Jeffrey Archer: As the Crow Flies

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

Granpa 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 half-full of stale food that nobody wanted. Even Sal and Kitty turned 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 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 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.