Mr Rosenblum's List

by Natasha Solomons

  Curtis had dozed off but he awoke with a start, when Basset nudged him with a sharp elbow. The old man stared at Jack without blinking, slowly taking in the spoilt suit, mud-streaked hair, and tired blue eyes. He cleared his throat and spoke in a rumbling voice. ‘I sawed him. You folk don’t believe me but I sawed him an’ I shan’t talk about it anymore. Yoos are all a bunch of turds. An’ stinkin’ dung heaps.’

  Basset gave the old man a vicious nudge, making him scowl and then relent. He set his cider tankard down on the bar with a thud, and when he sensed his audience was ready, spread his arms with an expansive flourish.

  ‘Twas three score year ago. And twas ’bout two weeks after midsommer an’ a real scorcher o’ a day. I were mindin’ sheep on top of Bulbarrow. It was so ’ot that I thought I’d ’ave a little nip o’ special cider like, before goin’ home for my supper. I must have fallen asleep, cos of the sunshine, mind, and when I awoked – well, there ’ee was. The great beast were starin’ at me. ’Is eyes blazed like a burnin’ wheat field and ’is woolly coat glowed as if it were a snowy January. Never seen anything like it.’

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of tail did he have?’

  Curtis swallowed hard and stroked his stubble – it was many years since someone had listened this intently to his story. He was fed up with the others and their teasing, but this new chap had proper respect. Rose-in-Bloom seemed like a bright young fellow.

  ‘’Ee had the curled tail of a pig. And great curved tusks. Like those but on his chops.’ Curtis pointed to the head of a ram with magnificent curly horns that was mounted above the bar.

  ‘Weren’t you afraid?’

  Curtis furrowed his brow and took a sip of cider to help him think.

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘No. I don’t remember that I was. ’Ee was like nothing else. I jist looked at ’im and ’ee looked at me. And then ’ee were gone.’

  As he said ‘gone’ he blew on his fingertips and opened his hands to reveal his empty, if slightly grimy, palms.

  Jack turned to the rest of the men. ‘Has anyone else seen him?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Old Tom Coffin did.’

  ‘And Matthew Clinker.’

  ‘Aye, but they’s dead now. Long since – may God rist their souls.’

  There was a general muttering amongst the fellows – a prayer or curse, Jack couldn’t fathom.

  ‘I is only one left,’ said Curtis. ‘An’ trouble is – you ’ave to really believe in ’im an’ be pure of heart. That’s why these noggerheads ent seen ’im.’

  The others didn’t seem to take offence at the insult but just chuckled and refilled Curtis’s pint.

  ‘We is truly sorry for the mess in yer field. It’s a nasty shame. But only a woolly-pig can make that much trouble. An’ a big ‘un at that,’ said Basset.

  ‘Aye. Was the woolly-pig what done it. No doubt at all.’

  Jack glanced round the sombre faces. So, they were going to blame their barbarous savagery on a fairy tale. Well, he would go along with their ludicrous game. He surveyed the ram’s head on the wall and, for a moment, he felt that the glassy orange eyes were staring back at him.

  When he arrived home Sadie was waiting for him on the doorstep. Her face was pale and her expression almost compassionate. Jack was touched, and reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. ‘Thank you.’

  Sadie flinched and stomped inside the house, ‘Not your stupid course. I would have dug that up myself if I’d only thought of it. It’s Elizabeth. She’s not coming home.’

  Jack went cold. He felt the last remnants of optimism trickle out of him like the dregs of tea from a kettle.

  ‘She telephoned to say that Alicia Smythe’s father will take them both to Cambridge. She said it would be easier – save you the bother of collecting her, and the long journey.’

  ‘It would have been no trouble.’

  ‘I told her that. She was very insistent.’

  Jack crumpled – the anticipation of Elizabeth’s visit and then driving her to university had carried him through all the hours of hard labour. The trip was to have been a great adventure for them both, but Mr Smythe had stolen it from him. Jack thought of Arnold Smythe: banker, six feet and three quarters of an inch tall, handsome, blond moustache and a hearty handshake. He would get to take both girls to tea in Cambridge and walk with them through those ancient college quadrangles. Jack could just picture him (moustachioed and smiling) with two lovely English daughters – all of them at ease and where they belonged, and with a pang, he wondered whether Elizabeth had planned this all along. Was she so embarrassed of her father and his foreign voice and looks? Yes, he could understand her preferring Mr Arnold Smythe as a standin father.

  Jack was tormented by the idea that Elizabeth was mortified to be seen with him. He had thought that he was different to the others. He was the one chap in their circle who knew to buy marmalade from Fortnum’s, and who realised that Lux was the only brand of soap flakes that would pass muster (and was not to be confused with a kind of smoked salmon beigel). Yet, it seemed that his own daughter knew him to be a fraud and a foreigner. He must return to his list, and rehearse the subtleties of Englishness. This had to be done properly, and so he found a spot in the garden well concealed by an overgrown willow, carried out his list, the wireless, the papers and a bottle of whisky, set down a canvas chair and took up his studies once again.

  It was over a month since he last glanced at a newspaper (item forty-nine: an Englishman studies The Times with careful attention) and the city and financial crisis seemed oddly distant. As he turned to headlines about the ‘Chronic Housing Shortage’, ‘National Debt Crisis’ and ‘Expense of the Health Service’, he realised that he was no longer a man who cared about such things. He folded the paper into a neat stack, deciding they would be useful in lighting the fires when the weather turned cold.

  There was a soft thud as a plum hit him on the head and then rolled into the long grass. He picked it up and rubbed it on his not-quite-clean trouser leg. The skin was dark purple and shining and, when he bit into the yellow flesh, tasted faintly of honey. He yawned, switched on the wireless and took a large slug of whisky. Number seventy-one – an Englishman listens to the BBC – felt quite natural to him. He’d been desolate when his set was briefly confiscated during the war (they would have taken his bicycle, camera and car too if he’d had them). The local bobby who came round to collect it was apologetic, but he was under orders to remove wirelesses from all ‘class B’ enemy aliens. He gave Jack a ticket, and promised to return it the minute he was reclassified as a ‘class C’. On seeing the dejected look on Jack’s face, the bobby had assured him that he wouldn’t let any of the chaps down the station listen to it. Six months later, the wireless was indeed returned unscathed by the same policeman, along with a bag of almond biscuits baked by his wife. The incident remained in Jack’s mind, a symbol of the vagaries of government legislation (not that he’d ever criticise), and the kindness of the ordinary Englishman.

  The clipped tones of the announcer introduced John Betjeman and Jack nestled into his deckchair, closing his eyes in anticipation. He remembered his programmes during the war – Betjeman, like the great Churchill himself, had reminded the public of what they were fighting to safeguard: a resolutely English way of life. Jack heard the voice of the poet as a rabbi hears the Song of Solomon. Each broadcast was a lament for an England he saw slipping away. Sitting in his garden, he joined with Betjeman in his ardour for feather-grey slate roofs, flowering currant bushes and the ancient place names of Fiddleford, Piddlehinton and Fifehead Magdalene. He felt himself to be one of the broadcaster’s select society of ardent anglophiles, devoted to the preservation of everything great about this little island. He too loved the water meadows brushed by hedges of wild rose and adored the idea of bluebells in April. Quietly, he promised himself trips to St Ives, Brownsea Island and the Isle of Man, and swore allegiance to Betjeman’s quest to block the mar
ch of the pre-fabricated bungalows across England’s green and pleasant land.

  Betjeman’s fascination with churches he could not share. However ancient, ivy clad or pretty the ramshackle tombstones in the churchyard, churches remained a symbol of Jack’s un-Englishness. If only what they stood for had some name other than ‘The Church of England’. They were stone watchtowers to remind him if he ever got too comfortable or ever began to feel even a little bit English, that he did not belong. He listened to today’s talk on churches obediently but, unlike those on every other subject, he did not weep with sympathy. He fidgeted, trying to pay attention until finally, in an admission of abject failure, he switched off the wireless.

  He folded up his chair, trapping his finger in the hinge and his temper snapped in a torrent of German obscenities, ‘Himmeldonnerwetter’, before he recovered enough to curse in English, ‘Shit and skulduggery.’

  He stormed into the house and lurked sullenly in his study, irked by his own shortcomings and worrying about Elizabeth. He wanted her to be pleased by her English father and here he was abandoning his studies. He must try harder. He pondered the other topics Betjeman had touched upon: seaside towns, the architecture of Bath, Victorian novelists. Now, that was a good one; he could cultivate his admiration of the novelists – Mr Betjeman was very clear that this was a vital aspect of Englishness. Jack had never read the British Canon – he had been taught Shakespeare in school, but it was Goethe and the Brothers Grimm that he loved. When the Rosenblums were waiting anxiously in Berlin for their British visas, Jack had prepared for the trip by reading Byron’s poems and a Polish translation of P.G. Woodhouse. He understood only a little Polish and read the adventures of Mr Bertie Wooster with the help of a German–Polish dictionary. It all got rather lost in translation, and the novel appeared to him a very peculiar sort of book and had dissuaded him from sampling further the pleasures of English literature. Now, having listened to Betjeman, he realised that this was a grievous error – being an English Gentleman was a state of mind and, while it was too late for him to attend Eton or Cambridge, he must cultivate his mind with the reading of a gentleman nonetheless.

  After all, was not Elizabeth reading English Literature at Cambridge? Jack flushed with joy at the delightful prospect of discussing voluminous tomes with his daughter and impressing her with shrewd insights. He drew up a reading list according to the principles of Mr Betjeman, who was very specific about the importance of the Victorian novelists above all others. He listed them: Thackeray, Dickens, Mrs Gaskell, Thomas Hardy. Yes, he would begin with Hardy because he was the author of Wessex. The house conveniently contained, in seventeen dusty volumes, the complete works of Hardy. Jack had stacked these neatly in his study because he admired the faded bindings and gilt-edged pages. To atone for his inability to appreciate chapels and churches, he would read some Hardy.

  He scanned the titles: Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd. Then, one caught his eye: Jude the Obscure. ‘I didn’t know Hardy wrote about a Jew! And an obscure Jew.’

  In an instant Jack went from feeling excluded by his Jewishness, to glorious exultation. The Great Victorian Novelist of Dorset had written about an obscure Jew like him. ‘This is me!’ He clamoured excitedly to the empty room as he wielded the book. He had been quite prepared to cultivate his enthusiasm for Hardy but he could see that this would not be necessary.

  He attempted to read Jude over breakfast the next morning but he was finding it very tricky to concentrate. On balance, P.G. Woodhouse was easier to read, even in Polish. He gave an unhappy sigh and pushed the book aside, miserably adding ‘Victorian novelists’ to ‘English churches’ on the list of things he could not properly appreciate, despite having being recommended by Betjeman. He considered that at this rate, when Elizabeth finally returned, she would notice no difference in her father at all, and began to butter his toast with such aggression that it disintegrated into a mush of crumbs.

  Jack rubbed his aching temples; he loved England and wanted to listen to the slow trains rattling through the green countryside via Millford Vale and Blandford Forum. He liked the British Railways: platforms selling soggy sandwiches and paperback novels, cramped compartments filled with suited holiday folk all gazing out of smeared windows at rushing fields. These trains were pleasant things that made you smile to think of them, like a hot cup of tea. They were not like those other trains – the ones of Mittel Europe that stole men’s souls.

  But there was that other side of England, the people like Basset, who did not want him and who tore up his land pretending it was the work of a giant pig. It was not the first time, or even the second or third that such a thing had happened to Jack, though it was the first to be blamed on a mythical beast. His factory in the East End had been vandalised on countless occasions. It occurred continually in the run-up to the war, as people did not like that a Jew (and a German) was making money in their city. The walls were daubed with paint, bricks tossed through the windows and every Monday morning Jack helped clean up the damage. It got better during the war; vandalism then was an unpatriotic act, especially on a parachute factory. In the vast, anonymous city such petty hatred did not upset him. The dislike was placid, impersonal and he accepted that his position as a new arrival made him the perfect scapegoat. Here, amongst the dappled clouds and cooing wood pigeons, the hatred punctured his idyll and disturbed him.

  He sat in the kitchen miserably chewing his toast and slurping a cup of black tea. Sadie bustled around, scrubbing pots and muttering under her breath, until finally she abandoned an encrusted casserole dish, letting it clatter into the sink and, fixing Jack with a hard stare, demanded, ‘When are you going to start work again on that wretched course?’

  ‘It’s broken. Kaput. Finished.’

  ‘So, you must fix it.’

  While Jack’s obsession irked her, Sadie discovered that this miserable man, who refused to shave and dripped from study to deckchair like a cat caught in a rain shower was even more bothersome. Gott in himmel! She needed him to be fizzing with optimism. ‘Dann wurstel dich durch!’

  ‘Sausage through? How can I?’ Jack gazed steadily at his wife and brushed crumbs off the book beside him. ‘I don’t want to rebuild because I cannot bear them to destroy it again.’

  There was a dull bump as the post hit the doormat, and he went into the hall to collect it. He recognised the handwriting of Fielding on a white envelope and opened it with a sinking feeling. The letter from the factory manager contained the usual requests for new machinery. The looms were near obsolete, (everyone wanted tufted and pile carpets nowadays) but Jack was reluctant to invest in case he required more money for his course. Fielding was pressing him for a decision, but Jack had no room in his mind for such things and guiltily slipped the letter to the bottom of the pile.

  Then he noticed something most unusual. Amongst the usual bills there was a cream envelope made from expensive watermarked paper. He took it into his study – such a pretty piece had to be opened with the silver letter knife. He fumbled in the drawer and pulled out the shining blade, carefully slicing open the envelope to remove a smart cream ‘At Home’ card.

  Piddle Hall

  Dear Mr and Mrs Rosenblum,

  My wife and I are hosting a little gathering for drinks on Friday. We would be delighted if you and Mrs Rosenblum could join us. We look forward to welcoming you to our delightful piece of country. Be so kind as to come at seven.

  Regards,

  Sir William Waegbert

  Jack’s hand shook with excitement. This was a letter from a real English knight, not a mere gentleman but an actual member of the aristocracy. He marvelled over the invitation; did it mean that he was finally about to be accepted as an Englishman? He wished again that Elizabeth was here – then he could have shown her the card and she would realise he was a proper gentleman. Still trembling, he read and reread the invitation, admiring Sir William Waegbert’s close hand and genteel loops. He must strive to ma
ke his own handwriting more gentlemanlike. Clearly, his was far too easy to read – one must work to decipher the words of a real gentleman like Sir William Waegbert. Jack tried the name aloud, ‘Sir William Waegbert.’ It sounded most auspicious. Much smarter than ‘Arnold Smythe’, and a fragment of Jack’s jealousy of that man broke off and vanished.

  There was one slight difficulty with the otherwise delightful invitation – Sadie was also invited. While Jack knew that it was usual to include a man’s wife, Sadie was not like most wives. He hoped that she would behave – he could not bear for her to make a scene – and wished for the thousandth time that she would rinse her hair blue, paint her nails and be like other women. Jack realised it would take all of his persuasive powers to get Sadie to agree to accompany him; the party was on Friday night and she never went out on Shabbas. She would not even pick flowers, for the law states that nothing shall be broken into two halves on the Sabbath. Jack ventured into her territory to plead his case and found her kneeling amongst the flowerbeds cutting the dead heads off cala lilies. Without a word, he squatted down beside her and handed her the invitation. Putting down her shears, she read it in silence and passed it back to him, leaving a bright yellow smear of pollen across the pristine surface. He winced but uttered no reproach. ‘Well, will you come?’

  ‘It is on Shabbas,’ she said by way of answer.

  ‘Ah, well, no, not quite.’ He had been thinking about this on his way into the garden. ‘It states an arrival time of seven o’clock and dusk is not until eight thirty. And, therefore,’ he gave a little cough, ‘by my calculations Shabbas will not be in until nine thirty.’ He actually had no idea when dusk was, but he spoke with such assurance that Sadie did not question him. She picked up her scissors and continued to snip away at the flowers, placing the fallen heads into a bucket. She moved a stone and instantly the soil was teeming with ants. Jack shuddered, repulsed by the wriggling black bodies and tiny pinkish eggs.

  Seeing his revulsion, she gave a snort, ‘Everything is home for something.’