Dream On

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘What, have you got a customer for the whole lot?’ she asked, running up the stairs after him. Someone must have a few bob to spare. That should put him in a good mood.

  ‘Just help me shift it out to the motor.’

  ‘The motor?’

  He spun round on the landing and glared at her. ‘What are you? A fucking parrot?’ he snarled. ‘Just do it. Unless you wanna get me nicked.’

  Ted jumped into his car with a muttered warning that, if Ginny knew what was good for her, she was to keep her trap well and truly shut, except for what he had told her she could say. He was going to lie low for a while and he didn’t want her blabbing her big mouth off to anyone. Not to Nellie, Dilys, Pearl, no one. Then, with his car full of gear, Ted disappeared out of Bailey Street with a screech of rubber.

  Less than ten minutes later there was a loud rapping on the front door of number 18. Ginny took a deep breath, nervously patted her hair into place and walked slowly along the passage. Ted had told her what to say; all she had to do was remember it. She could only pray that she got it right. Thank Gawd Nellie was down the Albert. She would just have got herself hysterical and made matters worse.

  Pinning a neat smile on her face, Ginny opened the door.

  As she had expected, it was the police. There was a black squad car parked outside and in the driver’s seat sat a uniformed officer. But what she hadn’t expected were the two smartly dressed men confronting her on her doorstep. From the little she knew about coppers, Ginny assumed they were detectives of some kind. And if they were, then this was no casual warning about selling bent gear, this was serious.

  She licked her lips. Her mouth was so dry, it felt as though she had been eating uncooked porridge. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ she eventually managed to say.

  ‘Mrs Martin?’ asked the taller of the two men, taking off his trilby.

  She nodded.

  ‘Perhaps we could step inside for a moment?’

  Ginny nodded again and stood back to let them in, ushering them towards the front room. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  As she stepped inside the room and gestured towards the matching over-stuffed armchairs standing either side of the fireplace, Ginny hoped they didn’t notice her hand was trembling.

  ‘We’ll be all right standing, thank you,’ said the man who had spoken before.

  ‘Cup o’ tea?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Ginny blinked slowly. She felt as though she were watching a film. Take deep breaths, she told herself. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Ted’s shifted everything.

  Before anyone had the chance to say anything else, the street door was sent crashing back on its hinges and Nellie came hurtling into the room like a lunatic. ‘What’s happened?’ she yelled, grabbing the smaller of the two men by the lapels. ‘Has my boy been hurt?’

  The taller man spoke. ‘Mrs Martin senior?’

  Nellie ignored him. ‘I asked you a question!’ She spat the words into the shorter man’s face. ‘Someone runs into the Albert and tells me there’s a law car outside my house and you stand there asking me my sodding name!’

  Surprisingly delicately, the man unpeeled Nellie’s fingers from his coat and brushed her hand away. ‘No, Mrs Martin, your son hasn’t been hurt.’ He paused and exchanged a brief, smug grin with his colleague. ‘Not yet. But someone’s got it in for him. I think you ought to know that, so you can pass that little message on to him. And whoever it was didn’t mess about. They went straight to the top. Tipped off the Ministry of Food.’

  The other man nodded at him to indicate that he would take it from there. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the Ministry’s campaign against the black market. Well, we’re cooperating with them. There’s road blocks going up all around London. We’re searching lorries, vans, cars. You name it. Shops and restaurants, they’re all being raided.’ He flashed another look at his associate. ‘Aw yeah, I forgot. And houses. They’re being searched too. So if you don’t mind, Mrs Martin – either Mrs Martin will do – I’d like you to show us around the place.’

  Two hours later the house was in a shambles and the two men were putting on their hats ready to leave.

  ‘Satisfied now you’ve upset an old lady?’ wailed Nellie.

  ‘Not really,’ said the tall one casually. Then, turning to Ginny, he added, ‘You will remember to tell your husband that someone’s got it in for him, won’t you, Mrs Martin? The word is that he’s upset one of the big boys. And I reckon they’re right. So I’d watch out if I was you. See, they’re not too fussy how they go about paying someone back, especially when it’s just a little two-bob spiv they’ve got the hump with. They’ll pick on wives, mothers . . . Anyone.’

  With that, he raised his hat and treated both Ginny and Nellie to a bright, sunny smile. ‘Cheerio then, ladies. I’m sure the Detective Constable and myself will be seeing you again soon.’

  At thirty-eight years of age, Billy Saunders was a man in the prime of his life. He was tall, dark, powerfully built, and had a self-assured manner that convinced everyone he was handsome, despite the fact that, on closer inspection, he was more striking, in a rough, almost threatening sort of way, rather than conventionally good-looking.

  He and Johnno, the minder who had been with him on the night he had given Ted a kicking as a reward for his bad manners, were paying an afternoon call on the same dodgy Limehouse pub where it had happened.

  As they walked through the door, a few people looked up, but most of the customers got on with what they were doing: drinking, playing cards, or just staring into their beer. People in that area, so close to the docks and what remained of the bomb-damaged but still secretive world of Chinatown, knew to mind their own business.

  That attitude – as well as the possibility of buying up cheap property – was one of the reasons Saunders was interested in the area.

  Two of the people who did take notice of Saunders and his sidekick were Lilly and Marge, the girls who had inadvertently been the cause of Saunders giving Ted the beating.

  The pair exchanged a nervous glance and hurriedly grabbed their handbags from the bar. The last thing they wanted was trouble; it was hard enough finding pubs that weren’t complete bugholes, where they’d tolerate girls plying their trade. As it was they had to give the landlord his cut. Causing fights could only put his price up even more.

  Billy Saunders, with his most charming smile, took off his hat and walked over to them. ‘Not leaving already, are you, ladies?’

  ‘Er, yeah, we’ve gotta be going, ain’t we, Marge?’

  ‘That’s right. We’ve got an appointment,’ she agreed.

  ‘Shame,’ Saunders said. ‘I was going to make you both a nice little offer and all, wasn’t I, Johnno?’

  Johnno stretched his lips tight across his teeth in regret. ‘He was.’

  Marge immediately put her handbag back on the beer-stained counter. She wasn’t going to let a chance like this slip by. These two looked much cleaner and better off than their usual punters and they might even take them to a decent hotel, instead of expecting to have a quick knee-trembler under one of the slimy, dripping railway arches. She grabbed Lilly’s arm, holding her back. ‘What sort of offer would that be then, darling?’

  ‘I was going to offer you a job.’

  Marge’s face dropped. A job! What was he, barmy?

  Lilly looked relieved. ‘Come on, Marge.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand.’ Saunders turned to Johnno. ‘Fetch a round of drinks and bring them over to that table,’ he said, walking over to the corner of the pub.

  The girls followed him. They weren’t stupid, they knew when they had to do as they were told; there was no one in the pub who would take a tom’s side in the general run of things, never mind against these two big buggers, and especially not after what they’d done to Ted.

  There were two men already sitting at the table that Saunders had chosen. ‘You don’t mind chaps, do you? Only me and the ladies want a bit of privac
y.’ He winked and slipped a ten-shilling note into the nearest man’s hand.

  Without a word, the men moved.

  Saunders sat down on the bench seat that ran along the wall and gestured for the two girls to sit opposite on the rickety, splintered little stools.

  He shrugged out of his camel coat and folded it carefully, setting it beside him as though it were a pampered pet cat being bedded down for the night.

  He looked across at the girls, fixing them with his unusually pale blue eyes. ‘I’m expanding my interests.’

  ‘Aw yeah,’ said Marge warily. ‘What sort of interests would they be then? Painting and decorating?’

  He laughed at her cheek. People didn’t usually give him that sort of backchat, nervously or otherwise. ‘Business interests. Property. Clubs. Mostly clubs at the minute.’

  He paused while Johnno put down a tray of drinks. Beer and chasers for him and Saunders, and gin and orange for the girls.

  ‘Up West, they are,’ Saunders went on. ‘But I fancy setting up one or two out this way, and in a few other spots round the East End. Shoreditch maybe. From the sort of deals I’ve heard are going on round here, and with all the money I’ve seen change hands, I reckon there’s plenty of people with spare dough to chuck about on having a good time. And that’s where you two come in.’

  Lilly and Marge sipped at their drinks, listening in watchful silence.

  ‘I’m looking for pretty girls like you. Girls who know their way round the sort of punters you get in these parts. And that’s why you’re gonna work for me.’

  Lilly’s eyes opened wide and she mouthed something to Marge.

  ‘If it’s that twat Ted Martin you’re worried about, you can forget him. He won’t worry you while I’m around.’ Saunders took a long swallow of beer and grinned at Johnno across the rim of his glass. ‘Even a no-mark like him’s got the sense to keep his head down when he knows he’s in Billy Saunders’s bad books.’

  It wasn’t even six o’clock in the evening, but as Lilly climbed, or rather stumbled, up the bleak, unlit staircase to the top floor of the grubby Stepney boarding-house where she had her miserable little room, her head was spinning as though she’d been out all night.

  Billy Saunders was generous with the gin, she’d give him that. And he wasn’t mean in other ways either. He had told Johnno to see them home as if they were proper ladies or something. Lilly had protested at first, not liking too many people to know where she lived. She’d never been one to work from home unless she couldn’t help it, as you never knew with punters, some of them could be right nasty buggers. But, in the end, she was glad she’d given in. She could never have shifted Marge once the booze got the better of her and she’d passed out on the corner of Salmon Lane. But it was no trouble for Johnno. He’d just hoisted her up on his shoulder as though she were a bag of nutty slack and had carried her all the way home to her flat.

  Lilly smiled drunkenly to herself, as she thought what Marge would say when she told her how she had been carted through the streets like a parcel. And as for the look on her landlady’s face! That was something to behold.

  But after the walk back from Marge’s, having to persuade Johnno that she’d be just fine and then the further effort of getting to the top of her stairs, Lilly was now feeling really groggy.

  She paused in the gloom for a moment, taking deep breaths of cabbage-stinking air, trying to get her balance. Pushing open the door – she never bothered locking it, she had nothing worth nicking – Lilly called huskily into the darkness, ‘Ted. You awake yet?’

  A groan came from the single bed that took up more than half of the mean little space.

  She staggered across the room in the direction of the sound. ‘Ted. Come on. You’ve gotta get up. It’s gone tea-time.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’ve gotta go,’ she slurred. ‘You can’t stay here no more.’

  Ted sprang from the bed as though it were on fire and slapped her hard across the face. ‘What did you say, you dirty little whore?’

  It must have been the drink that made her so brave. Swaying slightly, Lilly took aim, then stabbed her finger hard into his chest. ‘I wouldn’t do that again if I was you, Ted Martin. I’ve got someone looking out for me now.’ She took another step forward. ‘And his minder’s downstairs waiting for me to throw you out,’ she lied recklessly, half wishing that Johnno was still down there.

  After a fortnight of putting up with Ted’s increasingly unpredictable temper, the idea of being shot of him definitely appealed to her, although she still felt bad about chucking him out without any notice. She knew what it was like to have nowhere to go. But he was married – weren’t they all – let him go back to his old woman. ‘I mean it Ted. You’ve gotta go. Now.’

  Ted raised his hand. ‘You stinking, little—’

  Lilly lurched back towards the door, out of his reach. ‘I’ll do you a favour. I’ll go down and say I’m giving you a couple of hours. A chance to sort yourself out. Then I’ll go along to the coffee shop and wait for you to clear off. But I’m telling you, Ted, if you ain’t gone by the time I get back, I won’t be responsible.’

  Holding on to the jamb, she paused, stared down at the faded lino and muttered that there was some grub in the cupboard and a fresh bottle of milk in the sink, then, somehow, she found her way back down the stairs.

  Ginny dipped her chin and yawned loudly. She wanted to put up her hand to cover her mouth, but couldn’t because she was so loaded down with shopping bags. As well as going out to work, keeping the house clean and doing all the washing, Ginny was now responsible for doing every bit of shopping as well. She felt worn out and cold. The evening sky might have been clear and bright, but there was a chill in the air that made her shiver.

  When she had worked near the Lane she had often brought home a few bits and pieces during the week, but it wasn’t so easy now she was working in the factory at Stratford. And getting the bags home on the bus was bloody murder. She would have made do with a sandwich but Nellie always wanted a proper dinner, which was easier said than done since Ted hadn’t been around for the past few weeks, and what with all the queuing and rationing . . .

  Ginny thought with longing about having a proper dinner hour when she could sit down with a cup of tea and the paper instead of standing with a bunch of women all moaning about the price of mince. Sometimes she wondered what things would’ve been like if Britain had lost the war instead of winning it. They couldn’t have been much worse.

  If only Nellie would try to help a bit, no matter how small the effort, at least it would have been a gesture. But there was less chance than ever of that now. Since Ted had gone into hiding from the police, Nellie had been even more of a pain to live with and had taken to going to bed for most of the day. She hadn’t even roused herself for Violet Varney’s funeral.

  Ginny shuddered as she thought what had happened to Violet. How she’d wound up a disease-ridden torn, just like the women who hung around the street corners in Whitechapel. Bad as things might be, Ginny would never let her life get out of hand like that, she’d take an oath on it. She’d never give up, not like Violet.

  Poor, sad Violet.

  Her funeral had been a terrible affair. Martha had organised a collection in the Albert so there had at least been a few flowers, but apart from the neighbours who had turned out to show their respects for Bert’s sake – the man was a war hero when all was said and done – the church was almost empty. And when the undertakers lowered the coffin into the cold, damp earth, Bert had cried silently to himself, doing his best to keep a bit of dignity, but it was obvious that he knew what people were thinking: however had Violet let herself stoop so low?

  Ginny sighed. There must have been another way, surely.

  Violet really must have lost her mind. There was no other explanation.

  Nellie didn’t even have that as an excuse. She was just a selfish, idle old trout, and her not bothering to go to the funeral hadn’t surprised Ginny in the le
ast. In fact, there wasn’t much about Nellie that could surprise her any more. During the four years Ginny had been married to Ted, any illusions she had had about Nellie becoming a mother to her had slowly, but surely, worn away.

  Ginny could only think herself lucky that she was fortunate enough to have someone like Pearl to go to; not that she did very often. Pearl had enough to worry about with her own family. Dilys had always been a handful, Ginny knew that, but now the boys as well – both girl mad, like any young fellers of their age – were causing Pearl aggravation of their own. She certainly didn’t need Ginny bothering her as well. But it was still comforting to know that she was there. A sort of safety net, a last resort if Ginny couldn’t cope any more.

  At last Ginny reached the corner of Bailey Street. She turned out of Grove Road and crossed the street, heading straight for number 18. She had almost reached her front door, when she heard Dilys calling her name.

  Dumping her bags on the step, Ginny turned round. ‘All right, Dilys?’ she greeted her.

  ‘Come over for a minute, will you, Gin?’ whined Dilys. ‘There’s something I’ve gotta ask you.’

  ‘Dilys, I can’t. Really. I’ve just got home and there’s Nellie wanting her tea, and—’

  ‘But, Ginny, I’ve been waiting for you for ages,’ moaned Dilys.

  ‘Hang on.’ Wearily, Ginny reached inside the letter-box, pulled out the key on the length of string and undid the door. She put her shopping bags inside the passage and called out, ‘It’s only me, Nell. I’ll be in to do your tea in a minute, but I’ve just gotta pop over the road first to see Dilys.’

  She dragged herself back across the street to number 11, preferring not to wait for what she rightly suspected would be Nellie’s sarcastic reply.

  ‘D’you know how long I’ve been waiting for you?’ Dilys demanded, pulling the door to behind her, so that nobody inside could hear them.

  ‘Sorry, Dil, but what with Ted being away still, I’m having to do even more hours. Nellie might have the hump but it don’t stop her eating like a flipping horse. And I’ve gotta get the money for grub from somewhere.’