As the Crow Flies Read online

  “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