The Bad Book Affair. Ian Sansom

Sure, some people have no hands.’

      ‘What?’ said Israel, watching the grim outer-lying estates flashing by.

      ‘No hands,’ repeated Ted, sticking his own arm out of the window as they approached the first of Tumdrum’s many mini-roundabouts. ‘Must get that indicator fixed.’

      ‘Some people have no hands?’ said Israel.

      ‘That’s right. I saw a programme on the television the other week, about a fella with no legs.’

      ‘No legs?’

      ‘Aye. Makes ye think, doesn’t it? Come back to me when you’re in that sort of a position and start complainin’ and I might start listening to ye.’

      ‘Right, OK. When I’ve lost my legs in some horrific—’

      ‘Or yer arms.’

      ‘Or my arms.’

      ‘Aye. Get back to me then with yer troubles.’

      ‘I will, Ted, most certainly get back to you when I have lost either my arms or my legs—’

      ‘Or both.’

      ‘Both.’

      ‘And ye might get some sympathy then. In the meantime,’ continued Ted, ‘turn the peat.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘It’s a saying.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘And get a haircut and a shave as well while ye’re at it, that’ll cheer you up.’

      ‘I don’t need cheering up, Ted.’

      ‘You need a haircut and a shave, but.’

      ‘All right, thank you. Let’s drop this whole conversation now, can we?’

      ‘Well, I promised yer mother I’d look out for ye and I don’t intend lettin’ her down.’

      ‘I don’t need you keeping an eye on me, Ted, thank you.’

      ‘Well, believe me, it’s the last thing I want to do either, but I told your mother I would, and I will. She’s a good woman, yer mother.’

      ‘She doesn’t need to worry about me.’

      ‘Of course she needs to worry about ye,’ said Ted. ‘That’s what mothers are supposed to do.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘You know what they say.’

      ‘No. What?’

      ‘You always meet your mother when you’re young.’

      ‘Right,’ said Israel. ‘Well, thank you, Martin Buber. Illuminating as ever.’

      They were approaching the square, the downtown of Tumdrum.

      ‘Ye probably just need a new challenge,’ continued Ted.

      ‘Probably,’ agreed Israel.

      ‘A hobby,’ said Ted, ‘is what you need.’

      ‘A hobby?’

      ‘Aye. A choir, or something.’

      ‘A choir?’

      ‘Or line dancing.’

      ‘Line dancing?’

      ‘Aye, or a jigsaw even.’

      ‘A jigsaw?’

      ‘Or walk a good brisk mile every morning. That’d cure you.’

      ‘A jigsaw?’ repeated Israel.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And a good brisk walk.’

      ‘Aye.’

      ‘I’m sure that’d do the trick, Ted. But can we talk about something else now, please?’

      ‘It wasn’t me got us started on the subject of yer hartship,’ said Ted.

      ‘Anyway,’ said Israel.

      They pulled off the main road.

      ‘Ye all ready for the morning, then?’ said Ted.

      ‘Oh yes,’ said Israel, who wasn’t ready at all. He’d spent the best part of two weeks in bed reading David Foster Wallace, and he’d lost all track of time, place, sense, meaning, or himself. ‘What day is it? Where are we going?’

      ‘It’s Friday. All day. Morning in the lay-by. And then we’re off to the school.’

      ‘Oh God. No.’

      ‘No language, thank ye.’

      ‘Oh Jesus,’ said Israel.

      ‘Shut up,’ said Ted, leaning over and slapping Israel across the back of his head. ‘I’ll not tell ye again.’

      Israel and Ted were back in business.

       2

      Tumdrum. Tumdrum. Tumdrum was not the back of beyond. No.

      It was much, much farther.

      No. Farther.

      A little bit farther.

      There. That’s about right.

      Tumdrum, the armpit of Antrim, on the north of the north coast of the north of Northern Ireland, a place where the sky was always the colour of a pair of very old stone-washed jeans, beaten and rinsed, and where the only pub, the First and Last, was a harbinger of Armageddon, and where the Bible Shop was the bookshop, where the replacement of what little remained of Edwardian and Victorian historic architecture with stunning, high-spec turnkey apartments was almost complete, and where a trip to Billy Kelly’s edge-of-town Car and Van Superstore (‘Please Pull In To View Our Massive Stock With No Obligation’) represented a day out, and where scones—delicious, admittedly, served warm, buttered and spread with jam—were the height of culinary sophistication at Zelda’s Café, the town’s ‘Internet Hot Spot: The First And Still The Best’.

      And here, of all places, was Israel Armstrong, back at his post in this godforsaken Nowheresville, sitting on the mobile library, parked up in a lay-by, doing nothing but issuing true crime books about local thugs, and thinly fictionalised books about local thugs, and books by local thugs, and memoirs by the wives of local thugs, while enjoying all of the usual banter and craic with his regular readers. Such as Mr McCully.

      ‘I’m looking for the De Saurus.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘The DE SAURUS.’

      ‘Right. And it’s a foreign author?’

      ‘A foreign author?’

      ‘De Saurus. Like the Marquis de Sade?’

      ‘The what?’

      ‘Or De Maupassant?’

      ‘Are ye having me on?’

      ‘No. No.’

      ‘Are ye having a wee laugh?’

      ‘No. Not at all. I’m trying to help.’

      ‘Good. So, it’s the book with the words in it.’

      ‘Well, sir, I think you’ll find that…most books have words in—’

      ‘Don’t ye be patronising me now, ye wee skite, I know exactly what your game is.’

      ‘I can assure you, Mr McCully, that the last thing I would do would be to patronise you.’

      It was as if he’d never