by Ian Sansom
'Oh, all right then,' he said, prodding his glasses grudgingly. 'But just a couple of weeks.'
This was how most of the big decisions in life got taken, in Israel's experience, and contrary to what he'd always been given to understand from his reading of the world's great literature: you needed to go to the toilet, or you were bored, or you were just tired from arguing and you couldn't think of anything else to do, and suddenly you found yourself married, or you'd signed the petition, or you'd volunteered for something you wouldn't normally consider doing even if you were paid for it, or you'd accepted a job driving a mobile library in a godforsaken corner of the north of the north of the island of Ireland.
'Oh, that's great! That's great!' exclaimed Linda, punching the air with her salty, chubby fists. 'I'm delighted, delighted, delighted. Wonderful!' She reached over her desk and shook his hand. 'It'll be like a holiday for you.'
Israel rubbed his hand on his trousers.
'Sure. And you'll be re-advertising the post?'
'Of course. Yes. Absolutely. Right away. I'm glad we've sorted that out. We've your accommodation and everything all arranged for you.'
'Right.'
'You're going to love it! You're going to be staying with George up country. It's lovely! And if you just get yourself down to Ted he'll sort you out with the mobile library—'
'Ted?'
'Ted Carson. You'll love Ted! He's going to be showing you round. He has his own wee cab company there in town. You know, you're going to love it here, Mr Armstrong. I really think you're going to fit right in.'
3
He was not fitting right in. In fact, on the contrary. In fact, to be honest, to be absolutely, perfectly honest–and he wouldn't have wanted to have offended anyone by saying this, particularly his long-dead father, but still, the truth hurts and sometimes it's important to speak one's mind, if only to oneself and to the familiar dead, who can take it–to be absolutely frankly, brutally honest, Israel had taken an immediate, huge and intense dislike both to the people and to the place of Ireland in general, to Northern Ireland in particular, and to Tumdrum, County Antrim in very particular. And he was getting to dislike it more and more all the time.
Back at the council offices Linda Wei had got him to sign several forms on the dotted line, and had issued him with papers and instructions as to his exact role and responsibilities, and details of bank accounts had been confirmed, and then it had taken him an hour–a whole hour–to find Ted's Cabs following Linda's directions, wandering up and down the endless grey-black streets of Tumdrum, which meant that in total he'd been on his vast trek now from London to here for nearly two days–two whole days–and when he finally made it to the so-called offices of Ted's Cabs, it turned out to be nothing more than a large shiplap and corrugated-iron shed on a patch of weedy waste ground next to a barbed-wired electricity sub-station on the edge of Tumdrum. There was a red neon sign attached to the roof of the shed, flashing TED'S CABS into the cold Northern Irish sky, and as he got closer Israel could see a faded motto painted on hardboard in a wobbly hand which hung on chains down and across the front of the shed, and which was banging forcefully in the high winter winds: IF YOU WANT TO GET THERE, announced the flapping sign, CALL THE BEAR.
He could feel another of his headaches coming on. He could have done with a chunky KitKat.
He swallowed his absolutely last Nurofen and stepped up to the shed, to a window that had an orange number-plate with the word TAXIS spelt out on it and a large arrow pointing down, and he tapped on the glass–which wasn't glass, in fact, but a thick, scarred plastic, and which slid back instantly, which made Israel gasp, not something he was much given to do; his life up until now had never given him much cause for gasping, which was pretty much how he liked it, and he nearly choked on his headache tablet.
The opening revealed a metal grille, and a man sitting up close to the window, his huge meaty face filling the space.
'Aye?' said the man, not looking at Israel.
'Hello,' said Israel, as cheerily as possibly, after his near death by Nurofen. 'I'm looking for Ted Carson.'
'Aye?' said the man again. He was busy watching a television mounted high on a wall bracket in the opposite corner of the shed.
'My name's Israel Armstrong. I'm the new librarian. Linda Wei up at the council offices said I could call in here and Ted would be able to—'
'Aye. Well,' said the man inside, turning an eye from the TV for a moment and looking at Israel. 'It's you, is it?'
'Yes—' began Israel.
The man got up from his seat and gestured for Israel to move over to the door of the shed, which Israel dutifully did, and there was the sound of the sliding of bolts and the unlocking of locks and then the door opened and the man beckoned Israel inside.
'Come on!' he commanded. 'If you're coming.' Israel stepped inside and the man locked the door behind him. 'You can't be too careful these days.'
'No. Quite,' said Israel, putting down his old brown case, turning down the hood on his duffle coat, and taking off his glasses to wipe the mist and condensation from them.
'Blinkin' head-bangers, they'd have the paint off the walls.'
Israel glanced around, but there didn't actually seem to be that much in the shed for blinkin' head-bangers to steal: a table, the chair, a Calor Gas heater, and the TV. There was no paint on the walls.
'We've been burnt out twice,' said the man.
'Oh dear,' said Israel. 'That's terrible.'
'You're right,' said Ted, looking Israel up and down, sceptically. 'So, they got one in the end, then.'
'Sorry?'
'A librarian. You're supposed to be the new librarian?'
'I am the new librarian,' said Israel, with some force and certainty, although to be honest he was no longer entirely convinced himself. He no longer felt much like a librarian: he felt more like someone having reached the edge of the world and himself, a bit like Scott on his last expedition to the Antarctic, perhaps, or Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.
As the man stared at Israel, sizing him up, so Israel did his weary best to stare back.
The man saw Israel–the duffle coat, the glasses, the case, the podge, the suit, the messy mop of hair–and Israel saw a man in hearty good health, maybe early sixties, with a shaven head and wearing so many different layers of clothing that it was difficult to tell where his natural thick-settedness ended and mere padding began. His bulk and his distinctly lived-in, or rather, punched-in appearance–he looked as though someone had at some time secured his fat head in a vice and hit him hard with a flat-iron–suggested that he wouldn't stand any nonsense. You wouldn't mind him driving your cab, but you wouldn't want to have to argue over the fare. Israel strongly suspected tattoos.
'You were supposed to be here earlier,' said the man.
'Yes. Sorry. I got held up.'
'Aye. Right. But you're here now and you're wanting the van and dropped off?'
'Er. Yes,' said Israel. 'Linda Wei said someone here would be so kind as to—'
'Aye. Linda…'
'Is that OK?'
'Well,' said the man, turning away and beginning to flick delicately through a large black ledger on the desk by the grille. 'I suppose it'd better be.'
'Right. Erm. Well, if not, I'm sure I can always find someone else to take me.'
'Aye.' The man laughed–just once. 'You could try. And you might know different, but to my knowledge I'm the only minicab company between here and Rathkeltair.'
'Uh-huh,' said Israel, suitably chastened. 'So you're actually Ted Carson himself?'
'That I am.'
'Pleased to meet you,' said Israel, extending his hand.
'Aye,' said Ted, shaking Israel's hand absentmindedly, and almost crushing it, and continuing to examine the ledger. 'Fortunately for you, as it happens I do have a car and a driver free.'
'Good.' Israel waved his hand to restore his circulation; it was a hell of a handshake. 'Good. Is it…Er. The mobile library. And where I
'm staying. Are they–is it–far?'
'Within an ass's roar,' said Ted, 'and at the back of God speed.'
'Right,' said Israel.
Oh, God.
The driver that Ted had free was in fact Ted himself, and the car was an old Austin Allegro with a large illuminated orange plastic bear stuck on the roof–'Ted, bear, d'you see?' said Ted. 'It's advertising,' and 'Yes,' said Israel, trying to sound enthusiastic, 'very good'–and Ted drove Israel far out of Tumdrum, out along the coast, along narrow country roads between high hawthorn hedges, with grey and white farms dotting the landscape, and hills and mountains looming, and the sea shimmering in the distance, but Israel was too tired and too fed up to be bothered about the view.
'Mind if I smoke?' said Ted.
'Not at all,' said Israel, although he did mind actually, but he couldn't say he did because he was a liberal and so instead he just slumped further down in his seat, huddled in his duffle coat and his corduroy trousers, looking at all the green and the grey outside, and feeling profoundly sorry for himself. Ted turned the heating up to full. The car felt like a pressure cooker.
'You know you've come on one of the busiest days of the year?' said Ted.
'Really? I'm sorry,' said Israel.
'No one's blaming you. First Friday in December. Beginning of the auld Christmas season. Bunged, the whole place.' There didn't seem to be that much traffic on the roads.
'Of course. Sorry. I forgot.'
'Forgot Christmas?'
'I'm Jewish,' mumbled Israel in mitigation. 'And a lot on my mind. You know, packing up, moving over here.'
'Oh,' said Ted, giving Israel a sidelong glance. 'Muhammad Ali, he was a Muslim, you know.'
'Erm…'
'Ted Kid Lewis: he was Jewish. Ruby Goldstein. Probably before your time.'
'Erm…'
'Welterweights,' said Ted, adding, 'Birth of Our Saviour and all that, Christmas.'
'Yes.'
'So the young ones are all out getting bladdered.'
'Yes,' agreed Israel, who could feel things beginning to rise within his gullet. 'I wonder. Erm. Would it be OK to have a window open?'
'Aye,' said Ted, winding down his window. 'No problem.'
'It's Hanukkah too,' said Israel vaguely, momentarily revived by the breeze.
'Bless you,' said Ted, turning off the main road onto a narrow road and then onto a rutted lane and pulling up outside an old corrugated-iron barn. 'Here we are now.'
'What?'
'The van.'
'Where?'
'Here.'
Here was a ploughed field, with far views off to dark green mountains one way and the dark grey sea the other, and the old metal barn set in mud and concrete between them. Ted parked, got out of the car, fiddled with some padlocks on a door, and ushered Israel inside.
'There she is,' said Ted, pointing to a massive dark shape in the centre of the dark shed. 'That's my girl.'
It was a large bus-shaped girl.
Ted stepped closer to the big bulky mass and Israel followed and tentatively held out his hand, brushing the dark, heavy, patchy fabric, which felt like a giant damp towel left on a single radiator for many years.
'This is the mobile library?' asked Israel.
'Aye.'
'This?'
'Aye.'
'Right,' said Israel. 'What's with the…sheet?'
'The tarp?' Ted touched the tarpaulin and sniffed his fingers. Israel imitated, trying to pick up the scent.
'What's that sm—'
'Chickens,' said Ted.
'Ah!' said Israel, wiping his hands on his trousers. 'That's disgusting.'
'Well, we couldn't have let her just stood.'
'Ugh!' said Israel, still wiping his hands. 'How long's she been here?'
'Long enough,' said Ted, gazing round.
Israel looked around too. A barn more in the middle of the middle of nowhere and dirtier and damper and dustier Israel could not have imagined: the cobwebs had cobwebs; the dust had dust; and the dirt was so dirty you'd have had to clean the dirt off it first to get at it.
'The mobile library's been kept in this…place?'
'Nowhere else for her. We had to keep her safe, when they stopped the service a few years back. The council wanted to sell her as scrap,' said Ted, screwing up his face in disgust, which was effective: he had a face that was more than capable of expressing disgust; his broken nose was pre-wrinkled. 'They were after breaking her up and selling her off.'
'I see.'
'Same as they did with me.'
'Right.'
'I drove her nearly twenty-five years, man and boy. And then they did away with the pair of us.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Ach, sure but, you knock your pan in for half a lifetime, that's what you get. They're a bunch of hoods, the lot of them.'
'Hoods?'
'Aye.'
'Right. But the council didn't break her up and sell her for scrap?'
'No. Because we hid her.'
'You hid her?'
'Aye.'
'You hid her from the hoods?'
'Aye. Exactly. We had to tuck her away, like. So they couldn't find her,' said Ted, who was now circling the tarpaulined shape, sizing it up, like a sculptor before a block of stone, or a wrestler eyeing up a worthy opponent.
Israel was struggling to keep up with all this.
'So–hang on–you hid a whole mobile library?'
'Aye.'
'In here?'
'Aye.'
'Like Anne Frank?'
'Well, I don't know about that.'
'But hidden.'
'Aye. You're the first man to be seeing her, actually, apart from myself, for nigh on three years.'
'Was that not illegal though?'
'What?
'Well, when you say you hid her…'
'Hmm?'
'Is that not the same as stealing her?'
'Ach, no. Not at all. Stealing's wrong. Yous must have that in your religion, don't you?'
'Yes. Of course we have that in my religion—' began Israel.
'We were looking after her, just, that's all. She was on loan, if you like.'
'And now you've decided to give her back?'
'No. No. We're not giving her back.'
'But…This is the mobile library we're going to be using?'
'Aye. But we're not giving her back. We've sold her back.'
'You've sold the council back their own mobile library?'
'That's right.'
'That's unbelievable.'
'It's practical.'
'God,' said Israel, trying to take it all in. 'It's quite a vindication, I suppose, for you.'
'Vintication?' Ted glowered. 'It'd take more than that for a vintication.'
'Right. So you and who sold her back?'
'A few of us.' Ted tapped his nose. 'Those of us with the interests of the wider community at heart.'
Israel knew when not to ask any further questions, and anyway some small chick feather seemed to have lodged itself in the back of his throat; he began coughing and coughing, breathing in more dust and the stench of bird and chicken shit.
'Ah.'
Ted slapped him hard on the back.
'Eerrgh. Thanks,' said Israel. 'Couldn't you have kept it, you know, somewhere a bit more hygienic?'
'There wasn't anywhere else. Here we go,' said Ted, unbolting the big double doors at the far end of the chicken shed and heaving them open. Light and fresh air streamed in. 'Freshen her up.' Ted's shaven head shone like a beacon in the winter's light.
'Where are we exactly?'
'Where? We're here.'
'Yes, but where is here exactly?'
'Well, that'd be Ballycastle across Cushleake there. What's that? North-west?' Ted pointed off into the cloudless distance. 'Then round westerly you've got yer Giant's Causeway, and Bushmills and—'
'I see,' interrupted Israel, who was still none the wiser, his grasp of Northern Irish geography being almos
t entirely limited to memories of the little black dot showing Belfast on the BBC news during his childhood.
He wiped his glasses on his shirt and turned back to look at the tarp–a vast, damp, mouldy sack, pocked with black and white stains. Ted was walking round and round, huffing and puffing, loosening ropes.
'I used to do all the work on her myself. She wasn't in bad shape, so she wasn't.'
'I'm sure.'
'But the tarp, you know.'
'What?'
'Not good, tarps. Moisture. Rust if you do, rust if you don't.'
'A bit like life really then,' said Israel feebly.
Ted ignored this comment. 'You helping, then, or your hands painted on?'
Israel started fiddling with the ropes. 'These are tight knots. I'm not sure if I can—'
'Quit your gurnin' and get on with it,' advised Ted.
So Israel did.
'Now. Pull,' commanded Ted eventually, and he started pulling, and Israel started pulling, and 'Pull!' commanded Ted again, and Israel did again, and 'You're as weak as water,' shouted Ted, and 'Pull!' again and suddenly the whole big damp dirty tarpaulin came off in a storm of dust and bird and chicken shit, right on top of Israel, who lost his balance and fell back onto the filthy dust and bird- and chicken-shit floor.
'Aaggh!'
'What?' said Ted. There was a muffled sound from under the tarpaulin. 'You there, you big galoot?' More muffled sounds. Ted lifted up the heavy tarpaulin and helped Israel out and onto his feet: he was covered, head to foot, in grey dust and black and white and bright green bird and chicken shit.
'Aaggh,' said Israel.
'There she is,' said Ted.
'Aaggh,' said Israel, rubbing his eyes.
The van came into focus. He could just make out what looked like the remains of a bus in a faded, rusting cream and red livery: there were rust patches as big as your fist, and what looked like mushrooms growing around the windscreen.
Ted was down on his knees, examining the wheel arches and the paintwork.