As the Crow Flies (3 page)

The
crowd around the old fellow’s barrow seemed larger than usual for a Saturday
morning and I couldn’t work out why there was such a hush the moment I showed
up. “There’s young Charlie,” shouted a voice and several faces turned to stare
at me. Sensing trouble, I let go of the handles of my new barrow and ran into
the crowd. They quickly stood aside, making a path for me. When I had reached
the front, the first thing I saw was Granpa lying on the pavement, his head
propped up on a box of apples and his face as white as a sheet.

I
ran to his side and fell on my knees. “It’s Charlie, Granpa, it’s me, I’m ‘ere,”
I cried. “What do you want me to do? Just tell me what and I’ll do it.”

His
tired eyelids blinked slowly. “Listen to me careful, lad,” he said, between
gasps for breath. “The barrow now belongs to you, so never let it or the pitch
out of your sight for more than a few hours at a time.”

“But
it’s your barrow and your pitch, Granpa. ‘Ow will you work without a barrow and
a pitch?” I asked. But he was no longer listening.

Until
that moment I never realized anyone I knew could die.

G
ranpa Charlie’s
funeral was held on a cloudless morning in early February at the church of St.
Mary’s and St. Michael’s on Jubilee Street. Once the choir had filed into their
places there was standing room only, and even Mr. Salmon, wearing a long black
coat and deep-brimmed black hat, was among those who were to be found huddled
at the back.

When
Charlie wheeled the brand-new barrow on to his granpa’s pitch the following
morning, Mr. Dunkley came out of the fish and chip shop to admire the new
acquisition.

“It
can carry almost twice as much as my granpa’s old barrow,” Charlie told him. “What’s
more, I only owe nineteen and six on it.” But by the end of the week Charlie
had discovered that his barrow was still halœfull of stale food that nobody
wanted. Even Sal and Kitty turnd up their noses when he offered them such
delicacies as black bananas and bruised peaches. It took several weeks before
the new trader was able to work out roughly the quantities he needed each
morning to satisfy his customers’ needs, and still longer to realize that those
needs would vary from day to day.

It
was a Saturday morning, after Charlie had collected his produce from the market
and was on his way back to Whitechapel, that he heard the raucous cry.

“British
troops slain on the Somme,” shouted out the boy who stood on the corner of
Covent Garden waving a paper high above his head.

Charlie
parted with a halfpenny in exchange for the Daily Chronicle, then sat on the
pavement and started to read, picking out the words he recognized. He learned
of the death of thousands of British troops who had been involved in a combined
operation with the French against Kaiser Bill’s army. The ill-fated exchange
had ended in disaster. General Haig had predicted an advance of four thousand
yards a day, but it had ended in retreat. The cry of “We’ll all be home for
Christmas” now seemed an idle boast.

Charlie
threw the paper in the gutter. No German would kill his dad, of that he felt
certain, though lately he had begun to feel gully about his own war efforts
since Grace had signed up for a spell in the hospital tents, a mere half mile
behind the front line.

Although
Grace wrote to Charlie every month, she was unable to supply any news on the
whereabouts of their father. “There are half a million soldiers out here,” she
explained, “and cold, wet and hungry they all look alike.” Sal continued her
job as a waitress in the Commercial Road and spent all her spare time looking
for a husband, while Kitty had no trouble in finding any number of men who were
happy to satisfy her every need. In fact, Kitty was the only one of the three
who had enough time off during the day to help out on the barrow, but as she
never got up until the sun rose and slipped away long before it had set, she
still wasn’t what Granpa would have called an asset.

It
was to be weeks before young Charlie would stop turning his head to ask: “‘Ow
many, Granpa?” “‘Ow much, Granpa?” “Is Mrs. Ruggles good for credit, Granpa?”
And only after he had paid back every penny of his debt on the new barrow and
been left with hardly any spare cash to talk of did he begin to realize just
how good a costermonger the old fellow must have been.

For
the first few months they earned only a few pennies a week between them and Sal
became convinced they would all end up in the workhouse if they kept failing to
cough up the rent. She begged Charlie to sell Granpa’s old barrow to raise
another pound, but Charlie’s reply was always the same “Never” before he added
that he would rather starve and leave the relic to rot in the backyard than let
another hand wheel it away.

By
autumn 1916 business began to look up, and the biggest barrow in the world even
resumed enough of a profit to allow Sal to buy a second-hand dress, Kitty a
pair of shoes and Charlie a third-hand suit.

Although
Charlie was still thin now a flyweight and not all that tall, once his
seventeenth birthday had come and gone he noticed that the ladies on the corner
of the Whitechapel Road, who were still placing white feathers on anyone wearing
civilian clothes who looked as if he might be between the ages of eighteen and
forty, were beginning to eye him like impatient vultures.

Charlie
wasn’t frightened of any Germans, but he still hoped that the war might come to
an end quickly and that his father would return to Whitechapel and his routine
of working at the docks during the day and drinking in the Black Bull at night.
But with no letters and only restricted news in the paper, even Mr. Salmon
couldn’t tell him what was really happening at the front.

As
the months passed, Charlie became more and more aware of his customers’ needs
and in turn they were discovering that his barrow was now offering better value
for money than many of its rivals. Even Charlie felt things were on the up when
Mrs. Smelley’s smiling face appeared, to buy more potatoes for her
boardinghouse in one morning than he would normally have hoped to sell a
regular customer in a month.

“I
could deliver your order, Mrs. Smelley, you know,” he said, raising his cap. “Direct
to your boardinghouse every Monday mornin’.”

“No,
thank you, Charlie,” she replied. “I always like to see what I’m buyin’.”

“Give
me a chance to prove myself, Mrs. Smelley, and then you wouldn’t ‘ave to come
out in all weathers, when you suddenly discover you’ve taken more bookie’s than
you expected.”

She
stared directly at him. “Well, I’ll give it a go for a couple of weeks,” she
said. “But if you ever let me down, Charlie Trumper... “

“You’ve
got yourself a deal,” said Charlie with a grin, and from that day Mrs. Smelley
was never seen shopping for fruit or vegetables in the market again.

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 misses 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 resumed 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 reamed 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 resumed 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 gun.

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.”