Crusaders Page 38

  ‘Well, I tell you what I like, you can really shop around. You can’t get oversold, not that I can see. Not like Fenwick’s. All under one roof. I mean to say, it’s huge.’

  ‘It was Enterprise land, all this, you know? They’re not paying rates, they’ll not even pay tax.’

  Jenny shrugged as to say that was neither here nor there. ‘I know I’ve had a nice day. How about you, little man?’

  Alex nodded shyly, raspberry sauce all over his lips. Martin swilled tepid Coca-Cola round his mouth. Such was the nightmare scenario to his mind – that big ugly wheezes such as these were somehow seen to work.

  It had gnawed at him for some time – a certain historical notion – that the north-east was a laboratory for this stuff, a testing ground for some spark’s obsession with the spanking new and cutting edge. When Wilson had blown hot air about a ‘white heat’ of technology, no one had taken it seriously, least of all Wilson himself. And yet, somehow, north of York and Darlington, the notion seemed to enjoy breathless respect. Worse, it was open to easy purloin – Thatcher, donning a white coat and a hard hat to open the Nissan car plant in Sunderland.

  All this, Martin knew in his gut, was the grist of his own major work. It wouldn’t be fucking shopping, that was for sure. No, the north-east was living an industrial nightmare, but one from which it might awaken. The crisis was an opportunity, for radical analysis. What would Marx have said? Might new industry render the old no more than a blackened memory? Could the Metro ever employ so many as his dad’s works? Doing what? It seemed a lightweight proposition. All that is solid melts into air. Yet this mall, these crowds, their custom – you couldn’t call it fly-by-night.

  Martin wetted a finger between his lips and rubbed absently at his son’s smeared and beaming cheeks. Oh aye – happy now – happy he had what he wanted off his grandma. It was a breezily banal thing, family life – it gave and it took away. His energies felt sporadic to him now, his style firmly cramped. At work, where once he had basked, he found himself newly irascible to his students. One above all gave him a keen pain between the eyes, through every profitless tutorial hour. This was Paul Todd, the ex-Durham mechanic, now chasing a mature education for himself after the closure of Sacriston Colliery. A protégé of Martin’s union weekenders, and ostensibly a sensible lad, he had somehow fallen in with Joe and mutated into the same species of Trot know-all. It was sufficiently distressing to have lost a fan – much the worse to be rowing with some lanky doppelgänger of his dad every fortnight in a tiny office.

  With crushing inevitability Todd had chosen for his thesis the Taff Vale Judgement of 1901, wherein the Lords made the railwaymen’s society liable for costs of a strike they hadn’t supported. Martin freely conceded this to be a turning point for the fledgling union movement, a spur to their pursuit of representation at Westminster. Todd, though, seemed to see it as a proud and final welding together of a class determined to secure for itself the full fruits of its labour, ‘by hand or by brain’. At first patiently, Martin tried to make the lad see the sometime vying interests and concerns of dock workers and engineers, the not always pure desire for political power, the often faint-heard claims of solidarity. Todd only sat there and laughed at him. ‘How did a Labour lad like you get so down on the unions, Martin?’

  He was Dr Pallister, in point of fact, and for some reason he could not but take it personally. ‘Because, Paul, they don’t speak for their members. What they do is deliver a nice fat sack of their members’ votes to the leadership, all stitched up … I’ve heard it all before, man. If you get bored I could sit here and argue your end too, argue better and all.’

  He knew he ought to be generous. It gave him no pleasure to cut that sorriest figure, the poacher-turned-gamekeeper. But such was the straitjacket for which he had got himself fitted – the former firebrand, now to be found down at the shopping mall, his gibbering bairn on his lap, ice cream staining the lapel of his all-weather coat.

  *

  The GC of Heaton & Wallsend had dreamed of convening in high spirits at the Rajdoot curry house come the 18th of July 1987. The revel, though, became a post-mortem. There was nothing half-baked about a majority of seventeen thousand for Mike Watt. Newcastle Central, too, had been wrested back to where it belonged. In the country, though, it was the same old waste of breath, for the Tories had said ‘Britain is Great Again, Don’t Let Labour Wreck It’, and they had been believed.

  Martin had demanded a free pass for the night from Becky, she more terse than obliging, and he duly planted both feet in the trough, wolfing a scarily red tandoori mixed grill, keeping the pints coming. Mike Watt was an affable moon-faced bloke, yet another lawyer, as seemed obligatory these days. But he sat laconic at the end of the table, surrounded by the women, nodding limply at each hare-brained critique of how Labour had fought. It seemed to Martin that not one in this bunch had the gumption of the late George Manton, at whose hardy forehead he had once hurled a plate of egg-and-crisp sandwiches. And if there was one thing he liked less in Labour than self-pity, it was self-satisfaction.

  ‘It’s like what Hatters said on telly the other night, we have to stick by our sermon on the mount …’

  ‘That bloke with the moustache, fancies himself. I don’t care for him. Didn’t care for that red rose, not one bit …’

  ‘Come on, don’t be so fucking quick to knock Mandelson.’ Martin hadn’t thought that he would swear, or slur, but such was his mood, and it killed all other conversation. ‘I mean, come on. There’s nowt wrong with a red rose. It’s our policies people didn’t want. If you want to think the public are kidding themselves, go on, kid yourself too. It’s patronising shit, but.’

  ‘That’s not very friendly, Martin.’

  ‘Whey, we’re too friendly in this Party. We’re afraid to hear what we don’t want to. Britain’s back on top, we’ve made it happen, my lot are alright, the rest of you skivers fuck off.’

  ‘Get away, Martin.’

  ‘You don’t believe that!’

  ‘I’m not talking about me, man. I’m talking about people, they like backing winners. I’ve worked for this Party since I was sixteen. We beat the Tories twice that bloody year, man.’

  It was a heated, intolerable table and he left early without preamble, desirous of different company. He reached Titch Harwood from the payphone in Bob Trollop’s pub. Mike Tweddle couldn’t be prised from his hearth, but newly divorced Tony Charnley was game. From Trollop’s to the Offshore, the Cooperage, Akenside Traders, they got locked in a session. Martin felt some of the old crackle in his strides. Onward! Down to the river, and the pulsating Club Zeus. The fucking lightweights only left him there. But the devil in his ear sang, Marty, oh Marty, man, you’ve done it again. In for a penny, in for a pound, get yourself hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  The music was poison but the place was throbbing wall to wall with summertime girls, partially clad, tender flesh kissed by the sun or singed by the sun-bed. Swishing hair and bobbing chests on the dance floor, some of their looks awfully provocative. That was the thing about girls – they walked past you and all of a sudden you pictured other possibilities in life.

  He danced gamely with a few, one who stood very tall in heels, her black hair eerily long and straight, Kirsty by name, a bit too mannishly square-jawed for his taste, but clearly keen as mustard. With a meditative succession of vodkas, though, he had grown, he knew, just a teeny bit fixated by a girl with a Betty Boop haircut in a shiny slip of a blue dress. Eighteen, surely – legal and tender? He had no qualms about shimmying up close and slow. Then, to his stupefaction, some lanky arsehole was trying to push him aside.

  ‘Just get away, man. Fuck off.’

  ‘Lindy, I’ll gan and get big Steve.’

  Lindy had liked him, though, she surely had. ‘You cheeky get,’ she had pouted at some stage, if a good bit earlier. She had her bloke, alright, but plainly she liked Dr Pallister tonight.

  A big baldy bouncer surfaced with alacrity, a little keener-eyed t
han the usual meathead, seeming to think himself a Zen Master.

  ‘Alright, Steve, just cool it, eh, kid? Nowt to see here.’

  A cuboid hand was planted on his shoulder and he intended to shrug it aside in short order, for through the fog he recalled what Tweddle the boxing fan always said about keeping hands up and chin low, throwing from your hips. Then an elbow struck him like a shovel in the face, a hammer fist fell on his nose, and the lights went down over the Quayside.

  Kirsty was his saviour and damnation, helping him up, getting him out and into a cab. Alas, she resolved at some stage to go all the way. Next Martin knew, the taxi was running on Gowland Avenue, Kirsty had determinedly inserted herself into his drowsy arms, but Becky – crazily – was standing out in the street in a tee-shirt and flip-flops. He stumbled indoors. He had no explanation. Only with the bathroom closed in his face did it occur to him how he might look. Then the door was open again, Becky hissing, ‘Don’t you dare wake Alex.’

  The next day he was a dirty hungover dog, under a loathsome sun. Becky would not look at him.

  ‘Why did you have to get so hammered?’

  ‘Because I’m miserable.’

  ‘You’re miserable. Miserable? You fucking child.’

  He had nothing else prepared, whereas she had phone numbers and condoms retrieved from his coat pockets. He had expected he would make a pledge to do better. Instead he grew resentful. He could have done a lot worse. And thus he was floored when she asked him to leave. He almost found himself admiring her anew. For sure, she had turned out far braver than he had ever guessed at.

  *

  He took Titch Harwood’s view on the state of the market and mustered the deposit for an ex-council place on the Blake Estate in Hoxheath, one of the newer, better builds in the area. Fresh magnolia on the walls, beige pile carpet – by no means swanky, but clean and manageable. Tweddle hired the van and helped him shift his chattels from a sadly deserted Gowland Avenue. It was only on foot back from the off-licence at dusk, swinging six cans in a bag for them both, that he started to pick up a current in the air, one he hadn’t sensed when viewing the place in daylight. Some of his new neighbours had hauled ropy armchairs out into their gardens, the better to enjoy beers of their own. There were kiddies running barefoot, lads hacking about on bikes, little girls smoking. Hardly worth staring at, he told himself. But the lads, loitering in packs, stared straight at him. How did they imagine they looked, skulking like hyenas in a dull documentary? He ventured a greeting, was met by a hail of barked insults. The next morning he judged that something had ran in rivulets down his front-door paintwork, leaving a stain and an odour on the doorstep. The woman next door – Sharon Price by name, grossly overweight, a sad-eyed little girl hoisted up in her sausage arms – seemed to blink with surprise at everything Martin said, at his very presence, though not at his predicament.

  ‘Thursdays, see? They get tha’ giro and drink it.’

  That night the kids were rowdier yet by twilight – mad shouts, bottles smashing on concrete. Alert at his work desk Martin listened and told himself he was only slightly bothered. But overnight he rose several times from tangled sheets and darted to the window, fearful for his car.

  Three cagey weeks in, he returned from a quiet pint with Charnley to find his fanlight jimmied open and his various entertainment systems torn from their housings. He had never suspected he and Mrs Price would have so much to talk about, yet there they were together on his doorstep as he waited for the call-out response.

  ‘Police aren’t so bad at coming round, but they can’t do shite. Not really. Getting turned over like you’s almost nothing. I don’t mean nothing by that. Lady at thirty-seven, but, her’s got set on fire. Despicable, really.’

  He had never wanted his consumer durables to mean too much to him. But his answering machine then fell prey to foul garbled messages, the red light promising much but offering only screeches of crackle and evil juvenile jeering. ‘Ahh! We done yah fucken house, man! Yee are fucken deed!’ His insurer dealt promptly with matters, but advised him matter-of-factly that his premium would vault, which seemed maddeningly unfair in the same week that he received a banger and a paper bag of cat excrement through his letterbox. ‘Candidly? You’ll struggle to sell that place. I mean, good luck.’ Martin blamed himself, for no one had forced him to take the financial advice of Titch Harwood. He struggled, though, to ward off more malign spirits. What were the underlying causes of the presenting problem? Limited prospects, learned helplessness? Bad parenting, broken homes? All of that shit, mixed up together in a bucket? Whatever way it fell, life had deposited him in the selfsame reeking litter tray.

  *

  Charnley took him for a drink he actually didn’t fancy, since the lads had begun to do little more than sit looking rueful on his behalf. This was what the night-times were reduced to. Somehow, he hadn’t had sex in five months. Per recent form, Charnley started twittering about some ‘motivational’ course he had undergone, crediting it with giving him the nerve to start up his new bedroom-furniture business. Martin was primed to point out that such patent rip-offs were for nerds and rabbits. Charnley happened to have a brochure to hand. The Compass Course: Get Yourself Directed. The pages boasted of instilling transferable skills in leadership, entrepreneurship, communication, all-round personal excellence. It was, on paper, a weekend at a newly refurbished Hampshire hotel with a decent bar and pleasant gardens. Reviewing the application form at the back, Martin realised with dawning relish that the university could pay for him, under a long-unclaimed training subsidy.

  Sheets of rain fell on the first day’s sessions. The course ‘mentor’ was a soft-spoken Irishman with a suspicious tan. The other enlisters seemed largely a shower of southern ex-salesmen and journalists. Clad in his customary black, Martin tried to look flinty, though he felt scruffy and sweaty. At coffee breaks he adjourned alone to the bar to watch Wimbledon tennis. The sun broke through, and still he rued the uncharacteristic lameness that had led him here.

  On the second morning the Irishman told them they were to play ‘trust games’. Martin nearly walked. But, seeing nowhere else to go, he exhaled slowly, got into the circle, and turned to his right as instructed.

  ‘Put your hands on the waist of the person in front of you.’

  Before him was the tidy brunette with the vaguely Geordie lilt. Things were looking up, fractionally.

  ‘Now, in a moment, you’re each going to lower yourselves down so you’re parked on the knees of the person behind you. The person in front of you will be doing the same, so focus on getting them settled, nice and comfy. Do that, and you’ll know the person behind is doing the same for you. Ready? Slowly, now! One, two, three …’

  She shifted her bottom in his lap. Her hair was bottle-fresh.

  ‘Is that nice for you, pet?’ he murmured carelessly.

  ‘Is that a chisel in your pocket, kidder?’ she murmured right back. ‘Or do you really like trust games?’

  Susannah was her name, some kind of Tory, yet tolerably bullshit-free. Not Martin’s sort of girl at all. They rubbed along nicely, though, whether by some north-east solidarity, or the same sly humour, or maybe her instant attraction to him – he didn’t care to speculate. Much could be endured thereafter, even the ‘Are You Happy?’ quiz, and the lecture on ‘Rubbing Your Inner Genie’. He led her into the hotel bar that night without much persuasion, anticipating a simple procession of events, but on his return to their seats bearing the first round he saw that her eyes had narrowed.

  ‘You know what? We’ve met before. I’ve just cottoned.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘It was London. About six years ago. Aye. You were with a girl.’

  ‘Sounds like me. Not a crime, is it? We weren’t married, were we?’

  ‘No, but you were, weren’t you?’

  She proceeded to pick what seemed to him a string of gratuitous quarrels – about mortgage rates, homelessness in London, the strength of the pound, what were the
better songs of Roxy Music, God knows what else. ‘Bloody right I’m for privatising. We should do the whole bloody lot. What makes governments better at running business than businessmen? You get back the revenue in taxes anyway. Howay, man, you’re not going to sit there and deny that capitalism’s the best way to create wealth?’

  ‘Best way to steal it, maybe.’ He grinned into his pint.

  ‘Oh, don’t sneer like that, you look about twelve. If you’re so fed up with things, stand for election. Stop wanking about. I’d vote for you.’

  ‘Why? Why would you do that?’

  He looked at her, feeling careless once more, delighted when she blushed.

  ‘Do you want another?’ she said finally.

  They repaired to her room and split a bottle of Asti Spumanti, first sitting then lying down. The sex happened mostly clothed, Susannah on top. She was a nice person to have sex with, considerate too, for five months of abstinence had exacted a price on his stamina, and he lasted less than half as long as he would have expected.

  ‘Throw us them tabs, would you?’

  ‘You get up and get ’em. I did all the work.’

  No, she didn’t need a lot of hugs, this lass. Once they had agreed to agree that the Compass Course was drivel she began to unburden herself of more complicated professional anxieties. ‘I’ve always known I wanted certain things. I’m a bit stuck now, but. Not sure why. Or – I maybe do and I just can’t be arsed. I’m good enough, I never worry about that. I’m just maybe not enough of a player, whatever they call it. Maybe not glam enough.’

  ‘Get away. You’re lovely.’

  ‘Aw. Aren’t you sweet?’

  Out of a protracted silence she told him she had been fucking Sebastian Sellars, MP, and he was startled and slightly repelled, most of all to infer that this streak of Tory smarm was fire in the sack. But seeing that she thought herself bold, Martin was emboldened. The tale slipped from him of how Becky had kicked him out – and rightly so, he asserted, for he had been a disgrace, a dead loss.