Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  Martin nodded. No, the chairman of North East Labour, the regional chief of the Transport and General, was self-evidently no man’s lickspittle.

  ‘Yes, we’ll report to the minister. But, the fact is – whisper it if you want – the government’s been almost generous. We’ve got some money, and some clout, and we’re going to use it. Cut some red tape, get some things built. Council can moan if they want, but I’m betting they’ll like what they see after we’ve done it. Cos the plan is to be radical.’

  ‘As reality itself,’ Martin murmured, no longer so bothered by the heat, or those few frowns still trained upon him.

  ‘Jon’s right, but. We’re not set up to be the Samaritans. We’ve got to follow business logic. Saying that, though, there’s no reason we can’t help the neighbourhood. Now, I see here you live in Hoxheath? So you’ll know the problems there, from a development side?’

  Martin nodded keenly, until realising he was expected to exhibit some of the knowledge to which he tacitly laid claim. ‘Oh aye. Yes, God knows, Hoxheath needs something radical. The riverside’s a wasteland. You’ve got buildings derelict, old shop-floors emptied for storage, left to rot. Polluted land, acres of it in need of a clean-up. I mean, clearly, from a business angle it’s value sitting there to be unlocked.’

  Ball beheld him with tolerant rheumy eyes. ‘Of course, now, there’s people living there too …’

  ‘Of course there are. But we need to get more people in there. Moving back there. Kill this idea that it’s just the losers get left hanging on. The local people have to feel like they’ve got a stake in what we’re doing.’

  ‘Right. What we need’s a man who’s good with people. To – I’ll not say sell the project, because people should want to buy – it’s in their interest. But to present the thing … Do you get me?’

  ‘I do. That’s me. I’m an explainer. I’m a proselytiser. I can hold a room, I can talk to people on their level. Make ’em listen, get through to them …’

  A fart of dissent blared forth, Salter shifting audibly in his squashy chair. ‘Says you, my friend. You’re not getting through to me.’

  ‘Whey then, sit up straight, man, get your fingers out your ears.’

  A risk, Martin knew, but noting certain smiles across the panel he didn’t think he would have cause for regret. If it came to a vote, right now, he believed he had the numbers.

  *

  He convened public meetings, chaired sessions in civic rooms and hired halls and, on occasions, in people’s front parlours. He shook hands up and down the Tyne from Hoxheath to North Shields.

  ‘I want us to know each other better. Because we should. I want to help you understand what we’re doing, reassure you – if it’s reassurance you need. But I need as much from you in return. I have to convince you to participate. I don’t take that lightly. Without you, we’re nothing. With you? We’ll look a hell of a lot better …’

  If this much earned him a laugh, however grudging, he was thereafter at ease.

  ‘They say Tyneside’s in decline, gone to seed. Okay, it’s in a poor state, and there’s reasons for that, you know better than I. Eleven years of this government, for starters. Not soon put right. But I tell you, give us the tools and tackle and we’ll start doing the job. Because this is God’s own place, right? And we’re God’s own people. What else do we need?’

  The usual way was that, within the hour, a gratifying number in the audience were ready to buy him a drink. Always there were some who claimed to have seen his sort coming a mile off, but he could turn closely attentive to them at the spin of a heel. If the complaint was that there would be no jobs for local people, he stressed the focus on training. If the fear was that flash new flats and their owners would only embarrass the old, he spoke of his personal commitment to the Housing Associations. At all times he listened and took good notes, though he reserved the right to form his own views, issue his own recommendations.

  He was yet more sedulous on occasions when he dined with selected TREC board members at sponsored meet-and-greets. The favoured venue was Altobello, a glowingly understated Italian restaurant on Dean Street, four months old and already the best in Newcastle. He noted the ostentatious impatience of the most prosperous attendees, men who costed their time and scowled at idle chat. He was sometimes baffled when introductions were made and he struggled to connect his work to the ostensible interests of a hotelier or a rep from an American cinema chain. It was explained to him by Jon Salter, originally from Monkseaton, who bore him no grudge over Pinot Grigio and insalata tricolore. The heavy hitters were being courted for large-scale ‘flagship’ endeavours, under which a fleet of smaller projects would sail. ‘We’re used to all this in Newcastle, Martin,’ Salter waved a hand. ‘People care about the north-east. Top people. Get ’em up here and they love Geordies. The Tories admire us, they do. Not as a job lot, mind you. But they’re on the side of any have got initiative.’

  A silvery gent from Scottish and Newcastle invited Martin to a whisky-tasting weekend by the Tay. TREC’s Director of Finance, fresh from KPMG tax & audit, offered to advise him on his ‘investments’ – an advance on Titch Harwood. The chief executive of Nissan endured his dauntless jests about Sunderland FC and how it felt to shake Thatcher’s hand. The red wine was always velvety and heady. Frank Ball, though, stayed stony sober at these functions, and would rise from his chair among the earliest, invariably with a blunt parting to Martin. ‘Don’t drink too much, y’hear?’

  But it was only by lingering late over brandies that Martin got palled up with Proctor Wallace, Altobello’s owner. Wallace was a well-tended fifty, still in possession of his black hair and sporty build, and he had a high old tale he liked to tell of his path to glory – from shipyard apprentice to door-to-door salesman, to renovator and developer of a better class of homes for the aged, a business he had built up, floated, and flogged at its peak. ‘I’m nowt special, me,’ he asserted. ‘Just I was in the right place, and I was hungry.’ Thus did a Fellgate man come to pass his days in a million-quid pile in Ponteland, suntanned from jaunts to a Portuguese villa, his ambitions still far from fully realised.

  Invited out to the Wallace homestead for a World Cup barbecue in high June, Martin ironed a polo shirt and chinos and collected Alex from Becky. Proctor’s boy Peter was seven too, and they ran off together like tow-headed twins down the epic jade lawn to where a full-sized football net billowed unattended in a slight breeze. Martin fancied a kickabout too, but the grown-ups were meant to watch Italy versus Ireland on Proctor’s monolithic Japanese telly. ‘I probably spoil the lad,’ Wallace shrugged between sips of lager from an engraved frosted tankard. ‘That Sting, he doesn’t give his kids owt. What else is it for?’ Martin nodded, affirmative of Proctor, his largesse, his sleek young Danish wife.

  ‘What you’re doing at TREC, y’knaa,’ Proctor confided, ‘I’m all for it. It’s inspiring. I’ve nee clue what I’m worth now, but if I hadn’t got given a bit of start-up cash back when, I’d still be selling plastic windies to pensioners.’

  It occurred to Martin anew that he had got himself in gear much, much too late in the day – had applied but a fraction of his capacity for clear thought, and accordingly banked but a pittance of what he might otherwise have earned. His focus, his energies – they had always been there, but had led him down some pointless byways, on the narrowest of principles. Stood beside Proctor, he found that stretches of his past life only embarrassed him – none more so than his ongoing residence at the Blake Estate, Hoxheath.

  But Proctor wheedled the story out of him, then got him out of that beleaguered ex-council house by dint of a friendly loan at nought per cent interest. Proctor was big on property, more than happy to be helpful, and Martin would not have refused in a million years. In tandem with his new salary, his funds were adequate to offload the Blake house at a thumping loss and acquire a light-filled flat on the Jesmond fringes, a secluded Georgian terrace nestled amid insurers, accountants and legal services. When
the truck came Sharon Price knocked on his door to say cheerio and all the very best, a gesture that cut him unexpectedly. But from the moment he parked his car and closed his new improved front door, it felt right. This was a place that his boy would like, that Becky might covet. That first weekend of occupancy, he strolled up to Town Moor with his tennis racket and smashed a few serves over a net. Regeneration had revived him.

  True, the first developer TREC invited for talks at Altobello was discovered to be trading while insolvent. But the firm of Doggett & Delavel stepped into the breach, and Martin was good as his word to the people of Hoxheath, adamant through each and every planning meeting that one-in-four new-build homes be social housing. He was a little sneaky, he knew, in advising Becky to buy one of the smart boxy apartments in the heart of the ‘Project Zone’. He wasn’t surprised when she frowned through her inspection of the show house. But he knew that the gleaming taps, the duck-egg walls and floor-to-ceiling windows rubbed her the right way.

  ‘Alright for a bachelor boy like you, Martin. Not for me and Alex.’

  ‘Just trust me, eh, Becks? For once in your life?’

  *

  ‘What are you doing? Are you in bed yet?’

  ‘No, I’m fixin’ me supper.’ Indeed the sound of mashing jaws now assailed his ears. But even after the longest of days that ran into evening, he looked forward still to that hour before bed and the more or less nightly phone call. It was one stable fixture in his life, a prized friendship, an intimacy.

  ‘I like a man who knows how to use the phone.’

  ‘No great skill there, pet.’

  ‘You say that. My dad spent his life up a telegraph pole and you hardly get a word out of him.’

  Susannah, too, was pressing on, now a tyro lobbyist. Yet she seemed obsessively interested in Martin’s job.

  ‘It’s a new sort of culture, I’d say,’ he let himself pontificate. ‘A new way to mix public and private. I’m not saying it’s the socialist dawn. But we’re handing out money all over.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Marty. You can’t slightly endorse the free market. You can’t be slightly pregnant.’

  ‘Says you. Proctor always says he’d never have got on without the state.’

  ‘Oh, “my mate Proctor”. If he said jump in the Tyne, would you?’ The vying was gentle. She seemed pleased for him. ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘Suppose I wait for my boss to get another job.’

  ‘What about Marty Goes to Westminster? I’ve not forgotten.’

  ‘Aye, well, me neither. I’ve talked to my mate Proctor and all.’

  ‘You’ve been talking that long and not doing – I could lose respect for you.’

  ‘It’s the time, but, Suze. And the effort. And the money. I can’t be dragging round church halls for a year trying to get selected. Where’s the seat, anyway? I don’t see it, Suze.’

  ‘It’ll turn up. You’ve got to be ready for it. Gotta sharpen your odds. I mean, look at you. Okay, youngish sort of a fella, not so shabby-looking –’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Party man to the core, put in the hours. Travelled light, never made a fuss. In with the unions.’

  ‘But in favour of one member, one vote.’

  She snorted. ‘As are all sane men and women.’

  ‘I’ve friends in the T and G, sure. But it’s GMB pulls the strings up here.’

  ‘You just keep in with Frank Ball. He’ll see you right.’

  Martin smiled into his chest. The selfsame thought had occurred.

  ‘Now then – what about the bitter ex-wife?’

  ‘Nah, Becky’s canny. I’ve done right by them. I’d worry more about my old man, to be honest, if you’re talking about someone showing us up …’

  ‘No, that’s a blessing, that. Telling your old man to fuck off shows you mean business. Not afraid to dump old baggage. All that leftie shit.’

  ‘Let me stop you there, flower. I know you’re a bit ignorant when it comes to how we do things in the Labour Party, but I think you’ll find there’s principles aren’t open for discussion.’

  ‘I’m not saying ditch everything. Then you wouldn’t be Labour. Then we’d miss you. But come on, kidder. Some things are just symbolic, aren’t they? Out of date. They’ve got to go. Got to go sometime, so get shot of them now, get it over and done with. You’ll feel better. That’s Kissinger’s Law.’

  ‘Who? The bomber of Cambodia?

  ‘Whatever. Just say you learned better. Better than clinging on to things you didn’t believe in anyway, just for an easy cheer. That’s what you like to say, isn’t it? Be as radical as reality?’

  ‘It was Lenin said that, sweetheart.’

  ‘Oh, God help us …’ Her voice dwindled down the line.

  *

  After three decades of service Harold Rodham declared that he would retire from representing the people of Newton Aycliffe in 1992. Martin got the news early, and knew what he had to do. He filled his tank with petrol, burned up the phone lines, secured his nominations, fretted over his lines for the selection meeting. Susannah listened to an early draft and let it be known she didn’t approve – too ‘clever’, too ‘wordy’, insufficiently ‘humble’. Fuck her, Martin heard his demon jeer. Who knows how Labour works? You or that Tory?

  And yet, installed in a creaking seat before the panel at Horndale Working Men’s Club, he watched his hopes crash, and it was clear that the old guard rankled most at his high estimation of his own powers. They were not impressed by half a lifetime of Party service, for their own counts tallied to more. When he declared he was ‘politically savvy’, they seemed to mishear, and to openly scoff when he spoke of ‘contacts’ and ‘up-to-date thinking’.

  ‘Look, we’re maybe on the wrong foot here, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can talk Labour movement all night long.’

  ‘You may talk it all you want,’ the chairman grunted. ‘You’ve not lived it.’

  ‘I may not have come off the shop-floor but what I am saying – with respect, on the whole – is that I understand the history of this Party better than you.’

  He had not banked on trading verbal blows with a senior citizen, much less coming off second best in the eyes of the assessors. In the cold light of analysis, yes – he had been too clever, too wordy, insufficiently humble. So much for 1992. On election day itself, the 9th of April, Dr Martin Pallister – who had once submitted a paper to the Fabians on the need for compulsory voting – found so many chores with which to occupy himself that he was unable to attend his polling station before closing. Mike Watt didn’t need his vote. He was certain, though, that the Party had need of his qualities, and was not so very surprised when they lost in the country yet again.

  He didn’t speak to her, for weeks that turned into months. But his stance was not so resolute that he failed to keep count. When he parked his pride, he found the voice unchanged at the other end of the line.

  ‘What do you think then? John Smith and old maid Beckett? Is that the Labour dream ticket? See, I thought it was Kinnock and Hatters.’

  ‘Don’t mock, Suzie.’

  ‘I’m sorry, pet. Next time, eh? Really. You’ll have enough in the tank then. Least there’s what you might call talent on the front bench. All northern too. Northern or Scots. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Something else too. Another little thread – a tip for you.’

  ‘Aye? What?’

  ‘Well, it’s funny, but have you noticed? They’re all churchgoers and all. Or they say they are. Smith and Brown. Blair, Blunkett, Straw.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes, Marty.’

  ‘No, Sue, look, I can swallow nuclear weapons but I draw the line at God.’

  *

  He had not hoped that in his lifetime Tyneside West would ever stand in need of a new Labour candidate. But then no one had imagined that Alf Jakes – fifty-nine years of age, married for thirty-five of them, and MP for twenty-two – would be arrested by plainclothes policemen durin
g the routine raid of a massage parlour in Coxlodge. Martin was more or less certain that sex scandals were Tory behaviour until Alf was interrupted in the midst of tender ministrations from a sixteen-year-old Taiwanese. He asked forgiveness only from that wife of his, and would not seek re-election – indeed deemed it wise to stand down and permit a by-election in 1994.

  Newly appointed Director of Development at TREC, Martin might not have mustered the will for a second sally had not Susannah harried him onward, goading him for a gutless wonder. She was herself setting out alone as SEG Solutions, a one-stop shop for lobbying, PR, planning and analysis. He chuckled over her brochure, its boast of ‘a wealth of experience at the heart of Westminster’. But it was all true, only more so. Now she was ready to work with anyone, public or private, corporation or charity, bookmaker or children’s hospice. And she would work for the selection and election of Dr Martin Pallister at a striking discount. The plan she presented to him was almost embarrassingly comprehensive.

  It was immediately clear to him that the constituency party secretary preferred him to his chief rivals, the perpetually grey city councillor Bob Muir and some mouthy ex-miner with UNISON backing who stomped round the selection meeting at Hoxheath Civic Centre as if these needful preliminaries were a conspiracy against horny-handed sons of toil. Martin, though, was in his element. It was only a few years since he had shaken every hand worth shaking in Hoxheath. His speech was by some distance the most poised, and when it came to questions from the audience he was much the least awkward in addressing the matter of the debacle of the retiring candidate.

  ‘Look, there’s gotta be a moral basis to what we do. I say that as someone who’s a churchgoer. I know that’s not so fashionable these days. But without that moral base, we’re nothing. We’re not Labour. Tell you what, but, the Church hasn’t got a monopoly on the moral high ground. Nor has the hard left neither. It’s not for me to judge whether I meet the highest standards, or whether others meet ’em either – just to act morally. To match my deed to my word. And you can bet your life I’m gonna try.’