Dream On

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘Are you surprised?’ Dilys let go of the lamp-post, swallowed the rest of her drink and took a long moment to balance the empty glass on the window-ledge behind Ginny. ‘We might have seen the flipping thing right at the beginning of the bloody war – flaming years ago – but you’ve gone on about it so much, I know the bleeder off by heart.’

  Ginny was on the defensive. ‘Well, it’s a good story. And I like the clothes, and the house, and . . .’ She paused. ‘I know Scarlett’s everything I’m not, but—’

  ‘Who but you would care about old-fashioned toot like that?’ Dilys butted in. ‘And anyway she didn’t even get the bloke.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Not for sure. It’s like at the end she’s still kept her dream, and—’

  Dilys poked her finger close to Ginny’s nose, her aim as shaky as her inebriated logic. ‘I tell you, you wanna be like me and stick with the modern stuff. Brief Encounter. Now that’s a film. None of that old fanny you go on about. Just a proper good story about fancying having a bit of how’s your father when your old man ain’t about.’

  Dilys tried to wink, but the drink had not only loosened her tongue and ruined her aim, it had also made her eye co-ordination a bit haphazard, so she contented herself with a lopsided grin instead.

  ‘Mind you,’ she continued, her face suddently serious, ‘when you think about it, she didn’t get the bloke either in the end. I don’t understand that, Gin.’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I’d have left my old man like a shot and gone off and, you know, done it, with me fancy piece. Bugger all that being noble lark. Gimme a bit of adventure every time.’

  Ted stretched back on the pillows, yawned and released a rumbling, smelly fart.

  ‘Oi, Ted, d’you mind?’ she wailed. ‘D’you have to be so rude?’

  Ted rolled over, trapping her beneath his muscled forearm. ‘I’ll show you rude.’

  ‘You’re a dirty pig,’ she said, pushing him away with an unconvincing shove.

  He flopped on to his back and grinned drunkenly up at the ceiling, still half cut despite the pubs having closed hours ago. ‘That’s me all right, darling. Dirty.’ Then, smacking the sagging mattress, he sat up and rubbed his face, drawing his fingers slowly down his stubble-covered cheeks. ‘Better be off, I s’pose.’

  She sat up next to him. ‘But Ted, you promised you’d stay with me all night. You said we’d celebrate together.’

  Leaning back and taking his weight on his elbows, Ted considered her prettily pouting mouth. ‘Maybe I could stay just a bit longer,’ he drawled, in a passable imitation of Clark Gable, which immediately had her giggling. ‘But you’d have to be extra nice to me, of course. I was meant to be taking me old woman to a party tonight, so when I say extra nice—’

  The podgy young redhead, who, for the life of him, Ted couldn’t remember taking back to this room wherever it was, didn’t let him finish speaking; instead, she threw herself at him and began covering his face with kisses. She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily, not after the amount of money she’d seen him pull out of his back pocket while they were in the boozer. He must be good for at least another fiver.

  A couple of hours later, Ted lifted the gently snoring girl’s plump arm from across his chest, threw back the blankets and carefully swung his legs out of the bed and on to the grubby rug.

  ‘What is it?’ the girl mumbled in her sleep.

  ‘Ssssh, it’s all right,’ he soothed her, as he scrabbled round in the darkness for his clothes. The room was so gloomy it was almost as though the black-out was still on, but it wasn’t a few yards of cloth that was obscuring the light from the gas lamp in the street outside, it was the layers of grime and soot which caked the unwashed window-panes.

  He had been in some bugholes in his time, but this was something special. The place didn’t want fumigating, it wanted burning down. It made him sick to the stomach to see how some of these toms lived and he didn’t exactly feel proud of himself for winding up in such a dump. He must have had a real skinful.

  Finally dressed, and with the two pounds he had given the girl earlier tucked safely back in his pocket with the rest of his money, Ted started for the door, creeping away from the bed with the practised guile of a stray dog nicking sausages from the butcher’s shop.

  But this time he just wasn’t careful enough. As he reached for the handle, a floor-board creaked and a wail went up from behind him. ‘Ted! Where you going? You promised me you’d stay.’

  Slowly, he turned round to face her. ‘Shut your noise,’ he said calmly, his face creased with disgust.

  ‘But Ted, you did, you said—’

  ‘I said, shut it.’

  ‘Yeah but—’

  He moved so fast that she didn’t even see him raise his fist; the first thing she knew was the pain of her front teeth shattering beneath the full force of his punch and the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth.

  Dilys sat up in bed with a start. It sounded just as though someone was rattling the letter-box. But who’d be doing that in the early hours of the morning? Definitely neither of the soldier boys; they’d cleared off with two sorts she’d never even laid eyes on before. But they weren’t much of a loss, they were a right pair of drips.

  Maybe it was the wind, or she’d been dreaming. She dropped back on to her pillow and pulled the covers up to her chin.

  It could have been a drunk. There were still plenty of those left sitting outside on the kerb when she’d come in to bed and that was the sort of prank that would probably amuse them. But that was hours ago. Surely they’d all have gone home to sleep it off by now?

  Dilys closed her eyes.

  There it was again.

  It was definitely the letter-box. And it was getting on her nerves.

  She slipped out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown and tiptoed across the room, so as not to disturb the rest of the house.

  Lifting the corner of the curtain, she peered down into the street.

  Hardly able to believe what she was seeing, Dilys dragged back the rest of the curtain, raised the window as quietly as she could, leaned out and waved her arms frantically at the person below. ‘Stop it, for Christ’s sake!’ she spluttered. ‘You’ll have the whole flaming street awake!’

  ‘Well, come down and let me in, then.’

  Dilys flew down the stairs with barely a sound, wrenched open the street door and dragged Ted inside. Looking up to the landing to make sure no one had heard them, she closed the door gently behind him.

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re up to?’ she whispered.

  Ted grinned and grabbed roughly at her breast. ‘Quite a lot, I hope, darling.’

  ‘Ssssh!’ she warned him, brushing away his hand. ‘You’ll have them all out of bed. You know you’re meant to tell me when you’re coming over. If anyone hears you—’

  Quite suddenly, she stopped speaking and shrank back against the wall. ‘Whatever’s that you’ve got on you?’

  Her mouth dropped open like a trapdoor as she realised what it was. ‘Ted,’ she gasped. ‘It’s blood. There’s blood all over your hands. And on your shirt. Look at you.’

  ‘You know me, Dilys.’ Ted waggled his eyebrows and pulled her back to him. ‘I can’t help it if I’m irresistible. I have a few drinks in a pub and wind up fighting, don’t I? Blokes get jealous of the way their girlfriends look at me and start having a pop. What am I meant to do? Ignore ’em?’

  He touched his lips gently to hers. ‘You can’t blame them, can you? Handsome bloke like me goes in a place. I drive women wild, don’t I?’ He kissed her again, harder this time.

  ‘I know you drive me wild, Ted,’ Dilys breathed, her hand sliding down his chest, over his taut belly and coming to rest on his groin, where she began opening his fly buttons with practised ease.

  Ted jerked his head towards the stairs. ‘We going up then, or what?’

  Dilys didn’t answer straight away. She stopped fondling him and ran her hands through her hair,
watching his eyes staring into hers. It was always exciting smuggling Ted up to her room in the early hours when everyone else in the street was in bed – including her own family upstairs – it made what they did even better. But Dilys was still annoyed with him for spending most of the night somewhere else; he’d promised her he’d be at the street party. If he was playing away from home, then Dilys wanted it to be with her, and only her, not with some little tart, or worse still with some glamorous sort he’d met up West in one of the clubs he was so fond of.

  ‘You do love me, Ted, don’t you?’

  ‘Course I do.’

  ‘I wore the frock you got me for the party. And I was right disappointed that you weren’t there to see me in it. You said—’

  ‘Look, Dilys, do us both a favour, just shut your noise and get up them stairs, there’s a good girl. Or I might get bored and have to go over home to Ginny instead.’

  Chapter 2

  TED FLAPPED HIS hand in her face, trying to brush her off, as she kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

  ‘Leave off, Dilys, for Christ’s sake. You know I hate all that sloppy stuff of a morning.’

  ‘Sorry, Ted. I wanted to wake you up nice and gentle, that’s all.’

  He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and stifled a yawn. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly a quarter to six. Dad’ll be getting up in about ten minutes, so I—’

  ‘It’s what?’ Ted just stopped himself from shouting. That would have been all he needed, having her dad and brothers bursting in to give him a working over.

  As he threw back the covers and started pulling on his clothes, Ted felt as if he’d gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. He was worn out. What he wouldn’t have given just to have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but he knew he had to get a move on. He might have been getting pretty good at dishing out the kicks and punches, but Ted was definitely against the idea of anyone laying so much as a single finger on him. And in the sober morning light, he didn’t have an ounce of the courage left that his drunken self had had, when he’d thrown his weight about under the coward’s cover of darkness.

  Ducking his head to look in the mirror that stood on Dilys’s chest of drawers, Ted ran his fingers through his hair and barked his orders. ‘Go and see if the coast’s clear.’

  Dilys did as she was told: clambering across the narrow single bed and poking her head out of the door of her little box-room, which stood at the top of the stairs.

  From there she could see that the two other doors – the one to her parents’ room and the one to the room shared by her brothers – were both still closed. It was a routine to which she was accustomed.

  ‘You’re all right. There’s no sign of them.’

  Ted snatched up his jacket, tucked his shoes under his arm and then, pushing past her with a conspiratorial wink and a grin, took the stairs two at a time in his stockinged feet.

  Dilys stood on the landing and watched until he disappeared through the street door, then rushed back inside her room, scrambled across the bed and over to the window and looked out at him as he made the short journey across the cobbled street to the house he shared with his wife and mother.

  Even though the Chivers’ street door was on the jar, Ginny waited politely for someone to answer her knock.

  George, Dilys’s dad, welcomed her with a baffled smile. ‘I’m sure I shut that door last night,’ he said, scratching at his head so that his greying hair, which had until then been oiled into flattened submission, stood up in an untidy fan. He was wearing his usual outfit for that time of the morning: collarless shirt, open and showing his vest; shiny trousers resting on his increasingly round pot-belly; and braces dangling to his knees.

  ‘Must have had more to drink last night than I realised. That or I’m going a bit doolally.’ George chuckled to himself as he stood aside to let Ginny in. ‘Go through, love.’

  ‘Dilys still in bed then, Mr Chivers?’ she enquired matter-of-factly as she walked along the passage towards the back kitchen.

  Although Ginny was in front, George Chivers shook his head as though she could see him – he was used to women having eyes in the back of their heads; he was married to Pearl, after all. ‘No girl, she ain’t. Believe it or not, our Dilys was up and about this morning, singing like a flipping skylark, before her mum or me was even dressed.’

  Now it was Ginny’s turn to be baffled. She stood in the kitchen doorway and gawped. Dilys was indeed up and about; there she was, admiring herself in the flower-etched mirror on the chimney-breast, fiddling about with her compact, tipping her head this way and that, as she considered the effect of the finishing touches she was adding to her make-up.

  George stepped round Ginny, took the couple of steps it needed to cross the little kitchen, and let himself out of the back door and into the yard without another word. Three women chattering away nineteen to the dozen was more than he could take at that time of the morning, especially after the amount of ale he had sunk at the VE do the night before. A visit to the sanctuary of the outside lav was just what the doctor ordered.

  ‘Morning, Gin.’ Dilys greeted Ginny’s bewildered reflection with a cheery wave of her powder-puff. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Told you he’d be back.’

  ‘Eh?’ was all Ginny could manage in reply. She was genuinely confused by this strange turn of events. It was part of their regular morning routine – always – that Ginny came over half an hour before they actually needed to leave. She then spent a frustrating twenty-five minutes coaxing and persuading her friend to get a move on, so that they could get to the clothing factory off the Whitechapel Road where they worked, without being too outrageously late for clocking in.

  Dilys never, ever, got up without a fight, yet here she was, looking as though being out of bed was a pleasure she wouldn’t have missed for the world.

  ‘Blimey, Gin, pull yourself together girl, for Gawd’s sake,’ Dilys said, snapping the lid off her lipstick. ‘I’m talking about Ted. I said he’d be back, didn’t I?’

  ‘Cup o’ tea, Ginny?’ Pearl asked, flashing a warning look at her daughter to both mind her manners and to keep off the subject of Ted Martin. ‘I think the boys left some in the pot.’

  Dilys finished painting her mouth and then sat herself down at the table to straighten the seams of her stockings. ‘They looked as gormless as you, Gin, when they went out just now. You should have seen ’em. Talk about wreck of the flaming Hesperus! But at least they had an excuse, they must have drunk that Albert dry between the pair of ’em.’

  ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night,’ Ginny said quietly. ‘I tried to keep awake for Ted.’

  ‘It bloody shows.’

  ‘We all got to bed late last night,’ Pearl said sternly, narrowing her eyes at her daughter. Then, turning to Ginny she held up the teapot. ‘You having one then, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’d love a cup, please, Pearl.’ Ginny sat down opposite Dilys. ‘How d’you know he was back then?’

  ‘Nosy, ain’t I?’ chirped Dilys. ‘I woke up early see, and I heard a noise down in the street. So I looked out and I saw him going indoors. Lovely bright morning it was,’ she added with, for her, unusually sweet wistfulness. ‘Really lovely.’

  Ginny nodded at Dilys’s explanation, as she took the cup that Pearl was shoving towards her across the oil-cloth-covered table. ‘You was right about where he was and all, you know, Dil. He hadn’t stayed out ’cos he had the hump with me at all. It was like you said, he’d just had a few drinks too many. He met these fellers in some pub over Bethnal Green way and, before he knew what was happening, he was out cold in one of their mum’s armchairs. I dunno if you noticed,’ she added with a sheepish, almost guilty, glimmer of a smile, ‘but he’d had a bit of a fight and all by the look of him. His shirt’s got all sorts on it. I dunno how I’m gonna get it white again.’

  ‘Can’t say as I did notice, actually,’ Dilys said hurriedly. ‘I mean, I was only looking out of me bedroom window. I didn’t say I had flam
ing binoculars, now did I?’

  She reached behind her and picked up her handbag off the green-painted dresser. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking the still half-full cup from Ginny’s hand. ‘We don’t wanna be late, do we?’

  Pearl frowned as she watched her daughter almost skip out of the kitchen. What on earth had got into the girl? Whatever it was, Pearl wasn’t sure she liked it. In her experience of her daughter’s moods, this was probably just the lull before a very nasty storm.

  As they stepped out of the house, Dilys linked her arm through Ginny’s and took a deep breath of morning air. ‘What a smashing day,’ she sighed.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right, Dilys, it is a smashing day.’

  Ginny looked up and down the street and smiled, a smile which came more easily this time, as she took in the signs of last night’s party, still evident all around them. From the empty bottles and crushed paper hats littering the gutter, to the now slightly drooping swags of flags and ribbons draped across the soot-ingrained terraced houses, anyone could see that Bailey Street had had a good time.

  ‘I know I get a bit down now and then, Dilys, but you know how it is. No one said being married was easy, did they? Still, I should have listened to you, shouldn’t I? Ted came home, and he came home to me.’ She squeezed Dilys’s arm. ‘And on mornings like this I’m counting me blessings, ’cos I don’t half love him, you know, despite our little ups and downs. And he was so sweet when he got in. Right sorry he was that he’d got himself tanked up and missed the party and everything. I’ve promised meself I’m gonna be extra nice to him to show him I understand and that it’s all all right.’

  Ginny lowered her chin and added quietly. “Cos if he ever did get fed up with me, I dunno what I’d do without him, Dilys, d’you know that? Soon as I was old enough to realise what fancying a bloke was all about, I started thinking what it’d be like to be Ted’s wife. What it’d be like to set up home together. And then, when me mum and dad—’

  ‘All right. Leave off, can’t you?’ Dilys snapped, pulling her arm away from Ginny’s. ‘There’s no need to go on. Just leave it, will you?’