Dream On Read Free Page B

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.
    â€˜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