The Bad Book Affair. Ian Sansom

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       4

      They waved goodbye to Pearce playing his viola outside and pushed into the crowds. Even by the usual packed standards of Zelda’s on a Friday morning, Zelda’s was packed: you couldn’t move for the thick fug of car coats, steamed milk and potpourri.

      ‘Oh God. What the hell’s happening in here?’ said Israel.

      ‘Busy,’ agreed Ted.

      Zelda’s 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 СКАЧАТЬ