The Bad Book Affair

14

That evening Israel stood in the queue at the Venice Fish Bar, his vegetarian lasagna lying heavily in his stomach. The rain had kept on all afternoon: it was turning into one of those classic Tumdrum long, damp days. Fortunately, the Riesling kept him warm.

It was a long queue but a small shop, and as he waited outside in the rain, his duffle coat hood pulled up tight around him, Israel looked in through the window. Even from outside you could tell that it wasn’t exactly what you’d call spotless. The tiled floor was cracked in places, and the brown-spotted pale yellow walls looked as though they might have once been white, and there was an old TV mounted on a shelf up high in the corner, the volume turned up so loud that you could hear it outside, even in the rain; it was a repeat of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Israel stood staring blankly as Sarah Michelle Gellar raced around, skimpily, warding off evil. He only wished he was Anthony Head as Giles the Watcher. Buffy was probably one of the things that had made him want to become a librarian in the first place. That, and the fact that he was a mournful, withdrawn, unhappy individual who preferred books to people.

Through the window he studied blurrily the big plastic signboard above the counter. The Venice Fish Bar was the kind of fish and chip shop where fish and chips were just the beginning, the prelude to a big concerto grosso of battered fish and fast foods. As well as fish and chips it did burgers, pizzas, kebabs, and curries. Basically, if it was bad for you, the Venice Fish Bar did it: if you could batter crack cocaine, or just deep-fry salt and sell it, then the Venice Fish Bar would have done it. This was not Off Main Street.

He watched the women inside, serving. They wore red baseball caps and red polo shirts, and they were all pale white, discolored by the exposure to spitting fat, and they looked bored almost to the point of self-destruction, as though they had become their baseball caps and red polo shirts, mere chip shop automatons, like machines assembling food, moving slowly from the counter to the cash register, and from the deep fat fryers to the griddles. It was not a happy sight. Israel felt depressed just watching it.

He made it in through the door as a couple were making their way out.

“Smell that,” said the man, opening up a grease-stained brown bag with an incongruous image of a gondola crudely printed on it, the grease seeping through like flood water. The woman with him obediently sniffed the contents.

“Mmm,” she said.

“Beautiful that is,” said the man. “Hawaiian burger.”

The fumes were like those from a particularly fruity air freshener, like a meat-based fruity air freshener. Fructified manure. Israel quietly gagged, huffed, puffed out his cheeks, and queasily waited his turn.

Finally, there was just one more person in the queue in front of him, a woman with hair so shiny and so straight it had the appearance of man-made fibers. She ordered a cod supper and a Coke.

“No Coke, only Pepsi,” said the baseball cap behind the counter. But the straight-haired woman was wearing headphones, so she couldn’t hear.

“No Coke, only Pepsi,” repeated the baseball cap.

Israel tapped the straight-haired woman in front of him on the shoulder, and she turned round, her hair swaying, her face stony. A face that may have been eighteen. Or may have been thirty. A fast-food-preserved face; a face that had temporarily postponed the consequences.

“What?” she said.

Israel motioned for her to remove her earphones.

“Sorry,” he said, pointing to the woman behind the counter. “Just, the lady was saying there’s no Coke, only Pepsi.”

“Pepsi’ll do,” said the straight-haired woman, putting her earphones back in and turning her back on Israel.

When the woman handed over the Pepsi it was a liter bottle. The woman staggered out.

Just to his right a man and a woman sat in a booth with their daughter, who was perhaps four or five years old. She was lying down on the wooden bench.

“Get up,” said the man. The girl got up quickly and proceeded to nibble at the plastic clamshell of chicken nuggets set before her.

“Can I eat it on the way home, Mummy?”

“No,” said the man.

“Your daddy says no,” said the woman. “Eat it now.”

“But, Mummy, I want to save it for home.”

“No. Your daddy says you can’t. Eat it now.”

“Daddy…”

“Shut up and eat it or you’ll get a slap round the head,” said the man.

Israel concentrated again on the menu board.

“Who’s next?” said the baseball-becapped young woman behind the counter.

“Oh, I think I am. Erm,” said Israel.

He gazed up.

“Yes?”

“Erm…”

“Yes?”

“Just a portion of chips, er, please,” said Israel.

“Regular or large?”

“Regular, please.”

“That all?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“That’s one pound seventy, please,” she said.

Israel handed over the money.

The young woman walked over to a brightly lit metal container full of chips and with one hand scooped a metal shovelful into one of the plastic clamshell containers. And then she walked back and handed over the chips.

“Thank you,” said Israel.

“Who’s next?” said the woman.

A man behind Israel started jostling to get past him. But Israel stood his ground at the counter, spreading his arms slightly to prevent the man coming forward.

“Erm. Actually, I wanted to ask you about Lyndsay Morris?” he said.

The young girl looked at him.

“Are you the police?”

“No, I’m not the police.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“No, I’m not a journalist.”

“Who are you, then?”

“You done?” said the man in the queue behind Israel.

“Yes,” said Israel, turning round. “Just one moment, please. I just really need to speak to someone about Lyndsay.”

“There’s people queuing here,” said the man behind Israel.

“Please,” said Israel to the girl behind the counter.

“Ask Katrina,” said the girl.

“Right. Thanks,” said Israel.

“Oi,” said the man. “It’s not a talking shop, it’s a fish and chip shop. Come on.”

“And where would I find Katrina?” persisted Israel.

“Go out and up the stairs,” she said. “Yes, love?” she said to the man who had pushed past Israel. “What can I get yous?”

Israel walked triumphantly from the shop and dumped the chips in the nearest bin.

Immediately outside the shop and to the right there was an open stairway filled with rubbish-the remains, mostly, of the Venice Fish Bar meals, both the meals themselves and the wrappings, along with plastic knives and forks smeared with ketchup, like elaborate place settings for a rat’s tea party.

Israel kicked his way gingerly through the rat’s place settings and walked up the stairs. At the top was a steel door.

He knocked. There was no reply.

He knocked again.

“Yes?” said a voice from inside.

“Katrina?” said Israel.

“Yes,” said the voice.

“The lady downstairs sent me up to see you. I’m looking for Katrina.”

“Are you the police?”

“No. I’m a librarian.”

This was Israel’s trump card.

“What?”

No one wanted to turn away a librarian. It would be like turning away the postman or Jimmy Stewart. It wouldn’t have seemed right.

“A librarian?” said the woman.

“Yes,” repeated Israel.

And as usual, it worked its magic; it was just a pity the same trick didn’t work on more romantic and intimate occasions.

The heavy steel door was heaved open.

“A librarian?” said the woman as Israel stepped over the threshold.

“Katrina,” he said. “I should introduce myself,” he said. “I’m-”

“A librarian,” she repeated “Yes, and I just wanted to ask about…”

As he spoke, Israel’s eye wandered slowly from Katrina to the room in which he now found himself. Like the staff downstairs, Katrina was wearing a red polo shirt and red baseball cap-dyed blonde hair poked out the back. She wore powder blue eye shadow. And the room he was standing in seemed to be her bedroom. There was a low, thin, sick sofa in brown acrylic fabric pressed up against the left wall, a chipped and clawed white melamine wardrobe next to it. Big empty metal cans that had once contained cooking oil seemed to double up as furniture, with clothes slung on them, plates stacked up. The place stank of smoke and fat. In the middle of the room was a single bed with a faded purple padded headboard that people seemed to have been using for some time to stub out their cigarettes. A young man wearing a white tracksuit and a white baseball cap lay on the bed on a yellow blanket. A TV in the corner of the room was showing what appeared to be a zombie film, in which corpselike individuals in tattered clothing lurched, moaned, and grunted in a swaying crowd through a shopping mall.

“This is…very cozy,” said Israel. “This is your…recreation area, is it?”

“Recreation area!” Katrina laughed.

“Well, I mean, where you all congregate for…”

“We live here.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“And you work downstairs?”

“Yes. We work downstairs and live here.”

“That’s…handy, for work, then,” said Israel.

“You want to live over a chip shop?”

“No, not really,” said Israel.

She gestured forlornly around her.

“For this, we pay one hundred pounds,” she said.

“A month?”

“Week.”

“One hundred pounds a week!”

“Five of us living here. When it rains…” She pointed up at a cracked plastic skylight, which had been patched together with masking tape and cellophane tape.

“Water. Falls down,” she said.

“That’s terrible.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But so?”

“Who is he?” said the man on the bed.

“A librarian,” said Katrina.

“Librarian?” said the man. “You are going in the library?”

“No,” said Katrina.

“So why is he here?”

“Erm. Let me explain. I’m just…I wondered if you’d seen Lyndsay Morris lately?”

The man snorted, dismissively.

Israel thought he might try another tack.

“Where are you from? Poland?” He’d got to know some of the Poles working on the local farms. They walked up and down the coast road to and from work, wearing bulging fluorescent coats. He sometimes gave them a lift in the mobile library into Tumdrum, and he’d try to have conversations with them, the kind of conversation conducted in the abstract, consisting largely of questions such as “You like Northern Ireland?” and “How long have you been here?” And when they answered, the Poles had a faraway look in their eyes, like people who had lost something or had something taken away from them; it was an expression he recognized from the photographs in the silver frames of his parents, back home in London.

“I’d love to visit Poland,” said Israel.

“It’s very beautiful,” agreed the woman. “Cigarette?”

“No,” said Israel. “In Poland, everybody still smokes, don’t they? It’s normal.”

“I don’t know,” said Katrina. “I’m from Romania.”

“Ah,” said Israel, slightly stumped. “Sorry. I thought you said you were from Poland?”

“You said I was from Poland.”

“Ah. Right. Sorry. And where are you from in Romania?”

“You know Romania?”

“No.”

“So why do you ask?”

“I just…Anyway.”

“Where are you from?” said Katrina.

“London,” said Israel.

“London!” She laughed.

“Yes,” said Israel.

“I’ve been to London,” said Katrina.

“Oh, have you?”

“It’s like a big rubbish bin,” she said.

“Well. Parts of it could certainly do with a bit of a-”

“Too many immigrants,” said the man on the bed, as the zombies continued to roam abroad in search of human flesh.

“Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at things…So how long have you been over here?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“I thought you want to ask about Lyndsay?”

“Yes. Yes. I do. I just wondered how long you’d known her.”

“As long as we live here.”

“Right.”

“Not long.”

“And how did you-”

“I come here to study English,” said Katrina.

“Your English is very good.”

“Ha!” She laughed. “Everybody says that, and then they laugh when you speak a mistake.”

“No. No. I’m sure that’s not right. Your English is really very good.”

She smiled as though it was a great sadness.

“So. Lyndsay? You know her quite well?”

“I know her. She is my friend.”

The man on the bed had sat up. His arms were burned up to the elbows from the chip fat and frying.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Six month.”

“And you got to know Lyndsay while working here?”

“Yes. She is a good person.”

“Right.”

“She helps me find babysitting.”

“I see. You do babysitting as well as-”

“I work here in evenings. And bar at night. During the day I clean. Day off, I do babysitting.” She counted the jobs off on her fingers.

“Wow. That’s-”

“I don’t like babysitting.”

“Oh.”

“It’s worst.”

“I would have thought-”

“Most don’t ask my name. They don’t look at me. They don’t care. I could be anybody!” She laughed again. “They don’t know my name. And I am looking after your kids. There, in the house.”

“Well,” said Israel.

“In Romania, where I am from, your parents, to look after your children. If you are going out. Always. A relative. Or a friend. Not stranger. Never.”

“Yes, I agree,” said Israel. “That certainly sounds more sensible.”

“Bad job,” said Katrina.

“Well, I’m sorry to-”

“And the men, they do not pay.”

“Do they not?”

“Of course. Sometimes. We agree price. They come back-they’re eating dinner or drinking-and the man asks me how much money. And I say we agree twenty pounds, twenty-five pounds. For looking after their children! But he does not want to pay. And even after midnight when it is more money. And he gets-” She indicated something with her fingers.

“Calculator,” said Israel.

“Yes. Calculator. And the wife, she is gone. In bed. And the man says he will pay me ten pounds.”

“I see.”

“Or he says he will pay twenty pounds, but I have to do something for him.”

“What?”

“Sex!” The man on the bed laughs.

“Yes,” agreed Katrina. “He means sex with him.”

“Oh god.”

“His wife is bed, upstairs,” said Katrina.

“That’s terrible,” said Israel. “I’m so sorry.”

She blew smoke up toward the ceiling. “Is not your fault.”

“No, but…”

“What do you want to know about Lyndsay?”

“Well, I don’t really…Anything, really.”

“She was nice.”

The man on the bed nodded his head in agreement.

“I like her. She help me with things.”

“And did she have any boyfriends, or…”

“Yes, of course. Boyfriends. She is pretty.”

“Yes. Anyone in particular?”

Katrina looked at the man. The man looked back.

“You don’t know anybody we know this.”

“No. No. Of course.”

“We think Gerry.”

“Gerry who?”

“The boss.”

“She was friendly with the boss?”

“Yes. He used to give her a lift home.”

“I see.”

“In his Mercedes.”

“Oh.”

“He pick her up, night she disappear.”

“In his Mercedes?”

“Yes.”

“You saw him pick her up?”

“I see the car,” said the man on the bed.

“Are you sure?”

“Mercedes.” The man nodded his head.

“Did you tell the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to lose my job.”

“But what if Lyndsay’s been…”

“What can I do?” said the young man.

“What’s he like, this Gerry?”

Katrina hesitated in her answer.

“He’s a bad man.”

“Really?”

“Bad,” piped up the young man on the bed.

“I see.”

“DVDs. Computer things. His other business. Illegal. Friend of ours. He was caught by police. He go back to Romania.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Did you tell the police?”

Katrina laughed.

“We’re just immigrants.”

“And you’re a librarian!” said the man on the bed, laughing.

“In Romania, I study literature,” said Katrina. “One day, I think I believe I will become great playwright! Like Ionesco. And look! Here I am! You know Ionesco?”

“No. Not really. I mean, I know-”

“Rhinoceros? Everybody knows Rhinoceros.”

“In Romania, everybody knows Rhinoceros,” echoed the man on the bed. “Schoolboys!”

“Here,” said Katrina. “Nobody knows nothing.”

“Anything,” said Israel.

“What?”

“Nobody knows anything, that’s the…”

“Nobody knows anything!”

“Yes. Well, thanks.”

“Nobody knows anything!”

“‘Les morts sont plus nombreux que les vivants. Leur nombre augmente. Les vivants sont rares,’” said Katrina.

“Yes,” agreed Israel, assuming that she’d told him a joke. “Very good.”

As he left the building he could still hear them laughing.

He returned to his chicken coop.

Rang Gloria.

No reply.

Lay on his bed.

Wept.

Decided it was time to go and see a doctor.