Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman

by Natasha Solomons

  Yet Jack was also transfixed by Robert Hunter, author of the celebrated tome The Links Courses of England and Scotland, who declared, ‘it should be remembered that the greatest and fairest things are done by nature and lesser by art’. Hunter was a Romantic and valued the sublime on the golf course. Bunkers were only true hazards when formed from sand blown in by the turbulent North Sea. The rough should be toughened blue seagrass and the greatest vista was that of the crashing waves against the horizon. Beauty is small scale – a mere construction of prettiness by mankind, who cannot manufacture the sublime magnificence of nature. Bobby Jones may smooth a hillock or alter the course of a stream, but he cannot fill an ocean or grow a granite-tipped mountain. Hunter knew of no course that could rival the ancient links. Yet, Jack reasoned, Hunter had not actually built a golf course and Bobby Jones had.

  Torn by the conundrum of whose approach to choose, Jack took off his glasses, nestled into his high-backed armchair and lit a cigarette. He was not a regular smoker, perhaps smoking three cigarettes a week, but they helped him think. He struck a match and let it burn between his fingers, watching the bright orange flame flicker before shaking it out. He inhaled deeply and coughed. The smoke curled upwards and lingered alongside the beams embedded in the low ceiling. He stretched out his short legs and closed his eyes in consideration. While he liked the photographs of the course at Augusta, he remained concerned that diverting the Stour single-handedly might conceivably be ambitious for a novice. Similarly, the purchase of thousands of exotic flowers may be beyond his means. Nonetheless, he was adamant that his course would be one of the best and, like all great visionaries, he was not going to be dissuaded by trivial inconveniences.

  Mr Robert Hunter’s command to utilise the natural obstacles provided by the terrain was compelling. Jack’s land was full, overflowing in fact, with natural obstacles: there were the water meadows at the base of the valley filled with sprouting bog plants, and the slope of the hill was really very steep, an incline of approximately twenty per cent which, Jack understood, already made his course one of the more challenging. The edges of the course were tightly wooded and hedges divided the land into thin strips.

  Considering this, Jack tried to blow a smoke ring and choked. His eyes began to water and tears streamed down his cheeks. He reached for the nearest liquid, which happened to be the whisky decanter, and took a large gulp. This made the coughing worse and he spluttered whisky from his nose. It took a minute for the fit to subside and exhausted he settled back in his chair. He contemplated why he was so drawn to the game of golf – what had compelled him to pack up his life, gather his petulant wife and move to this place? Yes, he wanted to be an Englishman but there had to be something more, a reason for his obsession with the game. Perhaps he liked golf because it had rules – within those little laws lay a logical order. If you played the game and obeyed the rules, then win or lose you were safe. The game contained and held you safely within its structures. For the hours of your round, you could live in this perfected world of flowers and silver pools, and exist according to the boundaries of the game. Golf was a great list of rules, all by itself. He sucked on his cigarette, exhaled a small funnel of smoke and reached a decision. He must combine the two great models: he would create a links course according to the wisdom of Robert Hunter but using the techniques of Bobby Jones. He would create a St Andrews in the Blackmore Vale – even if he had to demolish the entire western face of Bulbarrow Hill.

  There remained one niggling doubt, like a small stone in his shoe, and so Jack decided he must do what any logical man would – write to Bobby Jones for advice. He went over to his desk, pulled out a piece of crisp white writing paper and reached for his pen.

  Dear Mr Jones,

  I have recently purchased sixty acres of land in the county of Dorsetshire, which I have undertaken to turn into a golf course. I am a great admirer of your triumph at Augusta, and hope that you would condescend to bestow upon me a little of your advice. I intend to have my course completed before the following summer. I enclose a map of the land. My only slight inhibiting factor is that currently I must undertake all work myself. I do not wish this to impede any suggestions you may decide to bestow. Please, be assured sir, that I am five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity.

  With regards,

  Your humble servant,

  Jack M. Rosenblum

  Jack sealed up the letter and placed it carefully in his pocket. First thing tomorrow, he would take it to the post office to be weighed. He did some rough calculations in his head. Presuming that the letter went into the first airmail post tomorrow, it would still not reach Mr Jones’s publisher until a minimum of four weeks later and a delay of anything up to twelve weeks was certainly very possible. He then assessed that it would sit in a secretary’s in-tray for another week and would not be forwarded to Mr Jones, undoubtedly a very busy man, for at least another fortnight. All in all, he would consider himself fortunate if he heard back at all before Christmas. He simply could not wait that long. Whilst he would incorporate Mr Jones’s advice the instant he received it, construction must begin right away.

  He stood up and brushed himself down. There was no more time to waste – he’d already lost a whole month in preparation. He must start this very instant. He went straight to the ramshackle barn at the side of the house that had been converted into a tool shed. Unable to procure any labour from the village, the previous week he had requested two caretakers from the London factory to come to the country. He agreed to pay an exorbitant bonus and Fielding, the factory manager, was very unhappy, but it had been worth it – in seven days they had plumbed a bathroom and fixed up his tool shed. He surveyed the gleaming racks of tools; he had no idea what most of them were, but they looked wonderful. They had cost a pretty penny, using up a tidy chunk of the Rosenblums’ savings account, but he was sure they were all vital to the construction of a golf course. There were five different types of hoe as well as rakes, trowels, mowers and a fearsome array of heavy rollers and, on a hook just beyond his reach, rested a steel spade with a red-painted handle. He moved an old seed crate into position to use as a step and, standing on tiptoe, unfastened the spade, but it was heavier than he thought and clattered to the ground. Retrieving it with a curse and getting a lightweight hoe for good measure, he headed for the door. He had no notion what a hoe was actually for, but felt more professional with a tool in each hand.

  He hurried out to the field and stood in the biggest of the meadows with his local Ordnance Survey map, surveying his land.

  ‘Bugger it. I ought be wearing my new cap.’

  He plunged his hands into his pockets, wishing he’d thought to write to Mr Bobby Jones earlier. Then he’d have a proper plan and real advice.

  ‘Never mind. Can’t be helped.’

  He closed his eyes and tried to visualise Tom Morris’s plan of St Andrews. He had stared at it long enough that he could see it in his mind and, as he opened his eyes and gazed at the landscape once more, he saw it with St Andrews superimposed on top. To the north, where the sea should be, was the one part of the original that Jack recognised he could not recreate. There was a rise to the south at St Andrews but on his land there was a dew pond. He did not know how to drain a pond and he wondered briefly if there was a plug to pull like in a bath – a straw bung, perhaps, that once removed enabled the water to flow back into the centre of the earth. There was also a strange hollowed-out path cut into the side of the hill, just where he wanted it level for the first green. On the Ordnance Survey map it was labelled ‘the coffin path’. He supposed this was the route the dead were taken to the little church – the lane was too steep and so coffins had to be carried along the gentler path across the fields – and now the centuries of use with heavy, lead-lined boxes had sliced a deep gouge into the soft earth underfoot. Interesting, but no use for golf – he needed a perfectly even surface. It’d have to go. Well, then, he decided, that was a good place to begin. On balance, he considered it would b
e easier to fill in the path than empty the pond. He would pack it with earth and level the ground. Buoyed with enthusiasm he thrust his spade into the soil. Instantly there was a crack as metal hit rock. He bent down to inspect the damage and saw that the spade had struck a piece of flint. He hesitated for a moment, removed it carefully with his hands and tossed it aside. From his pocket he retrieved a crisp pocket-handkerchief and meticulously wiped his muddy hands.

  ‘There now, that’s what it’s all about. Getting one’s hands mucky.’

  He thrust the spade into the earth once more and again, there was a clink as it collided with stone. He bent, plucked out the object, cleaned his fingers on the dirt-smeared pocket handkerchief and stood upright, slightly painfully this time. An hour later, there was a low pile of stones and a hole but the sunken path was no less hollow.

  ‘How on God’s earth am I supposed to fill these blasted holes without digging more holes for earth to fill them?’ It was a real conundrum.

  He was damp with perspiration and his fingers were blistered. He sat down with a tiny sigh on a tufted molehill, the size of a well-fed snoozing sheep, and put his head in his hands, inadvertently smearing mud across his cheeks. Old grassed molehills covered nearly an acre, rising out of the ground like giant mossy pimples.

  ‘That’s it!’ He jumped up in excitement. ‘I will dig up the molehills and use them to fill the holes! That’ll kill two birds with one stone.’

  It was genius in its simplicity. None of his tools were right for slicing off molehills, what he really needed was a giant cheese wire. He made some estimates – there were enough molehills to plug the voids and, if there were enough left over, he would use them to fill in the dew pond. ‘It’s going to be a triumph – I can sense it.’

  Later that evening, Jack returned to his study and consulted his maps. Every bit of him ached with tiredness; his eyes were bloodshot, irritated by the tiny flecks of soil that had endlessly been thrown into his face as he worked. Clasping a stiff whisky in one hand, he traced over the land with a shaking finger. After ten hours of labour he had succeeded in moving three molehills. ‘Not to worry,’ he told himself, brightly, ‘tomorrow I shall be quicker. First, I had to mould my tools, and now they are made, I shall get on like a donkey, stubborn and efficient.’

  The cheese-wire plan had worked. He’d found a piece of wire and managed to work it through the base of the mound. The molehills, however, proved to be extremely heavy, forcing him to construct an elaborate pulley system in order to lift them. This took several hours and many buckets of water from the pond to use as counterweights. The system was very unsteady and, if he got his measurements off, the buckets would waver and empty their loads all over his trousers. The molehills were loaded onto the pulley and then deposited in the holes, where they sat, round and grassy like cupcakes in odd-shaped cases. He was sure he had read somewhere that molehills grew in the wet, so he poured water over them in the hope that they would melt into the right space. In a few months, with a bit of luck and a little rain, they would expand to fit perfectly and his land would be smooth and level.

  In blue ink, Jack circled the area on the map. When it was even, he would flatten it with the heavy rollers and cut the grass. Then, and only then, could he trim his first green and make the very first hole. He reached into his desk drawer; the rejection letters had all been disposed of, and in their place rested a small book of fabric samples. These had been sent from the factory as Fielding had wanted him to consider diversifying into curtains, but Jack needed the cash funds for the golf course – construction was going to be expensive. He kept the samples anyway to select a colour for the flags. He held the fabrics on his lap and stroked a vibrant blue and cream stripe, then a crimson check.

  Moving the molehills was a gargantuan task and he made slow progress, inching around the field like a shadow on a giant sundial. He had been at work for a month now and there were bare brown circles where the molehills had been removed. The land was riddled with these round marks amid the lush grass. His pulley system was wheeled out of the barn at first light and, in the sun-soaked silence of the afternoon, the mechanism bobbed up and down as he rearranged the great piles of earth. Word spread throughout the Blackmore Vale about the Jew’s quest to construct a golf course on Bulbarrow. At first he was dismissed, but then, when his molehill contraption was glimpsed, it was decided that here was a sight worth seeing. Jack never took a day off to rest, his task was too important, and so on Sunday afternoons people came from villages all around to gaze at the unusual spectacle. They gathered with picnics on the brow of the hill, and stared happily at the peculiar little man with his giant cheese wire invention. They clapped as the pulleys lifted the tufts right off the ground and groaned when the system faltered and deposited its buckets of water over him. Binoculars were passed between family and friends to afford a better view. No one offered to help. It seemed to them that here was a man devoted to a unique and solitary calling. They considered him to be somewhere between a prophet and a lunatic. Some wondered if, like Noah or Moses, he was compelled by the voice of God. Others were convinced he was a madman, but as long as he was not dangerous, they were happy to eat egg sandwiches and ginger cake and watch the small man move piles of earth as the sunlight shone off his polished head.

  Away from the crowds on top of the hill, Sadie watched her husband quizzically. She hardly recognised the darkly sunburnt figure with tiny muscles showing through the thin skin on his arms. At dusk he crossed the fields and opened the kitchen door with a bang, collapsing onto a high-backed chair.

  She studied him before speaking. ‘So, you only come inside for meals now?’

  He shot her a beseeching look. ‘Too tired to argue.’

  Sadie hid a tight smile. It was more fun if he didn’t enjoy it. ‘You’re an old man, you work all day and for what?’

  Jack only nodded.

  ‘We live in the same house, at the edges of each other’s lives. Nearly twenty years of marriage and it has come to this,’ said Sadie slapping the table with her palm for emphasis.

  Still he said nothing. This irked Sadie; she was plaguing him and he was not fighting back. As long as he didn’t walk away – she couldn’t bear that. She fetched a loaf of bread and some cold beef from the larder, slapped it onto a plate and handed it to him. He ate hungrily. He would have to stay and listen whilst he ate.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and smiled.

  This was too much for his wife.

  ‘Mein Gott! Always so cheerful! It’s not natural. Why can’t you be even a little bit miserable? Then, maybe, we’d have something to talk about after all these years.’

  ‘Why do you have to chew over everything like a piece of gristle? The past is in the past. For pity’s sake, let it stay there.’

  There was a note of anger in his voice that pleased Sadie. At last, she had got to him. ‘You are sunshine at a funeral.’

  Jack gave a sharp laugh. ‘And what is wrong with that?’

  ‘Everyone wants good weather for a wedding, but at a funeral the sky should have the decency to be overcast. It is simple respect.’

  Jack finished his bread, sent his wife a wary glance and stalked out of the kitchen. She gave a sigh of exasperation and contemplated following him into his study to torment him further, but deciding against it, she sat down, wondering if he took the trouble to remember anything at all.

  Despite the usual quarrels with her husband, Sadie felt more peaceful than she had for many years and certainly since Elizabeth had left. In the mornings she was woken by the scent of roses seeping in through the open windows. The sounds of the wood pigeons in the roof no longer alarmed her. She had a pair of white doves sent down from Harrods and installed them in an old dovecot she discovered in the garden; they started to breed and the air was full with the cheeping of baby birds. Leaning against the house stood an ancient nodding lilac tree, its branches spindly and heavy with sprays of sweet-smelling blossoms. Butterflies and humming bees moved amongst the tangl
ed flowerbeds and snails left their silver trails across the damp earth. The sky was bigger here than in the city and she lost herself for hours as she watched the branches on the ash trees, the leaves shifting in the summer wind like glass inside a kaleidoscope. Sometimes she did not get dressed, she would come downstairs in her curlers and nightdress and lie on the dew damp ground and stare at the clouds drifting across the changing sky. In the thick July heat she spent whole mornings resting on the unkempt lawn and if she felt drowsy she slept; there was no one to chide her for eccentricity. Sometimes as she lay watching the scudding clouds, she imagined Emil beside her in the long grass. It was he tickling her wrist with that strand of green. She was careful to look straight ahead at the soaring larks, so as not to spoil the game.

  There was still that familiar scent in the garden, a flower that smelled of her childhood. Finally, she traced it to a rose – an unremarkable yellowing bloom with dark leaves marked with blight. Its fragrance was of endless summer holidays a long time ago. It made her melancholy and yet it reminded her of a time before, when she was happy. She did little to the flowerbeds except trim a space around this rose.