As the Crow Flies Read Online Free PDF

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.

CHAPTER 3
    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