As the Crow Flies (2 page)

I
knew Granpa wanted me to stay on at school and improve my readin’ and writin’,
but on the last Friday of term in December 1913, I walked out of the gates of
Jubilee Street Elementary with my father’s blessing. He had always told me that
education was a waste of time and he couldn’t see the point of it. I agreed
with him, even if Posh Porky had won a scholarship to someplace called St. Paul’s,
which in any case was miles away in Hammersmith. And who wants to go to school
in Hammersmith when you can live in the East End?

Mrs.
Salmon obviously wanted her to because she told everyone who was held up in the
bread queue of her daughter’s “interlectual prowess,” whatever that meant.

“Stuck-up
snob,” Granpa used to whisper in my ear. “She’s the sort of person who ‘as a
bowl of fruit in the ‘ouse when no one’s ill.”

I
felt much the same way about Posh Porky as Granpa did about Mrs. Salmon. Mr.
Salmon was all right, though. You see, he’d once been a costermonger himself,
but that was before he married Miss Roach, the baker’s daughter.

Every
Saturday morning, while I was setting up the barrow, Mr. Salmon used to
disappear off to the Whitechapel synagogue, leaving his wife to run the shop.
While he was away, she never stopped reminding us at the top of her voice that
she wasn’t a five by two.

Posh
Porky seemed to be torn between going along with her old man to the synagogue
and staying put at the shop, where she’d sit by the window and start scoffing
cream buns the moment he was out of sight.

“Always
a problem, a mixed marriage,” Granpa would tell me. It was years before I
worked out that he wasn’t talking about the cream buns.

The
day I left school I told Granpa he could lie in while I went off to Covent
Garden to fill up the barrow, but he wouldn’t hear of it. When we got to the
market, for the first time he allowed me to bargain with the dealers. I quickly
found one who agreed to supply me with a dozen apples for threepence as long as
I could guarantee the same order every day for the next month. As Granpa
Charlie and I always had an apple for breakfast, the arrangement sorted out our
own needs and also gave me the chance to sample what we were selling to the
customers.

From
that moment on, every day was a Saturday and between us we could sometimes manage
to put the profits up by as much as fourteen shillings a week.

After
that, I was put on a weekly wage of five shillings a veritable fortune. Four of
them I kept locked in a tin box under Granpa’s bed until I had saved up my
first guinea: a man what’s got a guinea got security, Mr. Salmon once told me
as he stood outside his shop, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, displaying a
shiny gold watch and chain.

In
the evenings, after Granpa had come home for supper and the old man had gone
off to the pub I soon became bored just sitting around listening to what my
sisters had been up to all day; so I joined the Whitechapel Boys’ Club. Table
tennis Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, boxing Tuesdays, Thursdays and
Saturdays. I never did get the hang of table tennis, but I became quite a
useful bantamweight and once even represented the club against Bethnal Green.

Unlike
my old man I didn’t go much on pubs, the dogs or cribbage but I still went on
supporting West Ham most Saturday afternoons. I even made the occasional trip
into the West End of an evening to see the latest music hall star.

When
Granpa asked me what I wanted for my fifteenth birthday I replied without a
moment’s hesitation, “My own barrow,” and added that I’d nearly saved enough to
get one. He just laughed and told me that his old one was good enough for
whenever the time came for me to take over. In any case, he warned me, it’s
what a rich man calls an asset and, he added for good measure, never invest in
something new, especially when there’s a war on.

Although
Mr. Salmon had already told me that we had declared war against the Germans
almost a year before none of us having heard of Archduke Franz Ferdinand we
only found out how serious it was when a lot of young lads who had worked in
the market began to disappear off to “the front” to be replaced by their
younger brothers and sometimes even sisters. On a Saturday morning there were
often more lads down the East End dressed in khaki than in civvies.

My
only other memory of that period was of Schultz’s, the sausage maker a Saturday
night treat for us, especially when he gave us a toothless grin and slipped an
extra sausage in free. Lately he had always seemed to start the day with a
broken windowpane, and then suddenly one morning the front of his shop was
boarded up and we never saw Mr. Schultz again. “Internment,” my granpa
whispered mysteriously.

My
old man occasionally joined us on a Saturday morning, but only to get some cash
off Granpa so that he could go to the Black Bull and spend it all with his mate
Bert Shorrocks.

Week
after week Granpa would fork out a bob, sometimes even a florin, which we both
knew he couldn’t afford. And what really annoyed me was that he never drank and
certainly didn’t go a bundle on gambling. That didn’t stop my old man pocketing
the money, touching his cap and then heading off towards the Black Bull.

This
routine went on week after week and might never have changed, until one
Saturday morning a toffee-nosed lady who I had noticed standing on the corner
for the past week, wearing a long black dress and carrying a parasol, strode
over to our barrow, stopped and placed a white feather in Dad’s lapel.

I’ve
never seen him go so mad, far worse than the usual Saturday night when he had
lost all his money gambling and came home so drunk that we all had to hide
under the bed. He raised his clenched fist to the lady but she didn’t flinch
and even called him “coward” to his face. He screamed back at her some choice
words that he usually saved for the rent collector. He then grabbed all her
feathers and threw them in the gutter before storming off in the direction of
the Black Bull. What’s more, he didn’t come home at midday, when Sal served us
up a dinner of fish and chips. I never complained as I went off to watch West
Ham that afternoon, having scoffed his portion of chips. He still wasn’t back
when I returned that night, and when I woke the next morning his side of the
bed hadn’t been slept in. When Granpa-brought us all home from midday mass
there was still no sign of Dad, so I had a second night with the double bed all
to myself.

“‘E’s
probably spent another night in jail,” said Granpa on Monday morning as I
pushed our barrow down the middle of the road, trying to avoid the horse shit
from the buses that were dragged backwards and forwards, to and from the City
along the Metropolitan Line.

As
we passed Number 110, I spotted Mrs. Shorrocks staring at me out of the window,
sporting her usual black eye and a mass of different colored bruises which she
collected from Bert most Saturday nights.

“You
can go and bail ‘im out round noon,” said Granpa. “‘E should have sobered up by
then.”

I
scowled at the thought of having to fork out the half-crown to cover his fine,
which simply meant another day’s profits down the drain.

A
few minutes after twelve o’clock I reported to the police station. The duty
sergeant told me that Bert Shorrocks was still in the cells and due up in front
of the beak that afternoon, but they hadn’t set eyes on my old man the whole
weekend.

“Like
a bad penny, you can be sure ‘e’ll turn up again,” said Granpa with a chuckle.

But
it was to be over a month before Dad “turned up” again. When I first saw him I
couldn’t believe my eyes he was dressed from head to toe in khaki. You see, he
had signed up with the second battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. He told us that
he expected to be posted to the front at some time in the next few weeks but he
would still be home by Christmas; an officer had told him that the bloody Huns
would have been sent packing long before then.

Granpa
shook his head and frowned, but I was so proud of my dad that for the rest of
the day I just strutted around the market by his side. Even the lady who stood
on the corner handing out white feathers gave him an approving nod. I scowled
at her and promised Dad that if the Germans hadn’t been sent packing by
Christmas I would leave the market and join up myself to help him finish off
the job. I even went with him to the Black Bull that night, determined to spend
my weekly wages on whatever he wanted. But no one would let him buy a drink so
I ended up not spending a ha’penny. The next morning he had left us to rejoin
his regiment, even before Granpa and I started out for the market.

The
old man never wrote because he couldn’t write, but everyone in the East End
knew that if you didn’t get one of those brown envelopes pushed under your door
the member of your family who was away at the war must still be alive.

From
time to time Mr. Salmon used to read to me from his morning paper, but as he
could never find a mention of the Royal Fusiliers I didn’t discover what the
old man was up to. I only prayed that he wasn’t at someplace called Ypres
where, the paper warned us, casualties were heavy.

Christmas
Day was fairly quiet for the family that year on account of the fact that the
old man hadn’t returned from the front as the officer had promised.

Sal,
who was working shifts in a cafe on the Commercial Road, went back to work on
Boxing Day, and Grace remained on duty at the London Hospital throughout the
so-called holiday, while Kitty mooched around checking on everyone else’s
presents before going back to bed. Kitty never seemed to be able to hold down a
job for more than a week at a time, but somehow, she was still better dressed
than any of us. I suppose it must have been because a string of boyfriends
seemed quite willing to spend their last penny on her before going off to the
front. I couldn’t imagine what she expected to tell them if they all came back
on the same day.

Now
and then, Kitty would volunteer to do a couple of hours’ work on the barrow,
but once she had eaten her way through the day’s profits she would soon
disappear. “Couldn’t describe that one as an asset,” Granpa used to say. Still,
I didn’t complain. I was sixteen without a care in the world and my only
thoughts at that time were on how soon I could get hold of my own barrow.

Mr.
Salmon told me that he’d heard the best barrows were being sold off in the Old
Kent Road, on account of the fact that so many young lads were heeding
Kitchener’s cry and joining up to fight for King and country. He felt sure
there wouldn’t be a better time to make what he called a good metsieh. I
thanked the baker and begged him not to let Granpa know what I was about, as I
wanted to close the “metsieh” before he found out.

The
following Saturday morning I asked Granpa for a couple of hours off.

“Found
yourself a girl, ‘ave you? Because I only ‘ope it’s not the boozer.”

“Neither,”
I told him with a grin. “But you’ll be the first to find out, Granpa. I promise
you.” I touched my cap and strolled off in the direction of the Old Kent Road.

I
crossed the Thames at Tower Bridge and walked farther south than I had ever
been before, and when I arrived at the rival market I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I’d never seen so many barrows. Lined up in rows, they were. Long ones, short
ones, stubby ones, in all the colors of the rainbow and some of them displaying
names that went back generations in the East End. I spent over an hour checking
out all those that were for sale but the only one I kept coming back to had
displayed in blue and gold down its sides, “The biggest barrow in the world.”

The
woman who was selling the magnificent object told me that it was only a month
old and her old man, who had been killed by the Huns, had paid three quid for
it: she wasn’t going to let it go for anything less.

I
explained to her that I only had a couple of quid to my name, but I’d be
willing to pay off the rest before six months were up.

“We
could all be dead in six months,” she replied, shaking her head with an air of
someone who’d heard those sorts of stories before.

“Then
I’ll let you ‘ave two quid and sixpence, with my granpa’s barrow thrown in,” I
said without thinking.

“Who’s
your granpa?”

“Charlie
Trumper,” I told her with pride, though if the truth be known I hadn’t expected
her to have heard of him.

“Charlie
Trumper’s your granpa?”

“What
of it?” I said defiantly.

“Then
two quid and sixpence will do just fine for now, young ‘un,” she said. “And see
you pay the rest back before Christmas.”

That
was the first time I discovered what the word “reputation” meant. I handed over
my life’s savings and promised that I would give her the other nineteen and six
before the year was up.

We
shook hands on the deal and I grabbed the handles and began to push my first
cock sparrow back over the bridge towards the Whitechapel Road. When Sal and
Kitty first set eyes on my prize, they couldn’t stop jumping up and down with
excitement and even helped me to paint down one side, “Charlie Trumper, the
honest trader, founded in 1823.” I felt confident that Granpa would be proud of
me.

Once
we had finished our efforts and long before the paint was dry, I wheeled the barrow
triumphantly off towards the market. By the time I was in sight of Granpa’s
pitch my grin already stretched from ear to ear.