Ian Sansom - Mr Dixon Disappears

‘I’m parking, which is not that easy, actually, without power steering and—’

‘Aye, all right, well, you can’t park there.’

Israel had pulled up the mobile library next to a large silver Mercedes.

‘Sorry, I—’

‘Ye blind?’

‘No. I am not blind. And I am not deaf, I—’

‘Can ye not raid then?’

‘Sorry. I didn’t catch that. Can I…’

‘Can ye raid?’

‘Raid?’

‘Aye, raid.’

‘Read?’

‘Aye.’

‘Read? Ah, read. Yes. Thank you. I can read, actually. In fact, as you’ll see, I’m driving the—’

‘Aye, right. So you’ll see that’s a reserved space. See, says here “RESERVED”.’

‘I just thought—’

‘Aye, well, you thought wrong.’

‘Couldn’t I just park here until—’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘These spaces are reserved.’

‘Yes, but it’s only—’

‘I just said no. What’s the matter with ye? D’ye think I’m joking?’

The man had little flecks of spit – the real thing, real threat-phlegm, the stuff of demented dogs and monkeys – around his mouth, Israel noticed.

‘No. No. I don’t, actually. I don’t think you’re—’

‘Aye, right. Well. Move yerself on in this piece of crap.’ He pronounced crap as though with a double k.

‘But—’

‘Move. Her. On.’

‘OK. Fine. Sorry. Look.’ Israel stuck his hand out of the window in a rather feeble, placatory, let’s-shake-hands-and-make-up kind of a gesture. ‘I feel we’ve maybe got off on the wrong foot here. I’m Israel Armstrong.’

The man ignored his hand. ‘I know who you are. You were meant to be here half an hour ago.’

‘Ah, yes, few problems with the mobile on the way over. You must be the caretaker—’

‘Round the back.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Round. The. Back. You. Can. Parkee. Upee. Round. The. Back. Do. You. Understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aye, right. Good. I’ll go open her up for you.’

Oh, God.

Israel was getting a headache. He didn’t always have a headache these days – just every other day. Because, honestly, he was getting used to life around Tumdrum, he really was. Like a prisoner eventually becomes accustomed to his captors, and adults as they get older eventually have to learn to live with some slight stiffness and joint pain in the morning and a sense of perhaps having lost their way a little on the road towards manifest destiny.

‘Move!’

‘Yes. Just going,’ said Israel, grinding the gears.

And he was certainly getting used to the colourful locals and their charming and eccentric ways.

He hadn’t had any breakfast, that was Israel’s problem, a cup of tea before he left the Devines’ farm, which was hardly enough to sustain a growing young man like himself. Israel had lost a little weight since arriving in Tumdrum, due to the lack of readily available non-meat protein, but he still clocked in at a solid 36-inch waist and 16 stone, not hideously fat by any means, but big enough for people to refer to him as ‘big lad’ and to mean it. He’d worked up a sweat already this morning and could have done with a nice fried egg soda or maybe a big bowl of porridge with the cream off the milk. Or some Tayto cheese and onion crisps. Or maybe a nice croissant. No, don’t get him started on croissants, or pains au chocolat , or muffins: Israel fantasised about breakfast pastries. Fresh breakfast pastries were not readily available in and around Tumdrum, although the baker’s, the Trusty Crusty, did do a nice cinnamon scone; scones were about the closest thing Tumdrum had to fresh patisserie items.

He’d been working hard, up until midnight and up again since six, getting the van loaded. Today was the big day. Easter Saturday. Today was the first day of Israel’s first ever mobile library touring exhibition, his debut as keeper and curator of Tumdrum’s heritage and history. Today was the day when Israel got to unveil Tumdrum and District’s mobile-library-sponsored five-panel display showing the history of the famous Dixon and Pickering’s department store, which was celebrating one hundred years of serving Tumdrum and District, and indeed the whole of the north coast of the north of Ireland and beyond, keeping the local farmers and their wives supplied with polyester-cotton sheets, Royal Doulton figurines, and Early Bird Light Suppers in the Cosy Nook, the award-winning cafeteria on the first floor, where on a clear day it was possible to see Scotland while you ate your jumbo gammon panini (served with chips and a light salad garnish).

It might not seem like it to you or me, and it certainly wouldn’t have seemed like it to Israel six months ago, but today was the real deal, a genuine event, a happening around Tumdrum. Dixon and Pickering’s was about as famous locally as the Giant’s Causeway a little further up round the coast: it was the Harrods, the Selfridges, the Fortnum and Mason, the Macy’s, the Tiffany’s, the Woolworths and the Wal-Mart of North Antrim all under one roof, and it had survived and thrived where other family-owned department stores had failed; it had made it to one hundred. And now it was none other than Israel Armstrong, mobile librarian, who had been tasked and commissioned to help the store to commemorate the occasion in style.

Israel couldn’t deny it: he was honoured. And he also couldn’t deny it: he was maybe going soft in the head.

He drove round the side of the building to the back.

It was undoubtedly a lovely spot, right by the sea. Actually, it wasn’t by the sea, that didn’t do it justice: you couldn’t really say that Dixon and Pickering’s was by the sea; Dixon and Pickering’s was on the sea.

Dixon and Pickering’s official motto – which was printed boldly on all the shop’s plastic carrier bags, just below the company crest, an image of a lamb lying down with a lion in a bucolic scene also featuring fauns and nymphs frolicking beneath mountains by the sea – was ‘The Customer Is Always Right’, which was wrong, actually, in Israel’s experience round about Tumdrum and in Northern Ireland generally. In his experience around here the customer was almost always wrong, unless you wanted to make a big deal about it, in which case the motto should really be amended to ‘The Customer Is Always Right…Eventually’, or ‘…After Threat of Legal Action’.

Dixon and Pickering’s was known locally as the Department Store at the End of the World, which was an accurate description, in several senses: you could have picked up Dixon and Pickering’s and plonked it down off a dirt-track near an old gold-prospecting town in the middle of Alaska or in some as-yet-undeveloped remote province in China, and people wouldn’t have blinked an eye; put moose or fried rice on the menu in the Cosy Nook and it would have fitted in just fine; because for all its airs and graces Dixon and Pickering’s remained an outback kind of shopping experience.

Built in 1906, Dixon and Pickering’s still stocked items that other department stores had stopped selling quite some time back, around about the Second World War in fact – his and hers thermal underwear, and two-colour sock wool, and a full range of hearth-sets, and extending toast forks, and wind-up repeater alarm clocks, and paraffin lamps – and it looked as though, with a slight push, you might be able to topple this whole teetering mound of old stucco and kitsch and knick-knacks and watch it disappear under the Irish Sea’s big white waves. On a rough day the salt spray came right up over the stone walls of the car park and lashed at the store’s stone steps and the new disabled access ramp. People said that if you were to shop in Dixon and Pickering’s just once a week and parked down at the sea wall then your car would be gone in a year, eaten alive by salt and rust, like the proverbial cow in a bottle of Coke.