Free Crusaders by Richard T. Kelly

but.’
    They set to their game. Gore quickly found himself in a quandary. ‘Well, I’m knocking here.’
    Ridley nodded with satisfaction at the concession, and sipped at his bitter.
    ‘I don’t want to keep you from your wife tonight, Jack.’
    ‘Aw, she’s used to us runnin’ about all hours.’ Ridley was staring at the dominoes cupped and shielded in his calloused hand. Carefully he laid down a double blank.
    ‘I’ve been wanting to ask your advice, actually. About the church.’
    ‘Oh aye?’
    ‘Yes, I wondered. What kind of a church do you think it should be?’
    Ridley peered flatly at him. ‘What kind ?’
    ‘I just think it needs a theme. Something a bit different to the usual. I mean, it’s not usual, this, what we’re doing. Is it?’
    Ridley shrugged. ‘Well, it seems to me – if you were wantin’ todo a bit good – you would want a church that does something about them little buggers.’ Ridley jerked a thumb in the general direction of whence they had come. ‘Get them off the street.’
    ‘Right. We should focus on the young people?’
    ‘Maybe. I say that like it means owt. You’ll have a bother. They’re all that bloody ignorant. Ignorant and proud of it an’ all.’
    ‘It looks like they could do with something better to occupy their time.’
    ‘ Whey , they’ve got it cosy, man. Slouching about, sucking up beer. You’ll not see ’em out of their pits before midday. Unless it’s to sign on.’
    ‘Do you think there’s the work for them, but?’
    ‘Why aye there’s work. They’ll just not do it. Their parents neither . But they’ve still got money for the big telly, and room to park their backsides, thank you very much.’ Ridley had won the game, and began to reshuffle the dominoes. Still, he was dissatisfied. ‘I’ll tell you this, John, far as I’m concerned? The Church ought to say what’s right. There’s nee point to it otherwise. I don’t like rubbish being talked. Not if a blind man can see things have gone to hell. We’re not to say, “Aw, people are just like that nowadays, lads have got it tough, police are all villains.” All that.’
    ‘You’re not by any chance a Conservative voter?’
    Ridley looked as if he might spit. ‘I bloody well am not. Them’s the buggers took wor job. I’m a socialist is what I am, man, always have been. Tell you what that means , but. It means you work . Support your family, do right by your wife, mother of your bairns. You do the best you can, and you pass it on to your kids, so you’ve the right to expect same off them. Off your neighbour and all. That’s the way things work . Not shirking off when you feel like. Like them lads. Who divvint want to be men. Who’ve got some – some bloody lout ’s notion of what it means to be a man. Which is making themselves generally obnoxious. A quick squirt up some lass then off you skip, free as a bloody bird, so you can squirt somewhere else.’
    Gore, taken aback by Ridley’s terminology, looked at his hands for some moments.
    ‘You’ll be sorry now you asked my opinion, I daresay.’
    ‘No, no. It’s better we speak plainly.’
    ‘You sorry yet for coming? Up here? Gettin’ stuck with an owld bugger like us, after your nice place in the country?’
    Gore shook his head. ‘I don’t miss Dorset one bit. It wasn’t a happy time.’
    ‘Was it not?’
    ‘No. I’m not a country person. Didn’t fit in hugely. And there was the whole BSE thing while I was there, the mad cow disease? Had a terrible effect.’
    ‘Oh aye, it will have done, I s’pose. Rotten business, that.’
    ‘It was. But, it taught me a few things. The whole experience.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Not to make the same mistakes twice.’
    Ridley nodded, as to say that was a very good one right there. Then he was up and collecting his cap, lifting their not- quite-empty glasses to the bar. Rightly so , Gore acknowledged, deciding against the offer of another round. He had no reason to believe that