Crusaders Read Free Page B

again.
    As for his sermon – no doubt it needed work, but he sensed it would repay the effort.
    *
    Oh river city, industrial seat, Victorian marvel of Newcastle …
    If no one else in the carriage seemed greatly fussed, still Gore felt a fond sentiment kindling in his chest as their train trundled onto the King Edward Bridge across the River Tyne. The sky outside was overcast but daubed with patches of serene blue, a pale sun straining to burn through tufted clouds. He craned his neck in search of the best vantage from the window. To his right, stalwartly arrayed down the river’s gentle bend, were four other crossings – their fulcrum the great radial green steel arch of the Tyne Bridge, a sight that filled Gore with boyish delight.
    The general view he considered only a little tarnished by the faceless candy-coloured uniformity of offices and apartment blocks that seemed to have sprouted in clusters down the riverside toward the Crown Court – itself a blank, brute mica-pillared parody of classical form. Long gone were the derricks and trolleys and giant cranes, the colossal black trappings of heavy industry that formed the river landscape in picture-books Gore had pored over as a boy. But the banks of Gateshead now behind them were like one big building site – mounds of tilled earth, lying in wait for some forthcoming venture of labour and capital.
    The train swung right toward Central Station, a shed of iron and glass looming up ahead, and then they were trundling under its high arched portico. Gore was quick on his feet and to the luggage rack, taking up his chattels and disembarking into the hubbub of the afternoon, shafts of sky-light falling on the tiled concourse , its burger shacks, sports bars and ticket hutches. He had not to go far before sighting his promised welcome party: it could only be Mr Jack Ridley holding up a white card with carefully etched letters in black felt-tip, ‘ REV. JOHN GORE’ . Ridley stood stock-still amid the bustling commuters, as if he had been rooted there dourly for years while the old Victorian station was slowly remodelled around his ears. A stocky man of medium height, probably in his late fifties, he wore corduroy trousers and Hush Puppies, an olive-green car-coat and a flat cap, some scant reddish hair curling out from under it. Though there was an affable aspect to his squashed nose and chubby cheeks, he was unsmiling, and something in his even, assessing gaze was flint-like – if not obsidian – as Gore drew near.
    ‘Jack? I’m John.’
    Gore’s glad hand received a cursory clasp. ‘How do then, Reverend.’
    ‘You’ll call me John, I hope.’
    ‘Shall we’s gan? I’m parked a canny way off.’
    Ridley had wrested one of Gore’s bags from his hand, wheeled and set off before Gore could quarrel. Indeed he sensed already that there would be little arguing with this man – either that, or a great deal.
    *
    ‘How long have you been active in the parish, Jack?’
    Ridley, now in bifocals, was peering through his windshield with displeasure at a lady motorist reluctant to nose out onto the roundabout. ‘Helpin’ out, you mean? Whey, since we started gannin ’ to St Mark’s up in Fenham, me and the wife – before I was retired, even. Before the new vicar started and all. I’ll always help, but, where I can. If I’m asked to. I’m still at it, any road.’
    Ridley refocused his riled attention on the traffic. Gore took a moment to decide where he might start decoding. ‘The new vicar being Bob Spikings? My mentor-to-be?’
    ‘Aw aye. He’s alright, is Spikings. Not the worst.’
    ‘And you’re not working any more yourself?’
    ‘Oh I’ve never stopped workin ’, me. No fear. They laid us off, but, back in – must have been nineteen-eighty-six? When they shut down the County Council, y’knaa? Tyne and Wear. On the orders of bloody Thatcher .’
    This last was virtually expectorated. Gore weighed his options before opening the next front. ‘What