Dream On (3 page)

Ted Martin was also lucky on another count: ordinarily, Pearl would never have let him across her doorstep. Unusually for a woman as generous and loving as her, she'd always found it difficult to take to him. She'd watched him grow up in the house right across the street and had seen a spiteful, selfish streak in him even as a little boy – probably not surprising with a mother like his – and she had been happy to avoid having anything to do with him. But when she'd opened her front door that night and had seen him with his arm folded round Ginny's shoulders, Pearl couldn't turn him away. She wouldn't have seen a dog left out on a night like that. And then later, when he'd told her what had happened, Pearl had actually been quite impressed by how well he was handling young Ginny's terrible shock. She resolved to try to see the good in him from then on and Ted had pleasantly surprised her – for a while.

But the occasions on which Ted Martin showed his decent side were becoming rarer and rarer and, try as she might for Ginny's sake, Pearl found it harder and harder to find excuses for his behaviour. It broke her heart to see the way Ted was turning out, and as for the way that Nellie was treating her daughter-in-law, sometimes it beggared belief that Ginny could put up with it. Maybe if she hadn't been put through so much, if she hadn't been left feeling so completely alone, maybe then she might not have been so quick to marry into such a family. But although Pearl had come to have feelings for Ginny that were almost as special as those she had for her own children, Pearl wasn't an interfering woman and it was really none of her business what went on behind the street door of number 18. She'd leave meddling to the likes of Florrie Robins. It would be an entirely different matter, of course, if Ginny ever came asking for help, then Pearl would be over there like a shot; or even if it was her Dilys who'd got herself hiked up to the no-good so-and-so. But her daughter wasn't even married. More was the pity. With so many young men lost, whatever would happen to girls like Dilys?

Pearl sighed and shook her head at the thought of it, but common sense, past experience and bloody awful, grinding necessity told her that it was no good fretting about things like that. She wasn't the sort to dream, she was the sort who pulled herself together and got on with the job at hand, no matter what it was. And, right there and then, Pearl's job was spreading marge.

‘Dilys, you and Ginny take these ones what I've done on the trays and start dishing them out on to them dinner-plates.' Pearl waved her knife to show where she meant.

The two young women did as they were told, Ginny silently and Dilys with eyes rolling and tongue clucking in complaint. Dilys would much rather have been helping the men. Especially the couple in uniform, who were staying along the street in the Albert with their Aunt Martha and Uncle Bob. Dilys had been dying to talk to them since she'd first set eyes on them that morning. It was driving her mad having to waste her time hanging around with all the old girls.

‘That's that done, thank Gawd,' said Dilys, shoving the pile of empty trays under the table.

‘Don't leave them there, Dil.' Ginny bent down to retrieve them from beneath the layers of sheeting. ‘Someone might hurt themselves.'

Dilys made no effort to help her. ‘Fancy going along to the Albert to see if we can do anything for Martha?'

‘You go, I'll just take these trays back to Pearl.'

‘Suit yourself.' Dilys shrugged, then flicked back her thick dark hair and wiggled her way along the street towards the pub, targeting the two young servicemen as surely as a darts player eyeing up the bull.

The party turned out to be a real success. Everyone was in just the mood to celebrate: looking forward to the dawning of the wonderful new world where families would be reunited, where there would be plenty of everything for everyone and, as soon as Japan was sorted out, fighting would be at an end for ever.

Everyone was in the mood, that is, except Ginny.

As she leaned back against the soot-blackened wall of the terrace, watching the now drunken dancers whirl around outside the pub in the flickering light of the bonfire burning on the bomb-site opposite, Ginny had none of their optimism. All she could feel was disappointment.

Plenty of others had had their own share of disappointment, of course: loved ones still abroad and fighting in the East; husbands and sons still being held in camps; or, worst of all, no loved ones left, just black-crêpe-swathed photographs on the sideboard that would have to take their place for ever.

But Ginny's disappointment was different. She had married Ted Martin and that didn't get her sympathy so much as pity. After all, her husband was not abroad fighting and he was still, as far as she knew, very much alive – or at least he had been when he'd left home yesterday morning on ‘a bit of business', whatever that was supposed to mean. But with the pain he was causing, he might as well have been amongst the missing. Ted Martin had let her down yet again. Increasingly, he made his own rules, deciding what was or wasn't important and, unfortunately, Ginny seemed to come very low down on his list of priorities lately. But even though he thought only about himself and did exactly as he wanted, the trouble was, Ginny still loved him, loved him with all her heart. He was all she had, he was her life. That's why it was so hard for her to bear. She had had so many hopes for their future together; now it began to seem as though they were nothing more than a handful of girlish dreams. But they were dreams she had to hold on to. What else was there?

‘Come and have a dance with us, Gin,' slurred Dilys, weaving towards her, a half-empty glass of something slopping about tipsily in her hand. ‘I'd rather dance with a feller.' She grinned as she flopped back against the wall next to her. ‘But there ain't too many of them about here tonight, are there?'

She waved her glass in the direction of the pub. ‘There's a flipping queue up there for them two soldier boys. And when you start talking to 'em, you know what? You realise that's all they are: bloody boys. Give me a man every time, I say. Fellers more in their sort of mid-twenties. Like your Ted. They're more my cuppa tea. Men with a bit of experience.'

Ginny said nothing.

‘There'll be plenty of 'em around soon enough though, won't there?' Dilys went on, oblivious of the tears that had started to spill slowly down Ginny's cheeks. ‘Soon as they get this demob lark sorted out, there'll be plenty for everyone. And add in a few of them GIs for good measure and it'll be flipping paradise.'

She nudged Ginny in the side and giggled. ‘Till then, Gin, I'll have to make do with you for me partner. Come on.'

‘Leave me alone, Dilys.'

‘What's up with you this time, humpy? Even bloody Nellie's smiling.' Dilys sniggered wickedly. ‘Reckon she's forgot all about seeing something nasty in the black-out, eh, Gin?'

Ginny couldn't help herself; she turned on Dilys. ‘It's not funny, Dilys. I know everyone's having a good time and I don't wanna spoil it or nothing, but how can I join in, while he's off Gawd knows where? Look at me, I'm only twenty-two years of age, a married woman, but I might as well be an old maid.'

‘You ain't gonna start going on about Ted again, are you? Why don't you give it a bloody rest?'

Ginny shrugged wretchedly. ‘How can I?'

‘Leave off, Gin. You know what blokes are like when they get going.' Dilys waved her arms about expansively as though the street were packed full of men, all standing there just waiting to illustrate her theory. ‘The silly buggers have about ten pints too many and wind up drunk in a gutter somewhere.'

‘Some blokes, maybe.'

‘Well, to be honest, Gin, if you can't let a feller celebrate tonight, then when can you, eh? I mean, who wants a man what's tied to your apron strings? You wait and see, he'll sober up and be back home before you know it, with a head on him like a sore bear and not the foggiest about what happened to him.'

Satisfied that her words of wisdom had had the desired effect, Dilys grabbed Ginny by the arm and began hauling her along towards the pub. ‘Come on, we'll get a few drinks inside you, we'll have a bit of a dance and then, you trust your Auntie Dilys, you won't know yourself.'

Just as they reached the pale pool of light coming from the street's single lamp-post, with three doors still between them and the tantalising draw of the Albert, Ginny pulled away from her friend. ‘No, Dilys, I can't. I'm going back indoors.'

‘You're
what
?'

‘I wanna be there when Ted gets back.'

‘Eh?'

‘Look, I don't wanna upset him again by being out here at the party, all right? And we've gotta get up for work tomorrow, remember.'

‘Work? Work?' Dilys looked horrified. ‘I do not know what gets into you half the time, Ginny Martin. You must be mad, it's the only answer. You wanna be like me, girl. Start living for today. Forget tomorrow, forget yesterday. Just live for today.'

‘It's not as easy as that.'

‘It could be if you bloody well tried.' Dilys's knees wobbled and she grabbed at the lamp-post for support, shaking her head in despair at her friend's obvious insanity. ‘Know the trouble with you? I'll tell you. You're always sodding mooning about. It's like you and that bloody old film.' She paused for a moment, doing her best to gather her drink-befuddled thoughts into something approximating sense. ‘You know. That load of old rubbish.'

‘Dilys . . .'

‘
Gone With the Wind
.' She sneered with distaste as she remembered. ‘That's the one. You go on and on about that Scarlett tart, or whatever her name is. I wouldn't mind, but anyone with any brain in their head could tell you it's that other dopey mare what you're a dead ringer for. That bleed'n' goody-goody.'

‘Melanie.'

‘That's her!'

‘I thought you said it was a bloody old film and to forget the past. But you seem to know enough about it.'

‘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.