The Bad Book Affair

by Ian Sansom

  8

  Sundays were always the real challenge for Israel in Tumdrum. On Sunday, Tumdrum’s sheer Tumdrumness somehow intensified: the place seemed to hum not only with its average everyday senselessness and pointlessness, but with an extra tone, a deep overtone or undertone-a void-of doom, as though a dark-cloaked chorus had arrived and was lamenting the steady encroachment of catastrophe in the last scenes of some long, depressing opera about the terrible fate of Everyman: Sibelius, Benjamin Britten, Don Giovanni, Simon Boccanegra. O Tumdrum! Weh mir! Weh mir! And on Sundays, as a consequence, with the thrum of doom in his ears, Israel always suffered from a combination of queasiness, headaches, and a nausea of a kind both physiological and philosophical that would doubtless be familiar to anyone who’d been out on a Saturday night drinking, or at an amateur production of a play by Harold Pinter, or at home listening to the Saturday night play on Radio 4: He was a man of sorrows, despised, rejected, and acquainted with grief.

  Sometimes, to dispel the Sunday doom and anxieties Israel would go to the pub-the First and Last. But it only ever made things worse-the First and Last leaned more toward the Omega than the Alpha-and anyway, in the end he would always have to return home, to the converted chicken coop, his room like a prison cell, no more than twelve feet by twelve feet, with bare brick walls and a concrete floor and an asbestos roof, a room that Israel had worked on and worked on over the past year and had managed to transform into a…room no more than twelve feet by twelve feet, with bare brick walls and a concrete floor and an asbestos roof, with rugs and a bed and some books. A room of his own, to be sure, with his own enamel plates and cups. But no window. Fortunately, he wanted no window. For there was nothing out there to see.

  Outside the coop was the yard, and the Devine farmhouse, and the garden sloping southward, and the old glassless glasshouse, and the row of cold frames broken down, and the couch grass and nettles where once had been blackcurrants and berries, and the walls of the walled garden, pitted with nails where apples and pears had once been carefully trained, and where there was now just mud, mud everywhere, and everywhere mud.

  The Devine family farm wasn’t just deteriorating, it was sinking: the heavy and seemingly continual rain during the summer had not been kind to the two-hundred-year-old building. Parts of it had begun quietly to slip away-irreparable damage to outbuildings with leaky roofs and big old wooden doors and hardboarded windows that had swollen up like weeping eyes. And even in the main house, old carpets had had to be removed-the place was unprotected, like a sponge, the damp infecting and soaking in through the render and seeping down the walls providing the perfect environment for mold and for mushrooms. A fair crop of little crumble-capped fungi had sprung up on the wallpaper, and old Mr. Devine had simply brushed them off with the back of his hand, and scooped them up and tossed them onto the fire, and they’d filled the house with a sour, soapy smell that-mixed with the stench of damp cardboard and cabbage and chickens-was overwhelming, organic, fundamental: the unmistakable stench of decay. Israel gagged every time he went into the kitchen, which was decay, plus dogs, plus fat, plus Irish stew. Black mold, dry rot, condensation. Sum total: miasma. George did everything she could to maintain the property, but she was fighting a losing battle: it was simply impossible to fix everything that needed fixing, and paint everything that needed painting, and clean everything that needed cleaning. She often crawled into bed at midnight and then was up again at five to begin the day’s chores. The animals were cared for, but the windows were rotten, and the floorboards were rotten, and the walls were rotten; even the septic tank was rotten. There was continual surface runoff from the fields, and groundwater levels were rising; the farmhouse was like a rusting ship in an unforgiving ocean, and George was like Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Captain Smith of the Titanic. She could not cease in her lonely task, couldn’t leave her post, could not desert her command. Her duty was to the farm-and “the farm” they all called it, not “our” farm or “our house” or “our home.” It was “the farm” like the church was the church, and the government was the government, and the law the law. It was an entity, a being, an institution. It was not a way of life, it was life.

  The farm was where George had grown up. It was where she remembered her parents living, and where she’d played down by the stream and had run around in the fields. The farm was her entire world: she could imagine no world without it, although outside, the world was passing it by, superseding it, speeding up and crashing, colliding, collapsing, and rapidly remaking itself. Outside was progress, for better or for worse; inside, the Devine household was stasis. The furniture was heavy and inherited; the carpets were orange and thin. Mr. Devine would sit in the good front room by the fire, with crumbling, swirling turquoise wallpaper coming slowly down upon him, with a large pair of foot-operated bellows made of wood and leather at his feet. There was still a butter churner in the kitchen, and earthen bowls, and old brass candlesticks, and a big old mahogany wall clock, with a TV in teak to match. At night George used a brass bed pan with a long wooden handle to warm her in her loneliness, and next to her bed sat an old-fashioned automatic tea maker, her only companion.

  George’s bedroom was her sanctuary, or the closest thing to it, and she’d arranged it exactly as she liked: old Roberts radio next to the bed, and her library books in their thick plastic protective covers, and her one concession to luxury, a Cath Kidston floral bedspread that she’d had sent over from London, a concession not merely to luxury, indeed, but to herself: an allowance. Weighing heavily against it was the old woodworm-wracked pine clothes cupboard, made by her father and not made to last, and her parents’ old double bed-a rickety iron frame affair that had been in the farmhouse for generations. Inheritance. She’d been born in the bed and would probably die there too, just like her grandmother before her. The only picture in the room was a poor watercolor, painted by George’s mother when she was young and first married and had come to live there, a painting of the farm, all pure white against green fields and blue skies, expressive of all her hopes of the life she was going to live. Big dreams. Dark red Donegal tweed curtains hung at the windows and down over the deep window ledges, which had been painted over so many times that where the paint was chipped it was possible to see years of colors going back, from whites through creams and down to deep dark browns, like geological strata. Sometimes George would sit picking at the paint, staring out at the fields spread before her, wondering about her own deepening layers, and she would listen to the trills and calls of the birds, and if she closed her eyes she could see her father still, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, tall and spare, always on the go, out in the garden, or in the distance on the tractor. She’d kept all the old accounts books, their covers smudged with white mold, and sometimes she would read through them in bed, reading her father’s, her grandfather’s, and her great-grandfather’s careful detailing of income and expenses. She did all of the accounts on a laptop now-Brownie helped her when he was home from university. But she knew that ultimately it was pointless, that the forces of decay and modernity were about to overwhelm her and the farm and sweep them all away, and there was nothing she could do about it, that what had once been a farm employing half a dozen men was now little more than a small-holding and would soon become nothing.

  And of course she spoke of this knowledge, these fears, to no one. And certainly not to Israel Armstrong, whose lodgings in the chicken coop brought the Devines almost half of their monthly income.

  Israel had got up late, as usual, this Sunday morning, neurasthenically, and had washed, and dressed and not shaved, and had eaten his customary spoonful of peanut butter and drunk his customary pot of coffee and had now wandered, aimlessly but much refreshed, outside to the yard, where George was busy working, paintbrush in hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Erm. I’m guessing here…Painting?”

  “Whitewashing,” corrected George.

  “Is
that the same as painting?”

  George just looked at him, eyes wincing.

  “Well, anyway,” continued Israel. “Sorry about Friday night, by the way.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I…”

  “It’s really fine.”

  “I just had one or two too many.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, then. We’re fine, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. That looks like fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fun?”

  “Absolutely. Nice way to spend a morning-”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Whatever. Painting, though. Brightening the place up a bit. Looks very satisfying.”

  “Does it?” said George. “Well, here, you satisfy yourself, then.” She handed Israel the brush and stood with her hands on her hips.

  “Well, that’s not an invitation I receive very often from a-”

  “Just paint, Armstrong.”

  “Well, I’d love to help, obviously, but I…erm. I have a few things I need to do.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s Sunday. I need to…go and see Pearce.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. What’s the time?”

  George looked up at the sky.

  “About half past two.”

  “How do you do that?” said Israel. “I’ve always-”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell the time by looking at the-”

  “Armstrong, I need to get on, if you’re not helping.”

  “Sure. Yes. Sorry.” He handed back the paintbrush. Their hands touched briefly. Israel coughed. George looked away. It was nothing: nothing had passed between them.

  “Why are you painting the shed?” asked Israel. “Spring clean?”

  “It’s September, Armstrong.”

  “Yes. Well. A late spring clean.”

  “We’re selling the goats,” said George.

  “Oh, really? Why? I quite like the goats.”

  “Why do you think we’re selling them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Israel’s grasp of real-world economics was not great: sketchy, in fact, might be the word. Or feeble. Or poor. Risible. Rum. Quaint. Or pathetic. He was a salary man, when it came down to it, a public employee, so the gulf between him and someone who had to earn their living by the literal sweat of their literal brow was as big as the gap between, say, primitive tribespeople and the Christian missionary come to save them.

  “Goats must be sold,” continued George.

  “It does seem a shame, though,” said Israel.

  “Shame doesn’t come into it,” said George. “It’s a shame when you can’t eat.”

  “True. True. Good point,” said Israel. “So why are you painting the shed, if you’re selling the goats?”

  George took a deep breath: it was a family trait. Old Mr. Devine did the same when he was roused: an attention to and awareness of one’s own anger, which Israel always found impressive; he was always utterly shocked and surprised by his own emotions.

  “To set them off when people come to see them,” explained George patiently.

  “Ah,” said Israel. “Right. Presentation. A sort of framing device for the goats?”

  George looked at him, unimpressed.

  “Anyway,” continued Israel, sticking his head round the shed door and sniffing. “What’s that smell? Is that the-”

  “I’ve bleached the floors,” said George.

  “Ergh!”

  “And it’ll be the alkalis in the whitewash. You don’t want to breathe too much in.”

  “Ugh!”

  “And don’t touch the walls!” she said as Israel touched the walls. “It’ll have the hand off ye,” said George. “You have to wear gloves.”

  “Ahh,” said Israel, staring at his hands. “I touched it!”

  “Well, go and rinse your hands, then,” said George.

  Israel jogged quickly across the yard to the outside tap, George laughing.

  “Here, do me some more whitewash while ye’re there, would you?” she called over to him.

  “What?”

  “Hydrated lime. Salt. In the cans in the barrow there. Plus water.”

  “All right, all right,” said Israel.

  “But watch your hands,” said George.

  “OK!” said Israel.

  “And don’t rub your eyes,” shouted George.

  “Ahh!” said Israel, who’d rubbed his eyes.

  Having washed his hands and rinsed his eyes, Israel started adding water and lime and salt into the old cut-down oil drum on the wheelbarrow.

  “How much water?” he called across the yard to George.

  “About two gallons,” George called back.

  Israel didn’t want to ask how much was two gallons, so he hosed what he thought looked like two gallons into the oil drum and wheeled the barrow unsteadily back over, oil drum filled to the brim. He was trying to remember from school how many pints were in a gallon. Was it twelve? Or three? Or thirty-six? Or was that inches in a yard? He’d grown up metric in north London: gallons were as foreign to him as was bitter Sumatran coffee to the coffee crowd in Zelda’s Café.

  And as he wobbled back over toward George, for a moment it felt good to both of them to be working together, to have a purpose. It reminded George of her parents: in harmony and in tandem. Each knowing what the other needed and taking care to provide it. Helpmeets. Partners. Farmers. And Israel enjoyed doing something for George, because it felt as though he was not alone, as though his life was in parallel with another’s. For a moment.

  George paused from slopping on the whitewash, turned, looked into the oil drum.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “It’s the whitewash,” asked Israel.

  “That’s not whitewash,” said George. “I said two gallons of water.”

  “That’s about…two gallons, isn’t it?”

  “How many gallons in an oil drum?” demanded George.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never-”

  “Fifty-five!” said George. “And this is a half-drum, so-”

  “About twenty-seven gallons?” said Israel.

  “You’re an idiot, Armstrong,” said George.

  “Sorry,” said Israel.

  “Don’t say sorry for being an idiot!” said George. “Say sorry for wasting all that lime and-”

  “Sorry,” said Israel.

  “Stop saying sorry!”

  “But you just said-”

  “I don’t care what I just said!”

  “Well, I-”

  “Leave it. I’ll do it myself,” said George, grabbing one of the handles of the wheelbarrow.

  “No. No, I’ll do it,” said Israel, grabbing the other. “It’s fine, I just didn’t know how-”

  “Leave it!” said George, pulling at the handle. “I’m doing it.”

  “Let me help,” said Israel, yanking back. “I want to-”

  And it tipped, of course, the oil drum with its gallons of whitewash, tipped slowly and inexorably toward Israel, first splashing and then toppling, the murky white water coming over him like a torrent, and the drum rolling and shrieking across the yard like a wounded animal, the whitewash flooding in its wake. Israel staggered back, soaked, George’s eyes riveted on him.

  “Sorry!” he said, not sure how she’d take it.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Yes. Sorry,” said Israel.

  “All that waste,” she said, staring as the whitewash soaked into the concrete.

  “Sorry,” repeated Israel.

  “Just go,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll help-”

  “Just go away, Armstrong.”

  “No, it’s fine,” said Israel. “I’ll-”

  “Leave me alone!” screamed George suddenly.

  “But-”

  �
��Go!” she yelled. “Go! Away!”

  So Israel went. He went back into the chicken coop and shut the door. And George set about putting things right in the yard.

  And once again absolutely nothing had passed between them.

  9

  The lane from the Devines’ to Pearce Pyper’s was one of the most beautiful places Israel knew around Tumdrum, a place so beautiful in fact that it was almost enough to restore his proverbial and habitual and today very particular low Sunday spirits. But not quite. An overgrown, winding, one-way gravel track suitable for single traffic only, and hemmed with high hedges and tall trees, the lane made him think of Gloria and England and of long lacy and weepy Victorian and Edwardian narrative poems. It was a route he walked every Sunday on his way to read with Pearce, and it usually had an effect of uplift. The fields to either side of the lane sprang alive with rabbits and hares and the sound of blackbirds, and then suddenly, with a parting of the trees, there was the arrival at Pearce’s, which was always like stumbling upon a previously undiscovered ancient Aztec ruin, what with Pearce’s eccentric sculptures flanking the driveway and scattered throughout the grounds-the chunky painted concrete, and the driftwood things, and the totem poles made of old railway sleepers-and the avenue of trees extravagantly pleached, espaliered, and cordoned, and then finally the house itself, Pearce’s mad, grand baronial-cum-Corbusier home.

  Israel had spent the afternoon tidying his coop, avoiding George, who had also been avoiding him, and he stood now-confused and chastened, but also at least a little cheered and chivvied by nature-and yanked at Pearce’s big chain doorbell, which rang, as big chain doorbells always ring, ominously.

  Pearce’s housekeeper, Joan, answered the door. She was not a woman who wasted her words; she was a woman who looked like she permed her own hair. Unwillingly.

  “Yes?” she said. Up until recently Israel had come every Sunday to see Pearce, and Joan had always greeted him with the same thin, suspicious “Yes?” as though anything more would be an invitation to unwonted intimacy.

  “I’m here to see Pearce,” he said.

  “He’s not well.”

  “Oh dear,” said Israel. “Shall I call back at a more convenient time?”