As the Crow Flies

When we arrived back in London late on Friday afternoon Arthur Selwyn was pacing up and down outside my office.

“Someone’s broken into Cathy’s flat, the lock’s been forced,” he said even before I had a chance to speak.

“But what could a thief possibly hope to find?”

“The police can’t fathom that out either. Nothing seems to have been disturbed.”

To the puzzle of what Mrs. Trentham could have written to Daniel I added the mystery of what she could possibly want that belonged to Cathy. After checking over the little room myself I was none the wiser.

Becky and I continued to

travel up and down to Cambridge every other day, and then midway through the third week Cathy finally spoke, haltingly to start with, then in bursts while grasping my hand. Then suddenly, without warning, she would go silent again. Sometimes she would rub her forefinger against her thumb just below her chin.

This puzzled even Dr. Atkins.

Dr. Atkins had since then, however, been able to hold extensive conversations with Cathy on several occasions and had even started playing word games to probe her memory. It was his opinion that she had blotted out all recollection of anything connected with Daniel Trumper or with her early life in Australia. It was not uncommon in such cases, he assured us, and even gave the particular state of mind a fine Greek name.

“Should I try and get in touch with her tutor at the University of Melbourne? Or even talk to the staff of the Melrose Hotel—and see if they can throw any light on the problem?”

“No,” he said, straightening his spotted bow tie. “Don’t push her too hard and be prepared for that part of her mind to take some considerable time to recover.”

I nodded my agreement.

“Back off” seemed to be Dr. Atkins’ favorite expression. “And never forget your wife will be suffering the same trauma.”

Seven weeks later they allowed us to take Cathy back to Eaton Square where Becky had prepared a room for her. I had already transferred all Cathy’s possessions from the little flat, still unsure if anything was missing following the break-in.

Becky had stored all Cathy’s clothes neatly away in the wardrobe and drawers while trying to make the room look as lived in as possible. Some time before, I had taken her watercolor of the Cam from above Daniel’s desk and rehung it on the staircase between the Courbet and the Sisley. Yet when Cathy first walked up those stairs on the way to her new room, she passed her own painting without the slightest sign of recognition.

I inquired once again of Dr. Atkins if perhaps we should now write to the University of Melbourne and try to find out something about Cathy’s past, but he still counseled against such a move, saying that she must be the one who came forward with any information, and then only when she felt able to do so, not as the result of any pressure from outside.

“But how long do you imagine it might be before her memory is fully restored?”

“Anything from fourteen days to fourteen years, from my experience.”

I remember returning to Cathy’s room that night, sitting on the end of her bed and holding her hand. I noticed with pleasure that a little color had returned to her cheeks. She smiled and asked me for the first time how the “great barrow” was rumbling along.

“We’ve declared record profits,” I told her. “But far more important, everyone wants to see you back at Number 1.”

She thought about this for some time. Then quite simply she said, “I wish you were my father.”

In February 1951 Nigel Trentham joined the board of Trumper’s. He took his place next to Paul Merrick, to whom he gave a thin smile. I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at him. He was a few years younger than me but I vainly considered no one round that table would have thought so.

The board meanwhile approved the expenditure of a further half a million pounds “to fill the gap,” as Becky referred to the half-acre that had for ten years lain empty in the middle of Chelsea Terrace. “So at last Trumper’s can all be housed under one roof,” I declared. Trentham made no comment. My fellow directors also agreed to an allocation of one hundred thousand pounds to rebuild the Whitechapel Boys’ Club, which was to be renamed the “Dan Salmon Center.” I noticed Trentham whispered something in Merrick’s ear.

In the event, inflation, strikes and escalating builders’ costs caused the final bill for Trumper’s to be nearer seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds than the estimated half million. One outcome of this was to make it necessary for the company to offer a further rights issue in order to cover the extra expense. Another was that the building of the boys’ club had to be postponed.

The rights issue was once again heavily oversubscribed, which was flattering for me personally, though I feared Mrs. Trentham might be a major buyer of any new stock: I had no way of proving it. This dilution of my equity meant that I had to watch my personal holding in the company fall below forty percent for the first time.

It was a long summer and as each day passed Cathy became a little stronger and Becky a little more communicative. Finally the doctor agreed that Cathy could return to Number 1. She went back to work the following Monday and Becky said it was almost as if she had never been away—except that no one ever mentioned Daniel’s name in her presence.

One evening, it must have been about a month later, I returned home from the office to find Cathy pacing up and down the hall. My immediate thoughts were that she must be agonizing over the past. I could not have been more wrong.

“You’ve got your staffing policy all wrong,” she said as I closed the door behind me.

“I beg your pardon, young lady?” I had not even been given enough time to shed my topcoat.

“It’s all wrong,” she repeated. “The Americans are saving thousands of dollars in their stores with time and motion studies while Trumper’s is behaving as if they’re still roaming around on the ark.”