Crusaders by Richard T. Kelly Read Free Book Online

There’s a service to get their banners blessed and that.’ The scorn in Alec’s mouth John thought odd and uncommon. They shuffled onward. Alec, though, seemed dissatisfied with the manner in which he had expressed himself. ‘I’ll tell you summat, mind. Y’knaa how after the war, the government, they bought up the mines for the country?’
    John nodded, though he didn’t entirely follow.
    ‘Cos before that, they were just the property of the big knobs, y’knaa? And none of them buggers gave a tinker’s toss for their men, right? But I’ll tell you who else got fat off owning the mines in the old days, and that was Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral. What do you think of that, eh?’ Alec’s eyes were chilly blue as always, but his cheeks were mottled. ‘Aw aye, there’s two sides to Durham, bonny lad. Never the twain shall meet.’
    The incremental progression carried them over the Old Elvet Bridge, and they paused in unison outside the Royal County Hotel. From a balustrade balcony two floors up a welcoming party waved down, some with conspicuous raised fists. John recognised Durham’s Mayor, bloated in civic regalia, pressed in on all sides of the standing room by a congregation of men in grey suits and their good ladies.
    ‘Are they all important?’ John enquired of Alec.
    ‘They reckon they are. The fat fella?’ Alec pointed at a bespectacled gent with a bulbous, near luminous nose. ‘That’s Heffer, he’s in the government. Ginger nut beside him, that’s Scargill, big man in the union. They’ll be boring us stiff wi’ speeches later on.’
    Langley Park turned its banner toward the balcony. The band formed up facing the same way, and struck up a tune. The lordly ones gazed down as the opening bars rose upward, bearing with them immediate cheers and applause from the gathering. The guests turned to one another, then joined in the singing, looking to Gore’s eye for all the world as though they were lined up in church. One suit even put his hand to his breast, trying, it seemed, just a tad too hard. Everybody knew the words.
    ‘Though cowards flinch, and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag flying here …’
    It seemed to John that if there was drunkenness abroad now, it was not liquor alone that had lifted spirits. Even Alec’s voice was lusty in the chorus, and he seemed, as Audrey might say, proud as Lucifer.
    *
    Durham Racecourse Ground was a well-trodden carpet of green under the sun, munificently set with stalls and fairground attractions .The heat of the day had risen, the atmosphere thick with noise and smell. John stood with Alec as Langley Park’s banner was dismantled. Beneath the shade of a tree a short distance hence, a thickset chap with meaty sideburns was bent over, one hand on the trunk, vomiting onto the ground. Hughie shouted over cheerily. ‘That’s it ya bugger, get it out!’
    Alec was quick to press coins in John’s palm and urge that the boy avail himself of the entertainments. ‘Nee fun for you, sittin’ with a load of old pit yackers.’ But John wasn’t mad for chips or candyfloss, nor did he fancy testing his strength or aim. It didn’t seem wholly appropriate. Instead, while the men munched their sandwiches, John sat and stole looks at Tommy, a lanky man, milky-eyed and jug-eared, his crinkled forehead topped by startlingly vertical tufts of grey hair. But it was Tommy’s right hand that transfixed him, guiltily, for it had somewhere and somehow suffered the loss of the four fingers, now rendered down to smooth white nubs of skin. Finally John must have looked a little too long. Tommy caught his eye and raised the wounded hand in the air between them, sharp as a warning. John felt himself blanch.
    ‘You after the tale of this then, kidder? Is that it?’
    But there seemed no affront in Tommy’s piping high voice. Nor did the others look bothered. ‘Aye, gan on, Tom,’ murmured Alec. ‘Give him the story.’
    ‘It were, what? Twenty-eight year