Dream On (36 page)

‘Actually,' Dilys said, wiping her perspiring forehead on the back of her hand, ‘I'm a bit warm if you don't mind, Nellie. In fact, the heat from this oven's scorching me legs so bad that I don't know how much longer I can carry on. And if I pass out, we won't have no dinner.'

Nellie puffed out her cheeks and made irritating little puttering sounds through her pursed lips. ‘I wouldn't say no to a little drop of something in me tea then,' she whined. ‘Something to warm me through a bit like.'

‘I'm sure Ted wouldn't mind if you had a drop of his scotch,' said Dilys pointedly, as she tipped a pile of salt on to the meat and rubbed it furiously into the latticework of cuts she had made.

She would have loved to have said no to the old dragon, but the chance that she might drink herself back to sleep was an opportunity she really couldn't afford to miss. ‘Why don't you help yourself?'

Reluctantly, Nellie shifted herself just enough to reach the whisky bottle that stood on the side by the stove.

‘Shame you don't talk much to them brothers o' your'n no more,' she said, topping up her cup until the liquor-laced tea sploshed over the side and into the saucer. ‘Them wives of their'n have been filling that house with grub for weeks now. I've been watching 'em, going back and forward with bags bulging with gear. They'll be having a lovely do back in Bailey Street. Plenty of money them boys must be bringing in. Plenty.'

Dilys sank her teeth deeper into her lower lip and slapped the joint unceremoniously into a roasting tin. She wouldn't rise to her. She wouldn't.

But even if Dilys had been fool enough to say something, there'd have been little point because Nellie wasn't in the mood to listen to anyone. She was off and in full flight. And on her favourite subject – other people's mistreatment of her, a poor old girl that no one gave a bugger about.

‘And that sodding Ginny. She's another one. After how good I was to that ungrateful bitch. What does she do? How does she repay me? Sends sodding gear round for that kid o' your'n that's how. And cuts me dead. Like a knife to my heart that was. How about me? That's what I say.' Nellie glugged back a mouthful of her tea.

‘Mind you,' she went on, her devious mind on overtime, ‘it must have saved you a few bob, her buying all them presents for the kid. You ain't had to buy a single thing for her, have you? Not a single, solitary thing. You dunno how lucky you are.' She swallowed another whisky-fortified mouthful. ‘Maybe you should have spent the dough you saved on getting a bigger bit of pork.'

Dilys's blood boiled. Nellie knew they were lucky they had anything on the table at all, seeing as her darling Ted had, as usual, ‘forgotten' that he had promised to bring in all the food from some bloke he'd met. In fact, if the butcher's stall up on the Waste hadn't had this pathetic bit of meat left last night, they'd have been having a tin of corned beef for their Christmas dinner.

As if reading Dilys's thoughts, Nellie's next target was her son. ‘And then there's bloody Ted,' she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. ‘Fancy him going amongst the missing again. Disappearing on Christmas Eve like that. Who'd believe it of your own flesh and blood? And without leaving his old mum so much as a sodding box of hankies. Don't no one think of buying nothing for an old woman at Christmas time no more? And you know what'll happen next, don't you? That kid of your'n'll be moaning and groaning.' Nellie screwed up her face into an ugly travesty of a hurt child. ‘I want my daddy. Where's my daddy?'

Nellie's cruel impersonation could not have been further from the truth. Susan, a six-year-old who was already well used to her own company and to getting herself up and dressed every day, had been outside, solemnly and industriously constructing a snowman, since she had first opened her eyes to the strange early morning winter light over an hour ago.

Satisfied with her efforts, she was now ready to go in, and was fumbling with ice-numbed fingers for the doorkey she had worn around her neck on a piece of string since she had been barely four years old.

As she trotted into the kitchen, her eyes and face lit up with pleasure; when there were other adults around, her mummy was usually nicer to her than if they were alone. ‘Hello, Nanny Nellie, I didn't know you was up yet. D'you wanna see what things I got in me stocking? And I can show you me snow—'

Nellie recoiled. ‘Get off! You're all wet. And I told you before. I ain't your nanny.'

‘But Mummy said—'

‘And
I
said . . .' boomed Nellie.

With a wisdom far beyond her age, Susan dropped her chin and said very softly, ‘I'm sorry.' Then she backed away and disappeared into the front room to play with the lovely china tea-set that Father Christmas had brought her.

‘Queer sort of kid,' sneered Nellie. ‘Too quiet for my liking.'

She lit herself another cigarette, again without offering one to Dilys. ‘What a fine bloody day this is turning out to be.'

‘And a happy sodding Christmas to you an' all,' Dilys muttered, slamming the dish into the oven and whacking shut the oven door, wishing with all her heart that she was anywhere in the whole wide world except in a poxy prefab in Stepney, and with anyone in the world but her bloke's bloody mother and her bloke's sodding kid.

She would have been unhappier still, had she known what Ted had been up to.

A couple of hours before Dilys had even opened her eyes, Ted had been following a heavy, mousey-haired woman up an unlit stairway.

‘You can stay all night if you want,' she giggled over her shoulder. ‘As a Christmas treat like.'

‘What, the old man not docking till tomorrow?' Ted asked, grabbing a handful of her plump backside.

‘Get off, you cheeky sod! And anyway, I ain't married, am I?'

She pushed open a door and they stepped into a pitch-dark room.

Ted began tapping around the wall, trying to find the switch to turn on the light.

‘We don't want that on,' the woman breathed. ‘Let's be romantic.'

She fiddled around until she found the switch to a frilly table lamp shaped like a crinoline lady on a swing. When she turned it on, the bulb was so dim, all it illuminated was a pale, red-tinted circle around its base.

Ted squinted in the gloom. Where the hell had he fetched up this time?

When he'd picked up the woman, in the dark side-street outside the spieler where he'd been playing cards and drinking, he didn't have a clue where he was. Hackney Wick way, he reckoned, but it could have been as far away as Stoke Newington. He'd been out pub-crawling till closing time and then doing the rounds of the tatty little unlicensed drinking and gambling clubs for hours. Anything to get away from bloody Dilys and his mother, moaning on about why he hadn't brought home the stuff they reckoned he should have done, because it was sodding Christmas Eve.

But after a while the Christmas spirit had caught up even with Ted, and he had been more than happy when this friendly sort had asked him up to her place to help celebrate the season of goodwill.

‘How about a little bit of music?' she suggested, swinging her fleshy hips as she crossed to the corner of the room, where an old-fashioned wooden wireless set had pride of place on a little bamboo table.

Music? What was the silly tart going on about? He hadn't come here to have a poxy dance.

She found a station playing suitably festive music – a three-part women's harmony group singing ‘I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus'.

‘I love this one, don't you?' she giggled. ‘But it's a bit too loud. We don't want no distractions, do we?'

She twiddled with the volume control, lowering the sound until it was a barely audible background hum, then turned round and held out her arms to Ted. ‘How about a kiss for me then, Santa?'

Ted moved towards her. This was more like it. But even though he was half plastered, Ted's instinct for trouble and self-preservation was still operating on full power. He stopped dead in his tracks.

‘What's that noise?' he asked, visions of angry husbands, punched noses and pain filling his mind.

‘It's only me little sister,' the woman said hurriedly. ‘I wasn't planning on working tonight, not as it's Christmas like, so I said I'd mind her.'

Ted let the bit about ‘working tonight' pass – he wasn't stupid, he'd realised straight away she was a tom and had already decided she wasn't going to be paid anyway – but he was more interested in the idea of a little sister.

‘How old's she then, this little sister?'

‘What?' The woman wasn't sure if he meant what she thought he did.

‘Much younger than you, is she?' Ted leered. ‘I get on well with young 'uns.'

He did mean what she'd thought.

‘Leave off, she's just a kid.'

‘Come on, it'll be a real Christmas party with the three of us.'

‘Mum?' he heard a voice, thick with sleep, call from the doorway. ‘Can I hear a man talking? What's going on?'

Ted grabbed hold of the woman's arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. ‘What's she mean,
Mum
? You said she was your sister.'

With his other hand, Ted reached behind him and found the switch to the overhead light. ‘Jesus!' he fumed. ‘How old are you?'

‘She's forty-nine,' the girl wailed, shielding her eyes with her arm against the sudden glare.

‘Forty-nine?' Slowly, Ted shook his head. As he looked at the woman, his face contorted with revulsion, twisting into a mask of sickened contempt – not only at the woman but at himself for sinking so low. He saw in her all the women he hated. All the women who had caused his life to fail. All the women he wanted to get rid of. ‘You're old enough to be my fucking mother!'

‘Look, just get out,' the woman said, reaching out to snap off the light and returning the room to darkness – her irrational need to hide her raddled looks from the man who was not only insulting her, but was really hurting her arm, overcoming even her fear of him.

‘You filthy, dirty whore.'

In a flash of explosive hatred, the madness inside Ted was unleashed.

With his teeth clenched as though they'd been bolted together, Ted pounced on the woman with the ferocity of a wildcat bringing down an antelope.

Try as she might, there was nothing the young girl could do to stop him, as he rained punches, slaps and kicks across her mother's twisting and writhing body.

When the girl returned to the room, still barefoot and in her night-dress, covered in snow and trembling with terror and the icy cold, with the only neighbour she had managed to awaken during the early hours of Christmas morning, she turned on the light and stared.

The shell of what had once been her mother lay in a bloody heap on the floor. An ugly, abandoned rag doll.

The young girl started screaming, screaming as though she would never stop.

DILYS WAS CHEESED
off.

As she sat at her dressing-table, her mouth set in a stem, straight line, her arms folded rigidly across her chest, staring gloomily into the mirror, she listened to the annoying cut-glass drawl of the radio commentator wittering on and on about: the huge crowds! the enthusiasm! the fun! and (considering the damp weather!) the general, all-round, bloody good time that every other bugger in the whole sodding world but her seemed to be having.

Hoo-bleeding-ray.

She hoped they choked on it.

Dilys had briefly entertained a vague hope that Ted would turn up at the last minute and announce that he was whisking her off to some exciting do or other that he'd got tickets for. But she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him for days – surprise – so that was off the menu.

It just wasn't fair; even Susan – a six-year-old – was out enjoying herself. All right, she'd only gone to the Coronation party in Bailey Street, but she was still out. Like every other bugger in the whole pissing country, according to laughing boy on the wireless.

And what was
she
doing? She was sitting here, with no one to answer to, free as a ruddy bird, but nowhere to bleeding well go.

She picked up her hairbrush and aimed it at the radio set. She missed.

It wasn't as though her brothers and their smarmy, perfect little home-making wives hadn't invited her along to the Bailey Street party with Susan. They had. And Dilys had sort of said that she might be going. But when it came to it, she hadn't even bothered getting herself done up when she'd gone round there to drop Susan off a couple of hours ago. She just couldn't bear the thought of spending the whole day with that pair of self-satisfied bitches. She knew exactly what it would be like: bloody purgatory.

They would talk non-stop about how, after their father-in-law –
her
dad, mind – had died, they'd got
her
brothers to divide the old place in Bailey Street into two ‘dear little flats', and how they now had plans to turn them into ‘little palaces'.

Palaces! What was so bad about number 11 staying the way it was? That's what Dilys wanted to know. Maybe it had got a bit run down since her mum had got herself killed in that stupid accident, but the way that pair of dopey tarts carried on about having to rip out this, and panel over that, and cover every bloody surface in ‘contemporary' bleeding fabrics and sheets of flipping Fablon, it made Dilys want to smack them round their smug, simpering faces.

Housework and home-making, it was all they ever talked about. And what was worse was the
way
they talked about it. They acted as though Dilys was a bit dim and needed helpful hints on the right way to run a home. As if she didn't have better things to do than sodding polishing and ironing.

She probably wouldn't have minded quite so much if they had been older than her, but both her sisters-in-law were only in their early twenties, a good five or six years younger than she was, yet they carried on like old women. Always fussing about in their frilly aprons, cooking and cleaning, and smiling and twittering away like a right pair of old trouts.