Dream On

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘Here, Charlie,’ Tom called, ‘come and have a look at this.’ Tom held up the remains of a china doll and waved it in the air like a trophy. ‘It ain’t even broken or nothing. Well, not much.’

  Charlie scrambled over the rubble-strewn remains of what had once been Ethel Briggs’s outside lavatory to reach his friend. ‘Show us here, Tom.’

  ‘The arm’s a bit cracked and one of its legs has come off, but I reckon we could fix it.’

  Charlie raised his eyebrows in astonishment. ‘What’d we wanna fix a doll for?’

  Tom rolled his eyes and tutted at his mate’s stupidity. ‘So’s we can sell it or something.’

  ‘Right! Here, let’s look for more treasure.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said authoritatively, ‘there won’t be nothing else. We’ve gone over this debris hundreds of times and never found it before. Someone must have dumped it last night.’

  Charlie looked disappointed. ‘I don’t reckon you could mend it anyway.’ He sulked. ‘Look at the state of its hair.’ Suddenly his expression changed. ‘Tell you what’d be good,’ he beamed, ‘let’s go and throw it in the river, see if it floats.’

  Tom grinned back at his friend and, as if a starting pistol had just been fired, they both began running full pelt towards the lighterman’s steps that led down to the Thames.

  Little did the boys realise how fortunate they were not to have searched any further, or they might have found something that would have haunted them for ever: part of the left arm and the right foot of poor dead Lilly.

  The rest of her, unrecognisable from the beating she had taken, was scattered about the bomb-sites of London like so much unwanted rubbish.

  Book Two

  Chapter 9

  May 1951

  ‘ALL RIGHT, GIN?’ Micky Chivers called, as he closed the street door of number 11 firmly behind him.

  Ginny, parking her bags on the step of number 18, looked over her shoulder and called back across the street, ‘Yeah. Fine. You all right, Mick?’

  Micky checked that the door was shut, stuck his hands deep into his pockets and wandered over to her, his shoulders stooped in a self-deprecating slump. Like plenty of other lads in the neighbourhood, Micky had fancied Ginny since he had been tall enough – just – to peer surreptitiously down the front of her blouse. She was a fair bit older than him of course, and she certainly wasn’t like the strong-minded sort of girls he usually went for – in fact she was probably too quiet for her own good – but she was a kind, smashing-looking bird and she definitely deserved a whole lot better than the deal she got from being married to Ted Martin.

  Micky had often talked to Sid about the pair of them getting hold of the no-good bastard and sorting him out once and for all, and on a couple of occasions – soon after their mum’s funeral being one Micky particularly remembered – his brother had very nearly agreed. But then Sid had, as usual, calmed down and made Micky see sense, stressing what their mother had always taught them: it wasn’t right to go interfering in other people’s business, not unless they asked for your help and especially when it was your own sister’s best mate who was involved. But with Micky’s temperament, it wasn’t always easy for him to bite his tongue.

  ‘So you’re doing all right then, Gin?’ he said with a lift of his chin.

  ‘Yeah, not so bad, Mick.’ She shrugged. ‘You know.’

  Micky stood next to her, leaning back against the sooty brick wall trying to look casual. He folded his arms and crossed one leg in front of the other. ‘I ain’t seen much of your Ted lately. Been busy, has he?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s been out and about all over the place.’ She dipped her chin, hoping to conceal her flaming red cheeks. ‘You know what he’s like.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How’s that brother of your’n getting on with his new girlfriend then?’ she asked, hurriedly changing the subject.

  ‘Dunno, Gin. Ain’t seen much of him neither. As a matter of fact I don’t seem to see much of no one lately. Dad’s always down the Albert, or with his pals – he ain’t really got over Mum yet. I don’t suppose he ever will.’ He hesitated, staring down at his boots. ‘Nothing’s really been the same indoors since . . . You know.’

  ‘I know.’ Ginny smiled ruefully as she echoed Micky’s words. ‘We’re a right pair o’ Billy-No-mates, ain’t we?’

  Micky nodded in superficially amused agreement. He had plenty of mates, but Ginny, she didn’t seem to have anyone except Dilys, and she was as selfish as they come. If only he could find the words; this could be a real opportunity. Ginny might have been in her late twenties – probably even getting on for thirty if he was honest – but she was still a terrific looker, and here she was: lonely, obviously fed up and, he would lay money on it, at a loose end on a Friday night. He liked the girl he was seeing at the minute – a feisty little redhead from down the market, just his cup of tea – but surely it wouldn’t hurt to put her off for just this once . . .

  ‘So you ain’t seen Dilys neither, then?’ she said, interrupting his thoughts. She ran her fingers through her mop of dark-blonde curls in an easy, yet unconsciously disturbing gesture that had Micky squirming.

  ‘No,’ was all he managed.

  ‘I’ll have to try popping round the prefab again,’ she said, bending down to pick up her bags in a movement that allowed him one of the tantalising glimpses down her blouse. ‘I ain’t seen her for nearly a fortnight and I’ve got some lovely little bits I bought down the Roman for Susan and all. If I don’t get the chance to give them to her soon, she’ll have grown out of them.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to go round to see the little ‘un myself,’ Micky said in a sudden moment of inspiration. ‘It ain’t always easy though, what with work and that. But tell you what, I could go with you now if you like. I was only on me way to have a few jars with some of the lads from down Eric Street,’ he lied. ‘I’m sure they won’t miss me.’

  Ginny heaved the shopping further up her arm and sighed the sigh of a woman whose time was not her own. ‘That’d have been smashing, Mick, but if I don’t get indoors and do you-know-who’s tea, there’ll be murders. And I’ve got a few jobs to do an’ all. I dunno when I could get away.’

  ‘I heard that!’ came a gruff holler from the other side of the door of number 18. ‘You leave me in here starving to bloody death, while you’re out there sodding gabbing about going to see your mates. What’re things coming to in this house, eh? You tell me that.’

  Ginny rolled her eyes. ‘All right, Nell, I’m coming.’

  She flashed Micky a radiant smile that had his hopes rising and his toes curling. ‘I’ll have to go, Mick. Even though the old trout knows I’ve queued up all me bloody dinner hour to get her tea for her, she still ain’t grateful.’ She chuckled wearily. ‘But what’s a girl to do, eh? If I don’t look after her, who will?’

  Micky shook his head in bemused admiration. ‘You put up with too much I reckon, Gin.’

  She shrugged. ‘Not really, I just like a quiet life. Look, I’m gonna try and nip round Dilys’s later on, when I’ve finished seeing to Nellie and that. I dunno when that’ll be. But give her and Susan my love, will you, Mick? And tell them I’ll be round later.’

  ‘Look, Gin, come to think of it, I’d better not go now. It’s my mates, see. They’ll be expecting me, won’t they?’

  ‘You go and enjoy yourself, Mick. Go on.’ She leaned forward and gave him a conspiratorial wink. ‘But you know, I reckon even I deserve a bit of time off for good behaviour. So maybe you can be me gallant escort round there some other time, eh?’

  Micky grinned at her like a fool. ‘Yeah?’

  She smiled and ruffled his hair as though he was still a little kid, completely unaware of the effect of her touch on him. ‘It’s a date.’

  Levering himself away from the wall, Micky strode along Bailey Street towards Grove Road, whistling away as if he’d just won the coconut.

  ‘Dilys?’ Ginny shielded her eyes with her hand and peered t
hrough the prefab window, then she stretched across and rapped hard on the door frame with her knuckles.

  She knew that nine o’clock in the evening wasn’t the usual time that Dilys would expect her to call, but surely not even Dilys, a woman who could sleep perched on a clothes-line without so much as a dolly peg to keep her attached, would be asleep at this time of night. And Ginny was sure she could hear the wireless playing.

  After what felt like a good ten minutes of calling and knocking, the door suddenly opened.

  It was Susan. She stood there in her grubby little nightdress, with her hair in tangles, clutching the teddy bear that Ginny had bought her last Christmas. She looked as though she had been crying. Was that the noise Ginny had heard?

  ‘Hello, Auntie Gin,’ she said, her tone unusually wary.

  ‘Hello, babe!’ Ginny bent down and scooped the four-year-old up in her arms, trying not to sound worried. ‘Let me have a good look at my best girl.’

  Susan’s bottom lip quivered as she peered at Ginny through tear-dampened lashes. ‘Mummy said I wasn’t to open the door while she was out. I didn’t know what to do.’

  Ginny frowned. ‘Mummy’s out?’

  Before Susan had the chance to explain, Ginny felt someone poke her hard on the shoulder. She spun round, expecting to see Dilys standing there, holding a pint of milk she’d gone and borrowed from a neighbour, or maybe a packet of fags from the pub up by Stepney Green station, but instead she saw a stern-looking woman in her forties dressed in the housewife’s uniform of cross-over apron and cotton headscarf tightly knotted into a turban.

  ‘I’ve seen you round here before,’ the woman said sharply. ‘Friend of her’n, are you?’

  Ginny simulated a smile for the hatchet-faced woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said politely, hugging Susan to her shoulder, ‘do I know you?’

  ‘I’m her neighbour, ain’t I.’ The woman said the word ‘her’ as though it were an insult of the worst kind. ‘I’m Milly Barrington. She might have mentioned me.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘In my day women cared for their kiddies. They didn’t only give ’em a wash when they was expecting visitors. And they certainly didn’t go gallivanting around clubs in cocktail frocks every night of the bloody week.’

  ‘Look here, Mrs Ba—’ Ginny tried to interject, but the woman was in full flight.

  ‘And all that old toffee about her old man copping it out East in the war.’ She snorted disdainfully. ‘I ain’t never heard so much old fanny in all my life. She ain’t never even had no old man, if you ask me. I know a trollop when I see one. And I know a married man when I see one an’ all.’

  She flashed a look over her shoulder as though checking for eavesdroppers, then nodded knowingly at Ginny, narrowing her eyes for emphasis. ‘There’s this one feller what comes round here at all sorts of funny hours. I’ve seen him. And I know his sort and all, believe you me. Dark-haired, really good-looking type of a bloke he is. Always got nice ironed shirts – that’s a sure sign they’re married. And drives a right flashy car an’ all. If I wasn’t a decent sort of a woman, I’m telling you, I’d . . .’

  The woman was still droning on and on but Ginny was no longer listening. A sensation of sickness had flooded her throat. Dark-haired, she’d said. Good-looking. Flash car. No. She’d been through all this in her mind a hundred times before. It was just jealousy making her think the worst. It had to be. Ted not being around most of the time and her having to try to make ends meet and putting up with Nelly, it had driven her to thinking all sorts of crazy things. After all, there must be plenty of good-looking blokes with flashy cars. Of course it wasn’t him. But if she didn’t pull herself together she’d end up going round the bloody bend and winding up in Banstead.

  ‘Look, Mrs Barrington,’ Ginny broke abruptly into the woman’s monologue, ‘I dunno why you think any of this is your business, but I’m here to look after Susan now, so if you don’t mind I’ll take her inside and get her into bed.’

  With that, Ginny stepped inside the prefab, with Susan held tightly against her, and shut the door firmly in Milly Barrington’s flabbergasted face.

  Ginny smoothed the eiderdown under Susan’s chin, kissed the sleeping child gently on the forehead and tiptoed from the bedroom.

  By the time she had moved the few feet along the hall and into the front room, she was trembling with rage. If Dilys had been there, she would happily have throttled her with her bare hands. Whatever had got into her, leaving Susan alone like that? And in such a state. The poor little love was filthy.

  After Ginny had washed and changed her; it had taken her almost two hours to reassure her that she wasn’t going to be abandoned again.

  But from what she had gathered from Dilys’s big-mouthed, nosy parker of a neighbour, it was no wonder she was nervous – it obviously wasn’t the first time she had been shut in the prefab all alone with nothing but her teddy for company and a warning not to answer the door. Dilys was lucky no one had called the welfare people out.

  Why hadn’t she asked her to sit with Susan? She knew Ginny was always only too pleased to spend time with her – well, whenever she could get away she was. But then again, if that Barrington woman was telling the truth, it sounded as though Dilys was up to all sorts and probably wanted to keep her gallivanting to herself.

  Guilt and anger rose up in Ginny’s throat until it nearly choked her; she thought of herself back in Bailey Street, pandering to Nellie just so she could have a bit of peace and quiet from her moaning, while all the time little Susan was here, huddled up in her bed, alone and terrified. She’d have to try and find a way to see her more; Nellie would just have to lump it.

  Ginny felt the tears prick her eyes. If it wasn’t for her, Susan probably wouldn’t know what being loved was all about.

  She flopped down on to one of the burgundy uncutmoquette armchairs that one of Dilys’s mysterious ‘friends’ had come up with – part of a three-piece suite that made Ginny’s furniture look as shabby and drab as the gear they’d made do with down in the air-raid shelters – lit herself a cigarette and sat smoking in the darkness, waiting for Dilys to come home.

  She stifled a yawn and reached, yet again, for her cigarettes.

  At least it was a Friday night and she wouldn’t have to get up for work in the morning, she thought to herself, as she watched the shadows of people walking home from the local pubs flickering past the windows. It must be chucking-out time, but there was still no sign of bloody Dilys. Where the hell was she? She was going to give her a piece of her mind when she eventually decided to show her face. Not that she’d take any notice.

  Dilys never took notice of anyone; even when they’d been kids at school she’d always got her own way, and whenever she’d caused trouble it was always someone else who got blamed by the teacher. Maybe if Dilys had been brought up in number 18 Nellie would have been a match for her . . .

  Nellie. Going home to face her was another bloody nightmare to look forward to. Despite the fact that Ginny now tried to ignore her as far as was humanly possible, the thought of the ear-bashing she knew she had to look forward to when she eventually got back to Bailey Street made her groan out loud. And if Ted had decided to come home for once she’d really be in for it.

  From the look of things, she wouldn’t be getting back there this side of midnight. That was if Dilys actually condescended to come home at all.

  Ginny was shocked out of her musings by what sounded like someone trying to break in. She was immediately on the alert, her protective instincts towards Susan making her grab the poker from the companion set and stand there poised, ready to strike any intruder fool enough to try and invade the home of the child she was there to protect.

  The tautness in Ginny’s body relaxed, and she let out a relieved sigh, as she recognised the voice cursing the stupidity of the street doorkey and the even stupider lock.

  Ginny made a dash for the hall to put a stop to all the noise before it woke Susan. ‘Dily
s!’ Ginny hissed through the letter-box. ‘That is you?’

  ‘Who the fuck d’you think it is?’ Dilys hissed back. ‘Sodding Lady Docker?’

  As Ginny straightened up she winced; while Dilys might never have had what could be called a dainty mouth, her language lately would have made a sailor blush.

  There was more fumbling and rattling.

  ‘Here, Ginny,’ Dilys said, more loudly this time. ‘What you doing round here this time of night? And why ain’t you got the poxy light on? I can’t see a bastard—’

  Ginny jumped clear as the door flew back on its hinges, the lights suddenly blazed and Dilys fell into the hall at her feet.

  The combined stench of booze, stale cigarette smoke and too much expensive French perfume was stifling.

  Ginny had planned to have a go at Dilys, to demand to know exactly what she thought she was up to, but she decided that could wait until later; for now, the best course of action was to humour her. Much as she wanted to bring up the subject of Susan being left alone, the last thing she wanted was for Dilys to start hollering and hooting – she had a voice on her like a foghorn in a peasouper at the best of times, never mind when she was half cut. And Susan had already had more than enough upset for one day without hearing her mother’s drunken screeching.

  ‘Your neighbour said you’d had to pop out,’ Ginny said, following Dilys as she staggered her faltering way into the sitting-room.

  ‘Neighbour?’ asked Dilys, clinging to the sideboard for support as she twisted round to confront Ginny through puffy, red-rimmed eyes. ‘What sodding neighbour?’

  ‘Milly Barrington.’

  ‘Her, the nosy bastard.’ There was real venom in Dilys’s voice. ‘If she didn’t have a face like the back of a trolleybus maybe she’d have a bit of a life of her own and stop sticking her oar in where it’s not wanted.’

  Dilys’s attention, never having much in the way of a span at the best of times, wandered from her neighbour to the more immediate, and therefore more graspable, question of Ginny. ‘Did I ask you round or something?’ she asked, dropping down on to the sofa.