Free Mr. Rosenblum's List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman by Natasha Solomons Page A

climbed into the car and he started the engine. Sadie surreptitiously knocked a shiny, round sheep turd off her seat. Hearing the car fire up, Max leapt into action and swung open the gate.
    ‘Goodbye. I shall see you on Monday!’ Jack said with a wave.
    He drove the car at walking pace. The sky was a bold, unbroken blue and the buttercups in the hedgerows glowed yellow. The dandelion clocks sent seed parachutes flying on the breeze and into the car where they tickled his cheek. They passed a row of ancient dwellings with sagging roofs and untidy gardens filled with blue forget-me-nots and tall lupins in purple or yellow. Bumblebees filed in and out of nodding foxgloves. Jack briefly closed his eyes – this evening sunshine felt different from the close heat of London. In the city he felt the grime cling to his skin while this felt clean, as though the sunshine was warming him inside like a generous bowl of curried mutton stew.

 
    Sadie spent the next day scrubbing the house. The same light blue feathers littered every room and white bird excrement had sprayed the flagstone floors and spoilt the walls. She wondered about the people who lived here before. The house had been deserted for years, save for the birds and mice that she could hear scratching at beams in the attic. She did not know from whom they had bought the place but she liked not knowing. It made the house belong more to her; the only history that mattered now was theirs. ‘I don’t have space for other people’s memories,’ she murmured as she crouched in her petticoat and washed away the dirt and the recent past, the years of neglect.
    Jack sat in the sunshine listening to the birds. The sound came from every tree and bush, filling the air with a constant high-pitched chatter. He thumbed through a battered copy of the ‘1951 Golf Year Book’ scouring the advertisements for tools and brands of fertiliser. There were captions proclaiming the virtues of ‘Dorman Simplex Junior Pneumatic Sprayer’ and telling him to ‘Obtain The Finest Turf Of All From Sutton’s Grass Seeds – They Ensure Success!’ He wondered whether he ought to buy some for his greens – he didn’t want the grass to grow either too long or too coarse, it had to be just right.
    Lost in this pleasant reverie, he started when the gate clattered loudly and half a dozen men stomped along the driveway. He recognised them from skittles but now they were unsmiling and had changed into stout leather boots. They were all big men, broad shouldered and bull-like. He glimpsed a flash of steel studs on the bottom of the boots as they marched across the gravel. Trying not to be alarmed, Jack strolled through the garden to greet them, just as Basset began to hammer furiously on the ancient front door.
    ‘Why did you do it?’ Basset shouted, jabbing a finger accusingly at Jack who stood there whitely on the porch, dropping his golfing annual in shock.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘That’s right. You should beg my bloody pardon. The lads won’t work now. Not less I give ’em another fifteen bob a week which I ent got. So what am I going to do? Watch my harvest rot in them shittin’ fields?’
    Basset paused for breath. He flushed with anger and struggled to articulate the words through his rage.
    ‘This man ’as thieved my boys. For ’is feckin’ golfin’ course.’
    Flecks of spittle caught in the corners of his mouth.
    Jack shuddered; he was not used to this kind of unbridled rage. There was something feral about Basset’s fury and he made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the neat Mr Rosenblum and his pristine shirt. Jack surveyed the orgy of enraged faces and heard their muttered curses.
    Sadie watched from the kitchen, lurking out of sight – this was Jack’s mess. She wanted to disappear, to dissolve into nothingness or to fly away and leave behind only a pile of feathers. She gave a tiny laugh; perhaps that was what happened to the last residents of the house.
    For a