Dream On (9 page)

‘Come on, Marge,' she prompted her friend, flashing her eyes for emphasis, ‘come and sit with us. And bring that little cutie-pie with you. He's a real little smasher, ain't he? Where d'you find him then, Ted?'

As Lilly sashayed over to the table with Ted's hand clamped firmly over her buttock, Al felt his neck and then his face flame red, but it wasn't Ted's crude behaviour, or even Lilly's teasing that was making him blush, it was the strangeness of the situation. While Ted might have been happy to go and sit down in the corner, Al definitely wasn't. In fact, he didn't want to be in the pub at all. He couldn't see the sense in staying in a place where you'd just taken two women away from a pair of blokes who had probably been buying them drinks all night. Novice as Al was at this sort of thing, it seemed to be asking for trouble.

As Al followed Ted across the room to the table, he leaned forward and spoke to him in a tone so low that it was just about audible. ‘Don't you feel a bit awkward?'

Ted looked round at him in surprise. ‘No. Why should I?'

Al jerked his head over to the bar where the two men were watching them with unmistakable resentment. ‘How about them?'

Ted threw his head back and laughed loudly. ‘Here, you ain't one of them nancy-boys, are you, Al? You don't fancy them instead of the girls, do you?'

‘Blimey, I hope he don't!' Marge shrieked in a voice so shrill it sounded more like that of a puppet than a fully grown woman.

‘But if he
is
,' Lilly screeched back at her, ‘you'll soon be able to show him better ways, won't you, Marge?'

‘Course I will! You know me, Lilly, always glad to oblige!'

‘So I can see,' muttered one of the two disgruntled men. ‘Drink up, Johnno, and we'll be on our way. I don't like the stink what's come up in here.'

With that, both men drained their glasses, snatched up their hats and topcoats from their bar-stools and barged their way out of the pub, followed by hoots of derisive glee from Ted. ‘I think you've upset your friends, girls,' he hollered after them.

‘They ain't no friends of ours,' Marge said, wriggling her body closer to Al's. ‘We ain't never set eyes on 'em before, have we, Lil?'

Lil shook her head dismissively. ‘No, never.'

When the door was slammed firmly shut behind them, Ted turned to the darts player in the corner. ‘So who were the pair of charmers then, Puggy?' he called.

‘Dunno mate. I'm as much in the dark as the girls.'

That was good enough for Ted. They weren't locals, just visitors. And it wasn't as though he'd enticed the girls away, they had come over to him by choice. And anyway, blokes didn't get into fights over birds like Lilly and Marge. They were disposable, interchangeable, the sort you used and then dumped. Within Ted's logic, everything was just fine.

He banished the two men from his mind and set about really enjoying the rest of the evening. And he had every reason to celebrate: he'd done a good deal down at the docks – more than a good deal, actually, as Al was still wet behind the ears when it came to asking a fair price for the knocked-off gear he passed on to him – and now he had a pint in his hand and a warm and willing woman pressing herself against him, just asking for those chubby thighs of hers to be groped. Yes, Ted had every reason to be a happy man.

Marge watched Ted and Lilly fondling and kissing one another with growing nervousness. She was doing her best to get Al in the mood, but he didn't seem to want to know, and she was worried that, being Ted's mate, Ted would get angry with her for failing to get the kid's interest. She knew Ted. The trouble was, Al seemed less concerned with putting his tongue down Marge's throat than in pouring booze down his own gullet. And he kept looking over at the door as though he was waiting for the other two blokes to come back. Maybe it wasn't a joke after all, maybe he was a bit the other way. Marge hoped not. That was all she needed. Still, she could only do her best . . .

When the four of them eventually staggered out of the pub – Lilly clinging gingerly to Ted as though he were an over-inflated life jacket that was liable to explode in her face at any moment and Marge with the now paralytic Al draped round her like a fur stole – the cold night air hit them like a wall.

‘Bloody hell, Ted,' gasped Lilly, pulling her thin woollen coat tighter around her neck, ‘I'm gonna freeze me tits off if we don't get inside soon.'

‘I've got the motor, ain't I?' Ted grinned, towing her across the street towards the Talbot. ‘We'll soon warm up, with the four of us all going at it at once in there.'

‘What? All in there together? That'll be cosy, won't it, Al?' giggled Marge, rolling her eyes suggestively at him, in what, she promised herself, was her final attempt to arouse his interest.

It should have been clear, even to Marge, that Al was now so drunk, a whole harem of girls, hand-picked to suit every taste and with fairy lights hanging from every digit, would have been hard pressed to have gained even a glimmer of appreciation or response from his semi-conscious form.

Being about as used to drink as he was to women, Al, in his efforts to make himself feel better about the two men, had drunk himself almost senseless. If he hadn't had quite so much to drink he would have realised what Ted had in mind and wouldn't even have contemplated letting Marge drag him over to the car. Al was only just getting used to the idea that he could engage in the straightforward type of liaisons with women. In any other, even slightly more sober, circumstances, the thought of all four of them being together in the car would have terrified the life out of him and he would have had it away on his toes, back to his mum's and dad's place as though the dock coppers themselves were after him. But Al was not only drunk, he was now what could only be described as totally rat-arsed.

Marge looked at him with resigned weariness and frustration. She just hoped he'd liven his ideas up a bit before they got down to it, or she was really going to have to put on some sort of act so that Ted wouldn't realise what was going on. If that was the case, she could only keep her fingers crossed that Lilly was in good enough form to keep his interest from straying to what she and A1 were supposedly up to.

She pulled Al's arm more firmly round her shoulder and hauled him over to the car, where Lilly was pawing Ted in a show of increasingly revved-up anticipation. ‘Hurry up, Ted,' she was urging him in a breathy little voice.

‘All right, all right,' Ted snapped. ‘I know you can't keep your hands off me, Lil, but let me find the bloody keys, will you? And stop pulling at me coat.'

The pulling stopped, but was immediately replaced by a hand gripping Ted's shoulder. It felt like a vice being tightened against his collar-bone.

‘What the fuck?' Ted demanded and spun round to confront her for daring to do such a thing. His face was contorted with anger at her presumption. But it wasn't Lilly who had grabbed him.

The next thing Ted knew was a knee slamming into his groin. As he crumpled to the frosty cobbled ground, cupping his testicles in an effort to protect himself from further agony, he squinted up through his pain to see one of the men who had been drinking with the girls at the bar.

‘Billy Saunders,' said the man, raising his hat in a parody of polite introduction. ‘Don't forget the name, will you. You'll be hearing it a lot round here. I've decided Limehouse might just be the place to start up a little business.'

He turned, raised his hat once more and smiled magnificently at the two now ashen-faced girls. He pointed at Lilly and jerked his head towards where Ted was still squirming on the damp ground. ‘What's his name?'

She didn't answer, but Billy noted that the girl shot an urgent, warning look at her friend.

‘Scared of him, eh?' said Billy with a disgusted shake of his head. ‘I wondered why you both went running over to the flash little bleeder.'

Billy took a cigarette out of his case and waited for the other slightly taller man to light it for him, then he strolled the few steps over to Ted. ‘You fucking coward,' he said simply, gave him another vicious kick and turned back to Lilly and Marge. He raised his hat again. ‘Ladies. Let me wish you both a very good night.' With that, the man and his companion strode off into the shadows.

The girls exchanged a terrified glance. What the hell were they meant to do? It was bad enough being stuck with a nutter like Ted Martin when he wasn't even upset, but now . . .

Lilly took a deep breath, put her handbag on the kerb and linked her arm through Ted's. It was just a shame he wasn't as pissed as the stupid kid he'd brought with him, then she and Marge could have cleared off and left them both to the dippers and cosh gangs from Chinatown and neither of them would have been any the wiser that the girls had abandoned them. Still, it was no good wishing; good things just didn't seem to happen to the likes of Lilly. ‘Help us then, Marge,' she gasped.

Between them, the girls somehow managed to haul Ted to his feet. He staggered backwards and slumped against the car.

‘Billy Saunders,' Ted panted. ‘I won't forget you, you bastard.'

Al dropped down on to the kerb next to Lilly's handbag and stared at the three people in front of him Even with all the alcohol fuddling his brain he was able to see that the girls were as scared of Ted as he suddenly realised himself to be.

There was something in Ted's expression, a strange, distant look in his eyes as though he were seeing something that was only visible to him. Something that Al felt genuinely relieved he couldn't see, or even begin to understand.

He had seen Ted turn to violence before, going berserk over the merest slight; smashing his fist into a woman's face for just looking at him the wrong way; or giving a real whacking to an old night-watchman at one of the bonded warehouses, who had simply asked him what he wanted. In fact, in the months since Al had first met him, Ted Martin had proved himself to be a really vicious sort of bloke, especially where women were concerned, but Al had never seen that look before. And it really frightened him. Drunk as he was, Al knew that he was well out of his depth.

He picked up Lilly's handbag, clasped it to him like a comforter and vomited all over it.

WHEN GINNY WOKE
up the next morning she was saddened, but not surprised, to find that the covers on Ted's side of the bed were undisturbed and that his pillow had not been slept on again. She might have become accustomed to him staying out all night, sometimes for days on end, but she would never feel happy about it.

Sleeping alone and being scared to open her mouth when Ted actually deigned to be there: it wasn't how Ginny had expected things to turn out.

Early on in their marriage, Ted had been nothing like he was now, or so she had thought. Maybe love, or grief for the loss of her family, had blinded her to the truth, but even though she had heard rumours about Ted she had put them down to jealous gossip; there was always plenty of that in the neighbourhood for those who chose to listen. All right, she knew he had a reputation for having a bit of a temper, so did a lot of blokes his age, but Ted himself had never given her any reason to believe that they wouldn't be leading a happy, ordinary married life together. She had pictured it so many times: the war would be over – she was right about that, at least – and Ted would be going off to work every morning, doing a normal sort of job. Something like Dilys's dad and brothers did down at the docks maybe, where he would graft hard, but honestly, not ducking and diving and pulling the Lord alone knew what sort of strokes. And he would come home every evening and greet her and their children with hugs and kisses, scooping them high into the air, making them giggle and shriek with happy laughter that would ring around their picture-book, perfect home. Then she would put on a pretty flowery apron to keep her dress nice and dish up their tea, and afterwards Ted would help her put the little ones to bed, and . . .

She rubbed her hands roughly over her eyes, refusing to cry at the cruelly taunting images in her mind.

Children. Would they only ever be a dream?

She rolled on to her side and slapped angrily at Ted's untouched pillowslip. Dreams
did
sometimes come true and her dreams were the one thing she wouldn't ever let anyone take away from her.

She
would
dream about having children; about Ted changing into the sort of man she'd believed she'd married; and – her latest fantasy – about Nellie vanishing from number 18 and leaving her and Ted alone in the house for ever. Ginny didn't know why, but her mother-in-law was treating her more and more like an unwanted lodger lately and Ginny honestly, if guiltily, wished her gone.

She had a glorious vision of her disappearing in a puff of red smoke, just like the wicked witch in the films, leaving behind only a pair of steaming carpet slippers and a smouldering cigarette end dangling in mid-air like the smile of the Cheshire cat.

Ginny too was smiling – at the picture she had conjured – although she felt no happiness. What she felt was a desperate, intense, gut-wrenching loneliness: a woman imprisoned by her own girlish dreams.

But if anyone had seen her, on that bright but chilly mid-March morning, as she drew back the curtains and looked down on to Bailey Street from her bedroom window, they would never have been able to guess at her sadness. Instead of weeping and wailing and making a fuss, as many others would have done, Ginny simply took Nellie her morning cup of tea and got on with the chores. Just as she did every weekend.

Nellie could, of course, have done a lot of the jobs during the week while Ginny was out at work and, up until about a year ago, she had at least made some pretence at helping. But that was all in the past. Now Nellie did nothing, except for the odd times when she cooked something for Ted.