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

On into the main room, the living room.

He'd decorated this room when they moved in. From top to bottom. Stripped the paper. Put up fresh lining paper. Badly. Repapered. Big job. The radiators: he could remember pretending that he knew how to bleed the radiators, to impress Gloria, and how he'd attempted to take the first one off the wall, and not only did he find a stash of crinkly old porn mags stuffed down behind it, but he then discovered to his horror that the radiator itself had rusted to its brackets and the whole wall came away, bracket and radiator attached, and it turned out that his leaching had been rather less than successful because the carpet was soaked with stagnant water, and he just about managed to re-fix the brackets back on using some Polyfilla, but then he couldn't seem to get the radiator fitted back on and attached to the pipe, and there was water dripping not only from the radiator but also from the pipe, and…Everything. He'd done everything here. He'd made it his own; they'd made it their own.

But now…His books. She'd moved his books. His books had been cleared from the top row of shelves, the IKEA shelves, and in their place were photographs. None of him. Photographs of Gloria and her family. Black-and-white photographs-a family in black-and-white photographs; that's the kind of family they were-in modern frames. And Gloria's law books. The kind of book that cost £500. His books-paperbacks, books that cost about £5.99, maximum-were now jumbled and double-stacked on the bottom shelves, down behind the sofa.

He knelt down, pushed away the sofa, looked at his books, stood up.

Took a deep breath.

Into the kitchen. The little baby Gaggia in the corner: his machine. The top-of-the-range blender: hers. It was cleaner than he remembered, the kitchen.

The whole flat seemed to have been deep-cleaned.

Cleaned of him.

And finally the bedroom. Candles in the bedroom. New duvet cover-white. Gloria had a thing about Egyptian cotton. And the pillows had been redistributed, presumably so that Gloria was sleeping in the middle of the bed. His presence had been overruled. His space had been colonised. He checked the wardrobe. Where were his clothes? Since arriving in Tumdrum he'd been wearing cast-off clothes, like a scarecrow or a younger brother. His clothes had gone. He looked under the bed. He had no idea where she might have put his clothes.

He went back into the living room. Sat down on the sofa. The sofa he had carried up the stairs.

He was definitely going to maintain his dignity.

It was fine.

Everything was going to be absolutely fine.

He tried to do some deep breathing-he'd read about deep breathing exercises in a book from the mobile library, Breathe to Live, Live to Breathe, by an American with a foreign name, and he'd tried the exercises a few times, when they were parked up in lay-bys; they made him sleepy, but now, when he needed to, he found he couldn't do it. His breathing was…

He felt himself shaking again, and he began to feel long dormant emotions, terrible forces, welling up within him. He didn't know exactly what they were: rage, passion, lust for destruction. It was as though…He couldn't explain it. It felt like he had suddenly fallen into a whirlpool. Him, he-Israel Armstrong, mild-mannered, vegetarian, Jewish librarian-was drowning. And he had to fight for his life.

He suddenly got up and started to ransack-that was the only word for it-ransack the flat, looking for clues. Clues of something.

Of another man's occupation?

Possibly.

Possibly it was that.

Maybe that's what he was looking for. Maybe he knew. Maybe he'd known all along.

He searched through the cupboards. The wardrobe they'd carried up the stairs together. The chest of drawers that Gloria had inherited from an aunt; he searched under the bed; in every drawer. Nothing. There was no sign anywhere, no trace. But then wouldn't they deliberately hide the evidence? They? Them?

He was shaking so violently now he could barely contain himself. He thought he was going to explode. He realised he could never be satisfied ever again and he found himself yelling out loud, 'I will never be satisfied.'

Then there was the vase. By the bed. A vase that Gloria's mother had given them when they'd moved in together. He'd always hated that vase. White vase. He picked it up. It was full of stagnant water. He held it-felt it, the weight of it-in his hand.

And he went to the bathroom and poured out the water. Then returned to the bedroom, stood by the bed, felt it, held it-and threw it, very deliberately, very hard against the wall on Gloria's side of the bed. It dented the wall-plasterboard walls. The vase shattered.

And that seemed to do it. That broke the spell.

He was overcome then with guilt and shame, and he fell down onto his knees and began quietly sobbing.

He cried, and he cried-deep, satisfying, pointless, lonely, self-pitying tears-and then he picked himself up, went to the bathroom, wiped his eyes, took some toilet paper and returned to the bedroom.

And he carefully picked up every scrap and splinter of the vase.

He wasn't angry with Gloria. He wasn't disappointed with Gloria.

He was angry and disappointed in himself.

He was stupid.

Totally stupid.

It was late. He lay down on the bed.

That night the ceiling, half lit by the streetlights through the curtains, became the screen for Israel's nightmares. He saw himself with Ted, in the van, travelling forever. Travelling with no hope of arrival or rest. Pointlessness. Humiliations. Gloria with other men. Ted with his mother.

He was stupid.

Totally stupid.

It could never have worked between them. They were mismatched. Gloria's family: they had money. They were 'accomplished'-that was it. There was no higher term of praise in Gloria's family for someone they admired: 'accomplished'. Which meant money, really. He remembered Gloria's mother had once used the phrase 'inferior people'. He was an inferior person. Worse: he was neither one thing nor the other. He was neither inferior nor superior. He was just middling. He imagined himself riding in the van, down the middle of a long road, and then suddenly braking sharply, and the van beginning to keel over. The feeling of the van falling over.

He fell into a deep sleep.

And when he awoke it was morning.

And there was still no sign of Gloria.

The sun was streaming in, bright and pale. He got up, went to the kitchen. Went to the fridge. Ate a couple of crackers spread with cream cheese. Took a slug of white wine from an opened bottle. There was no other food in the house.

Gloria must have been eating out.

The flat felt cold and unlived in.

He didn't know what to do. He thought about leaving a note. That wasn't right. He went back to the bedroom. He looked again at the pile of books on the table beside the bed.

Law books.

Hardback history.

And there, on the top, was a copy of Postmodern Allegories. His friend Danny's book.

It must have been the copy he'd sent Israel.

It was probably the copy he'd sent him.

'Ah!'

It felt as though someone had inserted a knife into his foot. He rocked back onto the bed, and brought his foot round-a piece of the vase was embedded in there. He'd missed a bit. When he pulled it out, there was a little blister, a bleb of blood. A drop of blood on the white cotton sheet.

He lay down in a stupor, a kind of hungover dullness descending upon him, weighing him down, a deep weariness overcoming him.

He was filled with loathing for his life. Not only away in Tumdrum, but also here in London. He no longer had a life in London. You have your life where you're living.

Everything seemed pointless and meaningless.