As the Crow Flies

by Jeffrey Archer

  Charlie decided that following this initial success he should extend his delivery service to other customers in the East End. Perhaps that way, he thought, he might even be able to double his income. The following morning, he wheeled out his Granpa’s old barrow from the backyard, removed the cobwebs, gave it a lick of paint and put Kitty on to house-to-house calls taking orders, while he remained back on his pitch in Whitechapel.

  Within days Charlie had lost all the profit he had made in the past year and suddenly found himself back to square one. Kitty, it turned out, had no head for figures and, worse, fell for every sob story she was told, often ending up giving the food away. By the end of that month Charlie was almost wiped out and once again unable to pay the rent.

  “So what you learn from such a bold step?” asked Dan Salmon as he stood on the doorstep of his shop, skullcap on the back of his head, thumbs lodged in the black waistcoat pocket that proudly displayed his half hunter watch.

  “Think twice before you employ members of your own family and never assume that anyone will pay their debts.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Salmon. “You learn fast. So how much you need to clear rent and see yourself past next month?”

  “What are you getting at?” asked Charlie.

  “How much?” repeated Mr. Salmon.

  “Five quid,” said Charlie, lowering his head.

  On Friday night after he had pulled down the blind Dan Salmon handed over five sovereigns to Charlie along with several wafers of matzos. “Pay back when possible, boychik, and don’t ever tell the missus or we both end up in big trouble.”

  Charlie paid back his loan at a rate of five shillings a week and twenty weeks later he had returned the full amount. He would always remember handing over the final payment, because it was on the same day as the first big airplane raid over London and he spent most of that night hiding under his father’s bed, with both Sal and Kitty clinging to him for dear life.

  The following morning Charlie read an account of the bombing in the Daily Chronicle and learned that over a hundred Londoners had been killed and some four hundred injured in the raid.

  He dug his teeth into a morning apple before he dropped off Mrs. Smelley’s weekly order and returned to his pitch in the Whitechapel Road. Monday was always busy with everybody stocking up after the weekend and by the time he arrived back home at Number 112 for his afternoon tea he was exhausted. Charlie was sticking a fork into his third of a pork pie when he heard a knock on the door.

  “Who can that be?” said Kitty, as Sal served Charlie a second potato.

  “There’s only one way we’re going to find out, my girl,” said Charlie, not budging an inch.

  Kitty reluctantly left the table only to return a moment later with her nose held high in the air. “It’s that Becky Salmon. Says she ‘desires to have a word with you.’”

  “Does she now? Then you had better show Miss Salmon into the parlor,” said Charlie with a grin.

  Kitty slouched off again while Charlie got up from the kitchen table carrying the remainder of the pie in his fingers. He strolled into the only other room that wasn’t a bedroom. He lowered himself into an old leather chair and continued to chew while he waited. A moment later Posh Porky marched into the middle of the room and stood right in front of him. She didn’t speak. He was slightly taken aback by the sheer size of the girl. Although she was two or three inches shorter than Charlie, she must have weighed at least a stone more than he did; a genuine heavyweight. She so obviously hadn’t given up stuffing herself with Salmon’s cream buns. Charlie stared at her gleaming white blouse and dark blue pleated skirt. Her smart blue blazer sported a golden eagle surrounded by words he had never seen before. A red ribbon sat uneasily in her short dark hair and Charlie noticed that her little black shoes and white socks were as spotless as ever.

  He would have asked her to sit down but as he was occupying the only chair in the room, he couldn’t. He ordered Kitty to leave them alone. For a moment she stared defiantly at Charlie, but then left without another word.

  “So what do you want?” asked Charlie once he heard the door close.

  Rebecca Salmon began to tremble as she tried to get the words out. “I’ve come to see you because of what has happened to my parents.” She enunciated each word slowly and carefully and, to Charlie’s disgust, without any trace of an East End accent.

  “So what ’as ’appened to your parents?” asked Charlie gruffly, hoping she wouldn’t realize that his voice had only recently broken. Becky burst into tears. Charlie’s only reaction was to stare out of the window because he wasn’t quite sure what else to do.

  Becky continued shaking as she began to speak again. “Tata was killed in the raid last night and Mummy has been taken to the London Hospital.” She stopped abruptly, adding no further explanation.

  Charlie jumped out of his chair. “No one told me,” he said, as he began pacing round the room.

  “There’s no way that you could possibly have known,” said Becky. “I haven’t even told the assistants at the shop yet. They think he’s off sick for the day.”

  “Do you want me to tell them?” asked Charlie. “Is that why you came round?”

  “No,” she said, raising her head slowly and pausing for a moment. “I want you to take over the shop.”

  Charlie was so stunned by this suggestion that although he stopped pacing he made no attempt to reply.

  “My father always used to say that it wouldn’t be that long before you had your own shop, so I thought…”

  “But I don’t know the first thing about baking,” stammered Charlie as he fell back into his chair.

  “Tata’s two assistants know everything there is to know about the trade, and I suspect you’ll know even more than they do within a few months. What that shop needs at this particular moment is a salesman. My father always considered that you were as good as old Granpa Charlie and everyone knows he was the best.”

  “But what about my barrow?”

  “It’s only a few yards away from the shop, so you could easily keep an eye on both.” She hesitated before adding, “Unlike your delivery service.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Even know you tried to pay back the last five shillings a few minutes before my father went to the synagogue one Saturday. We had no secrets.”

  “So ’ow would it work?” asked Charlie, beginning to feel he was always a yard behind the girl.

  “You run the barrow and the shop and we’ll be fifty-fifty partners.”

  “And what will you do to earn your share?”

  “I’ll check the books every month and make sure that we pay our tax on time and don’t break any council regulations.”

  “I’ve never paid any taxes before,” said Charlie, “and who in ’ell’s name cares about the council and their soppy regulations?”

  Becky’s dark eyes fixed on him for the first time. “People who one day hope to be running a serious business enterprise, Charlie Trumper, that’s who.”

  “Fifty-fifty doesn’t seem all that fair to me,” said Charlie, still trying to get the upper hand.

  “My shop is considerably more valuable than your barrow and it also derives a far larger income.”

  “Did, until your father died,” said Charlie, regretting the words immediately after he had spoken them.

  Becky bowed her head again. “Are we to be partners or not?” she muttered.

  “Sixty-forty,” said Charlie.

  She hesitated for a long moment, then suddenly thrust out her arm. Charlie rose from the chair and shook her hand vigorously to confirm that his first deal was closed.

  After Dan Salmon’s funeral Charlie tried to read the Daily Chronicle every morning in the hope of discovering what the second battalion, Royal Fusiliers was up to and where his father might be. He knew the regiment was fighting somewhere in France, but its exact location was never recorded in the paper, so Charlie was none the wiser.

  The daily broadsheet began to h
ave a double fascination for Charlie, as he started to take an interest in the advertisements displayed on almost every page. He couldn’t believe that those nobs in the West End were willing to pay good money for things that seemed to him to be nothing more than unnecessary luxuries. However, it didn’t stop Charlie wanting to taste Coca-Cola, the latest drink from America, at a cost of a penny a bottle; or to try the new safety razor from Gillette—despite the fact that he hadn’t even started shaving—at sixpence for the holder and tuppence for six blades: he felt sure his father, who had only ever used a cutthroat, would consider the very idea sissy. And a woman’s girdle at two guineas struck Charlie as quite ridiculous. Neither Sal nor Kitty would ever need one of those—although Posh Porky might soon enough, the way she was going.

  So intrigued did Charlie become by these seemingly endless selling opportunities that he started to take a tram up to the West End on a Sunday morning just to see for himself. Having ridden on a horse-drawn vehicle to Chelsea, he would then walk slowly back east towards Mayfair, studying all the goods in the shop windows on the way. He also noted how people dressed and admired the motor vehicles that belched out fumes but didn’t drop shit as they traveled down the middle of the road. He even began to wonder just how much it cost to rent a shop in Chelsea.

  On the first Sunday in October 1917 Charlie took Sal up West with him—to show her the sights, he explained.

  Charlie and his sister walked slowly from shop window to shop window, and he was unable to hide his excitement at every new discovery he came across. Men’s clothes, hats, shoes, women’s dresses, perfume, undergarments, even cakes and pastries could hold his attention for minutes on end.

  “For Gawd’s sake, let’s get ourselves back to Whitechapel where we belong,” said Sal. “Because one thing’s for sure—I’m never going to feel at ’ome ’ere.”

  “But don’t you understand?” said Charlie. “One day I’m going to own a shop in Chelsea.”

  “Don’t talk daft,” said Sal. “Even Dan Salmon couldn’t ’ave afforded one of these.”

  Charlie didn’t bother to reply.

  When it came to how long Charlie would take to master the baking trade, Becky’s judgment proved accurate. Within a month he knew almost as much about oven temperatures, controls, rising yeast and the correct mixture of flour to water as either of the two assistants, and as they were dealing with the same customers as Charlie was on his barrow, sales on both dropped only slightly during the first quarter.

  Becky turned out to be as good as her word, keeping the accounts in what she described as “apple-pie order” and even opening a set of books for Trumper’s barrow. By the end of their first three months as partners they declared a profit of four pounds eleven shillings, despite having a gas oven refitted at Salmon’s and allowing Charlie to buy his first second-hand suit.

  Sal continued working as a waitress in a cafe on the Commercial Road, but Charlie knew she couldn’t wait to find someone willing to marry her—whatever physical shape he was in—just as long as I can sleep in a room of my own, she explained.

  Grace never failed to send a letter on the first of every month, and somehow managed to sound cheerful despite being surrounded by death. She’s just like her mother, Father O’Malley would tell his parishioners. Kitty still came and went as she pleased, borrowing money from both her sisters as well as Charlie, and never paying them back. Just like her father, the priest told the same parishioners.

  “Like your new suit,” said Mrs. Smelley, when Charlie dropped off her weekly order that Monday afternoon. He blushed, raised his cap and pretended not to hear the compliment, as he dashed off to the baker’s shop.

  The second quarter promised to show a further profit on both Charlie’s enterprises, and he warned Becky that he had his eye on the butcher’s shop, since the owner’s only boy had lost his life at Passchendaele. Becky cautioned him against rushing into another venture before they had discovered what their profit margins were like, and then only if the rather elderly assistants knew what they were up to. “Because one thing’s for certain, Charlie Trumper,” she told him as they sat down in the little room at the back of Salmon’s shop to check the monthly accounts, “you don’t know the first thing about butchery. ‘Trumper, the honest trader, founded in 1823’ still appeals to me,” she added. “‘Trumper, the foolish bankrupt, folded in 1917’ doesn’t.”

  Becky also commented on the new suit, but not until she had finished checking a lengthy column of figures. He was about to return the compliment by suggesting that she might have lost a little weight when she leaned across and helped herself to another jam tart.

  She ran a sticky finger down the monthly balance sheet, then checked the figures against the handwritten bank statement. A profit of eight pounds and fourteen shillings, she wrote in thick black ink neatly on the bottom line.

  “At this rate we’ll be millionaires by the time I’m forty,” said Charlie with a grin.

  “Forty, Charlie Trumper?” Becky repeated disdainfully. “Not exactly in a hurry, are you?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charlie.

  “Just that I was rather hoping we might have achieved that long before then.”

  Charlie laughed loudly to cover the fact that he wasn’t quite certain whether or not she was joking. Once Becky felt sure the ink was dry she closed the books and put them back in her satchel while Charlie prepared to lock up the baker’s shop. As they stepped out onto the pavement Charlie bade his partner good night with an exaggerated bow. He then turned the key in the lock before starting his journey home. He whistled the “Lambeth Walk” out of tune as he pushed the few remains left over from the day towards the setting sun. Could he really make a million before he was forty, or had Becky just been teasing him?

  As he reached Bert Shorrocks’ place Charlie came to a sudden halt. Outside the front door of 112, dressed in a long black cassock, black hat, and with black Bible in hand, stood Father O’Malley.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Charlie sat in the carriage of a train bound for Edinburgh and thought about the actions he had taken during the past four days. Becky had described his decision as foolhardy. Sal hadn’t bothered with the “hardy.” Mrs. Smelley didn’t think he should have gone until he had been called up, while Grace was still tending the wounded on the Western Front, so she didn’t even know what he had done. As for Kitty, she just sulked and asked how she was expected to survive without him.

  Private George Trumper had been killed on 2 November 1917 at Passchendaele, the letter had informed him: bravely, while charging the enemy lines at Polygon Wood. Over a thousand men had died that day attacking a ten-mile front from Messines to Passchendaele, so it wasn’t surprising that the lieutenant’s letter was short and to the point.

  After a sleepless night, Charlie was the first to be found the following morning standing outside the recruiting office in Great Scotland Yard. The poster on the wall called for volunteers between the ages of eighteen and forty to join up and serve in “General Haig’s” army.

  Although not yet eighteen, Charlie prayed that they wouldn’t reject him.

  When the recruiting sergeant barked, “Name?” Charlie threw out his chest and almost shouted “Trumper.” He waited anxiously.

  “Date of birth?” said the man with three white stripes on his arm.

  “Twentieth of January, 1899,” replied Charlie without hesitation, but his cheeks flushed as he delivered the words.

  The recruiting sergeant looked up at him and winked. The letters and numbers were written on a buff form without comment. “Remove your cap, lad, and report to the medical officer.”

  A nurse led Charlie through to a cubicle where an elderly man in a long white coat made him strip to the waist, cough, stick out his tongue and breathe heavily before prodding him all over with a cold rubber object. He then proceeded to stare into Charlie’s ears and eyes before going on to hit his kneecaps with a rubber stick. After taking his trousers and underpants off—
for the first time ever in front of someone who wasn’t a member of his family—he was told he had no transmittable diseases—whatever they were, thought Charlie.

  He stared at himself in the mirror as they measured him. “Five feet nine and a quarter,” said the orderly.

  And still growing, Charlie wanted to add, as he pushed a mop of dark hair out of his eyes.

  “Teeth in good condition, eyes brown,” stated the elderly doctor. “Not much wrong with you,” he added. The old man made a series of ticks down the right-hand side of the buff form before telling Charlie to report back to the chap with the three white stripes.

  Charlie found himself waiting in another queue before coming face to face with the sergeant again.

  “Right, lad, sign up here and we’ll issue you with a travel warrant.”

  Charlie scrawled his signature on the spot above where the sergeant’s finger rested. He couldn’t help noticing that the man didn’t have a thumb.

  “The Honourable Artillery Company or Royal Fusiliers?” the sergeant asked.

  “Royal Fusiliers,” said Charlie. “That was my old man’s regiment.”

  “Royal Fusiliers it is then,” said the sergeant without a second thought, and put a tick in yet another box.

  “When do I get my uniform?”

  “Not until you get to Edinburgh, lad. Report to King’s Cross at zero eight hundred hours tomorrow morning. Next.”

  Charlie returned to 112 Whitechapel Road to spend another sleepless night. His thoughts darted from Sal to Grace and then on to Kitty and how two of his sisters would survive in his absence. He also began thinking about Rebecca Salmon and their bargain, but in the end his thoughts always returned to his father’s grave on a foreign battlefield and the revenge he intended to inflict on any German who dared to cross his path. These sentiments remained with him until the morning light came shining through the windows.