Mr. Rosenblum's List Part 8

Jack could see why. There were no wings on the glow-worms, but he could hear a soft batting, like the whirring of a clock. A single light hovered as though treading air, and then darted in a jabbing pattern above his head. Curtis pointed with a stubby finger. 'Only males 'as wings an' they doesn't usually glow. They is right lazy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

Jack stared at another pale light nestled in the p.r.i.c.kly palm of a thistle. As he watched, the light dimmed. He blinked and it was dark.

'Ah,' said Curtis, 'once she's mated, she puts out 'er light. She lays her eggs, she fades and then she dies.'

Through his alcohol haze, Jack wondered whether the male jitterbug was performing a dance of grief for his dying mate.

Jack and Curtis lay in a large ditch, that formed part of a series of Iron Age trenches designed to defend the fort against other marauding head-hunters. Each dugout had gra.s.s walls nearly fifteen feet high and Jack marvelled at their construction.

'How did the head-hunters dig these ditches?'

Curtis took a swig of cider. 'Antler horns and wooden pick axes.'

The place felt ancient; they were lying in a fort nearly two thousand years old. Jack could hear the whispers of the earth and knew that here was deep time. The woolly-pig was part of that world, a remnant from another, older age.

Curtis heaved himself onto his elbows; his battered hat perched at an odd angle and a clump of burrs were stuck to his s.h.i.+rt.

''Ave you 'eard the legend of Arthur and the Round Table an' all that stuff?'

'Yes. Don't they think it was at Cadbury Castle now and not Glas...o...b..ry? I read it in The Times. The Times.'

Curtis spat on the ground in disgust. 'Those Somerset folks. They nickered our 'istory. Tisn't Glas...o...b..ry nor Cadbury Castle neither. Tis Stourcastle. Dorset. That's where the Saxon King were old Wess.e.x. b.l.o.o.d.y, thievin' Somerset folks. Jist cause they hasn't got enuff stories of their own they goes stealin' ours.'

Jack rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. The green lights were a blur and the sky was sinking towards earth it was a star-sprinkled blanket a few inches from his face.

'King Arthur was in Stourcastle?'

Curtis nodded. 'Aye. But 'ee wasn't called Arthur, mind. 'Ee were Albert.'

Jack closed his eyes and dreamt of King Albert. He was a mighty woolly-pig with tusks of gold, and when he opened his mouth a stream of green lights poured out and filled the sky with stars.

ack woke the next morning in his own bed with no memory of getting home. He sat up and immediately lay back down, rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. He felt as if he had been asleep for a hundred years and was now rousing from a magnificent and enchanted slumber. His very soul was rejuvenated, and he had a furious craving for a soft-boiled egg. Putting on his worn leather slippers he wandered downstairs and went outside to check the car. It was parked neatly in the driveway, paintwork unscathed. Then he noticed the driver's seat: it was pulled all the way forward as though a child had been driving.

Despite the drinking and the late night, he was filled with more exuberance than he had experienced for over a week. He had the first two members of his Great Golf Course and his stomach tingled when he considered this remarkable turn of events. As he changed out of his pyjamas and into his work clothes, he decided that now it seemed appropriate he hadn't yet played a hole. It was right and proper that the first hole should be played on the morning of the Coronation. That was to be the greatest British Event since the end of the war and would mark the beginning of a new era: the Ill.u.s.trious Elizabethan Age.

He collected his molehill contraption from the barn and wheeled it along the rugged track down to the field. For the first time in nearly a fortnight he was not disheartened by the monumental task before him and was instead flooded with energy. Humming 'Land of Hope and Glory', he loaded up the first bucket of water and tugged on the pulley. He hoped the threat of traps would be enough to ward off any would-be saboteurs but, just in case, he had bought several from a gamekeeper on Bulbarrow. They lay bundled in a sack by the pond, since he could not quite bring himself to set them. The bucket of water wavered and the first molehill was hoisted up; he swung the contraption and dumped the heap of earth into a ditch. One down. He turned to the next molehill, but someone was sitting on it. Curtis was perched on the edge, head in his hands. He picked up a blade of gra.s.s and started to peel away the outer layer, while Jack watched him in silence. He didn't know what Curtis did he didn't have a farm, though sometimes he minded other people's sheep, but Jack didn't even know where he lived. Triumphant, Curtis held up a thin sliver of white, the inside of the leaf he had been peeling.

'This 'ere is a wick dip him in pig fat and yer got yerself a candle. Now,' he said turning to Jack, ''ow has the woolly-pig hunt bin farin'?'

Jack winced; he did not like lying to the old man but could not confess that when confronted with daylight and a clean head, he did not believe in the woolly-pig. Saying nothing, he pointed towards the sack by the dew pond. Curtis picked it up and tipped out the traps so that they lay in the long gra.s.s, a heap of glistening metal jaws. He gave a shudder. Jack had to agree they did look rather evil now he studied them, and one serrated edge was encrusted with dried blood and tufts of fur.

'I was told they were humane,' he said, sounding unconvinced.

'Aye, very humane,' said Curtis. He lifted his trouser leg and showed an angry red scar all the way round his ankle, where the skin was mashed up like flesh-coloured marble.

'Zum Kuckuck! That was from a trap?' That was from a trap?'

Curtis preened in Jack's dismay. 'It is. Got done by a trap on Bulbarrow. Jist mindin' my own business. Found a pheasant weren't poachin', it jist flew into a sack I 'appened to be 'oldin' like and then crack. crack.' He smacked his hands together to show the movement of the trap shutting on his leg. 'I were lucky them trap didn't take my leg off.'

Jack was appalled. 'I don't want to kill them. It. The woolly-pig. I don't even want to hurt it. I want to trap it.'

'Well then, don't use them things. Evil b.u.g.g.e.rs,' said Curtis bitterly.

Jack paused. Much as he did not wish to maim another man, he also did not want his course destroyed. He thought for a moment. 'I want to see see a woolly-pig, but I don't really need to catch one.' a woolly-pig, but I don't really need to catch one.'

To his surprise the old man jumped up and began to shake his hand.

'Spectacular! Tis good news. No noggerhead can never catch one of them nanyhow. Yer might be from forin lands but yer gets the beast and 'is thinkin'.'

Jack held onto Curtis's arm, 'I won't use any traps. But I am a very private man and I don't want any of them them on my land. Perhaps, you could tell Jack Ba.s.set that I am using these things to catch the woolly-pig. Then he will leave me alone.' on my land. Perhaps, you could tell Jack Ba.s.set that I am using these things to catch the woolly-pig. Then he will leave me alone.'

'Yer wants me to tell folk that yoos is an evil and nasty b.a.s.t.a.r.d not to be b.u.g.g.e.red with?'

This was not quite how Jack would have put it. 'Yes.'

Curtis frowned and tapped his nose confidentially. He helped himself to one of the shovels and, with a neat thwack, sliced off part of a molehill, lifted it and dumped it into a ditch. Jack watched, amazed at the tiny old man's strength.

'Righty ho?'

Jack agreed and turned back to his machine. The ground was hard and cracked yesterday's rain had been absorbed like milk into blotting paper and the earth was as dry as before. They could only dig a few inches at a time, scratching away layers of dried dirt. Curtis dug twice as fast, but it was still very slow. The wind was strong and whipped the mud flecks into their faces, so that soon Jack began to tire. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

'Here 'ave a nip,' said Curtis, drawing the flask from beneath his jacket.

Too tired to argue, Jack took a small sip. Instantly, he felt fiery strength burn along his veins. He seized the bucket and poured the contents over a patch of cleared green. Then, he filled up another and another, until, in half an hour, he had tipped fifty loads of water over the brown gra.s.s.

'With a little sun, it will be back to green in no time. May I show you the rest of the course?'

They walked slowly to the top of Bulbarrow. Before the war, the area had been wild scrub and yellow heath but it had been converted to grazing during the 'Dig for Britain Campaign', yet in the last couple of years the edges were reverting to gorse as the thicket took over once more. The land wasn't rich enough for crops; only sheep and st.u.r.dy Dorset cattle could graze on the spiky gra.s.s and thistles that grew there. The fields lay in a neat patchwork, the hedges at the corners like green embroidery holding them together. It was a peopled scene; the land bore the marks of a thousand years of cultivation. The last corn had been harvested, the stubble burnt and the land ploughed, ready to be replanted. From a distance, the brown furrowed fields looked like they had been combed. Groups of whitewashed cottages huddled together in villages, while beyond Hambledon a column of smoke spiralled upward from the orange flames of a bonfire.

Jack and Curtis climbed up Backhollow, a great crater cut into the hillside during the Middle Ages. Now it looked like a giant, semi-circular amphitheatre with gra.s.s seats in the hill; however, they weren't seats but gra.s.s shelves built to create more land for farming at a time when the population was beginning to starve. It had never been used. Instead, the Black Death had come along killing half the peasants and Backhollow became the haunt of deer and ghosts.

Curtis paused for a moment halfway up the slope and pointed happily at a big, cream ball. 'Look, a giant puffball.' He gave the ball a kick and it exploded into dust that flew up into the air. ''Ee's a mushroom. Lovely on toast.'

Jack looked around and saw half a dozen of the things in the hollow. The largest were nearly a foot in diameter and looked like huge footb.a.l.l.s growing up from the earth. He gave one a gentle nudge it was soft and spongy; he prodded it a bit harder and it disappeared with a puff as billions of tiny dust particles blew into his face. He coughed and brushed them away as Curtis cackled with laughter.

'Them is spores,' he said, as Jack picked them out of his hair. 'An' if ivry spore in a giant puffball grew up to be another puffball, all tigether they 'ud be twice as big as earth 'imself.'

'That would be an awful lot of mushroom.'

Curtis picked up a small one, the size of a tennis ball, and handed it to him. This one didn't explode, but was firm and rubbery and smelled of earthy fungus.

Curtis s.n.a.t.c.hed it back. 'Aye, well, we doesn't want to waste 'em.'

Jack noticed that Curtis appeared to have a duffle bag under his battered jacket. From the top of the bag sprouted a few feathers, which looked suspiciously like pheasant. Observing Jack's look, hurriedly he dropped the mushroom into the bag.

'It's a feather duster. I do my dustin' on a Tuesday. Always use a pheasant duster, gives a lovely sheen.'

Jack said nothing after all, it was none of his business. He picked up another small puffball and handed it to Curtis, which the old man cheerfully popped into his bag.

'Nice mushroom supper.'

Every morning for the next month Jack found the older man waiting for him. Working side by side, they heaved the last of the molehills off the spoilt green and into the ditches, smoothed the hillocks as best they could and carefully watered the withering gra.s.s. Whenever he thought Jack wasn't looking, Curtis poured a precious drop from his hip flask into the water buckets for the green, confident that the gra.s.s needed nothing more than a nip of special brew it was much more powerful than any of the fancy fertilisers his friend insisted on buying from London stores.

Curtis had the strength of a much younger man and together their progress was swift. Jack enjoyed the companions.h.i.+p; although, he tried to avoid the topic of the woolly-pig, worried that the only reason the old man had bestowed his friends.h.i.+p was in the mistaken belief that Jack shared his faith in the creature. The elderly farmer grumbled continually as he laboured. 'Why did you choose this effing field, yer ninnywally. Everywin knows that stones grows 'ere. Chuck one away and two grews to take his place. b.u.g.g.e.rin' h.e.l.l.'

Jack mounted a large calendar on the wall in his study. Every evening at dusk, he went into the room and crossed off another day from the calendar, shadowed by a sombre Curtis.

'Don't worry, Mister Rose-in-Bloom, we'll git him done.'

Jack shook his head the cider fumes fading and the panic rising and took the bottle of whisky from the cupboard. He poured himself a stiff drink and squirted a tiny drop of soda into the amber liquid. 'Whisky?' he asked Curtis who shook his head, preferring the flask in his pocket. Jack settled into his chair, Curtis choosing a low stool by the grate, stretching out his short legs and warming his bare toes in front of the flames. Jack switched on the wireless it was time for Betjeman. The two men closed their eyes and listened. The voice described in nostalgic tones the joy of old buildings, thatched roofs, limewashed cottages, and how the strength of England lay in her wild woodlands and mud-caked walls.

'Aye. Aye,' murmured Curtis in agreement.

Jack was too exhausted to find his way up to bed and so, for the third time in a week, fell asleep in his chair in the study. He was vaguely aware that he'd not seen his wife for several days. He heard her in the garden and noticed that the larder remained stocked with bread and cheese for him to pillage for meals, but he was too busy with his golf course to worry himself with her. When the course was finally finished, and she could look out of her kitchen window on to the first tee to see players. .h.i.tting b.a.l.l.s in the suns.h.i.+ne, she would feel much better. He felt a little uncomfortable about the neglect of his wife but as with all things that were unpleasant to him he tried to think about something else. Whisky. He would have another whisky and then a little sleep.

A few hours later, Sadie threw the bedcovers off, too hot to sleep and realised she was alone yet again. The night air was sticky and the scent of the night flowers was sickly sweet. She reached for the bedside clock: midnight. With a yawn she climbed out of bed, put on her dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs, unwilling to disturb the darkness. She retrieved her box from the kitchen dresser and sat down at the table. The moon was so strong that she didn't need any other light in order to see the picture of her brother. Emil smiled up at her from the curled, brown print. His was a face that would never grow old.

Next she picked out a white linen towel, stiff with starch and with an embroidered rose in the right-hand corner. It was neatly ironed into folds and wrapped in tissue paper. Mutti had given it to her when she left for England, insistent that a lady always needed a clean towel. Sadie must be able to wash, be clean and nicely groomed; it showed one's respect for the adoptive country. English people were always clean and tidy and she needed to be the same (it was one of the few items on Jack's list that she agreed with). Sadie never could bring herself to use the towel and it remained pristine in the neat folds of her mother's ironing, still smelling of lavender soap and starch.

Sadie sighed and wondered whether she ought go back to bed but knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. Murmurs were coming from Jack in the study he was so tired from digging, from trying to become one of them. She went to the window and gazed out across the night-time garden; it was growing bare now the late summer flowers were dying and the ground cover crept back to expose the cold brown soil. Soon it would be winter and she would tuck up the plants in armfuls of straw and wait for spring. The flora would return, undamaged by death and a sojourn underneath the earth. She inhaled deeply, and breathed in the cinnamon perfume of her favourite rose.

Playing in the woods surrounding the Bavarian cabin, Sadie and Emil had discovered a baby vole underneath a dog rose. The vole was tiny, smaller than her pinkie, and almost hairless. She scooped it up in her pinafore, and laid it in a cardboard box, which they lined with handfuls of dry gra.s.s. They fed it with boiled cow's milk through a pipette borrowed from Emil's chemistry set. Sadie picked a flower from the dog rose, to place in its bed so the vole wouldn't be homesick, and Emil laid the box beside the stove. It died anyway. They held a little ceremony, Emil wearing Papa's tallis tallis and and Yarmulke Yarmulke and reciting from Grandpa Landau's prayer book, while Sadie read the dormouse pa.s.sage from and reciting from Grandpa Landau's prayer book, while Sadie read the dormouse pa.s.sage from Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland (they didn't know any stories about voles and hoped the vole-ghost would understand) (they didn't know any stories about voles and hoped the vole-ghost would understand). Finally they wrapped the tiny corpse in a napkin and Finally they wrapped the tiny corpse in a napkin and buried it beneath the dog rose. buried it beneath the dog rose.

In her Dorset garden, Sadie thought of Emil and Mutti and Papa and school holidays, while she breathed the scent of the flowers and let the weeds flourish. She removed the last item from the box: Mutti's cookery book. She had not touched it since the day she glimpsed Mutti in the pond. Opening the worn pages, she noticed cooking spatters from long ago and imagined Mutti bustling in her Berlin kitchen, pans bubbling. Once, Sadie tried writing down her memories, attempting to preserve them in a nice book to pa.s.s on to her daughter but it did not work. The meaning kept disappearing in the s.p.a.ces between the words, and her story as written was never quite how she remembered it. Now Sadie wondered whether it would be better for her to cook her way home to them. Perhaps she would find them in the smell of slowly simmering cholent cholent or cinnamon or cinnamon rugula rugula.

Sadie's mother was a great cook and had ordered her life entirely round meals, keeping time via the contents of her larder. Mutti knew it was tomorrow when the big loaf of bread she baked yesterday was going hard. It was summer when Sadie brought her the first plate of rose petals ready to be iced in order to bejewel her lemon rose cake and autumn was gooseberry fool, or a big round summer pudding, oozing with blackberries, strawberries and the last of the blackcurrants. For Mutti there were no hours of the day, only meals: breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. Things were either before breakfast, after lunch or between tea and supper. A time like three o'clock meant nothing it was instead that s.p.a.ce shortly before apple strudel and freshly boiled peppermint tea. Then there were the recipes themselves that fitted into neat categories: the conventional ones like 'dishes so that you can tell it is summer', 'meals for times that are cold and wintry', but there were others like 'biscuits for when one is sad', or 'buns for heartbreak'.

Sadie stroked the battered volume. The spine was coming away and the cloth cover loose, and she glanced through the index, neatly inscribed in her mother's curling hand and smudged with mixtures from a hundred mealtimes, until she found the one she wanted: 'Baumtorte' part of a category called 'cakes to help you remember'. Unlike Jack, Sadie preferred German to English because she liked the literal meanings of the words; they were put together like tidy building blocks and felt good in her mouth as she said them. 'Baumtorte' was a good word, meaning tree (Baum) cake (Torte), since it is made of layers like the rings of a tree. Sadie, like her mother and grandmother before her, had baked a Baumtorte whenever she needed to remember. She'd baked a cake after Jack kissed her for the first time that December night, another when he proposed (in a noisy train carriage on the way back from Frankfurt, so that she couldn't hear him and he had to repeat himself), another when they were stripped of German citizens.h.i.+p and one more after Elizabeth was born. She made the last one with Mutti on the day they received their exit visas. They'd asked for six (Jack, Sadie, Elizabeth, Mutti, Papa and Emil) but there were only three. They hadn't cried they'd baked a Baumtorte.

Sadie read out the recipe, 'Whip together a batter made of eggs, the right amount of sugar, sufficient flour and the perfect quant.i.ty of vanilla'.

The quant.i.ties were never more precise than that she had to know the correct amount in her heart before she began. 'Oil a tin and heat up the grill, spread a thin layer over the bottom of the pan and grill until it is done.'

More and more layers would be ladled on and then grilled until the side of the cake looked like the rings of a tree. Sadie first baked the cake as a young girl. It had been thin as there were not so many memories to record in the layers. She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall nearly one o'clock time to bake another Baumtorte. She would bake a layer for everyone she needed to remember.

She went into her larder and counted out three-dozen eggs from a large metal basket dangling on an iron nail. She had started to keep chickens as their s.h.i.+t was good for her beloved plants; they were as good layers as they were s.h.i.+tters and, having no friends to give the eggs to, she stored them in the cool of her larder.

'A vanilla pod.'

She had just one and it had travelled with her all the way from London. She bought it in the days before the war and kept it all those years and, upon giving it a sniff, happily discovered that it had not lost its scent. A mountain of b.u.t.ter given to her by Curtis rested under a tea cloth; she did not ask whose cows it had come from. There was a sack of flour from the mill and a large enamel flask filled with milk, which would be useful if she needed to loosen the batter all she wanted now was a basin big enough to mix the ingredients. None of the kitchen pots was sufficiently large and then she remembered the tin bath that was in the house when they first arrived; she would give that a good wash.

Still clad in her pink floral dressing gown, she began to whip up the batter. She did not weigh any of the ingredients, trusting her instincts. She mixed them in the echoing bath; at first she used a wooden spoon but finding it too small, she carefully washed her feet with soap, dried them on a clean towel, hitched up her dressing gown and climbed into the bath to stir the batter with her feet. She found the widest cake tins in the cupboard and put layer after layer of the oozing mixture under the grill, and when each tin was completely full, carefully removed the cake inside and smothered it in a layer of sharp lemon icing. Each cake was placed on top of another and then another until, when dawn came, there was a cake towering many feet high with a thousand layers of rings; every layer holding a memory.

Sadie fell asleep on the kitchen floor, still holding her spatula. When Jack rose half an hour later, he did not see her lying hidden in the shadow of the kitchen range; helping himself to a gla.s.s of milk, he disappeared into the field to carry on digging. While Sadie slept, the smell from her baking drifted out into the lane where several women from the village were walking. Jack was not the only person in the village counting down the days until the coronation; the women had formed a Coronation Committee and were busy pinning posters to trees along the lane, when the scent of baking overwhelmed them. It had a strange smell, not merely dough or sugar but the fragrance of unbearable sadness.

'We should ask Mrs Rose-in-bloom to join us,' murmured Lavender. She had not thought of the plump women with the German accent since the day of the fair, but knew somehow that the baking was hers. 'We always need good bakers.'

The women followed the smell along the driveway leading to Chantry Orchard, like several middle-aged Gretels searching for the gingerbread house in the wood. The kitchen door was open, and they saw Sadie stretched out on the floor, still fast asleep. On the table above her stood the Baumtorte. It was as tall as Curtis, and the women stared, uncertain.

'Should we wake her?' asked Myrtle Hinton, a portly woman with greying hair, tied back with a sc.r.a.p of yellow ribbon.

'Well, we can't be leaving her sleeping 'ere. Poor soul will catch cold,' tutted Lavender. She wondered what could make a middle-aged woman bake through the night and sleep on a stone floor. Mrs Hinton napped on the barn floor when her sow was a piggin' but that was different.

Mrs Hinton gently shook Sadie awake, 'Mrs Rose-in-bloom?'

Sadie opened her eyes, alarmed to find her kitchen full of women.

'We are the Coronation Committee. Would you join us for a meetin' in the village hall?' asked Lavender primly.

Bleary eyed, Sadie nodded. 'I must dress.'

'No, dear. It's only us. Put on a housecoat.'

Sadie shrugged and b.u.t.toned up her dressing gown. She glanced at the Baumtorte it was a thing of magnificence; she had used the juice of three precious lemons for the icing. If it were a tree, it would be hundreds of years old a cake like this should be shared.

'Help me carry the Baumtorte,' she said.

As though part of a stately parade, the women filed to the village hall. Several others were already waiting for them, busily setting out chairs and handing round sheets of paper, but they all paused to watch the procession of the Baumtorte. They placed it on a table at the front of the hall while they discussed the day's business. Lavender chaired the meeting with unquestioned authority. Sadie tried to feign polite interest it was all very pleasant but she wondered what these things had to do with her. Lavender cleared her throat and opened an envelope.

'Now, I've been requestin' suggestions from all residents. I have only had a few suggestions, and only one that I am able to read in polite company. It is from Mr Jack Rose-in-Bloom. He wishes to propose a game of golf to be played at 'is new course in honour of Her Majesty.'

Sadie looked up in astonishment; Jack had not confided his plans to her. Lavender appealed to her but Sadie shook her head, embarra.s.sed.

'I know nothing at all. My husband tells me nothing.'

Lavender smiled Mr Ba.s.set never told her anything either. It seemed men were all the same English or foreign. 'Well, if there are no objections, perhaps Mrs Rose-in-Bloom would be good enough to tell Mr Rose-in-Bloom that the Coronation Committee approves the match.'

It was time for tea and Sadie went to her Baumtorte, which rested on a makes.h.i.+ft table, bowing under its weight. She cut slices for each of them with a huge knife the thinnest that she could manage. The women ate, and it was the most remarkable cake that they had ever tasted. It was sweet and perfectly moist with a hint of lemon but, as her mouth filled with deliciousness, each woman was overwhelmed with sadness. Each tasted Sadie's memories, her loss and unhappiness and whilst they ate, Sadie was, for once, not alone in her sorrow.

Jack was too preoccupied with his golf course to notice the unusual behaviour of his wife. Parading towering cakes through the village on a Wednesday afternoon while wearing rose-patterned slippers was not blending in, but Jack was driven by his obsession and was therefore spared the bother of being embarra.s.sed.

Jack and Curtis restored the opening hole on the golf course; it was more battered than before and the gra.s.s still needed time to recover, but the damage had been repaired. Jack checked the post each day for a letter from Bobby Jones, eager to hear from his hero. There was none, just an ever-growing pile of anxious letters from Fielding at the factory.

Dear Mr Rosenblum,I have nothing good to report. I'm very concerned about the looms. The machines are getting old and finicky (much like my missus, if I'm allowed my little joke). Soon one is going to break down beyond repair. The emergency funds are almost empty please wire more cash. When are you coming back? When are you coming back?

Yours truly,George Fielding Jack did not reply. He was reluctant to wire money to the factory he needed every farthing for the course. Surely the looms would be fine for another season or two? They could sausage through. He felt a pang of guilt at his neglect of business, but he had room for nothing in his mind except the golf course, and the possibility of a letter from Bobby Jones.

He knew it was too soon to expect a reply from America but still he hoped. That afternoon he confided his disappointment to Curtis.

'He might be a busy man, but I am in serious want of advice.'

Curtis paused for a long moment leaning on his spade and looked up at the sky. A dragonfly hummed as it skimmed the pond. He liked being asked for advice; when it was requested one was duty bound to give an opinion, whether or not one knew anything on the subject. He swallowed, rubbed his nose and folded his arms behind his back.

'Tis my 'pinon that tis time to write him another letter. Tis always the danger that Mister Jones were not in receipt of yer first epistle. Besides 'ee might like gitting letters.'