the Jew gets blackballed from the country club

1: Golfing Tales

His key in the door, and shaking off his wet umbrella, Erik let himself into his Mamma's front hallway in Paddington, on a wet Thursday morning. (Leaving Beast in charge of the shop – and he could only pray that he'd finally got the hang of the cash register and wouldn't again try to charge anyone six shillings for a sixpenny Puffin. And beyond that, he had to stop calling poor Hank by Raven's nickname for him. The poor lad suffered enough, just being her deluded besotted swain.)

And standing in Edie's dusty murky hallway, Erik put his brolly down, took his coat off. And cursed. Cursed, taking a look at the newspapers and letters on the hallstand. He picked one up, and recognised the stamp on it. Oh, dammit, Mamma. Dammit.

He was waiting – therefore – when she got in from her charity coffee morning. He'd meant only to take care of cleaning out the pond, and to drop off the Spanish spices and candy she liked from his local deli. But this... well, a man had limits. They needed to have words. Again.

And when he finally heard her key in the door – and her light, skipping trip down the hallway, still sixteen in essence, a girl, for all she was close on sixty – he had the letter in hand, brandishing it at the kitchen doorway. So that it was the first thing for her eye to fall upon, when she walked through and saw him.

The guilty – mischievous – look on her face, immediately, said plenty. Oh, she knew what was afoot, all right.

"Oh, Erik darling," she said, innocently. (For shame, Mamma, Erik sometimes thought. For shame. No-one could lie by omission, by implication, by expression, with quite the skill and brio of Edie Lehnsherr.) "How lovely! I didn't think it would get here half so soon!"

Erik glared at her – for a moment – and then pulled 'it', open, the better to brandish the contents at her some more. "Again, Mamma?" he asked, stern. "Really? Are we going to go through all of this again?"

And Edie came over, and kissed his cheek. Oh, damn the woman. How dare she look so pleased and fond, while he was trying to administer a dressing down, to get her to be reasonable, to... Well, yes. All of that was wasted energy, with Edie. "My love," she said, and plucked it out of his hands. "You know what I'm like, when I get an idea in my head." And she smirked at him, sidewise.

Erik flattened his hands down on the kitchen table, and glowered down at them. As if he were fourteen again, sulky and helpless at Edie's insistence on him attending school socials and dating her friends' daughters. Not upwards of thirty-four, and... well, anyone's comely daughters had been left well behind at this point. "Really, Mamma, though," he beseeched. It had come to beseeching, now, of course. Stern remonstrances had been quickly abandoned. "The country club, again? Another application? Haven't I prostrated myself often enough, before those blasted offensive narrow-minded self-satisfied bigots? Why would I even want to?"

"The golf club, darling," his Mamma corrected him. "It's not a country club. Despite all the toney airs they give themselves."

"I don't even like golf, Mamma," Erik fulminated, feeling his cheeks heating up. "I don't even like them. You must have had me apply half a dozen times, and every time they come up with some damned snooty faux-polite reason for knocking me back, that very carefully never mentions me being a son of Abraham, in regular attendance at temple. Mamma: you know it, I know it. It'll be the same thing all over again, from the anti-Semitic pseudo-county Conservative club old barstewards. Why again? Why on earth?"

"Oh, Erik darling," Edie said, turning away to set coffee brewing in the nice new percolator he'd bought her. "My silly love. I don't have you apply with any actual expectation or desire of membership. Heavens, I don't expect them to actually admit you to membership, to welcome you with open arms. That isn't remotely what it's about."

The good china clinked as she got cups and saucers down from the cupboard: Erik generally got the benefit of the good china, unless he was in the doghouse. Especially when he was being coaxed into some shenanigans. Morosely he examined his cuticles: glowered a bit, in expectant silence. He wasn't going to plead any further: he'd said his piece. He wasn't going to ask. And here it came... Edie turning, cup in hand, her smile the sweetest in the whole fine British nation.

"It's just to periodically remind them," Edie explained, sunny, smiling. "Of what historic, astounding, humungous horses' asses they are. Although surely they should be full well aware, already?"