As the Crow Flies

by Jeffrey Archer

  Charlie put on his new suit, the one Mrs. Smelley had commented on, his best shirt, his father’s tie, a flat cap and his only pair of leather shoes. I’m meant to be fighting the Germans, not going to a wedding, he said out loud as he looked at himself in the cracked mirror above the washbasin. He had already written a note to Becky—with a little help from Father O’Malley—instructing her to sell the shop along with the two barrows if she possibly could and to hold on to his share of the money until he came back to Whitechapel. No one talked about Christmas any longer.

  “And if you don’t return?” Father O’Malley had asked, head slightly bowed. “What’s to happen to your possessions then?”

  “Divide anything that’s left over equally between my three sisters,” Charlie said.

  Father O’Malley wrote out his former pupil’s instructions and for the second time in as many days Charlie signed his name to an official document.

  After Charlie had finished dressing, he found Sal and Kitty waiting for him by the front door, but he refused to allow them to accompany him to the station, despite their tearful protest. Both his sisters kissed him—another first—and Kitty had to have her hand prised out of his before Charlie was able to pick up the brown paper parcel that contained all his worldly goods.

  Alone, he walked to the market and entered the baker’s shop for the last time. The two assistants swore that nothing would have changed by the time he returned. He left the shop only to find another barrow boy, who looked about a year younger than himself, was already selling chestnuts from his pitch. He walked slowly through the market in the direction of King’s Cross, never once looking back.

  He arrived at the Great Northern Station half an hour earlier than he had been instructed and immediately reported to the sergeant who had signed him up on the previous day. “Right, Trumper, get yourself a cup of char, then ’ang about on platform three.” Charlie couldn’t remember when he had last been given an order, let alone obeyed one. Certainly not since his grandfather’s death.

  Platform three was already crowded with men in uniforms and civilian clothes, some chatting noisily, others standing silent and alone, each displaying his own particular sense of insecurity.

  At eleven, three hours after they had been ordered to report, they were finally given instructions to board a train. Charlie grabbed a seat in the corner of an unlit carriage and stared out of the grimy window at a passing English countryside he had never seen before. A mouth organ was being played in the corridor, all the popular melodies of the day slightly out of tune. As they traveled through city stations, some he hadn’t even heard of—Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, York—crowds waved and cheered their heroes. In Durham the engine came to a halt to take on more coal and water. The recruiting sergeant told them all to disembark, stretch their legs and grab another cup of char, and added that if they were lucky they might even get something to eat.

  Charlie walked along the platform munching a sticky bun to the sound of a military band playing “Land of Hope and Glory.” The war was everywhere. Once they were back on the train there was yet more waving of handkerchiefs from pin-hatted ladies who would remain spinsters for the rest of their lives.

  The train chugged on northwards, farther and farther away from the enemy, until it finally came to a halt at Waverly Station in Edinburgh. As they stepped from the carriage, a captain, three NCOs and a thousand women were waiting on the platform to welcome them.

  Charlie heard the words, “Carry on, Sergeant Major,” and a moment later a man who must have been six feet six inches in height, and whose beer-barrel chest was covered in medal ribbons took a pace forward.

  “Let’s ’ave you in line then,” the giant shouted in an unintelligible accent. He quickly—but, Charlie was to learn later, by his own standards slowly—organized the men into ranks of three before reporting back to someone who Charlie assumed must have been an officer. He saluted the man. “All present and correct, sir,” he said, and the smartest-dressed man Charlie had ever seen in his life returned the salute. He appeared slight standing next to the sergeant major, although he must have been a shade over six feet himself. His uniform was immaculate but paraded no medals, and the creases on his trousers were so sharp that Charlie wondered if they had ever been worn before. The young officer held a short leather stick in a gloved hand and occasionally thumped the side of his leg with it, as if he thought he were on horseback. Charlie’s eyes settled on the officer’s Sam Browne belt and brown leather shoes. They shone so brightly they reminded him of Rebecca Salmon.

  “My name is Captain Trentham,” the man informed the expectant band of untrained warriors in an accent that Charlie suspected would have sounded more in place in Mayfair than at a railway station in Scotland. “I’m the battalion adjutant,” he went on to explain as he swayed from foot to foot, “and will be responsible for this intake for the period that you are billeted in Edinburgh. First we will march to the barracks, where you will be issued supplies so that you can get yourselves bedded down. Supper will be served at eighteen hundred hours and lights out will be at twenty-one hundred hours. Tomorrow morning reveille will be sounded at zero five hundred, when you will rise and breakfast before you begin your basic training at zero six hundred. This routine will last for the next twelve weeks. And I can promise you that it will be twelve weeks of absolute hell,” he added, sounding as if the idea didn’t altogether displease him. “During this period Sergeant Major Philpott will be the senior warrant officer in charge of the unit. The sergeant major fought on the Somme, where he was awarded the Military Medal, so he knows exactly what you can expect when we eventually end up in France and have to face the enemy. Listen to his every word carefully, because it might be the one thing that saves your life. Carry on, Sergeant Major.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Sergeant Major Philpott in a clipped bark.

  The motley band stared in awe at the figure who would be in charge of their lives for the next three months. He was, after all, a man who had seen the enemy and come home to tell the tale.

  “Right, let’s be having you then,” he said, and proceeded to lead his recruits—carrying everything from battered suitcases to brown paper parcels—through the streets of Edinburgh at the double, only to be sure that the locals didn’t realize just how undisciplined this rabble really was. Despite their amateur appearance, passersby still stopped to cheer and clap. Out of the corner of one eye Charlie couldn’t help noticing that one of them was resting his only hand against his only leg. Some twenty minutes later, after a climb up the biggest hill Charlie had ever seen, one that literally took his breath away, they entered the barracks of Edinburgh Castle.

  That evening Charlie hardly opened his mouth as he listened to the different accents of the men babbling around him. After a supper of pea soup—“One pea each,” the duty corporal quipped—and bully beef, he was quartered—and learning new words by the minute—in a large gymnasium that temporarily housed four hundred beds, each a mere two feet in width and set only a foot apart. On a thin horsehair mattress rested one sheet, one pillow and one blanket. King’s Regulations.

  It was the first time Charlie had thought that 112 Whitechapel Road might be considered luxurious. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the unmade bed, fell asleep, but still woke the next morning at four-thirty. This time, however, there was no market to go to, and certainly no choice as to whether he should select a Cox’s or a Granny Smith for breakfast.

  At five a lone bugle woke his companions from their drowsy slumber. Charlie was already up, washed and dressed when a man with two stripes on his sleeve marched in. He slammed the door behind him and shouted, “Up, up, up,” as he kicked the end of any bed that still had a body supine on it. The raw recruits leaped up and formed a queue to wash in basins half full of freezing water, changed only after every third man. Some then went off to the latrines behind the back of the hall, which Charlie thought smelled worse than the middle of Whitechapel Road on a steaming summer’s day.

  Br
eakfast consisted of one ladle of porridge, half a cup of milk and a dry biscuit, but no one complained. The cheerful noise that emanated from that hall wouldn’t have left any German in doubt that these recruits were all united against a common enemy.

  At six, after their beds had been made and inspected, they all trudged out into the dark cold air and onto the parade ground, its surface covered in a thin film of snow.

  “If this is bonny Scotland,” Charlie heard a cockney accent declare, “then I’m a bloody Dutchman.” Charlie laughed for the first time since he had left Whitechapel and strolled over to a youth far smaller than himself who was rubbing his hands between his legs as he tried to keep warm.

  “Where you from?” Charlie asked.

  “Poplar, mate. And you?”

  “Whitechapel.”

  “Bloody foreigner.”

  Charlie stared at his new companion. The youth couldn’t have been an inch over five feet three, skinny, with dark curly hair and flashing eyes that never seemed to be still, as if he were always on the lookout for trouble. His shiny, elbow-patched suit hung on him, making his shoulders look like a coathanger.

  “Charlie Trumper’s the name.”

  “Tommy Prescott,” came back the reply. He stopped his exercises and thrust out a warm hand. Charlie shook it vigorously.

  “Quiet in the ranks,” hollered the sergeant major. “Now let’s get you formed up in columns of three. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left. Move.” They parted.

  For the next two hours they carried out what the sergeant major described as “drill.” The snow continued to drop unceasingly from the sky, but the sergeant major showed no inclination to allow one flake to settle on his parade ground. They marched in three ranks of ten, which Charlie later learned were called sections, arms swinging to waist height, heads held high, one hundred and twenty paces to the minute. “Look lively, lads” and “Keep in step” were the words Charlie had shouted at him again and again. “The Boche are also marching out there somewhere, and they can’t wait to have a crack at you lot,” the sergeant major assured them as the snow continued to fall.

  Had he been in Whitechapel, Charlie would have been happy to run up and down the market from five in the morning to seven at night and still box a few rounds at the club, drink a couple of pints of beer and carry out the same routine the next day without a second thought, but when at nine o’clock the sergeant major gave them a ten-minute break for cocoa, he collapsed onto the grass verge exhausted. Looking up, he found Tommy Prescott peering at him. “Fag?”

  “No, thanks,” said Charlie. “I don’t smoke.”

  “What’s your trade then?” asked Tommy, lighting up.

  “I own a baker’s shop on the corner of Whitechapel Road,” replied Charlie, “and a—”

  “Ring the other one, it’s got bells on,” interrupted Tommy. “Next you’ll be telling me your dad’s Lord Mayor of London.”

  Charlie laughed. “Not exactly. So what do you do?”

  “Work for a brewery, don’t I? Whitbread and Company, Chiswell Street, EC1. I’m the one who puts the barrels on the carts, and then the shire ’orses pulls me round the East End so that I can deliver my wares. Pay’s not good, but you can always drink yourself silly before you get back each night.”

  “So what made you join up?”

  “Now that’s a long story, that is,” replied Tommy. “You see, to start with—”

  “Right. Back on parade, you lot,” shouted Sergeant Major Philpott, and neither man had the breath to speak another word for the next two hours as they were marched up and down, up and down, until Charlie felt that when they eventually stopped his feet must surely fall off.

  Lunch consisted of bread and cheese, neither of which Charlie would have dared to offer for sale to Mrs. Smelley. As they munched hungrily, he learned how Tommy at the age of eighteen had been given the choice of two years at His Majesty’s pleasure or volunteering to fight for King and country. He tossed a coin and the King’s head landed face up.

  “Two years?” said Charlie. “But what for?”

  “Nicking the odd barrel ’ere and there and making a side deal with one or two of the more crafty landlords. I’d been getting away with it for ages. An ’undred years ago they would ’ave ’anged me on the spot or sent me off to Australia, so I can’t complain. After all, that’s what I’m trained for, ain’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charlie.

  “Well, my father was a professional pickpocket, wasn’t ’e? And ’is father before ’im. You should have seen Captain Trentham’s face when ’e found out that I had chosen a spell in the Fusiliers rather than going back to jail.”

  Twenty minutes was the time allocated for lunch and then the afternoon was taken up with being fitted with a uniform. Charlie, who turned out to be a regular size, was dealt with fairly quickly, but it took almost an hour to find anything that didn’t make Tommy look as if he were entering a sack race.

  Once they were back in the billet Charlie folded up his best suit and placed it under the bed next to the one Tommy had settled on, then swaggered around the room in his new uniform.

  “Dead men’s clothes,” warned Tommy, as he looked up and studied Charlie’s khaki jacket.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Been sent back from the front, ’asn’t it? Cleaned and sewn up,” said Tommy, pointing to a two-inch mend just above Charlie’s heart. “About wide enough to thrust a bayonet through, I reckon,” he added.

  After another two-hour session on the now freezing parade ground they were released for supper.

  “More bloody stale bread and cheese,” said Tommy morosely, but Charlie was far too hungry to complain as he scooped up every last crumb with a wet finger. For the second night running he collapsed on his bed.

  “Enjoyed our first day serving King and country, ’ave we?” asked the duty corporal of his charges, when at twenty-one hundred hours he turned down the gaslights in the barracks room.

  “Yes, thank you, Corp,” came back the sarcastic cry.

  “Good,” said the corporal, “because we’re always gentle with you on the first day.”

  A groan went up that Charlie reckoned must have been heard in the middle of Edinburgh. Above the nervous chatter that continued once the corporal had left, Charlie could hear the last post being played on a bugle from the castle battlements. He fell asleep.

  When Charlie woke the next morning he jumped out of bed immediately and was washed and dressed before anyone else had stirred. He had folded up his sheets and blankets and was polishing his boots by the time reveille sounded.

  “Aren’t we the early bird?” said Tommy, as he turned over. “But why bother, I ask myself, when all you’re goin’ to get for breakfast is a worm.”

  “If you’re first in the queue at least it’s an ’ot worm,” said Charlie. “And in any case—”

  “Feet on the floor. On the floor,” the corporal bellowed, as he entered the billet and banged the frame on the end of every bed he passed with his cane.

  “Of course,” suggested Tommy, as he tried to stifle a yawn, “a man of property like yourself would need to be up early of a mornin’, to make sure ’is workers were already on parade and not shirkin’.”

  “Stop talking you two and look sharpish,” said the corporal. “And get yourselves dressed or you’ll find yourself on fatigues.”

  “I am dressed, Corp,” insisted Charlie.

  “Don’t answer me back, laddie, and don’t call me ‘corp’ unless you want a spell cleaning out the latrines.” That threat was even enough to get Tommy’s feet on the floor.

  The second morning consisted of more drill accompanied by the ever-falling snow, which this time had a two-inch start on them, followed by another lunch of bread and cheese. The afternoon, however, was designated on company orders as “Games and Recreation.” So it was a change of clothes before jogging in step over to the gymnasium for physical jerks followed by boxing instruction.

  Ch
arlie, now a light middleweight, couldn’t wait to get in the ring while Tommy somehow managed to keep himself out of the firing line, although both of them became aware of Captain Trentham’s menacing presence as his swagger stick continually struck the side of his leg. He always seemed to be hanging about, keeping a watchful eye on them. The only smile that crossed his lips all afternoon was when he saw someone knocked out. And every time he came across Tommy he just scowled.

  “I’m one of nature’s seconds,” Tommy told Charlie later that evening. “You’ve no doubt ’eard the expression ‘seconds out.’ Well, that’s me,” he explained as his friend lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Do we ever escape from this place, Corp?” Tommy asked when the duty corporal entered the barracks a few minutes before lights out. “You know, for like good behavior?”

  “You’ll be allowed out on Saturday night,” said the corporal. “Three hours restricted leave from six to nine, when you can do what you please. However, you will go no farther than two miles from the barracks, you will behave in a manner that befits a Royal Fusilier and you will report back to the guardroom sober as a judge at one minute before nine. Sleep well, my lovelies.” These were the corporal’s final words before he went round the barracks turning down every one of the gaslights.

  When Saturday night eventually came, two swollen-footed, limb-aching, shattered soldiers covered as much of the city as they possibly could in three hours with only five shillings each to spend, a problem that limited their discussions on which pub to select.

  Despite this, Tommy seemed to know how to get more beer per penny out of any landlord than Charlie had ever dreamed possible, even when he couldn’t understand what they were saying or make himself understood. While they were in their last port of call, the Volunteer, Tommy even disappeared out of the pub followed by the barmaid, a pert, slightly plump girl called Rose. Ten minutes later he was back.

  “What were you doin’ out there?” asked Charlie.

  “What do you think, idiot?”