Paradise Court Read Free

‘Hello, Ernie,’ she said in her animated way, and she gave him a brilliant smile.
    Ernie took the hand. It was small and slim. He looked up at Daisy’s smooth face, at her grey, dark-fringed eyes and thick auburn hair. ‘Hello,’ he mumbled, wide-eyed and nodding furiously.
    â€˜That’s right, Ern,’ Robert encouraged He’d rolled back his shirt-sleeves and now slicked back his hair with his fingertips as he watched Ernie’s greeting in the mantelpiece mirror. He turned to Daisy. ‘Ernie’s always going on about you,’ he said. ‘He thinks you’re a dazzler!’
    Daisy’s glance was suspicious. ‘You’re having me on,’ she said.
    â€˜No, honest.’ Robert crossed his arms and studied Daisy. ‘He does.’ And he began to hum, ‘He’s half crazy, all for the love of you!’
    Ernie stood, enthralled.
    â€˜Not funny, I don’t think!’ Hettie yelled from the kitchen.
    â€˜Well, bring him along to the show, why don’t you?’ Daisy suggested. ‘I think he’d like that.’ She made a move to go.
    Robert nodded slowly, still standing his ground. ‘Maybe I will,’ he agreed.
    Hettie emerged from the kitchen threatening dire consequences if Ernie didn’t manage to tear himself away from the lovely Daisy, and Robert sent him up to help while he escorted Daisy back downstairs. He parted with her in the public bar. ‘Mind how you go,’ he said, holding the door with exaggerated courtesy.
    â€˜Here, Robert, there’s three barrels standing here waiting for you to tap,’ Duke called gruffly from behind the bar. ‘Never mind the girls, just for once in your life.’
    Robert went off grinning to help his father hammer the brass taps into the new barrels. He took up the heavy wooden mallet they kept on the top cellar step and inserted the first tap with a sharp, expert blow. Then he tapped gently at the bung on the top which would let air into the barrel when they began to draw the beer. It was a skilful job, to be done without loss of liquid and without disturbing the sediment newly settled at the bottom of the barrel. Duke watched and grunted with satisfaction as Robert finished the job.
    â€˜I only hope it tastes better than the last lot!’ Arthur Ogden said sourly, as he slammed his pint pot on the counter for a refill.

Chapter Two
    By 1913, Wilf Parsons, known to all his customers as Duke, had run the pub on the corner of Duke Street and Paradise Court for almost a quarter of a century. He’d seen service in India as a farrier, chosen because of his massive build and his long-time knowledge of horses. His own father had driven a hansom cab, and his father before him. Wilf had been brought up to the ring of iron shoes on the cobbled yard below, and he’d sat alongside his father through the dirty black fogs of many a London winter.
    At seventeen the strong lad had joined the army for adventure, and left it at twenty-five with the usual conviction that the sun never set on the British Empire. Army service had impressed upon him the values of orderliness over impending chaos, sternness in the face of insurrection, and a belief in polishing, spitting and polishing again against all the combined forces of darkness.
    The army had turned him into an upright, impressive young man who didn’t question things deeply. But afterwards he sought a situation minus the constant ‘yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir’ of life in the army. He knew enough to be his own boss now.
    First he must find a wife, and through his father’s family he was introduced to a girl in service with a Chelsea property owner. She was the cousin of a cousin, named Patience, and that was her nature too. Pattie, as Wilf called her, was a drudge to the Chelsea family; a tweeny who was as badly treated by the housekeeper and the other servants as she was by the mistress of the