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‘Emerson and Thoreau.’
‘Yeah. Right. Tea?’ she’d say.
And, ‘OK, yeah,’ he’d say, defeated, and that would be that.
He liked the way Rosie drank her tea and coffee. He liked her broad swimmer’s shoulders, and her hippyish kind of dresses. He liked the way she tucked her thick dark hair behind her ears, and the way sometimes when he arrived for her in the van she still had the towel around her head where she’d washed her hair, and she’d come anyway, drying her hair as they went. He liked the way they’d be sitting in the van and waiting for a borrower, and they’d just talk and time would pass. And he liked…Well, he liked her a lot.
Not that there was anything between them. There was absolutely nothing between Israel and Rosie. It was important to make that clear. Rosie had an ex, the father of her son, Conor, and Israel had Gloria – who was coming over to stay next weekend, coming all the way over, finally, finding time in her busy schedule.
Israel and Rosie were just good friends.
He glanced at his watch, pulled on a T-shirt and his old tank-top, which he noticed was becoming a little ruched around the waist – it needed a wash – and as he shrugged on his duffle coat and did up his old brown brogues he had to admit maybe it wasn’t such a bad life.
He was paid to drive around beautiful, rural, coastal Irish countryside, with a van full of books and pleasant female company. Maybe life as an English, Jewish vegetarian, corduroy-wearing mobile librarian on the north coast of the north of Northern Ireland wasn’t so bad after all.
Look at yourself, Armstrong, he told himself, with a last glance in the mirror: you have nothing to complain about. Really, you don’t.
And he didn’t.
Until, that is, the disappearance of Mr Dixon from the Department Store at the End of the World.
It started with an argument. It was too early for an argument, far, far too early.
‘What d’ye think yer doin’?’
‘Sorry?’ It caught Israel off-guard.
‘Ye deaf, or what?’
‘No,’ said Israel. ‘No. I am not deaf.’
‘Well then.’
‘Sorry?’
Israel had the window wound down, and was staring the man full in the face, and the man did not look happy. Indeed, Israel guessed the man might never look happy; he had a profoundly unhappy kind of a look about him: it was the shaven head and the pierced eyebrow and the nicotine lips and the cigarette tucked behind his ear, and the Manchester United football shirt pulled tight over a hard-looking, family-haggis-sized pot-belly, and the dark, cynical look in his eyes. He looked like a man who woke up angry and went to bed incandescent.
‘Look, you’ve totally lost me I’m afraid,’ said Israel.
‘What. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Doing?’
‘I’m parking, which is not that easy, actually, without power steering and—’
‘Aye, all right, well, you can’t park there.’
Israel had pulled up the mobile library next to a large silver Mercedes.
‘Sorry, I—’
‘Ye blind?’
‘No. I am not blind. And I am not deaf, I—’
‘Can ye not raid then?’
‘Sorry. I didn’t catch that. Can I…’
‘Can ye raid?’
‘Raid?’
‘Aye, raid.’
‘Read?’
‘Aye.’
‘Read? Ah, read. Yes. Thank you. I can read, actually. In fact, as you’ll see, I’m driving the—’
‘Aye, right. So you’ll see that’s a reserved space. See, says here “RESERVED”.’
‘I just thought—’
‘Aye, well, you thought wrong.’
‘Couldn’t I just park here until—’
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘These spaces are reserved.’
‘Yes, but it’s only—’
‘I just said no. What’s the matter with ye? D’ye think I’m joking?’
The man had little flecks of spit – the real thing, real threat-phlegm, the stuff of demented dogs and monkeys – around his mouth, Israel noticed.
‘No. No. I don’t, actually. I don’t think you’re—’
‘Aye, right. Well. Move yerself on in this piece of crap.’ He pronounced crap as though with a double k.
‘But—’
‘Move. Her. On.’
‘OK. Fine. Sorry. Look.’ Israel stuck his hand out of the window in a rather feeble, placatory, let’s-shake-hands-and-make-up kind of a gesture. ‘I feel we’ve maybe got off on the wrong foot here. I’m Israel Armstrong.’
The man ignored his hand. ‘I know who you are. You were meant to be here half an hour ago.’
‘Ah, yes, few problems with the mobile on the way over. You must be the caretaker—’
‘Round the back.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Round. The. Back. You. Can. Parkee. Upee. Round. The. Back. Do. You. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aye, right. Good. I’ll go open her up for you.’
Oh, God.
Israel was getting a headache. He didn’t always have a headache these days – just every other day. Because, honestly, he was getting used to life around Tumdrum, he really was. Like a prisoner eventually becomes accustomed to his captors, and adults as they get older eventually have to learn to live with some slight stiffness and joint pain in the morning and a sense of perhaps having lost their way a little on the road towards manifest destiny.
‘Move!’
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