Farewell To The East End

world, eh, Julie?’ And he drifted off into sleep once more.
    Julia sat beside him for several hours; she couldn’t bring herself to leave him. Darkness fell, and the tea grew cold. The noise from the pub ceased at closing time but continued in the street for a while. Raucous shouts and shrill cries grew fainter as the customers wandered or staggered away to their homes. A few tuneless attempts at a song, accompanied by a guffaw of laughter – and then all was quiet.
    Julia fell asleep in her chair, and when she awoke the Master of the Master’s Arms was dead, surrounded by children’s toys.

THE MISTRESS

    I saw pale kings and princes too
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, by John Keats

    Julia was so accustomed to death in her family that she was neither afraid nor surprised when she found her father had died in his sleep. She waited till morning and then called the doctor. When Terry came up with the previous day’s account of sales he questioned if they should close the pub for the day. She thought for a moment and then said no, her father would not have wished it – business as usual. But she told him to put a notice on the bar informing all customers and requesting quiet, out of respect for the Master.
    Two days later a lawyer called. He informed Julia that she was the sole inheritor of the Master’s Arms, of the buildings and all its assets, subject to a life annuity for Mrs Masterton. The will had been made six years earlier. Julia was shattered. The inheritance of the pub had not crossed her mind. If she had thought of it at all, it was only in a vague way, as though a business can carry on by itself. Her first words to the lawyer were ‘What am I going to do?’ He explained that she could sell the freehold to one of the big brewers, and that he would arrange the business side of things for her. ‘You will be a wealthy woman,’ he added.
    Julia was a mere twenty-three years old, and the large inheritance overwhelmed her. When the lawyer had gone she wandered around the flat in a daze. She made her way down to the bar, and the staff and several lunchtime customers came over to her with words of sympathy. She went down to the cellar and looked at the huge barrels, the crates of stock and the bottles lining the walls. It was all hers. She felt numb with shock, and her mind was in turmoil. She returned to the flat and sat for a long time in the window seat overlooking the street. She watched the women gossiping or passing by, many pushing prams, going in and out of the little shops, some now and then making a furtive entry into a pawn-shop. Two barrow boys were arguing over a pitch. She heard children’s voices from a nearby school. There was a street sweeper with his hand-cart. A woman flower-seller trundling along with her basket. A group of seamen in clogs and a Chinaman with a pigtail went past. A woman opposite was scrubbing and whitening her front doorstep. A shopkeeper in his long green apron was sweeping the pavement in front of his store. The lawyer had told Julia that she could sell and she would be a wealthy woman. But sitting in the window and watching the street scene had a calming effect on Julia, and she realised, for the first time, that she was amongst her own people, and that this was where she belonged. The memory of her father’s hard work and pride in his achievement, and that of her grandparents, brought with it a proud and stubborn resolution: she would not sell, she would be the fifth-generation landlord of the Master’s Arms.
    The staff cheered when she told them of her decision, but were dubious, because she was a woman. They had not taken into account Julia’s determination to succeed. Knowing that she was little more than a girl taking on a man’s job, her instinct told her that she would have to be the undisputed boss from the very beginning.
    She immersed herself in the business, taking over her father’s office, and apart from cleaning it up a bit and introducing flowers and some pictures, she changed very little. She poured over the ledgers and on her own initiative drew a graph of sales and purchases throughout the year, which was pinned to the wall, giving an immediate visual record of profit and loss. She familiarised herself with suppliers and visited breweries and distilleries, causing quite a stir among the men, who had never seen a woman publican