The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery by Ian Sansom Page B

again, but the children, being children, wanted novelty, and the teachers wanted something more appropriate to the national curriculum’s reading strategy. So Israel would read something dull and appropriate in a dull and appropriate monotone, and the children would inevitably fidget, and then this would lead inevitably to shoving and poking, and then usually to a fight, and hence to chaos. It didn’t help that Israel also didn’t much like children, per se. He could never remember their names, or if he could remember them, he couldn’t pronounce them.
    “How do you say the name of the boy with the big ears?” he asked Ted, as he always did.
    “Who?” said Ted.
    “The one who always asks the difficult questions.”
    “ Pod-rig ,” said Ted.
    “I thought last time you said it was more like…” He puckered up his lips. “ Pahd-rag .”
    “Ach, I don’t know,” said Ted. “I’m not good with these Irish names.”
    “You’re Irish,” said Israel.
    “I’m an Ulsterman,” said Ted.
    “Right.”
    “Big difference,” said Ted.
    “Sure,” said Israel.
    “It might be Paw-rick .”
    “Right,” said Israel.
    “It just depends,” said Ted.
    “On what?”
    “I’ve no idea,” said Ted.
    “So, is it Pod-rig . Or Paw-rick ?”
    “ Paaah-ric ?” said Ted, rolling the vowels around in his mouth. “I don’t know. Paw-drig .”
    “Oh, come on,” said Israel.
    “Just call him Paddy,” said Ted. “That’s what I do.”
    “Marvelous,” said Israel.
    “I’ll just have a wee smoke here, then,” said Ted.
    “But—”
    “Me back’s a bit sore, still. You hurry on there, sure.”
    While Ted waited cozily in the van Israel trudged toward the classroom and the moon-faced children of Tumdrum, who stared up at him, as they always did, loudly fidgeting, while Tony Thompson, headmaster of the school, sat at the back, in his shiny black suit and his gray shirt and black tie, smirking, and poor Israel droned.
    The reading was bad enough. He read from a supersized book about someone called Red Ted, who sat on a shelf and did very little else, except clearly demonstrate some pointless rule of phonics. There were the usual skirmishes. It was awful. But there was worse to come. Question time. He absolutely hated question time.
    “Yes, Laura,” said Tony Thompson, when Israel had finished reading about Red Ted, on his shelf. “You have a question for Mr. Armstrong—the librarian .”
    Tony somehow always managed to make the word “librarian” sound dirty and sinister, as though a librarian was a sort of a book pimp.
    “Why have you grown a beard?” asked Laura, a girl with pure pale blue eyes and a full head of fizzing ginger hair, like a changeling out of a horror film.
    “Erm.” Israel was thrown. “Just to make my face look…smaller. Any other questions?”
    “Are you on a diet?” asked Laura.
    “No. I am not on a diet. Any book questions?”
    “Do you make books?” asked Laura, without pausing for a beat.
    “No,” said Israel, trying to muster what might pass for a tone of infectious enthusiasm. “No, personally, I don’t actually make the books myself, I just…”
    Laura’s eyes bored into him, withering his confidence.
    “I just…look after the books,” he continued. “Like a…zookeeper looks after the animals.”
    “Thank you,” said Mr. Thompson. “Any other questions for Mr. Armstrong, the bearded book zookeeper ?”
    A hand shot up. It was Padraig.
    “Any other questions?” said Israel, eyeing up Padraig. “Anyone else?”
    No hands were raised.
    “Sure?” said Israel. “No one else? Any questions?”
    Silence.
    “Good. So…Yes…Paddy,” said Israel.
    “My name’s Padraig,” said Padraig.
    “Ah, yes, sorry. Of course. Porr—idge ?”
    “What do you do?” said Padraig.
    “What do I do?” said Israel. “I’m a librarian.”
    “But do you have another job?” interrupted Padraig. He had intricate whorl-like ears, Padraig, and a head like a