As the Crow Flies

If
you purchased this book without a cover, you should be

aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as

“unsold
and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the

author
nor the publisher has received any payment for this

Stripped
book.’

This
is a work of fiction. The characters incidents and

dialogues
are products of the author’s imagination and are

not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual

events
or persona living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright
(c) 1991 by Jeffrey Archer

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A
hardcover edition of this book was published in 1991 by

HarperCollinsPublishers.

Cover
illustration by George Angelini Cover background

illustration
by Mitzura Salgian First HarperPaperbacks printing May 1992

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O’0987654321

TO FRANK AND KATHY

“I
don’t offer
you these for tuppence,” my granpa would shout, holding up a cabbage in both
hands, “I don’t offer ‘em for a penny, not even a ha’penny. No, I’ll give ‘em
away for a farthin’.”

Those
were the first words I can remember. Even before I had learned to walk, my
eldest sister used to dump me in an orange box on the pavement next to Granpa’s
pitch just to be sure I could start my apprenticeship early.

“Only
stakin’ ‘is claim,” Granpa used to tell the customers as he pointed at me in
the wooden box. In truth, the first word I ever spoke was “Granpa,” the second “farthing,”
and I could repeat his whole sales patter word for word by my third birthday.
Not that any of my family could be that certain of the exact day on which I was
born, on account of the fact that my old man had spent the night in jail and my
mother had died even before I drew breath.

Granpa
thought it could well have been a Saturday, felt it most likely the month had
been January, was confident the year was 1900, and knew it was in the reign of
Queen Victoria. So we settled on Saturday, 20 January 1900.

I
never knew my mother because, as I explained, she died on the day I was born. “Childbirth,”
our local priest called it, but I didn’t really understand what he was on about
until several years later when I came up against the problem again. Father O’Malley
never stopped telling me that she was a saint if ever he’d seen one. My father
who couldn’t have been described as a saint by anyone worked on the docks by
day, lived in the pub at night and came home in the early morning because it
was the only place he could fall asleep without being disturbed.

The
rest of my family was made up of three sisters Sal, the eldest, who was five
and knew when she was born because it was in the middle of the night and had
kept the old man awake; Grace who was three and didn’t cause anyone to lose sleep;
and redheaded Kitty who was eighteen months and never stopped bawling.

The
head of the family was Granpa Charlie, who I was named after. He slept in his
own room on the ground floor of our home in Whitechapel Road, not only because
he was the oldest but because he paid the rent always. The rest of us were
herded all together in the room opposite. We had two other rooms on the ground
floor, a sort of kitchen and what most people would have called a large
cupboard, but which Grace liked to describe as the parlor.

There
was a lavatory in the garden no grass which we shared with an Irish family who
lived on the floor above us. They always seemed to go at three o’clock in the
morning.

Granpa
who was a costermonger by trade worked the pitch on the corner of Whitechapel
Road. Once I was able to escape from my orange box and ferret around among the
other barrows I quickly discovered that he was reckoned by the locals to be the
finest trader in the East End.

My
dad, who as I have already told you was a docker by trade, never seemed to take
that much interest in any of us and though he could sometimes earn as much as a
pound a week, the money always seemed to end up in the Black Bull, where it was
spent on pint after pint of ale and gambled away on games of cribbage or
dominoes in the company of our next-door neighbor, Bert Shorrocks, a man who
never seemed to speak, just grunt.

In
fact, if it hadn’t been for Granpa I wouldn’t even have been made to attend the
local elementary school in Jubilee Street, and “attend” was the right word,
because I didn’t do a lot once I’d got there, other than bang the lid of my
little desk and occasionally pull the pigtails of “Posh Porky,” the girl who
sat in front of me. Her real name was Rebecca Salmon and she was the daughter
of Dan Salmon who owned the baker’s shop on the corner of Brick Lane. Posh
Porky knew exactly when and where she was born and never stopped reminding us
all that she was nearly a year younger than anyone else in the class.

I
couldn’t wait for the bell to ring at four in the afternoon when class would
end and I could bang my lid for the last time before running all the way down
the Whitechapel Road to help out on the barrow.

On
Saturdays as a special treat Granpa would allow me to go along with him to the
early morning market in Covent Garden, where he would select the fruit and
vegetables that we would later sell from his pitch, just opposite Mr. Salmon’s
and Dunkley’s, the fish and chippy that stood next to the baker’s.

Although
I couldn’t wait to leave school once and for all so I could join Granpa
permanently, if I ever played truant for as much as an hour he wouldn’t take me
to watch West Ham, our local soccer team, on Saturday afternoon or, worse, he’d
stop me selling on the barrow in the morning.

“I
‘aped you’d grow up to be more like Rebecca Salmon,” he used to say. “That girl
will go a long way... “

“The
further the better,” I would tell him, but he never laughed, just reminded me
that she was always top in every subject.

“‘Cept
‘rithmetic,” I replied with bravado, “where I beat her silly.” You see, I could
do any sum in my head that Rebecca Salmon had to write out in longhand; it used
to drive her potty.

My
father never visited Jubilee Street Elementary in all the years I was there,
but Granpa used to pop along at least once a term and have a word with Mr.
Cartwright my teacher. Mr. Cartwright told Granpa that with my head for figures
I could end up an accountant or a clerk. He once said that he might even be
able to “find me a position in the City.” Which was a waste of time really,
because all I wanted to do was join Granpa on the barrow.

I
was seven before I worked out that the name down the side of Granpa’s barrow “Charlie
Trumper, the honest trader, founded in 1823” was the same as mine. Dad’s first
name was George, and he had already made it clear on several occasions that
when Granpa retired he had no intention of taking over from him as he didn’t
want to leave his mates on the docks.

I
couldn’t have been more pleased by his decision, and told Granpa that when I
finally took over the barrow, we wouldn’t even have to change the name.

Granpa
just groaned and said, “I don’t want you to end up workin’ in the East End,
young ‘un. You’re far too good to be a barrow boy for the rest of your life.”
It made me sad to hear him speak like that; he didn’t seem to understand that
was all I wanted to do.

School
dragged on for month after month, year after year, with Rebecca Salmon going up
to collect prize after prize on Speech Day. What made the annual gathering even
worse was we always had to listen to her recite the Twenty-third Psalm,
standing up there on the stage in her white dress, white socks, black shoes.
She even had a white bow in her long black hair.

“And
I expect she wears a new pair of knickers every day,” little Kitty whispered in
my ear.

“And
I’ll bet you a guinea to a farthin’ she’s still a virgin,” said Sal.

I
burst out laughing because all the costermongers in the Whitechapel Road always
did whenever they heard that word, although I admit that at the time I didn’t
have a clue what a virgin was. Granpa told me to “shhh” and didn’t smile again
until I went up to get the arithmetic prize, a box of colored crayons that were
damned-all use to anyone. Still, it was them or a book.

Granpa
clapped so loud as I returned to my place that some of the mums looked round
and smiled, which made the old fellow even more determined to see that I stayed
on at school until I was fourteen.

By
the time I was ten, Granpa allowed me to lay out the morning wares on the
barrow before going off to school for the day. Potatoes on the front, greens in
the middle and soft fruits at the back was his golden rule.

“Never
let ‘em touch the fruit until they’ve ‘ended over their money,” he used to say.
“‘Arc to bruise a tato, but even ‘arder to sell a bunch of grapes that’s been
picked up and dropped a few times.”

By
the age of eleven I was collecting the money from the customers and handing
them the change they were due. That’s when I first learned about palming.
Sometimes, after I’d given them back their money, the customers would open the
palm of their hand and I would discover that one of the coins I had passed over
had suddenly disappeared so I ended up having to give them even more bees and
honey. I lost Granpa quite a bit of our weekly profit that way, until he taught
me to say, “Tuppence change, Mrs. Smith,” then hold up the coins for all to see
before handing them over.

By
twelve, I had learned how to bargain with the suppliers at Covent Garden while
displaying a poker face, later to sell the same produce to the customers back
in Whitechapel with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. I also discovered
that Granpa used to switch suppliers regularly, “just to be sure no one takes
me for granted.”

By
thirteen, I had become his eyes and ears as I already knew the name of every
worthwhile trader of fruit and vegetables in Covent Garden. I quickly sussed
out which sellers just piled good fruit on top of bad, which dealers would
attempt to hide a bruised apple and which suppliers would always try to
short-measure you. Most important of all, back on the pitch I learned which
customers didn’t pay their debts and so could never be allowed to have their
names chalked up on the slate.

I
remember that my chest swelled with pride the day Mrs. Smelley, who owned a
boardinghouse in the Commercial Road, told me that I was a chip off the old
block and that in her opinion one day I might even be as good as my granpa. I
celebrated that night by ordering my first pint of beer and lighting up my
first Woodbine. I didn’t finish either of them.

I’ll
never forget that Saturday morning when Granpa first let me run the barrow on
my own. For five hours he didn’t once open his mouth to offer advice or even
give an opinion. And when he checked the takings at the end of the day,
although we were two shillings and fivepence light from a usual Saturday, he
still handed over the sixpenny piece he always gave me at the end of the week.