choir?’
‘Or line dancing.’
‘Line dancing?’
‘Aye, or a jigsaw even.’
‘A jigsaw?’
‘Or walk a good brisk mile every morning. That’d cure you.’
‘A jigsaw?’ repeated Israel.
‘Yes.’
‘And a good brisk walk.’
‘Aye.’
‘I’m sure that’d do the trick, Ted. But can we talk about something else now, please?’
‘It wasn’t me got us started on the subject of yer hartship,’ said Ted.
‘Anyway,’ said Israel.
They pulled off the main road.
‘Ye all ready for the morning, then?’ said Ted.
‘Oh yes,’ said Israel, who wasn’t ready at all. He’d spent the best part of two weeks in bed reading David Foster Wallace, and he’d lost all track of time, place, sense, meaning, or himself. ‘What day is it? Where are we going?’
‘It’s Friday. All day. Morning in the lay-by. And then we’re off to the school.’
‘Oh God. No.’
‘No language, thank ye.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Israel.
‘Shut up,’ said Ted, leaning over and slapping Israel across the back of his head. ‘I’ll not tell ye again.’
Israel and Ted were back in business.
Tumdrum. Tumdrum. Tumdrum was not the back of beyond. No.
It was much, much farther.
No. Farther.
A little bit farther.
There. That’s about right.
Tumdrum, the armpit of Antrim, on the north of the north coast of the north of Northern Ireland, a place where the sky was always the colour of a pair of very old stone-washed jeans, beaten and rinsed, and where the only pub, the First and Last, was a harbinger of Armageddon, and where the Bible Shop was the bookshop, where the replacement of what little remained of Edwardian and Victorian historic architecture with stunning, high-spec turnkey apartments was almost complete, and where a trip to Billy Kelly’s edge-of-town Car and Van Superstore (‘Please Pull In To View Our Massive Stock With No Obligation’) represented a day out, and where scones—delicious, admittedly, served warm, buttered and spread with jam—were the height of culinary sophistication at Zelda’s Café, the town’s ‘Internet Hot Spot: The First And Still The Best’.
And here, of all places, was Israel Armstrong, back at his post in this godforsaken Nowheresville, sitting on the mobile library, parked up in a lay-by, doing nothing but issuing true crime books about local thugs, and thinly fictionalised books about local thugs, and books by local thugs, and memoirs by the wives of local thugs, while enjoying all of the usual banter and craic with his regular readers. Such as Mr McCully.
‘I’m looking for the De Saurus.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The DE SAURUS.’
‘Right. And it’s a foreign author?’
‘A foreign author?’
‘De Saurus. Like the Marquis de Sade?’
‘The what?’
‘Or De Maupassant?’
‘Are ye having me on?’
‘No. No.’
‘Are ye having a wee laugh?’
‘No. Not at all. I’m trying to help.’
‘Good. So, it’s the book with the words in it.’
‘Well, sir, I think you’ll find that…most books have words in—’
‘Don’t ye be patronising me now, ye wee skite, I know exactly what your game is.’
‘I can assure you, Mr McCully, that the last thing I would do would be to patronise you.’
It was as if he’d never been away.
‘Come on, then. The De Saurus. The book with all the words in it.’
‘The book with all the words in it,’ repeated Israel. ‘The…Book…With…All…The…Words…In…It.’
‘Aye! THE DE SAURUS!’
‘Ah, right! Yes! Roget’s Thesaurus?’
‘No. That’s not it.’
‘I think it might be, actually. If you want to have a look here…’
‘No.’
‘The classic book of synonyms and antonyms?’
‘No! Cymbals and Antimals?’
‘I think it’s the Thesaurus.’
‘It is not. The De Saurus.’
‘OK, well, sorry. We can’t help you with the De Saurus.’
‘D’ye have any books on the Foreign Legion, then?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And a guidebook to Prague for the wife?’
‘Of course.’
He was harmless, really, Mr McCully. They were all harmless: the only real harm they did was to Israel’s fragile mental and emotional health.
Like Mrs Hammond, for example.
‘I’m looking for a book.’
‘Yes, Mrs Hammond. Good. You’ve come to the—’
‘It’s a true story.’
‘OK.’
‘About a man.’
‘Good. What kind of a man?’
‘It was on the telly yesterday, sure. A fella was talking about it.’
