Dream On (13 page)

If only all
she
had to fret about was the petrol ration. Things were so simple when you were free and single.

Suddenly she sat up.

It was the street door.

She jumped out of bed and ran on to the landing. It wasn't Sid's car, it was Ted's! Ted was home!

Ted rolled off her, turned on to his side and closed his eyes. It was good to be back in his own bed. That tart Lilly he'd been shacked up with the past couple of weeks had really started getting on his nerves. All that old toffee about minders and him having to get out. What would minders have to do with the likes of her? Any idiot would have realised she was spinning him a line. She probably had someone waiting downstairs who was gonna slip her a few quid rent to use her bed while she was out whoring.

He only wished he'd given her a few more hidings. The mouthy cow certainly deserved them.

Ted couldn't stand lippy women like her. Mind you, he put up with Dilys's old bunny often enough, but that was only because it amused him to be having his wife's mate as his bit on the side. It added a bit of spice and he liked that. In fact, if he didn't think they'd both give him earache about it, he'd often thought it'd be nice to get them together some time . . .

A slow smile eased its way over his lips. Now there
was
a lovely thought.

It surprised him, but he'd quite missed Dilys. Come to think of it, he wouldn't mind nipping over the road to her now. She'd be as pleased to see him as Ginny had been and she always got all excited when everyone else was in the house.

But could he really be buggered getting up and going out again? He knew the answer to that: no, he couldn't.

Instead, he rolled over to face Ginny and grabbed her breast. She'd do again for now.

‘Ted,' she said softly.

‘What?' he grunted, annoyed at being interrupted. He hated it when women started chatting while he was doing the business.

‘Please, wait just a minute, there's something worrying me. Something I've gotta tell you. When the police came—'

He levered himself up on to his elbow. ‘This had better be bloody good, Ginny.'

She pulled the sheet up to her chin and nibbled nervously at her lip. How could she put it without upsetting him? ‘It's something they said.'

‘For Christ's sake spit it out, will you? I've been away for a fortnight and—'

‘Ted, they weren't just looking for gear, there was something else. They'd come here to sort of warn you.'

‘What?'

She let the sheet drop and ran her fingers distractedly through her hair. ‘Well, not warn you exactly. But they said you – we – should be careful. They said someone grassed on you. Someone who's got the needle. Someone who's out to get you.'

‘They
what
?'

Ted threw back the covers and grabbed his trousers.

It was that fucking Saunders! He just knew it. Everywhere he bloody turned it was fucking Saunders. Everywhere he'd been during the last few weeks, every face in the East End was talking about pissing Saunders. How he was gonna do this, and do that. Now he couldn't even be in bed with his bloody wife without the bastard haunting him. And, now he came to think about it, maybe Lilly was telling the truth. Maybe he'd even got to her . . .

‘Ted, where you going?' Ginny was standing beside him, not daring to touch him, but willing him not to go.

‘Shut it, Ginny.'

‘Ted, please.'

‘I'm going out.'

‘No, Ted, please. Promise me you won't go out again. You have the bed. I'll go and sleep downstairs.'

Ted replied with his fist, hitting Ginny so hard in the stomach that she collapsed into a heap on the floor.

He stepped over her and wrenched open the bedroom door.

Lilly. He'd show her where messing about with the likes of Saunders would get her.

But not just yet. Ted wasn't stupid, he'd bide his time. For now he'd just have to take his frustrations out on Dilys.

As Ginny heard the street door slam, her tears began to flow once more. It had all been going right: Ted had come home to her, made love, even stroked her hair the way he used to, and then she'd gone and opened her big mouth.

She'd got it all wrong again.

Why didn't she ever learn?

‘
MY ALF TOOK
me to see that new Joan Crawford picture last night, Gin.'

‘No good talking to her, Mavis,' said Dilys, lounging lazily on her high-backed stool, watching the electrical circuits pass slowly by on the conveyor belt, as though they had nothing to do with her. ‘You might as well try talking to the lavvy wall as trying to get any sense out of that one.'

Dilys bent forward and poked Ginny in the arm. ‘In a right bloody dream lately, ain't you, Gin?'

Ginny kept her eyes firmly on her soldering iron as she guided the molten drops towards their target. ‘Sorry?'

‘Nothing.' Dilys flopped back in her chair and rolled her eyes in wonder at the paragon sitting between her and Mavis. ‘You just keep working, girl. All the less for us to do in this bloody heatwave.'

Dilys leaned forward again and spoke to Mavis across Ginny as though she wasn't there. ‘So what was it like then, Mave, her new film?'

‘
Mildred Pierce
it was called.' Mavis sat up straight and arched her eyebrows Joan Crawford style. ‘All about this woman and her right little tart of a daughter. What a cow! Smashing it was.'

‘She's good, Joan Crawford.' Dilys folded her arms and settled back comfortably in her seat.

‘Yeah, but she played a different sort in this film to what she usually does. I mean, I do a lot for my kids – I even put up with their bleed'n' father, and that's something a bloody saint'd say no to – but what she put up with from that little madam. I'd have wound up wringing her flaming neck for her, long before she—'

‘Don't spoil it for me!' squealed Dilys, leaning across Ginny and slapping Mavis on the hand. ‘Oops! Sorry, Gin.' Dilys pulled a mock-sorry face as she saw that she'd knocked Ginny's arm, making her spoil the fiddly bit of soldering she'd been doing so conscientiously.

Ginny shook her head. ‘It's all right, it'll clean off.'

‘Hark at you.' Mavis tutted. ‘You sound just like Mildred flipping Pierce. Putting up with all her old fanny all the time. Have a go at her, Gin. Go on, have her!'

‘She wouldn't do nothing like that to me. I'm her best mate, ain't I?' Dilys grinned, flapping her hand dismissively. ‘And talk about saints; she's Saint bleed'n' Ginny of Bow, ain't you, girl?'

Ginny shrugged, but said nothing; she just got on with her work.

Dilys didn't seem at all put out or embarrassed by Ginny's silence. ‘Come on, hands up,' she chirped, looking along the assembly line, ‘who's going out at dinner-time then?'

A babble of replies came from either side of her.

‘Count me in and all, girls.' Mavis sighed dramatically. ‘My bleed'n' larder's empty again for a change.'

She leaned back and had a quick look along to the glass partition that sectioned off the foreman's tiny cubicle of an office from the rest of the workshop. Satisfied that he wasn't there, she took out her cigarettes and lit one, holding it discreetly down by her knees between puffs.

‘I dunno about the papers going on about sodding bread riots in France,' she went on, somehow managing to blow smoke from her nostrils as she spoke, ‘but I tell you, there's gonna be bread riots in bleed'n' Stratford if I can't get hold of a loaf this dinner-time. My old man's going mad not having nothing to take with him for his sandwiches. And he hates that canteen grub.'

She chuckled happily to herself. ‘Reckons they cook even worse than me, and that's saying something.'

Mavis blew out her cheeks and stared wistfully at her work-roughened hands. ‘You know, I wish the war was still on sometimes and that the ungrateful bleeder had stayed in bloody India or wherever he was. Gets right on me tits, he does. It's like having another kid around the place, getting under me feet all the time and expecting to be waited on.'

‘Watch it, Mave!' someone hissed along the line. ‘It's Himself!'

As the big double doors at the far end of the workshop closed, and Stan the foreman began walking slowly towards the line, Mavis made her cigarette disappear with all the cunning of a skilled prestidigitator and, like the rest of the women in the room, suddenly became fascinated by the work in front of her.

Stan came to a halt by Ginny. ‘What's the chance of you staying late for me tonight, Ginny love?' he asked ingratiatingly. ‘Only I'm right backed up with orders. I've been down in Dispatch and they're going barmy down there. Like raving lunatics they are. And I really wanna get off home.'

He stood there, his fingers linked across his belly, beaming down at Ginny. He was a friendly, elderly man, but he was carrying far too much weight for his height and was really suffering in the summer heat. Just the thought of spending another hour in the oppressively stifling atmosphere of the factory, when he could have been out in his backyard in Plaistow training his latest brood of young pigeons, was more than he could bear to contemplate.

He knew that if Ginny agreed to stay, he'd be able to get away with going home at knocking-off time – something he hadn't had the opportunity to do for months now. Since the war had been over, it seemed that everyone had gone mad for buying things. Any sort of things. And what with all the rationing on clothes and food still, anything else they could get hold of was snatched up as though spending your money was in danger of going out of fashion.

Stan had been pleased at first, very pleased. It was always good to have a bit of overtime to take home to the missus, but lately it was getting out of hand, especially with the choking summer heat. And then there was the racing season. His pigeons were the first youngsters he'd been able to raise since before the war and he was already well behind with them. They wouldn't stand a chance unless he managed to get them into training really soon. But, if he went home, he needed someone to keep an eye on things at the factory, and that was where Ginny came in.

Ginny was not only a good worker, but, if Stan asked her to, she always covered for him if he wasn't around when the governor decided to come down from upstairs and stick his nose in. And also if Stan asked her, he knew he could trust her to make sure that no liberties were taken by any of the others who stayed on.

There was no doubt about it, Ginny Martin was a good kid, and pretty too, which made it all the harder to see her putting up with whoever the bastard was who gave her the regular hidings that the poor little cow was so ashamed of. She'd invented more far-fetched stories than Scheherazade to explain how she got her black eyes, fat lips and split cheeks. She was too soft for her own good, that one. She could do with standing up for herself more. But then she'd probably had all the fight knocked out of her. Stan had seen it all, in his years supervising at the factory, and had become an unlikely authority on women. But it still made him wild to see how some of them lived: girls working their fingers to the bone all week, then their old men pissing their wages straight up the wall on a Friday night and leaving nothing for their wife and babies. The thing was, it never happened to the likes of Dilys Chivers, only to good-hearted kids like young Ginny.

Still, at this particular moment, and from Stan's point of view, Ginny's good nature was something to play on, not to sympathise with.

He put on what he thought was a winning sort of smile and, just for good measure, added a conspiratorial wink. ‘I'd see you all right, Gin. You know that, don't you, ducks. And I know you said you could do with the extra money.'

‘I know, Stan, and I'd love to help you out—'

Stan's face dropped with disappointment. ‘But?'

Ginny rubbed the back of her hand across her sweat-soaked forehead and pushed back her chair, leaving the other women on the assembly line to get on with their jobs of checking and soldering the electrical circuits that passed before them in a never-ending stream. ‘You know I wouldn't let you down unless I had a good reason.'

‘I know.' He looked like a big, sad baby.

‘You could ask Mavis. Or Dilys.' She lifted her chin to indicate the overalled figure of her friend slumped sullenly over the conveyor belt.

Stan opened his eyes wide and let out a huff of incredulity at such an idea. ‘Don't be silly, Gin. Even if I could persuade either of them two not to dash out of here the second the hooter goes, could you really imagine me trusting that pair to keep an eye on things for me? And I could just imagine what old Larkin would have to say, if he came down from upstairs and found either of them in charge.'

He put his big, beefy arm around her shoulders. ‘You sure you won't change your mind, babe? Like I said, I'd make it worth your while.'

‘To be truthful, Stan,' she whispered, making sure that the others couldn't hear, ‘I really wanna get straight home myself. I ain't feeling very well.'

Stan released his hold on her and backed away slightly. ‘Nothing catching I hope.'

Ginny smiled ruefully. ‘I don't think so.'

‘There's only a few minutes to go.' Stan took another step backwards. That's all he wanted, bloody head-cold germs to pass on to his birds. ‘If you ain't well, Ginny, you'd better get yourself off right away.'

‘I'll go with her,' volunteered Dilys almost falling over her own feet in her hurry to leave the line.

Outside the factory gates, there seemed to be even less air than there was inside. At least inside there had been the breeze blowing through the open skylights. Outside there was nothing but traffic, fumes and noise, and crowds of people making their way home from work in the sultry afternoon heat.