by Giles Milton
The flames were growing dangerously close. The very air had been heated to a furnace and flames and squibs were dropping from the heavens. King Street and Milk Street were now ablaze and several dwellings on Lothbury were burning fiercely. It was only a matter of time before the wall of fire would reach Trencoms.
When the flames did arrive, they came in a relentless wave. They latched themselves onto the corner shop – Mr George’s, the vintner – grasping at the woodwork before tearing off the roof. Humphrey watched, horrified yet fascinated, as the gable end detached itself from the building and crashed to the ground in an explosion of flame. The Olde Bear was the next to be consumed; the flames – fuelled by tuns of brandy in the cellars – made short shrift of the wattle walls. They then tore through Number 12 and the Olde Supply Store before sniffing hungrily at the parch-dry facade of Trencoms cheese shop.
Humphrey moved as close as he dared to the flames, observing with detached horror the impending ruination of his life. The heat was intense – a pulsing, scalding blast – yet he seemed incapable of fleeing until he had witnessed with his own eyes the destruction of his livelihood.
The flames licked at the wooden timbers as if they wished to sniff and taste the cheeses before taking their first big lunge. The ancient beams, which had been set into the ground more than two centuries earlier, were as dry as an old corpse. London had not seen rain for more than three months and the parched surface of the timber was charred in seconds. Then, all at once, the entire front of the shop burst spectacularly into flame.
The little windowpanes held out valiantly against the rush of heat, but only for a few more seconds. Humphrey could not tell which melted first – the lead or the glass – but he noticed that the famous Trencoms shopfront, bought at a cost of more than twenty guineas, fell from its casement in a dramatic molten collapse. Moments later, the darting tops of the flames began filtering inside the ground floor of the building, sniffing out anything that might be combustible.
Humphrey was standing dangerously close to the fire – he was less than thirty yards from the shop. In spite of the heat, which was roasting his cheeses, he remained rooted to the spot, watching in detached horror as the flames located their first victim. A large pile of prize Suffolk gilden was displayed on a tabletop close to the window. For the previous few minutes, it had been shielded from the worst of the heat by the thin, leaded window. Now, with that gone, it bore the full force of the flames.
Its surface turned shiny as it began to melt. Then, ever so slowly, its innards started to liquefy. The pile shrank slightly as its solid structure softened. The top cheese oozed into the one below and that, in turn, melted into the large round at the bottom.
Small bubbles appeared on the surface. It began to blister and splutter. And then, all at once, its gooey underbelly began to drip to the floor. The hard rinds still held out defiantly against the fearsome heat. But, deprived of their inner organs, the cheeses soon puckered and collapsed in on themselves. Humphrey’s gildens were transformed into a runny puddle.
The flames were encouraged by the ease of their success and pushed themselves deeper inside the building. As the heat intensified, more and more cheeses began subsiding into waxy lumps. They lost their rigidity. Their edges softened. And then – finally – they were slowly unclotted by the flames. The charworths leached into the bridgeworths; the stiltons mingled with the blues.
In the midst of this oozy catastrophe, the noble parmesan alone held its shape and form. For more than five minutes it stood proud against the relentless onslaught of fire and flame. But, seemingly disheartened by the surrounding doom, its rotund belly began to shrink and buckle.
For more than two months, this 50 lb drum had brought pleasure and delight to Trencoms’ regulars. Now, its rheumy innards were drip-drip-dripping to the floor.
Humphrey knew that when the inside of the shop reached a certain temperature, all of the surviving cheeses would spontaneously combust. He only had to wait a few seconds longer before this sorry moment came to pass. As the bells of St Mary’s knelled the seventh hour – the last time they would ever ring – Trencoms cheese shop exploded into a fireball.
Humphrey watched in a mixture of awe and horror. He had already resigned himself to the loss of his shop and had also grasped that this spelled the end of his livelihood. And yet, amid this scene of utter devastation, he took pride in the fact that his cheeses were putting on a far more ostentatious display than all the other burning buildings. The tavern had disappeared in a squib of flame. The Olde Supply Store had burned long and slow. But his cheeses were proving theatrical to the last. Molten, dripping and turned to liquid oil, they now transformed the shop into a spectacular furnace of fire.
It was as Humphrey watched this operatic finale that his nose once again started to twitch. This time, his brain responded in seconds. Ah, yes! His cheeses – his beloved family of cheeses – were giving him one final burst of pleasure. Amid the stench of burning timber, pitch, dust and ash, there was the all-pervasive aroma of molten cheese. Humphrey could identify no one variety in the pungent concoction of smells. Instead, his nose was infused with a powerful miscellany of scents – one quite unlike anything he had smelled before.
He looked around him and was suddenly gripped by panic. He realized that he was now entirely alone and almost encircled by a wall of flame. He had been so enrapt in watching the cheese-fuelled flames that he had quite failed to notice that the fire had spread southwards and eastwards, tearing its way along the length of Lawrence Lane. The air was heated almost to roasting point and Humphrey could feel his wedding ring burning his skin.
‘Great God!’ he thought. ‘Where’s everyone gone? I must get out – I must get myself to the river.’
He allowed himself one final glance at the still-burning corpse of what had only recently been Trencoms cheese shop before turning on his heels and fleeing down the lane, stumbling over charred timbers and mounds of fallen masonry.
His mind was focused absolutely on saving his own skin and it was not until he at last reached the waterfront that he began to assess his predicament with a degree of clarity. As he did so, his thoughts performed several somersaults before turning in a most unexpected direction. He began to ask himself if the fire was the sign that his mother, in her characteristically cryptic fashion, had told him to one day expect. She had always insisted that the Trencom family was awaiting some sort of signal from the heavens and that when it came he would not fail but to notice it.
‘Watch out for it, Humphrey,’ she had said to him when he was still a young boy, ‘and seize the moment. The sign will mark your destiny and it will also mark the destiny of the Trencoms. Yes, it will betoken good tidings for our family for generation upon generation.’
As a small boy, Humphrey had often asked his mother to tell him more, but she would only ever offer him one of her customary monologues. ‘All the noble courts of Europe once sought our blood,’ she would say with a vigorous nod of her head. ‘Oh, yes. And we could have married into some of the very greatest dynasties. Tsar Ivan the Terrible proposed to Irene, your great-great-great-grandmother. And King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden offered one of your aunts the city of Lutzen in Saxony as her dowry.’
The youthful Humphrey had listened entranced to his mother’s litany of royal names and houses. He had heard these stories so many times that he knew, almost to the word, what was coming next.
‘Here it comes – here it comes,’ he would think to himself, mimicking in his head his mother’s strange accent. ‘And I could have married Prince Christian IV of Denmark, Norway and the Lofoten Islands.’
‘And I,’ she said right on cue, ‘could have married the Holy Roman Emperor himself – yes, indeed – Ferdinand III. But I didn’t like the cut of his moustache.’
Humphrey had involuntarily gulped when he realized that the well-worn script had suddenly acquired a new and most illustrious personality.
‘Really, mother?’ he had said. ‘Are you sure it w
asn’t Prince Christian IV – of Denmark, Norway and the Lofoten Islands?’
‘Aye,’ had been her answer as she spat in the dust. ‘Him as well. I could have married them all. But I – we – didn’t want to mix our blood with such inferiors.’
‘Then why,’ Humphrey had asked tentatively, ‘did you marry my father?’
There was a long pause as his mother, Zoe, looked dreamily at the cob and timber dwelling that had been her home for the last ten years.
‘I fell in love,’ she had replied, wiping her eyes on her kirtle. ‘And I knew that together we could produce the son who would reclaim our patrimony. That’s you, Humphrey. And when I saw your nose – when I saw that you had inherited my nose – I felt sure that it was only a question of time. We had left our homeland in a welter of fire and flame – and a welter of fire and flame would surely send us back there again.’
What exactly had his mother meant by these words? Humphrey had never known for certain, but now, as he turned his head towards the burning skyline, he quickly convinced himself that the fire was the mysterious portent of which she had spoken. To his way of thinking, the flames that had destroyed his shop heralded something of the utmost importance.
‘Why, of course,’ he thought, with a tingling sense of excitement.’ ‘Tis certainly the sign of which she spoke. This must be the sign. It has at long last come to pass, just as she promised it would.’
No sooner had Humphrey concluded that the fire was a message from on high than he found a rush of ideas swift-footing themselves through the overheated chambers of his brain. Within a very short space of time, and in absolute disregard of either practicality or logic, he decided upon a dramatic and quite unexpected course of action.
‘I shall go to Constantinople,’ he said to himself with a vigorous nod of his head. ‘Yes, indeed. That’s surely what my mother wanted me to do. I shall put these charred ruins into the capable hands of brother John and seek my destiny in Constantinople.’
And so he would. But little did he know that in following the sign and making his voyage, Humphrey was to spark a most catastrophic train of events – one that would not reach its nemesis until the spring of 1969, precisely 303 years and nine generations after his hasty and unexpected departure. It would fall to a certain Edward Trencom, a direct descendant of the precipitate Humphrey, to deal with the terrible consequences of his decision.
JANUARY 1969
The guide clapped her hands and let slip an impatient cough. She was anxious to start the tour. ‘Excuse me – ladies and gentlemen. Ahem – if you’re ready. Could I ask you – ahem.’
The little group fell silent and she began.
‘First of all,’ she said, ‘let me welcome you all to the tour. It’ll last about forty minutes and if anyone has any questions, well, please don’t hesitate to ask.
‘Now – where shall we begin? Trencoms, as you can see, is housed in a most unusual building. The exterior facade is quintessentially Georgian – red brick, three storeys and finely proportioned – the sort of house in which, Mr Trencom once remarked, many of Jane Austen’s characters might have been very much at home.
‘Take a look at the fan light over the door. It’s original. Look, too, at the sash windows. Most of them still retain their eighteenth-century glass. Yes, sir, you’re right, it is very unusual in London – and for that we must thank Mr Albert Trencom. He boarded up the windows on the day that World War Two broke out – much to the amusement of the neigh-bouring shopkeepers – and the panels were not removed until Armistice Day.
‘Above the main door, which has been dark green for more than a century, you’ll notice the sort of wrought-iron sign that was once a familiar sight all over London. Trencoms, 1662. That was, of course, the year in which the shop first opened its doors.
‘Yes, sir – you have a question. Ah, yes – so what did happen to the original Trencoms? Well, the first shop no longer exists. It was burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1666 – completely destroyed. It had only been open for four years when it suffered its first great catastrophe.’
The guide shuffled on her feet for a moment and stared briefly at the ground. ‘Perhaps I should point out,’ she said, ‘that the fire was not the only disaster Trencoms has suffered in its long history. It’s strange. You see, almost every generation has had to face some accident or other.’ She lingered over the word accident, as if she wished to hint at something more sinister. ‘You could almost say that Trencoms is in some way – cursed.’
The guide had managed to get everyone’s attention with this last comment and, in the dramatic silence that followed, she took the opportunity to crack a well-worn joke – one she knew would make everyone laugh.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s hope that it doesn’t suffer another disaster in the course of the next forty minutes.’
As the group duly let out a collective chuckle, the guide acknowledged their enjoyment with a knowing nod of her head and pressed on with the tour.
‘Now then, just a couple of other things to add. Notice the royal insignia and those three magical words, “by royal appointment”. I’m sure that some of you will have seen this on other shops during your stay in London – yes? Hmm? I can see that some of you are nodding.
‘Well, I can assure you that a “royal appointment” is indeed a great honour. Trencoms was awarded this status during the reign of Queen Victoria, who was particularly partial to Mr Henry Trencom’s double-aged double gloucester. Prince Albert, incidentally, preferred the salty gewurtskäse, from northern Bavaria. We had someone on the tour the other day, a German businessman, who actually came from the village where gewurtskäse is made.’
She paused for a moment in order to acknowledge a new arrival to the group. ‘Good morning, good morning,’ she said with characteristic jollity, motioning with her hand to draw the man closer. ‘Please come and join us. A holiday, is it? Tell us your name. And do tell us where you’re from. I always like to know what countries I’ve had on my tours.’
The man looked distinctly uneasy, as if this was the last thing he was expecting to be asked. ‘Er – Greece. I’m from Greece.’ He spoke hesitantly, in a voice that was heavily accented. ‘The name’s Papadrianos. Andreas Papadrianos,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘From Salonika.’
‘Ah, good – good,’ said the guide. ‘We haven’t had a Greek on the tour for many a month. A little word of advice – once we’re inside, do try a slice of Mr Trencom’s haloumi. Delicious, it really is. You won’t find better outside Greece and that’s a guarantee.’
She smiled and asked the man another question.
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mr Papadrianos.
‘Are you here for business or pleasure?’ repeated the guide, who was speaking rather more slowly than usual on account of the fact that she was addressing a foreigner.
‘Business,’ snapped the man, who was clearly annoyed at having to reveal anything about himself. ‘I’m here on – personal business.’
‘I see, I see,’ said the guide, who took this as a sign that her nosiness was once again getting the better of her. ‘Well now, ladies and gentlemen – and Mr Papa-what’s-it – if you’re ready, we can enter the shop. I’d ask those of you who have cameras to switch off the flashes as they have been known to interfere with the growth of the mould of the cheeses.’
With that little caution and with one last glance at the facade, the group was ready to enter the oldest, finest and most famous cheese shop in London.
The first and most immediate sensation on first entering Trencoms was the extraordinary smell. The pungent odour of cheese permeated the air, as if the very walls and ceiling were built of great slabs of creamy-white emmental. Whenever customers and tour guides first walked through the door, the smell of cheese momentarily stopped them in their tracks. It was not unpleasant – not at all – but it took more than a minute for one’s nostrils to adapt to such an abrupt change.
The air
was at its foggiest and most fusty in the early morning, when the shop had just been opened. It was as if, all night long, the mouldering cheeses had been exhaling in their sleep – yawning, sighing and respiring stale cheesy odours. The Trencoms had long been convinced that, in the depth of their slumber, the stiltons burped and the roquefort broke wind. And why not? After all, every single cheese in Trencoms was a living being – a dense and vibrant clump of greeny-bluey-creamy bacteria.
The family had long ago discovered that many of the cheeses underwent a mysterious transformation during the hours of darkness. They would arrive in the morning to discover that the bell-shaped clochettes – which had been unripe just a few hours earlier – had acquired a new and greenish patina of mould. They would find that some of the couhé-veracs had miraculously divested themselves of their chestnut-leaf wrappers, as if they were petticoats or negligees to be wantonly dropped to the floor.
Many a Trencom had amused himself with thoughts of what really went on in the noctural world of cheese. Did the tommes make advances on the picodons? Did the gaperons woo the willowy buchettes? Whatever antics took place during the hours when Trencoms was closed – and no one could ever be entirely sure – the cheeses managed to imbue the shop with a distinctive, if ambiguous, morning odour – the sort of pleasant-unpleasant smell that occasionally finds itself trapped under the duvet of young lovers.
‘Good morning, Mr Trencom,’ said the guide as she entered the shop. ‘And how are you this morning?’
‘Ah, good morning indeed, Mrs Williamson,’ he replied, smiling at everyone on the tour. ‘Yes, yes – I’m tickety-boo, just tickety-boo.’ This was nothing short of the truth. Mr Edward Trencom, the proprietor of Trencoms – the tenth generation of the family to occupy this position – was in the finest possible fettle. He gave his belly a hearty slap and then polished his nose with the corner of his apron. A couple of people in the group sniggered when they heard him speak and several others exchanged glances when they noticed the curious shape of Mr Trencom’s nose. But the better mannered managed to keep their composure.