Dream On (42 page)

‘They're out slumming, if you ask me. But wherever they come from, I'll tell you this, all the customers have got money, whether they've earned it from some posh job in the City, been born to it, or robbed it from a bank. Mind you, from some of the things you hear them saying, I don't know that there's a lot of difference between some of the so-called honest ones and the crooks.'

Ginny took a gulp of tea and a bite from one of the tiny crustless sandwiches. ‘You'd have been proud of me the other night, Leila. I'm not the soft touch I used to be.'

‘I can see that,' she answered quietly.

‘See, when I realised one of the girls was working a spinner—'

Leila's eyebrows shot up. ‘A spinner?'

‘Fixing the roulette wheel.'

‘I know what it means, I'm just surprised that you're familiar with the term.'

‘I'm familiar with all sorts now, Leila.'

‘I'll bet you are.'

‘Well, I told Billy straight away and he chucked her right out and the bloke she was working with. Right out of the door they went.'

While Ginny continued with her tales about running the club, Leila sat listening with increasing bewilderment at just how in control Ginny seemed to be.

‘It's from what I saw in Frith Street, I suppose,' Ginny went on. ‘That's how I know how to attract the customers. That “artistic” stuff we used to do in the tableaux, that's all old hat. People want something modern, contemporary. You should see the girl I've got doing a routine to “Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend”. Billy said it makes my fan dance look like an evening with the Girl Guides!'

‘Is Billy at the club very often?'

‘Yeah. Most of the time.'

‘Really?'

‘Mmmmm. He seems impressed with what I'm doing.'

Leila busied herself pouring more tea. No wonder she hadn't seen him for nearly a month.

‘I nearly forgot.' Ginny took another swallow of tea. ‘He asked me to say hello. Said he hadn't seen much of you lately.'

Leila shook her head, making the feather trim on her hat shimmer in the lamplight. ‘Not for a week or two.'

‘How about Shirley? Any word on her?'

‘She could be on the streets for all I know.' Leila did her best to smile brightly, although the effort was nearly killing her. What she really wanted to do was scream at Ginny that she was a stupid little tart who was getting involved way over her head, and if she had any sense she'd get back where she came from and get her bloody claws out of Billy Saunders.

But Leila had never been one to display her emotions.

Ginny emptied her cup and picked up the teapot for a refill. It was empty.

‘Shall I order some more?' Leila asked, a study in graciousness.

Ginny wrinkled her nose and looked at her watch. ‘No thanks, Leila. It's nearly half four already.'

‘You're going?'

‘Yeah. I don't like being away from the club for too long.' She pulled on her gloves and grinned happily. ‘I take my responsibilities very seriously, you know. I want Billy to feel he can trust me.'

‘But when I told the girls from Frith Street we were meeting up they said they'd see us in the Three Greyhounds in Greek Street.' Leila paused, checking the desperation that was creeping into her tone. ‘So we can all have a natter and a drink together.'

‘Sorry, Leila. Better not. But don't let me stop you going to have one with them.' Ginny stood up, took a large white five-pound note from her purse and put it on the table. ‘And treat the girls for me, eh?'

With that, Ginny pecked Leila on the cheek and left, pausing in the doorway to look over her shoulder and waggle her fingers in a gesture of farewell, then she wiggled her way out to reception on her now customary stiletto heels to collect her shopping.

Leila didn't need to look round to check, she just knew that every man in the room had his gaze fixed on Ginny's backside.

Later that evening, as Ginny was putting the final touches to her hair, Dilys was standing in her bedroom in Stepney looking at her watch for the tenth time in so many minutes.

‘That's it,' she snapped, throwing up her hands. ‘Half past seven. I'm off. I've waited long enough for you, Ted bloody Martin. In fact, I've given you more chances than I've got lipsticks and that's saying something.'

She pulled her coat from where she'd chucked it over the back of her chair the night before, slipped it round her shoulders and ducked down for a final glimpse in the dressing-table mirror.

As she looked in the glass, she saw the reflection of Susan standing behind her in the doorway.

‘What d'you want?' Dilys asked, wiping away a smudge of lipstick from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger.

Susan gnawed the skin around her thumb-nail, unsure how much she dared say, but her empty stomach overcame her fear. ‘I'm hungry,' she said quietly.

‘I told you, there's stuff in the maid-saver.'

‘There's not, Mum. I looked.'

Dilys sighed wearily, twisted round and snatched her handbag off the bed. ‘Here,' she said, rummaging in her bag. ‘Go and get yourself a bag of chips. And don't leave the lights burning when you go to bed. I ain't made of money.'

With that, Dilys threw some coppers on to the eiderdown and flounced out of the room without so much as a goodbye, let alone a good-night kiss, for her little girl.

While Dilys was out doing her now familiar Saturday night round of pubs, looking for men willing to treat her – not a difficult task as she had vamping down to a fine art – Shirley was sitting on her foul-smelling bed in the little room in Berwick Street she was renting from the most unpleasant Greek woman she had met in her entire life, wondering what on earth she was going to do next.

When Leila had first thrown her out, Shirley had found the room straight away and things hadn't seemed too bad. She had only ever had to deal with the landlady's husband and he had been a right mug; not worrying if she was late with the rent and even occasionally letting her off an entire week at a time, so long as she gave him a free seeing to now and again. But then he had gone back to Crete on some sort of family business, and Shirley had been left dealing with his monster of a wife.

As soon as the woman had realised that Shirley didn't work in the market, as her husband had claimed, but was on the game and using the room as her ‘lumber', she had put up the rent, demanded a share of Shirley's weekly takings and now, worst of all, was insisting that Shirley should be
nice,
as she put it, to her elderly father as he was missing his wife who was back home in Crete.

When the landlady had said what she expected her to do if she wanted to keep a roof over her head, and for absolutely no money, Shirley had laughed, thinking she was having a joke. But the woman had just stared at her with her sunken, piggy little eyes and cursed at her in Greek.

Shirley cursed back in English. She wouldn't take that sort of crap from a runty little middle-aged woman.

But runty or not, the landlady had meant business and had cracked Shirley – smack! – right round the side of the head with a pair of brass knuckles that Shirley hadn't even suspected she was wearing.

Shirley stumbled backwards across the room, clutching her ear as blood dripped between her fingers.

She had only gone round there to pay the rent and the woman had come up with this bloody nightmare of an idea. It wasn't as though Shirley had never done an old man before, she had, plenty of times, but at least there had always been money involved. And this one looked as though he was on his last legs. His face was all yellow and shrivelled with age, and his wrists were so thin they looked as though they might snap at any minute. It would be like going with a corpse.

As Shirley pressed herself against the wall, staring at him, as he sat dwarfed by the carver chair in the woman's kitchen, she knew she wasn't going to go through with it. It wasn't just the thought that the effort of getting him on to the bed would probably be more excitement than he could take – let alone what the act itself would do to him – it was the thought that the woman would be taking her for a mug, and before Shirley knew what she was doing, she'd have all the old cow's uncles and cousins queuing up for a free go as well.

So, here she was in her room, with a half-empty bottle of gin and the few clothes that Leila had let her keep stuffed into a brown paper carrier, knowing that she had had enough, that this wasn't the life she deserved. But what next?

She couldn't think straight. All that filled her head – apart from the pain from the blow and a raging hangover – was the knowledge that this was Ginny's fault. She hated the bitch. Hated her more than that Greek cow downstairs and her disgusting father; more than Leila for throwing her out; more than anything in the whole fucking world.

Slowly a smile began to form on Shirley's lips.

Ginny had caused her all this trouble, so it was only fair that she should get some too. Shirley would get her own back. She would get revenge.

Her smile broadened.

All the girls knew that
Miss
Martin was actually a married woman who had an old man tucked away somewhere. Just as they all knew that for some reason she never wanted him mentioned.

Shirley would go and find Ginny's husband.

And Ted was surprisingly easy to find. All Shirley had had to do was nip round to Frith Street, blow all but her last ten shillings on a nice little treat for Carmen and offer it to her in exchange for a favour.

Carmen, stupid as ever when promised some free dope, had immediately agreed to find out from Yvette where Ginny used to live and her husband's name.

Ginny hadn't been wrong when she'd worried that she'd told Yvette just a little too much, because although, unlike Shirley, she had no malice in her, Yvette did lack an ability to think things through.

A couple of hours later Carmen turned up in the Moka Bar with the information and Shirley handed over what she claimed was a really potent strain of gear she had bought from Italian Tony in Brewer Street.

Shirley had then only to visit a few pubs and buy a couple of drinks, to find herself steaming along the right track in the direction of a dismal boozers' pub near the Rotherhithe tunnel.

‘Hello. Ted is it? Ted Martin?'

At the sound of a woman's voice, and a cultured sort of a voice at that, Ted looked up.

Shirley could see he was obviously half cut, but she was more interested in how good-looking he was. From the amount of drink that Carmen had reported he was supposed to put away each night, Shirley had expected someone looking more like the landlady's shrivelled old dad than this handsome, slightly stockier version of James Mason.

She smiled seductively. This was going to be more fun than she'd hoped.

‘Who wants to know.'

‘I'm Shirley. A friend of your wife's. Now how about buying me a drink and I'll tell you some things that might well be of interest.'

‘If you're gonna tell me she's working as a hostess, I know. I know all about her whoring. And I don't care. All women are the same.'

Shirley noted he didn't seem to know anything about the club. It wouldn't hurt to keep back a little information. You never knew when you might need a bargaining tool.

This time, as she smiled she leaned forward, making sure that he could get a good look down her dress. ‘All women aren't the same, Ted,' she purred.

‘No. I can see that. And I like the look of what I see an' all, darling.'

‘And I like the look of you too.' She leaned closer and breathed into his ear. ‘I'm not wearing any knickers. Fancy coming outside?'

She let Ted lead her from the warm fug of the bar out into the cold night air, and round the corner to where the railway arches formed a dark, dank maze behind the pub.

Without saying a word, Ted slammed her against the dripping wall, shoved up her skirt, tore open his fly and thrust straight into her.

‘Like it a bit rough, do you?' Shirley giggled.

‘
SORRY TO BOTHER
you, guv, but I reckon you ought to give your eyes a chance on this one.' Flora straightened up from his subservient pose over Saunders's table and looked warily about him.

Saunders nodded his apologies to the two men and women at his table and stood up. ‘This had better be good, Flora.'

‘It's . . .' He hesitated. ‘You'd better see for yourself.' Flora lead his boss over to one of the tall, small-paned windows at the far end of the room. ‘Take a butcher's out there.'

Saunders lifted the fine lace curtain and squinted out into the darkness. Down below, in the dim glow of the wrought-iron street lamp, he saw the unmistakable outline of two squad cars and a matching pair of Black Marias blocking the end of the alley. Their lights were off and there was no sign of anyone inside them, not even the drivers.

Saunders snorted, shaking his head contemptuously. ‘Hurry-up wagons? Are they sure?'

‘Johnno gave me the whisper they were out there,' Flora said under his breath. ‘I thought you'd better know.'

‘Yeah, all right, Flora, get back to the bar, eh? I'll see to this.'

Flora backed away from his boss's side. He was immediately replaced by Ginny. Having seen the unprecedented spectacle of Flora leaving his precious bar to the mercies of his two underlings, she too wanted to see what was so fascinating in the street below.

‘It's the law,' she gasped, leaping back from the window, with the net draped limply over her head.

Saunders flicked the curtain from Ginny's hair, took her firmly by the shoulders and steered her back towards the bar. ‘Keep it down, girl, we don't want no one panicking, or we'll have the customers getting upset.'

‘But—'

‘But nothing. It's only the Old Bill sprinkling a bit of frightening powder around the place.'