As the Crow Flies Read online

  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.”

  “Captive audience on the ark,” I reminded her.

  “Until it stopped raining,” she replied. “Charlie, you must realize that the company could be saving at least eighty thousand a year on wages alone. I haven’t been idle these last few weeks. In fact, I’ve put together a report to prove my point.” She thrust a cardboard box into my arms and marched out of the room.

  For over an hour after dinner I rummaged into the box and read through Cathy’s preliminary findings. She had spotted an overmanning situation that we had all missed and characteristically explained in great detail how the situation could be dealt with without offending the unions.

  Over breakfast the following morning Cathy continued to explain her findings to me as if I had never been to bed. “Are you still listening, Chairman?” she demanded. She always called me “chairman” when she was wanted to make a point. A ploy I felt sure she had picked up from Daphne.

  “You’re all talk,” I told her, which caused even Becky to glance over the top of her paper.

  “Do you want me to prove I’m right?” Cathy asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  From that day on, whenever I carried out my morning rounds, I would invariably come across Cathy working on a different floor, questioning, watching or simply taking copious notes, often with a stopwatch in her other hand. I never asked her what she was up to and if she ever caught my eye all she would say was, “Good day, Chairman.”

  At weekends I could hear Cathy typing away in her room for hour after hour. Then, without warning, one morning at breakfast I discovered a thick file waiting for me in the place where I had hoped to find an egg, two rashers of bacon and The Sunday Times.

  That afternoon I began reading through what Cathy had prepared for me. By the early evening I had come to the conclusion that the board must implement most of her recommendations without further delay.

  I knew exactly what I wanted to do next but felt it needed Dr. Atkins’ blessing. I phoned Addenbrooke’s that evening and the ward sister kindly entrusted me with his home number. We spent over an hour on the phone. He had no fears for Cathy’s future, he assured me, especially since she’d begun to remember little incidents from her past and was now even willing to talk about Daniel.

  When I came down to breakfast the following morning I found Cathy sitting at the table waiting for me. She didn’t say a word as I munched through my toast and marmalade pretending to be engrossed in the Financial Times.

  “All right, I give in,” she said.

  “Better not,” I warned her, without looking up from my paper. “Because you’re item number seven on the agenda for next month’s board meeting.”

  “But who’s going to present my case?” asked Cathy, sounding anxious.

  “Not me, that’s for sure,” I replied. “And I can’t think of anyone else who’d be willing to do so.”

  For the next fortnight whenever I retired to bed I became aware when passing Cathy’s room that the typing had stopped. I was so filled with curiosity that once I even peered through the half-open bedroom door. Cathy stood facing a mirror, by her side was a large white board resting on an easel. The board was covered in a mass of colored pins and dotted arrows.

  “Go away,” she said, without even turning round. I realized there was nothing for it but to wait until the board was due to meet.

  Dr. Atkins had warned me that the ordeal of having to present her case in public might turn out to be too much for the girl and I was to get her home if she began to show any signs of stress. “Be sure you don’t push her too far,” were his final words.

  “I won’t let that happen,” I promised him.

  That Thursday morning the board members were all seated in their places round the table by three minutes to ten. The meeting began on a quiet note, with apologies for absence, followed by the acceptance of the minutes of the last meeting. We somehow still managed to keep Cathy waiting for over an hour, because when we came to item number three on the agenda—a rubber stamp decision to renew the company’s insurance policy with the Prudential—Nigel Trentham used the opportunity simply as an excuse to irritate me—hoping, I suspected, that I would eventually lose my temper. I might have done, if he hadn’t so obviously wanted me to.

  “I think the time has come for a change, Mr. Chairman,” he said. “I suggest we transfer our business to Legal and General.”

  I stared down the left-hand side of the table to focus on the man whose very presence always brought back memories of Guy Trentham and what he might have looked like in late middle age. The younger brother wore a smart well-tailored double-b