“Ach, brilliant!” said Ted, again and again, after they’d left Zelda’s and they were driving to their next port of call, Tumdrum Primary School, where Israel was expected to help the children with their reading. “Brilliant! Brilliant. Priceless.”

“All right, thank you, Ted,” said Israel.

“The look on his face, but. Brilliant. Brilliant. You must have done something bad to upset him! Oh, brilliant!”

“He’s just a miserable bas-” began Israel.

“Language!” said Ted. “Mebbe he just doesn’t like the look of you.”

“Horrible,” said Israel. “A creepy, slimy, rude, horrible man.”

“Ach, he was maybe in a bad mood, just, eh? ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself, you sick bastard!’ Oh dear, oh dear.”

“He’s got some sort of problem,” said Israel. “Personality disorder probably.”

“It’s the election, isn’t it?” said Ted. “Pressure getting to him.”

“I know the feeling,” said Israel.

“What? Pressure?”

“Yes,” said Israel. “Do you have any Nurofen?”

“Ach, wise up,” said Ted, as though Nurofen were a heroin substitute. They pulled into the school playground. “Who’d ye think ye are, Barack O’Bana?”

“Obama,” said Israel. “O. Ba. Ma.”

“Aye,” said Ted. “His family were from Kerry, weren’t they?”

“What? He’s a black man from Hawaii,” said Israel.

“I’m not arguing with you about it,” said Ted. “Just get on with it. Come on. We’re late.”

They visited the school once every two weeks, and the routine was always the same: the children would choose their books from the library under Ted’s menacing gaze and without major incident-no tears, no fights, no tantrums-and then Israel would trudge with them into the classroom for the compulsory story time, and all hell would break loose.

Israel was just not a story-time kind of a librarian: he absolutely hated children’s books, for starters. Most of them were mind-bogglingly bad, illustrated by the artistically challenged-can no one draw hands anymore?-and with words by people who clearly hated words. He was always trying to read Where the Wild Things Are or Green Eggs and Ham 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 pug.

“No,” said Israel, “I don’t have another job. This is my actual job.”

“D’ye not have another job?”

“No. I don’t. It’s actually quite a busy job, being a librarian. You have to…sort the books out, and put them on the shelves, and…”

“Thank you, Padraig,” said Tony Thompson. “Any final questions for Mr. Armstrong this week before he rushes off to rearrange his books on the shelf?”

Hands again.

“Yes, Billy?”

“What are books?” asked Billy, whose face was as wide as it was tall.

“What are books?” said Israel. “Erm. Books? Good…question. Excellent…question.”

“I’m sure we’d all like to hear your answer to that question, Mr. Armstrong,” said Tony Thompson. “What is a book? Listen, children, to what Mr. Armstrong has to say.”

“A book is…” Israel was struggling here slightly. “Well, a book can be about…”

“Sorry,” said Tony Thompson. “Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Armstrong. But I think what Billy was asking was not what is a book about, but a wider and more general question-wasn’t it, Billy?” Billy nodded obediently, his pure white lardy child-jowls shaking. “About what exactly a book is?”

“Ah, yes, what is it? A book?”

“Indeed,” said Tony Thompson.

“A book?” repeated Israel. “What is a book?”

“Yes,” said Tony Thompson. “That’s the question, Mr. Armstrong. And the children would love to hear your answer.”

“Well, a book is a kind of…” Israel looked around desperately for inspiration. “It’s a dead tree, basically.”

“A dead tree,” repeated Tony Thompson, grinning and showing his teeth. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Israel, “basically.” He got the sense he was maybe losing his audience here, but he’d started so he’d have to finish. “Not a tree that’s been killed, exactly, by a…gun or anything. It’s more…I mean, more like a piece of a dead tree.”

“A piece of dead tree,” said Tony Thompson.