The Delegates’ Choice. Ian Sansom

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       4

      He was packing! Israel Armstrong was packing up and getting ready to go. He had his case out from under the bed, and his little portable radio turned up loud, and he was listening to BBC Radio Ulster, the local station; he’d gone over some time ago, had switched from Radio 4, had made the move away from the national and the international, from big news stories about Bush and Blair and the plight of the Middle East and worldwide pandemics and whither the UN Security Council, to local news stories about men beating each other with baseball bats in local bars and pubs, and road closures due to mains-laying down in Cullybackey, and good news about the meat-processing plant in Ballymena taking on ten new workers due to expanding European markets and increased orders from Poland for pork. He knew it was a bad sign, but he couldn’t help himself; he had grown accustomed to the rhythms and the pitch of local radio, to the shouty-voiced shock-jock first thing in the morning, and the faded country music star at lunchtime who played only Irish country and read out requests for the foot-tappin’ welders in Lurgan and all the lovely nurses on the cancer wards down there at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and the mid-morning bloke from Derry who specialised in trading daring double-entendres with his adoring female callers.

      Somehow—and how he wished it were not so—Israel could now recognise a tune by Daniel O’Donnell from far distant, and the supersweet sound of Philomena Begley and her band, and he also knew the time the Ulster Bank closed on a Wednesday (three thirty, for staff training), and the times of the high tides (varied according to season), and the best grocer to go to for your soup vegetables (Hector’s) and which one for eggs (Conways). This was not what was supposed to happen. Israel had imagined himself, heading into his late twenties, being able to recommend fine restaurants in Manhattan to his friends, many of whom probably worked for the New Yorker magazine, or who were up-and-coming artists with a gallery representing them, and he could have told you what time to go to MOMA and what was happening at the Whitney Museum. Instead, somehow, Israel had ended up knowing what night the Methodists had their ladies’ indoor bowling practice (Tuesday) and the Post Office opening hours (Mon-Fri, 9.00 a.m.-1.00 p.m., 2.00 p.m.-5.00 p.m.; early closing Wed, 3.30 p.m.; Sat, 10.00 a.m.-1.00 p.m.).

      He turned up the radio louder to drown out the ennui and focused on his packing.

      Brownie was back for the summer break from univer-sity over in England, so the Devines had moved Israel out of Brownie’s room, where he’d been staying, and out of the house and back into the chicken coop in the yard, where he’d first started out when he arrived in Tumdrum. Israel didn’t mind, actually, being back in the coop. It was good to get a little breathing space, and to be able to put a bit of distance between himself and George Devine—his landlady with the man’s name—and the perpetually Scripture-quoting senior Mr Devine, George and Brownie’s grandfather, and he’d done his best with the coop; had put in quite a bit of work doing the place up over the past few weeks. He had a desk in there now, along with the bed, and the Baby Belling and the old sink battened to the wall, and it was a nice desk he’d picked up from the auction down in Rathkeltair (Tippings Auctions, every Thursday, six till ten, in one of the new industrial units out there on the ring road, hundreds and hundreds of people in attendance every week, from as far afield as County Down and Derry, drinking scalding-hot tea and eating fast-fried burgers from Big Benny McAuley’s Premier Meats and Snacks van, and bidding like crazy for other people’s discarded household items and rubbish, and rusty tools, and amateur watercolours, and telephone seats and tubular bunk beds, and pot-plant stands, and novelty cruet sets, and golf clubs, and boxes overflowing with damp paperback books; Israel loved Tippings; it was like a Middle Eastern bazaar, except without the spices and the ethnic jewellery, and with more men wearing greasy flat caps buying sets of commemorative RUC cap badges). Lovely little roll-top desk it was, although the top didn’t actually roll, and a couple of the drawers were jammed shut, and Israel had had to patch up the top with some hardboard; but it did the job.

      He also had a table lamp, which had first graced a home some time in the 1970s, by the look of it, СКАЧАТЬ