The Delegates’ Choice

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Quarterinch.’

Israel, scanning the shelves: ‘OK. Erm. I don’t know, Carol Shields, have you read any of her? She’s very popular.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘How thick’s she?’

Israel: ‘Erm.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (taking book from Israel): ‘She’ll do rightly.’

Israel: ‘Do you have a ticket with you?’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘No. I’ve not a ticket. The wife does, but.’

Israel: ‘I’d need to see the ticket really. I could always hold it over for you.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain (glancing outside): ‘Ach, no. I’ll not bother. We’ve family over at the weekend. I thought it might be the thing for to fix the table—there’s a wee wobble where we had the floor tiled.’

Israel: ‘Right.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘I’ll get an offcut a wood, sure. It’s only because you were insisting that I was askin’.’

Israel: ‘OK, right.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain: ‘Rain’s off.’

Israel: ‘Good.’

Old Man in Baseball Cap, Dripping with Rain exits.

Israel: ‘Sorry we couldn’t be of more help!’

‘Sure, there was no harm in him,’ said Ted.

‘No!’ said Israel. ‘No! You’re right. There may have been no harm in him, but he did harm to me! To my mental health! I am a highly trained professional.’

Ted coughed.

‘I am though,’ continued Israel. ‘We are. And we should be treated with respect.’

Israel had imagined that a librarian in a small town might be regarded as a kind of cultural ambassador, an adept, like a country priest guiding his grateful parishioners into the mysteries of the holy realms of the book. In fact most library users in and around Tumdrum and District seemed to regard a librarian as nothing more than a glorified shop assistant, and the mobile library as a kind of large motorised shopping trolley. There were only so many small errands that Israel could perform in a day without beginning to feel like a grocer’s assistant, and there was only so much sugar, tea, biscuits, potatoes, newspapers, betting slips and hand-rolling tobacco that the mobile library could carry before they would have to start abandoning the books altogether and go over entirely to carrying dry goods and comestibles. If they ripped out the issues desk and put in a deli counter and got a licence for selling drink, Israel and Ted could probably have made a fortune: your breaded ham, a bottle of Bushmills, and the latest Oprah or Richard and Judy Book Club Recommends, available together at last from a veritable touring one-stop shop; they’d be babillionaires by Christmas.

‘You’re getting carried away now,’ said Ted.

‘I am not getting carried away!’ said Israel.

Israel glanced around the café at all the old familiar faces. ‘Look!’ he said

‘What?’ said Ted.

‘Sshh! Behind you!’ said Israel.

‘What?’ said Ted, turning round.

‘No! Don’t turn around!’

‘Why?’

‘It’s her.’

‘Who?’

‘Mrs Onions.’

‘Aye,’ said Ted. ‘What’s wrong with her, sure?’

‘Oh, God, Ted. She’s another one.’

‘Another one of what?’

‘Another one who’s cracking me up!’

That was the third stop.

Mrs Onions: ‘D’ye have any books with those sort of suedey covers?’

Israel: ‘Erm. No, no, I’m afraid not. We’re right out of the…suede-covered books at the moment, I think.’

Mrs Onions: ‘You’ve plenty of other sorts of books.’

Israel: ‘Yes. We do. That’s true.’

Mrs Onions: ‘I could take one of those. But I like the old suede covers, ye see. My granny used to have one, when she lived on the farm down in the Mournes. The butter, honestly, beautiful it was.’

Israel: ‘Uh-huh.’

Mrs Onions: ‘Will ye be getting any in?’

Israel: ‘It’s possible, yes, that we will be getting in some suede-covered books in the future. I could certainly—’

Mrs Onions: ‘Ach, I’ll not bother for the moment. I’ve shopping to get here.’

Israel: ‘Good. Well, it’s lovely to…’

And there was more! Much, much more, every day: the man who’d come in and take out any books that he deemed were unChristian, and then claim that he’d lost them; the woman who used Sellotape as a bookmark; the creepy man with the moustache who was continually ordering gynaecology textbooks on inter-library loan. It was too much. Israel still found it hard to believe that he’d ended up here in the first place, and the longer he stayed the less he believed it, the more he felt like merely a vestigial presence in his own life, a kind of living, breathing Chagall, floating just above and outside the world, staring down at himself as librarian, as though this weren’t really him at all, not really his life, as if he were merely observing Tumdrum’s nether-world of inanities and bizarre and meaningless human exchanges. The longer he stayed in Tumdrum the more he could feel himself slowly withdrawing from the human world, becoming a mere onlooker, a monitor of human absurdities.

He took another bite of his scone.

‘I feel like a Chagall,’ he said.