I did quite well in other subjects and although I was not much good at games I took up the cello and was invited to join the school orchestra, but my form master said none of this was important because I was obviously going to be a mathematician for the rest of my life. I didn't understand what he meant at the time, as I knew Dad had left school at fourteen to run my great-grandfather's fruit and vegetable barrow in Whitechapel, and even though Mum had gone to London University she still had to work at Number 1 Chelsea Terrace to keep Dad "in the style to which he'd become accustomed." Or that's what I used to hear Mum telling him at breakfast from time to time.
It must have been around that time that I discovered what the word "bastard" really meant. We were reading King John out loud in class, so I was able to ask Mr. Saxon-East, my English master, without drawing too much attention to the question. One or two of the boys looked round and sniggered, but this time there were no pointed fingers or whispers, and when I was told the meaning I remember thinking Neil Watson hadn't been that far off the mark in the first place. But of course such an accusation could not be leveled at me, because my very first memories had involved my mum and dad being together. They had always been Mr. and Mrs. Trumper.
I suppose I would have dismissed the whole memory of that early incident if I hadn't come down to the kitchen one night for a glass of milk and overheard Joan Moore talking to Harold the butler.
"Young Daniel's doing well at school," said Harold. "Must have his mother's brains."
"True, but let's pray that he never finds out the truth about his father." The words made me freeze to the stair rail. I continued to listen intently.
"Well, one thing's for certain," continued Harold. "Mrs. Trentham's never going to admit the boy's her grandson, so heaven knows who'll end up with all that money."
"Not Captain Guy any longer, that's for sure," said Joan. "So perhaps that brat Nigel will be left the lot."
After that the conversation turned to who should lay up for breakfast so I crept back upstairs to my bedroom; but I didn't sleep. Although I sat on those steps for many hours during the next few months, patiently waiting for another vital piece of information that might fall from the servants' lips, the subject never arose between them again.
The only other occasion I could recall having heard the name "Trentham" had been some time before, when the Marchioness of Wiltshire, a close friend of my mother's, came to tea. I remained in the hall when my mother asked, "Did you go to Guy's funeral?"
"Yes, but it wasn't well attended by the good parishioners of Ashurst," the marchioness assured her. "Those who remembered him well seemed to be treating the occasion more as if it were a blessed release."
"Was Sir Raymond present?"
"No, he was conspicuous by his absence," came back the reply. "Mrs. Trentham claimed he was too old to travel, which only acted as a sad reminder that she still stands to inherit a fortune in the not too distant future."
New facts learned, but they still made little sense.
The name of "Trentham" arose in my presence once more when I heard Daddy talking to Colonel Hamilton as he was leaving the house after a private meeting that had been held in his study. All Daddy said was, "However much we offer Mrs. Trentham, she's never going to sell those flats to us."
The colonel vigorously nodded his agreement, but all he had to say on the subject was, "Bloody woman."
When both my parents were out of the house, I looked up "Trentham" in the telephone directory. There was only one listing: Major G. H. Trentham, MP, 19 Chester Square. I wasn't any the wiser.
When in 1939 Trinity College offered me the Newton Mathematics Prize Scholarship I thought Dad was going to burst, he was so proud. We all drove up to the university city for the weekend to check my future digs, before strolling round the college's cloisters and through Great Court.
The only cloud on this otherwise unblemished horizon was the thunderous one of Nazi Germany. Conscription for all those over twenty was being debated in Parliament, and I couldn't wait to play my part if Hitler dared to plant as much as a toe on Polish soil.
My first year at Cambridge went well, mainly because I was being tutored by Horace Bradford who, along with his wife, Victoria, was considered to be the pick of the bunch among a highly talented group of mathematicians who were teaching at the university at that time. Although Mrs. Bradford was rumored to have won the Wrangler's Prize for coming out top of her year, her husband explained that she was not given the prestigious award, simply because she was a woman. The man who came second was deemed to have come first, a piece of information that made my mother puce with anger.
Mrs. Bradford rejoiced in the fact that my mother had been awarded her degree from London University in 1921, while Cambridge still refused to acknowledge hers even existed in 1939.
At the end of my first year I, like many Trinity undergraduates, applied to join the army, but my tutor asked me if I would like to work with him and his wife at the War Office in a new department that would be specializing in code-breaking.
I accepted the offer without a second thought, relishing the prospect of spending my time sitting in a dingy little back room somewhere in Bletchley Park attempting to break German codes. I felt a little guilty that I was going to be one of the few people in uniform who was actually enjoying the war. Dad gave me enough money to buy an old MG, which meant I could get up to London from time to time to see him and Mum.
Occasionally I managed to grab an hour for lunch with him over at the Ministry of Food, but Dad would only eat bread and cheese accompanied by a glass of milk as an example to the rest of his team. This may have been considered edifying but it certainly wasn't nourishing, Mr. Selwyn warned me, adding that my father even had the minister at it.
"But not Mr. Churchill?" I suggested.
"He's next on his list, I'm told."
In 1943 I was made up to captain, which was simply the War Office acknowledging the work we were all doing in our fledgling department. Of course, my father was delighted but I was sorry that I couldn't share with my parents our excitement when we broke the code used by the German U-boat commanders. It still baffles me to this day why they continued to go on using the four-wheel enigma key long after we'd made our discovery. The code was a mathematician's dream that we finally broke on the back of a menu at Lyons Corner House just off Piccadilly. The waitress serving at our table described me as a vandal. I laughed, and remember thinking that I would take the rest of the day off and go and surprise my mother by letting her see what I looked like in my captain's uniform. I thought I looked rather swish, but when she opened the front door to greet me I was shocked by her response. She stared at me as if she'd seen a ghost. Although she recovered quickly enough, that first reaction on seeing me in uniform became just another clue in an ever more complex puzzle, a puzzle that was never far from the back of my thoughts.
The next clue came in the bottom line of an obituary, to which I wasn't paying much attention until I discovered that a Mrs. Trentham would be coming into a fortune; not an important clue in itself, until I reread the entry and learned that she was the daughter of someone called Sir Raymond Hardcastle, a name that allowed me to fill in several little boxes that went in both directions. But what puzzled me was there being no mention of a Guy Trentham among the surviving relatives.