Read Online Crusaders by Richard T. Kelly - Free Book Online Page A

his head. ‘Something. Even if it has to be begged or borrowed.’
    ‘Or pinched,’ said Ridley, deadpan. ‘Don’t forget pinched.’ Gore smiled as he dabbled an idle hand into an open box-load of New English Prayer Books. Ridley sniffed. ‘We’ll be wanting the Book of Common Prayer, surely?’
    ‘I can’t afford to buy new. This is a shoestring production.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got your piano at least. For your hymns.’
    ‘Hmm. I wonder, though. Do we really need them? Hymns?’
    ‘You’re joking, aren’t you, John? People aren’t going to show up just to hear you natter. They’ll want a tune.’
    ‘ If they turn up.’
    ‘Divvint be soft.’
    Gore’s spirits, though, were meagre. What sort of a church could this amount to? It felt more like amateur dramatics, the humdrum worries of set dressing and helping hands and ticketsales. A crisis of legitimacy was on the horizon and here they were, he and his churchwarden, grubbing about in a dusty closet.
    ‘I don’t know, Jack.’ He sighed. ‘I’m feeling – out of practice here.’
    ‘Well,’ Ridley coughed. ‘I should say. Spiking telt us he’s planning on giving you a go or two in his pulpit? St Mark’s? Just to keep you in nick ’til you’re ready to go here. A christening, he said. Or a funeral, maybe, summat you can’t mess up for him.’
    Gore, having listened with interest, winced.
    ‘Them’s his words, not mine,’ said Ridley, looking away.
    *
    In all the reconnaissance consumed more hours than Gore had expected, and he was ready to make haste for home when Ridley suggested they adjourn to a suitable nearby pub for a quiet pint. He didn’t think it politic to spurn any more of the older man’s apparently friendly gestures, and so let him lead the way down Hoxheath Road in the sfumato of dusk.
    As they skirted the Crossman Estate, Ridley seemed almost to avert his eyes, shaking his head as they passed the Gunnery pub. ‘Nowt good comes out of there.’ Fifty yards further on, he nodded to himself. ‘We’ll cut through here, eh? The Lord Nelson’s on the other side.’ They turned into a long alley running behind blocks of redbrick housing on the Scoular Estate, and rounding a corner they came upon a grim concrete quadrangle under yellow sodium light – a playground with swings, roundabout, see-saw and sandpit . But it was an overgrown mob of teenagers who perched on and around the swings, nursing tins of drink, a large plastic bottle being passed around. Some sort of ruction was in progress too. Gore grew wary as he and Ridley drew near. A blonde girl in a ragged-hemmed denim skirt, and her bloke – carelessly bare-chested , lean and muscled if pasty – were cursing one another over who did what to who and when.
    ‘Ah said, neebody fancies your rotten cunt.’
    Gore saw Ridley flinch as if struck – recognised, too, one of the boys in the pack, with whom he had cheerfully kicked a ball that very morning. Mackers? The boy at least had the grace to looksheepish, electric-blue beer can snug in his fist. But they were nearly through the trouble-spot, and Gore wished only to leave it well behind.
    ‘Watch that language, you lot,’ Ridley barked as they passed.
    ‘Fuck off, y’owld fucker.’
    Gore was resolved to keep walking. Ridley, small mercy, did not stop to quarrel.
    ‘Oi, you, I’m not finished wi’ you.’
    It took Gore some nervy seconds to be certain the shouted challenge was only the resumption of hostilities behind them.
    ‘ You fuck off, I fuckin’ hate you.’
    ‘Pack it in , Jason man.’
    Then a shriek, and Gore and Ridley turned as one. The blonde girl had been thrown onto her backside, legs in the air, helpless as a ladybug, a streak of white underwear visible. Her bare-skin bloke strutted round her, clearly delighted, and disinclined to help her to her feet. Gore decided in a flash that this could not be permitted, and brushed past Ridley’s custodial hand.
    ‘Come on , what are you playing