The Delegates' Choice aka The Book Stops Here

by Ian Sansom

  'At the Mobile Meet they have all these competitions, you know.'

  'Hmm,' said Ted.

  'Driver of the Year.'

  'Hmm.'

  'State of the Art Vehicle.'

  'Hmm.'

  'Best Livery.'

  Israel thought he could just detect a slight interest in Ted's hmms. This could be it. He tried to utilise his advantage. Counter-intuitive was the way to go with Ted; there was no point setting out premises and establishing arguments. There was absolutely no point arguing with Ted, or appealing to his better nature. Cunning-that's what was called for.

  'This old thing probably wouldn't stand a chance, of course, at that sort of competition level.'

  'Don't ye get started into the van again now.'

  'No, no, I'm not. I mean, she just wouldn't, though, would she, realistically, stand a chance of winning a prize at the Mobile Meet? With that, you know, all that competition. Not a chance.'

  'Ach, of course she'd stand a chance.'

  'I don't think so, Ted. Not up against all those English vans.'

  'Ach,' said Ted.

  'Not a chance of winning. Not in a million years. If you look at these categories. Concours D'Elégance.'

  'What?'

  'Concours D'Elégance means, you know, the best-looking van there on the day.'

  'Ach, well, if she was there, she'd definitely win that. Best van, no problem.'

  'No?' said Israel. 'Do you really think so?'

  'Of course she would!'

  'Well, I suppose if you pimped her up a bit and-'

  'Wee bit of work, no problem,' said Ted. 'Definitely she'd win it. She's a beauty,' said Ted, affectionately stroking the dashboard. 'Aren't you, girl?'

  He had found Ted's Achilles' heel, his underbelly, his soft spot, his weakness, his fatal Cleopatra: pride.

  'I tell you what,' said Israel. 'Do you want to have a bet on it?'

  'A what?' said Ted. 'A bet?'

  'Yes, a bet, on your winning the Concours D'Elégance at the Mobile Meet.'

  'With you, a bet?' said Ted.

  'Yes.'

  'Ach,' said Ted. 'I'm good living. I don't gamble.'

  'Oh,' said Israel. He knew that in fact Ted did gamble; the week of the Cheltenham Gold Cup he'd talked about nothing else. Israel had had to cover for him every day. Then again, Ted also claimed he didn't drink. And didn't smoke. And he did. And he did.

  'I don't gamble,' repeated Ted. 'Unless I know I'm going to win.'

  'Ha ha,' said Israel.

  Israel could see a glint in Ted's eye.

  'A bet,' Ted said to himself. 'The van to win the…What did you call it?'

  'Concours D'Elégance.'

  'Concord De Elephants,' repeated Ted.

  'That's it,' said Israel.

  'Are ye serious?'

  'Yes, absolutely I'm serious.'

  Israel could see Ted thinking through the proposition. 'Well?' he said gingerly.

  'I tell you what, son,' said Ted, pausing dramatically. Big pause. 'Seeing as you've asked.' Another pause. 'You're on.'

  'No. Really? Honestly?'

  'Yes,' said Ted.

  'Really?' said Israel.

  'I said yes.'

  'Great!' said Israel. 'How much? A couple of pounds?'

  'Couple of pounds!' said Ted, bellowing with laughter. 'Couple of pounds! Ach, ye're a quare geg. No, no, no. No. If I'm going all the way over to the mainland I want to get my money's worth out of you. We'll do it properly. I'll get JP to open up a book on it.'

  'JP?'

  'The bookie on Main Street. He'll see us right.'

  'Erm.'

  'Yer bet's definitely on now; ye're not going to back out?'

  'No. Definitely. Absolutely,' said Israel. 'Game on.'

  'You don't want to change yer mind?'

  'Nope.'

  'Ye know ye don't back out of a bet, now?'

  'Quite.'

  Ted reached a hand across. 'Five hundred pounds,' said Ted.

  'Five hundred pounds!' said Israel.

  'You're right,' said Ted. 'Five hundred's not enough. One thousand says we win the…What did you call it?'

  'Concours D'Elégance. But I haven't got one thousand pounds, Ted. The van's not worth a thousand pounds.'

  'I thought you wanted a bet?'

  'I do, but-'

  'Aye, right, that's typical, so it is. You're trying to wriggle out of it now.'

  'No, I am not trying to wriggle out of it.'

  'Ach, you are, so you are. Ye're not prepared to put your money where your mouth is. Typical Englishman.'

  'I am not trying to wriggle out of it, Ted.'

  'Well, then, are youse in, or are youse out?'

  'All right,' said Israel, trying to suppress a grin. 'One thousand pounds says you won't win the Concours D'Elégance at this year's Mobile Meet.' He knew his money was safe.

  The rest of the journey continued in silence, with Israel elated and exhausted from his negotiations and Ted already planning the few little tweaks and alterations he needed to get the van into top condition. Eventually, Ted pulled up outside the Devines' farm, where Israel was a lodger, and Israel clambered down wearily from the van.

  'Hey!' called Ted, as Israel was about to shut the door. 'Did ye not forget something?'

  'No,' said Israel, patting his pockets, patting the seat. 'I don't think so.'

  'I think you did,' said Ted.

  'What? "Thank you" for the lift?'

  'No,' said Ted.

  'What? The bet?'

  'No. The bet's on-we've shaken.'

  'Yes,' said Israel. 'And I am a man of my word.'

  'Aye. Exactly. And you remember what you were going to do today, Man of Your Word?'

  'Erm. No. I don't remember. Should I?'

  'You were going to tell her?'

  'Tell who?'

  'Linda. That you were resigning.'

  'Ah, yes. Well…things have changed since this afternoon.'

  'Have they now?'

  'Yes. I feel I have a…responsibility to the readers of Tumdrum and District to…'

  'And it's not because you're getting a free holiday to England?'

  'No! Of course not!'

  'You shouldn't ever try to kid a kidder,' said Ted.

  'What do you mean?'

  'I know your game.'

  'I don't…I'm not playing a game, Ted.'

  'Aye.'

  'No. I just feel very strongly that my responsibility is to books, and to…encouraging the people of the north coast of Northern Ireland to…indulge their learned curiosity and to give them unlimited assistance…by helping to choose a new mobile library van.'

  'Aye, tell the truth and shame the devil, why don't ye?'

  'What?'

  'I don't care what you think your responsibility is,' said Ted. 'My first responsibility is to the van. One thousand pounds, remember.'

  'Fine.'

  'Pay for some refurbishments, wouldn't it? You'd better start saving, boy!'

  'No, Ted, I don't need to start saving, because, alas, very soon we shall be in sunny England choosing a brand-spanking-new top-of-the-range mobile library and we will no longer have need of this…' And with that, Israel walked away and slammed the door. 'Piece of junk,' he muttered under his breath.

  Oh, yes!

  Ted had been reeled in hook, line and sinker!

  Israel Armstrong was going home!

  4

  He was packing! Israel Armstrong was packing up and getting ready to go. He had his case out from under the bed, his little portable radio turned up loud, and he was listening to BBC Radio Ulster, the local station; he'd gone over some time ago, had switched from Radio 4, had made the move away from the national and the international, from big news stories about Bush and Blair and the plight of the Middle East and worldwide pandemics and whither the UN Security Council, to local news stories about men beating each other with baseball bats in local bars and pubs, and road closures due to mains-laying down in Cul
lybackey and good news about the meat-processing plant in Ballymena taking on ten new workers due to expanding European markets and increased orders from Poland for pork. He knew it was a bad sign, but he couldn't help himself; he had grown accustomed to the rhythms and the pitch of local radio, to the shouty-voiced shock-jock first thing in the morning, to the faded country music star at lunchtime who played only Irish country and read out requests for the foot-tappin' welders in Lurgan and all the lovely nurses on the cancer wards down there at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and to the mid-morning bloke from Derry who specialised in trading daring double entendres with his adoring female callers.

  Somehow-and how he wished it were not so-Israel could now recognise a tune by Daniel O'Donnell from far distant, and the supersweet sound of Philomena Begley and her band, and he also knew the time the Ulster Bank closed on a Wednesday (three thirty, for staff training), and the times of the high tides (varied according to season), and the best grocer to go to for your soup vegetables (Hector's) and which one for eggs (Conway's). This was not what was supposed to happen. Israel had imagined himself, heading into his late twenties, being able to recommend fine restaurants in Manhattan to his friends, many of whom probably worked for The New Yorker magazine, or who were up-and-coming artists with galleries representing them, and he could have told you what time to go to MoMA and what was happening at the Whitney Museum. Instead, somehow, Israel had ended up knowing what night the Methodists had their ladies' indoor bowling practice (Tuesday) and the post office opening hours (Mon-Fri, 9.00 a.m.-1.00 p.m., 2.00 p.m.-5.00 p.m.; early closing Wed, 3.30 p.m.; Sat, 10.00 a.m.-1.00 p.m.).

  He turned up the radio louder to drown out the ennui and focused on his packing.

  Brownie was back for the summer break from university over in England, so the Devines had moved Israel out of Brownie's room, where he'd been staying, and out of the house and back into the chicken coop in the yard, where he'd first started out when he arrived in Tumdrum. Israel didn't mind, actually, being back in the coop. It was good to get a little breathing space and to be able to put a bit of distance between himself and George Devine-his landlady with the man's name-and the perpetually Scripture-quoting senior Mr Devine, George and Brownie's grandfather, and he'd done his best with the coop; he had put in quite a bit of work doing the place up over the past few weeks. He had a desk in there now, along with the bed, and the Baby Belling and the old sink battened to the wall, and it was a nice desk he'd picked up from the auction down in Rathkeltair (Tippings Auctions, every Thursday, six till ten, in one of the new industrial units out there on the ring road, hundreds and hundreds of people in attendance every week, from as far afield as County Down and Derry, drinking scalding-hot tea and eating fast-fried burgers from Big Benny McAuley's Premier Meats and Snacks van, and bidding like crazy for other people's discarded household items and rubbish, and rusty tools, and amateur watercolours, and telephone seats and tubular bunk beds, and pot-plant stands, and novelty cruet sets, and golf clubs, and boxes overflowing with damp paperback books; Israel loved Tippings-it was like a Middle Eastern bazaar, except without the spices and the ethnic jewellery, and with more men wearing greasy flat caps buying sets of commemorative RUC cap badges). Lovely little roll-top desk it was, although the top didn't actually roll, and a couple of the drawers were jammed shut, and Israel had had to patch up the top with some hardboard; but it did the job.

  He also had a table lamp, which had first graced a home sometime in the 1970s, by the look of it, and whose yellow plastic shade bore the scars of too many too-high-watted lightbulbs; and also a small armchair which had at some time been reupholstered with someone's curtains, and which had a broken arm; and a couple of old red fire buckets to catch the rain that made it through the coop's mossy asbestos roof; and also he'd rigged up a washing line using some twine and a couple of nails; and he had a walnut-veneer wardrobe crammed in there, with a broken mirror and only one leg missing, to keep his clothes in. To store his books he'd broken apart some old pallets and knocked up some shelving-him, Israel Armstrong, wielding a hammer and nails, and with the blackened thumb and fingernails to prove it-and these pretty sturdy shelves of his were now piled with books on one side of the bed and with jars of tea and coffee on the other, and an old teapot containing all his cutlery, two Duralex glasses and his enamel mug. He'd cut off a bit of an old mouldy scaffolding plank to cover the sink when he needed to prepare his food. The chicken coop wasn't exactly a palace, but nor was it quite the proverbial Augean stable. Israel liked to think of it as an eccentric World of Interiors kind of a look-Gloria loved The World of Interiors. It was…there was probably a phrase for it. Shabby chic, that was it. With the emphasis, admittedly, on the shabby. Super-shabby chic? Shabby shabby chic?

  It was shabby.

  He squeezed his spare corduroy trousers into his case, and went to the farmhouse, to the kitchen to say good-bye to the Devines.

  There was only Brownie in, hunched over the table, reading. It was June, but the Rayburn was fired up, as ever. There were flies, but even the flies were resting. Old Mr Devine was a firm believer in flypaper; the kitchen was festooned with claggy plumes of curling brown tape.

  'Israel!' said Brownie, looking up. You could always count on Brownie for a warm welcome.

  'Brownie.'

  'How are you?'

  'I'm doing good, actually,' said Israel. 'Pretty good. What are you reading?'

  'Levinas,' said Brownie. Brownie was studying Philosophy at Cambridge.

  'Oh, right. Yes.'

  'Totality and Infinity?'

  'Absolutely, yes,' said Israel.

  'Have you read it?'

  'Erm. That one? Er. Yes, I think so. I preferred some of his…others though, actually-'

  'Alterity.'

  'Yes, that's a good one.'

  'No, that's the idea, translation of the French.'

  'Uh-huh,' said Israel dubiously.

  'Anyway, how are things on the mobile?' asked Brownie.

  'Good! Yes. Excellent,' said Israel. 'Even better now, we're going away for a few days.'

  'Oh, really? In the van?'

  'Yes. Yeah. Big conference thing over in England.'

  'Really?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Are you giving a paper or…'

  'No. No. I mean, they did ask me, of course, but I was…It's difficult to fit it all in when you're at the…'

  'Coal face?' said Brownie.

  'Exactly. The library is the coal face of contemporary knowledge management.'

  'Right,' said Brownie. It was something Israel had read in one of the brochures for the Mobile Meet.

  'Anyway. I was wanting to explain to George I wouldn't be around, just so that she-'

  'Ah, right. I think she's out with Granda in the vegetable patch if you want to catch them.'

  'Great.'

  'Good. Well, enjoy the conference.'

  'Thanks, you enjoy the…'

  'Levinas.'

  'Yeah. What was it called again?'

  'Totality and Infinity.'

  'Yeah. Great book. Great book.'

  * * *

  Israel's reading had always been erratic and undisciplined; there were huge chunks missing in his knowledge, while other areas were grossly over-represented. It was like having mental biceps, but no triceps, or glutes, or quads, or forearms; he was a kind of mental hunchback-misproportioned, a freak. Graphic novels, for example, were ten a penny up in Israel's mental attic, along with the novels of E. F. Benson and Barbara Pym-God only knows how they'd got there-piled up uselessly like old trunks full of crumbling paper, together with a whole load of Walter Benjamin, and Early Modernism, and books by Czechs, and the Oedipus complex, and the Collective Unconscious, and Iris Murdoch, and William Trevor, and virtual reality, and form follows function, and 'Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent,' and The White Goddess, and William James, and commodity fetishism, and Jorge Luis Borges, and Ruth Rendell, and Jeanette Winterson, and Anthony Powell-Anthony Powel
l? What was he doing there? Israel had no idea. He had a mind like Tippings Auctions. His actual knowledge of philosophy proper, say, or eighteenth-century literature, or science, anthropology, geology, gardening, or geometry was…skimpy, to say the least.

  And since arriving in Tumdrum, his reading had become even more erratic and undisciplined; he'd had to cut his cloth to suit his sail. Or was it sail to suit his cloth? He was reading more and more of what they stocked in the van, which meant crime fiction, mostly, and books by authors whose work had won prizes or who were in some other way distinguished or remarkable; thus, celebrity biographies and books about people's miserable childhoods. But it wasn't as though he felt he'd lowered his standards. On the contrary. Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent-that was a great book, much better than most Booker Prize-shortlisted books, in his opinion. And The Firm, by John Grisham, that was pretty good too. He'd even started reading Patricia Cornwell from A to Z, but they seemed to go downhill rapidly, and he'd lost interest around about D. Cookery books he also liked: a man cannot survive on scrambled eggs alone. For the journey over to England, Israel was taking with him A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Purpose Driven Life, and a couple of large-print crime novels. Most of the library's crime novels were large print. Israel had discovered a direct correlation between print size and genre: crime fiction, for example, came in big and small sizes, and also in audio, and in hardback, and in several kinds of paperback, and trailing TV tie-ins; literary fiction occasionally came with a different cover relating to a film adaptation. And poetry was just poetry: he'd never come across a book of large-print poems; for poetry you needed eyes like a pilot, with twenty-twenty vision, opposable thumbs, and never-ending patience. On the mobile library they stocked only Seamus Heaney and derivatives.

  To get to the vegetable patch Israel had to pass by the chickens, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty, having turned them out of their home. George had fixed them up with new runs using some old manure bags over wire netting, but Israel could tell they weren't happy. They eyed him-gimlet chicken-eyed him-suspiciously as he hurried past.