Crusaders (30 page)

‘Aye aye. Remember me?’

Grey eyes deigned to him. ‘Aye …’

‘Mackers, right? I’m John. C’mon, we’ve met.’

‘Might’ve done.’

‘Yeah, and I’ve met this one and all.’

Notorious
spun his cue in one hand. ‘The fuck
yee
deein’ here?’

‘Well, I was invited.’

‘Not by me.’

‘Pack it in Jason, man.’

Gore gestured to the table and to Mackers. ‘Fancy a game?’

‘It’s winner stays on, man,’ Jason retorted.

‘I’ll play you then.’

Mackers shrugged, handed Gore his cue and left the room. The subsequent contest was brief. Gore did not presume himself a player, but nonetheless endured near-constant verbal
gamesmanship
. ‘Ahhh! You’re
shit
, man.’ Six of Gore’s red balls were yet afloat as Jason drilled home the winning black and pushed out past him.

Back in the main room Kully had joined the congregants on the sofas. A low-key symposium looked to be in progress. Gore squeezed onto the end of a chair-arm and accepted a glass of Coca-Cola. Kully gestured as if to draw him in. ‘Reverend, we were just talking about the
riot
last summer.’

‘Call me John. There was a riot?’

‘Aye, it were magic,’ said a girl with eyes like a low fever.

‘Best thing ever happened round here, man,’ a boy said, leaning
back emphatically as if to invite dissent, or rival nominations.

‘What happened, John,’ said Kully, ‘the police chased a
joyrider
into the Blake Estate, and it all turned into a bit of a
standoff
.’

Mackers seemed offended. ‘Aye, cos the fella ran off and left the car, but the coppaz went knocking on doors like we wuz all of us hiding him. So they get telt to piss off and do summat useful. It was them what started the bother. Cos of that.’

‘Aye,’ someone seconded. ‘They lash into ya for nowt.’

‘Some people said they’d been a bit harassed,’ Kully nodded. ‘And one or two
missiles
got thrown at the police and next thing –’

‘Coppers are
cunts
, man, bunch of
fucken cunts
.’ This was Jason, muttering into his chest, though clearly for the attention of the group.

Gore winced. ‘Come on with that language.’

Jason’s head snapped up at him. ‘Shut yer mouth, man. What the fuck? How ya
want
us to talk, like? Like me’sel or how
you
want us?’

‘I’d like you to talk to me the way you’d want me to talk to you.’

‘Ah divvint
care
how yee talk to wuh.’

‘You’d want me to show some sort of respect.’

‘Why should ah respect you?’

‘Why should I respect
you
? “Notorious”? Because of your
brilliant
fashion sense?’ The resultant sniggers, Gore sensed, were on his side. ‘Look, I don’t expect you to like the police. I’m interested in your view. But that language – it’s hard to hear. And among women, you know? And I think you knew when you said it that I would find it so, right? But you said it anyway.’

Jason snorted and stared at him in silence – though he was
tapping
his foot to the floor with a manic intensity.

‘So, yes, we were saying – why you dislike the police.’

‘You heard. Even them uns are al’reet, they come round, aye? Act like you’re mates ’n’ all. Then summat gans off and they steam into you like
bastads
.’

Gore nodded.

‘Is “bastads” alreet for ya, then?’

Gore sniffed. ‘Yeah, fine, I know a few bastards.’

A few more chuckles, not from Jason. Gore looked to the group about him. ‘What do you think about Hoxheath, then? As a place to live?’

‘It’s ballocks,’ said a girl, sadly.

Cliffy chipped in. ‘I’m bored shitless, me. There’s nowt tuh dee.’

‘Nothing to do?’

‘Thas what ah said. Do ah stutter,
fool
?’

Gore blinked in surprise, for the half-pint boy had half-risen from his seat to spit the last word with maximum derision. He earned the best laugh of the afternoon. Gore bit his lip. ‘No, what I mean is, is there
absolutely
nothing to do?’ He looked to Kully but she was staring absently to the window. ‘What sort of work would you
like
to do? If you had your pick? What sort of jobs do people you know do?’

‘
Bin
man,
bin
man,’ intoned Jason, amusing himself.

‘I knaa what
I’m
gunna do,’ Cliffy piped. ‘Gunna work for Big Steve, me.’

For his pains, a torrent of jeering abuse. ‘Not in a million
years
, man.’

‘You gotta be
rock
to work for Big Steve.’ This was grey-eyed Mackers, as if he had now seen it all.

The complicit air in the room bumped the needle of Gore’s curiosity. ‘Stevie Coulson? Why do you want to work for him?’

‘The big man, in’t he?’ Cliffy scowled. ‘Original gangsta.’

‘Coulson’s a bastad an’ all,’ Jason muttered, seemingly
heartfelt
. ‘He wants workin’ on.’

By who?
thought Gore.
You? And whose Panzer division?
‘You know Stevie does a spot of work for me? At my church?’

The youths seemed to try very determinedly to remain doleful and unimpressed. But Kully was attentive to him again. ‘Yes, John, what about your
church
? Would you say a little?’

‘Oh. Sure. Well. I have a church service on Sunday at St Luke’s School. It’s just … really it’s a place to come along and hang out. Be together like this. And talk a little about how we might make things better. No pressure from me, you know? I won’t look out
for you, I mean. But you’d be very welcome. I’d appreciate it. And if I can ever be of any help to any of you then … you know where to find me.’

There
, he thought,
you can’t say that’s not friendly
. And he slapped his palms upon his thighs. ‘Well, I need to be off, thanks for your time.’

‘Me and all,’ declared Mackers. ‘Nee rest for the workin’ man.’ Gore noted that Mackers’ alleged friend Jason, now recumbent and toying with the bunched hair of one reluctant girl, was
goading
him with a masturbatory jerk of his wrist.

Kully followed Gore to the door, and together they saw Mackers zip up his coat, don a helmet and mount a moped, its delivery pillion box decorated in the Italian tricolour and
emblazoned
BARZINI’S PIZZA/PASTA. Kully shook his hand, her smile still pitying. ‘John, John – you’ve got to sell yourself better. “I’d
appreciate
it.” Really.’

Gore shrugged. ‘This was useful, thanks. I just don’t think they have much use for me.’

‘Oh rubbish. Now I will call you, yes?’

‘By all means,’ he murmured, vaguely amused by her rhino hide. Then he was striding free down the concrete ramp to the gravel parking lot. Then suddenly he was slipping and skittering and nearly falling face first.
Not fucking dog shit, not again
. He
hastily
inspected his sole, glanced back to Kully – for once, a picture of embarrassment – and heard the laughter of a few lads jabbing jeering fingers at a burst condom and a snail trail of leavings smeared down the ramp.

‘
Urgh
man, look. A
dobber
, a used dobber …’

‘They need men in their lives,’ announced Jack Ridley. ‘
That’s
what.’ Had he banged upon his placemat with the hub of his stout table-knife, he could not have seemed more emphatic.

They sat as six in the reception of Monica’s tidy home in Gosforth – Gore, Jack and Meg Ridley, Monica, husband Stan and their daughter Janet, a quiet dark girl in her twenties. Gore had been recounting his impressions of the Youth Centre for only a
few moments, in the course of which Monica had borne to table a stupendous shepherd’s pie, its raked and fissured crust bubbling in a dish the size of a paving slab. It smelled wondrous to Gore, and his appetite for conversation receded. Yet Ridley was
wrangling
him from across the table.

‘And this
Indian
girl was the only one in charge? How is it the only ones trying to put any sense into these young men are women?’

‘They’re not
all
women.’

‘Whey, charity and social services and that … all a lot of fussy women.’

‘Jack, you’ll get a clout off Monica if you don’t mind your tongue.’

Meg Ridley was silver-haired and ruddy-cheeked and rather handsome, like the wife of a well-heeled Scottish hill farmer, the homely fragrance of the Geordie hearth about her.

‘Well, Jack’ – Monica made a face – ‘I can tell you, there’s always vacancies in them sorts of jobs. If any fellas could be bothered. The money’s poor, mind, and it’s only women’s work, so they get stick off their mates.’

‘I’m not talking about them jobs. I’m talking about how they’ve not got fathers, these lads. That’s what they need. Set a good example and they’ll follow it, sharpish.’

‘Like you and our Luke,’ murmured Meg, and Ridley glowered at his wife.

Gore decided to capitalise on the injured silence. ‘I don’t believe all these boys are from broken homes.’

‘Oh, some’ll have dads but they’ll be dead losses and all, I’ll bet. The majority won’t, but. “One-parent households”, eh? I’ll bet you any money. That’s why we’re overrun. Two so-called parents, two nice flats, two lots of benefit …’

Gore looked for someone else to intervene, but no one did. Meg looked merely indulgent. They chewed in silence for a moment. Gore was weighing up the potential size of his second helping before he realised that Monica had her eye on him. ‘Oh, but John’s a big fan of the single mam.’

Meaning what?
He set down his cutlery. ‘I agree, life would be
better if everybody got raised by two happy parents, but I don’t think it’s essential. Clearly there are kids who get by. With just a mother, say.’

‘“Get by”,’ Jack growled. ‘They shouldn’t have to “get by”.’

‘Well, that’s just life, couples can’t always stay together. It’s not a curse falls on the kids’ heads.’

‘So why are they sitting around, dead losses, not in school, not in work? If you had kids of your own, John, I tell you now, you wouldn’t stand to watch ’em piddle their lives away. You’d give ’em a kick up the arse. Well, I say that, maybe you wouldn’t, maybe you’d just let ’em run amok.’

The evening was starting to oppress Gore, its mood recalling him to childhood subjection. ‘Some of these lads, Jack, they’ve not got a chance.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’re poor. Just that. They get looked down on.’

‘Poor, get away. You’re dreaming, aren’t you? Being poor is
having
nowt. My
dad’s life.’

‘Poverty’s relative. If you’ve got so much less than everyone else, you still feel it. The stigma of it.’

‘Aw, so that’s why they lie around all day, is it? Life’s not fair?’

‘Well, it’s a fact that it’s not fair –’

‘And what are you going to do about it?’

Gore’s mouth stayed closed, his mind yawning wide,
suspended
helplessly over his own inadequate store of ideas.
Love each other or die?

‘It’s the drugs, really, I think.’ Janet, so quiet and attentive all evening, was risking an opinion. ‘The drugs make them awfully shiftless. They cause most of the crimes too … I know what you’ll say, Jack, they shouldn’t be taking them. And you’re right. But I think it’s hard.’

‘Hard. They want it given to them hard, that’s what they want.’

‘By who?’ Gore rallied. ‘The police?’

‘Police, no. No policing will ever get it back to how it was in my day, never mind what power you give ’em. It’s not
down
to the police, man. It’s the
society
. The adults. It starts with the mams and
dads, and it bloody well goes to the teachers and the vicars and all.’

‘At least John’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.’ Gore looked up at Janet in gratified surprise. ‘It’s a fine thing you’re doing here.’

Over dessert, a charred and deep-sided rice pudding, Gore felt Monica attempting to draw him further into dialogue with her daughter. It was true that she had read English at Edinburgh, that she now worked for British Telecom, that she indicated a
willingness
to assist at St Luke’s. The problem, frankly, was that she was the image of her mother. It was Janet who escorted Gore and the Ridleys to the door. Jack seemed not to want to talk or even look at John, but Meg smiled faintly and touched his arm.

‘I think you might have been offered more than your dinner there.’

Gore gave her a wan smile. He was aware that had he ever found it so easy to manufacture sexual/romantic feeling then he could have been yet marooned in Dorset with Jessie Bradbeer, stepfather to a pair of bespectacled buck-toothed boys. As to Janet’s offer of help – well, help was not help unless given freely. This principle Gore felt sure he applied to all things equally. And whatever were Stevie Coulson’s flaws, he was not, as far as Gore could see, sizing him up for a shotgun wedding.

His finger hovered over the doorbell. Was it really such an
irrevocable
act? Hardly. And so he pressed. No sound was discernible within. He pressed again, but silence endured. One more piece of needful repair? He knocked, then rapped at the glass, awaiting vital signs. Perhaps he had botched his timing – early, for a change – just a shade after two of a Saturday, time for shopping or lunch or whatever were the weekend’s perks.

He was clad in mufti, a seaman’s coat of navy-blue wool over a loose tee-shirt and jeans, and he was touting a hand-sorted box of tools he thought fit to accomplish the various tasks for which he had volunteered – hammer, drill and bits, assorted screws and screwdrivers, a full set of Allen keys.

At last he heard footfalls and the door was flung wide by Lindy Clark, Jake hoisted up awkwardly in her arms.

‘Hello there. Well, look who’s come knocking, eh?’

Her face was bare of its usual slap, and for the first time Gore saw the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks. At last, the secret of her addiction to liquid foundation.
Irish
, he thought. Had she once been a redhead? She wore a fatigued white tee-shirt and tracksuit bottoms; warmth and bed-smell emanated from her. As she stooped and set down her squirming son, Gore saw once more the sharp-tongued snake at the base of her spine. That snake, that sceptical curl of the lip, that knowing youth of hers … all things that made Gore shrivel inwardly, deem as daft some of the idle thoughts he had been entertaining. And yet her door was open, he was bade welcome.

On his knees in the boy’s bedroom, methodical Gore cleared a space for work, slit the polystyrene round the box, dismembered the
cardboard
packaging, counted and set aside the panels, and turned a drawer out as a receptacle for assorted small bags of bolts. As he unfolded the instructions, Lindy looked in on him. Her face had been reinstated, black lashes and gleaming purplish lips.

‘Is it all canny? Y’alright there?’

‘Champion. I was wondering, but?’

‘Aye?’

‘Is your kettle broken?’

‘Cheeky bugger. Hark at you.’

‘Listen, I’ll try and be quick, I won’t keep him out for long.’

‘Don’t worry, he’s got the match on the radio, he’s happy. Your daddy’s there, isn’t he?’ She was shouting down the hall. ‘He’ll maybe take you next time …’ she muttered in a lower key.

Gore kicked on. For the next hour he diligently bolted uprights to boards before he realised, aghast, that he had set about the job back-to-front. With less patience and more grazing of his thumb he undid the original work and recommenced, whistling for his amusement, hearing occasional crescendos in the football
commentary
. When he had all but the last few screws to dispose of, he took a breather, hands on his crouching thighs, and peered from the window down the alley to where a kid was kicking
pointlessly
at a brick wall. Then he felt a sharp prod in his kidneys and almost jumped out of his skin.

Swivelling, he saw the familiar challenging pout. ‘Oh, Jake. You gave us a start there, kidder.’

The boy wore shiny red foam-filled boxing gloves on his hands, and was proffering between them another matching but larger pair.

‘Look at them, eh? What? You want to have a go with me?’

‘Aye!’

‘Oh, I see. Fancy a dust-up, do you? Bit of a pagga?’

‘Aye!’

Gore slid a hand snugly into first one glove and then the other. He shifted his weight onto his knees and made a guard of his two
bulging paws. Jake began to throw jabs, left and right, shuffling about in his stocking feet, first tentative, then with vigour. Gore took care to chortle and exclaim in surprise with each blow
landed
, for it was good fun – a perfectly safe and pleasurable
pounding
of glove upon glove. The boy too seemed to be relishing it, though he looked terribly intent, not quite smiling, his backside bulging out of his tracksuit trousers as he bobbed and weaved.

Gore blocked again, then popped a weightless jab to the child’s belly.

‘Gotcha. Left yourself open there, eh?’

Lindy nudged through the doorway with the tea tray, and she was frowning.

‘Oh, sorry,’ Gore exclaimed. ‘Is this alright?’ Then he felt a clout to his chin that made his teeth rattle.

‘Eee Jake, man!’

Gore knew he had bitten his tongue, but he resolved to tough it out, and made a pantomime of seeing stars, listing over onto the carpet.

Daylight was fading as he wielded the cordless drill to secure the shelf unit to the bedroom wall. He heard the front door rapped, and voices below – Auntie Yvonne, it seemed, taking Jake into her care for the evening. Gore felt something turn over in his stomach, like appetite, or apprehension. Some minutes later Lindy came to the threshold again with a corkscrew.

‘So, handyman, will you have a glass of wine with us? For your trouble.’

Downstairs the two of them sank deep into Lindy’s faux-leather sofa, nursing their drinks. Gore was tired, but not so much so as to make his excuses and leave. He glanced about him in the quiet. ‘Funny, isn’t it? These estates, how uniform it all is. Your place and mine, they’re the exact same layout.’

‘Keep your place nice, do you? Bachelor pad?’

‘I wish.’

‘You’re not, are you? With anybody. Not married, I mean, are you?’

‘No, no. Married to the Church.’ He offered a small smile.

‘Aren’t you meant to have a little woman, but? To do all the woman’s things …?’

‘You mean a housekeeper?’

‘Nah, I mean a wife. Your lot are allowed to get married, aren’t you’s?’

‘Oh yeah. There’s no – injunction, from above. None
whatsoever
.’

‘So you’re free to be with whoever you like.’

Gore smiled softly into his chest. If she wished for his company this evening, he decided, she would have to indulge his odd mood.

‘What’s funny ’bout that, like?’

‘Not funny, just a – oh, a feeling of mine. See, I don’t think
anyone’s
ever really
free
. In that department? It’s more complex. For being mutual. I mean, you can’t just choose who you want, can you?’

‘Dunno. I’ve mostly felt like I’ve had me pick. Within
reason
, like. I’ve stopped thinking Liam Neeson’s gunna gan out wi’ us.’

‘Who?’

‘Liam Neeson? Actor in the films? Irish. Dead sexy. Big hands.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Gore, none the wiser.

‘Any road, but. You’re a nice big lad. You could have your pick and all.’

‘Oh, that
is
funny. No. Nice of you to say. But it’s never worked out. It’s a funny sort of job I do.’

‘There’s funnier, I can tell you. Least a lass would know where she was with a vicar. I mean, you’re kind. You’re a decent sort …’ She put her hand on his arm, he felt a light squeeze of her
fingertips
.

‘Oh, well, you see, now you’re talking to me like I’m a bit of a
mong
.’

Lindy looked authentically hurt. Gore recalibrated. ‘Sorry, no – I mean, look, the way I see it, to be honest – you talk about choice? See, I’m not sure the choice isn’t made for us, in a way. When two people … get together. I do just think there’s – just a bit of an
element of the preordained to it.’ Her brow was still furrowed. Gore knew very well what he was thinking and decided to say it, as mad as it sounded – indeed because it was mad. ‘A good man I used to know would say, “God will have a partner for you.” And that’s a very powerful idea.’

‘Say again? “
God
will have a partner …”?’

‘God will – gravitate you to someone. And that someone toward you. Because it was meant to be so. In the beginning, before you ever came to be. I just – I
do
think our lives are fated, somehow. They
have
to be. People
present
themselves to you. And it makes sense. It’s like this guy Coulson at my church. It’s too bizarre otherwise. So I have to trust in it.’

She was looking perplexedly at him. The wonder-working power he felt in the words, the fantasy in which he could almost believe, did not, seemingly, stir quite so much in Lindy. It was hardly a surprise. ‘Well, any road. I expect that all sounds a very sort of airy-fairy …
religious
way to look at it.’

‘No, no. It’s – romantic.’ Still, she was knitting her brow. ‘What about sex, but? While you’re waiting, y’knaa? For God to get you’s together. Cos you’d have to wait a canny bit, right? It’s not going to land on a plate.’

‘I suppose. You have to – kiss a few frogs.’

Lindy seemed suddenly most invested in this discussion. ‘I mean, people shouldn’t go without. Should they? Without sex?’

Gore shrugged.

‘It’s one of the good things, isn’t it? We wouldn’t have it if we weren’t meant to like it.’

‘No. But the Church says, and I believe, it has to be in a loving relationship. Anything else is … disturbing, I feel. The
meaningfulness
of the … two people coming together, reduced to a sort of a … just a physical spasm.’

She made a face. ‘Quick squirt, you mean? Aye, right, that does sound shit.’

He shifted. ‘I’m sorry, Lindy. This is a bit of an adult conversation.’

‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Feels like I’m back at school. Talking about the birds and the bees …’ She peered at him, mouth
wry. He could see her point, and it pressed acutely into his ribs, making him unsure as to whether she was mocking him or else exhorting him toward a declaration of why he was still here, on her sofa, drinking her wine. Or perhaps she was merely running down the clock before her favourite TV show. He found that he didn’t want to decide what were his own feelings, and thus he took the simpler, well-trusted option of pretending that nothing was so very serious.

‘I know, I know. You’re right. I do have some half-baked ideas. You’d think one of these days I’d grow out of them.’ He stood,
collected
the glasses and carried them to the kitchen, set them in the sink, absently found himself refilling the kettle. Always, he knew, it was easier, far easier, to disengage, drift free. He sensed her behind him but did not turn. She dallied closer.

‘I’m sorry, Lindy,’ he heard himself say.

‘It’s me sorry. What are you sorry for?’

‘Being what I am.’

He felt her arms slip around his waist, saw her hands clasp in front.

‘I really like you, but, John. I really do.’

She pressed her face into his back.

‘I like you, Lindy,’ he murmured.

He took her hands into his and turned them, felt them squeeze, felt and heeded the firm impress that seemed to be saying: be quiet. He turned and she was smiling. He folded her into him, the warmth of her body pliable and cat-like, and he kneaded her,
feeling
her strain and stretch as they inclined to one another and kissed. As he tasted her perfumed lipstick a deliciousness flooded through him. In this cold kitchen he could feel blood in circulation again, a well-reckoned but long-suppressed uncoiling of desire. Her lips were up at his ear. ‘Do you want to go upstairs? Lie down?’

He took her hand and she led him up and across the landing into her bedroom – perhaps fifteen feet by ten, scent in the air, clothes on the floor or hung upon a free-standing rail, russet
cotton
curtains leaking light onto a carelessly made bed, an ivory
duvet fringed with small frills. Lindy perched on the edge of the mattress and yanked off her tee-shirt. He hastily removed his own tee-shirt and emerged to be faced by the hollow of her shaven underarm as she reached behind her back and unclasped a
sensible
white bra. She bunched the hems of her track-pants and
knickers
and peeled them down, baring a coppery delta. Gore glanced aside, to the MFI drawers, the bedside table bare but for a lone spent cigarette in an ashtray. And to the framed film poster on the wall, the chiselled features of a male lead. Was this Liam Neeson, he of the big hands?

Then she was unbuckling his belt, unstudding his jeans,
drawing
them down. He kicked them free of his ankles, slid down, over and on top of her, and they kissed. They lay a while in the gloom, he cupping her face in his hands, she grinning up at him.

‘Lindy, I don’t have any protection.’

‘We’ll not make a baby, divvint worry.’ She stretched to kiss his mouth, then wriggled aside and reached to his groin. For a sick moment he feared for the stoutness and preparedness of his
erection
. Some feather-light touches of her fingers dispelled that doubt. Then she steered him inside her, their crotches met, and he began to thrust with all the
tendresse
as he could muster given his entire being was clenched in white-hot concentration. He was lumbering, he knew – short of practice, eager to please. But Lindy was still smiling, and keenly groaning in time, exhibiting – at least it seemed – one hundred per cent of her own capacity for
excitation
. He had found his rhythm – a gamut of sensations long
forgotten
– and she appeared keenly abreast of her own, indeed some way ahead of his. Assured that he might also start to enjoy
himself
, he made his thrusts short and uninhibited, then the stone in his groin dissolved into hers and he slumped to rest on his elbows above her, breast to breast. He withdrew carefully and rolled aside, but she reached and stroked him, idly, trailed fingers across his mons pubis. And so he laid a careful hand in kind upon her.
The precious things of the earth and the fullness thereof
was the thought that struck him, and he wanted to laugh, already short of breath and mildly elated.

Lindy reclined on her pillows, taking short draws on a Benson & Hedges, one arm strewn around Gore’s neck where she idly stroked and tweaked the short hairs there. He was conscious,
disconcerted
even, that he lay in the position traditionally occupied by the female at such moments.

‘Ahhh,’ she exhaled. ‘A tab and a big man in wuh bed. If I just had a brew and a bit toast I’d be in heaven.’