Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (18 page)

The grass was vivid green under the blackening sky; rain began to drizzle and a fine mist slowly rolled into the valley below, obscuring Jack’s view. He helped Sadie climb over the stream to reach the dew pond.

‘Are you sure there are fish?’

‘Quite certain.’

‘Then empty your pockets.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes. And feel contrite.’

Obediently, Jack emptied his pockets. There were several crumbs, a piece of string, a receipt for straw and a bag of humbugs. He tried his best to be contrite, but it was hard because he always tried not to dwell on regrets, although he did regret the paper bag of humbugs that was slowly sinking to the bottom of the pond. He watched Sadie, her eyes closed and her lips moving in prayer as she turned her pockets inside out and flapped them over the water.

‘Hey, there’s nothing in them. They’re already empty,’ he objected.

She opened her eyes and stared at him.

‘Of course I emptied them first. I don’t want to actually throw anything away. You cast away your sins
metaphorically.’

‘Oh.’

Now Jack really did regret the loss of his humbugs – they were still on ration.

‘Say
Kaddish
with me, Jack.’

He sighed, but he supposed, as the English say – in for a penny in for a pound. Round his neck he wore his battered sun hat on a string – it would have to do for a
Yarmulke
. He placed it on his head and started to sing, his voice mingling with the cries of the birds and the falling rain. Yet, there was a strange sort of harmony to the sound. The wind shook the branches of the willow tree above their heads making tiny drops of water spatter their faces.

‘
Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash sh’may ra’bbo, b’olmo dee’vro chir’usay v’yamlich malchu’say.
’

The dead are held in our memories; we carry them with us through life; one generation to the next, so that our people live on in the minds of our daughters and our sons.

Jack sang the names of those they had lost while Sadie pictured their faces and, for a few brief moments, saw them dancing on the water before her.

Then there was another sound: the rich long note of a horn. It rose up through the mist and echoed against the hillside. Sadie clutched Jack’s arm.

‘A miracle! Thank God! It’s a miracle!’

Tears ran down her cheeks. God had sensed her loneliness and here, in the wilderness, he had found them and sent her the sound of the
shofar
. They were alone no more; the note of the ram’s horn united them. It rang out across the centuries and cut through the fog to find them. She rubbed Jack’s knuckle with trembling fingers, whispering Papa’s old words, ‘The sound of the ram’s horn is sharp. It is like no other sound. It pierces the armour of the heart.’

For a moment the mist cleared and there was a flash of scarlet and rushing limbs. Jack moved to the edge of the pond and stared towards the horizon. There was the sound of barking and pounding hooves, and then a pack of hounds raced into the meadow below, closely pursued by red-coated riders on thundering horses. The horn cried out again and the hunt disappeared back into the haze. In the distance the note rang out for a final cry, and then silence.

Sadie was sobbing now. Jack passed her a rather grubby handkerchief and noisily she blew her nose. ‘It’s a miracle, Jack isn’t it?’

He reached for her hand, ‘Yes, darling, a miracle.’

Autumn slid into winter. The leaves fell to the ground, blew into piles, turned crisp in the frost and rotted away. The branches were jagged against the pale winter sky, and at night Jack and Sadie listened as the windowpanes rattled and the winds rose up and hissed through the empty attics above their bedroom. Jack dug out extra blankets from one of the boxes and they huddled under it at night, hostilities suspended as they clutched one another for warmth. Each evening Sadie filled the earthenware water bottles in an attempt to ward off chilblains. She kept a chamber pot underneath the bed; it was too cold to traipse down the landing to the bathroom, and in the morning the urine in the bowl was ice covered.

Progress on the golf course was halted by the thick frost. The ground froze one night and did not thaw the next day or the day after that. There was nothing to do, except wait. Jack paced his fairways, admiring the five chequered flags, each one frozen mid-flutter. He now realised his course was rather testing (though he was sure it would be much admired by expert players). From each tee the respective hole was invisible, hidden behind the slope of the valley or masked by scrub. The greens were uneven and steep. The rough was a mixture of wild grass, dogwood and gorse and a ball entering it would be lost for ever (in Jack’s view adding to the challenge). Despite these drawbacks, it had a magnificent position. The view across the countryside was vast and open, and Jack felt his smallness against the great expanse of earth and sky.

November eased into December, bringing the thickest frost of the year, and Elizabeth. Jack was filled with joy at the prospect of seeing his daughter. He missed her noise. Young people filled the house with bustle and life; one could feel the world turning and moving onwards.

Elizabeth was the only girl in her class to go up to Cambridge and Jack was a little in awe of his daughter’s achievement. He’d left school at sixteen eager to join the busy world and was unsure as to the proper English method of educating girls. (The information in
Helpful Information
was entirely unhelpful on this point, merely stating that Jews should not expect their sons to be doctors, lawyers or dentists since those occupations must be reserved for the offspring of English professionals). Once a year (or so it seemed) Mr Austen presented to Jack a neatly folded copy of
The Times
announcing the marriage of Miss Marianne Austen or Miss Jessica Austen to a Mr So and So Esq. This appeared to be the pinnacle of an English girl’s achievement, until the following year when the same paper was waved under Jack’s nose so he could admire the ‘safe arrival of Henry Edmund So and So, seven pounds and six ounces’.

Sadie was the one who vocalised concern and consternation – ‘Don’t you want to find a nice boy? Your father will give you all the carpets you could ever want.’ But Jack wanted something more than carpets for his daughter, and if it was Cambridge she wanted, then Cambridge it must be.

Elizabeth knew she was her parents’ connection to the alien, English world and was not above exploiting their ignorance. Most girls went home for the weekends and when at college they were strictly supervised, but she was expert at circumventing rules and avoiding home visits. Even so, she was deeply curious about her parents’ strange journey into rural England. They had never really done anything interesting before, her father made lists and sold carpets, while her mother gossiped and wept when she thought no one was listening.

Sadie cleaned the house and made up the little bedroom under the eaves for her daughter, filling it with all her old childish things. There was the school desk, scratched with ten years of homework, and volumes of Dickens and Shakespeare. In a packing crate she discovered a stash of bedtime stories that she used to read to Elizabeth. Jack didn’t want his daughter speaking German – it was the first and second rules on his list. But, Sadie wanted Elizabeth to hear a little of her language and so read
auf Deutsch,
the pranks of Till Eugenspiel and the macabre adventures of Stuwelpeter
.
She wasn’t sure the little girl understood every word, but Sadie wanted her to know that
Deutsch
was also a language of stories and magic. She wouldn’t let those
Schweinepriester
take all her words from her. The child promised her mother that she wouldn’t tell Papa about the German storybooks. Sadie cherished their secret. As a girl Elizabeth shared everything with Jack – they were forever laughing at some joke or disappearing off to cafés without inviting her – but those forbidden bedtime books belonged solely to Sadie and Elizabeth. During those minutes, she could be
Mutti
at last.

Leaving his wife fussing, Jack left early to collect his daughter from the station. There was a deep frost, the leaves coated with white and the grass hidden beneath an arctic layer. The ponds froze and birds pecked miserably at the solid surfaces. The Jaguar was parked inside the barn, covered in a horse blanket and it took him a good ten minutes to fire it up. He packed hot water bottles, which he wrapped in blankets, along with a flask of tea mixed with brandy for the journey. The roads were icy and he wondered about the wisdom of driving a sports car; he would have to put chains on the tyres if it snowed.

Elizabeth was waiting on the platform, stamping her feet to keep warm, her hands buried in a pair of red woollen mittens. She had two ancient suitcases, filled with a term’s worth of books, washing and memorabilia. For a moment Jack didn’t recognise the young woman standing very straight in the smart caramel-coloured coat; every last trace of the schoolgirl had vanished. He was the same: small, balding, bespectacled and smiling. Elizabeth ran to him and planted a kiss on both cheeks. He received her affections awkwardly and bashed her nose with his, not expecting the second kiss. Suddenly embarrassed before this elegant, adult creature he tried to prise her cases from her grasp. A moment later a porter appeared and firmly piled the luggage onto a trolley.

‘Let me look at you, Daddy.’

She stood, hands on hips and gazed at her father, who shifted from foot to foot under her scrutiny.

‘You’re thinner. And browner. Your hat’s on funny.’

She reached out and fiddled with Jack’s trilby for a moment, took a step back and shrugged.

‘It never sits right,’ she sighed.

Jack felt himself flush like a schoolboy and walked briskly after the porter to hide his mortification. All his hats were purchased from Lock of St James, the best hatter in London, and yet they never sat right. He wished she wouldn’t always draw attention to it; he was trying as hard as he could and hated it when he shamed her. They caught up with the porter, who loaded the bags into the trunk as Jack slipped him sixpence. Elizabeth rolled her eyes in mock exasperation.

‘Oh Daddy, when will you learn not to tip so much?’ she said when the porter was out of earshot.

Jack winced; she’d told him that before – people sneer at you, if you tip too much.

‘But it’s nice to be generous. It’s Christmas.’

She waggled a finger at him playfully. ‘Only Americans tip that much. The English are mean.’

‘Thank you for coming, love, it means so much to your mother.’

She smiled at him, the quick, bright smile that made dimples form in either cheek and she looked happy. Jack relaxed. ‘It’s all right,’ he thought. ‘It’s all right. I’m a
klutz
but love has brought her back to me.’

Her face was rosy pink from the cold; the heating had broken down at Salisbury and the last miles inside the train were freezing so that even the car seemed warm in comparison. Eagerly she wiped away the condensation from the window and watched the English landscape unfold – the trailing rivers iced over and the frost hanging in the rushes on the riverbanks. She had never left London as a child, except for a school trip to Minehead, and now barely heard her father chattering as she stared in amazement at this new world. Smoke puffed from every chimney and the cottage doors were festooned with wreaths of holly. It was not yet four o’clock but daylight was already fading and candles began to flicker in the windows. The fields glimmered in the dusk and Elizabeth wanted to stroke them; the gathering frost looked as soft as goose down.

Sadie was waiting anxiously at home; she’d been checking the window for signs of them at least an hour too soon. Then, in a crackling of gravel, they were there. Elizabeth flung open the heavy front door and embraced her mother, burying her face in the familiar soft cheek and neck. Sadie always smelled softly of Chanel No. 5, and there it was, but mixed in with it was the heady scent of damp earth and woodsmoke.

‘
Mein lieber Schatz! Mein Kind,
’ exclaimed Sadie, her face buried in her daughter’s hair. She covered her face with exuberant kisses, and ushered her into the kitchen. Sadie felt a tug of joy at the prospect of feeding her little one, and sat at the table to watch her eat, hiding her smile behind her hand as Elizabeth demolished half a dozen vanilla crescents. And yet, they had been apart for so long that there was a distance between them; they were two strangers who needed to become acquainted. She felt that Elizabeth was different – a young woman now, beginning her own life and exuding confidence. In contrast Sadie felt middle-aged and tired. Her clothes were faded, her hair grey and in the mirror she could see creases round her eyes and thin lines on her top lip. She remembered when she was young like Elizabeth with thick hair and smooth skin. Elizabeth looked English: she had dark Jewish hair but bright green eyes and the creamy pink complexion of the classic English rose, and now she spoke with the quiet self-assurance of a graduate of one of The Universities. No one would guess that she was conceived in a tiny apartment in a Jewish suburb of Berlin. She listened to Elizabeth chatter about new friends, the tutors she liked and the ones she didn’t, new words peppering her conversation. Sadie didn’t understand but did not like to expose her ignorance to this smart new daughter who drank tea with milk.

Jack marched into the kitchen, a scarf wrapped around his face, his eyebrows covered in frost. Elizabeth smiled – he looked like a peasant from a storybook
shetetl
in his layers and woollen cap, rather than the dapper London businessman.

‘Come see my course.’

Swaddled in her coat and woollen scarves, Elizabeth followed Jack outside. The winter’s moon hung low in the sky. The frost was so thick that it shone white, bathing the countryside in a ghostly light. It was a good night for stories, so Jack told his daughter all about the legend of the woolly-pig. She listened in silence as their feet crunched through ice on the iron ground. They paused at the ridge by Backhollow, the moon illuminating the weird grass ledges; at the bottom of the slope a hoar frost hung in the ash trees. It coated the spindly trunks and dangled from the branches like silver streamers, each twig coated in tiny crystals. In this strange other world of glittering white Jack could almost believe in the tale of the woolly-pig.

‘Perhaps there really is such a creature. It might be a wild boar. After all they still have them in France,’ conceded Elizabeth.

Jack was delighted; he loved it when she believed his stories. He reached deep into his jacket for a flask and passed it to her.

‘Here, drink this – it’ll keep you warm. Don’t tell your mother.’

His coat was purchased from Curtis. It was lined with rabbit fur and had a handy inside pocket for keeping all manner of hidden things, from a poached pheasant to a hip flask or scrap of fabric for polishing a flagpole.

Elizabeth took the flask and unscrewed the cap with difficulty through her mittens, tilted it and had a sip. Apples burnt the back of her throat. She coughed and handed it back to her father.

‘God, Daddy, what is that?’

Jack shrugged, ‘Just cider from our orchard. It’s not very good. You must taste the stuff that my friend Curtis makes.’

He took another swig and gave a loud hiccup. He hadn’t yet made a batch that didn’t give him hiccups – it was most upsetting.

‘Come, you must see the first hole. I dug it all myself.’

Sadie sat alone in the kitchen. They had been gone for two hours and she was starting to worry. There was a chicken roasting slowly in the oven as a special treat and soon it would go dry. It was pitch dark outside, the lamps kept going out and there was the uncanny howl of a fox in the distance. She felt like crying. It was always the same – they would go off and forget all about her. Every Sunday in London, Jack had taken Elizabeth to the Lyons Corner House in the high street. Not once had they thought to ask her.