Crusaders (43 page)

‘You want us to get rid for ye? The gun?’

‘Nah, I’ll get shot of it.’

Get your fucking nose out of it, Shack, man.
No question, these had to be the dog-end days of their long association. If he could have had one wish, it would have been to end it right there.
Call it a handshake, eh? Then you gan left and I’ll gan right.
But the night shift had an hour to run. He still had need of a ride.

And he would not be losing the firearm, no fear. Waste not, want not. Something in his gut told him its usefulness was not yet at an end. It didn’t quite bear thinking. But the thought of
discarding
it, even sinking it to the bed of the Tyne, seemed lunatic –
infinitely
less sane than stowing it away in a place of safekeeping. At least, small mercy, he knew just such a place, just such a
safe-keeper
.

They clung to one another, yet neither could seem to find comfort.

‘You’re manic, you. It’s like kipping with a dog.’

‘Sorry. Am I keeping you up?’

‘Nah, you’re alright … I’m the same. Got a bit itch.’

In the early evening hours, confined to quarters, he had
hankered
after her company – was glad of her voice on the phone, glad of her invitation. They had talked of this and that, without consequence. Now, in the dark around midnight, he felt emptied and pensive, resigned to passing the night under her frilled and slightly soiled duvet. On her bedside table lay the wilted latex sheath, his semen bagged and knotted like kitchen leavings and wadded up in tissues – a used dobber, to be dropped, he assumed, into the crowded bathroom bin, there to nestle amid toilet-roll tubes and spent sanitary towels. For the moment, though, Lindy seemed unbothered by housekeeping, and Gore didn’t care to be her tidy-up fairy.

She yawned, flipped her pillow, nestled her profile resignedly next to his. ‘You never told us how it started with you? Taking the cloth and that?’

‘Christ, you don’t want to talk about that, do you?’

‘Why not? It’s what you do.’

‘We don’t talk about what
you
do. Your many jobs.’

‘S’not worth talking about. Yours is a story, like. How, just tell us, man. You’ll maybe get us off to sleep.’

He sighed, rolled onto his back. ‘I was born in Pity Me. You know? Just north of Durham. I thought for a living I might try and pity other people.’

‘Get away. Divvint act the prick wi’ us.’

He blew out his lips. ‘Well, okay, the truth is – I felt a call. That’s the only way to say it. I went to France one summer for work. I was maybe twenty? And I had a, a sort of a religious experience, basically.’

‘Like what?’

‘A sense of God. That just came at me. And was overpowering.’

‘What was it like, but?’

‘I don’t know. It just felt all of a sudden like – the world was a perfect creation. And there was no way it couldn’t have been
willed
that way. I’d never thought that was remotely plausible before. Then it just seemed obvious.’

‘And that was it for you then?’

‘What else do you need?’

She scrunched her features. ‘Sounds a bit mental is all. A bit touched.’

‘Well, maybe it was. I’m just saying – I felt God. I’m not trying to sell it to anyone. People have to feel it for themselves.’

‘Aye, well. We’s can’t all gan off around France.’ She rolled aside, groped for her alarm clock. ‘And have you ever felt the same since? D’you ever look round Hoxheath and think, “Eee man, it’s just
perfect
, this”?’

‘I do, sometimes.’

‘Get away.’

‘No, I do. God is here, Lindy. He’s on this estate.’

‘Hallo, God,’ she hooted. ‘Divvint mind wuh.’

He shrugged aside the duvet, swung his legs out over the side of the bed, sat up, presenting her with his broad back. And he rubbed at his stiff neck.

‘Well – you’re maybe right.’

‘About what?’

‘It’s not the same. That time in France, I still remember the
feeling
. In my whole body. I do wonder, but. If I didn’t maybe – read it wrong. Back then? The wrong end of the stick. I was shattered, see, I’d done a hard day’s work. For once. Maybe I should have been a stonemason, you know. I maybe missed my true calling.
Honest labour.’

He had decided not to care whether his musings aloud sailed clean over her head. Indeed, turning to look at her, he saw she beheld him coolly from over the bedcover.

‘Wouldn’t
that
be funny? Eh?’

‘I’m
not trying to be funny, John. If you felt it, you felt it.’

‘Thanks. No, but you’re right, really. Just in that one moment – I cashed in an awful lot of reservations. Doubts I’d had.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, that Christ was born of a virgin? That God became a man. Died for our sins, all that, you know – it sort of underpins quite a lot of what we do. You’ve taken communion off me, you should know.’

‘I don’t think about it.’

‘Yes, but if you don’t
believe
Christ rose, then what you’re doing in the act is a sacrilege. You’re just mocking it.’

‘No I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.’ She raised herself from
recumbent
to her elbows. ‘Fuck off, you. I’m not the one wears the dog collar. It’s
your
problem, pet.’

He laughed softly into his chest, since clearly there would be no sleep tonight. ‘Well. Sorry. You did ask, Lindy, so – that’s what you get.’

‘Aw, bloody sod
you
, man.’

She threw aside her own share of covers, stomped round the bed and out of the room, flushed in her loose tee-shirt and
knickers
.

Gore lay back, stretched, heard the crank of the tap running in the kitchen below. There was no point in pretending sweet
harmony
between them. When she had unrolled the condom upon him – after bobbing with her lips and running fingers quicksilver across his perineum – however undeniable and desired was the effect, he had sensed something tired and perfunctory in her
performance
. He had to face himself, had to wonder indeed how many others had been privy to her conscientious manners in the act. And he could no more guess now than on prior occasions quite how Lindy felt in its aftermath.

Tonight she had not looked too thrilled – rather more patient, indulgent. Could she have reached the terminus of her curiosity in him? Or had he dismayed her inadvertently once more, as seemed to be his gift? Over a glass of wine he had made the blandest of remarks about time and the demands of childrearing. ‘Aw God, I’d love another one,’ she had avowed instantly. ‘Little brother or sister would be
magic
for him.’ He smiled and said nothing,
deeming
this by far the wisest course. The prophylactics, box-fresh,
nestled
in his coat pocket, and whilst he would offer them as a gesture of shared responsibility he knew he had acquired them more by way of insurance.

He must have dropped off, for the next he knew he was blinking confusedly in the semi-dark, eyes swimming toward the angle of light through the doorjamb. There were noises below, the front door clicking closed, heavy boots shuffling on the bristly doormat, hushed voices in conference. Groggily Gore lifted himself up and out of bed, and with a crooked finger lightly pulled the door open a little wider.

‘Y’alreet? What’s the matter wi’ you?’

‘I need a bit kip, Lind. I’m done in. S’alright if I crash out?’

‘Aw not tonight, man, I’ve got company.’

‘You’ve
company
, pet? Man alive. Anyone I knaa?’

‘Naw, man –’

‘Got yer’sel a new little friend then, pet?’

‘Just a fella I’m seeing.’

‘Aw, I see. Well, you’ve let us down there, like. I get lonely an’ all but, sometimes Lind. There was me dreaming of you fixin’ us breakfast.’

‘Stevie, I canna, man, please –’

‘Naw, you’re alright. You’re alright, divvint get yer’sel het.’

In the silence that followed, Gore could think only of Coulson’s pulverising size, the uselessness it made of all resistance, usually.

‘Honest, but, what’s the matter?’

‘Nowt. Just the normal.’

‘Just you look really off, man. Peaky, like.’

‘I’m canny. Just fucked is all. Here.’

Gore heard a tread on the lowest stair, and his scalp prickled.

‘Leave it, Stevie, just leave it there, I’ll take it up.’

The stair creaked again, but only in relief, it seemed. Gore stepped back to the bed and slipped back under the duvet. The conversation ebbed in and out of his earshot.

‘Lad’s al’reet?’

‘Canny.’

‘You’re on for the shop the morra neet?’

‘Aye, and Saturday and all, I’ve talked to Claire.’

‘And you’ll do ours Wednesday? Aye? Good girl.’

He heard the front door click once more, weighed his options, then rose, pulled on his jeans and trod down the stairs with
deliberation
. Lindy was curled in her armchair, chewing a fingernail, staring into space. Finally she favoured him with her gaze.

‘Thought you’d got off …’

‘No chance. You had a visitor?’

‘Aye. Just Stevie. You know Stevie.’

‘What about? This time of night?’

She scoffed through her enervation. ‘Peak hours for Stevie, this. Naw. There’s a bar I work in some nights. In town. It’s Stevie’s place. He runs it, his lads on the door and all that.’

‘That sounds a bit rough.’

‘Naw, it’s just like a clubby sort of bar. For young uns. Ravers and that. He wanted checking I was on for doing a night in the week.’

‘What’s it called, this bar?’

‘The bar? Teflon.’

‘And it’s okay, is it? Okay place?’

‘Aye, it’s fine. Just the odd night a week I do.’

‘Maybe we should have a night out there. Together.’

‘Get away.’ Her eyes narrowed, as if hostilities had
recommenced
prematurely after a seasonal ceasefire.

‘Wouldn’t that be nice, though?’

‘I don’t think it’s your
scene
, John.’

‘Can’t know ’til I try.’

‘Look you, don’t be making promises you’ll not keep, alright?’

‘I thought you wanted us to do more together?’

‘Not like
that
. God. It’s where I
work
, man. I wouldn’t go near it otherwise. It’s not my scene neither, not any more.’

‘Well then – maybe I could just drop in at the end of your shift one night. Pick you up, bring you home.’

‘In what? On your bike? Two in the morning? I’m tellin’ you, John, you’d not like it. You’d stick out like an arse in Fenwick’s window.’

‘I’d only be there to see you, Lindy. See what you get up to.’

‘Well I don’t
want
you seeing us, not particu’ly, thanks. I’m on my bloody feet all night pulling pints for a load of jakey lads. I’d not be
comfortable
with you there, John, can you not see that? I’d be
shy
, man.’

‘
Shy
? You?’

‘Aye, fuckin’
me
.’ She eyed him blazingly, and it crashed in on him, just how crude he had sounded. ‘I mean – what do you
think
, like? Do you think I’m just some
trollop
, John? Do you think it’s just fun and games for me all the time? Am I just here for your
pleasure
any fuckin’ hour of the day?’

Gore blinked under her barrage, thrown, grasping mentally for some respite, a temporary pause, something to re-exert the force of his silence.

‘No, Lindy, no. I don’t think any of that. I only want us to have a few things in common. Like you say. Given the … the
disparities
of our lives.’

The line of her mouth was bitter and crumpling. ‘It’s not a life
I’ve
got, man. I never know if I’m bloody coming or going.’ She thrust a balled fist to her lips. He moved impulsively toward her, open-armed. ‘Naw, look, just don’t, man, alright? Don’t.’

So he lowered himself gingerly onto the arm of her chair. She did not look at him.

‘It’s just fucking hard sometimes. You know? So hard.’

He nodded.

‘I know you’re not like a lot of fellas, I do know that, John. It’s just sometimes … you’ve stood there like a bloody
statue
, man. I
dunno what you’re thinking. And – oh, I dunno – sometimes I just can’t be
arsed
.’ She gave him the full weight of her gaze. ‘What I need to know is, am I wasting my time with you?’

‘You’re not. Of course you’re not.’

‘Well then, look, you. I’m not just here to tickle your fancy. When you can be bothered. I’m not just gunna be, y’knaa, your
little
breath of fresh air. Liza bloody Doolittle. Alright?’

Gore would have whistled under his breath, had the moment permitted. Her acuity had come at him from clear out of the blue, and he was abruptly and crushingly embarrassed by himself.

‘Do you hear us, John?’

He hazarded a caress of the nape of her neck, a stroke of the thick hair gathered there, tangled and dulled.

‘I do, I do. Look I’m sorry. Really. But please don’t be thinking any of that. That’s not how I feel about you.’

‘Oh, it’s not, is it?’

‘No. You have to believe I care for you. You have to.’

‘Oh aye …?’ She bowed her head, rubbed at her eyes. But there was no more fight. Stroking her still, gently, cautiously, he
followed
her gaze to the floor. Resting by the coffee table was the orange Adidas sports bag, that now-familiar eyesore of her
bedroom
belongings. He prodded it idly with a toe.

‘Just leave that, man.’

‘Sorry, will it explode?’

‘It’s Stevie’s, he must’ve left it, just leave it.’

There came a creak from the stairway, and they looked together to see Jake descending, one step, two step, his tummy protruding from pyjamas styled in England football colours. Gore smiled wanly at the boy, who stared back, impassive.

‘Aw, man … Look, it’d be better maybe if you just go, John.’

He looked close at her, surprised – a little put out.

‘Then you’ll maybe sleep. We’ll all sleep.’

She was already getting up, moving past him, taking her boy in hand and back upstairs to quarters. Gore sat for a moment in his discomfort. It was cold outside, and this seemed a sort of
banishment
– but, on reflection, he had no obvious grounds for appeal.

Alone again, her son safely stowed abed once more, Lindy sat and fingered a strand of her straggling hair. Now then, would she? Or wouldn’t she? Her late-favoured colour had been growing out awhile, the auburn roots making themselves heard again. Selfish, maybe – so late in the day, laundry unfolded, dishes unwashed, and here was Miss, thinking only of expending some care on
herself
. But she loathed the thought of creeping back into her pit so dissatisfied.

No, she was resolved. She went to the kitchen drawers, located the big-handled scissors, headed for the stairs. Then she
remembered
Stevie’s magic bag, and plucked it from the floor. It was lighter than usual, rattling a little – clearly not stuffed to the gills, as she had observed once when she dared to peek and found it brimful with ten bagged kilo-weight of cocaine.