The Bad Book Affair

‘Up! Come on, let’s go.’

‘Leave me alone!’ said Israel.

‘That I shall not,’ said Ted. ‘Ye might be able to run rings round the others, but you can’t fool me.’

‘I’m not trying to fool anybody.’

‘“We were all a bit worried about him”,’ Ted said, mimicking George.

‘There’s no need to be worried about me, thank you,’ said Israel.

‘Good. Up and out yer stinking pit, then. Lyin’ in bed like a cripple—’

‘We don’t say “cripple” these days, Ted.’

‘Aye. Lying in like a woman—’

‘You can’t say—’

‘No wonder ye don’t know what end of you’s uppermost.’

‘What?’

‘Come on. Up and out, ye bedfast.’

‘Ted. Sorry. No. I’m staying here.’

‘Ye’re due in work, boy. Come on.’

‘Ted. Look. I really can’t be bothered.’

‘Can’t be bothered?’

‘No.’

‘Can’t be bothered to work?’ said Ted, incredulous.

‘That’s right.’

‘If a man work not, then how shall he eat?’

‘Yeah, all right, spare me the lecture,’ said Israel.

‘That’s not a lecture, ye fool, that’s the Bible. Now come on. Get yerself up and let’s go.’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Ted.’

‘If you act like a child, then I’ll talk to ye like a child.’

‘Well, I would appreciate it if you could just moderate your language and talk to me in a calm and rational fashion.’

‘Calm and rational?’ said Ted. ‘Calm and rational? What do you want me to say? “Please come back, Israel. We all miss you on the mobile library”?’

‘Well, that might—’ began Israel.

‘Of course we don’t miss ye on the mobile library. Ye blinkin’ eejit. Ye’ve got a job to do. And you’re expected to do it, like anyone else. And don’t expect me to be covering for ye, because I’m not. Linda Wei’ll hear about this before ye know it, and ye’ll be out on yer ear.’

‘So?’ said Israel.

‘So? I’ll tell ye what’s so. I’m stepping outside here for a smoke and ye’ve got five minutes to get out of yer stinking bed before I lose my temper.’

Ted walked outside.

And Israel readjusted himself on the bed, pulling the quilt back up around him, plucking David Lean’s Great Expectations out from under the covers—he’d wondered where that had got to. He’d joined an online DVD postal delivery service, which was very good—unlimited DVDs, no late fee, £12 per month, delivered to the door of the farm—and he’d been steadily working his way through the British Film Institute’s Top 100 films. The Third Man, Brief Encounter, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Kes, The Red Shoes. Often he’d fall asleep in the coop to black-and-white images and then wake up in the morning to the sound of the shipping forecast on the World Service. Alfred Hitchcock, Dirk Bogarde, ‘And now the shipping forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 0520 today. There are warnings of gales in Rockall, Malin, Hebrides. The General Synopsis: low, Rockall, 987, deepening rapidly, expected Fair Isle 964 by 0700 tomorrow.’

Sometimes he didn’t know where he was. Or what year it was. It was like he’d come adrift in his life.

He thought maybe he’d try ringing Gloria on his mobile again. He’d only rung a couple of times so far today. She hadn’t answered the phone to him since he’d arrived back in Tumdrum.

Straight to voicemail.

He’d try again later.

He picked up Infinite Jest again. Laid it back down. Started flicking through a month-old Guardian.

He scanned the job ads. He was seriously thinking about retraining. Administration. There were always jobs in administration. Israel knew he would make a great administrator. He just needed the right thing to administrate. How difficult could it be, being an administrator? ‘Israel Armstrong is The Administrator.’ He could see it, in his mind’s eye. ‘When the going gets tough there are men who know how to take charge. Men who know how to make things happen. Men who know how to administrate.’ He had many times cast the film adaptation of the book of his life—he imagined John Cusack playing him, or someone younger, maybe Owen Wilson, he would be fine, he had an intelligent face, and Harvey Keitel as Ted, maybe, and a nice little cameo for Steve Buscemi, although obviously he’d have to beef up a bit, and Salma Hayek would be perfect as Gloria.

The trouble was, though, he wasn’t in the film of the book of his life. He was in his life, in which he had split with his long-time girlfriend Gloria, was living in a converted chicken coop, and was paid exactly £15,000 a year as a mobile librarian on the northernmost coast of the north of the north of Northern Ireland. And he was nearly thirty. He had somehow become a shadow of himself, as though he were somewhere else and this thing—this body—was having experiences on his behalf. It was as if his own life had become a series of ancient lantern-slides, or an old video, or a shaky cine-show, or a snippet on YouTube, or a cinema trailer for a blockbusting main feature called Failure. He had no idea what he was doing here, or what the point was, or how he was feeling. All he knew was that sometimes, in the chicken coop, he’d wake in the night sobbing and sobbing, his chest heaving, and there were these black beetles all over the floor, and when he switched on the light the beetles froze, as if they were holding their breath, waiting for something, their own destruction, or salvation, possibly, or the dark again, and that’s exactly what he felt like…

‘Time up!’ said Ted, bashing back through the door. ‘Not ready?’

‘Look, Ted, I’m really not feeling the best this morning. Can we maybe reschedule?’

‘Reschedule?’

‘Yeah, look—’

‘Reschedule?’

‘Yeah. Just, if you could give me a couple of days maybe and I’ll get back to you.’

‘Ye’ll get back to me?’

‘Yeah. I just need a little time to take stock and—’

‘Take stock!?’

‘Yes.’