Dream On

by Gilda O'Neill

  Ginny stood up, brushing a stray curl from her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘But you’ve already done so much. There’s the kitchen . . .’ she jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the newly decorated room with its fitted Formica-covered cupboards and work tops. ‘And all the wallpapering and the lino . . .’

  Saunders shrugged and smiled. ‘You can’t get by without some decent furniture or a bit of carpet.’ He stuck his head out on to the landing and called down the stairs. ‘Up here, Jim.’

  A man and a young lad came puffing up the stairs, carrying a double bed between them.

  ‘Miss Martin’ll tell you where to put it,’ Saunders said, flattening himself against the wall so that they could get into the flat. ‘And you can take all the old gear back down to the truck.’

  Ginny’s excitement grew as she watched the old stuff disappear and the ‘few things’ that Saunders had bought begin to fill the flat.

  There was a wardrobe, a kidney-shaped dressing-table and a velvet-upholstered headboard with tassels to go with the bed; a light oak dining-table and six chairs, with a matching bookcase – Saunders said he figured Ginny was the type who probably read a bit – occasional tables with splayed spindly metal legs with balls for feet; an equally modern three-piece suite in the latest ‘contemporary’ style; brightly coloured rugs with vibrant, abstract patterns all over them; standard lamps and bedside lights; and even one of the very latest wood and gilt cocktail cabinets.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said to the now dumbfounded Ginny. ‘Open it.’

  She lifted the mirror-lined lid and gasped as it began to play a tune. ‘It’s playing “Secret Love”!’

  ‘Thought that’d tickle you,’ he said. ‘Better than that old Utility gear you had up here?’

  ‘I don’t know what—’ she began, but was interrupted by Jim staggering backwards into the room clutching one end of a television set.

  ‘Where d’you want this, Miss Martin?’ his young helper puffed from behind the other end.

  Stunned by this final addition to her good fortune, Ginny could only point to the corner of the room, the place where Leila had hers.

  With the television in place, Saunders slipped Jim and the lad some money and told them they could go.

  As Jim closed the door behind them, with a muttered ‘All the best in your new home, Miss Martin’, Saunders turned to her and smiled. ‘And that goes for me an’ all, Miss Martin,’ he said, bending forward and kissing her on the cheek. ‘I know we’re gonna have a very profitable future together, you and me, ’cos I trust you, Ginny. D’you know that? There’s no edge to you. What you see is what you get.’

  He grinned, looking like an oversized, handsome schoolboy. ‘And let’s face it, I’ve seen quite a lot of you, one way or another.

  Ginny blushed.

  ‘That gets me, d’you know that?’ He shook his head in amusement. ‘You’ve been up on that stage, flashing it all about, yet you still blush. I love it. You can’t lie if you blush. Shows you’re an honest bird. And there ain’t too many of them about.’

  Chapter 16

  GINNY STEPPED INTO the middle of the big room that took up the whole of the second floor of the now completely refurbished building and did a neat little pirouette. ‘What d’you think then, Flora? Will I do for opening night?’

  Flora, a heavily built, completely bald-headed Scotsman in his mid-fifties, put the glass he’d been polishing down on the bar and smiled admiringly. ‘You look just the business, Miss Martin. Just the business. Black’s always very tasteful.’

  She smoothed down the skirt of the figure-hugging barathea dress and walked slowly across to him. Leaning on the serpentine maple-wood bar top, she asked, ‘You don’t think these shoes are a bit much?’

  Flora craned his neck to get a good look over the counter. ‘They’re perfect,’ he said, scrutinising the black patent four-inch stilettos that Ginny had bought on nervous impulse just that afternoon. ‘Very stylish.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Billy Saunders handed his overcoat and hat to his minder and strolled across to them. ‘You look just right, girl. A million dollars.’

  Saunders sat on one of the high stools with his back to the bar and surveyed the room. ‘Just like this place. Georgie was very impressed with your ideas you know, Ginny. That spot-lighting over the dance floor . . . Great idea. And d’you know what else? He reckons it was the way you talked to that bloke they sent round that got us the full late-night supper licence. You’ve done a good job, girl. A real good job.’

  Ginny lowered her chin to avoid meeting his eyes. Even though she’d done her very best, had worked her socks off to make it all work, she still found it hard, after the years of being abused by Ted, to accept compliments of any kind without a certain amount of foreboding. Always, a nagging little voice in her head had her flinching as it told her to wait for the raised fist that would surely follow what had to be the mockery of false praise.

  If her eyes had been raised, however, she would have seen wordless signals being exchanged between Saunders and Flora; signals that might have given her different pause for thought.

  Ginny had taken Flora on as her chief barman on Gloria’s recommendation, but what she didn’t know was that although he was indeed a friend of Gloria’s – a very close friend, as it happened, whom he’d met in a notorious Turkish baths in Jermyn Street – it was Saunders who had told Gloria to recommend him to Ginny. Saunders’s intention was that she employed someone who knew how to mix a cocktail without using a pennyworth more bitters than was absolutely necessary, but also that that someone had no doubts as to his loyalties. And Flora, like Gloria, owed Saunders enough favours to be sure that there was no doubt as to where his allegiance should lie.

  It wasn’t that Saunders was overly suspicious, but he had spent a lot of money opening the club and he wanted someone on the inside who would keep an eye out for Ginny – as well as on her – to make sure she was up to running the place, superficially at least. Furthermore, Saunders wanted someone who’d keep an eye on everyone else who worked there.

  For while Ginny believed she had been given a free hand with the club, Saunders was still a businessman and intended to be very much in control of the place.

  There was the booze, the gambling, the girls, not to mention the band and the cabaret, and all the cleaners, moppers and washers-up in the kitchens. All of them had the potential for fiddling and conniving. Saunders had seen every stroke known to man being pulled in his time – in fact, he had pulled more than a few himself – and someone as powerful as he just wouldn’t tolerate the liberty of having some two-bob hoodlum getting away with making anything out of him on the side; even a single brass farthing would have hurt.

  Ginny looked at her watch. ‘Quarter past eight. Only fifteen minutes to go.’

  She turned to Saunders, nibbling her lip. ‘D’you think many people are gonna turn up, Billy? I mean, this is Shoreditch. Who’s going—’

  ‘Many people gonna turn up?’ Saunders interrupted her with a grin. ‘You listen to me, darling. Tonight’s little party is gonna be the biggest do of the year. After what I’ve told them about you, how could they resist? They’ve been fighting to get an invite to this opening bash. You mark my words, girl, Ginny’s is gonna be a real success.’

  ‘Ginny’s,’ she breathed, looking about her as though she could hardly believe she was there. ‘Having a whole club named after me. It’s such a big responsibility. Let’s just hope you’re right.’

  And he was. By nine o’clock the club was heaving and the tills were ringing like church bells on Easter Sunday. Every inch of the building, barring the fourth floor where Ginny had her private apartment, had been transformed into profit-making space.

  A stage had been built, with a separate area sectioned off for a three-piece band, big enough to take the cabaret turns without wasting too much floor area; there were tables for diners to eat fancy suppers at equally fancy prices; an ‘intimate’ little dance floor – a
gain small enough not to waste space – and plenty of room left where the customers could knock back over-priced drinks into the early hours, while they watched the shows with a pretty girl on their knee, or went down to the discreet room in the cellar for a hand or two of cards, or a few spins of the wheel.

  Saunders was sitting in one of the booths on the second floor, watching Ginny working the big main room, meeting and greeting her customers, when Leila made her entry in a shimmer of emerald-green chiffon.

  ‘All right, girl?’ Saunders called, beckoning to her.

  As Leila eased herself into the booth beside him, Saunders gestured to Flora to have some drinks sent over.

  ‘Just thought I’d pop in to wish Ginny well,’ Leila smiled, allowing her fox furs to drop from her shoulders. ‘Tell me, how’s the little sweetheart managing?’

  ‘You can see for yourself, girl. First class,’ he said, acknowledging the arrival of their drinks by leaning back to give the young waiter room to set down the glasses. ‘I’ve gotta hand it to you,’ he went on. ‘You put me on to a good ‘un. Look at her. She’s working this room like a real pro.’

  ‘I’m glad you approve, Billy.’ Leila sipped her drink, studying him surreptitiously across the rim of her glass, wondering how much of what she had on her mind she dared actually say. Deciding she had nothing much to lose, Leila began hesitantly: ‘I hear you’ve no girls working here.’

  Billy frowned. ‘No girls? What’re you talking about, woman? This place is packed with pretty girls. All handpicked by Ginny.’

  Leila hesitated, using the ritual of lighting a cigarette to give herself a bit of thinking time. ‘Yes . . .’ she said slowly, ‘. . . but what I meant was’, she leaned forward and said softly, ‘the girls are saying there’s no upstairs.’

  Saunders grinned. ‘What? There’s no toms working here you mean?’

  She sat back primly in her seat. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, I have to say I wasn’t bonkers about the idea at first, and I still ain’t, to tell you the truth. I mean, I don’t have to tell you, Leila, it’s a very nice little earner. One of the best there is, if you run it right. But Ginny was mad keen to make a go of the business without the whoring. Said she wanted to keep it refined like.’

  Leila said nothing, she just sat there with the bitter taste of bile rising in her throat, knowing and hating the fact that Billy would never give her such leeway – wouldn’t even give her a club to run, because she’d made herself sodding indispensable. He thought she already had enough to do . . . She sucked hard on her cigarette. Now here was Ginny – the dowdy little frump she had dragged out of her mean little life – deciding that working girls weren’t fit to do business in her precious fucking club. Working girls like her.

  She continued to nod and even managed a smile as Billy carried on talking, but inside, Leila was trembling, furious at being driven even to thinking such foul language. And what was worse was that it was all her own fault. Why hadn’t she just left her in the gutter where she belonged?

  ‘And so she persuaded me to let her run it without the toms, just for a month’s trial like,’ he explained. ‘Then I’ll have a look at her profits, and if she’s doing okay I’ll let her carry on a bit longer.’

  He laughed loudly, as though suddenly getting the punch line of a joke. ‘Fancy me having a club with no whores. It ain’t natural, is it, girl? Still, I reckon I can trust her to have a go. And you know how important trusting someone is to me. It’s what I like, trust. Always have done.’

  He took a swallow of his drink and lifted his chin to indicate Ginny who was standing by one of the tables. ‘Just look at her operating.’

  Leila looked. Ginny was smiling down at a customer with a hideously raised chiv scar right across his already ugly mug, but from her expression, anyone would have thought him the most handsome man in the room.

  ‘Just clock the way them blokes on the next table are looking at her. She’s really got something, but it’s like she don’t even realise it. When she used to stand up on that stage . . .’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘I’m telling you, there’s just something about her. And you’d never believe she’d ever worked as a torn, would you? She looks too good, if you know what I mean. She ain’t got that hard sort of look about her.’

  Leila couldn’t find the words inside her to reply, so she just nodded, staring at Ginny, the apparent receptacle of all feminine virtue, as she left the customer’s table and turned towards them.

  Leila could have spat: Saunders was waving to her to join them.

  Ginny, smiling with delight at seeing Leila, waved back and made her way over to them, accepting more praise and congratulations with every step she took on her four-inch spiked heels.

  Flushed with admiration and compliments, Ginny finally arrived at the booth. Saunders stood up, took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips. ‘You’re doing good, girl, very good.’

  Ginny, beaming with pleasure, bent forward and kissed Leila on the cheek. ‘I’m so pleased you could come.’

  All Leila could offer by way of a greeting was a weak stretching of her lips across her teeth into something approximating a smile.

  Ginny sat down next to Saunders with a satisfied sigh. ‘D’you know, Leila,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. And I want you to know how grateful I am, because it’s you I’ve got to thank for all this. If it wasn’t for you I’d . . . Well, never mind all that, I just wanna say thanks.’

  In her head, Leila responded to Ginny’s gratitude by telling her that the trouble with dreams coming true was that they usually – no, inevitably – turned into nightmares. That, unfortunately, was the cruel way of the world, as she would find out all too soon. But she actually said nothing; she just carried on flashing her tight-lipped smile and gripping the stem of her glass as though it were trying to escape.

  Before Ginny had the chance to settle into her seat, Saunders was on his feet again. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Leila, but I’d better go and say hello to some of these people.’ He finished off his drink and checked the knot of his tie. ‘And you, Ginny, you’d better come an’ all, they’ll want to say they’ve met the governor.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Come on.’

  Ginny shrugged with mock helplessness at Leila, as she allowed Saunders to lead her away.

  Leila lit yet another cigarette. She didn’t particularly want it, but nor did she want to be seen sitting alone doing nothing, or worse, to sit there watching Billy and Ginny parading around the room laughing and joking like an over-excited courting couple out on a first date.

  ‘Penny for them?’ someone asked her – or rather slurred at her in a drunken drawl – as Leila tossed her lighter back into her bag.

  Leila looked up. It was Shirley. Her hair was tousled, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bloodshot and puffy.

  ‘Shirley! What the hell are you doing here?’ Leila demanded, making sure, despite her anger, that she kept her voice low; Leila was nothing if not professional. ‘You know it’s Sally’s night off. I told you. You were to stay at the flat and take the calls.’

  ‘Didn’t want to miss the party, did I?’ Shirley mumbled. ‘Glad I didn’t. S’lovely party.’ She smirked lazily. ‘And I’ve been watching Billy. Real gentleman. Treating her like a proper lady. Kissing her hand like that. Nice.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘And you’re jealous.’ Shirley grinned, flashing one of her badly pencilled eyebrows and clutching the side of the table to steady herself. ‘Like I said before, it’s your fault. You’ve let her . . .’ She paused to gather her thoughts, to find the right words. ‘Get away with it. That’s what you’ve done. I told you all along.’

  ‘Shirley—’

  ‘And do you know what?’ Shirley dropped inelegantly on to the bench seat in the booth so that she was facing Leila. ‘The whisper is, she’s not letting the girls here do any business. Well,’ she wagged her finger in Leila’s face, ‘I reckon that’s crap. I don’t believe it. She
’s doing a foreigner. Letting them all work without telling Billy. I guarantee it. She’ll be raking it in. And he won’t even care. She’s got him bamboozled. Miss Innocent Bloody—’

  ‘Shirley. I think you’ve said enough. If you knew how ridiculous you sounded.’

  ‘Ridiculous? Me? You’re the one who’s letting her get away with all this. You and Billy had something special. Now look at him. The way he’s looking at her. Hanging around her like a dog after a bitch on heat. It’s so obvious, it’s staring you right in the bloody face.’ She slapped the table with the flat of her hand, knocking Leila’s drink flying. The young waiter was immediately there, mopping up.

  Shirley giggled girlishly until he left, then, after another struggle to recollect her train of thought, she continued her drunken monologue. ‘Anyone can see she’s letting him have it to keep him sweet. But you’ve got to hand it to her, she’s not got a bad price for it. A whole fucking club.’

  Leila sprang to her feet and wrenched Shirley from the bench, signalling with her eyes to the ever-vigilant Flora that she needed help.

  ‘That is it, Shirley,’ Leila whispered into her ear as she and Flora escorted her off the premises. ‘That’s the final straw. You are out.’

  ‘Who is it? Is that you, Flora?’ Ginny squinted at her watch through sleep-blurred eyes. Half past ten. She groaned wearily. She hadn’t got to bed until five o’clock.

  The knocking continued.

  ‘Hold on.’

  She pulled on her wrapper and dragged herself through the flat to the front door.

  ‘Billy. I wasn’t expecting—’

  ‘Never mind who you was expecting.’ He scowled at her. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Listen. D’you know what time I—’

  ‘No. You listen. I told you. Use that spyhole. And always put the chain on. You never know who might be about.’

  Pleased with his concern, but embarrassed by her own foolishness – Billy had warned her over and over again about security – Ginny stood there like a child being chastised by a displeased parent. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been dressed properly and had done her hair. She must look a real sight.