She turned back to her husband and sons. ‘And no slacking, you three, I’ve got eyes in the back of this head of mine, remember.’
‘As if we could forget,’ Sid muttered.
‘And I’ve got ears like a bat.’ She chuckled, nudging her son in the side. ‘So you wanna watch it, my lad. You might be nearly six foot in your stockinged feet, but you’re still not too big for a wallop with the copper stick.’
Pearl didn’t wait for Sid to reply, she just linked arms with Nellie and guided Dilys and Ginny forward in front of them towards the knot of women milling about at the business end of the tables, where yet more sandwiches were being made.
When he judged the women, or more specifically Pearl, to be out of earshot, George gave up the unequal contest and surrendered to the piano, leaving it perched on the street doorstep, hanging half in and half out of number 11 like an indecisive visitor.
Nodding for his sons to do likewise, George relaxed back against the door jamb, took a packet of Capstan Full Strength from his waistcoat pocket and offered them to the boys.
‘And for Gawd’s sake don’t let your mother see,’ he said, striking a match for them.
Micky inhaled deeply, his eyes narrowing against the smoke. ‘Sixteen years old and she still treats me like I was a little kid,’ he complained.
‘Less of the “she”, thank you, Micky.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘You can talk,’ sneered Sid. ‘How d’you think I feel? If this war hadn’t have ended just before I was old enough to bloody join up, she’d have had to have started treating me like an adult.’
‘Pipe down, will you? I’m sick of the pair of you sulking and moping about. You don’t know you’re sodding born, either of you. You should have had the life I had, when I was your age.’
George took a long drag on his cigarette, then lifted his chin towards Ginny. She was standing to one side of the other women with a sad, far-away look in her eyes.
‘Or the worries that poor little cow’s got; then you’d know what trouble was all about. Look at her. Left all alone with Nellie again while he’s out and about, and up to Gawd alone knows what.’
Sid shook his head in wonder. ‘Honest, Dad, I reckon Ted Martin’s gotta be off his head. I mean, you’d have to be mad wouldn’t you, leaving a lovely bit of stuff like Ginny at a loose end?’
Micky snorted, his youthful imagination painting glorious visions of Ginny in his mind. ‘I wouldn’t leave her at any sort of end. I’d—’
Sid punched his younger brother in the shoulder. ‘Shut up you, you little squirt.’ He rolled his eyes at his dad in a gesture of mature male solidarity, to demonstrate that he was obviously above such smut. ‘Typical of him though. I reckon he gets away with murder, that Ted Martin.’
‘You’re right there,’ agreed George with a sigh. ‘Must be one of the fittest young fellers in the street. And what is he, twenty-five, twenty-six? But did he do the decent thing and join up? Do me a favour. Bad chest, he reckoned. I’ve never heard so much old fanny. If he’s got a bad chest, then I’m—’
‘Here we go,’ murmured Micky.
Sid punched him in the arm again. ‘Shut up, mouthy.’
‘Come on.’ George flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and straightened his cap. ‘You’ve had your break. Let’s get this finished before the foreman catches us.’
‘Least the weather’s cleared up, eh, Ginny love,’ Pearl said gently. ‘You know, I was surprised our bedroom ceiling never come down on top of us when that thunderbolt dropped last night. Right overhead it was. I thought we was back in the Blitz for a minute.’
She put down her butter-knife and smiled at Ginny, trying to encourage her to join in. Pearl knew it was no use leaving it to Nellie to look after the poor little thing, it wouldn’t even occur to her. She might, on a very rare occasion, consider her son, Ted, whom, Pearl was sure, Nellie loved in her own peculiar way; but it would be very seldom that she would put even his needs before her own. And apart from that, well, she had no mind for anyone but herself; even on that terrible night in 1941, which Pearl supposed the inconsiderate old trout probably wouldn’t even remember.
But Pearl would never forget that night.
Ted and Ginny had been together, on and off, for almost two years by then; far more off than on, as anyone but the starry-eyed Ginny would have admitted, but a kid as innocent and trusting as her had stood no chance against the smooth ways of a handsome charmer like Ted Martin. After spotting the newly blossoming, pretty little blonde going into number 11 to see Dilys, Ted had homed in on her like a rocket launcher.
The night that stuck in Pearl’s mind was one of the occasions when Ted had actually turned up to take Ginny out as he had promised, and after an evening spent up West, he was taking her back to her house in Antill Road.
They were later than they’d said they’d be and Ginny was expecting a right rucking, but, instead of finding her mum and dad sitting up waiting for them in the back kitchen, all they had found was a pile of bombed-out rubble.
It was strange, the sort of thing that made the hairs stand up on the back of Pearl’s neck just to think about it, but Ginny had said afterwards that before she and Ted had even turned out of Grove Road and into her street, she had known there was something wrong. She could feel it somewhere deep inside, as surely as if someone was speaking to her.
Ginny had let go of Ted’s arm and stumbled along in the black-out, tripping and sliding on the debris and the sand spilling from the ripped and shredded sacking bags, ignoring the firemen, policemen and wardens who tried to stop her. She cared nothing for their shouts and warnings, nothing for her own safety, all she wanted to do was reach her house and her family. She had to get to them.
As she finally skidded to halt on the pavement, her heart was racing and her blood pounding in her ears.
But she was too late.
Her mum, her dad, and her five little brothers and sisters – all seven members of her family – were dead. Gone together in a single hit.
Ted had held her to him, stroking her back and rocking her as if she were a child with a grazed knee that he could make better with a kiss. He’d breathed into her hair, telling her not to cry, soothing her. But there was no need. Ginny couldn’t cry, she was too numb; tears had no purpose or meaning.
Ted had walked her back to his house in Bailey Street, whispering gently to her that everything would be all right; she would stay with him and his mum for the night, and he would sort everything out in the morning.
But when they reached his house, they couldn’t get in. Nellie had locked up the place hours ago, having cleared off to the shelter in the cellar of the Drum and Monkey, a pub on the corner of nearby Damfield Street. She had paused, it had to be said, for a brief moment to think about her son as she had locked the door against potential looters; but had then blithely presumed that, being like her – a twenty-four-carat survivor – her boy Ted would have made his own arrangements and had proceeded to untie the key from its string behind the letter-box and pop it into her pocket.
And so it was, with the flash and the flare of bombs and shells lighting up the black, moonless sky, and with the stink of fires and explosives souring the night air, that Pearl had taken the pair of them into her home.
They were lucky to have found her in. Pearl and her husband had intended taking the children down to the underground station at Mile End to shelter, but at the last minute their plans had changed. George had been asked to cover a fire-watching shift for a sick mate and Pearl hadn’t fancied packing up all the gear and organising the kids by herself – the boys were at the age when they would start a row if one of them even thought that his brother was looking at him a bit sideways – so she’d decided to stay home instead.
She and the children had spent an uncomfortable and chilly night crammed under the kitchen table; not that a few inches of scrubbed deal would have made any difference if a bomb had fallen on them, but Pearl was a home-loving woman
and her kitchen, and its table, made her feel safe.
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 grabb
ed 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.’
Dream On Page 2