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

by Giles Milton

  The other principal route wound its way towards the grassy slopes of the Jura, passed the moularens of Provence and the vachards of the Rhone. It then led high over the snow-covered Alps until the floor dipped suddenly and dramatically and you found yourself entering the warm valleys of Piedmont – an arrival that was heralded by the tangy smell of ripening gorgonzola. Again the path divided. One route led towards Naples and the great cheeses of the Italian south. The other headed east towards Macedonia, Thrace and the grassy plains of Anatolia. Once you crossed the Hellespont, you found yourself in the great cheese-making towns of Sivas, Erzincam and Erzurum. A few more paces brought you to some of the more remote provinces of eastern Persia. There were the hand-churned yoghurts of Bakhtaran; the Zoroastrian cheeses of Atashkade and Yazd. And further still, you headed northwards again to the acrid goat’s curds so beloved by the Turkmen nomads. From here, you entered the hinterlands of the Trencoms storeroom – the blank vastness of Kazakhstan, the cities of Astrakhan, Chechnya, Tbilisi and Yerevan. Paths, alleys and gangways that wound through to the other little cellars led to every corner of the globe – to Asia, India, the Americas and Australasia.

  And what of the great cheeses of the British Isles – the cheshires, the wensleydales and the stinking bishops? The Trencom family had never considered Britain to be a part of Europe. Separated by an iron grille and kept firmly behind lock and key, the cheeses of England, Wales and Scotland were housed together in one of the medieval side chapels.

  The famous Trencom altar stood in the very heart of the principal crypt – a thick slab of Purbeck stone that rested on two chunky legs. Centuries earlier, this had been where the monks of St Egbert’s Abbey had assembled to say their daily Mass. This was where they consecrated bread and wine. This was where their tonsured abbots had chanted dirges to their Lord. Albert of Wichbricht once celebrated the divine liturgy at this altar. St Branoc made a pilgrimage here in 1198. King Henry II heard Mass here before riding into Herefordshire to crush the barons’ revolt.

  Now, a very different worship took place at the altar. On this same slab of stone, cheeses were cut and smelled, examined and tasted. The monks of St Egbert’s (several of whose bones lay beneath the floor) would have shot bolt upright in their graves if they could have seen what had happened in the intervening centuries. St Branoc would have cast his venomous snakes at the Trencoms, cursing them for their defilement. Abbot Henri of Clairvaux would have had them burned for heresy. Yet the Trencoms themselves saw nothing blasphemous in their actions. Quite the contrary. In cutting their cheese on the altar, in eating at the table of Christ, they saw themselves as custodians of a long and holy tradition.

  Edward’s working day could be broken down into constituent parts which seldom if ever changed. At 8.31 a.m., he would unlock the front door of Trencoms and step sharply into the shop. He would blow his nose and sniff at the cheeses. And then, after standing under the twirling fans, he would make his way down into the cellars.

  His lunches, too, followed an unchanging pattern that suited both his temperament and his constitution. At 1 p.m. sharp he would suggest that Mr George should take his break, knowing that he would return to the shop at 1.58 p.m. Four minutes later – no more, no less – Edward himself would put on his overcoat, bid Mr George a cheery goodbye and step outside into the street.

  But on 23 January 1969, two days after Edward’s unexpected dash through the streets of the city, he found himself changing the habits of a lifetime. On any normal day, he would turn left into Mumford Court then left again into Milk Street. He would then join the queue outside Mrs O’Casey’s. Regular as clockwork, he would buy himself two sandwiches (one ham, one egg – ‘Extra lettuce in the egg, please’) before heading to the little garden at the corner of Love Lane. On this particular afternoon, however, Edward did not go to Mrs O’Casey’s. True, he still sniffed the air in his customary way as he left Trencoms. Certainly, he examined the sky to check for gathering rain clouds. But instead of turning left as he stepped out of the shop, he turned right – away from Mrs O’Casey’s – and struck out in the direction of Queen Street.

  In his heart of hearts, Edward must have been aware that such a deviation from the norm could only presage ill. He must have known that Mr George would have been dismayed to see him turn right out of the shop. Yet he didn’t falter in his decision, even though he had a frown on his face and a murmur in his heart.

  Two remarkable things had happened to Edward over the previous forty-eight hours. The most disquieting of the two was the fact that Edward was now convinced he was being watched – watched by someone whose identity remained a complete mystery. This caused him considerable alarm and had constantly preyed on his mind, quite spoiling the enjoyment of his daily routine.

  Now, something no less mysterious had occurred in the cellars of Trencoms. Edward had made a most startling discovery – a discovery so out of the ordinary that he felt sure his life was about to change forever. And although these two things were entirely unconnected – at least, they seemed to be unconnected – Edward couldn’t help feeling that one, in some strange way, had led to the other.

  His discovery in the Trencom crypt had taken him so completely by surprise that he had sneezed uncontrollably for the better part of three hours. And although the sneezes had eventually subsided, he found to his dismay that he had lost all powers of concentration. Whereas he normally looked forward to his mid-morning coffee break, today he had been itching for lunchtime. While he usually enjoyed chatting with Mr George about the action of bacteria on milk, such conversations suddenly seemed completely humdrum. Even the roquefort, the prince of cheeses, seemed to have lost its perfume on this particular morning. Some hidden anxiety – and Edward did not yet know what – was gnawing away inside his head.

  He hurried down Lawrence Lane and began retracing his steps from two days earlier when he had followed the mysterious Greek man. He walked purposefully along King Street, as if looking for clues, then turned right into Gresham Street. After sniffing the air in Old Jewry and Cheapside, all the while sticking to the same side of the pavement as before, Edward found himself once again in Queen Street.

  He paused for a second as he passed the offices of Christos Makarezos and Sons and looked up to the first floor to see if there was any sign of life. The curtains were drawn shut at both of the windows and yet he could see quite clearly that there was a light on in the room.

  ‘Something to hide,’ thought Edward to himself. ‘Definitely something to hide.’ And he recalled how the puritan pastors of Amsterdam never used to draw their curtains, claiming that only sinners needed to close themselves off from the world.

  He took one more look at the building before crossing the road. A few more steps brought him to Number 11, the offices of Barcley, Berkleigh and Barklee, Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths. He strode up to the shiny black door with great purpose and, before pressing the bell, paused briefly to admire the profile of his nose in the polished brass plaque. He examined it carefully, allowing his index finger to slowly massage the finely crafted ridge. Then he smiled. Oh yes, yes, yes! Of all the uncertainties in the world, one thing was sure. He was, without doubt, in possession of a truly priceless treasure.

  The bump brought him the greatest delight. It was hard. Solid. Bony. The sort of bump that would have caused vainer, vulgar folk considerable distress. Edward, by contrast, would have not have been too upset if the bump were ever so slightly larger.

  ‘Fancy!’ he said to himself with a smile. ‘What a fine nose you have, Edward Trencom.’ And as he lightly dusted his nostrils with a cream cotton handkerchief, he tried to remember the famous quotation about noses. How did it go? That the history of the world would have been utterly different if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter by half an inch. Was that it? Or was it longer by half an inch?

  He knocked on the door with three loud raps. After a few seconds, he heard the sound of shuffling feet in the hallway, followed by the turning of a latch. The door opened
and the secretary, Mrs Clarke, looked Edward up and down.

  ‘Yes?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Barcley,’ said Trencom as he shuffled his feet on the doorstep.

  ‘Which particular Mr Barcley?’ enquired Mrs Clarke. ‘Mr Barcley, Mr Berkleigh or Mr Barklee?’

  ‘Mr Richard Barcley,’ said Edward. ‘One y and no i.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment,’ said Mrs Clarke, ‘but I can let him know you’re here. Who shall I say would like to see him?’

  ‘The name is Trencom,’ said Edward. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell him that I have something of the greatest importance to relay to him.’

  Mrs Clarke frowned and motioned him to step inside. ‘I’ll see if he’s available,’ she said.

  Five minutes passed before an office door opened and Richard Barcley appeared clutching a half-empty mug of hot chocolate and a copy of the Daily Telegraph. He was a man for whom middle age had arrived with unseemly haste, as if it were anxious to wipe away any vestige of his once youthful frame. He was balding, dishevelled and with a rapidly spreading belly that clearly had designs on the last, as yet unused notch of his brown suede belt.

  Richard had been born to be a solicitor. He was clever without being intelligent, smart without being wise, like the over-bright schoolboy who knows everything and yet somehow nothing. He could cite his logarithmic tables with impressive ease and could tell you all the stations (in order) on the Central line, Bakerloo line and Northern line.

  ‘And,’ he would say with a pride that was just a whisker away from boasting, ‘I can generally finish the Times and Telegraph crosswords in under ten minutes.’ And so he could, but it would have been a trifle more impressive if he had kept this undeniable accomplishment to himself.

  Despite his high IQ – and membership of MENSA – Barcley was somewhat deficient in the charm department. Like so many people who are aware of their own superiority, he had an unfortunate tendency to talk to others in a manner that suggested they were not quite on his high-frequency wavelength.

  ‘But don’t you see?’ was one of his favourite phrases, often said with an exasperating sigh after the final ‘see’. ‘It’s quite clear to me,’ was another one – and was obviously intended to show that he felt it should have been quite clear to everyone else as well.

  So why, it may be asked, did Edward like Richard so much? Even the most unprepossessing of people have qualities to balance the faults and Richard was no exception to this general rule. When his work colleague had been desperately ill, Richard had taken over his workload with admirable grace. And when his elderly neighbour had been robbed of her pension, he popped over every evening for more than a month to make sure that she was all right. In short, Barcley was a dependable and loyal friend – uncommonly loyal – and once he had formed a friendship he was in it for the duration.

  ‘A friend in need,’ he liked to say, ‘is a friend indeed.’ Not the most original of saws, perhaps, but Richard had his own little twist which he would add with a flourish. After a theatrical pause he would say, ‘Did you know it was the Earl of Rochester who first coined that phrase?’ Edward did, for he had been told it many times before, but he nodded with charitable goodwill nonetheless.

  On this particular day, Barcley was not in the best of humours. His journey to work had been disrupted by a road closure in Sutton and his crossword had been ruined when his fountain pen had inexplicably voided a large globule of brilliant green ink. And just as he was about to slurp his first hot drink of the morning, he had jogged his elbow and spilt it all down his shirt and tie.

  ‘Edward, old man,’ he said with a wan smile as he stepped out into the corridor. ‘If I’d known it was you waiting to see me, I’d have invited you in earlier. Mrs Clarke has a habit of matching the wrong names with the wrong faces then sending them to the wrong room.’

  ‘Well, on this occasion,’ said Edward as he settled himself into Barcley’s office, ‘Mrs Clarke was one hundred per cent correct. Yes, yes – it’s me all right. And what’s more, I have a spot of news to tell you. Or, more accurately, I have two spots of news. One is very exciting indeed and I wanted you to be the first to know. The other is – well, to be honest, Richard, I’m hoping you might be able to help. You see, something rather strange has happened to me. Something that has left me feeling, well, uneasy.’

  He watched a large, plump bluebottle circle the lamp then zoom across to the window. It banged itself noisily against the glass then sped twice around the room and somersaulted over the armchair, before settling on the paperweight on Richard’s desk.

  ‘Before we go any further,’ said Richard with a detectable hint of weariness, ‘we must have something to drink. Would you like tea or coffee? If you want tea, I’ll tell Mrs C you want coffee. If you want coffee, I’ll get her to make you tea. If, on the other hand, you would care for a cold drink, I suggest you ask for hot chocolate. It’s all very simple: Mrs Clarke invariably gives you the opposite of what you ask for.

  ‘I think she’s got dyslexia of the brain – and it gets worse every year. The only cure is a complete surgical removal of the head – Ha-ha! – but our dear old National Health Service claims it’s too expensive.’

  Edward smiled and asked for a cup of coffee.

  ‘Good. I’ll have a coffee too,’ said Barcley, before shouting down the corridor for two cups of tea. ‘And Mrs Clarke,’ he said, as he winked at Edward, ‘this time we won’t be needing any biscuits.’

  He settled back in his chair and faced his friend. ‘Now, old chap,’ he said, ‘what can I do you for? What are these spots of news?’

  ‘Have you ever noticed anything strange about my face?’ said Edward. ‘Have you ever looked at me and thought there was something, well, out of the ordinary about me?’

  ‘In what particular sense, old chap?’

  ‘Have you ever thought that your friend has a fine – an uncommonly splendid – nose?’

  Richard shifted uncomfortably in his chair then looked at Edward’s face. There was a certain truth in what he said. His friend did have a strange nose. Yes, a quite extraordinary nose.

  ‘Fine? Yes. Splendid? Hmm, OK. But that’s not to say, mind, that I’d want it myself.’

  ‘Take a look at my profile,’ said Edward, as he swivelled around in his chair to enable Barcley to make a closer inspection. ‘Look at the ridge of my nose – look how it begins to tilt downwards towards my mouth.’

  Richard stared at his friend with puzzled bemusement. Edward, his friend for more than twenty-two years, could be such a queer fellow at times.

  ‘Now look at the bump. Examine it, Richard, examine it. Curious, don’t you think? It’s a perfect circle perched upon a perfect ridge. And what’s more, Richard, it’s shaped into a perfect dome.’

  Barcley noted that Edward had become so animated – excited – that his cheeks were infused with colour.

  ‘Can’t you see? It’s totally unique. No one in the world has a nose like mine. It’s one hundred per cent original.’

  Richard solemnly agreed with Edward. ‘It’s a fine nose, old chap. A splendid nose. But I’m not sure there’s a lot I can do about it. Unless, of course, it’s locked in a legal dispute. Then, I suppose, we might be looking at some rich pickings.’

  He guffawed at his own joke and was rather disappointed to see that Edward was not even smiling.

  ‘I’ve come to you precisely because you can do something about my nose. At any rate, you may be able to help. You see, I’ve unearthed something, Richard, of extraordinary importance. And I have a feeling that my life is about to change in a most fortuitous way.’

  Richard stared at his friend. Edward often behaved strangely, but on this particular afternoon he was excelling himself.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ he had started to ask, but before he could finish his sentence he felt – he thought – he was certain …

  But no.

  The sneeze had suddenly subsided.r />
  ‘Have you ever considered,’ said Edward, ‘the build-up to a sneeze?’

  ‘Good God!’ thought Richard, with a gathering sense of foreboding. ‘Next the old chap will be telling me he’s psychic.’

  ‘It takes more than fourteen seconds for the body to produce a full-blown sneeze. There’s the itching tickle in your lungs. The tingle in your eyes. And before you know it – a-a-a-tsch.’

  Richard begged Edward to stop. He drew his breath, covered his mouth and – with tears welling in his eyes – let rip a sneeze so loud that the very foundations of the building seemed to shake.

  ‘Congratulations!’ exclaimed Edward, ‘And right on cue. But let me get to the point. Yesterday – less than twenty-four hours ago – I was clambering down the stepladder in Trencoms when I also let out a violent sneeze. Just like yours. I hadn’t sneezed like that since we last took delivery of a frühstückskäse and I sniffed at the air to see what was wrong. And do you know what happened? My nose twitched and tingled for a second time and my eyes filled with water. And once again I was overwhelmed by an extraordinarily forceful sneeze.

  ‘And as I stood there wondering what had caused this unanticipated attack, I detected an unusual though not unpleasant smell filtering upwards from deep inside our cellars. It was unlike any cheese I’d come across in all my years at Trencoms. True, there was the dusty hint of the mistral that I’ve often detected at this time of the year. And there was also that faint scent of straw and lavender that’s not uncommon in the goat’s cheeses of the Languedoc. But there was none of the maturity or ripeness that is present in every single cheese that we stock.’