Crusaders Page 14

  Yours in faith & friendship,

  John

  Chapter XI

  THE GUNNERY

  Saturday, 28 September 1996

  Gore didn’t like to stare, yet he could hardly ignore the veritable elephant in this particular parlour. A hulk of a man, shaven-headed, absurdly muscled, was trundling tank-like through the modest crowd of late Saturday afternoon – not boorishly, but with a clear, calm surety that lesser bodies would step out of his way. Mid-to-late thirties, Gore reckoned, though the bluish sheen of his clean scalp perhaps added years to an ostensibly younger face. His faded jeans bulged as if to burst, his navy-blue polo shirt stretched drum-skin tight by the barrel chest and slab-like biceps that put Gore in mind of nothing so much as the marbled flanks in a Bridport abattoir to which he once accompanied Roy Jeavons.

  ‘So, uh, what do you think, John?’

  ‘Oh I think it’s terrific, Bob.’

  Spikings flanked Gore by the door of his church hall, wherein the weekly jumble sale had reached its peak hour of trade. Gore counted eighteen or nineteen stalls, a turnout of eighty or ninety bodies. The elderly were notable, as were the parents of noisy children. But it worked, by God – it was orderly and cheery. And none seemed more genial than the Incredible Hulk, now making a big show of buying from this stall and that, his over-biting grin like that of some cartoon shark circling a bony castaway on a buoy-like desert island.

  ‘Well, glad you think so,’ said Spikings. ‘Car-boot sales are quite the thing now, but we’re fighting back. This is nicer, I think. You do see some pretty, uh, ragged elements at the boot sales.’

  As opposed to the Mighty Quinn over there, thought Gore. Now the Hulk was whispering into the ear of a plump lady, she pulling a delightedly scandalised face.

  ‘And this turnout, it reflects your congregation?’

  ‘Pretty much. Attendance is up three years running now. Just a little each time, but my God you notice. It’s not a revival, nothing like the righteous Mr Barlow would argue. He can talk, uh, such crap.’

  Gore smiled. An old lady was touching the Hulk’s arm tentatively, cooing at him, and he inclined his domed head the better to hear.

  ‘… No, sometimes I think we’re just getting people out of their houses. Otherwise they sit by the telly and worry about crime and what-have-you. And we’re cheaper than a seat at St James’s Park. I mean, that’s how it is these days, John – you’ve got to see it from the punter’s angle. Find out what people want, try to give it them.’

  Drawing near, thin and eczematic under a sponge of frizzy red hair, was Spikings’s verger, Henry March, to whom Gore had been introduced in the foyer as he dispensed raffle tickets.

  ‘How we faring, Henry?’ Spikings asked.

  ‘Pretty good. Forty-two sold.’

  ‘Splendid. Now half of that will go straight to your cause, John.’

  Gore murmured thanks. Well and good – albeit not so diverting as the two small children running gleeful circles around the Hulk’s trunk-like legs, until he stooped and scooped first one then the other into his great arms. Only then, as the kids squirmed and bounced, did a momentary wince twist that grin of his. Bad back, thought Gore. Achilles heel?

  ‘It takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry, Bob?’

  ‘That fellow you’ve your eye on? Quite a sight, isn’t he? His name is, uh … gosh, I’m blanking. Clarkson? Bit of a character at any rate, locally.’

  ‘That I can imagine.’

  ‘Do you know, last year he called me up out of the blue. Said he was a businessman, wanted to come in for a meeting, about “church funds”, he says. I thought, fine. Then that shows up. You can imagine my face. But I realised, I’d seen him here before, at eventide. And what he did – I was stunned – was hand me a big fat donation for a new communion table.’

  ‘Gosh. That’s not to be sniffed at.’

  ‘Lord, no. Cash, too. You don’t forget that. Very intense he was about it. Said he wasn’t much of a churchgoer himself but the Church meant a lot to him. Heaven knows why. Didn’t give the impression he would brook any argument. And it was decent of him, I must say.’

  ‘He seems to have friends here.’

  ‘I’ll bet there’s not one he’s met before. Some people just have that way about them, don’t they? The world is their friend. No, he’s not doing any harm. Good job. I couldn’t ask him to leave, could I? I might get seven bells knocked out of me.’ Spikings chortled as they began to dander down one side of the room, until Gore’s arm was gently taken and he encountered some keen selling from a lady presiding over a table of crockery and tableware.

  ‘Nothing to tempt you, John?’ Spikings prompted. ‘Not even something for your new place?’ Sotto voce he added, ‘You only make one first impression.’

  Gore picked up the most plain-looking vase on display, a yellow ceramic number, and parted with a fiver.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ purred Spikings, as his phone trilled about his midriff. The next table was entirely populated by soft toys, and Gore had all but turned his face away when he spotted a saggy brown donkey with long fleecy ears and excessively doleful eyes. A daft impulse seized him.

  ‘Oh, I’ll have him.’

  ‘Fiver alright for you?’

  ‘My lucky day.’

  He sauntered out to the foyer, firing out broad smiles in every direction. Spikings was muttering into his phone, but he concluded the call and slotted the device into a pouch on his belt, easy as a workman’s tool. ‘Have you not got one of these yet? They’re awfully useful.’

  ‘I’m a bit suspicious. They seem to make you a slave. A bell rings and you have to answer.’

  ‘I wouldn’t see it, uh, quite so drastically. When one is called, it’s usually meaningful. My, that’s quite a prize you have there.’ He indicated the fluffier of Gore’s purchases.

  ‘Oh, I’m all for the donkey,’ said Gore, surprised by his own cheeriness. ‘A useful and good-natured creature.’

  Spikings feigned a short laugh, clearly a bridge to discourse over the wreckage of a remark that had baffled him.

  ‘That’s a line in Dostoyevsky.’ Gore smiled. ‘Big favourite of mine.’

  ‘Right,’ said Spikings, his warmer smile suggesting no new understanding, but plenty of reassurance.

  ‘Bob, while I’m here I wondered too if I might ask you a favour?’

  ‘Anything. Well, you know, within reason. At a price.’ He patted Gore’s forearm.

  ‘I think I need a loan of a few good items. Proper things. For my service.’

  ‘Oh! For sure. We have spares. What are you in need of?’

  ‘Well, a good altar cloth, certainly. Maybe a ciborium?’

  ‘Hmm. Can you bear to wait around? Henry could sort you out after the raffle.’

  Gore elected to stroll out of doors, down the Nun’s Moor Road for a breath of air. On his return, the sale was finished, stalls were being packed up. He could not see Henry March. Thus he stepped aside, through connecting doors, into the chapel. Spikings had spoken with quiet pride of his burnished brass lectern, a rather special choir stall and a fine old three-manual organ. Gore fancied he might steal a moment to peek around the nave before evening communion.

  The sight that met him was that of Henry towering over some sheepish and unkempt old fellow in a stained sweatshirt. Voices were raised, most especially Henry’s. Gore set off down the aisle toward them, but the old man broke away and stomped past, his face madly ruddy, eyes wild, beard yellow-grey. As Gore reached Henry’s side he turned and together they watched the tramp lurch out of sight.

  ‘As if there weren’t enough on,’ Henry sighed, ‘I find that kipping in the pews … Oh, and God I knew it, I mean, look at that. The dirty mare …’

  Gore understood as the stink assailed him, and covered his mouth with his sleeve, recognising the thoroughly regrettable shape on the ground, the piece of wretched ordure to which Henry pointed a short distance hence.

  The ver
ger’s voice became a pained hush. ‘Bob doesn’t want to hear about this, see. It’s like it’s part of the job, right? They’re all part of “the community”.’ March waggled his fingers in the shape of inverted commas. ‘So who’s left holding the baby, eh? I don’t mind the doors being unlocked, but this is what you get. Dossing and drinking and … urgh. I wouldn’t mind if he’d gone in his own trolleys. Oh bloody hell, I’d better go get the pail and shovel. We’re not paid enough for this,’ he muttered. ‘Oh, and you want something too, don’t you?’

  ‘In your own time,’ said Gore.

  *

  It was noticeably colder as Gore wended his way home on foot, and the lights of Hoxheath’s pubs seemed unusually warm and welcoming, however smeared the glass or grubby the curtains. Passing a few open doorways he heard sounds of inchoate rowdiness, but also bonhomie. Saturday night was Saturday night, however it was sliced – time for good cheer, for a little light relief. Turning his key in his door, he knew he had nothing to pass the evening other than reading, not even a stroke of meaningful work. Feeling a mite foolhardy, yet mildly hopeful, he dialled Jack Ridley’s number, and got his wife on the line. ‘Oh, he’s eating his tea, John …’

  When Ridley came on, he sounded like a man gripped by heartburn.

  ‘Jack, I’m just calling on the off chance. When we popped into the Nelson the other week, I found it very useful, meeting everyone and so forth? And I fancied I might head out to a pub or two around Crossman tonight. I just wondered if you’d be at all interested in joining me for a pint? A rematch on the old dominoes maybe?’

  ‘No, thank you, John, we’re settled in for the night now.’

  ‘Of course you are. Sorry.’

  ‘You say you’re off drinking round Crossman?’

  ‘Just to show my face. I’m all for pubs, as you know.’

  For some moments only ambient Ridley household noise came back down the line.

  ‘Okay then, John. But mind yourself when you’re out. And divvint drink too much, hear? Good night to you.’

  Gore set down the receiver, much the worse for having taken it up.

  *

  He heard noises, made out shapes, figures, in a doorway, and his pulse quickened as he made haste past the Crossman Youth Centre. Thirty yards ahead lay its squat detached doppelgänger, the Gunnery pub. A few cars were parked in its forecourt, and Gore felt a chuckle escape him, for one of these was a fancy jet-black Lexus – alloy wheels, creamy leather upholstery, tinted windows, bold as a bull in a tea-room given the wrecks all around it. He had to stop and walk around this immaculate vehicle in wonder, and it struck him that anyone with a house-key and a bad attitude might be tempted sorely to wipe the wealthy smile from the owner’s face.

  ‘Had a good fuckin’ look then, have ya?’

  The challenge came from behind and Gore twisted sharply, only to see a youth’s face, a puffy truculent buffer under lamplight – a bristling little version of a man, smoking sourly, acting like this were his property, his ride. It was beginning to seem to Gore that this boy and he had been twinned for a higher purpose.

  ‘It’s Mackers, isn’t it? Mackers?’

  ‘What’s it to yee?’

  ‘Well – I thought we were pals. Before your mate stuck one on me. Didn’t I take that corner for you? In the park last week?’

  ‘He’s not me mate. You’re alreet, you. Just leave off eyein’ the motor, aye?’

  The hard look was nearly funny. ‘Fine,’ Gore murmured and turned away.

  The Gunnery pub was sullen under the sodium light, exuding a certain eventide menace, a keep-out to passing trade. There were perhaps a hundred instant reasons to stray nowhere near, and Gore pressed them out of his mind as he pushed through the doors. Within? Just another drab boozer – a glum, unwelcoming, seemingly all-male haven for heavyweight drunks. At the bar two indecently red-faced men, in similar anoraks and tracksuit bottoms, were loudly speaking ill of an absent associate. Woodchip climbed the walls to a dado rail, above which the plaster was painted – smeared – in the manner of a dirty protest. Pushed up in rows askew around the wall were framed monochrome photos of local industrial scenes. A scattering of pension-age drinkers looked extremely ill over those drinks. For the moment, at least, Gore decided, he would not be initiating any conversations.

  He ordered a bottle of brown ale from a dilatory barman who glanced at his clerical collar but found no interest there. Where, then, should he settle himself, which spot was least uncomfortable? Past the bar and to the left was an enclave of alcove tables, but a raucous manly hubbub was issuing from same. To the right, a dim corner table presented itself, and yet he couldn’t but feel it would present him in turn, conspicuous as a prize lemon. He stood his ground, toyed with his half-pint glass. How long would he stay? How long to drain a bottle? Where next? His night out was off to a sluggish start.

  He was shifting so as to face the door rather than any hard look when he saw, coming round the bar from the seating at back, a face he knew. For this colossal man was not forgettable. What was his name? Clarkson?

  Tonight he had packed his bulk into a good single-breasted suit of dark blue, with a crisp white collar flying open, so framing that bulwark neck of his. He thumped on the bar without malice, but the barman hastily snuffed his fag. Gore made eye contact, then his eye darted aside, for he saw the big man’s eyebrows knit. Eye contact was a mistake, wasn’t it? He didn’t suppose his clerical suit gave him Red Cross immunity from aggro. Still, he glanced back – and Clarkson was looking at him most fixedly. Impulsively Gore raised his half pint, tried a smile. Now the Hulk was striding round and at him, purposefully, and Gore’s pulse jumped. He had meant no affront, and tried now to fight a wild-racing notion that he was about to be hoisted up bodily, tossed out through the double doors. Clarkson was nigh, raising a ham fist almost to his shoulder. He’s going to punch my arm. Gore quailed, rooted to the spot. The fist came down, the arm extending, and turned into an open hand, into which Gore reflexively inserted his own, and so found himself part of a pumping handshake.

  ‘Reverend Gore, aye? Am I right? I’m right, aren’t ah?’

  ‘Aye,’ Gore blurted. ‘That’s me. You are?’

  ‘I’m Stevie, Father. Stevie Coulson. Good to know you.’

  ‘You know my name?’

  ‘Aye, I saw you with the Reverend Spikings this afternoon, I meant to come owa, but you’d nipped off, hadn’t you?’

  At last Coulson relinquished Gore’s hand. But there remained something strangely grave and decorous in his bearing, like a diplomat greeting the monarch, or an undertaker on duty. Surely not for my sake, thought Gore. He couldn’t see himself as the recipient of dignities from this powerhouse, with his hard-worn hands and fighter’s face and broad over-biting smile.

  ‘So,’ Gore tried, ‘you wanted to say hello? This afternoon?’

  ‘I did. You did us a good turn, see. Th’other week? I say “us”, what I heard is you took care of a young friend of mine.’

  Gore made a lighting-fast mental account of his recent activities in the area. No ball was dropping.

  ‘It were young Cheryl MacNamara.’

  ‘Oh! Cheryl.’

  ‘Aye, her mam’s a pal of mine, see, and she were proper grateful you brought her in th’other night. So I’m grateful to you an’ all.’

  ‘Well, it was nothing.’

  ‘Ah but see, Father, it’s not everybody thinks like that. Now you’ll have another of them there, eh?’ He gestured to Gore’s bottle.

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘And you’ll come sit yer’sel wi’ us in the back, right?’

  Resistance, clearly, was useless. And so, after all, Gore had company for the evening. He found that he was served sharply this time, and carried his two glasses carefully to Coulson’s table, where the man sat at the head of four brawny broad-shouldered fellows. Three still had their own hair, one of these clearly the junior of the gang. The other skinhead wore a low brooding look of such enmity t
hat Gore suspected he had wrecked the man’s evening. In their jeans and tee-shirts they were scruffy next to the suited and booted Coulson, though stacked to one side of the party in the shelf of an alcove was a little hillock of leather coats, clearly new or nearly so, giving off the good aroma of a tanner’s shop.

  ‘Now this,’ Coulson announced, ‘is the Reverend Gore I telt you’s about.’

  ‘Hullo. Call me John.’

  ‘This here’s Simms. That man’s Dougie? That sour-looking toerag is Shack. And who are you again?’ This was directed at the youngster, but with a sporting cackle that the group echoed. ‘Nah, that there’s Robbie. New start, see. I say Robbie, he’s Smoggie to me, cos he’s Middlesbrough, aren’t ya?’

  Robbie bobbed his head bashfully – either an uncommonly forbearing soul, or a lad of limited faculties. Gore eased himself down onto a stool, shaking all hands as he went.

  ‘Now divvint tak’ a word of bother out of them, John. There’s not one of ’em as hard as they give out. And they all work for me, so they know to behave.’

  ‘You do your preachin’ round here then, do you?’ muttered Shack.

  ‘Actually I’m what they call “planting” a new church …’ And Gore stumbled into his stock speech, unsure of the true interest from his interlocutor, whose mouth stayed tightly pursed around his tab, the scar tissue under his eyes very pronounced at close quarters. Shack was not built to such fearsome proportions as Stevie, yet there was perhaps a surpassing hardness to him, a sense of more callous materials employed.

  When Gore was done, Coulson very solemnly clapped his hands. ‘Good man, you. I tell you what, Father, you set a good example and you’ll find people sharp follow it.’

  ‘Well, I hope. If anyone shows up.’

  ‘Whey, you’ll not have bother. Plenty good people round here, good honest families and that.’

  ‘Aye, Stevie’s got family round here,’ announced the one called Simms, seeming to think himself a wit, for a grin lit his babyish features, these with the regrettable look of having been crushed into the middle of his face as if by a vice. Stevie shot Simms a dead-eyed look in reply. Gore could almost smell the sheepishness among these big men, a seeming acceptance that, for all their equivalent size, one alone was the dominant dog in the pack.