Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘What about your office?’

  ‘There’s only my desk and a little coffee table, they’ll not do you.’

  ‘We’re going to need something, Monica.’

  ‘I see that, John, that’s why thinking ahead comes in handy.’

  Watching Monica clack away disagreeably, gazing anew around this sparse hall – the distressed floor, the glum windows, the childish art – Gore could do nothing to arrest the sudden plummet of his heart into his boots. Was anyone coming to his church today? The fear of a miserable failure was pressing down onto his shoulders. In his breast pocket, printed and folded, was the text of a sermon fastidiously drafted. He had lost hours of this last month to it, time and mental energy he now felt sickly sure that he had squandered. It was plain as a pikestaff – he had neglected the material, the organisational, the humdrum. He ought to have pounded the streets of Hoxheath by day and by night, with a bullhorn and a sandwich board larded in scripture.

  Now there was fresh commotion at the entrance, and so entered Mrs Boyle, the plump ginger pianist, in her wake a ragged crocodile of nine- and ten-year-old children, most looking highly disgruntled to have been squeezed into uniform of a Sunday and frogmarched onto school grounds.

  ‘Good day to you, John, I’ve brought some of my choir, they’ll give us a help with hymns. Children, this is Reverend Gore, say good morning …’

  A few half-hearted chirrups. Gore trusted that they sang at least in unison. Unsure whether the initiative was a boon or a further waste, he stood watching Mrs Boyle wrangle the children into cross-legged compliance, until Monica tottered up to him with a wooden-topped side-table, large enough – perhaps – to bear a slender vase.

  ‘Right, John, this’ll have to do you.’

  Gore tapped his chin. He hadn’t the heart to start laying out the sacraments on such inadequate provision. Instead – impulsively, for no reason but to cheer himself up – he retrieved from the holdall one of his more indulgent borrows from St Mark’s, a free-standing crucifix, cast in pewter, hand-finished. He set it upright on Monica’s table.

  ‘What do we need but the old rugged cross, eh?’

  Gore turned from Monica’s frown, thus to behold new pilgrims drawing near – one of his councilmen, Phil from the Journal, chaperoning an unshaven young man in a striped V-neck sweater, vines of photographic apparatus gathered about his neck.

  ‘John, can I introduce you to Matt Watson? He’s one of the cubs on the paper, he’ll take a few pics, maybe get a little write-up for you?’

  ‘Thank you for coming out.’

  ‘No bother.’ Matt yawned. ‘I’m due at a lads’ football match at eleven.’

  And now Rod Moncur was coughing at his shoulder, no doubt with a further query for which he would have scant interest and no answer.

  ‘How, John, I think we’re needing some people to move the piano?’

  ‘Right, sorry, could you ask Jack Ridley?’

  ‘I did, he said to ask you.’

  Gore winced, considered the matter, chose to ignore it, and stooped again to take from his hold-all the thurible he had borrowed from Spikings, carefully unwinding its silver-plated components from cloth and tissue. As he stripped a briquette of incense and crumbled it around the pan like good seasoning, he saw a scuffed pair of Hush Puppies come to a halt before him.

  ‘Do you have a match, Jack?’

  Ridley rifled his pockets and shoved a box of Swan Vesta under Gore’s nose. He struck a flame, touched it to the incense and held it there patiently until winsome trails of fragrant smoke were curling upward. Then he closed the silver cup over the pan, grasped snaky chains in a fist, hoisted the thurible aloft and proceeded with solemn tread to pace up and then down the aisle between the chairs, rocking the burning vessel gently from side to side. Stagecraft, thought Gore. But Ridley dogged his steps.

  ‘What’s the use of this, John?’

  ‘Just a bit of atmosphere, Jack, don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, I just know Fanny Boyle’s piano wants shifted.’

  ‘It’s on wheels, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, and both castors at one end just buckled. It’s going to need four pairs of hands to lift and shift.’

  ‘Oh, fuck it,’ said Gore, his shoulders slumping, the thurible grazing the floor at the end of its tether. Monica, too, was cursing somewhere behind him, then – louder, heels clacking sharply – ‘I’m sorry, hinny, we’re not open yet.’

  ‘Nivver worry, pet, I’m here to see the boss.’

  Gore turned to see Stevie Coulson striding determinedly down the length of the hall, his great taut arms looped round and hefting a sturdy wooden frame that had to be all of six feet wide and three in height. All eyes in the room were naturally drawn to the strenuous approach of the colossus in big boots and old jeans and leather coat, until at last – scalp shining, perspiring slightly, his shark-like grin creasing his face – he laid down his tribute at Gore’s feet.

  ‘Mornin’, John, full of busy, eh? Listen, I picked this up off a lad I know keeps antiques. Will it suit, do you think? For your communion and that?’

  Gore felt the first unforced smile of the day stealing over his features. Before him was, indeed, a communion rail – a first-rate model of same, an antique piece, Gothic, hewn from old oak and joined in good order.

  ‘Well, I’d say – it’ll suit handsomely, Stevie.’

  ‘Champion. Now you didn’t manage to sort yourself an altar, did you?’

  ‘We planned on managing without …’ said Gore, realising anew the inadequacy of that plan, for he could now see past Stevie’s brawny shoulder to where his strapping associates Shack and Simms were struggling into the hall, veins pulsing, faces ruddy with exertion, bearing between them a pool table of a size appropriate to a public house. They oriented themselves toward Monica’s lectern and lowered the table to the lino with such delicacy as they could muster.

  The room now looked to Reverend Gore as one – a look of surpassing perplexity. In a trice Gore saw that he alone seemed to have cottoned to Stevie’s masterstroke. He stooped to his kitbag, drew out his borrowed altar cloth, unfolded it and shook it out. Then he cast it wide over the green baize of the pool table, spreading it smooth with the flat of his hand. Thus vestured, the table looked fit for an altogether finer purpose.

  ‘Magic, eh?’ said Stevie, clapping the shoulder of Shack, who dragged the back of a scarred hand across his brow and plucked a lone cigarette from behind his ear. Gore sensed Monica moving forward, lips pursed, and he laid a hand on her lightly. Blessings were not to be spurned, not in any respect, and gratitude for same had to be made plain and unconditional. Shack sparked his tab, just as Moncur came capering toward Gore once again.

  ‘Reverend, y’knaa there’s people stood waiting outside? What with the weather I was thinking –’

  ‘People? Already? How many?’

  ‘Two or three dozen at least, I’d say.’

  Jack Ridley grunted. ‘You want to get yer’sel dressed then, John. You’re not giving the service in them jeans, are you?’

  Gore reached to the floor for his bag, empty now save for vestments. As he straightened, a notion occurred.

  ‘Steve, could you and the lads give Jack a hand with a piano?’

  *

  The clock edged past ten. Gore stood at the lectern and surveyed the hall, counting forward and back, sixty heads. He studied faces as they settled. The elderly predominated – they and the very young, under supervision and most wearing tired looks of duress. Fine – he had felt the same at their age. Monica, he knew, was keeping her own mental register of which pupils’ parents had heeded her calls. As for those he could claim as his own, he noted Eunice Dodd shuffling in among the latecomers, and the last of these was Lindy Clark, in a down-filled coat with a fur-lined hood, holding the small hand of her son. From her seat she threw Gore a forbearing smile, and he was gladdened.

  He had donned a simple surplice, an alb of white linen, ankle-length, closed
at the throat. The hall curtains were half-drawn, patchy morning light diffused, incense still in the air. The piano was shifted, the choir in waiting, prayer books and orders of service snug in every lap. A pair of restless boys were bombing up and down the aisle, until Steve Coulson planted himself in their way and stooped for a quiet word. The kids slunk back to their seats, and Gore’s unlikely sidesman resumed his patrol of the hall perimeter, nodding to his seconds. So strange, thought Gore, momentarily fixated upon Stevie’s polished black boots crunching across the scuffed red lino. My church has bouncers. The notion that they might be pressed into action made mirth bubble up inside him. Say Albert Robinson were to heckle some irreverent part of the sermon? Might Stevie wade into the seating, seize the old man’s lapels, propel him from the hall?

  He hastened down the aisle to where Coulson had paused, statue-still, arms folded. ‘We’re ready to go, Stevie,’ he whispered. ‘Will you sit?’

  ‘I won’t, John, if that’s alright. I get a bit sciatic pain from wor back, y’knaa? These chairs’d be murder.’

  So the Reverend returned to his lectern, smoothed open his order of service, felt the room fall into focus. Then he cleared his throat and launched into the welcome, thinking, Light, keep it light, John, nothing too churchy.

  ‘As is written in Psalm ninety-five, let us sing unto the Lord and make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation. Now I don’t know how your voices are fixed first thing in the morning – I can tell you mine has never won any prizes, I daresay there are cats in the street better able to carry a tune. So – I’d be ever so glad if you could help me lift the roof off this place, and I should say we’re very grateful this morning for the presence of Mrs Boyle and her Year Seven choir. Would you all please stand, then, and we’re going to start with one I’m sure you all know, though you have the words, and that’s “All Things Bright and Beautiful” …’

  Hands aloft, Mrs Boyle urged her children up from the floor, then plunged her fingers to the keys. Jaunty chords filled the air, chased by thin trebles and falsettos. For the first few bars the only other voices Gore could discern were his and Mrs Boyle’s, and so he gazed about him, with a stage grin fit to tear his face. ‘Come on,’ he mouthed, and, to his surprise, people began shiftily to open their throats. A respectable drone soon emanated. That’s it, thought Gore. It’s only church, you remember how it works. We sit, we stand, we sing, we pray. Then I read you a story and tell you what it means.

  *

  ‘I wonder – are we gathered here this morning because we call ourselves Christians? I hope and trust that we are – that we hold this much in common. And if we do call ourselves Christians, we have to be concerned with the welfare of our fellow man and woman. And endeavour to love them, as we love ourselves.’

  A child’s pained yelp rent the air.

  ‘By all means disagree, bonny lad, but perhaps we can discuss it when I’m done …?’

  Aripple of laughter. The child’s mother was fussing, but restoring order. Gore regained his place.

  ‘Yes, to love one another. Because, in the words of the apostle John, “If any man hath this world’s goods, and seeth his brother hath need, but shutteth up his bowels of compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Well, how indeed?

  ‘There may be many in our lives whom we say we love. Sometimes, in the abstract, it’s possible to love the whole world and everyone in it. We’ve all had those moments, haven’t we? When it feels like the sun is shining on us alone, and good will to others comes pouring out of us. But most days, we know, aren’t like that. On a grey day like today, when maybe nothing much is going so right – are we ready then to love a man who lies before us in destitution? And love him not just with a pat on the head and a wince of sympathy, but with a little of the food and raiment that he needs?

  ‘It’s a tough one, isn’t it? I can’t say my conscience is clear, any more than you, I dare say. We can’t be perfect, we can’t always share in others’ woes. It’s hard enough with friends, never mind strangers. We can always say – can’t we? – that we have “troubles of our own”. And we do.

  ‘But is it not just possible that in telling ourselves that – in averting our eyes from a stranger’s pain – is it not possible we’re cheating ourselves of a greater reward? I don’t mean some gold star from God on high. I’m talking about something far more powerful. I mean, the joy of feeling His love working through us.

  ‘If we call ourselves Christians then we say that love is the law. And we are bound to that law. God’s love … is burning in us anyway, whether or not we choose to heed it. But why should we cheat ourselves out of experiencing that blessing, by not yielding to it? Why refuse ourselves the ecstasy we might have in letting God’s love work through us in our actions? That’s why John tells us, “Children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed.”

  ‘Words grow stale unless they’re renewed by action. So many tired old words we hear too much of. What do we mean, for instance, when we talk about “our community”? We’re always hearing – aren’t we? – about this or that “community”. What is the community of Hoxheath? It’s more than just your neighbours, clearly. More than the people we know by sight in the Netto, or the Gunnery. It’s everybody in our locality, isn’t it? The people with whom we have the daily stuff of life in common – the same concerns, same hopes and fears. And we do have those things in common as long as we walk the same streets and breathe the same air. Since we have those same feelings, shouldn’t we try to act on them together? Each of us has a part to play in Hoxheath. A duty to act. But also a reward to be reaped. Because it’s nice to be together, isn’t it? Things we hold in common make us feel safe in the world. Feeling safe in the here and now gives us grounds to hope for more. And hope, dear friends, is the future …’

  *

  They shared the peace. ‘Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity,’ Gore intoned. ‘Peace be with you all who are in Christ Jesus.’ He watched them slowly shift from their seats, begin to mill about, albeit tentatively. ‘You don’t have to kiss, of course,’ he hastened to add. ‘A handshake is fine. But you won’t be taxed for a hug so long as you’re sure of who you give it to.’

  That seemed to break the ice, though Gore saw Albert Robinson flinch as he was folded into an aged female embrace.

  Had he his preference he would have closed proceedings with the Lord’s Prayer and sent a docile crowd on its way, but he had resolved to offer Holy Communion and offer it he would. After measures of silence, coughs, and shuffles – two, four, five, finally seven bodies rose and filed forward to the fine new communion rail, making of themselves an orderly queue as Gore busied himself with the vessels at his makeshift altar. Then he turned to where the supplicants were kneeling, thoughtful, in turn, and passed from person to person, commending that the bread and wine might be to them His body and His blood. The last face gazing up at him was Lindy Clark’s, her fur-lined hood an aureole for her painted face. She looked evenly at Gore as he pressed the wafer into her hand, and after the sip of wine she crossed herself at her breast, her lip curled.

  Afterwards, over tea and biscuits at the back of the hall, Gore tried to fight down a creeping euphoria. But the sight of apparently contented people taking their turn at the tea urn and settling into unforced conversation with their neighbours was a madly heartening one. I built this, he told himself, I bloody made this work.

  Matt Watson hoved into view. ‘Vicar, could I pinch a shot of you and the lads by the pool table? Before it gets carted off?’

  Gore shrugged – why not? – ran hands through his hair and took steps toward his altar. Then he felt two hard shoulders tackling him behind his knees, butting up under each thigh, and powerful hands upon his armpits, hoisting him into the air as easily as if he were newborn. He was aloft the paired shoulders of Shack and Simms, and he teetered wildly, but found his balance with his palms upon their backs. There were laughs and cheers from all about the hall, though he saw perp
lexed faces too among the lingering tea-drinkers. But Stevie Coulson was reaching a glad hand up to him, Gore grasped it firmly, and the big Nikon camera flared like a muzzle-flash.

  Chapter II

  CLEVER DEVILS

  Wednesday, 16 October 1996

  ‘My name’s Gore, I’m here to be on Tyne Talk with Chris Carter?’

  He stepped back, surveyed the tiled foyer of Tyne FM Radio, dense with the comings and goings of clipboarded runners, motorbike messengers and newly arrived ‘talent’ such as himself. Within moments a beanpole blonde girl in black emerged from the elevator, only to seize Gore’s arm and usher him back through the fast-closing doors.

  ‘So did you read about my service in the Journal?’

  ‘The Journal? Aw no, it was your sister, I thought? Aye, we got a call from your sister at SEG? Telling us all what you were doing.’

  Of all the liberties, thought Gore. He bit back displeasure. ‘Right. And this is live, this show?’

  ‘Aye, dead informal, just a roundtable. People with all different views on things … You’re in here.’

  She was pressing him out of the corridor into the Green Room – in fact, white – where one soul had already taken up jaded residence on a seemingly inflatable sofa of fire-engine red.

  ‘Reverend, this is Gaz Lyons, Newcastle’s top nightclub promoter.’

  ‘How man. Sally, you couldn’t fetch us a double espresso, pet?’

  ‘Sorry, Gaz, it’s only the machine coffee we’ve got on this floor.’

  ‘Get us two of them then, would you? Bit too much naughty last night.’ Lyons belched, clapping a hand to his mouth. He was perhaps in his early forties, Gore decided, though his hair was a plaited tower of bleached dreadlocks. He wore combat trousers festooned with zippered pockets, and a padded coat that looked to be of some light-but-durable textile, fit for outer space – a sort of futuristic clown, albeit heavily medicated, in need of better skincare and earlier nights.