As the Crow Flies (51 page)

“The
Prime Minister will see you now, Mr. Trumper,” she said, then proceeded to lead
him up a narrow staircase, past the framed photographs of former prime
ministers. By the time he reached Churchill he found himself on the landing
facing a man of five feet nine inches in height who stood, arms on hips, legs
apart, staring defiantly at him.

“Trumper,”
said Churchill, thrusting out his hand. “Good of you to come at such short
notice. Hope I didn’t tear you away from anything important.”

Just
a Bren lesson, thought Charlie, but decided not to mention the fact as he
followed the shambling figure through to his study. Churchill waved his guest
into a comfortable winged chair near a roaring fire; Charlie looked at the
burning logs and remembered the Prime Minister’s strictures to the nation on
wasting coal.

“You
must be wondering what this is all about,” the Prime Minister said, as he lit
up a cigar and opened a file that was resting on his knee. He started to read.

“Yes,
sir,” said Charlie, but his reply failed to elicit any explanation. Churchill
continued to read from the copious notes in front of him.

“I
see we have something in common.”

“We
do, Prime Minister?”

“We
both served in the Great War.”

“The
war to end all wars.”

“Yes,
wrong again, wasn’t he?” said Churchill. “But then he was a politician.” The
Prime Minister chuckled before continuing to read from the files. Suddenly he
looked up. “However, we both have a far more important role to play in this
war, Trumper, and I can’t waste your time on teaching recruits Bren lessons in
Cardiff.”

The
damned man knew all along, thought Charlie.

“When
a nation is at war, Trumper,” said the Prime Minister, closing the file, “people
imagine victory will be guaranteed so long as we have more troops and better
equipment than the enemy. But battles can be lost or won by something that the
generals in the field have no control over. A little cog that stops the wheels
going round smoothly. Only today I’ve had to set up a new department in the War
Office to deal with code-breaking. I’ve stolen the two best professors they
have at Cambridge, along with their assistants, to help solve the problem.
Invaluable cogs, Trumper.”

“Yes,
sir,” said Charlie, without a clue as to what the old man was talking about.

“And
I have a problem with another of those cogs Trumper, and my advisers tell me
you’re the best man to come up with a solution.”

“Thank
you, sir.”

“Food,
Trumper, and more important its distribution. I understand from Lord Woolton
the minister in charge that supplies are fast running out. We can’t even get
enough potatoes shipped over from Ireland. So one of the biggest problems I’m
facing at this moment is how to keep the nation’s stomach full while waging a
war on the enemy’s shores and at the same time keeping our supply routes open.
The minister tells me that when the food arrives in the ports it can often be
weeks before the damned stuff is moved, and sometimes even then it ends up in
the wrong place.

“Added
to this,” continued the Prime Minister, “our farmers are complaining that they
can’t do the job properly because we’re recruiting their best men for the armed
forces, and they’re not receiving any backup from the government in exchange.”
He paused for a moment to relight his cigar. “So what I’m looking for is a man
who has spent his life buying, selling and distributing food, someone who has
lived in the marketplace and who the farmers and the suppliers both will
respect. In short, Trumper, I need you. I want you to join Woolton as his
right-hand man, and see that we get the supplies, and then that those supplies
are distributed to the right quarters. Can’t think of a more important job. I
hope you’ll be willing to take on the challenge.”

The
desire to get started must have shown in Charlie’s eyes, because the Prime
Minister didn’t even bother to wait for his reply. “Good, I can see you’ve got
the basic idea. I’d like you to report to the Ministry of Food at eight
tomorrow morning. A car will come to pick you up from your home at seven
forty-five.”

“Thank
you, sir,” said Charlie, not bothering to explain to the Prime Minister that if
a car did turn up at seven forty-five the driver would have missed him by over
three hours.

“And,
Trumper, I’m going to make you up to a brigadier so you’ve got some clout.”

“I’d
prefer to remain plain Charlie Trumper.”

“Why?”

“I
might at some time find it necessary to be rude to a general... “

The
Prime Minister removed his cigar and roared with laughter before he accompanied
his guest to the door. “And, Trumper,” he said, placing a hand on Charlie’s
shoulder, “should the need ever arise, don’t hesitate to contact me direct, if
you think it could make the difference. Night or day. I don’t bother with
sleep, you know.”

“Thank
you, sir,” said Charlie, as he proceeded down the staircase.

“Good
luck, Trumper, and see you feed the people.”

The
Wren escorted Charlie back to his car and saluted him as he took his place in
the front seat which surprised Charlie because he was still dressed as a
sergeant.

He
asked the driver to take him to the Little Boltons via Chelsea Terrace. As they
traveled slowly through the streets of the West End, it saddened him to find
old familiar landmarks so badly damaged by the Luftwaffe, although he realized
no one in London had escaped the Germans’ relentless air bombardment.

When
he arrived home, Becky opened the front door and threw her arms around her
husband. “What did Mr. Churchill want?” was her first question.

“How
did you know I was seeing the Prime Minister?”

“Number
10 rang here first to ask where they could get hold of you. So what did he
want?”

“Someone
who can deliver his fruit and veg on a regular basis.”

Charlie
liked his new boss from the moment they met. Although James Woolton had come to
the Ministry of Food with the reputation of being a brilliant businessman, he
admitted that he was not an expert in Charlie’s particular field but said his
department was there to see that Charlie was given every assistance he
required.

Charlie
was allocated a large office on the same corridor as the minister and supplied
with a staff of fourteen headed by a young personal assistant called Arthur
Selwyn who hadn’t been long down from Oxford.

Charlie
soon learned that Selwyn had a brain as sharp as a razor, and although he had
no experience of Charlie’s world he only ever needed to be told something once.

The
navy supplied Charlie with a personal secretary called Jessica Allen, who
appeared to be willing to work the same hours as he did. Charlie wondered why
such an attractive, intelligent girl appeared to have no social life until he
studied her file more carefully and discovered that her young fiance had been
killed on the beach at Dunkirk Charlie quickly returned to his old routine of
coming into the office at four-thirty, even before the cleaners had arrived,
which allowed him to read through his papers until eight without fear of being
disturbed.

Because
of the special nature of his assignment and the obvious support of his
minister, doors opened whenever he appeared. Within a month most of his staff
were coming in by five, although Selwyn turned out to be the only one of them
who also had the stamina to stick with him through the night.

For
that first month Charlie did nothing but read reports and listen to Selwyn’s
detailed assessment of the problems they had been facing for the best part of a
year, while occasionally popping in to see the minister to clarify a point that
he didn’t fully understand.

During
the second month Charlie decided to visit every major port in the kingdom to
find out what was holding up the distribution of food, food that was sometimes
simply being left to rot for days on end in the storehouses on the docksides
throughout the country. When he reached Liverpool he quickly discovered that
supplies were rightly not getting priority over tanks or men when it came to
movement, so he requested that his ministry should operate a fleet of its own
vehicles, with no purpose other than to distribute food supplies across the
nation.

Woolton
somehow managed to come up with sixty-two trucks, most of them, he admitted,
rejects from war surplus. “Not unlike me,” Charlie admitted. However, the
minister still couldn’t spare the men to drive them.

“If
men aren’t available, Minister, I need two hundred women,” Charlie suggested,
and despite the cartoonists’ genre jibes about women drivers it only took
another month before the food started to move out of the docks within hours of
its arrival.

The
dockers themselves responded well to the women drivers, while trade union
leaders never found out that Charlie spoke to them with one accent while using
quite another when he was back at the ministry.

Once
Charlie had begun to solve the distribution problem, he came up against two
more dilemmas. On the one hand, the farmers were complaining that they couldn’t
produce enough food at home because the armed forces were taking away all their
best men; on the other, Charlie found he just wasn’t getting enough supplies
coming in from abroad because of the success of the German U-boat campaign.

He
came up with two solutions for Woolton’s consideration. “You supplied me with
lorry girls, now you must give me land girls,” Charlie told him. “I need five
thousand this time, because that’s what the farmers are saying they’re short
of.”

The
next day Woolton was interviewed on the BBC and made a special appeal to the
nation for land girls. Five hundred applied in the first twenty-four hours and
the minister had the five thousand Charlie requested within ten weeks. Charlie
allowed the applications to continue pouring in until he had seven thousand and
could clearly identify a smile on the face of the president of the National
Farmers’ Union.

Over
the second problem of lack of supplies Charlie advised Woolton to buy rice as a
substitute diet staple because of the hardship the nation was facing with a
potato shortage. “But where do we find such a commodity?” asked Woolton. “China
and the Far East is much too hazardous a journey for us even to consider right
now.”

“I’m
aware of that,” said Charlie, “but I know a supplier in Egypt who could let us
have a million tons a month.”

“Can
he be trusted?”

“Certainly
not,” said Charlie. “But his brother still works in the East End, and if we
were to intern him for a few months I reckon I could pull off some sort of deal
with the family.”

“If
the press ever found out what we were up to Charlie, they’d have my guts for
garters.”

“I’m
not going to tell them, Minister.”

The
following day Eli Calil found himself interned in Brixton Prison while Charlie
flew off to Cairo to close a deal with his brother for a million tons of rice
per month, rice that had been originally earmarked for the Italians.

Charlie
agreed with Nasim Calil that the payments could be made half in pounds sterling
and half in piastres, and as long as the shipments always arrived on time no
paperwork concerning the money needed be evident on the Cairo end. Failing
this, Calil’s government would be informed of the full details of their
transaction.

“Very
fair, Charlie, but then you always were. But what about my brother Eli?” asked
Nasim Calil.

“We’ll
release him at the end of the war but then only if every shipment is delivered
on time.”

“Also
most considerate,” Nasim replied. “A couple of years in jail will do Eli no
harm. He is, after all, one of the few members of my family who hasn’t yet been
detained at His Majesty’s pleasure.”

Charlie
tried to spend at least a couple of hours a week with Tom Arnold so that he
could be kept up to date on what was happening in Chelsea Terrace. Tom had to
report that Trumper’s was now losing money steadily and he had found it
necessary to close five of the premises and board up another four; this
saddened Charlie because Syd Wrexall had recently written to him offering his
entire group of shops and the bombedout corner pub for only six thousand
pounds, a sum Wrexall was claiming Charlie had once made him a firm offer on.
All Charlie had to do now, Wrexall reminded Arnold in an accompanying letter,
was to sign the check.

Charlie
studied the contract that Wrexall had enclosed and said, “I made that offer
long before the outbreak of war. Send all the documents back. I’m confident he’ll
let those shops go for around four thousand by this time next year. But try and
keep him happy, Tom.”

“That
might prove a little difficult,” replied Tom. “Since that bomb landed on the
Musketeer Syd’s gone off to live in Cheshire. He’s now the landlord of a
country pub in some place called Hatherton.”

“Even
better,” said Charlie. “We’ll never see him again. Now I’m even more convinced
that within a year he’ll be ready to make a deal, so for the time being just
ignore his letter; after all, the post is very unreliable at the moment.”