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

District and a volume on lesser-spotted quails. He had read it at least fifty times and was almost word perfect. He stroked the battered pages with affection. It was like the commandments given to Moses on the Mount – the blueprint for his destiny. With the wisdom of Tom Morris he would build the greatest golf course since the end of the war: an Old Course in the West Country. He didn’t have the sea, that was the only slight hitch and it probably couldn’t officially be a links course with only a duck pond, but other than the lack of ocean, the differences in topography, soil, wind direction and grass, it would be a perfect copy of St Andrews.
    Jack’s cheeks flushed with excitement – his entire life had been building to this great event. They had barred him from the London clubs, but this would be the best course in the south of England and he would select the members. He envisioned himself sitting in state at the kitchen table, reading a vast pile of correspondence from lords of the realm and club secretaries beseeching him for admittance, in letters dripping with adjectives.
    He went out into the garden, the wet grass making dark patches on his leather slippers, and listened to a cuckoo calling from a distant copse. He unfolded the central pages of the pamphlet to display a map of the Old Course, which he held up to the prospect before him. He wondered how long it would take until it was all finished – five months, maybe six? It was all about positioning the holes and he had Tom Morris to help with that. The holes themselves couldn’t take too long to dig – it was the greens that would be more tricky. They needed regular watering and he would have to find out where the springs on his land lay.
    ‘The springs on my land.’
    The words caught in his throat like a piece of bread. He stared at the ground before him, awed that this patch of green and this slice of steep hill belonged to him and Sadie – it scarcely seemed possible that he could be allowed to have so much. He would be the perfect country gentleman and take good care of these fields. What he needed first was a tweed cap and a walking stick with a bone handle – that was the wardrobe of a country gentleman with sixty acres, and Jack knew the importance of being properly attired (rule number five: always adhere to English conventions of dress). He returned to the house shouting, ‘Sadie, I’m off to buy a hat.’
    Sadie was already up; she had managed to fall into a fitful sleep but had risen at dawn to begin the immense task of cleaning the house. There was only one tap, a spluttering stream in the back kitchen that had been just sufficient to wash the floors – there was, of course, no hot water and the large tin bath in the kitchen also provided a dismal hint that there was no bathroom. Yet the bare, grimy house with its lack of electric light and strange nocturnal sounds reminded Sadie of her childhood. As a girl there had been long holidays in Bavaria with her family, in an ancient house on the edge of a wood. It was a memory that, like a favourite novel, had been hidden by shelves brimming with more recent matter, only to emerge that morning when she was woken by the cooing of wood pigeons in the chimney. The childhood holiday cabin was full of privations: a well in the garden, candles for light and no maids. Back then it had seemed like an adventure. She was older now, had a twinge in her knee, her back ached at night and she liked ease but somehow this house reminded her of before. Filled as it was with misplaced memories of a distant, underwater childhood, she thought she could lose herself here. Perhaps, she would fall through the cracks in the kitchen wall and re-emerge in Bavaria forty years before.
    She did not share these feelings with Jack – he would not understand, nor would he wish to. She resolved to accompany him, and since she knew he did not want her to come, this gave her a kernel of pleasure. From the landing she called