Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (21 page)

‘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 ominously. 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 difficult 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.’

‘I can’t find her either.’

This was more surprising. Jack called, but there was no answer. It seemed strange that she had gone for a walk in this despicable weather, but she could be unpredictable.

‘She’s probably cleaning out the hens.’

Elizabeth went to the window and peered towards the barn.

‘I can’t see her, Daddy.’

 
Jack set down his pen. Where had his wife gone? The snow pounded against the windowpanes, and the trees creaked in the wind. This was not a morning to be anywhere except by a warm fire sipping hot tea. He abandoned his figures, opened the back door and saw a set of partially obscured tracks leading through the garden to the gate.

‘I think she’s gone outside.’

Jack saw that Sadie’s stout walking shoes remained neatly on their Mackintosh square by the door. Her woollen coat and oilskins hung limply on the wooden peg. Jack had a nasty feeling in his belly. Sadie liked to make him cross, to worry at him like a blister, but she never tried to frighten him. She could catch a nasty chill going out in this arctic weather without proper layers. Jack shivered; he was not wearing his vest underneath his dressing gown and now that he had stopped schlepping sacks of straw and dirt he was getting cold once more. He pulled his overcoat over his pyjamas, put on some coarse woollen socks, his felt hat and three knitted scarves.

‘Won’t be long. I’d better check she’s all right. Best put the kettle on again.’

He hoped he sounded casual; he didn’t want Elizabeth to worry. She said nothing, but he felt her watching from the doorway as he ventured out into the blizzard. He could still discern Sadie’s route across the land to the river, and as the feathery layers hid her tracks he followed the stream to the edge of his land. What madness or stupidity made her venture out in this?

Grimly, Jack realised that people had frozen to death on warmer days and with a fierce pang of guilt he remembered all the times that he’d wished she would leave him alone. He thought ruefully of the cakes she left out for him on the table, those little markers of concealed tenderness. He must find her to thank her for the baking. He loathed her cooking; she always forgot the things he did not like and was forever making him rabbit stews, but he knew that she revealed her love for him through her pastries. Years afterwards, he’d learnt that those strudels she brought him in prison used up her entire week’s ration of butter. That’s why she could only make them once a fortnight. The whole time he was away, Sadie and Elizabeth managed on a meagre half portion of butter, so that he could have his strudels. So that Sadie could show she loved him.

His face stung with cold; it bit into his cheeks and flakes settled on his chin turning his stubble hoary. He drew his coat tight around his shoulders and pulled his hat down low over his eyes. Where the devil had she gone? He reached the gate at the bottom of the field, clambered to the top rung and peered into the distance. The river was still; there was only the creaking of the ice and the eerie cry of the dark birds. Nothing moved. Jack could believe that he was the only creature on earth. Was this his fault? Did he drive her to this?

Unable to see any sign of her, he climbed back down and began to trudge the path along the riverbank. The jutting branches and fluttering bird shadows cast weird shapes upon the snow.

‘I would like to sit in my house with my two women – my daughter and my wife.’ His voice sounded thin in the big afternoon and he felt a little sick as he realised how much he wanted the company of his wife. He did not need to try and be English with her. She did not care. She had known him as the little Jew in Berlin and had loved him enough to marry him. He was suddenly light-headed and felt himself sinking into the snow. He cursed himself and his stupidity, yelling so loudly that his throat hurt, ‘I am a fool!’

Fool, fool, fool!

His words echoed across the frozen river and he shuddered, drawing up his collar around his ears. There was a brisk flurry and he winced as the icy droplets hurt his eyes. He blinked hard and rubbed them. Damn this weather. He surged onwards through the gathering drifts, the bottom of his dressing gown hanging down beneath his greatcoat and dragging wetly along the path. He passed a rook perched on a bare bough of tree. The bird cocked its head on one side and stared back curiously, beak open in hope of food.

‘Tell me if you have seen her,’ he called in desperation.

 
It looked at him for a moment and then flew away. With an eager cry, he chased after it, buoyed by the wild hope that it would lead him to Sadie. He scrambled over the uneven ground as he raced to keep up.

‘Wait my friend. Wait!’

The bird took no notice and vanished into the white void. Jack swallowed hard, and felt a painful lump in his throat. He must not give up. He must find her
.
He gritted his teeth, adjusted his knitted hat and stomped on.

The snow was coming thickly now and he could see only a few inches in front of him. He held out his arm and his hand disappeared. He knew, rather than saw, that the river was still beside him, and moving as quickly as he could, trudged on through the falling snow. His mind began to fill with sinister thoughts: what if he never found her? What if he found her and she was dead? Jack raised his eyes to the dark sky and through chattering teeth tried to bargain with the God he did not believe in.

‘If you help me find her and she lives, I promise I will be a better husband. I will let her be a little sad. I promise I will be good to her.
I promise
.’

The trees groaned in the wind and a heavy fall of snow landed on his head, trickling wetly down his neck. He shuddered, swore and leant forward to shake it from his scarf. Losing his balance, he staggered and there was a sharp crack. Looking down, he saw Sadie’s wooden box splintered beneath his foot. Fingers stiff and covered in painful chilblains, he gathered the shards and shouted into the storm.

‘Sadie, it’s me! Sadie.’

No one answered.

‘I’ve come. Sadie, Sadie, I’ve come.’

Still no one answered.

 
He saw a snatch of pink fabric from her housecoat dangling from a twig on the bank – she must be nearby. His heart pounding, he slid down onto the river and struggled across the ice, but the cascading snow formed a mantle all around him. He blinked away the flakes. Another flash of pink. Jack slithered urgently towards it.

She was lying on the ice, half buried by snow. With the fury of a wild bear, he cleared it from her body, and brushed her pale cheek with his hand.

‘Sadie. Sadie.
Mein Spatz. Ich liebe dich
.’

Jack wrapped his arms around her and stroked her damp hair. She was so cold. There was only a faint tickle of breath on his cheek. Her eyes flickered, but they were filmy and unseeing. As he clutched her to him, he realised her housecoat was soaking wet, and the hem was starting to freeze.

‘
Mein Gott, mein Gott,
’ he muttered.
‘
Was soll ich nur machen?
’

It would take too long to fetch help; he needed to get her into the warm as quickly as possible. He took off his coat and laid it down on the ice. Then, he knelt down beside her, unpeeled her sodden clothes, undid his dressing gown and wrapped her in it as tightly as he could. Jack heaved her onto his fur-lined coat, untied his scarves and wrapped one around her head, another on her feet and slipped the third through the collar on the coat. Holding on to this scarf like a handle, dressed only in his red-striped pyjamas and heavy boots, he began to pull the makeshift sledge along the frozen river.

They reached the bottom of the field that led to the golf course and the dew pond. The snow had drifted and compacted to form a ramp. Panting, Jack used it to drag Sadie up the riverbank to the path, his pyjamas damp with sweat and steam rising from his back into the freezing air. His muscles burned, the air seared his lungs and throat and set his teeth on edge. He struggled to keep his footing as he carried Sadie through the field back home. At last they reached the garden and he dragged her the final few steps to the back door. Thumping on it with his fist, he called for Elizabeth.

‘Help me . . . carry her.’

Elizabeth came running from the kitchen and threw open the door. She froze at the sight of her mother. Sadie’s face was only a shade darker than the snow covering her. She was cocooned in white, like a giant chrysalis, her eyes shut.

‘Elizabeth!’

Shaking herself out of her stupor, she helped her father carry her over the threshold. They laid her in the hallway, and Jack leant against the wall, struggling for breath. Sweat and snow trickled down his face and mingled with salty tears.

‘In the sitting room . . . put her . . . is warmest in there.’

His voice filled the narrow hall and he could hear the sob stick in his throat as he spoke. Together they carried Sadie into the living room. With trembling fingers Elizabeth unbuttoned her from Jack’s coat while he stoked the fire into a fearsome blaze.

‘I’ll stay with Mummy. You go into the village and send for a doctor.’

Jack shook his head, dazed with grief. ‘I can’t leave her. I won’t.’

Elizabeth gave a small nod and was gone.

Jack stripped off his dripping pyjamas and climbed onto the sofa next to his wife, wrapped himself around her, rubbing her arms and legs to warm them. He was naked and cold but she felt colder still. She made him think of the tiny dead birds he had buried in the deep powder a few days before.

‘Don’t die, Sadie,’ he whispered. ‘I’m very sorry, please don’t die.’

He rubbed his foot against her calf and kissed her cheek. There was a blanket covering them and he pulled it over their heads, so that they were encased in a crude tent.

‘Don’t leave me. Please, please.’

He reached his arms around her stomach and felt the soft yielding rolls. He clung to her, his teeth chattering, terrified that if he let go, she would die.

They lay together in front of the fire as the shadows grew long and danced in weird patterns on the stone walls. Jack did not release his grip but slowly fell asleep. He dreamt they were back in London. They were young, he still had his hair and Sadie’s was chestnut brown. They were so poor, Elizabeth slept in a drawer in their bedroom, tucked in with the sweaters and tea towels. It was their anniversary but he had no money to buy his wife a present. In his dream, Jack climbed again the rickety cast-iron stairs to their fourth-floor flat and put the key in the lock. As he turned it, he heard Caruso crooning love songs on the gramophone from the place next door. He paused to listen, then pushed open the door to their apartment.

Sadie was standing stark naked on the table and when she saw him come in she began to dance. She swayed in time to the refrain lilting through the thin plaster wall. She was small and slender, her dark hair snaked down her back and she wore nothing but a pair of red high heels. ‘Happy anniversary, darling,’ she whispered and continued to dance. She turned her back and wiggled her round bottom. ‘
Mein lieber Schatz
. Do you like your present?’

As she spoke, she clicked her heels on the wood. She had lit the gas lamps and her skin glowed warmly in the dim light, her nipples dark pink. Seeing him stare she laughed and coyly pulled her long hair to cover her breasts. Jack stood, his back against the door, gazing at this girl-woman, silent with love.