Crusaders Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘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?’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  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

  About the Author

  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.

  By the Same Author

  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

  Copyright

  First published in 2008

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Richard T. Kelly, 2008

  The right of Richard T. Kelly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–28279–1