Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (7 page)

‘Glad to make your acquaintance, erm, Basset.’

Jack offered his hand, which Basset shook slowly before scratching at a tiny shaving nick in his muscular neck. He made no move to get out of the way of the car. Peering round him, Jack noticed a motley crowd gathering in the shade of the hall; the women dressed in floral frocks and wide-brimmed hats and the men sweating uncomfortably in hot, special occasion suits.

Basset waited for a moment and then cleared his throat. ‘Well? Are yer?’

‘Of course.’

Jack had no idea to what Basset referred but did not want to cause further upset so enquired with the utmost politeness, ‘May I ask where the car park is?’

‘Car park? He wants to know where the car park is?’

Basset started to cough with laughter, a button popped off his shirt and a fleshy triangle of hairy stomach poked through. Embarrassed, he straightened and pointed to a field across the road.

‘That there is the car park. Put him in corner. I’ll get gate.’

Jack steered his beloved Jaguar through a flock of nonchalant sheep and parked under a tree, eyeing the animals suspiciously. The Rosenblums allowed Basset to lead them onto the village green, where a battered white marquee was erected in the centre of the grass. Peering inside, Jack glimpsed plump girls selling fat hunks of red meat. Mounds of dark hearts, piles of kidneys and blue-tinged ox tongues lay on steel trays. Beside them rested baskets filled with misshapen vegetables and trays of grey fungus. He saw a table covered in the limp bodies of pheasant, duck and hare; they were skinned and raw, and the pretty girl presiding over them had a tiny smear of blood on her smooth cheek. Leaning up against a bench was a pile of rifles, and he wondered where they had come from – the trade in de-commissioned arms was strictly illegal. A heap of ammunition lay baking in the sun. ‘This is England,’ thought Jack, ‘you can sell anything here, and some poor bugger will buy it.’

Basset ushered them inside the tent, where it reeked of cider and warm bodies. While the women argued over filched rabbits and game, the men drank and, judging by the stench, they had been here a while.

‘This is Mr and Mrs Rose-in-Bloom,’ announced Basset guiding them into the midst of the crowd.

Jack stood quite still and let them all stare, while Sadie took a small step closer to him. A ragged woman viewed them suspiciously, eating the biggest peach he had ever seen; it took him a moment to realise what the round yellow-fleshed fruit was – it had been so many years since he had seen one.

‘Rose-in-Bloom’s a funny name,’ said the woman, ‘sounds English but yoos foreign, ent you?’ There were little pieces of peach flesh smeared round her mouth and caught in her brown teeth.

‘We are British now. We love England. We feel very English,’ Jack declared.

The woman wasn’t to be deterred. ‘Yoos British
now
. What was you before, then?’

Jack hated this part, the declaration of his otherness.

‘We were born in Berlin. We came to England before the war.’

‘Berlin – that’s in Germany.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’

The ragged woman was not impressed. ‘So, you is a Kraut,’ she corrected herself, ‘you
was
Kraut. You sounds Kraut.’

‘No. I am a British Citizen.’

‘Why ’ave you come to Pursebury?’

‘To build a golf course.’

This was unexpected.

‘A what?’

‘A golf course.’

Jack was standing in the centre of a growing crowd, where he was proving to be the most popular attraction at the fair – this did not please him, as he was trying his best to be inconspicuous. He never understood how, when he always obeyed the list to the letter, dressing in the uniform of the English gentleman, he was instantly identified as a rank outsider.

‘I shall build the greatest golf course in the South-West.’

The faces in the crowd stared at him dubiously.

‘Everyone in the village shall have membership,’ he announced proudly with a magnanimous wave.

No one seemed especially excited at this prospect and continued to stare.

‘This ent golfing country. It’s skittling country,’ said Basset. ‘Ever played skittles?’ he asked with a note of challenge.

‘No, I haven’t.’ Jack was intrigued – an English game he hadn’t heard about. He was filled with instant enthusiasm.

Seeing this, Basset smirked. ‘I’ll learn you,’ he said and led him away with a glint in his eye.

Choosing not to witness Jack’s latest escapade, Sadie wandered from the tent into the village hall. It was an unusual building; the pitched roof and walls were all made of sage-coloured corrugated iron while inside it was wood-panelled and decked with multicoloured flags. Framed photographs of the Royal family adorned every wall; the pictures of King George all draped in black crepe. A small army of women stood at the back of the hall guarding the tea table. Sadie was used to London where good food was scarce; it wasn’t like anyone went hungry – there was enough to eat – it was just plain. Food had lost its colour; there were drab potatoes, grey meat and tinned vegetables. Spices were a rare luxury and it took all of her skill to make her cooking taste of anything much at all. In contrast, the table in the church hall was a monument to excess and could have been the tableau of ‘gluttony’ in a painting of the Deadly Sins, heaving as it did with sandwiches of rare beef – blood turning the bread red – and baskets of brown speckled eggs, bowls of cream and trays of bright strawberries. She recalled the delicate pastries of the chefs in Berlin – the light folded palmiers and vanilla sugar biscuits – those were fragile pieces of artistry but this English feast was something different. She couldn’t remember food being such lurid colours – the dripping beef and scarlet strawberries looked obscene next to the faded floral patterns on the women’s dresses. She became conscious of someone staring at her, and turned to see a thin woman, hair swept into a severe schoolmistress bun, standing very close.

‘I’m Mrs Lavender Basset. Secretary of the Parish Council fourteen years runnin’ and chairwoman of the Coronation Committee. Will you be wantin’ some tea?’

Sadie swallowed, shyness making her perspire, and her blouse cling underneath her arms.

‘Thank you. That is very kind. I’m Mrs Sadie—’

Lavender cut her off with a snort, ‘Oh. I knows who you are Mrs Rose-in-Bloom.’

She led Sadie to the front of the hall and filled a plate for her with a fat slice of Victoria sponge oozing with cream, made pinkish by the jam. Sadie didn’t want to eat. The food was too much, and she worried that once she started she’d cram the sponge into her mouth, unable to stop. She always felt self-conscious eating in front of strangers, but Lavender was scrutinising her through owlish spectacles. Glancing around the hall Sadie realised that all the women were waiting, teacups poised on saucers, watching. Feeling a little sick, she took a bite and forced a smile.

In the field beside the hall, Jack was not faring well at skittles. He shook his head in total bemusement. Curtis, a tiny old man, gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder.

‘Nope. Like this, Mister-Rose-in-Bloom.’

Curtis clasped the rock-hard ball, took a run up and then, falling to his knees, slid along the wooden alley on his belly. The ball rolled from his hand and collided with the skittles, knocking them flying in a perfect strike.

‘Now, that there is the Dorset flop. Nothing like the piddling Somerset wump. Much more effective. ’S why we beats them nillywallies every time at t’ Western Skittlin’ championship.’

‘Yer turn to try,’ growled Basset and thrust the ball once more into Jack’s damp palm.

‘Trick is to let go of the ball at last minute. Got to do it sharpish like. Skittles knocked over with yer noggin doesn’t count, mind,’ added Curtis tapping his head.

The others grunted in agreement at this sound advice. Jack rubbed the ball against his trouser leg and prepared to bowl again. The rules were beyond him; he knew only that the general aim was to knock down as many as possible and that somehow, whenever it was his turn, the skittles remained resolutely upright on their wooden platform, whilst, when Curtis, Basset or one of the others bowled, the skittles clattered to the ground. Steeling his nerves, he took a deep breath, stepped back a few paces and began his run-up along the grass. Reaching the wood of the skittle shoot, he screwed his eyes shut and threw himself onto his belly, knocking all the wind out his lungs. He slid two yards along the ramp and stopped. Jack opened his eyes, and realised that everyone apart from Curtis was laughing.

‘Yer forgot to let go of the ball.’ the old man said sadly. ‘An ersey mistake.’

‘Loser ’as to drink,’ said Basset thrusting at Jack a brimming mug of a sweet, apple-scented alcoholic drink.

As the afternoon wore on, Jack became dimly aware of jeers, of Basset and the other men discarding their jackets, of shirts being unbuttoned and raucous shouts of, ‘Drink, Mr Rose-in-Bloom, drink!’

His head was really swimming now and the combination of home-brewed cider with hot June sunshine was making his vision cloud. He closed his eyes for a moment and heard a voice mutter, ‘’Ee’s a goner. Skittled. ’Ee’ll be seeing Dorset woolly-pigs soon.’

There were more snickers and hissing mirth. Then another voice. ‘Dorset woolly-pigs. Them is idiots wot believe that.’

There was a derisive cry from Curtis, ‘Don’t mock. Yer doesn’t josh about the Dorset woolly-pig. A noble beast of strength and savagery. If yer’d saw one yerself, yer wouldn’t say things.’

Jack tried to open his eyes and failed.

Curtis rumbled on in his deep burr, ‘I saw it. More ’an thirty yer ago. But I saw it.’

Jack struggled and with supreme effort opened his eyes. The sight that greeted them made him think that he was indeed skittled. A tree was standing in front of him: a huge knot of branches covered with leaves and woven with drooping flowers swaying on a pair of stout legs. There seemed to be a man inside, but he was almost entirely hidden by the vast framework of twigs, and perched at an odd angle on top of his head was a misshapen crown of leaves studded with daisies. Unsure if he was in the midst of a dream, Jack closed his eyes again.

‘Git moving, you drunken bastard,’ yelled a voice.

Concerned that he was being addressed, Jack opened one eye to see the tree-man lumber forward. He swayed and staggered across the field where he paused, and then slipped into a ditch. There were shouts, and a rush of children surged towards him, yanked him out and then, clutching the branches, pulled him onwards. A minute later the strange procession disappeared up the hill, the crowd resumed their business, and Jack drifted back into his stupor.

When he woke up, he realised his legs wouldn’t work. He looked at them, told them to move but they stayed on the ground, splayed out in front of him, immobile. The field was quieter now, the crowd had thinned, and his wife sat on the ground by his feet. She did not look pleased.

‘Scold later,’ he murmured.

She studied him for a moment and then heaved him upright but it was no use and, his legs as weak as a newborn lamb’s, he slid back down.

‘Just get me to the car. I can drive us back up the hill.’

Sadie said nothing and, pursing her lips in profound annoyance, half dragged, half carried her husband to the front of the hall where only the stragglers remained. Together they staggered past Curtis snoring beneath a wooden bench, their feet crunching on snatches of twig and fallen blossoms that had been discarded by the tree-man as he lumbered up the lane. In the distance there were cries and shouts and Jack could smell bonfire smoke. Vicious gnats whined in his ears and tried to bite him as he slipped into crevices and potholes. It was still warm, making his damp shirt mould to his back and, as they reached the shade of the trees, he paused for a moment to rest.

‘You go on. I’m going to wait here for a minute,’ he panted and, with a self-sacrificing little wave, slumped to the ground. A moment later, he watched indignant, as Sadie stalked off up the winding lane without a backward look.

‘Fine. You just leave me.’

He wiped his damp forehead with the back of his hand and stared at several cows chewing the cud by the side of the road. There was an unpleasant heavy sensation in his belly and a pulsating pain was building in his temples. Outside the hall lounged a few young men, smoking and idly rolling up the battered tents. A gunshot rang out and Jack winced in pain as the sound pierced his aching skull. Birds rose in a flurry out of the trees and an empty tin bounced along the ground. He frowned – someone had purchased the guns; he did not like men playing with such things – even air rifles and toy pistols disturbed him. A crew of youths reloaded the rifles and stared curiously at Jack as he ambled unsteadily past. He swaggered a little and wished, not for the first time, that he were five inches taller and wearing his Henry Poole suit – the next time he was in London he would purchase another. With relief, he saw that Sadie was waiting for him across the lane.

‘This where we parked the car?’

He pointed to an iron gate and she nodded. Jack heaved at the gate; it was heavy and squealed like a trapped rat. The car’s dark paintwork shone in the afternoon sun and Jack shambled to it, fumbling in his pocket for the key, but sitting in the driver’s seat, eyes shut and chewing happily, was a large woolly sheep. The words burst out of him before he was aware of it. ‘GET OUT! HELP! FIRE! THIEF!’