The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [121]
The Olive Branch was not old, but it was constructed in a cottagey style with cream-washed walls and a tiled roof, that gave it the air of a village inn in the heart of London. A firm of brewers had built it before the war as a public-house, but it somehow managed to give the informal impression of an ordinary house turned into a pub, like one of those country cottages which have a window pushed out at one side of the porch to turn the parlour into a sweet-shop.
The public and saloon bars were on opposite sides of the flagged entrance passage, and both of them looked like parlours turned into bar-rooms. The windows were small, with small panes and wide sills where tankards could be set down among the geraniums. The walls were panelled half-way up and whitewashed above. Oak beams ran across the low ceilings, and the bars themselves were made of darkened oak, with surfaces deliberately full of splits and knot-holes to give the impression of years of use.
Behind the two front-rooms were a kitchen and a store-room, and upstairs were three small but charming rooms for the landlord. Behind the house was a tiny walled courtyard, with seats made out of beer casks for customers who wished to drink outside in the summer, and an ivy-covered woodshed to supply the mellowed brick fireplaces which added to the cosiness of the two bar-rooms.
It was a snug little berth all right, and Joe congratulated himself that it was his. Well – his and Virginia’s, of course. It was her stepfather who had got them the job of managing it for the brewery, but if Joe had not put on such a good show for the old man, he might not have pulled it off.
‘Very man to man, I was,’ he told Virginia. ‘ “You must realize, my boy,” the old duck kept saying, “that you are a family man now, with all the responsibility that entails.”
‘ “Of course, sir,” I said. I kept calling him sir. He liked that. “All I want to do is to make a good home for my wife and baby.” I cleared my throat. A little emotional, I was, when I talked about the baby. He seemed to like that too. Then I looked him in the eye, and put on my sincere face.’
‘What is your sincere face?’ Virginia asked.
‘Like this.’ He opened his dark eyes very wide and set his mouth in a straight line. Virginia laughed, and they laughed together, and he hugged and kissed her in the saloon bar, paying no attention to Lennie, who was rubbing up the fireplace with red brick polish.
Lennie was their assistant, a thin, red-haired boy with a face like a freckled wedge, small wondering eyes, and a shortened leg from the infantile paralysis which had condemned him to spend most of his childhood in irons. Barman, pot-boy, maid of all work, he had worked in the Olive Branch since he left school. It meant more to him than his own home, and he knew its working inside out, and knew the names and affairs of all the regular customers, and could advise Joe on who should be tactfully denied credit. Everyone knew him, and knew his name, and gave him presents at Christmas, and tried to buy him drinks, although he was a teetotaller; a broadminded one, however, with an expert’s aesthetic appreciation of bottles and shining glasses, which allowed him to be tolerant of those who drank from them.
The last landlord, a genial clown, who was largely responsible for developing the popularity of the Olive Branch, had taught Lennie everything he knew, except how to drink a quart of beer in one swallow, before he died of a heart attack half-way between the woodshed and the public bar, carrying a load of wood on Lennie’s day off.
Lennie had loved him. He mourned him deeply, never ceasing to blame himself for having taken the day off, or for not having filled the wood-baskets before he took his day off. Since he had to love the person for whom he worked, he attached his affection to Virginia. He would