Ian Sansom - The Delegates’ Choice

‘It’s not ridiculous.’

‘It is!’ said Israel. ‘Honestly. This morning…’

First stop of the day, up round the coast, and first in, a man in his seventies, not one of their regulars.

‘D’ye have the Impartial Recorder ?’

‘Sorry?’ said Israel.

‘The paper? D’ye have the paper?’

‘No. No. I’m afraid not.’

‘The Tele then?’

‘No. Sorry. We don’t have any papers.’

‘You don’t sell any papers?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘You sell books then?’

‘No, no, we don’t sell books either.’

‘D’ye not?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘We’re a library.’

‘Ach, aye. Second-hand books then.’

‘Erm…Well, yes. Sort of, I suppose.’

‘By the yard, or by the pound?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I saw a thing about it on the telly once. Books by the yard. Or the dozen. I don’t know. I can’t rightly remember.’

‘Right. Well, we don’t actually sell books here at all. You have to join a library. Like you do a video shop or…something. I need to see a utility bill, something with your name and address on it, and then I can—’

‘I’d not be showing you that, indeed; that’d be under the Freedom of Information Act, wouldn’t it? I don’t know who ye are. Are ye the police?’

‘No. I’m not the police.’

‘You could be anybody.’

‘Yes, true. I could, of course, be…anybody. I am in fact the librarian though. Here. In the…mobile library. Where we…are.’

‘You’re a funny-lookin’ librarian.’

‘Yes, well, sorry, I…’

‘D’ye sell milk?’

‘No.’

‘Bread?’

‘No.’

‘A pan loaf just?’

‘No!’

‘Ach. We used to have Paddy Weekly—he was great, so he was—but he was driven out by the supermarkets, ye know.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve to get to Ballycastle for shopping these days.’

‘Right.’

‘I prefer the shopping in Coleraine, meself.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I can get me feet done and me hair cut—there’s a wee girl who comes round the Fold—but if I give ye a wee list ye couldn’t do me a few messages once a week, could ye?’

It just wasn’t right.

‘It’s just not right,’ said Israel, picking absent-mindedly at his scone. ‘You know, the longer I spend working as librarian, the more I’m questioning my vocation.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Ted, whose own scone was rapidly diminishing in size, down from bowling-ball size to tennis-ball size; maybe a little larger.

‘No!’ said Israel, correcting himself. ‘Not just my vocation in fact. The very ground of my being.’

‘Would ye like a top-up of coffee?’ said Minnie, who was doing the rounds.

‘Yes, thanks,’ said Israel.

‘Still on Beckett then?’ she said, pouring Israel another cup of the café’s so-called coffee.

‘Questioning the very ground of his being,’ said Ted.

‘Oh,’ said Minnie. ‘I think I’ll leave you to it then.’

As a child back home in north London, Israel had always imagined that a life communing with books might be a life communing with the great minds and lives of the great thinkers of the past, those who had formed the culture and heritage of the world, and that it might perhaps be his role to share these riches with others. In fact, in reality, as a mobile librarian on the perpetually damp north coast of the north of the north of Northern Ireland, Israel seemed to spend most of his time communing with the great minds and lives and thinkers who had produced Haynes car manuals, and Some Stuff I Remember About Visiting my Granny on her Farm in the Country, Before I Was Horribly Mentally, Physically and Sexually Abused by my Uncles and Married Three Unsuitable Husbands and Became an Alcoholic and Lost Everything and Lived in a Bedsit in Quite a Nasty Part of a City Before Meeting my Current Husband Who is Rich, and Wonderful, and Then Moving Back to the Country, Which is Ironic When You Think About It: The Sequel, and Shape Up or Ship Out! The Official US Navy Seals Diet, and How to Become a Babillionaire—Tomorrow!, and pastel-covered Irish, English and American chick-lit by the tonne, the half-tonne, the bushel, and the hot steaming shovel-load.

‘Ach, come on,’ said Ted. ‘It’s not that bad. You’re exeggeratin’.’

‘I’m what?’

‘Exeggeratin’.’

‘Exaggerating?’

‘Aye.’

‘I’m not! What about that other old man in this morning?’

‘Who? Which other old man?’

‘The old man in the baseball cap, that was dripping with rain.’

‘When?’

‘When it was raining?’

‘Ach, aye.’

Their second stop, up further round the coast. A lay-by. The rain had come on—even though it was June. June! Pounding with rain in June! Jesus Christ!

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Ye’ve some books here, boy.’

Israel (restrainedly): ‘Yes. Yes. It’s a library.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Aye.’

Israel (doing his best to be helpful): ‘And can I help you at all?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘No. I’m only in for to be out of the rain.’

Israel: ‘Right. OK. That’s fine. Happy to be of—’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Mind, would ye have any books about…’

Israel: ‘About? What?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (indicating width between finger and thumb): ‘About this thick?’

Israel: ‘Er. Well, possibly. Any subject in particular you’re after?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘I don’t mind about the subject.’

Israel: ‘Right. So, anything really, as long as it’s…’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (indicating his required width again): ‘This thick.’

Israel: ‘I see. What’s that, then? About two, three centimetres?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Quarterinch.’

Israel, scanning the shelves: ‘OK. Erm. I don’t know, Carol Shields, have you read any of her? She’s very popular.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘How thick’s she?’

Israel: ‘Erm.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (taking book from Israel): ‘She’ll do rightly.’

Israel: ‘Do you have a ticket with you?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘No. I’ve not a ticket. The wife does, but.’

Israel: ‘I’d need to see the ticket really. I could always hold it over for you.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (glancing outside): ‘Ach, no. I’ll not bother. We’ve family over at the weekend. I thought it might be the thing for to fix the table—there’s a wee wobble where we had the floor tiled.’

Israel: ‘Right.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘I’ll get an offcut a wood, sure. It’s only because you were insisting that I was askin’.’

Israel: ‘OK, right.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Rain’s off.’

Israel: ‘Good.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain exits.

Israel: ‘Sorry we couldn’t be of more help!’

‘Sure, there was no harm in him,’ said Ted.

‘No!’ said Israel. ‘No! You’re right. There may have been no harm in him, but he did harm to me ! To my mental health! I am a highly trained professional.’

Ted coughed.

‘I am though,’ continued Israel. ‘We are. And we should be treated with respect.’

Israel had imagined that a librarian in a small town might be regarded as a kind of cultural ambassador, an adept, like a country priest guiding his grateful parishioners into the mysteries of the holy realms of the book. In fact most library users in and around Tumdrum and District seemed to regard a librarian as nothing more than a glorified shop assistant, and the mobile library as a kind of large motorised shopping trolley. There were only so many small errands that Israel could perform in a day without beginning to feel like a grocer’s assistant, and there was only so much sugar, tea, biscuits, potatoes, newspapers, betting slips and hand-rolling tobacco that the mobile library could carry before they would have to start abandoning the books altogether and go over entirely to carrying dry goods and comestibles. If they ripped out the issues desk and put in a deli counter and got a licence for selling drink, Israel and Ted could probably have made a fortune: your breaded ham, a bottle of Bushmills, and the latest Oprah or Richard and Judy Book Club Recommends, available together at last from a veritable touring one-stop shop; they’d be babillionaires by Christmas.