Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman
Page 3
To his dismay, the single rejection rapidly turned into five, then ten, until every course in a twenty-mile radius had turned him down. The secret drawer was getting full and the papers were beginning to jam his desk. It was time he took advice. He spoke to Saul Tankel, the jeweller, who was considered to be a source not only of diamonds but information.
‘It’s no good, no good at all. They’ll never let you in. Not with that schnoz.’
Saul laughed, pushed back his thick, jeweller’s spectacles onto his forehead so that they resembled a pair of antennae, and waved with enthusiastic dismay; he looked like an alarmed grasshopper.
‘There is us and them. And they will never, ever let you in. Anyway, what will you do? They play on Saturdays.’
The problem of playing on Saturdays had already occurred to Jack, and did not unduly concern him. He hadn’t yet the courage to tell his wife, but he considered golf as an excellent alternative to a tedious morning spent at synagogue. Saul seemed to sense his thoughts.
‘You know what would happen if you did get in?’ He asked, jabbing a surprisingly large finger two inches from Jack’s controversial nose. ‘You will play on a Saturday, when everyone else is in schul praying to Him,’ Saul gestured to the heavens, or rather a light bulb hanging inches above their heads, but Jack took the point. ‘And you will play the best game of your life. And finally you will get the hoop-in-one.’
‘A hole,’ Jack corrected.
‘What?’
‘A hole-in-one. Golf has holes not hoops.’
‘Ah. So, then you will get the hole-in-one. And you will be able to tell no one. Because you played on Saturday, against His wishes on the day of rest!’
Saul jabbed at the light bulb so fiercely that it swung back and forth, clocking him on the head.
‘You see? You see?’ Saul exclaimed excitedly, taking this as a sign of God’s wrath.
Jack was not convinced, but the information was useful. The next letter he signed under the pseudonym Professor Percy Jones. The professor received a much more favourable response from a previously frosty club secretary.
1 February, 1952
Dear Professor Jones,
Thank you for you kind enquiry concerning membership of the Lawns Golf Club. We are indeed open to new members. I sincerely look forward to making your acquaintance.
Regards,
Edward Fitz-Elkington, Esq.
Jack turned the letter over and over until it grew quite worn along the folds. He decided to write back to the club secretary under his own name, mentioning that his good friend Professor Percy Jones had been told membership was not full, but the reply was inevitable.
Dear Mr Rosenbloom,
I am sorry to inform you that there has been a misunderstanding. Membership is now full. I would be pleased to place you on the waiting list, but I must warn you that the current wait is approximately twenty-seven years.
Yours sincerely,
Edward Fitz-Elkington, Esq.
It was hopeless. He could not produce the evidence of the professor’s letter without admitting that he had impersonated him, which he imagined the secretary would not take kindly. He did business with everyone: Anglicans, Catholics, socialists and even the odd agnostic, but they never became friends. He had known some of these men for fifteen years and for fifteen years they had enquired after the health and happiness of his wife, but they had never once suggested meeting her. He had never been invited to dinner at a colleague’s house. That was what restaurants were for, he thought grimly. They were for meeting with those whom you could not have to your house: actresses, Americans and those like him.
Jack wrote one final letter to the Sanderson Cliffs Club, offering free carpets for all the buildings and enclosing a colour chart with the season’s latest range. Considering the scarcity of good carpets, in fact the scarcity of everything, Jack knew it to be a generous proposal – and he even had a precious letter of recommendation. He was more hopeful than he had felt for months because Mr Austen, a woollen merchant from Yorkshire, had actually offered to nominate him for membership. Jack was elated; this was fate. The Sanderson Cliffs was the perfect club; their course was legendary, the best in North London. Even during the war they retained twenty greenkeepers to nurture that perfect grass and, according to legend, they used tweezers, nail scissors and water imported from the Nile, so smooth were the greens. If he closed his eyes and looked into the future he could see his name in gold lettering on the polished boards: Mr J.M. Rosenblum, Captain.
So optimistic was Jack that he finally bought a set of clubs. He had never actually played a single round of golf; he had never even been on a golf course, nor had he held a club, let alone taken a swing. He put on his Henry Poole suit and went to Harrods. He rode the elevator to the sports floor in a state of hushed reverence, and the shop assistant led him to the selection of golf clubs. The room was oak panelled with dim overhead lights, and in the gloom the steel of the clubs seemed to glow. Jack felt the sweat start to tickle his forehead. The assistant passed him a club.
‘Try this six iron. Beautifully balanced, sir. Specially designed to make striking the ball that bit easier.’
Jack held it in his hands and he felt his throat catch. He hadn’t wanted anything this much since he was a small boy and had saved up for a bright red steam engine that really worked. The assistant passed him another.
‘This nine iron has fine grooves. Used by Bobby Jones himself. Top of the range with polished lightweight steel shafts. The newest technology. Very aerodynamic.’
That was it. Jack had to have them.
‘Excellent choice, sir,’ cooed the assistant as he began to wrap them and Jack counted out the crisp pound notes. ‘Now, will sir require a new bag to put them in?’
Jack selected one in a rich tan with a crimson stripe stitched along the side. He thought they were the most beautiful objects he had ever seen.
The clubs rested in the corner of his office, still in their wrappings, propped up against a chair. Jack would sit behind his desk and gaze at them. Then, when he could bear it no longer, he would cross the room and reverentially pull out the nine iron or the sand wedge and grip it in his hands. After a few minutes – he never risked a swing, as he didn’t want a single graze on that metal – he would meticulously rewrap the club and tenderly place it back in the bag.
On Friday, Mr Austen paid a call. He had been trying very hard to get Jack into the Sanderson Cliffs; he’d written a generous letter of introduction and had pointed out the usefulness of Jack’s offer of carpets. Waiting for an answer had been most unpleasant; while Mr Austen was perfectly fond of the odd round, he couldn’t fathom Jack’s fixation. That was because Mr Austen was born an Englishman like his father and grandfather. There were Austens in Hampshire and Warwickshire going back at least twenty generations – there was even a rumour that they were distantly related to that greatest of English novelists. Edward Austen knew never to leave home without his hat, but to remove it immediately on entering a church. He knew when to use a fish fork should the occasion arise and he was aware that cake forks were bourgeois. He could tell by the cut of a man’s suit or the angle of his hat, as easily as by the tone of his voice or the wax of his moustache, where he ranked in the social order compared to himself. Such men as Mr Edward Austen never worried about membership to golf courses. They presumed their superiority above every other nation, as confidently as they knew that the 7.03 to Victoria stopped at Vauxhall.
Jack waited for Mr Austen in his small office, off the main factory floor. The clatter from the mechanical looms made the furniture vibrate and Jack’s temples throb, but he liked to be in the thick of things. One wall was entirely covered with samples from the new season’s range of innovative tufted carpet, in a rainbow of colours. Rosenblum’s Carpets might not have the cachet of a Wilton or an Axminster but Jack was secretly sure that his product was quite superior. Hearing a loud knock on the door, he rose to greet Mr Austen and shook his hand with enthusiasm.
‘Ah, nice clubs. May I?’
‘Of course.’
Jack watched, concealing his concern for his treasure, as Mr Austen pulled out a short iron and stood – legs slightly apart, shoulders tilted – and raised the club. He brought it down in a controlled arc, a proper golfer’s swing.
‘They’re a good heft. I like them.’
Jack beamed. Heft. That was an excellent word. He must remember it.
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Harrods.’
Mr Austen laughed unthinkingly. ‘Really? You didn’t? My good fellow, no one actually buys clubs at Harrods.’
Jack flushed, embarrassed to be found out once again. He stared at his clubs in their white tissue paper. Their shine no longer looked radiant, but taunted him. Perhaps everyone would be able to tell that he had bought his clubs from Harrods, and then they too would laugh at him.
Mr Austen slid the iron back into the bag and reached into his pocket. There was no point putting it off any longer. He pulled out a sheet of stiff notepaper embossed with the Sanderson Cliffs emblem.
‘I’ve heard back. Not good news, old man. It’s a no-go. Terribly sorry.’
Jack sat down, dumbstruck. It couldn’t be true. Mr Austen had recommended him, and he was one of them.
‘You needed more nominations; my paltry one wasn’t quite enough.’
‘But you said others had been admitted. That membership was still open.’
Mr Austen fiddled awkwardly with the label on the golf bag. He wished old Rosenblum would hide his disappointment better – it made this damned uncomfortable – always so emotional these continental Jews.
‘Mm, yes. Think that was part of the problem. Apparently the quota’s full.’
‘Quota?’
‘Yes.’
Quota. Jack turned the word over slowly. He hadn’t heard that for a while, and with it he knew the game was lost. They would never, ever admit him to any golf course inside or outside London. Despondency seeped into him, like cold water into a leaky rubber boot.
‘You told them about the carpets?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Austen. He was longing to leave. He’d done his bit, really he had. The suggestion of free carpets had gone down particularly badly. ‘Think they can buy their way in anywhere, don’t they?’ The club president had complained. ‘They make all this money on the black market, depriving us of things we need then sell them back to us. Worse than the blasted spivs in my opinion.’ He did not mention this to Jack.
‘I’m terribly sorry. You’ll have better luck with the next one. Try Blackheath.’
Jack bowed his head; he did not tell him that Blackheath, the oldest of the English courses, was the very first he had approached. The office door swung open and Fielding, the factory manager entered, staggering under a swaying tower of files.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. Shall I come back later?’
‘No. It’s quite all right, I’m just leaving,’ said Mr Austen, relieved to have an excuse.
Fielding dumped the pile of paperwork on the desk. ‘I need you to make a decision on these new machines, Mr Rosenblum.’
‘Leave them here. I’ll look at them later,’ said Jack, shooing away the young man.
There was no room left in his mind for business; it was full with this latest disappointment. He was disconsolate and needed to wallow in a few minutes of misery. His usual ration was ten minutes; after that he would force himself to start thinking of solutions and a plan. As this was a particularly heinous disaster he allocated himself an extra five minutes of despondency. The clock read ten forty as he lowered his head into his hands and let out a sigh.
At ten fifty-five Jack decided to get ready for the Sabbath, which involved pouring a large whisky and reading the paper. He settled into his armchair and flicked through The Times to the sports pages but something in the property section caught his eye: a large cottage with tangled roses growing up the walls and a thatched roof. He had only ever seen a thatch once before, on a train journey to the sea. Next to the picture of the house was another one of a view; it was grainy and slightly blurred, taken from the top of a hill looking down over a patchwork of fields that lay under a cloudless sky. The photograph was black and white but Jack could tell that it was the bluest sky he had ever seen. There were flowers at the front of the frame peeping out amongst the hedgerows and dots of sheep in the distance. He peered closely at the small print. ‘House offered for sale along with sixty acres of land. Splendid aspect. Apply Dorset office.’ Sixty acres. And in Dorset. He could hear the birds singing as he looked at that photograph and he hadn’t heard birds like that for a long time.
There was a distant chime as the bells of Bow Church struck the half hour and hurriedly Jack got up, put on his hat and left the office. The golf course was the last item on his list, and pursuing the list had not led him wrong yet. He needed a plan.
The carpet factory was situated in the East End in a large red-bricked Victorian warehouse with posters for ‘Rabenstein Ltd. Kosher sausage manufacturer for first-class continental garlic sausage’ and ‘Hats, Frocks and Fancies by Esther de Paris’ pasted all over the walls. Jack sniffed: change was coming – he could smell it as a hint of turmeric and cumin mingled with the yeasty scent of baking challah. There were holes where buildings used to be; a single missing house in a terrace like a knocked out tooth in the mouth of a boxer, and vast craters filled with rubble. Such was the scale of the repairs that the clean up had barely started, and nature had crept back into the East End; there were patches of grass and wild flowers, green, white and yellow, springing up amongst the waste. A small clump of forget-me-nots poked up between broken pavement slabs and lilted in the wind next to a lamp post. These were memories of the meadows that once covered the ground and that still lurked deep beneath the concrete crust.
He was considering this, alongside his other more serious concerns, when he walked right into an idea. He turned left down Montague Street and saw the sign. It read in Yiddish: ‘MILCH, FRISH FUN DI KU’. He remembered hearing that years ago those living in the East End couldn’t get milk from the countryside and so had their own herd in the middle of the city. The last cow had departed long since but the sign remained, hanging haphazardly on the disused gates, to serve the purpose of providing divine, or bovine, inspiration for Jack.
‘That’s it! Milk fresh from the cow!’
The sound of birdsong echoed in his ears and for a moment he almost muttered a prayer under his breath. If you couldn’t get milk from someone else’s cow, you had to get your own. No golf course would admit him and so he must build his own.
‘And tell me, mein Broitgeber, since you know everything – why couldn’t we go to Israel?’ Sadie muttered at her husband as the green Jaguar wound its way along the narrow country lanes. She was younger than Jack, still in her forties, but had long since resigned herself to a premature old age. She had neat grey-blond hair and on the rare occasions when she laughed the rolls of fat around her middle wobbled ever so slightly. Now they shook with agitation. ‘You want to be like everyone else. So let us go to Israel, where everyone is like us!’
Jack said nothing, concentrating hard on not steering into the jutting hedges and gave a little sigh. He liked being called ‘Broitgeber’, or ‘my Lord and master’, but wished her tone was a touch more sincere. ‘Israel is a place for the young and I am old. It’s too much to build a whole new country. A golf course is enough for me.’
He had bought the cottage without telling Sadie, which in hindsight may have been a miscalculation. He knew he would have to tell her sooner or later, but wanted it to be a fait accompli. Sadie would have railed against it, and he knew with
quiet self-assurance that this was the right thing to do. He had also taken the rather dubious decision of not telling her that their house in London was up for sale, which resulted in the first viewings being cloak-and-dagger affairs. The estate agent bundled visitors round the house while Jack watched from a window for Sadie to return with spurious items, which he’d sent her out to find, like flea powder and anchovies. So when a week later, while reading the Jewish Chronicle, Sadie discovered that her house was ‘under offer’ she was more than a little surprised. So surprised, in fact, that it had taken several brandies to calm her down.
‘And why could you not build this thing in London? Why this godforsaken place?’
‘London’s full. And fresh air is good for nerves.’
‘What do I care for fresh air?’ Sadie’s words came out in a sigh as she sank miserably into her seat. ‘You sell my house from under me, you take me to alle schwartze yorne and then you have the nerve to mention my nerves! Du Blödmann.’
Her litany of tribulations descended into disgruntled mutterings.
‘It will be better. You will be better away from it all,’ replied Jack, his grip on the steering wheel tightening.
‘No. I need to be there.’
The Rosenblums’ lives were divided into two – a neat line severed each half. There was the old life in Germany that was before. Then, there was the new life in England, which was after. Sadie thought of her existence purely in these terms of before and after but this left no room for right now. Her life was a blur of other times. The car reached a straight stretch of road and Jack hit the accelerator. The engine snarled and they surged forward, forcing Sadie to clutch the scarf covering her hair. She frowned and burrowed into her seat. Most of the luggage was in the removal van but she had insisted on her box being placed carefully in the boot of the car. That box was all that was left of before. It contained half a dozen photographs: there was one of Sadie, aged eleven, and her brother Emil, aged three, both dressed up in sailor suits as well as pictures of each of Sadie’s parents smiling at the camera. The rest were family portraits belonging to Jack. Sadie wished that all the photographs were hers – he didn’t deserve them. He couldn’t even remember who the people were in his pictures – the bearded men in tall black hats or the round, smiling women – she would have taken better care of remembering the people who belonged to her. His behaviour was downright careless. She felt the back of her neck itch in irritation.