Ian Sansom - The Delegates' Choice aka The Book Stops Here

'Uh-huh,' said Israel.

'We are all daughters and sons of the Sun, and offspring of Mother Earth.'

'Speaking personally, like, I'm the son of a Ted Carson, of Cullybackey, and offspring of Margaret McAuley, from the Shankhill Road.'

'I'm talking about spiritual offspring,' said Bree. 'Obviously. Tea?'

Bree offered Israel a jam jar of what seemed to be warm, murky-looking water.

'Mmm. Great. Thanks.'

He took a sip. It tasted like the brewed floor scrapings of a health food shop.

'And what do you believe in, Israel?' asked Stones.

'Erm. Good question,' said Israel. He coughed. 'A…Higher Being?' Hoping this was the right answer. It wasn't.

'Your Hebrew God is a lie,' said Stones.

'Right. Yes. Uh-huh. Well, I say I believe in a Higher Being-'

'And a lie, when repeated and repeated eventually comes to appear as the truth.'

'Yes, well. Anyway. I would love to talk theology all day with you, but-'

'Money, then?' asked Stones.

'Sorry?' said Israel.

'You believe in money, presumably?'

'Well, no, not exactly,' said Israel.

'Money's not a religion,' said Ted.

'Money,' continued Stones, 'is a religion. People worship money. And yet in reality there is no such thing as money: money is a fiction; it's a symbol.'

'Ach!' said Ted.

He fished into his pocket and produced a pound coin. 'What do you call this then?'

'I call it a curse,' said Stones.

'Aye, right. Well, I call it a blessing,' said Ted.

'That's perhaps where we differ,' said Stones.

'Anyway,' said Israel, desperate to avoid a confrontation. 'How did you sort of…end up, doing…this sort of thing?'

'Bree was with the Dongas,' explained Stones.

'The whatters?' said Ted.

'The Dongas. Road protests? Reclaim the Streets?'

'Oh, right.'

'We met in Seattle in 1999,' said Bree.

'Oh? I've got a friend from school who went to work for Microsoft actually,' said Israel. 'In Seattle.'

'We were at the G8 protest,' said Bree.

'Ah, yes, of course.'

'Bunch of Luddites,' said Ted.

'The modern world is a psychological and spiritual wasteland, Ted,' said Stones.

'Is it now?' said Ted.

'And you've never even lived in Northern Ireland!' said Israel.

'People want to reconnect with the Earth Mother,' said Bree. 'Israel, I sense that you are terrified of the Great Mother.'

'Am I?' said Israel, trying not to sip his tea. 'I mean, my own mother certainly, I-'

'I sense that you've closed yourself off to the creative goddess.'

'Right. Well, possibly, yes, I-'

'Shekinah.'

'Sorry?'

'Gaia, Mother Earth. Whatever you want to call her, that's her. You're denying her force in your life. You've closed yourself off to the cosmic part of the human psyche.'

'Have I?'

'Yes, you have.'

'Ach, Jesus,' said Ted.

'Sshh,' said Israel.

'Ach, come on,' said Ted. 'I have never heard such a lot of crap. I don't know how you can believe any of that stuff at all. It's like astrology. It's a lot of-'

'You believe in the sun and the moon, don't you, Ted?' asked Bree, with an ironic smile.

'Yes, of course.'

'Well, astrology is simply the study of the vibrations sent forth by the sun and the moon and their effect on our psychological makeup.'

'I don't believe in astrology.'

'You're Scorpio, right?'

Ted blinked. 'How did you know that? Did someone tell you that? Did he just tell you that?'

Israel shrugged.

'No!' Bree laughed. She had a phlegmy sort of laugh, which was quite sexy, actually, Israel found, but also suggested that she could have done with sleeping somewhere with cavity-wall insulation and central heating. She reminded him of Gloria. 'It's just,' she continued. 'You're temperamental. You have a tendency to the…' She was teasing him now. 'Tyrannous. Tell me, do you suffer from ulcers, Ted?'

Ted had been taking medication for ulcers on and off for years.

'How did you…?' said Ted.

Bree smiled serenely. 'I can do you a birth chart, if you'd like,' she said.

'I don't think so,' said Ted.

'Ha, Ted!' said Israel. 'She got you!'

'And what about you, Israel?' said Bree.

'Me? Sorry?' said Israel.

'I'd say you were probably…' Bree eyed him up and down. 'Sagittarius.'

'How did you…?'

'Long nose. Full lips.'

'He's Jewish, you know,' said Ted.

'Oh,' said Bree. 'Well, you of all people should understand our predicament here.'

'Well,' said Israel. 'I don't know if…'

'The travellers are the Jews of England,' said Stones.

'Erm. Well. Aren't the Jews the Jews of England?' said Israel.

'Stones often speaks metaphorically,' said Bree.

'Stones often speaks bullshit,' muttered Ted.

'When one of the trilithons went missing back in the eighteenth century, they blamed the Gypsies,' continued Bree.

'We've been hunted down like dogs for centuries,' said Stones. 'My own parents were involved in the Windsor Great Park festivals, you know?'

'Erm. No, sorry.'

'My father was one of the Global Village Trucking Company. I was taken away from my family when I was only three years old, in 1985, after the Battle of the Beanfield. Taken to a children's home. It took them a year to get me back.'

'Really?' said Israel. 'God, that's-'

'All very interesting, I'm sure,' said Ted. 'But all I want is our van back. It's ours.'

'Ah, yes, of course,' said Stones. 'You're very focused on the present, Ted.'

'Aye, that'd be about right.'

'We try to cultivate an eternal perspective.'

'Fine,' said Ted. 'You go ahead and crultivate your pspectre, and give me the van back.'

'Well, as you can perhaps tell, we're not that interested in material possessions. My real interest is in English antiquarianism.'

'Antiques?' said Ted.

'The sacred sites of England. Avebury,' said Stones.

'Stonehenge?' said Israel.

'Yes,' said Stones. 'And we follow the ritual year and the festivals-Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa, Samhain.'

'The van?' said Ted.

'I sense you want to talk about the van,' said Bree.

They talked about the van for the best part of an hour, and in the end it was agreed that Ted and Israel would return the following day with any documents and evidence of their legal possession of the van and that Stones and Bree would then accompany them to Barry Britton's in the van to resolve the problem.

'Well,' said Israel, as they drove back to London. 'They seemed very nice.'

'Bunch of flippin' hairy fairies.'

'You can't say that.'

'I can say what I like,' said Ted. 'Bunch of work-shy, drug-using poke-shakings.'

'What?'

'I said-'

'I didn't see any drugs, as such,' said Israel.

'Aye, you could tell, but, the look of them.'

'And it looked quite hard work to me, actually,' said Israel. 'Collecting the firewood, and the cooking, looking after all those children.'

'They'd all a wee tinker tan.'

'A what?'

'A tinker tan. Dirty, like animals, so they were, the weans.'

'I didn't think they were that bad.'

'Like little Arabs, the lot of them.'

'Ted!'

'I'm only saying!'

'Well, don't! You make yourself sound bad.'

'And they were all dressed funny,' said Ted. 'The big fella there had a wee kiltie sort of thing on.'

'That's all right,' said Israel.

'Aye, it would be all right with you. He was full of the smell o' himself. And I didn't trust the big woman.'

'Bree?'

'Aye.'

'I rather liked her. She was very accurate in her astrological readings.'

'Ach, not at all! She was away with the fairies. I wouldn't trust her with one half of a bad potato. And the whole place stinks a' addle,' said Ted.

'Addle?'

'Aye.'

'Is?'

'U-rine, ye eejit.'