“No,” said a man’s voice.

“Oh.” He couldn’t quite place the voice. “Who’s that?”

“Can I help you?”

“Yes. Can I speak to Gloria, please?”

The voice said, witheringly, “Who’s calling?”

“My name’s Israel. I’m a…friend of Gloria’s.”

Israel detected a slight pause, and the voice said, “I’ll just check if she’s here.”

He could hear voices in the background.

He stared deeply into the Plexiglas of the phone booth and thought about Gloria in the flat-their flat-and the mystery of this man’s voice. He had no idea…And then suddenly he did have an idea. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t anything he’d said; they’d only spoken for a moment. It was the intonation, the smart-arse, singsonging, pleading, wheedling intonation of a Bill Clinton or a Tony Blair or Bing bloody Crosby crooning his way carefully up and down and between the scales. It was Danny, his old friend from school. Danny! Danny the lecturer. Danny the author of the book Postmodern Allegories. Danny, a complete fraud and a show-off and an arrogant, selfish shit who thought Foucault was a major twentieth-century thinker…Danny, who was…what? Visiting?

Israel slammed the phone down and walked back to the van, leaned up against the front of it, took a deep breath, hung his head, and gave out a long, low moan of “No!”

At which point, Ted sauntered back from the toilet.

“Need the toilet?” said Ted.

“No,” said Israel, breathing deeply.

“Ye sure?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“All right, then, ye set?”

Israel was staring down at his broken-down brogues, his head resting against the cool flank of the mobile library.

“Hello?” said Ted. “Wakey wakey! Time to go?”

“Sorry,” said Israel. “What did you say?”

“Have you taken the strunt or what?”

“Taken the-”

“Strunt, for goodness’ sake. Somebody said something that’s upset ye?”

“No. I’m fine. I just feel a bit…queasy, that’s all.”

“Aye, well, whatever it is, ye’ll get over it.”

“I don’t know if I will, actually.”

“Aye, right. Heard it all before. Let’s get on. I want to be back home for my tea tonight, and I’ve choir practice later.”

“Right.”

Ted walked round to the passenger side of the van.

“What are you doing?” said Israel. “Where are you going?”

“You’re driving, remember?” said Ted.

“What?”

“Half and half is what we agreed.”

“Yes, but-”

“And I’ve already done more than my share.”

“Actually, Ted, I’m feeling a little bit…”

“Aye, right,” said Ted, walking back beside Israel, shaking his head. “I might have known. Always the blinkin’ same with you, isn’t it, eh?”

“No.”

“Aye. Ye shirker.”

“I am not a shirker.”

“Could have fooled me,” said Ted.

“I don’t mind driving,” said Israel, becoming agitated.

“Aye, right.”

“No, really, it’s fine, I’ll-”

“I’ll drive,” said Ted, walking round the other side of the van, toward the driver’s side.

“No, I’ll drive,” said Israel, catching up with him.

“I said, I’ll drive!” said Ted.

“I don’t-”

“Shut up and go and sit down,” said Ted. “And stop mucking me about. Ye give me the jandies, so you do.”

“The whatties?”

“Ach!”

Israel went and sat miserably in the passenger seat while Ted got back into the driver’s seat.

“Sorry,” said Israel, “I just-”

“I don’t want your apologies,” said Ted, starting up the engine and slamming the van into reverse. “I don’t know…What’s the point of having a dog and barking yerself, eh?”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s a saying, just.”

“Right, well, I-”

“One of yer headaches, is it?” said Ted, without sounding in any way sympathetic.

“No, it’s…”

“Ye’d only be deedlin’ along at ten miles an hour, anyway.”

“Deedling?” said Israel.

“That’s right,” said Ted, flooring the accelerator as he pulled back out onto the main road.

“Is that a word?”

“Of course it’s a word. I just said it, didn’t I?”

“Is it a proper word, though?” said Israel.

“What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve just never heard it before. It’s like jandies, and-”

“What, ye’ve heard every word in the English language, have ye, Professor?”

“No, not-”

“All fifty billion of them?”

“I don’t think there are fifty billion words in the English language-” said Israel as they began to pick up speed past the outlying areas of Ballynahinch.

“Aye, well,” said Ted. “However many, deedlin’s one of them.”

“Right,” agreed Israel.

“And jandies.”

“Sure. And what would be the opposite of deedling?”

“The opposite of deedlin’?” said Ted, as if no one had ever asked a more stupid question. “Going a dinger.”

“You’re making all these words up, aren’t you?” said Israel.

Ted’s response was to press PLAY on the cassette recorder.

“Expelliarmus!” he bellowed, and then Stephen Fry resumed reading.

They drove in silence the rest of the way down and into the Mournes, Israel spending most of the journey with his eyes half-closed, hoping it might somehow lessen the impact of his discovery of Gloria’s betrayal, as you might try to lessen the impact of a horror film by watching it through your fingers. It didn’t work. Scenes played before his mind, in appalling Technicolor: Gloria and Danny in flagrante, the whole thing in close-up, in detail, and in its entirety, as if he were in the clutch of some perverse mania or delirium, or in that film by Michael Winterbottom that he and Gloria had gone to see in the Coronet in Notting Hill. How had he not realized? Was he stupid? Had he missed something? Some intimation of this…outrage, this…betrayal, this…inevitability.

As they drove farther into the mountains, the roads became narrower and the bends sharper, and Israel’s anxieties rose as Ted’s driving style became correspondingly more relaxed. As they lurched round one corner, the van leaning dangerously to the left, Israel broke off from the explicit screenings in his mind and sat up with a start.

Ted, as usual, was driving with his knees.

“Can you stop driving with your knees?!”

“I am not driving with my knees,” said Ted, casually.

“Yes, you are.”

“I am driving with my thighs,” said Ted.

“Well, can you stop!”

“What, the van?”

“No, driving with your knees. You need both hands on the wheel here!”

“I was not driving with my knees. I was driving with my-”

“Yeah. Right. Whatever. It’s dangerous.”

“Ach,” Ted grunted, putting his hands firmly and deliberately on the wheel. “That all right?”

“Yes. Thank you,” said Israel.

Ted instantly lifted his hands off the wheel.

“Aaghh!” screamed Israel.

“Relax!” said Ted, laughing. “Ye’re wound up tight, boy, let me tell ye.”

“Right. Are we nearly there yet?”

“I don’t know,” said Ted. “You’ve got the map.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t need the map?” said Israel.

“Aye, well,” said Ted.

“Oh, so we do need the map?” said Israel, pulling an old, damp, dog-eared Ordnance Survey map from the glove compartment.

“Well, for the last bit of the journey, mebbe,” said Ted.

“‘I won’t need a map, sure’ were your exact words, I think,” said Israel. “As we were leaving Tumdrum.”

“Well,” said Ted. “Where is it we’re headed again?”

“We need the map,” said Israel, spreading the map out over his knees.

“All right,” said Ted. “Yes. We do.”

“You were wrong,” said Israel, his finger poised on the sheet.

“Aye, all right,” said Ted. “I was wrong.”

“Sorry?” said Israel, leaning over and cupping a hand to his hear. “What did you say? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“I was wrong,” repeated Ted.

“Say it again,” said Israel.

“No,” said Ted.

“I like hearing you say it,” said Israel.

“Aye, right. Wise up,” said Ted. “And tell us where we are.”