by Giles Milton
He held a piece to his nostrils and Edward followed suit. But just as he did so …
‘Richard,’ he said slowly, ‘there’s another thing – and this is the strangest thing of all. Something happened to me today – something most peculiar. All day long I’ve been holding cheeses to my nose and, well, there’s nothing. I can’t smell a thing.’
Richard let out a low, drawn-out whistle. ‘Really! Not even this stinking old goat? How long has it been going on? Did it just start today?’
‘No,’ replied Edward. ‘If I remember rightly, it first happened just a couple of days after I found these papers. And, well, it’s been occurring ever since.’ His voice trailed for a moment as he wondered whether or not to continue. ‘The thing is – this may well sound ridiculous, but it’s almost as if the two things are linked. These documents and my sense of smell. I can’t help feeling that my nose is trying to warn me of something – only what it’s trying to warn me of is not at all clear.’
‘What!’ chortled Richard. ‘Oh, Edward! Now you’re away with the fairies.’
‘No, Richard. No jokes. I’m being serious. It’s as if these characters from the past – my own ancestors – are somehow playing games with my nose. Take this touloumotyri, for example. I know it smells of goat, stinks even, and yet, right now, I can’t smell a thing.’
Richard was on the point of chortling but the nascent laugh was involuntarily stifled by a lump of touloumotyri that had glued itself to his windpipe. The shock of choking brought him to his senses. ‘Well, well,’ he said gravely, ‘I hardly like to admit this, but you have a point after all. Remember what you told me about your grandfather – George, was it? You said that he, too, complained of losing his sense of smell?’
‘Yes, he did,’ confirmed Edward. ‘And so did Emmanuel, my great-grandfather.’
Richard took a few more glugs of wine to wash away the last residue of touloumotyri then tapped his fingers on the altar. ‘Perhaps this is the wrong moment to broach this,’ he said, ‘and perhaps it’s not. I’m not quite sure how to say this, old chap, but, well, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for a couple of weeks. But I wasn’t sure how.’
Edward gave his friend a most quizzical look.
‘Well – it’s like this. If I’m completely frank, you don’t seem quite yourself at the moment. If you don’t mind me saying, as an old friend, of course, you’ve been behaving – how shall we put this? – a little strangely of late.’
It was at this precise moment, just as Barcley uttered these words, that there was a shuddering groan from somewhere far beneath the building. It was the eeriest of noises – to Edward’s ears it sounded like a cross between a low sigh and a yawn – that was so deep in register that it seemed to cause the stone floor to vibrate slightly.
‘Jesus, Edward!’ exclaimed Barcley. ‘What the hell was that?’
Edward shook his head. He had suddenly paled and he noticed that his hands were shaking uncontrollably. ‘I’ve no idea, he said. ‘No idea at all. But I’m glad you’re here. You’re my witness. It’s almost as if – as if something deep below the building is stirring from its slumber.’
The two men stood in absolute silence, half-hoping to hear the noise again. But it never came. All was apparently as normal in the medieval cellars of Trencoms.
When an interval of several minutes had passed without a repeat of the sound, both men began to relax.
‘I don’t know,’ said Barcley with a prolonged sigh. ‘Sometimes I think I’m the one who’s out of touch. Logic, logic. Maybe I spend too much time on logic. The problem is, Edward, that it’s ingrained. We’ve been solicitors for as long as I can remember. And logic has been in my family for generations. For us, one plus one has always equalled two, whereas in your family, I suspect, it has often equalled three, four or five as well.’
He sat himself down on a carton of cheeses and tried to erase logic from his thoughts. ‘Now then – let’s think long and hard about this. Could it be that some part of your brain is leading your nose astray? Or is it your nose that’s leading your brain astray? Or is it both? Or neither? We need to examine it from different points of view before we can arrive at any sort of conclusion.’
‘The truth is,’ said Edward, ‘I’m just not feeling myself at the moment. You see, ever since this discovery – ever since I began to investigate my family – well, I haven’t felt myself at all.’
Edward arrived home rather later than usual. His cheeks were flushed from the wine he had drunk with Richard Barcley and he had a chirpy spring in his step. On previous days, his walk home from the station had filled him with anxiety. He never knew if he was being followed – if someone was watching him. Now, for some unknown reason, he suddenly felt in an inexplicably good mood. He had walked back from Streatham Hill with the growing sense that his life had become altogether more exciting of late. It was true that a number of extraordinarily untoward things had happened to him. It was true, too, that he was clearly in considerable danger. And yet life was infinitely more exciting when full of surprises.
‘Evening, Mr Trencom. Why, you look cheerful tonight.’
It was Mrs Salmon from Number 36. ‘And a very good evening to you, Mrs Salmon – yes, indeed, I feel cheerful.’
Edward offered her a cheery wave and continued walking. He was almost home and could already see a rectangle of light beaming from his living-room window. ‘Nearly home, nearly home. Now, let me think – shall I mention to Elizabeth the fact that I know she’s been chatting with Richard? No, perhaps not. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie, at least for the time being.’
Edward put his key into the lock and gave it a sharp turn.
‘Hello,’ called Elizabeth. ‘Is that you?’ She emerged from the kitchen and offered Edward a kiss on his left cheek and then another one on his lips. ‘Everything OK? You look happier than I’ve seen you in a long time.’
‘Everything is just tickety-boo,’ said Edward. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late home but …’ He looked his wife up and down and, as he did so, he felt a sudden and quite uncontrollable tingle in his veins.
‘I’m not quite sure how to put this, darling, but – I suggest that – unless you have strong reasons to the contrary, we should – within the next three minutes – give or take a second or two – find ourselves upstairs – in bed. Or, better still – yes, why not? Right here – now – will do.’
Elizabeth let out a little laugh that contained more than a hint of complicity. ‘Goodness – I’m not sure how to respond to such a suggestion,’ she said in a tone of mock seriousness. There was a side of the new Edward that she found distinctly exciting. ‘But, well, if you insist, Mr Cheese, just give me a few moments.’
‘Quite out of the question,’ he replied. ‘I only have a few minutes. You see, Mrs Trencom, this is a case of extreme urgency – and there’s no time to go upstairs.’
With this said and done, Edward proceeded to unfasten and remove his wife’s blouse and skirt – the first time in his entire life that he had so much as attempted to undress his wife. He would have proceeded on to her undergarments if he’d had the time. But Elizabeth beat him to it. She unhitched her bra, slipped out of her panties and turned towards him completely naked.
‘Well, happy Christmas!’ she said.
Edward gulped inwardly and then removed his own clothes as well. Neither he nor Elizabeth stopped to consider that the curtains were open. Nor did it seem to bother either of them that all the lights were burning brightly. Before you could say as much as a by-your-leave, an animated Mr Trencom and an excited Mrs Trencom were in the throes of a full twelve rounds of calorie-burning love-making.
‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed Mrs Hanson from Number 47 across the road, who was at that very moment looking down into their living room from her upstairs bedroom. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Lucky man,’ murmured Mr Clarkson of Number 43, who was peeking at them from behind his curtains. ‘Wouldn’t mind being in his position.’
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‘And nor,’ added Mr Waller, from Number 39, ‘would I. He’s a very fortunate man, that Mr Trencom.’
And that much was true.
24 FEBRUARY 1969
Three days after this most enjoyable of encounters, Mrs Trencom took the train into town. As lunchtime beckoned, she found herself in the vicinity of Trencoms and decided to pay a surprise visit on Edward.
‘It’s been weeks since I’ve been into the shop,’ she thought. ‘I shall pop in to say hello.’ She walked down the length of Trump Street and then turned right into Lawrence Lane, the narrow thoroughfare on which Trencoms was situated. It was one of those glorious spring days that to Elizabeth’s mind were reminiscent of childhood. She noticed that sunlight was streaming onto the facade of the building, picking out all of the irregularities in the window glass – the bubbles, bumps and ripples. The cheeses displayed in the window were distorted by the glass and looked as if they had been heated to the point at which their surfaces were molten and runny. Elizabeth lingered outside and peered in through one of the puckered panes. She could see her husband’s head quite clearly and thought it strange how the irregularities in the glass had picked out his nose and warped it into the strangest shape. She moved her head a fraction and the nose was back to normal. But now the back of his head was distorted. It had been lengthened and elongated by the glass.
‘Enough silly games,’ she thought as she opened the shop door and heard the bell ring with its familiar ding-a-ding-ting.
‘Afternoon, afternoon,’ said Mr Trencom as he glanced up nervously from his notepad. ‘Ah – hello, darling! What a lovely surprise. I’d quite forgotten you were coming into town.’
‘Oh, Edward,’ said Elizabeth in a mock-scolding voice. ‘You are a clot. Don’t you remember anything? I told you this morning that I had to come in – you know? – to pick up the curtains.’
‘Ah, yes,’ replied Edward. ‘Well, it’s very nice of you to stop by to say hello. Come – let’s go downstairs.’
He called down to Mr George, who was filling out order forms in the cellars, and asked him to serve customers for a few minutes while he took a break.
Elizabeth cast her eyes around the shop and was somewhat alarmed by the sight that greeted her. Even a cursory glance at the display of cheeses was enough to convince her that all was not right at Trencoms. It had always been the custom in the shop to have the most popular cheeses laid out on the marble counters. Yet she noticed that less than half the normal number were on display and that many of the favourites were missing. There was neither epoisses nor emmental. And where was the gouda? Elizabeth also realized that many of the cheeses that were on display were in short supply. There were only three Belgian remoudous on the counter and the Californian monterey jack was almost finished.
‘Edward, darling,’ she said as her husband reappeared, ‘why have you run out of so many cheeses? I get the distinct impression that Monsieur d’Autun was right after all – there are lots of the usual cheeses missing.’
‘Ah – no, no, no,’ responded Edward. ‘Just need to get some more up from the cellars. As a matter of fact, I was intending to do it later this afternoon.’
He popped an oatmeal biscuit into his mouth and gave it a vigorous crunch; the sort of crunch that was designed to put an end to any more questions. ‘Don’t you worry. It’s true that we’ve been having problems with some of our deliveries – but who isn’t at the moment? These blasted unions. Still, we’ve been going strong for three hundred and seven years and’ – two more crunches – ‘I confidently predict that we’ll be around for a few years more.’
He put his arm around Elizabeth’s waist and scooped her over to the stepladder. ‘Come on – let’s escape the shop and go down into the cellars. There are a few family papers I wouldn’t mind showing you – and a couple of cheeses that I want you to try.’
As Edward went off in search of some Pyrenean moulis, Elizabeth took the opportunity to meander through the cellars, something she had not done for many months. As she wandered down through Burgundy and the Jura, and passed into the Alpine meadows of the Swiss Valais, she felt a growing sense of disquiet. Something was not right – something was not right at all.
‘Edward?’ she said, spotting her husband’s head poking out between two stacks of Slovakian oschtjepek. ‘It feels damp down here – really damp.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said as he searched through some crates for the Serbian katschkawalj. ‘No damper than usual. Besides, darling, cheeses like the damp.’ His voice became muffled as he bent down to pick up a Transylvanian monostorer. ‘Oh, yes – eighty-five per cent humidity. That’s what they like.’
‘Hmm,’ said Elizabeth, who was far from convinced. ‘Where do you keep the old humidity reader? It used to be by the ladder. I’m sure it’s damper than it should be.’
‘The humidity reader – the humidity reader,’ repeated Edward, who was halfway between the Dolomites and the Apennines. ‘Ah – yes – it broke a couple of weeks ago. Blast – you’ve reminded me. I keep meaning to get it fixed.’
Elizabeth made her way deeper into the cellars, passing the Ticino pioras and the Bernese saanen. Then, finding it much less damp in the side crypts, she headed back towards eastern France, picking up a bleu du haut-jura that had been left on top of a half-opened crate. She sniffed at it and then rubbed the smooth surface with her finger. Funny. When she looked at it closely, she noticed that both her finger and the cheese were covered in a dusty coating of mould.
‘Edward,’ she called, telling him what she’d found. ‘Are you sure this is right? Is it meant to be like this?’
‘Oh, do stop fretting, darling,’ replied Edward, who was flicking through some papers that were lying on the altar. ‘It’s fine. A bleu du haut-jura, you said? Well, yes, of course it’s meant to be mouldy – Penicillium glaucum, if you want to get specific.’
‘I know, Edward, but this mould is on the rind, not a part of the rind. And I may be no expert but I’m sure that’s not right.’
Edward was scarcely listening. ‘If there were problems with our cheeses, dear, I think I’d be the first to know. You remember Mrs Burrows? She always complains if there’s something not right with a cheese.’
He paused for a moment before turning to Elizabeth with an eager smile. ‘And now, if you’d be so kind as to follow me to northern Spain – yes, here, among the cheeses of the Asturias – there’s a spot of business I’d like to conclude with you, Mrs Trencom.’
‘Oh, Edward! Not here,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We can’t possibly do it here!’
‘Why ever not?’ replied her husband. ‘It’s not every day you get to make love in the mountains of northern Spain.’
‘I never thought,’ whispered Elizabeth some five or six minutes later, ‘never in a million years, that I’d find myself agreeing to that. Now, Mr Trencom,’ she said as she straightened her skirt and brushed out the creases, ‘you’ve got some work to do – and I’ve got some curtains to pick up. I shall see you tonight.’
She blew Edward a kiss and headed back up the ladder. ‘And don’t forget,’ she said, ‘to get that humidity machine mended.’
16 AUGUST 1774
Joshua Trencom is in a most irascible mood. His periwig has been itching all morning (he suspects that it’s riddled with fleas) and his lumbago has spread to his thighs. And now, to top it all, Dorothea, his wife, is squawking at him like a fishwife.
‘Nah, nah, nah, Josh Trencom – fancy’s a fine thing – you did not lead me up t’aisle only to lee’ me a London widow. Dorothea says nah – ye shall not go abroad.’
Joshua slides his hand under his wig and scratches vigorously. There’s a fine layer of stubble which is aggravating the weals and spots on his scalp. Mites or fleas? He’s not sure but he is most perturbed to see that his fingers are smeared with blood.
‘D––n things’, he says, ‘and d––n you, madam. I shall not allow meeself to be spaken to like that.’
After scratching his hea
d once again, he storms to the rear of the shop and descends the old stepladder that leads to the cellars.
Joshua Trencom cuts a comical, well-nigh preposterous figure. This is due, in part, to the curvature of his midriff which is as round and firm as a Suffolk rumple. The expanse of his belly is exacerbated by his habit of waddling when he walks, for it is forced outwards rather than downwards, in apparent defiance of gravity. After a hearty luncheon (which he always takes at the Fox and Grapes), the buttons on his waistcoat are stretched to the limits of their endurance. One can almost hear them squeaking in pain as they attempt to stand firm against the gently swaying gut of their voluminous owner.
Joshua in motion is like a ship in a buffeting wind. His under-carriage holds steady, his belly sways gently and his jowls swing freely in the stiff upper breeze. ‘He walks,’ according to Mr Swithen, the nightwatchman, ‘as if he ’as a cork up ’is fundament.’ And although this is a cruel jibe – and the source of much laughter among the clientele of the Fox and Grapes – it is undeniably true. Joshua Trencom has the air of someone who has been plugged.
Yet there is a single feature to his person that confers upon him a certain nobility and charm. His nose! Yea! His nose! Long and aquiline, it is marked by a prominent bump over the bridge. ‘Ah, my nose,’ he says to the customers who frequent his shop. ‘It’s my heritage and my fortune.’
Joshua’s clothes are scarcely less comic than his girth. Antiquated in style and polished to a sheen with wear, they belong rather to the age of the previous George, the Second, than to the current occupant of the throne. On this particular day – in defiance of the summer heat – Joshua is wearing an embroidered waistcoat and taffeta bow; knee-length breeches and boots with spurs. Most outlandish of all – indeed, positively rakish – is his tricorn, which has the appearance of having come under sustained attack from a battalion of famished moths.
Joshua Trencom is not easily upstaged, but there is one person in his immediate vicinity who is able to do precisely that. Dorothea Trencom, née Roudle, is larger by far than her conjugal Joshua. She is also (as a consequence of allowing herself no more than one bath a month) rather more pungent than her graveolant husband. Notwithstanding these defects – for even her most sympathetic contemporaries consider her size and smell to be beyond the norm – Dorothea has managed to bring no fewer than thirteen Trencom babes to maturity, of whom Charles (aged fourteen) is her firstborn favourite.