As the Crow Flies (4 page)

“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 cam 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 ‘elf’s name cares about
the council and their sappy 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 have 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 notes 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 CocaCola, 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 turns 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 click black ink needy 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 day 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 turnd 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.

C
harlie 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 Kity 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.

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 retum?” 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.