Mr. Rosenblum's List Part 12

'Let me have some of your cigar,' said Elizabeth, taking it from her father's hand.

'Don't breathe, suck,' commanded Edgar. 'Like this.'

He demonstrated and blew a column of blue smoke into the fireplace where it spiralled away up the chimney. She tried but it made her cough and she gave it back to her father in disgust. 'I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Goodnight Daddy, 'night Uncle Edgar.'

She leant over and kissed the s.h.i.+ny top of her father's head.

'You're a good girl.'

Jack settled back in his chair and watched as she tidied away the backgammon set. This evening her hair was damp and drying in feathery curls around her face. She reminded him of Sadie all those years ago, before the sadness took her. He closed his eyes against the heat of the fire and pictured the girlish Sadie. She was so young and with such soft edges; she had the kind of bosom a man wanted to lay his head on at night. She was a delicious plumpness; like the perfect roast chicken. When they locked him up in that cell for being an 'enemy alien', he dreamt of her every night. He missed Elizabeth for sure, but it was Sadie's face he saw in the darkness. With a start Jack opened his eyes. He listened to the wind outside and through a crack in the curtains watched it blow the snow into great white piles in the garden.

Elizabeth was going to make some young man happy, thought Jack, but he would never appreciate her, not until it was too late. It was the sad lot of the middle-aged man to value youth and happiness long after it had vanished. He helped himself from a supper tray, and turned to Edgar with a melancholy smile.

'When did we get old?'

'I am not sure', said Edgar matter-of-factly. 'Here, have a herring.'

By christmas eve the house was buried in two feet of snow. Jack cleared a path through to the orchard but the field beyond was smooth and perfectly unmarked like a sheet of white paper before a word has been written. Sound was m.u.f.fled through the snow; the cries of the birds were muted and strange. The bright white dazzled him every time he went outside but it was oddly peaceful; time seemed to have slowed with the snow. Everything took longer; walking down the lane for a pint of milk was an expedition. The telephone cables came down with the first flurry and the bright red telephone box was buried uselessly under a vast drift. The boundaries beyond Bulbarrow signalled another far off and unreachable realm. Pursebury Ash was a miniature, ice-filled island.

Sadie looked out of the kitchen window. A robin was balancing along a sugar-coated branch with a bright berry in its beak, trying not to drop its precious cargo. The wind blew and flakes fluttered from the bough of a birch tree in spirals to the ground. Icicles dangled like doll-sized mountain ranges from the eaves and in the distance the whiteness bled into the horizon and disappeared round the curve of the earth. She could hear Elizabeth and Jack in the sitting room arguing over backgammon.

Alone in the quiet kitchen, she opened the st.u.r.dy farmhouse dresser, took out her box, removed the lid and laid out her family on the battered table. Her brother's face smiled up at her and she felt a twist in her stomach. Next, she took the picture of her father and placed it on the table, first dusting away the toast crumbs. It was tattered at the edges, beginning to yellow and curl, but it wasn't a good photograph in any case; he looked stern and cross. It was taken when he was a young man and Sadie still a baby. He had a neatly trimmed black beard in the snap but he had shaved it off when she was small and she didn't remember it. Yet this was the only picture she had of him and, as her memory began to wear and fade, the face in the photograph seemed to loom where once her father's had been.

She placed the picture of Mutti beside her father. It was taken shortly before Sadie left for England and showed a fretting, middle-aged woman doing her best to look cheery for the camera. She wasn't worrying about things to come this was no premonition she was concerned whether she had picked up enough chicken schmaltz for supper. The mismatched photographs presented an odd couple: her father glowering in his twenties and her mother twenty years later, huddled in middle age, so that husband and wife looked more like mother and son. Sadie reached into the box for another picture: a studio print of Jack, Elizabeth and herself taken several years ago for the holidays. She arranged all the photographs in a circle, her family together.

'Sadie Rose. Sadie Rose,' she said, to the pictures, introducing herself. This new name was strange; it had an unpleasant taste like strong mustard and burnt her tongue. It was one more thing to take her away from them, to separate her from before. before. Her family had known her as Sadie Landau and later, when she married Jack, as Sadie Rosenblum. This Sadie Rose was someone new, and they Her family had known her as Sadie Landau and later, when she married Jack, as Sadie Rosenblum. This Sadie Rose was someone new, and they would never be able to find her. When Emil was small, they used to play hide and seek in the apartment building, hiding in the hallway shadows or the creaking elevator car. She would crouch in the s.p.a.ce underneath the stairs, listening as he called, ' would never be able to find her. When Emil was small, they used to play hide and seek in the apartment building, hiding in the hallway shadows or the creaking elevator car. She would crouch in the s.p.a.ce underneath the stairs, listening as he called, 'Sadie, Sadie Landau, I'm going to find you.' Now she could see him walking through the fields calling for her, but she wouldn't hear. He had the wrong name.

Several days ago, she'd found Jack completing forms for new pa.s.sports for the entire family, under this unfamiliar name. Of course she had remonstrated, scratching at him and trying to grab the papers and rip them into little pieces.

'Give me back my name! You can't take it from me.'

'Stop being hysterical. It is sensible. It's all part of the naturalisation process.'

'I don't want it.'

'Well, I want to have the same name as my daughter. Families share a name.'

'Why do we even need new pa.s.sports? Are you taking me on holiday?'

Sadie's face contorted into a mocking smile, knowing exactly why Jack always applied for pa.s.sports. He wanted to feel that this place was home and not exile, but there was always a flicker of doubt and, like Houdini or the Scarlet Pimpernel, he liked to have an escape plan. Just in case. Despite everything, she knew that he was an outsider like her.

That afternoon, the Roses walked together by the banks of the river Stour. It had frozen over and a wintry carnival erupted in what had been water meadows and were now ice fields. Boys in greatcoats and girls in m.u.f.flers skated over the still surface. Jack shuddered, he did not like deep water, solid or not. When he looked at it, he could feel the wetness pulling him downwards, his breath escaping in bubbles above his head and hands grabbing at the fronds of weed as he sank deeper into blackness. He shook his head and clapped his hands to drive away such gloomy reflections. Elizabeth, ignorant of this aversion, took his hand and dragged him resisting out onto the river. He wobbled, his feet sliding away from him.

'Scheie! Let me go. I don't like this at all.' Let me go. I don't like this at all.'

Elizabeth laughed and pulled him along. 'Look, we're like Moses, see, see!'

Sadie smiled and shook her head, 'No, no he parted the sea then then walked.' walked.'

Jack succeeded in crawling back to the bank where, breathless, he rested against the trunk of an alder tree. 'You see, even Moses would not walk on water. It's not natural.'

Tiny silver fishes were suspended in the ice, and he peered at them, wondering if they would unfreeze and swim away in the thaw. The air was punctured by the happy shouts of children upon toboggans and makes.h.i.+ft sledges made of coal sacks, which left dirty smears on the white ground. Half-wild dogs careered madly, chasing sticks and barking at the sky. The poplars were so laden with snow that they leant forward heavily like stooped old men. The willows on the banks dangled down into the river, their branches frozen in a silent waterfall.

Jack and Sadie perched on a tree stump on the sh.o.r.e, watching Elizabeth skate. Jack could hear the earth s.h.i.+ver and hum and felt that he had fallen to the other side of the world; this was an arctic, unearthly place not the muddy, wriggling place he knew but some strange netherworld. Elizabeth was hidden for a moment in the crowd of skaters and Sadie scrambled to her feet, anxious at losing sight of her. Jack smiled, he understood his wife's concern, even though they were parted from Elizabeth for months at a time. A moment later she reappeared, her red hat a crimson streak against the blur of white. She skated to a halt by her parents and grabbed on to a branch to steady herself.

'I'm hungry.'

'Well, let's get you something to eat.'

He offered her his arm and heaved her onto the glittering bank. The three of them strolled along to where stalls had been erected between the trees at the edge of the skaters. There were chestnuts and cobnuts burning gently in the coals, twists of home-made liquor to warm the throat, and the smell of sausages and sizzling fat. Elizabeth, catching sight of her mother's tight smile, wavered for a second. Then, she pointed to a sausage. 'One of those.'

Jack gestured to the man, who speared a sausage, popped it onto a piece of bread and handed it to Elizabeth, who ate hungrily, a little smear of grease trickling down her chin. Jack ignored Sadie, indifferent to her disapproval. Elizabeth was not a Rosenblum, she was a Rose and could eat pig if she wanted. What did it matter? The smell burnt the inside of Jack's nostrils, it was so delicious, salty and smoky. He had never eaten pig before, it was a taboo he obeyed, instinctively and without resistance. Fish he ate and whenever the opportunity arose he mixed milk and meat. Pig was the one deep-rooted aversion he did not think to overcome. It was as unnatural as drinking seawater. Yet here in the darkling light, the hissing of sausages mingled with the wind in the stripped branches.

' . . . And another.'

The man pa.s.sed 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 ist mein kind 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 carca.s.s 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 pa.s.sed a flask to Jack, who tried to drink surrept.i.tiously 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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.' 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 c.o.c.ked. 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 h.o.a.rding 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?' 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 suns.h.i.+ne, listening to the trickling of temperate streams, the piping song of nightingales and the pock of golf b.a.l.l.s.

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. s.h.i.+t-heaps and b.u.g.g.e.ring h.e.l.l.' s.h.i.+t-heaps and b.u.g.g.e.ring h.e.l.l.'

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 members.h.i.+p of the course in lieu of payment.

Sadie and Elizabeth shovelled armfuls of ceiling plaster, sc.r.a.ps 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 pa.s.sed.

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 ma.s.s 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 Scheie!' 'Verdammt Scheie!'

The photograph lodged in a drift by a s.h.i.+vering 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 ma.s.s. 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.'