Ian Sansom - The Delegates’ Choice

‘No,’ said Israel.

‘Not paid for with our taxes then?’

‘Well—’

‘You’re paying to go yourselves then?’

‘No. It’s—’

‘A holiday then, is it?’

‘No. It’s work. And—’

‘Good. How long are you gone for?’ said George.

‘It’ll be—’

‘Can we sub-let?’ said Mr Devine.

‘Sub-let?’ said Israel. ‘The chicken coop?’

‘You’ve it looking rightly,’ said Mr Devine.

‘How long?’ said George.

‘We’ll be gone about a week, I think. Few days visiting my family, and then to the Mobile Meet.’

‘A whole week?’ said George. ‘Sure, what are we going to do without ye?’

The conversation had not gone as well as Israel had hoped. He’d half hoped that his departure might excite some small favourable comment and wishes for a good journey and a safe return. He was wrong.

‘Is he here for the Twelfth?’ asked Mr Devine.

‘Are you here for the Twelfth?’ asked George.

‘Of?’ said Israel.

‘July,’ said George. ‘Obviously.’

‘Yes. Yes. We’ll be back by the twelfth of July.’

‘You wouldn’t want to miss the Twelfth.’

‘Right. No. Anyway,’ said Israel. ‘You’re not…considering a holiday yourselves this year?’ he asked, trying to be pleasant.

‘I’ve not been on holiday for seventy-eight years,’ said Mr Devine, pulling the rug tighter around his knees. ‘D’ye not think I could do without one now?’

‘Er. Yes. Probably.’

‘And some of us have work to do,’ said George.

‘Yes, quite,’ said Israel.

George was already walking away, her back turned from him.

‘Goodbye then,’ called Israel.

She didn’t turn to wave or answer.

Israel walked bitterly back to the chicken coop. He couldn’t wait to get away from here, to England, to Gloria, to good coffee, and home.

They very nearly missed the ferry.

Brownie dropped Israel off at Ted’s little bungalow out on the main coast road, just by the sign saying ‘Try Your Brakes’, and along past the little new-build ‘Café Bistro’, which had never been occupied or let, and which was now proclaiming on a large, ugly estate agent’s hoarding its extremely unlikely ‘Potential as a Gift Shop’.

Ted’s bungalow was sheltered at the foot of a sheer white limestone cliff, its extraordinary vast clear views of the sea—to the left, far out to Rathlin Island and then across to the Mull of Kintyre—blotted out by the perpetual blur of traffic. It could and should have been the perfect little spot, with a bounteous vista, vast and uninterrupted. Instead it was dark and cold, with long, depressing, interrupting views of cars, white vans and lorries; paradise obscured, like Moses allowed a glimpse of the Promised Land, and then cut off by the A2 coast road.

Parked up proud out on the bungalow’s weed and gravel forecourt, wedged tight between bins and Ted’s neighbours’—the McGaws—little fenced-off area for sheep, and shadowed by the cliff above, yet still somehow shimmering in the late afternoon light, was the mobile library. She looked different.

Ted had absolutely no intention of losing the bet with Israel and had undertaken some essential care and maintenance tasks: he had scraped and cleaned and waxed the van, polishing her and buffing her until her red and cream livery was all ice cream and municipal bright once again, the words ‘Mobile Library’ and ‘The Book Stops Here’ picked out gorgeously in a honey gold and crisp forbidding black. The chrome looked chromey, and the headlights clear, and all dirt had been washed from the windows. The van had had a makeover. She looked—and Israel actually thought this for a moment, a weird J.G. Ballard moment—she looked, he thought, the mobile library, she looked sexy. She looked absolutely fantastic. She looked flushed, and noble and come-hitherish. She looked good enough to eat. She looked—and again, this is what he thought, he couldn’t help it—she looked like Marilyn Monroe.

Israel knew in that instant of recognition, in that perverse, momentary gaze upon the van’s pouting, polished, peach-like beauty, that she would win the category for Concours D’Elégance at the Mobile Meet, and that all was lost. He knew that Tumdrum would never get a new mobile library, and that Ted would triumph and would demand his pound of flesh, and that he, Israel, would have to beg for a loan to pay off the bet, would have to beg from Mr Mawhinney, probably, the manager of the Ulster Bank on Main Street in Tumdrum, who borrowed to his limit from the library every week, biographies, mostly, and military history, so perhaps Israel could borrow to his limit from the bank in return? ‘I need the money,’ he would have to explain, ‘because Marilyn Monroe melted the hearts of the mobile library judges at the annual Mobile Meet.’ And Mr Mawhinney would say, ‘What?’ and Israel Armstrong would be ruined and ridiculed by beauty, by this great curvaceous ambulant thing. He’d be condemned to life with Ted on the mobile library for ever. He’d be ruined. He’d lose the duffle coat off his back, and the brogues from his feet, his corduroy trousers; everything.

But, then, on closer inspection it seemed that Israel’s dignity and his money were perhaps safe; on closer inspection you could still see the many little rust spots that Ted’s primping couldn’t cover, and the scuffs and the scrapes and the scratches on the chrome, the little dints on the windscreen, the horrible filthy dirt-brown exhaust. The van was not a movie star; Marilyn was a person. The van was real. Some of the paintwork looked as though it might have been touched up using ordinary household emulsion. And the hand that had painted ‘The Book Stops Here’ could perhaps have been steadier. Even Ted couldn’t work miracles in just a few days. A makeover could not make new.

Buoyed, confused, excited and relieved, Israel rapped loudly and rang at Ted’s door.

He was greeted first from inside with the sound of irritable growling from Muhammad, Ted’s little Jack Russell terrier, and then with irritable shushings and hushings as Ted quieted the dog, and opened up the door with a scowl. Or at least, not literally with a scowl. Ted opened the door literally with his hand, obviously, while scowling, but when Ted scowled it was overwhelming; whatever it was Ted did while scowling became an act of scowl; the scowl became constitutive. He scowled often when they were out on the van, and in meetings with Linda Wei, and often unexpectedly and for no good reason at all in mid-conversation. Ted’s mouth would be saying one thing—‘How can I help you, madam?’ or ‘Yes, we can get that on inter-library loan’—but his scowl at the same time would be clearly saying something entirely different, something like ‘Ach,’ usually, or ‘Away on,’ or ‘Go fuck yourself, ye wee runt, ye.’ This last was the scowl now facing Israel. He’d only been to Ted’s bungalow once before, and Ted clearly wished that Israel wasn’t here now. Ted did not believe in franertising—his word—with work colleagues. Franertising was extremely frowned—scowled—upon. Ted held the door open only a crack and Israel could just about see the room behind him, with its drab sofa and the yelping dog.

‘Ted,’ said Israel.

‘That’s correct,’ said Ted. ‘Quiet, Muhammad!’

‘Are you ready?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. You were supposed to be ready.’

‘Aye,’ said Ted.

‘Well, look, hurry up, we need to go, the ferry’s at six.’

‘Aye.’

‘We’ve not got much time. I can wait outside if you’d rather. But we do need to hurry.’

‘Hurry is as hurry does.’

‘What?’