Crusaders (56 page)

‘Hullo, young master Alex. Is your dad not here yet?’

The boy tossed his blonde mane toward the verdigris statue of the mounted Marquess of Londonderry, twenty feet hence. Gore 
walked around it and found Martin Pallister leaning against the base, one hand to brow, miniature phone cupped close to his mouth.

‘Look, I’ve got him the Newcastle shirt, I’m getting it signed by all the players … Aw, don’t even start with
that
, Becky. Twelve years old, I mean Jesus Christ, it’s sick you even discuss it.’

He glanced aside, saw that he was waited upon, tugged at the knot of his red tie and concluded his exchanges tersely. Then he nodded to Gore. ‘My master’s voice. She’s decided our son’s gay, you see. Based on what, I don’t know. What do you think?’

Gore turned and peered back at the listlessly seated Alexander.

Martin came fretfully close to his shoulder. ‘She lets him keep his hair that long. Lets him cry off all the team sports.’

‘He seems a solid lad, though,’ Gore murmured. ‘Not one of those speccy types, the ones who thumb their joysticks all hours. Just a regular sort of a boy.’

‘Well, you’d maybe tell that to the first Mrs Pallister.’

‘Or you maybe need to find her successor.’

‘Oh ho. I’ll take nee lesson off of you in that demesne,
Reverend
.’

Pallister was giving him that strange small smile he had
perfected
of late. How much Susannah had confided in him of her
little
brother’s recent debacle, Gore knew not – but some of it, no doubt, for this look was conspiratorial. Yet there seemed a kind of commiseration there too.

‘Any road,’ Martin persisted, ‘I’m as good as married to your sister. It’s why you and me are like family.’

Gore winced. ‘I’m just saying. If you gave your son more of a home, with a partner – I mean, look, it’s not that your wife hasn’t raised him perfectly well, clearly.’

‘I’ve had a hand in it, John. Man alive. You the expert on that subject an’ all?’

‘You asked me, Martin.’

Pallister chuckled. ‘That I did. What was I thinking? No, right enough, you’ve got to have gone through it, really. It all changes with kids, it really does. That’s what we’re
for
, really. Not winning elections. Or giving sermons. Before
he
come along – all through
my twenties – I used to think I was driving forward. Getting on, y’know? Like there’d be a point you got to where life would be different. Then his nibs showed up and I realised I’d hit it. Or it had hit us.’

Gore kept his gaze neutral, not in the mood for the lecture. Pallister’s smile had turned sportive once more. ‘Do you see, but? All that time I thought I was working my way through life – life was just working its way through me. Y’know what I mean? Are we not but vessels, John? For the great parasite? The worm of the world?’ He chuckled. ‘See, you can use that. If you ever go back to the preaching. So how are the troops then? And where’s Gerry?’

Pallister pressed past him and Gore followed, stooping to take a sheaf of pamphlets from his rucksack, adjusting the rosette in his lapel as he watched the MP give the canvassers the glad hand. He could see a few good citizens of Durham loitering with interest at a distance, as if they might have an active interest in the literature on offer, rather than suffering it to be pressed upon them. Pallister was now standing over his son as they conferred shortly. It seemed a fair enough rapport they had – enviable, in a way. The boy rolled his eyes, stood, yawned and stretched his young frame. Not a bad build, now Gore saw the whole of it – hips and crotch thrust forward with a certain familiar bored cocksureness.

Presently Pallister sauntered back to Gore’s side, apparently preferring his company, comfortable with his silence. Gore felt none of the same ease.

‘He’s at big school now, then, Alex?’

‘Aye, he’s at my old place. Heaton Manor. Still good. Mind you, they’ve got buzz-in security gates and all that now, not like my day. But that’s the world. It’s nice for him, local school, local kids.’

‘Right. A pity your friend Tony sent his boy to that Catholic
optout
place. What was it, ten miles from home?’

Pallister shook his head. ‘You’re just lucky if you’ve got a good school local. You should see the bloody bedlam where Becky teaches. Failing school. Failing teachers. Any road – it’s not an easy choice, so don’t be snide. You never bloody give over, do you? I hope you’re nicer when you’re knocking on doors for Gerry.’

‘Of course. I speak plainly to you because we’re family, Martin.’

It was as much of a retort as Gore could summon in the hard knowledge that he was bought and paid for.

Pallister grunted amusement. ‘Well, as the man said, John, a period of silence out of you would be greatly appreciated.’

Gore sniffed, lowered his head, mutely accepting that the thrust had struck home. Pallister, moreover, had a hand on his shoulder and was pointing a way forward. ‘Now look lively, bonny lad, you’ve a customer.’ Indeed one of the hovering circle of would-be voters had edged a few paces closer. Gore clasped his pamphlets to his chest and met the pilgrim’s eye.

‘Can I help you?’

There were a number of factual writings that were influential upon this fiction. I owe a particular debt to Andrew Martin for his article ‘They Told Me to Plant a Church’, which appeared in the
Independent on Sunday
on 20 February 1994 and detailed the work of a vicar in a parish within the diocese of Durham.

The subject of organised crime in Newcastle-upon-Tyne acquired a certain hazy focus after the killing of Viv Graham on New Year’s Eve 1993, and a further piece from the
Independent on Sunday
(13 March 1994), entitled ‘Death of a Philanthropist’ by Richard Smith, gave an account of Graham’s demise that was a further stimulus to me.

I am grateful to several books about the recent history of the Labour Party, principally
Tony Blair
by John Rentoul (which
provided
the anecdotal inspiration for Blair’s cameo in this novel),
Gordon Brown
by Tom Bower, and
Mandy
by Paul Routledge. A piece about Blair by James Fenton in the
New York Review of Books
(‘The Self-Made Man’, 12 June 1997) greatly informed my thinking about the then-prime minister’s association with County Durham.

I also found much of value in a pair of published memoirs by ex-bishops:
The Calling of a Cuckoo
by David Jenkins and
Steps Down Hope Street
by David Shepherd.

On a personal level I was much informed by discussions with the Reverend Peter Atkinson, a Durham-born vicar now retired. But I should say that the notional version of ‘the living’
presented
in these pages bears no relation to what was Peter’s, or, I suspect, any other churchman’s. It is every bit as invented as the
emotional lives of the characters and, accordingly, the author’s sole responsibility.

I was also greatly guided through the recent history of
organised
crime in Newcastle by discussions with persons who must remain unnamed, but whose time and insights were greatly
valued
. Again, the information received was used purely as a
springboard
for dramatic construction, rather than a documentary template.

Readers may have noticed here, and perhaps with disapproval, a handful of ‘moments’, pronouncements, and even chapter titles bearing a debt to things they have read elsewhere: namely in translations of the ‘big four’ novels of Dostoevsky. I readily own up to this
hommage
(or theft, if you like) since it is meant entirely and respectfully as a sort of genuflection to the Master.

The quotation from I. F. Stone used here as an epigraph is taken not from the original but as cited by Christopher Hitchens in an essay for
Vanity Fair
(September 2006) entitled ‘I. F. Stone’s Mighty Pen’.

At Faber I would like to thank Lesley Felce, Kate Ward, Charles Boyle, Neal Price, Walter Donohue, Neil Belton and Kate Burton. Above all, three individuals supported this project – Lee Brackstone, Kevin Conroy Scott and Rachel Alexander – for which I am dearly grateful to them.

Richard T. Kelly, April 2007

Richard T. Kelly is the author of the novels
Crusaders
(2008) and
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest
(2011).
Eclipse
, his first script for television, aired on Channel 4 in 2010. He has written several studies of filmmakers:
Alan Clarke
(1998),
The Name of this Book Is Dogme 95
(2000), and the authorised biography
Sean Penn: His Life and Times
(2004). In 2007 he edited
Ten Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Film Lists.
He blogs at http://richard-t-kelly.blogspot.com.

non-fiction

ALAN CLARKE

THE NAME OF THIS BOOK IS DOGME 95

SEAN PENN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES

as editor

TEN BAD DATES WITH DE NIRO