The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery

by Ian Sansom

  “Yes, you do that. Anyway,” said the Reverend Roberts, “as is traditional with schisms, there was a…man in the congregation—and it’s always a man, Israel, I’m afraid—I know of no great female schismatics—”

  “Too sensible?” said Israel.

  “Well, frankly, why would they bother?” said the Reverend Roberts. “Anyway, this man decided that Tumdrum First Presbyterian was not going in the direction that God intended.”

  “Right. And how did he know?”

  “Good question,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Some kind of hotline to Jesus? I don’t know. They all have them.”

  “Who?”

  “Schismatics. Religious fanatics. Fundamentalists. The Good Lord forgot to give me his direct line, alas. We seem to be disconnected.”

  “The number you have dialed has not been recognized,” said Israel.

  “Ha!” boomed the Reverend Roberts. “Exactly! But anyway, however he knew the Lord’s intentions, our schismatic, he decided to split off from the church.”

  “How do you mean, split off?” said Israel.

  “He went and set up his own church.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “Of course,” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “You don’t need permission?”

  “No more than you need permission to set up your own hairdressing salon or a sandwich shop.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, obviously he doesn’t benefit from the support of the Presbyterian church,” explained the Reverend Roberts, “or have access to any of its resources, but if someone thinks they can survive as a minister and they can draw a congregation, then they’re perfectly entitled to set up whatever church they see fit.”

  “Like Jesus?” said Israel.

  “Yes,” said the reverend, sounding unconvinced. “Although you have to remember that Jesus had the obvious advantage of being the Son of God.”

  “Arguably,” said Israel.

  “Arguably indeed,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Many people who set up their own churches do seem to fancy themselves rather as the Messiah.”

  “Right,” said Israel. “So…What was it the schismatic didn’t like about your church?”

  The Reverend Roberts looked uncomfortable. He fiddled with his coffee cup.

  “Well, I should point out first of all, it’s not my church as such, Israel: the church is of course the people, the body of believers—”

  “Like a synagogue.”

  “Well, no,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Not exactly. A synagogue is a beit tefilah.”

  “Yeah. Right. Which means?”

  “House of prayer?” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “You know Hebrew?” said Israel.

  “A little,” he said.

  “That’s more than I know,” said Israel.

  “I’m a Christian minister,” said the Reverend Roberts. “I also know Greek.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s part of the job. Anyway, a synagogue is also a beit knesset—a gathering place. And a beit midrash. House of study. The church, on the other hand, is ekklesia—”

  “Could you spell—”

  “It’s probably not relevant, actually, Israel, to your investigation. I’m just showing off here, really.”

  “Ah, right. Yes. So. The man who didn’t agree with the rest of the body of believers?”

  “Our schismatic, yes. He believed that there had been what’s called a ‘charismatic awakening’ in the church.”

  “A what?” said Israel.

  “A pouring out of the gifts of the spirit?” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Right.”

  “Never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “The charismata? The nine gifts of the spirit?”

  “No. Sorry,” said Israel. “No idea what you’re talking about. You’ve got me there.”

  “Words of wisdom?” said the Reverend Roberts, hopelessly. Israel shook his head. “Words of knowledge? Faith? Healing? Miracles? Prophecy?” He was drawing a total blank. “Anyway. Discernment of spirits. Speaking in tongues. Interpretation of tongues. It’s 1 Corinthians 12.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Israel. “That’s another one I’ll maybe need to—”

  “Yes. Take a note. Look it up,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Yes. It’s basically…spiritual manifestations.”

  “What, like in a Pentecostal church?” said Israel.

  “Kind of.”

  “Wow.” Israel was genuinely impressed. “And what, all these things were happening in your church?”

  “Not exactly,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Mr. Burns—”

  “The schismatic?”

  “Him. Yes. Mr. Burns claimed that these so-called gifts were happening among himself and a few friends, and that I was ‘stifling’—I’m quoting here—stifling their expression.”

  “Oh.”

  “More coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine,” said Israel. “So he upped and left?”

  “Upped and left,” agreed the Reverend Roberts. “That about covers it.”

  The two men stared outside for a moment at the black nothingness of the Reverend Roberts’s back garden.

  “It was my own fault, in a sense,” said the Reverend Roberts, sighing deeply. “I should have seen it coming.”

  “The schism?”

  “Yes. I made the mistake of letting the young people’s group start to incorporate worship dance and flag waving into some of the evening services.”

  “Sorry?” said Israel. “Did you say ‘flag waving’?”

  “Yes. It’s often the first step.”

  “What is?”

  “Flag waving,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Sadly.”

  “Flag waving?”

  “Flag waving, yes. Yes. It’s to do with David and the linen ephod.”

  “The linen what-odd?”

  “2 Samuel. Look it up.” The Reverend Roberts waved his hands dismissively. “Anyway, it could be anything, to be honest; it’s just a fashion thing, really. It just so happens that this time around it’s flag waving.”

  “The waving of flags?”

  “Precisely.”

  “In the church?”

  “Yes. Big banners, really, and sort of…bunting. People dancing with them. A bit like Jewish folk dance.”

  “Right. Sounds…unusual.”

  “Oh no. Not at all. It’s become a standard part of the renewal movement within the church. I don’t know exactly why. I suppose people want to express themselves creatively. Praise props, I call them, the flags.”

  “I’m sure that goes down well.”

  “Yes, you can imagine. Anyway, so Mr. Burns and the charismatic group within the church exerted a big influence over the young people, and so they broke away and…set up on their own.”

  “And Lyndsay Morris is one of them?”

  “As far as I’m aware, yes.”

  “She’s part of this whole charismatic thing?”

  “So I believe. She had been a regular attender, but she hasn’t been for a long time now.”

  “She’s really into it though, is she? I mean, she’s a Christian and everything?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say, Israel. We all stand before our God naked and alone. As it were.”

  “But I thought she was a Goth?” said Israel.

  “The two things are not mutually exclusive.”

  “Really? I sort of thought Goths were a devil-worshipping sort of…people.”

  “Ha!” The Reverend Roberts laughed. “It’s more a fashion thing, isn’t it? And who are we to judge fashions? God created us in his likeness, not in your or my image. Genesis 1.”

  “Right,” agreed Israel, with a faraway sound in his voice.

  “Anyway,” said the Reverend Roberts. “That’s the story of our schism, for what it’s worth.”

  Israel slurped the remains of his coffee and glanced at his unreadable scribbled notes.

  “Well,
that’s very helpful, thank you.”

  “Is it?” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “Good. Well, glad to be of help.”

  “Erm. Where do they meet, the charismatic people?”

  “They have various meetings. The church is called Kerugma.”

  “Kerugma?”

  “Yes,” said the Reverend Roberts disdainfully. “From the Greek. Meaning ‘proclamation’ or ‘proclaimer.’”

  “Right.”

  “The young people attend a group called the Retreat at the community halls. That’s tonight, actually.” The Reverend Roberts glanced at his watch. “Starts in half an hour.”

  “Ah. Right. Well, maybe I should…

  “Check it out?”

  “Exactly.” Israel got up to leave. “And anyway, I should let you get back to doing your sermon—”

  “Bloody sermon,” said the Reverend Roberts, glancing at the accusatory commentaries on the table. “But just hold on a minute.” He put a heavy hand on Israel’s shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been here sitting, listening to me talk about my troubles—”

  “Which was very helpful,” said Israel, brandishing his sheet of A4. “For my investigation.”

  “That may be,” said the Reverend Roberts. “But tell me, how the devil are you?”

  “I’m fine,” said Israel.

  “I was worried about you the other evening,” said the Reverend Roberts, leaning back.

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  “You didn’t seem fine, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Well, it was the…shock, I suppose, of Pearce, and…Anyway, I’m fine now.”

  “Are you sure? I know that grief can be a terrible shock.”

  “Yes. Well. I went to see the doctor, actually.”

  “You did?” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Yeah. He gave me a prescription for some SSRIs.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. They’re tablets. Like Prozac, apparently.”

  “Yes. I know. Not personally. Pastorally, if you like. And you’re going to give them a go?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” said Israel. “I haven’t picked up the prescription yet, but I think it might make a difference…”

  “With what?”

  “Well. Just…everything, I suppose. You know, that sort of feeling…”

  “I’m not sure I do know exactly which feeling you’re talking about, actually,” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “That sort of feeling of not…I don’t know. Failure, I suppose.”

  “Failure?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  “I feel like I’m a failure.”

  “Oh. But doesn’t that rather depend on your definition of success, Israel?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose.”

  “So what’s success?”

  “I don’t know. Someone who succeeds at what they’re doing. A businessman or J. K. Rowling or—”

  “It’s just money and fame, then, is it?”

  “No,” said Israel.

  “So you can have a successful social worker or a window cleaner or a bus driver?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And what would make them a success?”

  “Doing their job well, I suppose. Enjoying it. Making a contribution.”

  “And what is there to stop you doing that in your job?”

  “I don’t know. I just…It doesn’t feel right. I just feel I don’t fit in, I suppose.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I just feel…The milieu here, the—”

  “The milieu?” The Reverend Roberts laughed again. “The milieu!”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, Israel, maybe you don’t fit in here. Milieu!” He slapped his thighs with mirth.

  “What’s wrong with ‘milieu’?” said Israel.

  “Israel! Nobody says ‘milieu,’” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Well, I do,” said Israel.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said the Reverend Roberts, chuckling. “Seriously. Where do you think you would find your milieu, Israel? Where would you thrive?”

  “I don’t know.” Israel thought for a moment. “Vienna in the 1920s? Or Paris. Les Deux Magots?”

  “Ah, yes, the old café cultures,” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Conversation and intellectual stimulation,” said Israel.

  “There’s always Zelda’s,” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “It’s hardly the same.”

  “No. But there are cafés down in Belfast now. They’re everywhere. Starbucks.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I know, I know. I’m joking.”

  “It doesn’t seem that funny, being stuck here,” said Israel.

  “I know what you mean,” said the Reverend Roberts. “We are rather on the edge of things, I suppose.”

  “Exactly.”

  “In a funny way that’s what makes it attractive, though, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Feeling isolated, removed, yearning to connect to the center? Being here, it’s a kind of metaphor, really, isn’t it?”

  “A metaphor for?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Our need for redemption? That desire to resolve that sense of alienation from ourselves that I think we all have, and that derives from our recognition and knowledge of our own destructive impulses?”

  “Erm…”

  “I think living here excites in me that same feeling that religion or art or music or literature raises and simultaneously answers in us, and yet not completely answers…Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do,” said Israel. “Although I never thought of Tumdrum as a metaphor, I must admit.”

  “Well, maybe you should,” said the Reverend Roberts. “It might help answer some of your sense of—”

  “Having sort of lost the thread a bit,” said Israel.

  “Yes,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Yes. And do you think drugs are going to help you pick up the thread and make you feel like a success?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I just…feel like…I’m not…at home. I don’t seem to have found what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

  “Well, I think we can all identify with that feeling!” said the Reverend Roberts, with a sigh. “Ardens sed virens.”

  “Sorry?”

  “‘Burning yet flourishing,’” said the Reverend Roberts. “It’s the motto of the Presbyterian Church.”

  “Right,” said Israel. “It’s different for you, though, isn’t it? You have a calling, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t often feel like it,” said the Reverend Roberts.

  “Really? But you’re like the preacher to Kierkegaard’s ducks, aren’t you? The man up the front, telling people they can fly?”

  “Mmm. You know, Israel, usually, to be absolutely honest, I feel like one of the duck congregation myself.”

  “Oh.”

  The two men gazed again outside at the blankness beyond the kitchen windows.

  “I think we’re all destined to live our lives in darkness, don’t you, Israel?”

  Israel coughed nervously.

  “The Bible promises us that God will divide light from obscurity, yes. But not necessarily in our lifetimes, I think. It’s amazing to me, actually, that more people don’t…”

  Israel huffed. The reverend sighed.

  “But! Enough of this sort of talk,” said the reverend. “Come on! Onward! I’ve got a sermon to write, and you’ve got a young woman to try to find. Let’s not indulge ourselves.”

  “Right enough,” said Israel, standing up again.

  “If you need any help, let me know,” said the Reverend Roberts, reaching for a commentary.

  “Likewise,” said Israel, shaking the reverend’s hand.

  “I appreciate that,
” said the Reverend Roberts. “Thank you.” And “Now,” he continued, to himself as Israel let himself out, “Prevenient Grace: where to begin?”

  20

  The Retreat, as the Reverend Roberts suggested, was indeed held in Tumdrum’s community halls, a bizarre, dilapidated warren of buildings just off the town’s main square. The halls had metastasized over the years from their original simple 1930s wooden incarnation into a horribly deformed redbrick and concrete monstrosity that sprawled lazily and decrepitly across a large area surrounded by brown weeds and broken paving stones. But of course, like a church, the community halls were more than a mere building; you couldn’t really judge Tumdrum Community Halls on the basis of their looks alone. Which was fortunate, because they really were quite horrid.

  A big, bright luminescent sign had been erected outside the halls saying The Retreat, with another sign in luminescent orange saying FREE TRIP TO HEAVEN DETAILS INSIDE! alongside it, and there was a loud, forceful, jolly man with a clipboard at the door, the sort of man who in middle age was somehow both fully mature and yet still fully a child, his plump neck and receding hair the perfect complement to his hilarious Hawaiian shirt and character Buddy Holly–style glasses. He was directing young people to different rooms in the halls, with an air of grand and efficient theatricality, as though he were a stage manager and the halls were the backstage dressing rooms for a large and important show. Israel was surprised: at eight o’clock on a Friday night there were crowds jostling to get in. The range of weekend and nighttime recreational activities for young people in Tumdrum was neither alluring nor extensive: the bright lights of Rathkeltair tended to draw the over-eighteens for dancing and drinking, which left the town to the younger teens to do what they wished, and what they wished was what other teens wished on Friday nights in small towns all around the world, which was to hang around on street corners, smoking, drinking, and shouting at one another and at passersby. But when they got bored or cold or they wanted someone new to annoy or to intimidate, or they just had the urge to play table tennis or pool on slightly broken-down pool and table-tennis tables, the Retreat was there for them.

  “OK,” the clipboard man was saying to the crowds of people pushing through the doors, manically high-fiving whoever he could as they passed. “Good to see you! Good to see you! Hi! Hi! Hi! High-five! OK, people,” he yelled, “you know the score. It’s table tennis through to the left, sock hockey in the main hall, refreshments in the dining room, prayer room next to the toilets.” He caught his breath and then yelled over the heads of the crowd to address a gang of even-more-disenfranchised-than-most Tumdrum young people standing across the other side of the street who were shouting the traditional abuse at those going into the club. “Hey! Hey! Come on over,” he said, waving them across. “Come in. Come on. You might like it! Table tennis! Pool! Sock hockey. Come on! Check it out!”