Mr Rosenblum's List

by Natasha Solomons

  Jack telephoned Edgar to tell him that they were moving back to town. Edgar had not been able to keep the surprise out of his voice and pushed for an explanation, but Jack could not bring himself to give one. They all met for lunch at Kensington Roof Gardens, a city garden growing on the sixth floor above a department store. Edgar and Freida were waiting for them at a table outside, in the section called the English Woodland Garden. There were a few sad-looking oak trees growing in eighteen inches of soil but there was a pleasant view across West London; Jack was able to see the pockmarked skyline stretching out towards the horizon and could make out the holes in the city – great gaps gouged out by the Nazi bombs.

  The Herzfelds were baffled by their friends’ return; while it had seemed rather quiet without Jack and his various schemes, they believed them to be happy in Dorset. Edgar had been looking forward to playing a round of golf on the new course come summer, and this sudden return struck him as odd. He did his best not to mention it.

  ‘We thought we’d come here. The roof gardens have a good view and the woodland garden – well, it’s not like your place …’

  Sadie said nothing. This wasn’t woodland; it was a gimmick – a garden one hundred feet above the ground was unnatural. She wondered if the trees were lonely, separated from those in the earth.

  After lunch Jack and Sadie promenaded through Hyde Park, desperate for a proper expanse of green. Jack had not realised how claustrophobic he found the city; now he felt it tightening around his throat like a fist and he trampled the dusty grass in the park with relief. Wanting to prolong the afternoon, he suggested they go to a museum, but Sadie refused. Jack plunged his hands into his suit pocket, wondering what had happened to them since their return to London earlier in the week. It was almost as though the escape to the countryside had never happened; amongst the hedgerows and wooded streams they had found one another again, but here their lives started to diverge once more. Why wouldn’t she come with him? Did she not like his company? After a few months of proper companionship, he did not want to revert to the old ways.

  Jack went to the Natural History Museum alone. He hadn’t been there since Elizabeth was a small girl – it was one of their Sunday afternoon treats before the days of the Lyon’s Corner Café. He walked slowly up Exhibition Row, listening to the purr of the traffic. He had swapped his hazel switch for his London ivory-capped walking cane, but it was not as comfortable; the steel-tipped base clicked irritatingly against the street and he wondered how he had never noticed before.

  He climbed the stone steps of the Victorian museum, admiring the handsome building and its relief carvings in the shape of extinct animals, birds and fish. He had never liked churches or synagogues but he loved this place: it was a grand cathedral to nature – the Notre-Dame of sea anemones and forest ferns. He paid his penny entrance fee and wandered into the great hall, which echoed with the clamour of children’s chatter. It was strangely comforting, these young creatures being herded along by anxious mamas and papas, and he watched them for a few minutes, listening to their noise, before heading up the great staircase to the first floor.

  The creatures in the glass display cases were all perfectly still, frozen in position for the next hundred years. Eagles hovered mid-flight, dangling from wire threads, and recorded bird song played through a crackling speaker. He gave a shiver at the taxidermy – animals should be barking and wriggling – but he found it weirdly fascinating. A fly hurled itself furiously against the inside of the glass, trapped. Its situation was hopeless; it had found a way in but would never get out, and would die there and be preserved at the bottom of the case, another tiny addition to the display.

  There was an overpowering smell of camphor in this part of the museum and Jack stifled a sneeze. The specimens were old – most had been gathered during the Victorian rush for discovery of new things: machines, stars, fossils, species. The meerkats in the glass case in front of Jack were older than he was, although, he decided, they were probably not as old as Curtis. He wandered through a bat exhibit; they were tiny with razor-sharp teeth and floated against a sky of painted stars. One night last summer, he and Sadie had counted a hundred bats flying out of the roof to go hunting.

  Pacing the exhibition halls, Jack realised he was in exile once more. Dorset was home. Without his ramshackle cottage and muddy fields he was rootless – he would never belong anywhere again. He stumbled upon a moth-eaten display and gave a bitter laugh. Wild boars. The largest was over two foot high and five feet long, with coarse black bristles covering his body and a pair of fearsome-looking tusks, cracked and yellowed with age. He remembered Curtis’s description of the woolly-pig, ‘a noble beast o’ strength an’ savagery’. Jack crouched down and stared into eyes of orange glass. This was the closest he’d ever get to a real woolly-pig.

  His nose made a smear on the window of the display case and the dead creature looked back at him mournfully, as though conscious of the indignity of its fate.

  Sadie longed for grassy fields, so like a bee on a quest for the finest nectar, she went in search of the largest expanse of green in the city. She paced the well-worn paths through Hampstead Heath, inhaling the smell of mud and newly mown grass, which mingled with sooty fumes. Hobbling slightly, her feet sore in her tight, high-heeled shoes, she wished that she were barefoot in her garden. At least there were still ducks to feed. She remembered the time when she saw her mother feeding them poppy-seed cake in Hampstead Pond all those years before. Mutti might only have been a mirage, a memory flickering on the surface of the water, but at the time she had seemed so real.

  It was a weekday afternoon and the park was busy with mothers and grandmothers playing with their little ones and feeding the birds. A young woman walked a swaying toddler to the water’s edge, their summer dresses billowing in the wind. Two old ladies in pleated skirts and thick beige stockings sat gossiping in Yiddish and eating sweets from a newspaper twist, while another hitched up her dress and played hopscotch on a chalked board with a delighted child, who shrieked with joy as her grandmother jumped the squares.

  Sadie screwed up her eyes, trying to picture her mother’s face – tired smile, mole on her left cheek – then opened them and stared at the middle of the pond. Nothing. Although the little girl with her untidy plaits flying out behind her like streamers, reminded her of Elizabeth. The water stank of pond weed and stagnant water. A tufted duck perched on an old tyre poking up through the surface and stared at her quizzically.

  ‘What do you want?’

  It flapped its wings and opened its beak to display an empty mouth.

  ‘Here you are then.’

  She tossed the bird a corner of bread. A glossy mallard swam over and tried to snatch it away, but the black duck objected with a loud quack and a fearsome hiss. In a minute there was a noisy chorus of squabbling birds. The sound echoed all around Sadie until, suddenly, she remembered. She was in Berlin and the Zoologischer Garten at crocus time. The flowers reached her knees, she was so small, and she shrieked as a duck snatched a crust from her outstretched hand.

  ‘He’s hungry, don’t be frightened, my little one,’ soothed Mutti. ‘Watch!’ Mutti laughed as she tossed a scrap up into the sky, watching as the birds swooped to catch them in open beaks.

  Sadie threw another crust and a speckled duckling dived.

  ‘See them fly, Sadie,’ called Mutti, her shouts mingling with the call of the birds.

  Now, standing in the London park all these years later, Sadie shut her eyes and listened: she could still hear Mutti’s voice in the crying of the birds.

  She walked away from the pond and onto the open heath. The green rolled down to the city, where buildings and concrete replaced the grass, but here the sky above was empty. It was one of the few places in London where she could see the expanse of sky – everywhere else it was hidden by roofs and she saw only slivers of blue peeping between the houses. She was overwhelmed with longing for the empty spaces and the fields of the Blackmore Vale – that was wher
e her memories were hidden, like a mouse’s nest in a cornfield. Walking along Bulbarrow Ridge she had remembered chasing Emil as a boy through the German countryside. They had been running through the long grass when he shouted at her to stop but she refused, thinking it a ruse for escape, and caught hold of his arm. He pointed to the heavens, where a buzzard hovered, its wings barely seeming to beat, before diving to earth. In her memory, the Dorset landscape replaced that of Bavaria and she chased Emil along the top of Bulbarrow. Only now, when they had returned to the city, did she finally understand. While she had lost their faces, in the open fields she had learned to remember them and somehow, they were waiting for her there.

  Jack sat in the hotel bar thumbing through the Financial Times. He tried to interest himself in the headlines and failed, then noticed a copy of the Daily Mail on the table and started to flip through that instead. On page two, a news story caught his attention:

  Blushes at Red Carpet Trip-Up

  Officials organising the Coronation have been left red-faced after ordering insufficient carpet for the big day. More than a mile of carpet is needed but careless measurements by staff have left a shortage of hundreds of feet! So will the Queen break with tradition and be forced to walk up a Paisley swirl? A Palace spokesman declined to comment.

  Jack felt a prickle of excitement as an idea began to emerge like a fox from its winter den. He seized the paper, and half an hour later arrived at the gates of Rosenblum’s Carpet Factory. At a half-run, he tore along the corridor to his old office and flung open the door. Fielding was seated at the desk, eating a grey ham sandwich and speaking on the telephone but he lowered the receiver in surprise on seeing Jack, who stood backlit in the doorway, white hair shining like some kind of elderly, bespectacled genie. Jack thrust the newspaper at him and paced anxiously while Fielding read the piece.

  ‘Well?’ He demanded, when the other man had finished. ‘Can we do it? Can the factory produce all that carpet in a week with one loom out of action?’

  Fielding stared at him and then at the newspaper. ‘It would be almost impossible.’

  Jack banged the desk with a fist. ‘But almost impossible is still possible.’ He leant towards the younger man. ‘This order is big enough to save us. Imagine in a week’s time, Her Majesty walking up a red Rosenblum carpet.’

  Carried away by Jack’s enthusiasm, Fielding leapt from his chair, ‘Do you think we’d get to have the Royal Warrant “By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen” stamped on the side of the delivery pantechnicons?’

  ‘I am sure we could.’

  A flush of excitement suffused through the pallor on the manager’s face, and Jack grinned.

  ‘When this is over, I’m going to retire, Mr Fielding. I’m making you partner. I should have done it years ago, and then we wouldn’t be in this mess. The decisions are up to you. I won’t take any more money for loony plans. This is your office now.’ Jack glanced down at the ‘Tulip Surprise’ colour swatch on the floor. ‘And Mr Fielding, George, I’m sorry.’

  Fielding stared at him for a moment in silence, and then nodded, ‘Thank you.’ He picked up the telephone receiver, ‘Hullo, operator? Can you put me through to Buckingham Palace?’

  Walking into the hotel, Jack knew he had done the right thing; his heart had gone out of the business and so it was right that he handed it on. He wasn’t sure what he would do next, but he knew it wouldn’t be carpets. The porter held open the door as Jack slipped inside. A second later, he dropped his hat in shock: there in the marbled lobby stood Jack Basset and Curtis.

  For a moment Jack thought he was seeing things. Both men had dressed for the occasion: Curtis wore an ancient tweed suit and for once used smart braces to hold up his trousers, rather than his old spotted tie; Basset was in his Sunday suit with a neat neckerchief but still seemed out of place in the mirrored lobby. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and he rubbed his hands nervously. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and gazed about him, spying Jack with relief. Skidding on the polished floor in his hurry, Basset enfolded the smaller man in a large embrace, so that Jack was sandwiched against the wool of his suit jacket. A woman in a mink stole stared curiously at their little group.

  Jack eased himself free and shook hands with Curtis, bewildered. He pointed to several stiff velvet armchairs.

  ‘Shall we sit?’

  Basset continued to lurk near a tall rubber plant, reluctant to join them, and Jack realised that he was self-conscious amongst the smart set.

  ‘On second thoughts, let’s go upstairs. Sadie will want to see you,’ he said firmly, guiding them towards the lift.

  Curtis started as the metal doors of the cage clanged shut. ‘Aye. This is like them cattle cages at Stur market on a Monday. Feel like I is ’bout to be sold for ’alf a crown.’

  When Sadie opened the door, her face went wide with surprise. It was nearly six and she was just beginning to wonder what had happened to her husband. She ushered them inside, busily straightening cushions, trying to tidy her hair and wishing she had cakes to offer. Having visitors and not being able to feed them was a travesty.

  Basset undid his neck cloth and restrictive top button, and sank into one of the deep armchairs with a grateful sigh. Underneath his weather-beaten suntan he looked exhausted. ‘Traffic was terrible. N’er see sa many cars in all my life. An ’ee wasn’t no bloody use,’ he muttered with a dirty look at Curtis.

  ‘May I get you a drink?’ Jack asked, always the host.

  Curtis produced from his other pocket a large, familiar-looking flask. ‘Brought ’ome brew.’

  ‘Only thing ’ees good for. Stupid auld bugger,’ complained Basset snatching the flask. He unscrewed the cap and after taking a swig passed it to Jack, who took it gratefully and helped himself to a deep draught.

  ‘So,’ said Jack, trying to sound casual. ‘What has brought you to town?’

  ‘I ’as al’ays wanted to see Tower o’ London. My great-great-great-uncle Billy got ’is ’ead chopped off there an’ I wanted to see. ’Bout time I sawed the world.’

  Jack studied Curtis and saw a smile flicker at the corners of his mouth. Then, the old man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yoos left without even a goodbye. I doesn’t ’ave yer fancy ways, Mister Rose-in-Bloom, but where I is from, that’s rude, that is. Enough to make you a ninnywally.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Right you are. ’Ave another.’

  Curtis passed the bottle back to Jack who took a gulp.

  ‘We came to give yer this.’

  Basset fidgeted on the chair, pulling out an uncomfortable satin cushion, which he placed reverently on the floor. Then, he slid a hand into his breast pocket and proffered a telegram to Jack, who stared at it for a moment.

  ‘Well, gowarn. Op’n it.’

  ‘Yes, open it.’

  Sadie, Curtis and Basset watched closely as Jack read the sender’s name.

  ‘It’s from Bobby Jones.’

  ‘Aye. Aye.’

  Jack’s hands began to tremble.

  ‘Give it to me Jack,’ said Sadie.

  Unable to speak, he passed her the telegram and she unfolded it.

  DATE: 15 May, 1953

  Post Office Telegraphs

  No fees to be paid unless stamped hereon.

  TO CHIEF EXECUTIVE DORSET COUNCIL

  FROM BOBBY JONES AUGUSTA GEORGIA USA

  NO LONGER SUPPORT SIR WILLIAM WAEGBERTS GOLF COURSE STOP DID NOT REALISE MY FRIEND JACK ROSENBLUMS GOLF COURSE NEARBY STOP FULLY SUPPORT JACK ROSENBLUM STOP WILL PLAY IN CORONATION MATCH AT PURSEBURY ASH STOP

  Jack took the paper from Sadie, read it and then read it again, all the while his head swimming. Basset decided that a little explanation was necessary.

  ‘Clerk in council’s office gave me this. Sold his dad some cows at good price last year like, an’ ’ee thought it jist might interest me – yoos and me bein’ friends like. Mr Jones sent this ’ere telegram to the council and another to Sir William. Auld Waegbert’s shittin’ a
fury.’

  Curtis could no longer keep quiet but jumped to his feet and began to prattle excitedly.

  ‘Yer see, Jack, yer see? Din’ I tell yer to keep an writin’ to ol’ Mister Jones? I said it were right thing to do an’ look now! I bet it were the bit we told ’im ’bout the woolly-pig mischief what dun it, mind. That ud bring dew to a man’s eye, right enuff.’

  Jack swallowed hard, trying to take in this momentous news.

  ‘’Ee won’t work no more for old Sir William Shitterton cos ’ee don’t want to spoil yer chances at ’appiness an’ success. Yoos alwa’s said ’ee was a nice man, mind.’

  ‘And he really wants to play in the coronation match? You’re quite sure?’ Sadie asked, incredulous.

  ‘Aye. Says so right ’ere in black ’n’ white.’

  Jack could hardly believe that his letters had achieved such a profound effect. He had confided everything to Bobby Jones – in part because he had come to accept that Bobby would never, ever read them. But he had, and they’d inspired in the greatest, most illustrious golfer of all time a feeling of friendship towards him, Jack Morris Rose. It was a miracle. His head felt fuzzy and he needed another drink. He took the flask from Basset and drained it in a single swig. Was it possible? Could there be hope after all?

  He stared at the others. ‘So, I might get permission for the course? I can open?’

  Basset looked a little ill at ease and stared at his grimy nails. ‘Well. You’ll jist ’ave to trust us a bit.’

  Curtis fixed Jack with a steady gaze. ‘Come ’ome,’ he pleaded. ‘Got ninth hole to finish. Can’t let Mister Jones play on an ’alf-cooked course.’

  Jack was struggling to absorb all of this new information and when he started to speak it was only to find he had forgotten his words.

  ‘But what about the other course?’ said Sadie.

  Jack found his voice and wagged a finger. ‘Yes, yes. Sir William will just hire another chap to design his perfect eighteen-holes.’

  Basset’s nose twitched and he stared at his feet before looking up and meeting Jack’s eye.