Edward Trencom's Nose: A Novel of History, Dark Intrigue and Cheese

by Giles Milton

  ‘Here we go, Mrs Williamson – a slice of pencarreg to perk you up for the morning.’ The guide blushed ever so slightly and popped it into her mouth.

  ‘And if that doesn’t bring you out in goose pimples,’ chuckled Mr Trencom, ‘then we’ll have to prescribe a large chunk of Burgundian clacbitou.’ Mrs Williamson smiled, the tour group laughed and Mr Trencom wished everyone a most agreeable visit.

  The shop had a green and cream chequered marble floor. During the day, the tiles were scattered with sawdust, rendering it treacherous to anyone foolish enough to enter Trencoms wearing the sort of high heels that were popular with typists and office secretaries in the late 1960s.

  Along both walls there were long marble counters topped with glass and brass frames. These allowed customers to view the cheeses on display – a tiny fraction of what was stored in the cellars – while at the same time protecting them from any contact with the breath, or wandering fingers, of Trencoms’ clientele. Each cheese sat upon its own handmade straw mat, which had been imported from the Carmargue since the late 1870s. These were neutral in colour and odour, allowing the cheeses to breathe, but not imparting any unwanted flavour.

  The shop’s interior dated from 1873 – the first and only time when Trencoms had been redecorated. Two Victorian fans – installed in that year – still turned slowly in the ceiling, clicking slightly on every fourth rotation. They churned the air with heavy monotony, mingling all the individual odours into one. If you stood directly below the fans and held your head at approximately forty-five degrees, there was something about the way in which the air circulated that forced the smell deep into your nose. Yet if you stood at the end of the counter, the result was very different – light, fragrant and almost musty. It had long been a tradition among the Trencom proprietors to stand in four different spots each morning and allow the smell to permeate their nostrils. They liked to see how many individual cheeses they could identify in the pungent cocktail.

  The walls of the shop were lined with rectangular tiles whose creamy colour matched the sticky inside of a ripe maroilles. Three shelves stood above the counter; each was stacked with rare bottled cheeses from the Peloponnese which were preserved in piquant olive oil. Behind each counter there was a ripe, ready-to-eat epoisses and a mug containing teaspoons. Tour groups were always greeted with a spoonful of epoisses and a warm personal welcome. Americans were particularly keen to meet the descendant of a family that had ‘been in cheese’ for more than three centuries.

  ‘And now,’ said Mrs Williamson, ‘if you’re ready? We shall descend into the crypt.’

  It was as the tour group was clambering down the wooden stepladder and into the cellars that something rather peculiar happened – something that was to cast a shadow over the rest of Edward Trencom’s day. The Greek newcomer to the group hung back from everyone else as if, out of politeness, he intended to be the last to descend the ladder. But no sooner had everyone else disappeared from view than he made his way back into the shop and hurried over to Mr Trencom.

  ‘They know about you,’ he whispered. ‘Everything. And you are in grave danger. They’ve been watching you for at least a week, perhaps more. Even now they are monitoring you.’

  Edward Trencom was so completely taken aback at being addressed in such a manner – and by a complete stranger – that his immediate reaction was to rub his nose with great vigour, something that he always did when he was nervous or perturbed. He then fixed his eyes upon the man in a way that suggested he was wondering, firstly, if he had heard him correctly and secondly, if he should eject him from the shop.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said in a tone that retained its customary politeness but was somewhat firmer and more insistent than he would ever use on his regular customers. ‘Can we help you in any way? Were you after any particular cheese?’

  ‘I cannot tell you any more,’ continued Mr Papadrianos, who was completely oblivious to Edward’s response. ‘But even now, you – we – are being watched.’

  As he said this, he motioned towards the street outside. Edward swung his gaze across to the large glazed window and was startled by what he saw. A very tall man – who looked just as Greek as the stranger standing before him – was peering in through the window. Yes, staring straight towards him. As their two sets of eyes met – and connected – the stranger outside suddenly bowed his head and scurried off down the street.

  ‘I can’t talk now,’ said the man standing before Edward. ‘But watch your back – and be cautious. We need you. All our hopes are pinned on you, Mr Trencom, all our hopes. I’ll be back to tell you more. I can’t say when, but I will be back. That much I can promise.’ And with that said and done, Mr Papadrianos gave a wave of his hand and made a hasty exit from the shop.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ said Edward to himself as he reflected on the peculiar scene that had just taken place. ‘That is quite the strangest thing that has happened to me since …’ His mind was briefly sidetracked into thinking about the last strange thing that had happened to him. Unable to recollect anything at all, he let out a series of indignant tuts before returning to the matter in hand. ‘Now then,’ he thought, ‘what on earth was that all about? What did he say? “We need you. All our hopes are pinned on you.” Well, well, really! I’ve never heard such a preposterous piece of nonsense in all my life.’

  As he replayed the scene in his head – and allowed himself a little smile – he popped a slice of creamy caussedou into his mouth.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Edward said aloud as he squashed the cheese against the roof of his mouth. ‘It doesn’t taste quite right. Not at all. Indeed, one could even argue that it tastes as if it’s gone off.’

  Edward Trencom was in possession of a quite extraordinary nose. It was long, aquiline and marked by a prominent yet perfectly formed circular bump over the bridge. He had studied the architecture of his nose for much of his adult life and never tired of examining its curious shape. He was not a vain man – not at all. Aside from his habit of slipping on a fresh apron every morning, and being a stickler for cleanliness, he had scarcely a care in the world about his external appearance. It was rather an act of idle curiosity – speculation, if you will – that caused him regularly to check his nose in one of the many mirrors that adorned the walls of Trencoms.

  There was a time when he felt it was modelled in the perpendicular style so beloved by England’s cathedral builders. But no. Such a conclusion denied the very complexities that gave his nose its charm. For the bump over the bridge lent a dash of Byzantine excitement to its structure.

  After years of reading and researching, measuring and anatomizing, Edward had reached a few definite conclusions. ‘My nose,’ he decided, ‘combines sensuality’ (the bump) ‘with authority’ (the straightness) ‘in a perfect blend of Greek and Roman.’ Yes. Edward Trencom was in possession of a truly Graeco-Roman nose: one that adhered to Sapphic concepts of beauty yet overlaid them with a strict Virgilian sense of duty.

  Although the Trencoms had been in possession of their hereditary appendage for many hundreds of years, it had not always been so finely shaped. The earliest generations of the family had been born with noses that lacked any hint of the traits and characteristics that would one day become their most distinguishing hallmark. There had been no oriental bump. The bridge had none of the Roman straightness. The fine Greek facade had yet to be erected. Those early noses were the product of inbreeding and poor nourishment – malformed and born out of Saxon pillage and rape, bred on offal and turnips, smashed by blunderbusses, broken in alehouse brawls, subjected to the stench of the slaughterhouse, frozen in winter and abused by centuries of over-strong cider and ale. Incest had contributed to the skewed tip. Violent sword fights had left their scars. And although the owners of these noses would eventually dress themselves in elegantly slashed doublets, the flaccid red nostrils would reveal them to be in an advanced stage of deterioration. Capillaries would rupture and wiry hairs protrude from each nostril.

>   It was not until the mid-seventeenth century that the family suddenly found that an extraordinary nose had been thrust upon it. In or around 1637, a certain Humphrey Trencom was born with an appendage that was clearly out of the ordinary. It was uncommonly long and aquiline and particularly notable on account of a large bony dome that appeared almost to hang suspended above the bridge. No Trencom had ever been born with such an extraordinary-shaped nose and it was clear to the gaggle of family members crowing around the birthing bed that this particular specimen had come lock, stock and two fine barrels from the newborn Humphrey’s mother, the exhausted but deliriously happy Zoe. She, in turn, had acquired the nose from her father, from whom it could be traced back into antiquity, through fathers and mothers and occasionally aunts and cousins as well. There was no obvious logic as to how and when the nose would appear, yet it was present – proud and immutable – in every generation.

  By the time Humphrey was born, his mother was the only surviving member of the family to bear such a nose and she breathed a very heavy sigh of relief – and made the sign of the cross three times – when she saw that Humphrey was in possession of the family patrimony. She had performed her duty with perfect timing and others would duly follow suit in the decades and centuries to come. Ever since the birth of Humphrey, each generation managed to produce at least one offspring – usually, but by no means always, the firstborn son – who possessed a nose of formidable shape and sensitivity.

  There were times, of course, when it lost a little of its magnificence. Its structure had become temporarily debased during the Regency period and a daguerreotype of old Henry Trencom revealed the dome above the bridge to have listed sharply to the left. But such architectural catastrophes never lasted for long. By the late nineteenth century, the nose was back on form. Edward’s grandfather was so proud of his specimen that he underlined its qualities with a luxuriant moustache. Edward’s father had also been blessed with a fine exemplum – one which turned a lustrous pink whenever he drank his evening glass of porter.

  When still a young boy, Edward had quizzed his uncle about the family nose. ‘Uncle Harry,’ he had asked, ‘who first gave us our nose?’

  His uncle had shot him a steely look and given an even sterner reply. ‘That subject is strictly forbidden in this household,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘These noses have been the making of our family and they have also been our downfall.’

  He paused for a moment in order to wipe his dewy eyes with his lavender-coloured kerchief. He thought of Peregrine Trencom – Edward’s father – and a tear rolled down his cheek. He thought of George Trencom – Edward’s grandfather – and a second tear splashed to the floor.

  ‘But what do you mean?’ persisted Edward. ‘You must tell me more.’

  ‘God gave you your nose,’ replied Harold, ‘and so you must use it. But never ask questions about it. And never go in search of its origins. Never, never, never. From this time forth, Edward, your nose is a subject that is strictly forbidden in this household.’

  And that – for more than thirty years – was that.

  Cheese had been in the Trencom family blood for even longer than they had possessed their extraordinary noses. The fifteenth-century Boke of Nurture, written by the court physician John Russell, was the first to speak of the fulsome properties of the trencom round – a hard, aged cheese made from cows’ milk. ‘The trencom rounde,’ wrote Russell, ‘wille a stomache kepe in the botom open.’ Just a few years after these lines were written, Fulke Regis, Bishop of Exeter, presented half a hundredweight to King Henry VIII.

  From this moment on, the Trencoms never looked back. Their cheeses were trumpeted in both the 1596 Haven of Health and the encyclopaedic Booke of Goodnesse. And, in 1662, their fortunes took an even more dramatic upward turn. The finely nosed Humphrey Trencom sold a large parcel of the patrimonial farmland in Dorset’s Piddle Valley and headed to London. He founded Trencoms in the heart of the city and quickly established a reputation for quality.

  Humphrey had a singular ability to detect and buy the most fragrant cheeses and he was soon granted the honour of supplying the court of King Charles II. It was most unfortunate that the Great Fire should destroy the shop and that the mercurial Humphrey should make the terrible mistake of allowing his nose to lead him to Constantinople. But other members of the Trencom family managed to rebuild the business and re-establish themselves as the leading cheese merchants of London.

  The few decades that saw them transformed from farmers to merchants coincided with the remarkable transformation in the morphology of their faces, as well as a dramatic change in the sensitivity of their newly acquired appendage. Their noses had an extraordinary ability to discern the composition, maturity and quality of a cheese. And ever since that time, the family nose had sniffed, whiffed, judged and tested the great cheeses of the world, from camemberts and chèvres to saint nectaires and saint paulins.

  Their reputation hinged fairly and squarely upon their noses. For generation after generation, the menfolk of the family relied on this finely tuned organ to tell them good from bad and fair from foul. Their nose was both defence and prosecution, judge and jury, and it was only when the combined talent of two nostrils had confirmed that a cheese was exceptional that it was sold to the ladies and gentlemen of the city.

  The Trencoms did not consider themselves shopkeepers, nor would they have described themselves as purveyors of fine cheeses. A purveyor, they argued, merely buys a product at a low cost and sells it for profit – a hawker or pedlar on a grand scale. No. The Trencoms had always viewed themselves as connoisseurs and experts, judges and hierophants whose role in life was, as the sagacious Thomas Trencom had once remarked, to separate the curds from the whey. Just as a priest prays for the souls of his flock, so the Trencoms were custodians of their clients’ palates. Their shop was a breath of fresh air in the mouldering and rather smelly world of cheese.

  The family had long believed that a nose could only be truly refined by withholding the object of desire. From grandfather to grandson and from generation to generation, every Trencom had spent six long years in the company of cheese before being allowed to taste it. Thus it had always been and thus it was with the young Edward.

  No one in the family could remember why six years had to pass. It was, perhaps, because it took six years for Provençal cachaille to reach maturity. Or it may have been because the most exquisite cantal was made with milk from six-year-old cows. Whatever the reason, it came to pass that Edward first tasted cheese on the occasion of his twenty-second birthday. He arrived at Trencoms at a little after 8.00 a.m., as was his custom. He sniffed at the frowzy air and took a long inhalation of breath. Then, glancing down, he noticed that his hands were trembling. He could scarcely contain his excitement.

  He clambered down the stepladder into the cellars and checked the air for a second time that morning. As he did so, he was greeted by his uncle, Harold, who had cared for Edward since he was ten years old. Harold was in the process of tapping and wrapping a small selection of cheeses.

  ‘Ah – at last – here you are,’ said Harold, as he popped up from behind a precariously balanced tower of Savoyard tomme. ‘Edward – many happy returns. I only wish your father was still alive. He would have been proud to have been here today.’

  Harold paused for a moment as he wiped a film of damp mould from a mature tomme du Mont Cenis. Then, with great care, he rubbed the mould into his moustache and inhaled deeply. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said in a low murmur, ‘a truly rumbustious cheese.’

  Edward nodded in agreement as he detected the glacial freshness of an Alpine breeze. Then, a few moment’s later, he found himself sniffing at freshly scythed meadows. There was the hint of crushed cowslip, the fragile scent of gentian.

  Five seconds had passed.

  Then ten.

  ‘A tomme,’ asserted Edward, ‘but from where?’

  ‘Wait,’ was Harold’s reply. ‘Be patient.’

  And just as he spoke these
words, there was another wave of scent, this time warmer and more homely. Edward smelled the body sweat of cows and the thick odour of the milking shed.

  ‘Of course – it’s tomme du Mont Cenis,’ said Edward with a confident smile. ‘Straight from the Rhone Alps. You can almost smell’ – he gave a theatrical sniff – ‘the imminent arrival of snow.’

  Harold congratulated Edward and ushered him over to a corner of the cellar where he had prepared a birthday parcel bound in thick brown paper. Its contents came as no surprise to Edward, for he was well versed in the Trencom tradition. Even so, he ripped through the wrapping with growing excitement. Inside, sure enough, was exactly what he had expected: one epoisses, one whole stilton, and three farm-produced chèvres wrapped in copper coloured chestnut leaves. He was finally going to taste them.

  Slowly, gently, he pulled back the covers on the stilton to reveal a sight more beautiful than any he had seen in his life. She was complete perfection. Cloaked in brown-grey mould, firm yet sensual, she had the finest crust he had ever seen.

  ‘Can I open her?’ exclaimed Edward. He was hot and flushed and his fingers had once again begun to tremble.

  ‘Yes,’ said his uncle. ‘But you know the rule. Clear all the other cheeses out of the way. You must allow each individual specimen to breathe.’

  Edward hastily moved the other cheeses and returned to the stilton. He removed the thin muslin and allowed it to fall gently to the floor. He then stood back for a moment to admire her extraordinary skin before bringing his nose up close to a small crack in the surface. Then, gingerly, he reached for his knife and positioned it inside the crack. Pausing for a second, he thrust it deep into the stilton’s heart. Suddenly there was an explosion of scents and smells that sent Edward reeling backwards. There was the odour of damp churches and enclosed vaults, mushrooms and waxed wood.