The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery

by Ian Sansom

  “Have you taken the strunt or what?”

  “Taken the—”

  “Strunt, for goodness’ sake. Somebody said something that’s upset ye?”

  “No. I’m fine. I just feel a bit…queasy, that’s all.”

  “Aye, well, whatever it is, ye’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t know if I will, actually.”

  “Aye, right. Heard it all before. Let’s get on. I want to be back home for my tea tonight, and I’ve choir practice later.”

  “Right.”

  Ted walked round to the passenger side of the van.

  “What are you doing?” said Israel. “Where are you going?”

  “You’re driving, remember?” said Ted.

  “What?”

  “Half and half is what we agreed.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I’ve already done more than my share.”

  “Actually, Ted, I’m feeling a little bit…”

  “Aye, right,” said Ted, walking back beside Israel, shaking his head. “I might have known. Always the blinkin’ same with you, isn’t it, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Aye. Ye shirker.”

  “I am not a shirker.”

  “Could have fooled me,” said Ted.

  “I don’t mind driving,” said Israel, becoming agitated.

  “Aye, right.”

  “No, really, it’s fine, I’ll—”

  “I’ll drive,” said Ted, walking round the other side of the van, toward the driver’s side.

  “No, I’ll drive,” said Israel, catching up with him.

  “I said, I’ll drive!” said Ted.

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut up and go and sit down,” said Ted. “And stop mucking me about. Ye give me the jandies, so you do.”

  “The whatties?”

  “Ach!”

  Israel went and sat miserably in the passenger seat while Ted got back into the driver’s seat.

  “Sorry,” said Israel, “I just—”

  “I don’t want your apologies,” said Ted, starting up the engine and slamming the van into reverse. “I don’t know…What’s the point of having a dog and barking yerself, eh?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s a saying, just.”

  “Right, well, I—”

  “One of yer headaches, is it?” said Ted, without sounding in any way sympathetic.

  “No, it’s…”

  “Ye’d only be deedlin’ along at ten miles an hour, anyway.”

  “Deedling?” said Israel.

  “That’s right,” said Ted, flooring the accelerator as he pulled back out onto the main road.

  “Is that a word?”

  “Of course it’s a word. I just said it, didn’t I?”

  “Is it a proper word, though?” said Israel.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve just never heard it before. It’s like jandies, and—”

  “What, ye’ve heard every word in the English language, have ye, Professor?”

  “No, not—”

  “All fifty billion of them?”

  “I don’t think there are fifty billion words in the English language—” said Israel as they began to pick up speed past the outlying areas of Ballynahinch.

  “Aye, well,” said Ted. “However many, deedlin’s one of them.”

  “Right,” agreed Israel.

  “And jandies.”

  “Sure. And what would be the opposite of deedling?”

  “The opposite of deedlin’?” said Ted, as if no one had ever asked a more stupid question. “Going a dinger.”

  “You’re making all these words up, aren’t you?” said Israel.

  Ted’s response was to press PLAY on the cassette recorder.

  “Expelliarmus!” he bellowed, and then Stephen Fry resumed reading.

  They drove in silence the rest of the way down and into the Mournes, Israel spending most of the journey with his eyes half-closed, hoping it might somehow lessen the impact of his discovery of Gloria’s betrayal, as you might try to lessen the impact of a horror film by watching it through your fingers. It didn’t work. Scenes played before his mind, in appalling Technicolor: Gloria and Danny in flagrante, the whole thing in close-up, in detail, and in its entirety, as if he were in the clutch of some perverse mania or delirium, or in that film by Michael Winterbottom that he and Gloria had gone to see in the Coronet in Notting Hill. How had he not realized? Was he stupid? Had he missed something? Some intimation of this…outrage, this…betrayal, this…inevitability.

  As they drove farther into the mountains, the roads became narrower and the bends sharper, and Israel’s anxieties rose as Ted’s driving style became correspondingly more relaxed. As they lurched round one corner, the van leaning dangerously to the left, Israel broke off from the explicit screenings in his mind and sat up with a start.

  Ted, as usual, was driving with his knees.

  “Can you stop driving with your knees?!”

  “I am not driving with my knees,” said Ted, casually.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I am driving with my thighs,” said Ted.

  “Well, can you stop!”

  “What, the van?”

  “No, driving with your knees. You need both hands on the wheel here!”

  “I was not driving with my knees. I was driving with my—”

  “Yeah. Right. Whatever. It’s dangerous.”

  “Ach,” Ted grunted, putting his hands firmly and deliberately on the wheel. “That all right?”

  “Yes. Thank you,” said Israel.

  Ted instantly lifted his hands off the wheel.

  “Aaghh!” screamed Israel.

  “Relax!” said Ted, laughing. “Ye’re wound up tight, boy, let me tell ye.”

  “Right. Are we nearly there yet?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ted. “You’ve got the map.”

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t need the map?” said Israel.

  “Aye, well,” said Ted.

  “Oh, so we do need the map?” said Israel, pulling an old, damp, dog-eared Ordnance Survey map from the glove compartment.

  “Well, for the last bit of the journey, mebbe,” said Ted.

  “‘I won’t need a map, sure’ were your exact words, I think,” said Israel. “As we were leaving Tumdrum.”

  “Well,” said Ted. “Where is it we’re headed again?”

  “We need the map,” said Israel, spreading the map out over his knees.

  “All right,” said Ted. “Yes. We do.”

  “You were wrong,” said Israel, his finger poised on the sheet.

  “Aye, all right,” said Ted. “I was wrong.”

  “Sorry?” said Israel, leaning over and cupping a hand to his hear. “What did you say? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “I was wrong,” repeated Ted.

  “Say it again,” said Israel.

  “No,” said Ted.

  “I like hearing you say it,” said Israel.

  “Aye, right. Wise up,” said Ted. “And tell us where we are.”

  Israel squinted at the map.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “That’s your job,” said Ted. “I’m driving.”

  “That’s not my fault,” said Israel. “You wanted to drive.”

  “No, you didn’t want to drive,” said Ted. “So, you’re reading the map.”

  “Well, I don’t know where we are,” said Israel.

  “What did the last sign say?” said Ted.

  “I don’t know? Have you seen a sign recently?”

  “Not recently,” said Ted. “No.”

  “I thought you said you’d been down here before.”

  “I’ve been down to Newcastle,” said Ted. “The Slieve Donard. Old friend of mine had his wedding reception there. Beautiful meal, so it was. We had braised lamb, so we did, with—”

  “Yeah, maybe another time. At this moment I think we
should—”

  “Where is it we want again?” said Ted.

  “Slievenaman,” said Israel. “I can’t see it here. Is that how you say it?”

  “No idea,” said Ted.

  “Anyway, some little cottage on Slievenaman, is what I think she said.”

  “We’ll need to ask someone,” said Ted.

  Israel stared out at the bleak mountain landscape all around them.

  “What, a leprechaun? Or one of the little people? Or—”

  “We’ll find someone,” said Ted.

  “Yeah, right,” said Israel.

  They drove for another mile until they did find someone—an old man out walking, wearing a yellow fluorescent jacket and carrying a long stick. He didn’t look like a walker. He looked, worryingly, like a local.

  Israel wound down his window.

  “Hello!” he said, as brightly as possible.

  “Ye sellin’ fish?” said the old man.

  “No, no,” said Israel. “We’re not selling fish. We’re a mobile library.”

  “Potatoes?” said the old man.

  “No. Sorry. No potatoes either. We were just wondering—”

  “Thon’s a brave yin the day,” said the man.

  “Erm…” said Israel.

  “Quare and warm.”

  “Indeed,” said Israel. “I wonder if you could—”

  “But she’s comin’ on plump,” said the man, pointing into the sky with his walking stick.

  “Sorry? Coming on plump?”

  “Aye,” said the man. “I used to cut turf up here.”

  “Right, lovely,” said Israel.

  “Until the peelers and all put a stop to it. The world’s a miserable, crabbit sort of a place, isn’t it?”

  “Actually,” said Israel, who knew when he was beaten, “you know what? I’m just going to hand you over to my colleague here.” He leaned back, to let Ted do the talking.

  “Hi. How are ye?” said Ted.

  “All right,” said the man.

  “We’re after”—he spoke to Israel—“where is it we’re after?”

  “Slievenaman,” said Israel.

  “Slievenaman?” said the old man. “Ye’ll not get to Slievenaman from here.”

  “Oh,” said Israel.

  “Ye’d need to be back down the road.”

  “Right.”

  “And ye know the Fofanny Dam?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Turn yerself around,” said the old man.

  “Hold on,” said Israel. “Let me find a pen here, and I’ll just make a quick note.” But “Where are ye from?” the old man had asked, and before the pen could be successfully retrieved for a quick note and a speedy getaway, the old man and Ted had started swapping stories about dance halls and places and people from long ago. After five minutes of hit-and-miss reminiscence, Israel managed to wrestle the conversation back to the question of how to get to Slievenaman, and they were finally away again, Ted executing a tricky three-point turn, the old man conducting them with his stick.

  “He’s right about the weather,” said Ted as they drove away.

  “How do you mean?”

  “She is coming on plump,” said Ted, pointing up toward gray clouds in the distance. “Let’s swoop in, grab her, and get home again. Like the SAS in the Iranian embassy siege.”

  “Right,” said Israel.

  Eventually they found the narrow lane that led toward a cottage, and parked up on the gravel by the stone boundary wall. The cottage sloped away before them, built on the incline of the mountain, as though it were not so much a building as a glacial deposit. The roof was thatched. There were small outbuildings, a little courtyard.

  “Would have been a nice little farm once, I suppose,” said Ted.

  “It’s not bad now, is it?” said Israel, looking at the rough open moorland spread as far as the eye could see. “Rural idyll, isn’t it?”

  “If you say so,” said Ted.

  They pushed open the wooden gate and went and knocked at the door. There was no answer. The knock seemed to echo across the fields and mountains.

  “Now what?” said Ted.

  Israel was bending over, peering inside the windows of the cottage: it had clearly been expensively renovated inside in a traditional style, with a prominent pine dresser and stone floors and what looked like milking stools for seats.

  “Wow,” he said to Ted, “come and look at this.”

  “It’s a cottage, said Ted. “I’ve seen plenty of cottages before.”

  “It’s really cool, though,” said Israel.

  “Aye, right,” said Ted.

  There were colorful cushions on thick-string-seated chairs, a plain rug, oil lamps, and a huge wall-mounted plasma-screen TV over the open fire.

  “It’s lovely,” said Israel.

  “Looks dark and damp to me,” said Ted. “So, now what?”

  “Well, she’s clearly here,” said Israel, straightening up.

  “The Morris girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aye, how can you tell, Sherlock Holmes?”

  “There’s a pink iPod nano sitting on the table in there.”

  “And what’s that when it’s at home, then?”

  “An iPod?”

  “I’m joking,” said Ted.

  “So she can’t have gone far.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t go anywhere without their iPods, do they?”

  “Does she not have a car?” said Ted.

  “She’s only fourteen,” said Israel.

  “Hmm,” said Ted.

  Israel gazed around.

  “If you were fourteen, Ted, and you were hiding in this cottage, what would you do?”

  “Get the bus to Newcastle and go home?”

  “No. If you were here, hiding. I think she’s gone for a walk,” said Israel.

  “In the mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ach, don’t be soft.”

  “Why?”

  “If you live in the mountains, you don’t go walking in them,” said Ted. “Sure, I’ve lived in the Glens most of my life, and I’ve never been walking out. It’s only tourists go walking.”

  “But she is a tourist, isn’t she? This is her parents’ second home.”

  “Aye,” said Ted dismissively. “Second home. One not good enough for them.”

  “Walk,” Israel confirmed to himself. “That’s definitely what she’d do.”

  “Aye,” said Ted.

  “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Aye, you would,” said Ted. “Go all naturalistic, wouldn’t you.”

  “Yes, well, sort of,” said Israel, who was walking away past the stone boundary wall. “Like Thoreau. I think if we follow this path…”

  “Aye, right,” said Ted dismissively. “You follow away there. I’m going to sit in the van for a wee smoke.”

  “You sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Do I look like I want to go walking in the mountains?”

  “No.”

  “There you are, then. You work away there.”

  So Israel went walking alone. He’d not walked in mountains for years: the last time was probably when he’d gone on holiday with his mum and dad to Wales when he was eight or nine years old. He’d never really understood the whole nature and sublimity thing: he found his sublimity in a nice cup of coffee on a bustling city street, a crisp copy of the Guardian before him, and the prospect of a day’s flaneuring ahead.

  He followed the worn path up and up.

  And after just ten minutes he sat down on a rock, exhausted, and shut his eyes. Even though he’d lost the weight, he was maybe not as fit as he could have been. Not that there was any previous, perfect state of fitness he’d fallen away from: he’d never been as fit as he could have been. He was sweating. And his knees hurt. But at least he hadn’t been thinking about Gloria and Danny. The walking had somehow allowed him to stop thinking. Just for a moment he had escaped his imagin
ation, and he was living in the here and now. He allowed his breathing to become regular and deep, and he felt the warm autumn sun on his eyelids.

  “Hi.”

  Israel leaped up off the rock like a chamois leaping from a mountain peak.

  “Oh god!” he yelled.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  “You gave me the fright of my life!”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes. I’m fine, thank you. Yes,” gasped Israel.

  “You’re the librarian, aren’t you? From Tumdrum.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.”

  “And you’re Lyndsay,” said Israel, for Lyndsay indeed it was.

  “What are you doing here?” said Lyndsay. “Out walking?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. Actually, no, I’ve come to find you,” said Israel.

  “Oh,” said Lyndsay. “You know, then?”

  “I know that people back home are worried sick about you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “They are. Your parents are beside themselves.”

  “They don’t care at all about me,” said Lyndsay, who looked remarkably well for someone who’d been hiding away in a remote cottage halfway up a mountain.

  “Of course they care,” said Israel.

  “My father is a scummy politician.”

  “No,” said Israel, finding it difficult to disagree. “He’s…a man doing a very difficult job.”

  “He’s a total scumbag,” said Lyndsay.

  “No…” said Israel. “I wouldn’t say that. I think he’s a man who…”

  “You don’t know him,” said Lyndsay.

  “No. But I know of him,” said Israel.

  Lyndsay sat down beside him on the rock. They both stared in silence at the vista—the admittedly sublime vista—before them.

  “What did you think of the Philip Roth, then?” said Israel.

  “American Pastoral?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t started it yet,” said Lyndsay. “I’m reading the Stephenie Meyer at the moment.”

  “The vampire books?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh,” said Israel. “Really? I thought maybe you’d…Anyway.”

  “I hate living there,” said Lyndsay.

  “Where?” said Israel.

  “Tumdrum.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Israel.

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where are you from?” said Lyndsay. “Originally?”

  “London,” said Israel.

  “I’d love to live in London.”