LITMIR.BIZ

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      To Isadora,

       who carries our love into the future

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS going to be a very special day. Not that there were any clues to it when Scarlett Smith woke up. Everything seemed much the same. There was the sound of her mother’s broom knocking against the skirting-boards as she swept the floors downstairs, there was the drone of a BBC accent coming from the wireless and there was the familiar smell, the one that Scarlett had grown up with, the smell of stale beer and cigarette ash. The morning smell of a pub.

      But today was June the second. Coronation Day. The Queen was going to be crowned Elizabeth II of England and it was going to be extremely busy at the Red Lion. Scarlett slid out of bed, washed in cold water, pulled on an old cotton dress and a cardigan and ran down the creaking stairs to the lounge bar. Joan Smith, a floral overall wrapped round her cosy body, was mopping the floor. She looked up with a smile.

      ‘How’s my darling girl this fine morning? Not that it is fine. It’s raining. Such a pity! And all those people sleeping out on the pavements in London to get a look at the Queen. It said on the news they was out in their thousands. Old people. Little kiddies. But they’re all in great spirits, they said. Ready to cheer and wave their Union Jacks.’

      ‘Must be wonderful to be up in London,’ Scarlett said.

      ‘Yes—a once in a lifetime event. The fairy tale princess becomes queen.’ Her mother sighed. She leaned on the handle of her mop, a faraway expression in her eyes. Joan Smith loved a good story. A real life one featuring a real live queen was even better. Then she snapped out of it. ‘Still, we’re going to have a right old knees-up here, aren’t we? Morris dancers, tea on the village green—mind you, it might be in the village hall at this rate—and us open all day so as people can toast Her Majesty. No peace for the wicked! Come on, sweetheart, fetch a bucket and cloth and do the bars and tables for us. Sooner we finish, sooner we can have breakfast. I got fresh eggs. Old Harry brought us in a basin last night.’

      Mother and daughter worked rapidly through the lounge and public bars, wiping, polishing, setting out clean ashtrays, fresh beer mats and bar towels, straightening the tables and stools. Nobody looking on would have guessed they were related. Joan was round and dumpy, her brown hair greying, her blue eyes fading, her hands cracked and swollen and knees stiff from a lifetime of hard work. Scarlett, at fourteen, was already taller than her mother, slim and strong with big brown eyes and long dark hair pulled back in a shiny ponytail, her coltish figure starting to develop into a woman’s body.

      ‘Don’t it look lovely?’ Joan said as they gave a last rub to the horse brasses on the beams.

      ‘Very patriotic,’ Scarlett agreed.

      The Red Lion was all dressed up for the Coronation. Outside there was red, white and blue bunting draped from the windows and over the sign, with a big Union Jack over the door, and inside more Union Jacks and flags from the countries of the great British Empire were hung around the bars. Pictures of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and the little prince and princess had been cut out of magazines, framed with red, white and blue ribbons and stuck up on any available wall space. A specially brewed Coronation Ale had been delivered from the brewery a few days ago and was nicely settled and ready to serve to any of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects who cared to drink her health. Nobody could say the Smiths hadn’t made an effort.

      The two put away the cleaning things and Joan set about making breakfast in the kitchen-cum-living room behind the public area. It was rather a dark room, tacked onto the back of the main building and crowded with a table and chairs, sink and stove and dresser, and a sitting area of two Windsor chairs and a small fireside chair grouped round the fireplace. The big brown wireless set sat in pride of place on a small table next to the larger of the Windsor chairs. When Scarlett was little, the grouping reminded her of the Three Bears, and she would always be ready to guard her breakfast porridge against invasions of golden-haired thieves.

      Joan poured tea into a large white cup, put in three sugars, stirred it and handed it to Scarlett.

      ‘Go up and give your dad his cuppa, lovey.’

      Scarlett walked carefully up the stairs. Her dad never made an appearance until half an hour or so before opening time, giving himself just enough time to check the beers, have a cigarette and look at the sports page of the newspaper before the first customers of the day came in. Scarlett tapped on the door of her parents’ bedroom, listened for the muffled reply from inside and went in. The curtains were still closed and the air smelt of beer fumes. Her father had had a hard night last night. The regulars had been getting in some practice at toasting the new queen and naturally the landlord had to keep them company.

      Victor Smith raised his head from the pillow as his daughter came in.

      ‘Ah—tea—what a lovely girl you are.’

      He coughed, fumbled for his cigarettes and matches, lit up the first Player’s Navy Cut of the day and took a deep drag.

      ‘That’s better. Tell your mum I’ll be down soon.’

      Scarlett raised her eyebrows at this.

      ‘Pull the other one, Dad.’

      They both knew that pigs would fly and the moon turn blue before Victor made it to breakfast.

      Victor laughed, coughed and patted her arm.

      ‘You’re getting too knowing by half, you are. Sharp as a barrowload of monkeys. What’s two pints of best, a rum and black and a half of mild and bitter?’

      Scarlett added them up in her head in a trice, then made up a longer round for him to calculate. It was a game they had played practically since she could count. As a result she was top of her class at mental arithmetic.

      ‘Can’t beat you these days,’ Victor admitted.

      Scarlett kissed the top of his head, left him to his tea and cigarette and went back to the kitchen.

      ‘He all right?’ her mother asked, whipping eggs out of the frying pan and slipping them onto a plate.

      ‘’Course,’ Scarlett said.

      When she was younger, she had accepted the idea that fathers lay in bed while mothers worked. Even when she’d realised that other fathers got up and cycled to farms and factories to start work at eight, or down to the station to catch a train up to London and start work at nine, she’d still accepted it because, as her mother pointed out, other fathers didn’t have to stand behind a bar each evening. But as she’d grown older she’d realised that it was her mother who served the drinks, cleared the glasses, changed the optics, emptied the ashtrays and washed up. Her father supervised. That involved leaning on the bar, chatting to the customers and sampling the stock.

      ‘Oh, but he has all the cellar work to do,’ her mother said when Scarlett questioned this. ‘Everybody says he serves the best pint for miles around.’

      Which

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