the Jew gets blackballed from the country club

6 - Not A Sausage*

It had been Solomon behind the safety glass in his little booth in the betting shop, that first time, also. A visor perched on his fat sweating ugly bald head, roll-up tucked behind his mangled boxer's ear. And a tattoo on the side of his face. Oh, Toto, Erik was very far from home.

Erik was a nice nineteen-year-old Jewish boy, had just got distinctions on his first-year engineering exams at Imperial College. Recently bereaved, his heart pulsing out a little blood with every breath over it, still. And sweating a bit himself, under his best pressed shirt, and a trim from the barber's on the corner.

The unexpected thing, was how much a bookies - his mamma's preferred bookies -- was exactly what he'd expected. The cigarette smoke, like walking into the steam of a sauna, but laden with tar and nicotine. (And for that matter, the alcohol fumes, despite the fact that it wasn't a licensed premises. Erik hoped that it was just residual fumes from patrons of the pub next door, nipping in to put a bet on while they were at it. But he wouldn't have cared to stake his life on it.)

It was, in essence, every bit the seedy little hole he'd had qualms about, when his mother had charged him with this extra 'little job'. (Wiping her face dry of tears, as too often those few dreadful weeks after Jakob's final attack. Dry, and determined: that Erik hadn't dragged them all out of hell for nothing, that their lives would go on, would flourish. Even now.)

*Teenage, British, reserved Erik meets 1950s betting shop culture. Hee.

Chapter title - 'not a sausage', the most funniest expression in the English language. "Didja win owt at t'bookies, Dad? On t'hosses?" "Nah lass, not a sausage. Not a bean, old chum!"'Wizard of Oz' reference.