Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman

Mr Rosenblum's List

Natasha Solomons

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Sceptre

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Natasha Solomons 2010

The right of Natasha Solomons to be identified as the Author of the Work has been

asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

From ‘The Links’ by Robert Hunter, published by Wiley & Sons.

Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Constance Spry’s ‘Coronation Chicken’ recipe reprinted

by permission of Grub Street Publishing Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise

circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 9781848944961

Book ISBN 9780340995648

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

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London NW1 3BH

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On his ninetieth birthday, I promised my grandfather that I would dedicate my first novel to him. So, this is for Mr P.E. Shields O.B.E., 1910–2000.

And for David, with love.

It will be cloudy and dull this evening and tonight with periods of rain; the rain being moderate or heavy in many districts. Fog will be extensive on high ground with fog patches along the south coast. Tomorrow, more general and heavy rain will spread from the south-west with temperatures of approximately fifty-seven degrees. That concludes the weather summary; a further news bulletin may be heard at a quarter to . . .

Jack Rosenblum switched off the wireless and nestled back into his leather armchair. A beatific smile spread across his face and he closed his eyes. ‘So there is to be more rain,’ he remarked to the empty room, stretching out his short legs and giving a yawn. He was unconcerned by the dismal prognosis; it was the act of listening to the bulletin that he savoured. Each evening during the weather forecast he could imagine he was an Englishman. When the forecast was stopped through the war he grieved on behalf of the British, aware what loss this absence would inflict, and when it started again he listened in religiously, happily considering all the Englishmen and women hearing ‘light drizzle on high ground’ at the same instant as he. Through the daily weather reports he felt himself to be part of a nation; the prediction may be sleet in Scotland and sunshine in the West Midlands but the ritual of the weather forecast united them all. The national preoccupation had been rightfully restored and in his soul Jack rejoiced.

He stared out of the window, watching the rain trickle down the pane. Beyond, the tatty grass of the garden ran up to a dilapidated fence, and on the other side was the heath. No one had mended the fence. It had been falling down since 1940 but there was no new wood with which to mend it. He could have found some on the black market with a little
Schwarzgeld
, but the simple truth was that he, like everyone else in London, had ceased to notice the shabbiness of his surroundings. Over the last ten years the city had slowly decayed, cracks appearing in even the smartest façade, but the people of London, like the spouse of a fading beauty, had grown far too familiar with the city to notice her decline. It was left for those who had returned from exile to observe with dismay the drab degeneration of the once great capital. London was blackened and smoke stained, with great gaping holes strewn with rubble.

Jack was not like the other refugees who, in the most part, were quite happy to build their own tiny towns within the great city. He agreed with his neighbours that the role of the Jew was not to be noticed. If no one noticed you, then you became like a park bench, useful if one thought about it, but you did not stand out. Assimilation was the secret.
Assimilation
. Jack had said the word so often to himself, that he heard it as a hiss and a shibboleth. He was tired of being different; he did not want to be doomed like the Wandering Jew to walk endlessly from place to place, belonging nowhere. Besides, he liked the English and their peculiarities. He liked their stoicism under pressure; on the wall in his factory he kept a copy of a war poster emblazoned with the Crown of King George and underneath the words ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Their city was crumbling all around them; the peopled dressed in utility clothing, there were only wizened vegetables, dry brown bread and miserable slivers of bacon from Argentina in the shops, yet the men shaved and dressed for dinner and their wives served them the grey food on their best patterned china. All the British were alike – even as the Empire collapsed and the pound tumbled, they maintained that they were at the centre of the world and anyone coming to England must be here to learn from them. The idea that the traveller from India or America might have some wisdom to impart was ludicrous. The British stood tall in their trilby or bowler hats and discussed the weather.

Jack had lived amongst them for fifteen years. He felt like one of those newfangled anthropologists employed by Mass Observation, but while they were busy surveying the population, listening in on the conversations of coal miners in pubs and on buses, housewives and earls in Lyons Corner Houses, Jack was only interested in one sub-species: the English Middle Class. He wanted to be a gentleman not a gent. He wanted to be Mr J.M. Rosenblum.

Jack aspired to be an Englishman from the very first moment he and his wife Sadie disembarked at Harwich in August 1937. Dazed from the journey and clutching a suitcase in each hand, they had picked their way along the gangplank, trying not to slip in their first English drizzle. Sadie’s brand-new shoes made her unsteady, but she was determined to arrive in her host nation smartly dressed and not like a
schnorrer
. Her dark-blond hair was plaited into neat coils around her ears and Jack noticed that she’d carefully masked the heavy circles beneath her eyes with powder. She wore a neat woollen two-piece, the skirt a trifle loose round her middle. Elizabeth, barely a year old and unaware of the significance of the moment, slept on her mother’s shoulder, tiny fingers curled in Sadie’s plaits. All the refugees, with their piles of luggage, clutches of small sobbing children and pale-faced Yiddish speaking grandparents, were herded into haphazard queues. Seeing others with parents, cousins and brothers-in-law, Jack experienced a gut-punch of guilt. Acid rose in his throat and he gave a small burp. It tasted of onions. He cursed in German under his breath. Sadie had made chopped liver and onion sandwiches for the train ride into France. He hated raw onions; they always repeated on him. That whole journey, he knew he ought to be mulling over the momentous nature of their trip but he watched with an odd detachment as Germany vanished in a blur – God knew if they’d ever see it again. ‘
Heimat
’ –
the idea of home and belonging – was gone. And yet as the train rushed through Holland and France, all Jack could think about was the taste of onions. Sure enough, he arrived in England in his best suit, shoes polished to a gleam, hair neatly trimmed and his breath reeking.

The refugees had waited beside the dock in the falling rain, none daring to complain (they’d learned the hard way to fear the whims of bureaucrats). A man walked along the lines, pausing to talk and pass out pamphlets. Jack watched his progress with fascination. He had the straight back of an Englishman and the self-assurance of a headmaster amongst a gaggle of unruly first-form boys – even the immigration policeman nodded deferentially on asking him a question. Jack admired rather than envied elegance in other men. Jack himself was slight with soft blue irises (hidden behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles) and sandy hair receding rapidly into baldness. He rued his small feet, which turned inwards ever so slightly. When standing still, he always had to remember to turn his feet out, to avoid looking pigeon-toed.

Reaching Jack, the man handed him a dusky blue pamphlet entitled
While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee.
He gave another, identical, to Sadie.

‘Welcome to England. I’m from the “German Jewish Aid Committee”. Please study this with great care.’

Jack was so taken aback that this man with his twirling moustache was both an Englishman and a Jew that he stuttered – quite unable to talk. The man gave a tired sigh and switched effortlessly into German.

‘
Willkommen in England. Ich bin–
’

Jack shook himself out of his stupor. ‘Sank you, most kindly. I will learn it hard.’

The man beamed his approval. ‘Yes, jolly good.’ He pointed to the pages in Jack’s hands. ‘Rule number two. Always. Speak. English. Even halting English is better than German.’

Jack nodded dumbly, carefully storing this piece of advice.

‘And this? He will truly tell me everything that I must be knowing?’

The man smiled tightly, impatient to be moving down the lines. ‘Yes. It tells you everything you need to know about the English.’

Jack clasped the flimsy pamphlet in trembling hands. He glanced along the rows of refugees sitting on travel trunks, nibbling apples or glancing at newspapers in half a dozen languages. Did they not realise that they had just been handed a recipe for happiness? This leaflet would tell them – Jews,
Yids
and
Flüchtlinge –
how to be genuine Englishmen. The booklet fell open upon the list and Jack read avidly, his lips mouthing the words, ‘Rule one: Spend your time immediately in learning the English language . . .’

Jack spent his first few months in London living according to the rules set out in
Helpful Information
. He took English lessons; he never spoke German on the upper decks of buses and joined no political organisations, refusing to sign a petition for the repositioning of a tram stop, in case later it could be misinterpreted as subversive. He never criticised government legislation and would not allow Sadie to do so either, even when they had to register with the local police as ‘enemy aliens’. He obeyed the list with more fervour than the most ardent
Bar Mitzvah
boy did the laws of
Kashrut,
and it was whilst adhering to it, that he had an unexpected piece of good luck.

Sadie had sent him out to buy a rug or a length of carpet to make their flat above Solly’s Stockings
on Commercial Road a bit more homely and Jack strolled along Brick Lane, idly sucking the salt crystals off a pretzel. He was aware that he ought to be eating an iced bun, but as he recited item number nine, ‘An Englishman always “buys British” wherever he can’, he consoled himself that in this
shetetl
buns were hard to come by. It was a brisk morning and the steam from the beigel shops hovered in the atmosphere like bread-scented smog. Boys peddled newspapers, trolley-bus conductors yelled for passengers going to ‘Finchley-Straße’ and stallholders hustled for business, from tables sprawled along the uneven pavement. The air was thick with Yiddish, and Jack could almost imagine himself back in Schöneberg. With a shake of his head to drive away this stray homesick thought, he scoured the stands for carpets. He spied clocks and watches (ticking or with their innards spewing out), barrels of herring,
heimische
cucumbers, lettuces, a broken hat stand and then, at last, a length of mint green carpet. He tossed his half-eaten pretzel into the gutter for the pigeons and pointed to the roll.

‘Him. The green carpet. Is he British?’

The stallholder frowned in puzzlement, his usual sales patter forgotten.

Impatient, Jack flipped over the roll to inspect the underside and to his delight saw a Wilton stamp and the Royal Warrant of His Majesty the King.

‘Super! I take it all, please-thank-you.’

‘Right you are. I got more if you want it, guv? A bloomin’ trailer load.’

Jack thought for a minute. On the one hand, he had only ten pounds to his name. On the other, he could see the potential in selling on the rest of the carpet, if he could get a good price. He glanced back at the Royal Warrant – surely this was a sign?

‘Yes, all right. I take everything. I pay two pounds and I must be lending this trailer. ’

Sadie was appalled when Jack returned home with twenty rolls of carpet in shades from mint to mustard and magenta. For a week Elizabeth crawled through carpet tunnels, and they all perched on carpet benches in the evening to listen to the wireless – but that trailer load of carpet marked the beginning of Rosenblum’s Carpets. At first Jack acted as a middleman, selling on remaindered stock at a premium to other refugees looking to add homely touches to squalid apartments, but soon he realised that there was enough demand for him to open a small factory right there in the East End.

Sadie observed her husband easing into their new life with a mixture of wonder and concern. She knew that the neighbours whispered about him behind his back, calling him a
deliberate assimilator.
As though he was guilty of some silent betrayal.

For her part, Sadie felt off balance in this new place. She disliked leaving the safety of the East End, and rarely strayed beyond the boundary of the Finchley Road. Jack informed her that it was not done to shake hands with strangers on omnibuses or in tramcars (for which she was grateful, having been disconcerted by the hostile stares she received on formally greeting every passenger in the courteous Germanic way). Now reassured that she understood the customs, she agreed to take the bus into the West End with him. There was only one seat downstairs, beside a rotund woman whose doughy face was crowned by an enormous hat decorated with butterflies on wires. Insisting that Sadie took the seat, Jack climbed the stairs to the top deck in search of another. The conductor bustled round dispensing tickets. Sadie stiffened. Jack always bought the tickets – his English was
wunderbar
and more to the point, he had all the money.