Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (10 page)

The sun was low in the sky and the parched fields glowed pink in the evening light. At the edge of the garden, just beyond the orchard, she saw a deer nibbling the leaves of a hawthorn tree. It glanced up as if it sensed her staring through the window. Neither moved; the deer listening and Sadie lying naked in the warm water, watching.

As she got out of the bath and towelled herself off, she studied the large cracks in the wall, running all the way from the heavy oak beam in the ceiling right down to the floor. They had called in a builder when she first noticed them but he found their concern entertaining and explained, ‘They is like livin’ things these old houses. The stones move. It don’t matter. Supposed to. Those newfangled houses, they is no good. These old ’uns like to move. Stretch a bit. There’s one in Okeford that moves out so much I swear he walks down the street.’

Sadie had never thought of a house as a living thing before – it was a thing, which one filled with other things, like furniture and books. Yet the walls here were painted with limewash so that the stone could breathe and at night the house did feel almost alive, with its creaking and the sounds of the stream, trickling, trickling. She closed her eyes and imagined she could hear the stones of the house sigh.

She went back down to the kitchen to find that Jack had gone. There was an almighty crash and a rumbling clatter from close by. Clad in her bath towel, her feet still bare, she followed the noise to the sitting room.

Jack was standing on the hearth with a crowbar as black rubble and grime poured out of the chimney and onto the floor. It was as though he had opened a sluice gate. As Sadie watched in dismay, he changed colour; his hair went from white to black and his face turned grey, except for the shining whites of his eyes. A minute later the tide slowed. He took a piece of wood and poked around, causing more soot to tumble out and small clouds of smog to form in the living room.

Sadie stared in horror. ‘I’ve just had a bath.’

Jack did not turn around. ‘Hope you kept the water. Think perhaps I might need a wash.’

He stuck his hand back inside and reached into the back of the chimney. ‘There’s a shelf here. And. There’s something on it.’

 
He pulled out a charred object and laid it on the mat. Sadie peered at it from a safe distance and felt a little sick. It was a skeleton of some sort. Jack gave it a poke. ‘What is it?’ He dumped another item next to the skeleton.

While Jack had been reading endless books on golf, Sadie had read the volume on ancient folklore.

‘It’s a cat. People put mummified cats up the chimneys. Thought it kept out evil,’ she said.

Looking closely at the bones, Jack could make out the shreds of bandages.

‘And there should be a Bible. The cat keeps away witches. The Bible is for Him.’ Sadie gestured to the ceiling.

Jack was intrigued and he picked up the other object, which was indeed a book. He murmured a
Brocha
to humour his wife and opened it with reverence. The print was small and divided up into tiny chapters – it looked like a
goyische
bible. He read a line to Sadie.

‘“Asylum: a place of refuge; a place of protection. Atheist: one who disbelieves in the existence of God.”’ He paused, rubbing his nose and leaving another black smear on his spectacles. ‘The Christian Bible is more different from the Torah than I had thought.’

Sadie took it from him, flipping to the front page and read, ‘“
Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language.
To which are added an Alphabetical Account of the Heathen Deities. Published 1775.” Yes, hmm. Funny sort of bible.’

Jack gave a short laugh. ‘I’ll bet you the hole in my beigel, that whoever put it up there thought it was a bible.’

Sadie smiled. ‘The words are the same, just in a different order. I am sure He can rearrange them.’

Jack chuckled and Sadie turned, laughing with him. She looked pretty, he decided, with her wet hair curling around her face and in this light her eyes were quite green. In these brief interludes Jack could almost remember the woman his wife had once been. He recalled the first days of their courtship when, half in love, they were still shy with one another. In a fit of boldness he’d confessed that he liked Christmas carols and secretly always wanted to go to the service on Christmas Eve in the
Berliner Dom,
and listen to the singing – Christians had all the best tunes. Sadie laughed and goosed him, challenging, ‘Well? Why don’t we?’ They’d snuck in and sat in the very back pew, their thighs brushing, as the congregation bellowed the refrains of ‘O Tannenbaum’
.
Somewhere between the third and fourth verse, Jack realised that a small, gloved hand was sliding into his. He clasped it, his heart beating like butterfly wings. Afterwards, exhilarated by their daring, Jack kissed Sadie for the first time. They stood beneath the Christmas tree in the
Gendarmenmarkt,
cheeks flushed with excitement and cold, and Jack leant towards her, wondering if he ought to remove his spectacles.

 
Jack chewed thoughtfully on his lip. In half an hour he would return to the field and she would sink back into her silent gloom but, for an instant, they were in the same place – like travellers from opposite ends of the world happening upon the same village, and he did not want the feeling to pass, not just yet. ‘Let’s put up the
mezuzah
,’ he said.

Ordinarily, Jack despised the trappings of religion. They only served to show up one’s differences. He was willing, however, to humour his wife in order to maintain this fragile equilibrium. Besides, he reasoned, a
mezuzah
was only a small brown box by the front door – another Jew would recognise it while an Englishman wouldn’t notice it at all.

Sadie looked at him, surprised and pleased. Clutching her towel, she went into the kitchen and fetched a carved wooden box, a few inches long and with a space at the top for a nail. She held it up and shook it so that the parchment inside rattled.

‘What are the words on the paper in the
mezuzah
? Do you even know?’ Jack enquired, hoping that he was not jeopardising the peace.

‘No. But they’re supposed to ward off evil and bring good fortune to the household.’

‘With a cat, a dictionary and a mystery prayer I believe we are very well prepared for all eventualities.’

He placed a handkerchief on his head as a makeshift
yarmulke
and Sadie handed him a prayer book. It was evening now and the house martins zoomed under the eaves to their twittering young. Jack’s voice mingled with the birds as he sang a Hebrew prayer. His song was ancient; it sang of Israel and a desert land of milk and honey. The village of Pursebury Ash had never heard such a song before but the woodlarks continued their own choruses and the wind played gently in the long grass. Jack hammered the
mezuzah
to the doorframe in a single movement, his arm rising like Abraham’s, ready with the knife.

Jack worked as the long ears of corn turned golden and the days became slowly shorter. He laboured in the fields by the light of the high summer moon, the badgers watching him silently as he heaved piles of earth. As July slid into August, he finished moving the molehills. He retired his pulley system to the barn, fetched his mowing contraptions and for the first time in years the grass was cut. He left it long around the edges so that the rough remained strewn with frog orchids, goosegrass and bright pink ragged-robin. He read about the different kinds of grasses for the greens, the advantages of seed versus turf and ordered long hoses to keep everything watered. The dew pond would not be drained; it was filled by a spring whispered to have magical properties. The cold water seeped out from the depths of the earth, emerging from between the stones at the bottom. He could not tell how deep the pool really was, as the surface was covered with giant buttercup lilies. Sometimes, he glimpsed the silver shadows of fish and wisps of pondweed swaying in invisible currents but he did not like water, never having learned to swim. He poked a tall branch into the dark water, where it sank and was swallowed, never touching the bottom. It was good that he did not know the true depth of the pond: it was said to be so deep that it flowed for miles beneath the earth. One afternoon, he watched a duck bobbing on the surface – it dived under water and he waited for it to come up quacking, a fish in its beak. He waited and waited but the duck never reappeared. A few minutes later, a small boy throwing sticks in the pond many miles away at Ashbourne, was surprised to see a duck surface, certain he had not seen it dive.

By the beginning of September, the first hole was nearly finished. In the moonlight, Jack carried a large watering can from the pond to his green and poured it over the young grass. He had planted the finest seed he could find, ordered specially from Switzerland. He knelt down, tenderly stroking the soft stems, now three inches high and ready for their first cut. He went to the barn and fetched the mower, a hand-pushed roller with hundreds of tiny blades and, with the utmost care, slid it across the precious surface. Every few yards he had to stop, remove the basket and empty the cuttings. At midnight, he had finished mowing and the green was smooth, like a shot of silk in the darkness. It remained sparse but cutting would help it grow and put down good roots. He filled another watering can, mixed in a spoonful of fertiliser and sprinkled the grass once more.

He was so tired that his muscles trembled. ‘Must carry on . . . must carry on,’ he chanted over and over, clenching his fists in determination. Elizabeth would be here in a week or two, and he was resolved on having the hole finished.

He felt a flicker of excitement in his belly – finally, he was ready to cut the first hole. He had purchased a special tool for this: a long metal tube with a serrated top that lay in readiness by the pond, the new metal glinting coldly in the light of the moon. He ran his finger along the sharp edge, cutting himself foolishly, and a drop of blood fell to the ground. He licked his finger and carefully removed his torch and the map of Bulbarrow from his jacket. Trying to avoid smearing it with blood, he spread the map along the ground, weighted it with rocks and with a pencil marked with an
X
the spot where the hole was to go. It corresponded to the first hole on Tom Morris’s plan of St Andrews; Jack had laboured mightily to get the land to match, and the stream trickling down from the dew pond haphazardly mirrored the Swilcan Burn running in front of the first hole on the Old Course. He wished that Tom Morris’s greens were a little smaller – after two hours of mowing and trimming with scissors he was exhausted.

There were other drawbacks; the Bulbarrow stream ran at a different angle to the Swilcan Burn and instead of skirting the green it simply cut it in two. Try as he might, he simply could not get the green level and although he removed the molehills, the incline remained sharp – a ball placed at the top rolled straight down into the pond at the bottom. Similarly, the fairway remained bumpy as, despite all his watering and a hefty dose of summer rain, the molehills did not grow. They remained, grassy lumps, wedged into the furrows and dips of the land. These minor impediments aside, he was thrilled by his miraculous progress.

Clutching his map in one hand and a brass compass in the other, he walked carefully across the new grass to mark the position of the hole. He gazed learnedly at the compass and searched for the North Star. He wasn’t absolutely sure how to use a compass but the cowboys in the pictures always looked at the stars, unless it was daylight when, well, he didn’t know what they did then.

Suddenly, he swayed on his feet, his eyes closed and he fell fast asleep. A little snore rumbled forth from his throat and he snapped awake in surprise. ‘Here. The hole will go here.’ He plunged a stout stick into a random spot declaring, ‘I shall decide by instinct.’

Instantly the stick hit a rock, so he shifted it a little to the left where it sank into the wet earth with ease. ‘Clearly,
this
is the right spot.’

He slid the hole cutter into the ground and hammered it in with a piece of wood. Heaving and puffing, he hauled it out to leave behind a neat, round hole, a foot deep and perfect.

‘Now for the cup.’

He fished an old soup tin out of his pocket, parcelled in newspaper and preserved especially for this purpose. He unwrapped it and rinsed it out in the stream, the last flecks of beef consommé trickling away. Gingerly, avoiding the jagged edges of the tin, he slid it into the hole. Finally, it was ready – this was the part he had been waiting months for. As he picked up the black-painted pole with its neat blue and white chequered flag and slotted it into the hole, he felt a twinge of regret that Sadie was not here to watch his first triumph. There was a time when they were friends. He would have liked this moment better if his Sadie and Elizabeth were here.

The bright squares on the flag glowed whitely in the darkness and fluttered in a tiny breeze. Jack stood back and admired his handiwork. Eventually, after all his effort, the first hole was finished. He had felt a similar sense of achievement when his factory produced its first roll of carpet, but this he had done with his own hands. No man would help him and so he had laboured like Samson night and day (and golf courses were much more useful than temples). ‘One hole made – only seventeen to go.’

He felt slightly dizzy at this thought and craved sleep. In the morning, he would drink ginger beer for breakfast to celebrate and then he would play his very first hole. He’d had a case sent down from Fortnum’s, and he wondered how he could persuade Sadie to join him. To have his wife toast his success with a ginger beer, and then walk round the course with him (shaded by a white parasol and marvelling at his every shot) would be very pleasant. In London he could sometimes buy her goodwill with a box of glazed honey cakes from one of the bakeries in Golders Green or a print scarf from Liberty’s, but while he sensed that she was different here, he had no notion of how to curry favour.

He hoped Sadie would be impressed by the brilliance of his swing. After all this time and painful hard work, he still had not played any golf – he was determined to wait until the first hole was ready and to try his swing on a proper course. He’d tee off tomorrow morning. He glanced at his watch and hesitated; tomorrow was already here – it was two o’clock in the morning. Should he take out his clubs and try a shot in the dark? No, he decided. He’d waited this long. He would play a hole properly, like a gentleman – after breakfast.

He staggered back up the ridge to the house, so tired that he felt as if both legs had turned to lumps of clay. He paused on the edge of the garden and gazed down to the opening hole, where the flag waved as though in acknowledgement. Reaching the house, he climbed the stairs and, only removing his mud-caked shoes, slumped into bed next to his sleeping wife. He tucked himself in beside her and stroked her rigid back. ‘I know you are not pleased now, but you will be,’ he whispered. ‘This is for both of us. Wait until the course is full with people and then you’ll feel better. You’ll see.’

He kissed the nape of her neck, something he would never dare to do when she was awake. As he went to sleep, he saw himself teeing off and hitting a ball high up into the far reaches of the sky, where it became a shooting star and disappeared into the black night.

Jack woke late to the sound of bells; it was nearly twelve o’clock. The room was empty and he could hear Sadie in the kitchen. He waited until it was silent, signalling she was in the garden, and then traipsed into the bathroom to wash. He helped himself to one of the new fluffy towels sent from London and, hesitating before using Sadie’s Parisian soap, he strolled naked onto the landing.

‘Can I use your good soap?’

There was no response, which he took for ascent and liberally doused himself in lily of the valley. He cleaned himself carefully, washing the last crusts of dirt from his ears and hair and took a brush to his fingernails. He had been somewhat careless of his appearance the last few weeks but this morning, for his hole of golf, he needed to be pristine. He whipped up a lather and shaved meticulously, then took the scissors and comb from the bathroom cabinet and trimmed the hair protruding from his nostrils. He dabbed cologne behind his ears and on the top of his head, and scrupulously scrubbed his teeth with peppermint powder.

Clean and sweetly scented, he padded along the landing to the bedroom. Hanging in the wardrobe, wrapped in tissue paper, was his new suit. It was a green and yellow golfing tweed with plus fours, a matching cap and canary coloured socks. He pulled it on, humming cheerfully to himself, and scrutinised his reflection in the long mirror. He looked just right, a proper golfer. Once it was a little more lived in it would be perfect. He laced up his brown leather studs and clattered down to the kitchen leaving small holes in the wooden tread of every stair. The case of ginger beer was set out in readiness and Sadie had left some bread and fruit on the table. He cracked open a bottle and took a gulp; it was fiery and made him hiccup.

‘Well, is today the day?’ demanded Sadie coming into the kitchen.

Unable to speak, Jack nodded.

‘Do you know what to do?’

Jack scrambled to his feet in excitement at her interest, wiping sticky ginger beer from his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘I’ve been reading all about the perfect golf swing. First there is the grip, the
Vardon
grip.’

He grabbed a saucepan from the countertop and clasped it in both hands to demonstrate.

‘It’s all about power. You need to place your hands in a neutral position so as to deliver the force flush to the back of the ball and send it whooshing down the fairway!’

He swung the saucepan through the air and knocked a chair flying. Sadie frowned unimpressed, but Jack’s torrent of enthusiasm now unleashed, could not be stopped.

‘Do you remember – we saw a reel of Bobby Jones at the Masters?’

Sadie wrinkled her forehead. ‘Yes, I think so. It was at the front of a Veronica Lake picture.’

Jack barely recalled the film – some tedious weepy that Sadie had wanted to see – but the newsreel footage of Bobby Jones was something else. He had gone five times just to watch that swing: the elegant poise, feet shoulder width apart, elbows tightly in, head still, left arm straight, wrists cocked and then the sheer force; hips pivoting, as the club sweeps down in a perfect symphony of coordination with muscles, joints and mind all working together.

‘Bobby Jones’s swing – that’s as close as a man can get to magic.’ He shook his head, awed by the thought of his hero. ‘I mean, I realise that mine won’t be like that, not at first. I’ll need to practise.’

Sadie considered him curiously but he did not notice, already lost in reverie.

‘I have a course of my own, well, a hole, to learn upon. Maybe in a year or two, I can enter the British Open as a gentleman amateur, like Bobby Jones.’

 
Sadie stared at him, and wondered if she should knock sense into him or pity him.

 
Jack, unable to read the thoughts of his wife, was once again overwhelmed with the unfamiliar sensation of desiring her company. At that moment, there was nothing he wanted more than Sadie to share in his triumph. He felt almost shy, a bashful suitor once again.

 
‘Will you walk round with me? Watch my first shot,
mein Spatz
?’