The Bad Book Affair. Ian Sansom

Café was a kind of holding area for the nearly departed, a place where the retired of Tumdrum assembled for coffee and scones before ascending towards the Judgement Seat and the Gate of Heaven; it was a place neither in nor entirely of this world, or certainly not of the world that Israel wished to inhabit; not a world he could ever feel a part of. It wasn’t that they were bad people, the ever fragrant coffee-and-scone crowd in Zelda’s. In fact, they were very decent people—sweet, sweet milky coffee ran in their veins, and they were as good hearted as the glacé cherry in a cherry scone. They just weren’t Israel’s kind of people. And here they all were, gathered together, just about every last one of them: it was as though Zelda’s were staging the worldwide scone-and-coffee fest. Scoffest.

      ‘We’ll never get a seat,’ said Israel, staring at the heaving throng. ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’

      ‘There is nowhere else,’ said Ted.

      ‘Ah,’ said Israel. ‘Yes. You see. There’s the rub.’

      ‘Give over,’ said Ted.

      ‘Come on, ye, on on in,’ said Minnie, bustling over, frilly pinny on, brown cardigan sleeves rolled up. ‘Plenty of room, gents, plenty of room!’

      ‘God. Really?’ said Israel. ‘Isn’t it a little—’

      ‘And none of yer auld language here today, please. We’ve a visitor. Come on on.’ She waved them forward and started to lead them through the crowded café, like a guide taking tourists through a souk in Marrakesh.

      ‘Who’s the visitor?’ said Israel, squeezing between car coats.

      ‘A Very Important Person,’ said Minnie.

      ‘Who?’ said Ted.

      ‘Nelson Mandela?’ said Israel.

      ‘Och!’ said Minnie.

      ‘The Berlin State Philharmonic?’

      ‘What?’ said Minnie.

      ‘You know you’ve got Pearce outside busking?’

      ‘Ach, he’s harmless, bless him,’ said Minnie.

      ‘He’s away in the head,’ said Ted, demonstrating what he considered to be a state of away-in-the-headness by rolling his eyes and lolling his tongue.

      ‘He’s not well,’ said Minnie.

      ‘It’s the Haltzeimers,’ said Ted.

      ‘The what?’ said Israel.

      ‘Have you lost weight, pet?’ said Minnie, glancing behind her.

      ‘Just a bit,’ said Israel.

      ‘He’s depressed,’ said Ted.

      ‘I am not depressed,’ said Israel.

      ‘Split up with his girlfriend back in London,’ said Ted.

      ‘Oh dear,’ said Minnie. ‘And you’ve grown a beard as well,’ she added.

      ‘Adding insult to injury,’ said Ted.

      ‘Top-up of coffee when you’ve a minute,’ said a man in the traditional Zelda’s get-up of car coat, plus a suit and a tie, and a zip-up pullover, with a Racing Post propped before him, as Minnie bustled by.

      ‘Make that two,’ said his similarly attired companion.

      ‘And I’ll take another date-and-wheaten scone,’ piped up another identically clad man at another table.

      ‘And me!’

      ‘Cinnamon scone, and a large cappuccino?’ called someone else.

      ‘Och, all right,’ said Minnie, squeezing past women whose calorie intake had clearly exceeded recommended daily amounts for some years, and men whose red, flushed faces suggested that an occasional tipple had become a rather more regular routine, ‘give me a wee minute here, will ye?’

      Zelda’s was not the Kit Kat Club.

      ‘So who’s the VIP?’ said Ted. ‘Not the fat boy off the radio? He gets everywhere.’

      ‘Stephen Nolan?’ said Israel. ‘Oh God, no. Not him.’

      ‘Stop it,’ said Ted, pointing a finger at Israel. Ted insisted on the highest standards of non-blaspheming. ‘I like him.’

      ‘No,’ said Minnie. ‘Maurice Morris.’

      ‘Oh God, not him, the f—’ began Israel.

      ‘I said no language!’ said Minnie. ‘He’s getting worse,’ she said to Ted.

      ‘I’ve warned you,’ said Ted to Israel. ‘Ye bad-mannered bastard.’

      ‘Come on now,’ said Minnie. ‘Let me squeeze you in the wee huxter here, and I’ll see if I can’t bring Maurice over for a wee chat. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.’

      ‘No!’ said Israel.

      ‘I’ll be back in a minute for your orders,’ said Minnie, bustling away.

      ‘Maurice Morris,’ said Ted. ‘Well, well, well. The Man With The Plan.’

      Maurice Morris, The Man With The Plan: Independent Unionist candidate for Tumdrum and District, out on the stump, one of Northern Ireland’s most popular politicians, admired by all and loved by many, until he’d fallen from favour and had been defeated—crushed, humiliated—by the Democratic Unionists at the last election, not because of any policy or political crisis, but because of the small complicating matter of his affair with one of his constituency workers, and the accompanying slight whiff of financial impropriety, which never came to more than a whiff, but which was more than enough for the good people of Tumdrum, the scone-and-coffee crowd, who could smell a rat when they saw one and who had turned their car-coated backs to him and set their po-faces against him. It had taken Maurice years to patch things up and make himself anew and only now was he seeking to regain his seat, which is why he was here in Zelda’s, the very heartland of Tumdrum, busy working the crowd, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, receding hair swept boldly back from his vast, lined but deeply untroubled forehead, looking every thickset square inch the comeback politician. In his campaign literature Maurice liked to draw attention to his confidence-inspiring six-foot-five-inch frame and his well-cut suits—suits for which he was, according to his campaign literature, renowned Province-wide. His Savile Row pinstripes and his Jermyn Street shirts and ties, he believed, spoke for themselves, and they most certainly did; they told you everything you needed to know about Maurice Morris, or M ‘n’ M, as he prefer red to be called. His sparkling white teeth and his perma-tan spoke eloquently also—they sang out on his behalf—as did his reputation as North Antrim’s most successful independent financial adviser. What M ‘n’ M did not know about mortgages, repossessions and trusts in kind sim ply was not worth knowing: Maurice was the man, the big man in the big picture, financially, politically and socially; this was a man who had been photographed consistently, for over a decade, in the Ulster Tatler, and the Belfast Telegraph, and the Impartial Recorder, with every Irish and Northern Irish celebrity, major and minor, excepting Bono, who was still on his wish list. Maurice was not just a politician, or a businessman: he was a brand and a celebrity, and he was not a man to be underestimated, overlooked, doubted, mocked, questioned, queried, or in any other way challenged. Maurice Morris had been blessed at birth—by whimsical, apparently homonymic and possibly crossword-puzzle-minded parents—with his own surname for a first name, and he had known from an early age that this somehow made him impregnable and unassailable, like God with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Maurice was like New York, New York. He was entirely in and of himself; he was, according to his campaign literature, The Man With The Plan. His ostensible plan was accountable government, investment in jobs, reform of the planning process; all of the usual. His actual plan was to win back power by any means necessary. He’d done his penance; he’d made his apologies; and now he wanted back in. Israel had followed Maurice’s charmless charm offensive on the many