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

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘ … And another.’

  The man passed it to him, and Jack hesitated only for a moment before biting into the bread and blackened pork.

  The sun dipped behind the bank of bare trees, and dusk crept forth. The children were taken home to their beds, and the river took on a different shade. The ice gleamed blackly in the darkness and the skaters moved faster and faster, fuelled by cold and alcohol. They took swigs from bottles and shrieked into the night. Jack did not like it.

  ‘Where ist mein kind?’ Sadie’s voice trembled.

  Jack patted her arm. ‘She’ll be fine, dolly. She’s a big girl.’

  A second later Elizabeth glided into view, her cheeks bright with exercise, and waved happily at her parents. Jack went to the edge of the river and beckoned to her.

  The Roses picked their way back along the meandering river. As they turned the corner the cries of the last skaters drifted away into the night air. Jack thrust his hands deep into his pockets, grateful for the soft fur lining.

  ‘Snow is a white, white word,’ sang Elizabeth into the darkness.

  She took hold of her mother’s hand and tried to make her run and skip. Sadie stumbled to keep up, unaccustomed to moving so fast and young. Elizabeth skidded to a halt. ‘Look,’ she whispered, still clasping her mother’s mitten.

  A clamour of rooks rested upon the shadow of a dead tree, its branches outspread like pairs of lifeless arms and grasping fingers. There were hundreds of them, sitting on every limb of the tree. The birds were black, black against the snow.

  ‘They is nasty creatures,’ said a voice.

  Curtis appeared in their midst. Expertly, he skimmed a large stone, which bounced across the ice and hit the tree carcass with a hollow crack. The rooks beat their dark wings and rose into the sky, circling with angry caws.

  ‘’arbingers of death,’ he added cheerfully.

  Elizabeth laughed.

  ‘And them mare’s tails sproutin’ in the frost. Terrible omen, for sure,’ he said pointing to where a green brush like plant poked through the snow.

  Elizabeth snorted. ‘Do you know any tales that aren’t nasty?’

  Curtis was crestfallen. He thought for a moment.

  ‘Well, I does know that comfrey flowers is an excellent cure. Can’t remember what for ’xactly. But tis excellent. Also, you mustn’t wash on New Year’s Day, or yer’ll wash yer family away. That’s a good ’un.’

  He reached into his pocket and passed a flask to Jack, who tried to drink surreptitiously while joggling from foot to foot in an attempt to stay warm.

  ‘It’s a night as dark as a badger’s backside,’ said Curtis, replacing the flask. ‘Yer shouldn’t linger here. The Drowners will get ’ee.’

  Elizabeth laughed into her mitten. ‘The Drowners?’

  Curtis swiped the flask from Jack and fixed Elizabeth with a hard stare. ‘They puts out precious things upon river bank. Yer know, things that yer have treasured and lost. Then, when yer creep down to the edge of the water to grab it, they snatches yer and pulls yers under.’

  Jack shuddered; he felt the cold water closing above his head once more as he sank to the bottom of the river.

  ‘You shouldn’t say such things in front of my girl,’ Sadie scolded the old man.

  ‘She don’t believe me anyhow. Modern wi-min.’

  Elizabeth suppressed another giggle. She liked the books coming from America – Kerouac, Faulkner and Arthur Miller – that was the future. She was going to save up for an airplane ticket and go to America after graduation – Europe and the Old World were worn out and threadbare. Curtis and his folk tales belonged to another century.

  They reached the gate at the foot of the hill leading to the golf course. Curtis leant against it and, steadily ignoring Elizabeth, waggled a finger at Jack and Sadie.

  ‘Lost people in this village to the Drowners. I ’ad a cousin who ’ad a lovely gold watch, present from his granpa. Went out drinkin’ one night and lost it. Was very upset, got a big hidin’ from his pa when ’ee got home. Then. A year later. Maybee five. I doesn’t remember. Anyhow tisn’t important. Walking home ’ee sees ’is gold watch on river bank. It’d bin snowing like, and it were twinklin’, and he bends down to git it, and then …’

  His voiced trailed off and he gave a little wave into the darkness.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well, ’ee was niver seen again, was he,’ said Curtis crossly, slamming the gate.

  ‘If you never saw him again, how do you know about the watch and the Drowners?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Hush,’ said Jack.

  Curtis scowled, offended by the impertinence of the girl; he did not want to be dismissed like an old fool. Sadie took Elizabeth’s arm and gently pulled her towards the house. Jack and Curtis watched as the two women trudged across the garden and then a few moments later, the lights flickered on in the kitchen. The two men paused companionably in the night air.

  Jack stared at the criss-crossing tracks littering the white field; there were marks from the sledges of the village children and deer prints, but next to them, lying deeply embedded in the snow, was a large round trotter print. Was it possible? He pointed to it. ‘A woolly-pig print,’ he said, with an air of conviction to mollify his friend. ‘Yom Tov woolly-pig.’

  His voice rang out into the night. For a moment he waited, and then he was sure he heard a deep-throated grunt echoing a reply across the snow.

  The weather did not improve for the last days of the year. New Year came and the ice stayed, snow drifting against the ancient walls of the cottage. The flags on the golf course were dotted across a white ocean, and as he dug narrow walkways across the endless snow, Jack found the tiny, frozen bodies of birds. One morning he discovered the fat little robin that had hopped along the gate in autumn, tugging at worms and watching him, head cocked. He saw a splash of red feathers and, stooping to look, found the robin, stiff and half buried in the frost. It was as light as his handkerchief in the palm of his hand and he felt, as he covered the flame-coloured bird, that he was burying the last piece of colour in a white world.

  It was fortunate that Sadie, schooled by rationing, was in the habit of hoarding food or they would have gone hungry. Luckily, her pantry was piled high with tins, buckets of flour and crocks of eggs, which Jack traded for pitchers of milk. The hens huddled in the barn, their coop covered with blankets and Sadie took them water twice each day since inside the barn water froze in a few hours. The novelty of the cold changed into tedium.

  The hot water pipes froze and Sadie boiled kettles on the kitchen stove. Jack refused to wash – ‘I need my dirt to keep me warm’ – but on New Year’s Day, Sadie decided that it was time to bathe. She had never seen in a New Year dirty. With a scowl, she placed her hands on her hips and cleared her throat.

  ‘Broitgeber, I believe it is a rule on your list. An Englishman is always clean, is he not?’

  Lying in bed later that night, he decided the water had gently broiled his innards, since he was less cold than usual. He went to sleep with ease and dreamt he was at Augusta, lying contentedly in the sunshine, listening to the trickling of temperate streams, the piping song of nightingales and the pock of golf balls.

  When he awoke, it took him a moment to realise he was still in the midst of the dismal British winter and not in the great Georgian pleasure garden. He was only disappointed for a moment and slid smiling out of bed and into his slippers. He adjusted his fleece-lined dressing gown and bounded onto the landing. There was a powerful draught whistling along the staircase and he concluded that a window must have blown open in the night. Rubbing his hands for warmth he scurried down the wooden stairs to close it, before Sadie or Elizabeth caught cold. He could hear the wind howling in the kitchen and hurled himself at the door to open it. Mayhem greeted him: the ceiling had come down in the night. Plaster and debris were strewn everywhere and melted snow pooled on the flagstone floor. There was a large hole above his head and he could see the thatch sagging ominous
ly. A twig landed on his head, and he noticed the remains of a bird’s nest on the stove.

  ‘Mistfink. Shit-heaps and buggering hell.’

  The family surveyed the wreckage as snow fell gently into the kitchen turning the dust and rubble into a thick, rancid mess. The north wind hissed through the hole sending flurries of snowflakes and filth across the stone floor. Jack was almost out of sorts. He needed every penny for his golf course and did not have money for niceties like roof mending. Gazing up at the sky through the large opening in the kitchen ceiling he wondered if the repairs could wait until spring. Perhaps he could offer the thatcher membership of the course in lieu of payment.

  Sadie and Elizabeth shovelled armfuls of ceiling plaster, scraps of wood and liquefied black dust into large, wet piles, which Jack scooped into sacks. After an hour, the flagstones had turned to mud and they began to skid along the floor. Sadie slipped by the kitchen dresser, grabbing hold of the base to steady herself. She noticed the low doors were ajar, and frowned, biting her lip in anxiety – precious things were in there and she didn’t want them ruined. She knelt down in the dirt and shoved the wood with her fist. The cupboard door bounced open and water poured out. Snow from the roof had melted and run into the dresser, flooding every cabinet. The crockery was covered in slimy filth but she didn’t care about that, or the vases or the linen tablecloths. She only cared about her wooden box. She eased it out and left the kitchen without a word.

  She crept into the hall, feeling bile rise in her stomach.

  ‘Please let them be all right. Bitte. Bitte,’ she murmured.

  Her hands trembling, she lifted the carved lid. The photographs floated in water, the faces blurred and featureless, all drowned in the deluge. Sadie picked out the picture of her mother, rubbed it gently against her sleeve and held it up in the daylight. The face was gone – she had wiped it off. There was only a piece of soggy, grey paper on the floral swirl of her housecoat. She reached for the other pictures and tenderly laid them on the ground. Every one was ruined. The paper disintegrated into mush as her shaking fingers touched them.

  She picked up the sopping linen towel, Mutti’s last gift, and held it to her face and breathed in, but the scent of her mother’s starch and perfume was gone. Sadie had preserved that small towel immaculately in its tissue paper for nearly twenty years – its starched folds and the marks from Mutti’s iron – and now there was nothing left.

  She sat down on the stone floor and was sick; she retched and vomited again and again until the muscles in her stomach ached. Then she lay down; the stone cool against her cheek. A small pebble trodden inside from the driveway was trapped under her face and she could feel it slicing into her skin but she didn’t move. Without the photographs, in a year, or in five years, she would forget their faces. They had no graves, no names engraved in stone; they needed her to remember them. She closed her eyes. Perhaps if she slept and then woke she would still be in bed and this wouldn’t have happened. She opened her eyes. She was still here. The box was still spoilt.

  Suddenly, eyes feverishly bright, she sat up. Through the closed door she could hear the happy chatter of her husband and daughter. She had an idea; she knew where to look for her photographs.

  She fastened her robe tightly around her waist and, clasping her box, slipped out of the back door. The snow was knee-deep, and she had to stoop against the battering wind. It lifted the flaps of her flannel dressing gown and blew it open, making her pink nightdress flutter like a great moth. Her slippers were instantly sodden but she did not notice. It was mid-morning but the sky was pumice grey, filled with murky half-light hinting ominously of blizzards to come. She crossed the garden and opened the gate out into the blank expanse of the field, an odd figure, trudging across the whiteout in her floral housecoat, her grey hair limp in the damp air. The still rooks on the dead tree at the edge of the river eyed her as she passed.

  Breathless, she paused and craned upwards to look at the sky, and remembered winters like this at the old house in Bavaria. They were snowed in one December and stayed in the house in the forest, marooned from the outside world. She’d helped Mutti make goulash and vegetable broth, and tied a scarf round her hair and pretended that they were peasants. She wished then that they could stay in the rickety house for ever, and she would never have to return to school or the city. In her mind, the Bavarian house was part Chantry Orchard – the sound of the wind through the eaves at night was the same – and also like a picture from the storybooks she read to Elizabeth. Sadie wished she could recall how the house actually looked, the colour of the shutters and how the chimney appeared poking above the treetops. Sometimes, in her dreams, they were all still there in the cabin in the wood. Mutti hunched over the stove, Papa sleeping in his chair and Emil building models out of balsa wood in front of the fire. She was late, and they were waiting for her.

  She manoeuvred past a fallen branch blocking the path along the riverbank and sat down to rest on a stump, not bothering to brush the seat clear of snow. She was exhausted without being tired and wanted to slip down into the downy whiteness and close her eyes. Elizabeth and Jack did not need her; they would get on better without her. Jack had his golf course, and he would prefer not to see her again or to have her spoil his smiling content.

  Her fingers were turning blue at the tips, and she could feel them tingling uncomfortably but she liked the pain – she was supposed to suffer. The others had stayed and died, therefore she deserved to be unhappy. Jack did not understand this, however much she tried to show him, and so she placed burrs in his socks to give him blisters to mar the unbroken cheerfulness of his day. When she bothered to cook his supper she made all the food he disliked eating: kidney pie, rabbit and marzipan tarts. It was good for him, she reasoned, he needed to be a little sad. Making Jack a tiny bit unhappy, and nurturing her own hurt, were acts of love in Sadie’s eyes.

  She stared indifferently at the river and waited. The trees creaked under the heaving mass of snow, and the ice on the river groaned and sighed. She had always been a spectator, living on the edge of catastrophe, set apart from those who had lived and died in its midst. She felt like a series of women, like a paper-doll chain of Sadies, each connected by her fingertips to the next, but every one separate. There was the girl Sadie, then the Sadie before the war and the Sadie who escaped. Then the Sadie in London, and now this strange plump, middle-aged woman, who felt indistinct, like she was not really here at all.

  That moment she saw it: on the bank of the river fluttered a photograph. Not daring to blink in case it disappeared, she stole through the snow to the edge of the river. Her back stiff from cold, she bent down and peered at the paper. There, lying on the ice was the picture of Mutti, her face unmarked by water or dirt. Sadie held her breath, and reached out for the photograph. She grasped it with both hands and studied the familiar face, the grey hair and friendly eyes. Lovingly, she cradled it to her chest, and smiled. She must place it safely in her wooden box, but just as she moved away from the bank, she saw a flicker as another piece of glossy paper caught a stray beam of sunlight.

  It was just out on the ice of the frozen river, partly submerged in snow. She slipped the first picture into her pocket and sat down on the edge of the bank. There was a drop of several feet, and she tried to ease herself down but slid faster than she intended, tearing her housecoat on a tree root as she fell. She picked herself up, and stood bruised and uncertain, trying to balance on the black ice. Forcing herself not to hurry, she glided on her patterned carpet slippers across the solid river to the second picture, and crouched down to peel it off the surface. This picture was of her father and she smiled between chattering teeth as she placed it carefully in her pocket, confident now that there were more to find.

  Dark ivy clung to a gaunt elder overhanging the river, its deep green tendrils glimmered richly in the pale landscape. As she grabbed a strand to steady herself, she spied another photograph. She let go and skidded uncertainly further out, but this one was more difficu
lt to reach and her slippers had soft leather soles that slid in every direction. She was dizzy from the bitter cold and the hard exercise, and saw the rooks surveying her with black eyes. Voices in her head urged caution, but unable to resist, she edged onto the centre of the river and, kneeling down, reached for a corner of the picture. It was too far. She inched closer and stretched out an arm. Her fingers were so cold that she could not command them properly, and the paper fluttered away once more. It was snowing now, and her path onto the river became obscured. The paper was lifted by a gust of wind and floated along the river towards the opposite bank. She cursed, ‘Verdammt Scheiße!’

  The photograph lodged in a drift by a shivering willow. She took another few steps and came to a halt by the tree. Her cheeks were red raw from the wind, her lips tinged blue and her hair a tangled mass. Holding her breath, she reached up for the photograph wedged in the bank of snow. As her fingers brushed it, she felt herself being pulled downwards by invisible hands. They grasped at her, yanking her hair and clawing at her feet. The ice cracked open and Sadie fell slowly into darkness.

  Jack and Elizabeth had cleared away most of the rubble. The hole was patched haphazardly but at least it was no longer snowing inside the kitchen, and the floor was coated with a layer of grime that concerned neither of them. Elizabeth gave the stove a cursory wipe, put the ancient kettle on to boil, and when it began to sing, she poured out two steaming cups. Jack took his and sat hunched at the table. He was distracted, trying to do sums in his notebook, working out how much it would cost for a new roof and the minimum he needed to complete the golf course. He could afford no more mistakes, not a single one.

  ‘Are there any biscuits?’ said Elizabeth, interrupting his thoughts.

  ‘In the larder.’

  ‘I’ve looked. I can’t find them.’

  ‘Ask your mother.’