Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery

by Ian Sansom

  'How long does this go on for?' said Israel.

  'Two hours.'

  'He keeps this up for two hours? What, once a week?'

  'Five mornings a week, plus the TV.'

  'Jesus!'

  'Aye, I've heard he's a fan.'

  Another caller: someone who'd been robbed.

  'So. You were in the town centre there. And these people attacked your son?'

  'That's right, Robbo.'

  'And they pulled him out of the car?'

  'That's right.'

  'And they beat him?'

  'Yes, that's right, Robbo.'

  'About the head?'

  'That's right.'

  'Well, you know what I think about these people?'

  'I do, Robbo.'

  'They're not thugs. They're not scum. They're not…You know, I can't even find words this morning.'

  'They belong behind bars, Robbo, that's where they belong.'

  'But sure, you know what the prisons are like these days.'

  'They're like hotels, Robbo.'

  'That's right, they're like hotels. We need to treat these people the way they deserve to be treated.'

  'We do, Robbo.'

  'We need to hunt these people down and sort these people out!'

  'We do, Robbo, we do. Sure, if I could get my hands on them, I'd—'

  'Now you know I can't condone violence on this show.'

  'No, I know, Robbo. But they should all be shot, sure.'

  'I know, I know. But we can't say that on the show. They won't let us say that.'

  'You're only saying what a lot of us is thinking, Robbo.'

  'I know, I know.'

  'Your programme is brilliant, sure.'

  'Well, like you say, I'm only saying what a lot of us are thinking. It's people like you ringing in that make this programme.'

  'You're doing a great job, Robbo.'

  'Thank you. Caller on line three?'

  'I can't listen to any more of this,' said Israel.

  'Sshh,' said Ted.

  'Robbo, listen, I'm just ringing in here about us older people.'

  'How old are you?'

  'I'm sixty-three, Robbo.'

  'Sixty-three!'

  'That's right, Robbo. And I'll be honest with you–I'm fit enough, mind, I worked in the shipyard twenty-eight years–but the way things are going these days I'm scared to go out at night.'

  'You can't walk the street at night because you're scared?'

  'That's right, Robbo.'

  'Is that really true?'

  'It is, Robbo. Wait till I tell you. There's a bunch of young fellas around where I live—'

  'Where do you live?'

  'I don't want to say, Robbo.'

  'Why don't you want to say?'

  'In case, you know.'

  'What?'

  'They might come after me, Robbo.'

  'You're too scared to say where you live because you're scared these hoods who are–what?–terrorising your community?'

  'That's right, Robbo.'

  'Might come after you?'

  'That's right.'

  'You know, when people hear that they are just going to despair. I mean, what is our society coming to? When a man of your age–not an old man–can't walk the streets at night?'

  'I don't know, Robbo. These fellas round and about here, you see, they're shouting abuse at the old people, tearing around on these quad bikes. I've nearly been knocked down meself now a couple of times. It's a disgrace, so it is.'

  'You know what I think? About these young people, these hoods that are doing this to our communities, terrorising—'

  'That's right, Robbo.'

  '—terrorising our communities? These people are scum! That's what they are! They are worthless scum!'

  'They're scum, Robbo, so they are.'

  'And yet, if we say that, we get these do-gooders come crawling out of the woodwork ringing in here and saying it's not their fault. It's because of the Troubles or some other lot of nonsense. It makes me–I'll be honest with you–it makes me sick. It actually makes me feel physically sick.'

  'Exactly, Robbo.'

  'D'you know what we should do?'

  'No.'

  'I'll tell you what I think we should do. I think we should find these people. I think we should get a hold of these people.'

  'They're lower than the low, Robbo.'

  'There's no word in the English dictionary that can describe what I feel about these people.'

  'That's right, Robbo.'

  'They're talking about building a football stadium at the Maze, aren't they?'

  'Yes.'

  'D'you know what I think? I think we should reopen it. I think we should reopen it and set it up as a boot-camp, you know. Like a detention centre. Somewhere where they know they've been.'

  'You should start a campaign, Robbo.'

  'Maybe we will. Maybe we'll start a campaign to get the legislation changed. Have them properly punished. Really punished. Because you know what they are, these people?'

  'The scum of the earth?' said Israel.

  'Exactly!' said Ted.

  Israel leant forward and switched off the radio. 'I can't listen to that, Ted.'

  'What?'

  'That's awful. That's like…It's like listening to Adolf Hitler.'

  'I don't think so.'

  'It is. It's the same principle.'

  'No, it's not.'

  'Is it like that every day?'

  'Of course. That's why people listen.'

  'Him shouting and ranting?'

  'People love that, sure. He calls a spade a spade.'

  'And that's a skill?'

  'Aye.'

  'Isn't that just a basic command of the English language?'

  'Aye, well, you'd have fancy ideas about it, but.'

  'The bloke's stark raving mad.'

  'He speaks on behalf of a lot of us ordinary people…'

  'What? I'm an ordinary person, and he doesn't speak on my behalf.'

  'I hardly think you count,' said Ted, swinging the mobile library into another lane.

  Israel's stomach lurched with the van. They were on a six-lane motorway–twelve all told, six lanes one way, six the other–and it was heavy, heavy traffic, like the North Circular at rush hour.

  'Bloody hell, where is this?' said Israel.

  'Belfast City,' said Ted, keeping his eyes firmly on the road, 'where the girls are all pretty.'

  'This is it?'

  'Aye.'

  Israel knew Belfast only through television, where it was mostly dark and where there were only men in balaclavas with guns, or boys with scarves tied around their faces throwing bricks, or thick-set men in heavy overcoats doing their piece straight to camera. Israel had expected something spectacularly bad of Belfast, something immense and dramatic and ruinous, but Belfast refused to live up to its image. In reality, Belfast was a bit like Bolton, or Leeds: all the start-ups and ruins of industry; a disused mill, a warehouse, a derelict factory, low-rise industrial estates. Belfast was a big disappointment. For better and for worse, Belfast looked like anywhere else.

  They drove through docks, past big new buildings which looked like big new buildings anywhere, and eventually pulled up outside the BBC building, which looked like a miniature version of the BBC at Langham Place in London, though lacking Eric Gill's famous creamy white Portland stone statue of Prospero and Ariel with his penis, which had always fascinated Israel, even as a child, going past on the C2 bus up to Camden. What was it, the BBC's remit? To inform, to educate, and to entertain? It had certainly done it for Israel; that was his sex education.

  'So what are we doing?' asked Israel.

  'Waiting for Robbo.'

  'Can't we just go in and ask if we can talk to him?'

  'No, this is a stake-out,' said Ted.

  'Oh, come on, Ted. Let's—'

  'You think they'd let us just walk into the BBC?'

  'Well…'

  'Ach, wise up. We've time anyway
, he's still on the air. And I need to check on the dog.'

  Ted brought the dog up to the front of the van, cradling her in his lap.

  'Israel, Mrs Muhammad. Mrs Muhammad, Israel Armstrong.'

  'She looks tired, Ted.'

  'I said, she's pregnant. Right, you just hold her there for a while.'

  'Me?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  'Well, d'you fancy a fry?'

  'Where? Is there somewhere about?'

  'No. Here.'

  'In the van?'

  'Yes. Of course.' Ted lifted up the cover on a bench behind the driver's seat. 'We've the wee gas rings and the grill here.'

  'Ah. I always wondered what that was in there. I thought it was maybe the first-aid kit.'

  'Aye, with a Calor gas stove? What d'you think that was for?'

  'Sterilising the needles?'

  'Holy God, man.'

  Ted got out a carrier bag from one of the van's storage cupboards and produced a wrap of bacon and sausages, some soda farls and some eggs.

  It's a truth not perhaps universally acknowledged, but one that will doubtless be easily understood and appreciated, that it's difficult to remain a vegetarian in the confined space of a mobile library when there's the smell of fried bacon and sausages and you haven't eaten a square meal for almost a week. Indeed, Israel found it almost impossible to keep his vegetarian resolve as Ted dished out fried bread, sausages, bacon and egg onto two battered old enamel plates.

  Israel missed good home cooking; not that his mother ever did any good home cooking. This was a myth about Jewish mothers, in Israel's experience. He knew a lot of Jewish mothers who liked to eat, but who liked to cook? No. None. Gloria's mother had pretensions as a cook, but her meals were always somehow wrong or inappropriate; they were the meals of a woman going through a divorce. Back home in London with Gloria he used to eat out at least once a week, in cheap Italians, or Indians or Chinese round where they lived, or they would meet up somewhere in town. There was this vegetarian restaurant they liked near Old Street, where you used to get saffron lasagne with pistachio and ginger and it was all scrubbed wooden tables and body-pierced Australian waitresses. He hadn't eaten out much since arriving in Tumdrum, partly because he didn't have the money, and partly because the few restaurants there were tended not to offer much in the way of vegetarian options, unless you were content to have champ with your chips.

  'D'you not want your bacon and sausage?' said Ted.

  'No. I—' Before Israel had a chance to reconsider, Ted had reached across and taken them.

  'Ted!'

  'I'm seeing if Mrs Muhammad fancies the sausage. What's the matter with you anyway, you not like bacon?'

  'No, I'm vegetarian,' said Israel, regretfully. 'Remember?'

  'I thought you were Jewish,' said Ted, waving the sausage in front of Mrs Muhammad; the dog wolfed it.

  'You can be both,' said Israel.

  'Ah'm sure.'

  Israel ate the scrambled egg and fried bread, washed down with tea.

  'God, that's good, Ted.'

  'Aye.'

  'You know what? I feel a bit better actually.'

  'Good feed inside you, does wonders. Take the good o' it while it lasts.'

  'It feels a bit like being on holiday.'

  'Well, don't get too comfy, we're working here, remember.'

  They were parked directly outside the BBC, listening to the end of Robbo's show–street crime, scumoftheearth, car theft, scumoftheearth, dog-fouling, scumoftheearth, litter louts, scumoftheearth–and eventually the whole sorry thing came to an abrupt end, crashing into the Village People, 'YMCA'. Half an hour later a flush-faced man emerged from the building, wearing the traditional Belfast overcoat and clutching carrier bags. He looked as though he'd just eaten a very big breakfast, on top of an earlier breakfast, and had maybe been up all night working his way through some giant Easter eggs. He looked like a boy trapped in a fat man's body.

  'That's him!' yelled Ted. 'Quick!'

  They jumped down from the van and started running after him.

  'Mr Dixon!' said Ted. 'Robbo! Robbo!'

  'Hello!' said the man, turning round. 'How ye doin'?'

  'Can we have a word with ye?' said Ted.

  'If it's an autograph you're after I'll not charge ye.' Robbo laughed.

  'No, actually,' said Ted. 'We wanted to ask you about your father.'

  'My father?' There was an abrupt change in tone. 'What are yous, reporters?'

  'No,' said Israel. 'We're librarians.'

  'Very funny,' said Robbo.

  'No, really we are,' insisted Israel. 'Look.' He pointed over at the mobile library. 'We're from Tumdrum.'

  'Tumdrum? My home town? Is that the old mobile library?'

  'Aye,' said Ted. 'Good nick, isn't she?'

  'I used to get books out there once every two weeks when I was growing up,' said Robbo. This seemed to confuse him. 'OK,' he said. 'So, have we books overdue, or what?'

  'No, we just wanted to ask you a few questions about—'

  'Yes?'

  'Look, Robbo,' said Ted, grabbing Robbo's elbow. 'The wee fella here'–he nodded towards Israel–'It's a long story, but we're just looking for a wee bit of help with a…library project he's working on.'

  'Yes!' said Israel. 'It's a five-panel touring exhibition about the history of Dixon and Pickering's.'

  'Hmm.' You didn't argue with Ted when he had a hold of your elbow. 'Could you just…?' Robbo tried to wriggle free.

  'It's very important. If you could just spare us five minutes.'

  'I don't know.'

  Ted still had a hold of Robbo's elbow.

  'We'll buy you a coffee?' said Israel.

  'A library project?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'll tell you what, you get him to leave hold of me, and you make it a hot chocolate and a tray bake, you're on. Five minutes, mind.'

  Ted released his grip.

  They went into a café just along from the BBC, a place that was trying to be chic, and which was failing miserably: far too much taupe and too many lilies in too-tall vases filled with pebbles, and not enough comfortable seating. It was like an old Eastern European version of Western Europe; it was a simulacrum of cool. Nonetheless, it had got some things right. A waitress with a foreign accent came to take their order and Israel could have kissed her right there and then–she was the most excitingly ethnically diverse individual he'd come across in a long time.

  'What can I get you?' she asked.

  'Where are you from?' asked Israel.

  'I'm from the Czech Republic,' she said, Czechly.

  'God. I mean, wow. That's…How on earth d'you end up here?'

  'I'm a student.'

  'Wow. What are you studying?'

  'I'd doing my PhD on Seamus Heaney, up at Queen's.'

  'Right. Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests? I'll dig with it.'

  'Just ignore him,' said Ted. 'He doesn't get out much.'

  'Great poem,' said Israel.

  'Aye, and you'd know, would ye?' said Ted. 'You never been getherin praitas in yer life, man.'

  'What?'

  'Tubers.'

  'Sorry, you lost me, Ted.'

  'It's a poem about peat and potatoes, for guidness sake. I'll take a coffee, love.'

  'Regular?'

  'Cappuccino.'

  'And for you?' said the waitress.

  'I thought it was about writing?' said Israel.

  'It's about potatoes,' said Ted. 'Ask the expert here.'

  'Is it about writing?' said Israel.

  'I think it can be about both,' said the waitress.

  'Thank you,' said Israel.

  'Coffee?' repeated the waitress.

  'Espresso, please,' he said, satisfied.

  'And Mr Dixon, what do you think?' she asked. 'Will he have his regular?'

  'I would have thought so,' said Israel. 'By the look of it.'

  Robbo was busy circulating round the tables,
signing autographs. People were coming up to him, offering opinions on his show.

  'Great show, Robbo,' they said.

  'Thanks.'

  'Love it,' said another.

  'Hi!' he was saying, and 'Hello!' and 'Great to see you!' and 'Thanks,' 'All right!' and this seemed to go on for an age, but eventually people grew accustomed to having greatness among them and Robbo drifted back to Israel and Ted.

  'Belfast,' said Robbo. 'You gotta love it.'

  'Sure,' said Israel.

  'Great wee city,' said Ted.

  'It is,' said Robbo. 'But you know what I think? It's the people who really make it.'

  'Scum of the earth,' said Israel.

  'Sorry?'

  'Nothing.'

  'So, gents, now we're here, let's talk,' said Robbo, who was tucking into his luxury hot chocolate with whipped cream, marshmallows and a flake, with a side order of caramel slice. 'Shoot.'

  Israel and Ted looked at each other hopefully. They hadn't worked out exactly what it was they wanted to ask.

  'Israel?' said Ted.

  'Ted?' said Israel.

  'Gents? If you're going to ask me a question for your project, ask me a question. Your time's running out.'

  'Do you know where your father is, Mr Dixon?' said Ted.

  'No! Of course not! If I did, I would have told the police.'

  'Are you and your father…close?' said Israel.

  'No. We had a falling out a few years ago. This has all been covered before, though, in other interviews. It's been in the papers.'

  'Yes, of course,' said Israel.

  'What sort of project did you say you were working on?'

  'It's to do with the history of Dixon and Pickering's.'

  'Well, I don't know if I can help you much with that.'

  'And…' Israel had to think. 'People who work in family businesses.'

  'Ah! I see.'

  'So,' continued Israel, 'how did you end up down here, in Belfast?'

  'I had to get away, because of the business.'

  'Really?'

  'Well, you're from Tumdrum, you know the store?'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, you know the score. He had this whole thing, you know, my father, about me, the only son, taking on the family business.'

  'I see.'

  'Lot of pressure, you know, because Dixon and Pickering's was—'

  'Formed in 1906 when Mr Dixon, the haberdasher, inherited money from a distant relative sent out to seek his fortune in New South Wales,' said Israel.