He left the house and set out to find London University, and see if he could track down Rebecca Salmon. Had she, as he’d instructed if he were listed as dead, divided the proceeds of the sale between his three sisters—Sal, now in Canada; Grace, still somewhere in France; and Kitty, God knows where? In which case there would be no capital for him to start up again other than Tommy’s back pay and a few pounds he’d managed to save himself. He asked the
first policeman he saw the way to London University and was pointed in the direction of the Strand. He walked another half mile until he reached an archway that had chiseled in the stone above it: “King’s College.” He strolled through the opening and knocked on a door marked “Inquiries,” walked in and asked the man behind the counter if they had a Rebecca Salmon registered at the college. The man checked a list and shook his head. “Not ’ere,” he said “But you could try the university registry in Malet Street.”
After another penny tram ride Charlie was beginning to wonder where he would end up spending the night.
“Rebecca Salmon?” said a man who stood behind the desk of the university registry dressed in a corporal’s uniform. “Doesn’t ring no bells with me.” He checked her name in a large directory he pulled out from under the desk. “Oh, yes, ’ere she is. Bedford College, ’istory of art.” He was unable to hide the scorn in his voice.
“Don’t have an address for ’er, do you, Corp?” asked Charlie.
“Get some service in, lad, before you call me ‘corp,’” said the older man. “In fact the sooner you join up the better.”
Charlie felt he had suffered enough insults for one day and suddenly let rip, “Sergeant Trumper, 7312087. I’ll call you ‘corp’ and you’ll call me ‘sergeant’. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” said the corporal, springing to attention.
“Now, what’s that address?”
“She’s in digs at 97 Chelsea Terrace, Sergeant.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie, and left the startled exserviceman staring after him as he began yet another journey across London.
A weary Charlie finally stepped off a tram on the corner of Chelsea Terrace a little after four o’clock. Had Becky got there before him, he wondered, even if she were only living in digs?
He walked slowly up the familiar road admiring the shops he had once dreamed of owning. Number 131—antiques, full of mahogany furniture, tables and chairs all beautifully polished. Number 133, women’s clothes and hosiery from Paris, with garments displayed in the window that Charlie didn’t consider it was right for a man to be looking at. On to Number 135—meat and poultry hanging from the rods at the back of the shop that looked so delicious Charlie almost forgot there was a food shortage. His eyes settled on a restaurant called “Mr. Scallini” which had opened at 139. Charlie wondered if Italian food would ever catch on in London.
Number 141—an old bookshop, musty, cob-webbed and with not a single customer to be seen. Then 143—a bespoke tailor. Suits, waistcoats, shirts and collars could, the message painted on the window assured him, be purchased by the discerning gentleman. Number 145—freshly baked bread, the smell of which was almost enough to draw one inside. He stared up and down the street in incredulity as he watched the finely dressed women going about their daily tasks, as if a World War had never taken place. No one seemed to have told them about ration books.
Charlie came to a halt outside 147 Chelsea Terrace. He gasped with delight at the sight that met his tired eyes—rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetables that he would have been proud to sell. Two well-turned-out girls in green aprons and an even smarter-looking youth waited to serve a customer who was picking up a bunch of grapes.
Charlie took a pace backwards and stared up at the name above the shop. He was greeted by a sign printed in gold and blue which read: “Charlie Trumper, the honest trader, founded in 1823.”
BECKY
1918–1920
CHAPTER
6
“From 1480 to 1532,” he said.
I checked through my notes to make sure I had the correct dates, aware I had been finding it hard to concentrate. It was the last lecture of the day, and all I could think about was getting back to Chelsea Terrace.
The artist under discussion that afternoon was Bernardino Luini. I had already decided that my degree thesis would be on the life of this underrated painter from Milan. Milan…just another reason to be thankful that the war was finally over. Now I could plan excursions to Rome, Florence, Venice and yes, Milan, and study Luini’s work at first hand. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bellini, Caravaggio, Bernini—half the world’s art treasures in one country, and I hadn’t been able to travel beyond the walls of the Victoria and Albert.
At four-thirty a bell rang to mark the end of lectures for the day. I closed my books and watched Professor Tilsey as he pottered towards the door. I felt a little sorry for the old fellow. He had only been dragged out of retirement because so many young dons had left to fight on the Western Front. The death of Matthew Makepeace, the man who should have been lecturing that afternoon—“one of the most promising scholars of his generation,” the old Professor used to tell us—was “an inestimable loss to the department and the university as a whole.” I had to agree with him: Makepeace was one of the few men in England acknowledged as an authority on Luini. I had only attended three of his lectures before he had signed up to go to France…. The irony of such a man being riddled with German bullets while stretched over a barbed-wire fence somewhere in the middle of France was not lost on me.
I was in my first year at Bedford. It seemed there was never enough time to catch up, and I badly needed Charlie to return and take the shop off my hands. I had written to him in Edinburgh when he was in Belgium, to Belgium when he was in France and to France the very moment he arrived back in Edinburgh. The King’s mail never seemed to catch up with him, and now I didn’t want Charlie to find out what I had been up to until I had the chance to witness his reaction for myself.
Jacob Cohen had promised to send Charlie over to Chelsea the moment he reappeared in the Whitechapel Road. It couldn’t be too soon for me.
I picked up my books and stuffed them away in my old school satchel, the one my father—Tata—had given me when I won my open scholarship to St. Paul’s. The “RS” he had had so proudly stamped on the front was fading now, and the leather strap had almost worn through, so lately I had been carrying the satchel under my arm: Tata would never have considered buying me a new one while the old one still had a day’s life left in it.
How strict Tata had always been with me; even taken the strap to me on a couple of occasions, once for pinching “fress,” or buns as Mother called them, behind his back—he didn’t mind how much I took from the shop as long as I asked—and once for saying “damn” when I cut my finger peeling an apple. Although I wasn’t brought up in the Jewish faith—my mother wouldn’t hear of it—he still passed on to me all those standards that were part of his own upbringing and would never tolerate what he from time to time described as my “unacceptable behavior.”
It was to be many years later that I learned of the strictures Tata had accepted once he had proposed marriage to my mother, a Roman Catholic. He adored her and never once complained in my presence of the fact that he always had to attend shul on his own. “Mixed marriage” seems such an outdated expression nowadays but at the turn of the century it must have been quite a sacrifice for both of them to make.
I loved St. Paul’s from the first day I walked through the gates, I suppose partly because no one told me off for working too hard. The only thing I didn’t like was being called “Porky.” It was a girl from the class above me, Daphne Harcourt-Browne, who later explained its double connotation. Daphne was a curly-headed blonde known as “Snooty” and although we were not natural friends, our predilection for cream buns brought us together—especially when she discovered that I had a never-ending source of supply. Daphne would happily have paid for them but I wouldn’t consider it as I wanted my classmates to think we were pals. On one occasion she even invited me to her home in Chelsea, but I didn’t accept as I knew if I did I would only have to ask her back to my place in Whitechapel.