by Ian Sansom
To get to the vegetable patch Israel had to pass by the chickens, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty, having turned them out of their home. George had fixed them up with new runs using some old manure bags over wire netting, but Israel could tell they weren't happy. They eyed him—gimlet chicken-eyed him—suspiciously as he hurried past.
George and old Mr Devine were indeed, as Brownie had suggested, in the vegetable patch, which was close by the main house, protected on one side by fruit trees and on the others by redbrick walls; it was a walled garden, or, rather, it had been a walled garden. Like most things around the farm, it had seen better days; one might best now describe it as a half-walled garden.
'George!' Israel called as he entered through what was once a gateway, but which was now merely a clearing through some rubble.
George was kneeling down in among rows of vegetable crops. She ignored Israel, as usual.
'George?'
'What?'
'Could I just—'
'No, thanks. Whatever it is. We're working here.'
'Yes, sure. I see that. I just wanted to—'
'Can you just let me finish here?'
'Yeah, it's just—'
'Please?'
'Sure.'
'If you want to make yerself useful you could be thinning and weeding the onions.'
'Yes, of course. I could…I'll just…'
'Over there.'
'Where?'
'There.'
He looked around him at vast muddy areas where plants were poking through. He didn't recognise anything. He wasn't sure which were the onions. He went over towards Mr Devine, who was sitting on a wooden bench, a rug across his legs.
'Lovely day,' said Israel.
'It's a bruckle sayson,' said Mr Devine.
'Is it?'
'Aye.'
'Yes, I thought so myself actually,' said Israel. 'Erm.' He pointed towards some green shoots. 'Onions?'
'Cabbages,' said Mr Devine.
Israel pointed again.
'Onions?'
'Cabbages,' said Mr Devine.
'OK.' Israel tried again, pointing at some sort of pointy thing. 'Onions?'
'Cabbages.'
'Is it all cabbages?'
'"Thou shalt not sow thy seed with mingled seed,"' said Mr Devine.
'Yes. Of course. Lovely. Beautiful. And they are…' he said, gesturing vaguely towards the rest of the crops.
'Cabbages. Kale. Cabbages. Radish. Potatoes. Chard. Cabbages. Potatoes. Shallots. Cabbages. Onions.'
'Bingo!' said Israel.
Israel got down on his knees. He didn't quite know what to do next. The only thing he'd grown had been mustard and cress, at school, in a plastic cup.
'Thinning?' he shouted enquiringly, over to George.
'Yes, thinning!' George shouted back impatiently.
'Thinning?' he appealed quietly to Mr Devine, having no notion whatsoever what thinning onions might involve.
'"And he shall separate them one from another; as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats,"' said Mr Devine.
'Erm.'
'Two inches apart,' said Mr Devine.
'Ah, right, okay,' said Israel. 'Thank you.'
Israel occupied himself not unpleasantly, for about ten minutes, concentrating on the job. It was surprisingly satisfying. For about ten minutes he fondly imagined himself as a smallholder, with cows, and pigs, and a small orchard, and bottling his own tomatoes and mashing his own beer. He could be like Thoreau.
'Ta-daa!' he said, standing up and admiring his handiwork. 'A perfect row of thinned onions!' He stretched out and took in the view. It was idyllic here, really; it was pure pastoral. There were beehives down by the wheat field, and oats, some barley, sheep, the paddock. He took in these sights and breathed deeply, admiring a bunch of huge plants with bright yellow flowers.
'They're lovely-looking flowers,' he said to Mr Devine.
'Aye.'
'What are those flowers?'
'What do they look like?'
'Sorry, I don't know.'
'Ye don't know what a corguette plant looks like?'
'Er…Is it a courgette plant, by any chance?'
Mr Devine's eyes narrowed.
'And you've some lovely trees there,' said Israel, gesturing towards the fruit trees.
'Plum,' said Mr Devine. 'And pears like a trout's back.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Planted by my father. Cherries. Apple.'
'Good,' said Israel, as though he were a landowner inspecting a tenant farmer's fields. 'Very good,' he said. 'Good for you. Anyway, George,' he said, as George approached. 'I've done the onions.'
'I'm just checking on these early croppers,' she said, ignoring Israel's onion-thinning achievements and kneeling down by some bushy patches of green.
'It's finding something early that's floury enough,' said Mr Devine.
'Uh-huh,' said Israel, faux-knowledgeably. 'It's quite a crop you have here.'
'Mebbe,' said Mr Devine.
'Yes, you're certainly going to get lots of…cabbages. And…potatoes. Have you never thought of diversifying into…I don't know. Avocados or artichokes?'
'Ach, wise up, Israel, will ye?' said George, from in among the foliage.
'Asparagus?' said Israel.
'I refuse to grow anything beginning with A,' said George.
'Oh,' said Israel. 'Right.'
'Och, Jesus. I'm joking, ye fool. What do you want, Israel? Get it over and done with and then you can be on your way.'
Israel stood up straight as if about to read a proclamation. 'Well, actually, I've just come to say good-bye,' he said.
'What did you say?' said George.
'I've come to say good-bye.'
George straightened up slowly from her potato row and raised an unplucked eyebrow.
'Is this a joke?'
'No. I'm going away, over to England.'
'Well, well, well,' said George, crossing her arms.
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Just.'
'What?'
'Didn't take you long, did it?'
'To what?'
'Cut and run.'
'I'm not cutting and running.'
'Well, you've been here, what, six months?'
'Nearly eight,' said Mr Devine.
'Eight months,' said George. 'And then you're away? That sounds to me like someone who's cutting and running.'
'Aye, I always thought he was a quitter,' said Mr Devine. '"Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet—"'
'All right, yes, thank you, Granda,' said George.
'I'm not a quitter, actually,' said Israel.
'Are ye not?'
'No. I'm going to be coming back.'
'He's coming back?' said Mr Devine.
'Are ye coming back, Armstrong?' said George, crossing her arms. 'You don't want to dash our hopes now.'
'Ha ha. Yes, I will be back. It's just a…business trip I'm going on.'
'A business trip? Really?'
'Yes.'
'With what, your job as an international financier?'
'No.'
'With the mobile library?'
'Uh-huh.'
Mr Devine started wheezing with laughter.
'A business trip!' said George. 'That right? What is it, an international conference?'
'Well, yes, as it happens.'
'Ach, you're priceless, Israel, so you are.'
'A mobile library conference? Holy God!' said Mr Devine.
'A junket then,' said George.
'Junket? No. It's not a junket. It's the Mobile Meet, which is the UK's premier mobile library conference and—'
'Paid for with our taxes no doubt?' said George.
'"Render unto Caesar,"' said Mr Devine.
'No,' said Israel.
'Not paid for with our taxes then?'
'Wel
l—'
'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 sublet?' said Mr Devine.
'Sublet?' 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.
'Good-bye 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 to home.
5
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 proudly out on the bungalow's weed and gravel forecourt, wedged tightly 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 the 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 forever. 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 been to Ted's bungalow only once before, and Ted clearly wished that Israel weren'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?'
'It's just a—'
'Saying, right, fine. Whatever. We need to get going here. Do you want me to load your bags in the van? You're all packed?'
'No.'
'No, you don't want me to load your bags, or no, you're not packed?'
'I'm not packed.'
'What do you mean you're not packed? We've got only a couple of hours before the ship sails.'
'I'm not coming.'
'What?'
'I'm not coming.'
'What do you mean, you're not coming? Of course you're coming.'
'I'm not. Coming.'
'All right, yeah, stop muckin' about now, Ted. We've got to go.'
'I'm not coming
.'
'But we've a bet on.'
'I've changed my mind.'
'You said you couldn't change your mind once you'd made a bet.'
'I've changed my mind.'
Well, no.
On this occasion Israel could not afford to have Ted change his mind. He had already had just about enough of Northern Irish intransigence and stubbornness and self-righteous inconsistency for the past eight months, and now he was pumped and ready to go, and Ted was holding him back.
So, no. No, no, no.
'No,' he said, using his considerable weight to push against the door. 'No. That's it. I'm not having this, Ted.'
Israel stood staring up at Ted's scowl, wedged between the door and some old green cans containing peat.
'You've mucked me about with this enough already,' he said. 'I'm getting on that boat to England this evening whether you like it or not.'
He was trying to squeeze into the bungalow. Muhammad was going crazy. Israel was a bona fide intruder.
'Aye, right, you go on ahead, son,' said Ted, pushing Israel back out the door, with little effort. 'Because I'm not going. You.' Shove. 'Can.' Shove. 'Go.' Shove. 'Yerself.'
Israel was back out on the doorstep.
'I can't go myself, Ted,' said Israel, furious, pushing back against the door with his shoulder.
'Don't you lean against my flippin' door!' said Ted. 'You'll scratch the paintwork!'
Muhammad was barking himself demented behind Ted's legs.
'Ted. I need you to come with me,' said Israel, sighing, giving up on force and trying calm, quiet negotiation instead.
'Why?'
'Because. I can't drive the van all that way, without some…It needs two of us. We're like…Butch Cassidy and the—'
'Ach, Israel, wise up.'
'Wise up' was probably Ted's second favourite phrase, after 'Ach', though 'Catch yerself on', 'Ye eejit', and 'What are ye, stupit?' were also extremely popular.
'No, you wise up, Ted, for a change,' said Israel, the words, coming from his own lips, making him feel rather strange, as though suddenly inhabited by another nation and language, an alien within him bursting from his chest. 'We owe this to the people of Tumdrum, to—'
'Ach, Israel, ye want to have to listen to yerself. You're an absolute sickener, d'ye know that? You're as bad as the rest of them.'
