Crusaders (55 page)

‘Hello there, stranger, mind if I sit?’

She waited for an answer, as others probably wouldn’t, and upon his semi-obliging half-smile she slid herself into the facing chair. Shortly she was attended by the waitress – a sweet-looking girl but for a regrettable stud in her nose – and she dithered a
little
over her choice of cake or tart to accompany the pot of Earl Grey. Thus was she chastened a little by his frugal request for black coffee.

‘You’ll not have a pastry? I’d have two if I were you, there’s nowt on you. I only wish I could keep it off.’

The corners of his mouth twitched.
Come on, pet
, she was
thinking
,
a little nicety won’t kill you
. Her half-dozen colleagues in the canvassing team were sat as one on the far shore of the tea-shop counter, clearly a little mutinous and muttering, and with a
certain
justification, when their alleged leader – this frowning man whom they hadn’t met before today – sat himself apart and alone, perusing the
Mail
and the
Sun
, of all the wretched things.

But Mrs Margaret Deveson was nothing but a trier. Her calling as a hospice nurse was not one that allowed her to hide when she felt less than gladsome. Today – a bright spring day with a chill that put cherries in her cheeks – she was reasonably chipper. She would not rush to judgement. It was generally her view that
solitary
types wanted saving from themselves, or else they would have made a more thoroughgoing job of their solitude.

She tapped his pile of newsprint, which he had not entirely set aside.

‘Don’t tell me you’re reading for pleasure.’

‘Not a bit. Just better to know the enemy’s mind. When there’s a war on.’

She deemed that worthy of a chuckle. ‘Well, maybe so, but you want to watch. You’ll lose points off good Labour folk, sat with them dirty rags.’

He was stirring a spoon needlessly round his coffee cup. ‘I don’t know that my first impression was so great.’

Since he had shown himself not impervious, she favoured him with a more serious tack. ‘Listen, you won’t take it personal, I hope, but the others? They
are
a bit wary of you. I said to them, I said, “Look – he’s got this job, he must be good.” But, you know, with people not knowing your face, and you not from round here –’

‘I am, in fact. But that’s not the point. No, I understand – if it seems like I’m an imposition. A fiat. But I’m only here to help.’

‘And, have I got it right? You’re sent from the
regional
office? You’re one of them organisers?’

‘No, no, I’m from HQ. Millbank? The task forces? Have you heard of them? They’re only set up for the election, not the long run. So I’m just here to observe and support. Maybe advise if I can, just on presentation. “Message and delivery” they call it.’

‘Right, so that’s your expertise, is it?’

‘No, I just went for the job like anyone else.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve done a lot of it, but – presentation, public speaking. Acting.’

‘Okay, well – you see, I’ve been a Labour member all my life, the local parties are very close-knit, you might know. They have to be. So they’re not so keen on being given what for.’

He leaned forward and gestured impatiently, rather taking her aback. ‘Margaret, I couldn’t agree more. I joined when I was
fourteen
. But you’ve got to remember, there just aren’t so many
members
any more. Sometimes you have to hire bodies in to get things done. When the stakes are this high.’ He stopped, as if mindful of a stridency in his tone. ‘I don’t say I’m better than anyone, trust me. I’m just here to ensure the message gets over.’

‘So what’s that, then? The message?’

‘Come on, Margaret, you know very well, I’m sure.’

The note of complicity pleased her, and she nestled back cosily with her tea. ‘Well, I must say, I told the others, after you’d said your little piece to us this morning, I said, “There’s a man can express himself.” I was watching you a bit and all, as we went along, you’re good on the stump.’

‘Well, I ought to be,’ he said, in the direction of his chest.

They had passed the morning prior to this short break dawdling through the narrow and well-thronged streets of Durham City, urging the re-election of the sitting MP. The Market Place was to be their afternoon’s stall, and it was visible to them now from the upper windows of the Special Treat tea-room on Saddler Street. Mrs Deveson let her gaze rest on the dallying human traffic through the glass. ‘It makes me laugh, but, them uns who’d do anything not to stop for you. Looking over your head or at their watches and that. Like they’re so busy. I want to shout at them, “I don’t want your money.” And some of these kids you see, all in black, like death warmed up. I should talk, mind you, my daughter’s girl’s going a bit that way. No time for her granny any more, oh no.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m told you get twelve nice years with them. Then they’d rather, on the whole, you were dead.’

She smiled, though the witticism, if such it was, struck her as off-key. ‘I tell you summat else gets up my nose. The students. You’d think they’d have a view on an election. I thought they were all good Tory-haters. They’re supposed to be curious, at least, aren’t they? About the world? But they act like you’re not worth their time either. The accents on them and all. Public school, I
suppose
. Rugger-buggers. I say that, you’re not a rugby man, are you?’ His breadth of shoulder and stunningly bent nose had caused her to question her manners suddenly.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘But yeah, you’re right. My granddad used to say there’s two sides to Durham. Ne’er the twain shall meet.’

‘Oh, your family are from Durham then?’

‘I’m
from Durham. Pity Me.’ He jerked a thumb at the window.

‘Pity Me! Oh! Know it well. You do get some names around these parts, don’t you?’

‘You do that.’

Belatedly she was getting interested. ‘But you’ll not have spent much of your life here?’

‘Until I went off to college. Then I started working, you know … but I moved back up last year, for a bit.’

‘So what were you doing before this? Was it for the Party?’

‘No, no. I was a – I was a priest, actually. An Anglican priest.’

‘You never were!’

‘It’s true. I was due to take a post here, but it all fell through at the last. So I was unemployed. But it meant I could get involved with the Party again. Then, you know, the election was called, I heard they were hiring, so …’

‘And – but – you’re still a vicar then, are you? Or not?’

He looked to the window. ‘I’m on a bit of a sabbatical.’

‘My. Well, this’ll all be a bit of a change of pace, I suppose?’

‘Not so much. Still a lot of talking to people who don’t want to hear. For not much money.’

‘Oh but now, that’s God’s work for you, isn’t it?’ She savoured the taste of her own wit. ‘Right, and that’ll be where you get your good voice from then? The old sermons, eh?’

‘It’s not such a transferable skill, but yes, I suppose.’ She could sense his retreat from the colloquy. ‘I’ve not got a watch, is it time we shifted?’

‘We’ve a good ten minutes yet,’ said Mrs Deveson.

‘It’s just I’ve to run a small errand, before we start up again? But I’ll see you back in the Market Place for two.’

‘Okey-doke. Long as you’re not late for our star guest.’

‘He can wait.’

As her new friend John pulled on his coat she dabbled her
fingers
in the crumbs of her fruit slice. ‘So will you stay up here then? After the election?’

‘No, I expect I’ll troop back to London. See if there’s anything else going.’

‘Where are you stopping? While you’re here?’

‘With my dad. Out in Framwellgate Moor.’

‘Ah. Nice to have home still, eh?’

They rose, and she turned and shot a look at her colleagues, similarly stirring. He had resumed his frowning over the front pages of the papers.

‘What do you reckon to his chances then?’

‘Home and dry with a bigger majority, I’d have thought.’

‘Not our man, I mean
Blair
. In the country? I’ve still got my
worries
, see.’

‘I wouldn’t. He’ll be in by a mile. People should stop flapping.’

‘Well, aren’t you a little sunbeam?’ she clucked. ‘A few of the others are a bit down on him, see. I reckon he’ll be more radical than they think.’

‘Probably best to be realistic about things. That way you’re never disappointed.’ He smiled, in a manner Mrs Deveson thought apologetic, and drank down his sour-looking coffee.

Gore was chiding himself as he hastened past the shopfronts of Saddler Street. At best, his tale had finessed the truth, and the telling had been its own little humiliation. The urge to reinvent oneself was insistent at times, but a demoralising chore when it came down to the detail. Others, perhaps, had a greater facility for lying to themselves. Gore was not sure he considered such a feat even possible. But it was clear to him that certain aspects of the past had to be forcibly set aside if one were to go on with life. A measure of dishonour was probably his lot. And it would have been much the worse, he knew, had DC Chisholm not duteously kept him apart from the investigation and media scrutiny of same.

The brute fact was that he had been in a hole, had been granted an exceptional favour, and seized the opportunity without
scruple
. It was Susannah whose phone call had thrown the lifeline, and she who had, to all intents and purposes, both filled out and filed his application to Millbank, subsequently drilling and
dressing
him for interview in a matter-of-fact manner that he was far too chastened to query. If she had judged him harshly, her verdict had turned out to be not irrevocable. She was loyal, he had to admit, and for that much he was grateful. And so he was a
working
man again, albeit lodging in his teenaged bedroom – four
white walls, a bookcase and a map of the world, his father
sometimes
shuffling to the threshold with a mug of tea.

Do places really change with time,
he was thinking,
or is it only us?
His tread carried him up the narrow steep-winding path of Owengate, from the foot of which he could see the peak of the fortress, its northern face – five hundred feet wide from east end to west and the view over the gorge, dense woods shrouding the river. An impregnable site, this virile promontory, above the loop of the Wear. The Cathedral bells were still for the moment, but the aura of Norman supremacy needed no amplification.

At the north door a tour guide in a purple branded sweatshirt was addressing a loose congegration gathered before the
sanctuary
knocker.
‘Their clothes were taken off them and given out to the poor, you see, because as long as they took shelter in these walls they had to wear a black robe with a yellow cross …’

It was a tale Gore knew well, perfect for the tourists – the old legend of the Cathedral’s granting grace to fugitives from the law, lodging for thirty or so days, as long as they confessed to their sins. He glanced at the faces in the tour group – Americans, he guessed, standing attentively with handy cameras and annotated guidebooks and bored kids.

Within, he passed by some strenuous activity by the font, more deckhands in purple jumpers fiddling with the set-up of a silvery movie screen, twenty feet high, while others shifted lamps and a projector. It struck Gore as another little touch of showbusiness, stage management. There seemed no shortage of such notions for renewing this medieval site. A crocodile of boy choristers wended past him, mostly po-faced, a few smirking.

He sat awhile in the pews of the nave, staring up at the great
circular
rose window high in the east-end wall – muted golden light and Jesus in majesty, hemmed by a ring of saints. A few visitors were lighting penny candles. Many more sat stolid, heads bowed. The sole nuisance was a little blonde-headed girl making a playful mime with a hymnbook – ‘La-la-
la
! La-la-
la
!’ The pulpit was empty, the morning’s rota of hymn numbers still slotted on the wall to one side. It occurred to Gore that he had not been an audience member
for some time. He could imagine being up at the front, leading the chorus, yet he could no longer see himself a customer in the stalls.

It made a magisterial case for the faith, this old Cathedral, no question. You could not do without it. It could never be erased, never get sold off for luxury apartments, whatever the prophecies of Simon Barlow. Not yet. People would always come – for the sense of time and lineage, the efforts inscribed in the walls. They would come and fill the place, to visit or study, to be quiet and thoughtful or just to say they had seen it.

What part, though – he wondered – would one sacrifice, if one absolutely had to, to economise, to rebrand, remain current? What was expendable? The service itself, the prayer and the hymnal? Inconceivable. And then the ritual required a professor, a minister, even if the oaken pulpit this afternoon looked fine as it was, vacant and silent. What would go then? The belief in the almighty other? But it had spent so long on last legs. They could not start again, and were in no position to dictate any more. So was it enough that people be polite and kind and well-meaning? Agreeing to defer endlessly the matter of holy decree?

He shivered, for there was undeniably a chill in the air and in the hard seat under him. Then he glanced behind him at the Miners’ Memorial, perennially solemn and modest in its alcove. But no, his time was up, he had dallied enough. And so he
wandered
back down the aisle, over the perfectly inlaid floor, passing those massive drum columns, intricately patterned and round enough to house bodies.

As he drew near the chatty cluster of his team in Market Place Gore found he was not interested in resuming pleasantries with Margaret or launching a renewed charm offensive on those who likely wouldn’t thank him for it. Instead he veered toward the new arrival, who sat on a nearby bench with a fizzy can in his lap, chin on chest, swinging his legs.