Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (2 page)

‘Where to, madam?’ said the conductor, reaching her seat and jangling his box.

Sadie gave a timid smile and pointed at the ceiling. ‘The Lord above, he will pay.’

The conductor spluttered in wordless outrage, and Sadie felt the pudgy woman beside her swivel and stare, the butterflies on her hat wobbling as she sniggered.

When at home Jack explained her mistake, Sadie couldn’t help feeling that the English language was deliberately designed to confound outsiders. She refused to speak another word to him in that
verdammt
tongue for the rest of the afternoon, and since he would not chat in German, they sulked side by side in silence, until Jack went out. He insisted that they spoke only English (something in that cursed pamphlet for sure) but speaking with her husband in her disjointed newcomer’s tongue transformed him into a stranger. He looked the same, but the easy intimacies were lost.

‘He’d already changed his name. He was Jakob when she fell in love with him, and Jakob when she married him, but when a clerk wrote down ‘Jak’ on his British visa, he took it as a sign.’

Sadie perched on the uncomfortable settee sipping a cup of black coffee. There was a murmur as Elizabeth woke from her nap, and then a little cry, ‘Mama. Mama!’

Sadie put down her cup, spilling a few drops on the mauve rug in her hurry to fetch her daughter, and gave a little tut of discontent that Jack had taught her baby to call her ‘Mama’ instead of ‘Mutti’. Tonight, when he returned from the factory and could mind Elizabeth, she would go to Freida Herzfeld for some
Kaffee und Kuchen,
kitchen gossip and illicit German chatter. Then she might go to the synagogue – the only place in this city where she felt at home. There the words were the same: Hebrew in the grand
schul
on
Oranienburger Straße
and Hebrew in the handsome brick building behind Stepney Green. When she closed her eyes and listened to the deep song of the cantor, she imagined herself back in Berlin with her mother beside her in the women’s gallery fussing as to whether Emil was behaving himself in the room below. Sadie could almost make out the off-key intonations of Papa as he mumbled his way through the
service.

Rosenblum’s Carpets quickly outgrew its cramped workshop and expanded into premises off Hessel Street Market, until it was the largest carpet factory in London’s East End, supplying some of the best middling hotels in the city. Half the men in the Rosenblums’ street were gone, and goodness knew where – Canada? The Isle of Man? Even Australia, if the rumours were true.

The police came for you at dawn. It was a haphazard system, and sometimes if you were out they never came back. Sadie fretted that Jack would be taken, and to humour her, he agreed to this unconscionably early walk to the factory. He never actually believed they would take him, after all, he was an almost-Englishman applying through proper channels to become a genuine citizen (and he could finish
The Times
crossword in under two hours, which Jack was sure must be some sort of record). But when he arrived at the factory that September morning, he realised he’d forgotten his breakfast. Sadie always packed him a paper bag with matzos and a slither of rubbery cheese from his weekly ration, as well as a thermos of foul smelling coffee. His stomach growled.

‘
Mistfink,
’ cursed Jack, resorting to German in his exasperation.

He pictured the brown bag on the kitchen table and decided to go back for it. He trotted the half-mile back home.

The police were waiting for him on the doorstep. Jack didn’t even try to turn around. They’d found him and it wouldn’t be British to run like some coward–criminal.

The stench from urinals always brought it back – one whiff of ammonia and mothballs and he was back in 1940 in a makeshift cell in a London police station with five other refugees all facing internment, and all complaining loudly about cold benches and haemorrhoids. Jack had not joined in the discussion; he’d sat with his head in his hands and wondered how it was that he, the most promising Englishman of all his acquaintance, could still be labelled a ‘class B enemy alien’ (possible security risk) and arrested. With his knowledge of marmalade and Royal Family history going back to Ethelred the Unready, it scarcely seemed possible that he could be anything other than a ‘class C’ (loyalty to the British cause not in question).

Jack couldn’t understand how this had happened. He’d obeyed the rules to the letter and they’d still taken him – clearly the points in
Helpful Information
weren’t enough to make a chap blend in. He fished out the pamphlet and began to make his very first addendum:

Regard the following as duties to which you are in honour bound:

SPEND YOUR TIME IMMEDIATELY IN LEARNING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND ITS CORRECT PRONUNCIATION.
Have done so but it is not so easy. Even English lessons do not assist. Cursed German accent IMPOSSIBLE to lose.

Refrain from speaking German in the streets and in public conveyances and in public places such as restaurants. Talk halting English rather than fluent German – and
do not talk in a loud voice. (Unless talking to foreigners when it is the done thing to shout).
Do not read German newspapers in public.
Do not read them AT ALL or you will be considered a ‘class A threat’ and a spy.

Do not criticise any government regulation, nor the way things are done over here.
Very hard
to manage at times
like this
.
The freedom and liberty of England are now given to you. Never forget this point.

Jack snorted. Loyal as he was, he couldn’t help but notice that his was a funny sort of freedom. With a sigh, he realised that this very thought was perilously close to criticism, and turned to the next point.

Do not join any political organisations.

It was points five and six that Jack pondered the most. While useful for the newly arrived refugee, Jack now realised that they were in serious need of clarification.

Do not make yourself conspicuous by speaking loudly, or by your manner or dress.
Don’t gesture with your hands when talking. Keep them stuck to your sides or the English will think you strange and over-emotional.
The Englishman greatly dislikes ostentation or unconventionality of dress
. Remember, ‘bland is best’.
The Englishman attaches very great importance to modesty, understatement in speech rather than overstatement. He values good manners. (You will find that he says ‘Thank you’ for the smallest service – even for a penny bus ticket for which he has paid.)
Always apologise, even when something is plainly not your fault – if a man walks into you on the street, apologise profusely.

Try to observe and follow the manners and customs and habits of this country, in social and business relations.
Yes – but what ARE the manners and customs?
This point requires some significant expansion.

Do not expect to be received immediately into English homes, because the Englishman takes some time before he opens his home wide to strangers.

Do not spread the poison of ‘It’s bound to come in your country.’ The British greatly object to the planting of this craven thought.

A policeman banging on the bars of the cell interrupted Jack’s scribbling. He looked up with a start to see his wife and small daughter standing outside, and flushed with humiliation. He didn’t want them to see him caged and stinking. The first week he’d been here, they had met in the visitor’s room, but now thanks to Mr Churchill’s exhortation to ‘collar the lot’ every room in the police station was full with refugees waiting for transfer to internment camps.

Sadie reached through the bars and stroked his unshaven cheek.

‘
Meine Liebe . . .’

‘In English, darling,’ murmured Jack with an anxious glance at the guard.

‘The little one misses her papa.’

Elizabeth peeked out from behind her mother, pulling faces at one of the old men sitting at the back of the cell, who was plaiting his long beard into spikes to make her laugh. Jack planted a kiss on the back of Sadie’s hand and did his best to seem cheerful.

‘It’s not so bad. I’ll sausage through. Moishe here has been teaching me backgammon tricks. Did you speak to Edgar?’

‘
Ja
. I visit him at his office, just like you say. And Frieda, she tell me he visits police every day and he goes to see magistrate and he shout. Then he drink whisky.’

Jack tried to smile, knowing his friend was doing all he could. If anyone could help him, it was Edgar Herzfeld. Edgar was a gentle, sedentary fellow, until something roused him.

‘And Freida, she tells me give you this,’ Sadie leant forward and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. ‘You see? More exciting when kisses are not from your wife,’ she said, doing her best to seem light-hearted.

As she left, Sadie slipped a small package wrapped in a handkerchief through the bars. Jack sniffed at it. Apple strudel. Sadie and Mutti, her mother, always baked strudels on Fridays in Berlin. Today must be Friday. He took a bite and his teeth tingled on the sultanas. Sadie’s younger brother Emil hated sultanas. He always picked them out and lined them up in neat rows along his plate – it drove Sadie crazy. ‘Think of all the currants you’ve wasted!’ she used to say, ‘if you lined up all the currants you’ve not eaten, they’d stretch all the way to the
Zoologischer Garten
.’ Jack closed his eyes, and saw a row of sultanas end on end – every one that Emil had ever refused to eat – and wondered how long that line would be at the end of the boy’s life. That moment, Jack felt a crushing sadness against his ribs. He swallowed, trying not to cry, but a tear escaped and trickled down onto his strudel, making it taste salty. He worried about Emil and Mutti and the others left behind, but right then, he only had space for his own unhappiness. He was cold, the cell smelled of piss and he was homesick.

At dawn one morning the prison was emptied and he was herded into a second-class compartment of an extra-long passenger train at Waterloo Station. Sandwiched between a pair of elderly Viennese gentlemen, Jack knew he should be concerned about where they were taking him. Instead, after three weeks sealed into a damp, high-windowed cell, he felt a tingle of excitement in his belly.

The train rattled through the city, an endless warren of brick streets and grey skies. Plumes of smoke still smouldered from last night’s
Heinkel
raid. He saw people crawling over the wreckage of crumpled houses and closed his eyes in disgust. The lurching rhythm of the train lulled him to sleep. His head bumping against the glass, he dreamt of strange things, open skies filled with larks, emerald fireflies in the night and chequered flags on the side of a hill.

Then one of the Viennese gentlemen was shaking him awake, offering him a piece of stale bread that he did not want. Jack turned back to the window and realised he had woken in another England. This one was green. Before they left Berlin, he had imagined that this was what Britain was like. He smiled – so England was meadows and sheep, thatched roofs and silver rivers after all.

The train pulled into a station and Jack was shoved onto the platform by the throng. The air smelled of salt and he could hear the sea. The afternoon sun was so bright to his prison-accustomed eyes that it made him blink, and it took him a moment to realise that someone was calling his name.

‘Jack! Jack Rosenblum!’

Jack peered into the crowd and saw a figure frantically waving a wad of papers.

‘Edgar?’

A slight man with wild grey hair hurried towards him, pushing aside the unwilling bodies and enfolded Jack in a crushing embrace.

‘I’ve done it! You’re safe, Jack. I can take you home to Sadie.’

Jack swallowed and stared at Edgar, as his legs began to tremble, like a lush before her morning gin.

‘I went to a judge and I tell him, “This man, this Rosenblum of Rosenblum Carpets, is a true ally against the Nazis.”’ Edgar spread his arms for emphasis, bumping the men streaming by on either side. Refusing to let his recital be interrupted he continued. ‘I tell the judge in his funny long-haired wig, “On the day war is declared this man turns his profitable factory over to the British war effort. Do not question Jack Rosenblum’s loyalty!”’

Jack nodded dumbly, unable to speak.

‘The judge agreed. You are now “class C” alien and can go home.’

Jack’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. ‘This place? Where am I?’

Edgar gave a shrug. ‘Dorsetshire.’