Dream On

by Gilda O'Neill

  Ginny shut up immediately and automatically. She had been married to Ted for three years now and, despite keeping hold of her romantic dreams, she was also learning the self-protective habit of doing as she was told.

  ‘Well, come on, if you’re coming.’ Dilys straightened the collar of her jacket and began walking along towards the end of the street with Ginny following obediently behind.

  As they came to the Varneys’ house, the last one before the pub on the corner, they saw Violet balancing on the top of a set of steps, unhooking the bunting from the upstairs window-ledge.

  When Ginny stopped to talk to her, Dilys folded her arms and tutted with impatience. ‘You’ve got one minute!’ she said to Ginny without further explanation.

  ‘Don’t take them down yet, Vi. Leave them up a bit longer,’ Ginny urged her.

  ‘No,’ said Violet flatly without looking at her. ‘I’m taking them down now.’

  ‘Go on, be a devil. Everyone else is. Makes the street look right cheerful.’

  ‘I said, no.’ Violet pulled out a drawing-pin from the window-ledge and dropped it into the pocket of her cross-over apron.

  ‘But why d’you—’

  ‘I’ve had a telegram. This morning. It’s my Bert. He’s dead.’

  Carefully and slowly, Violet wound the bunting round her arm as though it were a skein of wool.

  ‘Funny, ain’t it?’ she said, as much to herself as to Ginny. ‘I was celebrating yesterday ’cos the war’s meant to be over. And my Bert goes and cops it. And I never knew. Dancing and drinking I was, like I didn’t have a care in the world. Don’t make no sense, does it? Don’t make no sense at all.’

  She let the flags drop on to the pavement and buried her face in her hands. ‘The kids don’t know yet. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the poor little sods.’ Her shoulders shook as she began to sob.

  ‘Violet, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

  Dilys, with a look of contemptuous distaste at such a public display of grief, tugged at Ginny’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Gin.’

  ‘Hang on, Dilys.’

  ‘She don’t want us. And we can’t do nothing anyway.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look, me mum’ll be popping out for her errands in a minute. She’ll see to her. You know what Mum’s like.’

  Ginny might have learned not to put up a fight, but she still felt ashamed of herself as she allowed Dilys to drag her away. In fact, she felt so guilty at her own weakness that as they came to the corner of Bailey Street she twisted round and called to Violet, ‘I’ll pop in after work, Vi. I promise.’

  Violet didn’t reply.

  Ginny and Dilys turned into Grove Road and headed for the busy junction with the Mile End Road, walking past the debris left by the rocket attack on the railway bridge that, like bomb-sites all over London, was now blooming with all kinds of gloriously colourful wild flowers.

  As usual, the sight of the pinks and mauves and yellows bursting triumphantly through the rubble brought a smile to Ginny’s face, but they could have been rare orchids and Dilys still wouldn’t have given a damn. ‘D’you know what, Gin,’ she said as they dodged across the broad thoroughfare to the bus-stop by the tube station, ‘you’ve right got on my nerves, you have. I was in a proper good mood this morning and now you’ve gone and upset me. First you keep going on about Ted, then you wanna hang around with bloody Violet Varney and make us late for work. What’s up with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ginny apologised, steering her friend carefully to the back of the queue to prevent her from trying her usual embarrassing trick of pushing to the front. ‘But that poor woman, she must be—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Ginny! No wonder Ted stayed out all night. The way you go on, it’s a wonder he bothered to come home at all.’

  They completed their journey to work in silence, with Ginny wondering how she could find ways of being nicer to Ted so that he would spend more time with her, and Dilys thinking exactly the same.

  By the time they were ready for their midday break, Dilys had at last calmed down. Even though all the girls in the workroom, except Ginny, had been at parties till the early hours, they had all worked flat out on their sewing machines. They were on piece work and if they wanted a decent wage packet on Friday they knew they had no choice but to get stuck in.

  But nobody really minded, especially today. The war was over and boyfriends, husbands and brothers would soon be home; everything would be wonderful again. And the nurses’ uniforms they were making were definitely a lot easier on the fingers than the greatcoats and battledresses they had been sewing for the last few years. The money wasn’t quite so good with the medical clothing, but it was certainly quicker and more pleasant working with the lighter-weight fabrics.

  ‘Where we going, then?’ Dilys shouted over the whine of the machines and the blaring of the wireless, as she tossed another completed tunic on to the pile by her chair. ‘Canteen? Or down the Lane?’

  Ginny allowed herself a little smile of relief; it wasn’t in her nature to like being in anyone’s bad books, but she particularly hated upsetting Ted or Dilys. Along with Pearl, they were the people who mattered most in her life and it really worried Ginny when either of them was wild with her. Sometimes she didn’t even know why they were angry, they just were; it must have been something about her she supposed. She had that effect on Nellie as well at times. She only wished she could figure out what it was that set them off.

  ‘I don’t mind, Dil,’ she hollered back. ‘Wherever you fancy.’

  ‘Down the Lane,’ Dilys decided for them. ‘I could do with buying a few bits to cheer myself up.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Ginny agreed happily. ‘I’ll be able to pick up some veg and that’ll save Nellie having to lug it home from the Roman Road tomorrow.’

  Dilys said nothing, she just rolled her eyes at Ginny’s totally aggravating saintliness.

  After walking through the grim, bomb-damaged streets, with their high-walled, soot-impregnated warehouses and sweatshops, stepping into Petticoat Lane – the local name for the market area around Middlesex Street and Wentworth Street – was like entering a fairground. Stall after colourful stall lined the roadsides of the shop-filled streets, their owners calling a running commentary of jokes and invitations to passers-by to come and look at their wares, be they dark-green, curly-leafed cabbages, or enormous salmon-pink satin corsets.

  Competing with their shouts were the street-corner beigel and herring sellers. Draped from neck to foot in swathes of stained white cotton aprons, their feet in big rubber boots and their sleeves rolled up to show their reddened arms, they dipped into their brine-filled barrels and held up the pickled fish for the customers’ inspection. Then, their sale made, they slapped them into a cone of paper with a couple of the shiny, sweet bread rolls they’d hooked off the tall wooden pegs balanced precariously against the kerb.

  Then there were the less vocal vendors: the sharp-suited men with goods that had somehow been liberated from locked and guarded warehouses, and from the backs of tarpaulin-sheeted lorries. A nudge and a whispered offer to examine their wares was a temptation that few resisted. Even the supposedly upright citizens, those who worked for respectable companies in the nearby City offices and banks, crowded round eagerly to bargain for the illicit contents of the spivs’ battered suitcases and from inside the depths of their lairy jackets.

  But none of these attracted Dilys; she was more interested in a stall selling sewing notions: the ribbons, bows and buttons of the haberdasher.

  ‘What d’you think of these then, Gin? Big enough to go on the front of me new cream swagger jacket, d’you reckon? I don’t like them bone ones on it, they’re too dull.’ She shoved a card of silver-coloured button backs in Ginny’s face for inspection. ‘I could take them in to the Ugly Sisters and get them made up, if I can find a bit of black velvet,’ she said, jerking her head towards the little shop behind the stall. ‘That’ll look the business that will. Black a
nd cream.’

  ‘Don’t be rotten,’ Ginny scolded her, as she visualised the two elderly spinsters who spent their days covering buttons for the steady stream of customers, most of whom were just as uncomplimentary about their looks as Dilys.

  The Ugly Sisters might have been skilled and inexpensive workers, but they were certainly no beauties and had earned their unfortunate nicknames when they had been little more than plain, skinny girls learning their trade at the knee of their surprisingly pretty mother.

  ‘You’re such a bloody hypocrite, Ginny. You know they’re ugly.’ Dilys threw down the buttons, bored with the thought of having to go to the trouble of finding material suitable for covering them.

  ‘Yeah, but it don’t mean you have to be nasty about them.’

  ‘I don’t have to be nasty about no one,’ Dilys said casually, as she strolled along to the next stall, ‘I just like to be.’

  ‘Morning, Mum,’ Ted yawned. He rubbed his hands over his unshaven face, sat himself down at the kitchen table and opened the paper. ‘What’s for breakfast then?’ he asked without moving his eyes from the story on the inside page about the intensifying official outrage over the black market.

  ‘Breakfast?’ sniffed Nellie. She was standing at the butler sink, up to her elbows in an enamel basin of soapy water. ‘More like sodding dinner, you lazy bugger.’

  ‘What time’s it then?’

  ‘Gone half past twelve, ain’t it.’

  ‘It’s what?’ Ted leapt to his feet, sending his chair skidding across the lino-covered floor. He might have been only twenty-five but sometimes he thought he was getting too old for all this carrying on with birds lark. He must have gone out like a light when he eventually got into bed with Ginny.

  He ignored the now overturned chair, reached round Nellie and tipped her bowl of sudsy water straight down the plughole.

  ‘Oi you, that was me hand washing I was putting in to soak.’

  ‘Ne’mind your bloody laundry, Mum. I’m late and I need a shave.’

  Ted was washed, dressed and out of the house within minutes; with his hair freshly oiled and his gleaming white collar held neatly in place with a discreetly striped tie, his hat in his hand and his overcoat slung over his arm, Ted Martin looked a picture of well-presented prosperity. And within less than an hour, he was sitting in a pub not five minutes’ walk from the market where Ginny was doing her best not to aggravate Dilys by taking too long over buying her vegetables.

  ‘So, what’s your best price then, Joe?’ Ted asked, pushing a pint along the bar to the middle-aged man by his side.

  Joe half emptied his glass in a single swallow, brushed the foam from his moustache with a delicate flick of his forefinger and thought for a moment. ‘It’s a lovely little runner, Ted. Whoever owned it took good care of it. Very good care.’

  ‘I didn’t ask that.’ It really got on Ted’s nerves when someone he was trying to do business with jerked him around like some bloody mug punter. If he hadn’t wanted to do this deal with Joe he’d have told him where he could stick it. But although Ted had a temper, he wasn’t stupid; he knew that Joe had the cheapest cars anywhere north of the river, which wasn’t surprising, considering his finely tuned system for acquiring them.

  Joe would nick the motor, get it back to his workshop under the arches in Bow Common Lane, have the numbers changed and any distinguishing marks wiped out, all within a couple of hours; then come up to this discreet little City pub to flog it off to the so-called respectable types – the respectable types with a few quid in their pockets, that is – the ones who made their living pushing pieces of paper back and forward across their big, polished desks, the same ones who flocked around the spivs in the Lane.

  He was a real craftsman, was Joe; Ted admired that.

  Joe knocked back the rest of his pint and stared down at the empty glass. ‘Now let’s see.’ He screwed up his face and scratched the side of his head. ‘Got a fag?’

  Ted tossed his cigarettes on to the bar. ‘Stop pissing about, Joe. You ain’t dealing with a know-nothing knob of a shipping clerk. This is me, Ted Martin. The bloke what’s seen you right for the last few years.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The one what’s got you all them lovely petrol coupons. Remember?’

  Joe stuck one cigarette in his mouth and another behind his ear. ‘Buy us another pint; get us another couple of bottles of that Scotch. The good stuff mind, you can keep the old shit for the mugs. And it’s yours for a oner.’

  A flicker of a smile passed across Ted’s lips as he slapped palms with Joe. An almost brand-new Talbot for a hundred quid! ‘You’ve got a deal, my son.’

  Ted walked out of the pub with his chin in the air and a swagger in his step, every trace of tiredness forgotten. Now he had a decent motor he’d be well away.

  He’d been doing all right up until now, of course, but now there’d be no stopping him. Things were really going to look up. Ted Martin had plans, big plans.

  He was going to be a face to be reckoned with.

  Chapter 3

  DURING THE NEXT few months there were many changes for families in the East End and those who lived in the area around Bailey Street were no exception.

  They experienced home-comings, as husbands, fathers and sons returned from abroad and were demobbed; and departures, as young women married boyfriends newly back from the war and went to live in what were, to them, alien neighbourhoods. The girls were, in reality, moving just a few streets away, but might as well have been going to try their luck at surviving in the depths of the Amazon jungle, such were the ties that cockneys had with their own tight-knit communities.

  Most of the home-comings were, of course, joyful: moments to be photographed, treasured and remembered, but it wasn’t the same for everyone. After the exhilaration of the victory in Europe and then in Japan, the longed-for pleasures of being back home and returning to what had once been normality, had more than their share of pressures and frustrations. Six years of war had changed people. Women had learned to control their own lives, to be the bosses in their own homes; they had earned wages and made decisions and now their men – who, to their children, were sometimes little more than a vague memory and a faded, sepia-toned snap on the mantelpiece – were expecting to take charge again and the women didn’t always appreciate it.

  It wasn’t always easy for the men either. While they weren’t exactly sorry to be away from the danger and the dying, they certainly missed their mates, the routine, the excitement even, and, as they were beginning to realise, they were missing out on a lot of other things as well. The land fit for heroes that they had been promised now all seemed to be a bit of a con. Instead of getting what they had all looked forward to: good homes, decent food and sharing a few pints down the local with the lads, they had come home instead to bomb-sites, queuing and ration books, and wives who seemed more interested in going out to work than in fetching them a cup of tea while they toasted their toes in front of the fire and listened to the Light Programme on the wireless.

  Some of the older residents of Bailey Street weren’t at all surprised by the younger men’s disillusionment and were only too keen to say so, adding dire warnings about the newly elected Labour government for good measure. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t approve of what they were being offered by this Labour lot – who but a fool would refuse the promise of a bright new Britain for all, and most had actually voted for them – it was just that they couldn’t help but think how it was all so reminiscent of what had happened to them after the Great War.

  Promises had been made then too. And they had all been broken, dissolving in front of their eyes like the foam in a wet beer glass. The so-called boom had quickly turned to dust and the brave new world had sunk into the horrors of the 1930s and the Depression. How could they not be wary when their dreams were still haunted by nightmare visions of the workhouse and the shame of being visited by the despised Relieving Officer?

  Sometimes, when Ginny stopped to pass the time of day with
one or other of her elderly neighbours, she found herself sympathising all too readily with their fears about the way the world seemed to be heading, especially when Ted was being difficult – as he seemed to be more and more lately. But she knew that no matter how down she felt at times, it was always best to try and put on a brave face, to keep her chin up and to look cheerful. That way she didn’t upset things even more and it also helped her convince herself that everything would turn out all right in the end. Although it wasn’t always easy to be positive, especially when Dilys was working herself up into a mood.

  ‘I just don’t see why you ain’t bloody furious like I am,’ Dilys fumed, as they waited at the bus-stop on the corner by Aldgate East station. ‘Anyone’d think you’d had a win on the dogs instead of getting the flaming sack.’

  ‘But we’ve not had the sack, Dil, have we? Not really. It’s more like we’ve lost our jobs.’ Ginny stamped her feet to warm them against the damp autumn chill. ‘I mean, you can’t blame old Mr Bloom for retiring, now can you? He must be eighty if he’s a day. And what with the last of the uniform work going . . .’

  ‘Can’t blame him?’ Dilys shook her head in amazement.

  ‘Anyway, this might be just the chance we could both do with. You’ve always said you fancied going on the buses.’

  Dilys’s mood, always unpredictable, took a swing away from gloom and touched on almost optimistic interest. She pouted and swung her shoulders, as she visualised herself in a conductress’s uniform being chatted up by a bus stuffed full of men, all eager to show her a good time.

  Ginny dropped her chin and continued shyly, ‘And what with Ted doing so well, it’s probably as good a time as any for me to start thinking about staying at home and having a baby. I’ve—’

  Shocked back to reality by such treacherous talk, Dilys almost exploded. ‘You wanna get pregnant? By Ted?’

  A large, middle-aged woman standing in front of them in the queue looked over her shoulder at Dilys and stared in scandalised reproach. ‘That’s nice talk for a young girl, I don’t think. In my day, we didn’t even know the meaning of the word.’