Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  ‘He is also my brother and I wish he was not going to live and work in Oxfordshire. It’s so very far away.’

  ‘Always the little mother, eh Ellie.’

  She laughed. ‘I cannot forget that they suffered so cruelly when our mother died. Oh…’ She gasped as suddenly a spasm of pain seized her.

  Gideon demanded sharply, ‘Ellie, what is it?’

  Her face had gone pale and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. ‘I – I don’t know.’

  Another pain seized her and she cried out and tried to stand up. As Gideon rushed to help her, she gasped, ‘Gideon, I think it’s the baby, but it is much too soon.’

  Beneath her loose thin summer dress Gideon could see the gentle swelling of her belly suddenly contort and fear filled him. Ellie was gasping and moaning, leaning heavily on him as the pain seized her.

  ‘Ellie. We must get you back to the house…’

  The pain came in black waves edged with jagged red teeth that tore into her body, savaging it in surge after surge of red-hot agony. She cried out against it and tried to escape from it, but there was no escape. She could smell blood and the visceral scent stirred memories that knifed her with fear. She cried out for Iris and then for her mother as nature tore the life from within her womb and destroyed it.

  ‘Oh Hettie, you poor little love. Don’t worry about your frock, Cissy in wardrobe will be able to mend it for you so as you’d never know it had been torn. But from now on you’ll have to go to the hotel wearing your singing dress.’

  Hettie gulped and sniffed, the near hysterical state of distress in which she had arrived back at the lodging house calmed by the practical concern of the other girls as she sobbed out her story to them.

  ‘But what about when I have to go to practice, and it’s just the two of us in the room?’ Hettie whispered shakily as she kept the cotton pad soaked in witchhazel one of the girls had made for her pressed to her scratches.

  ‘If I was you I’d go and have a quiet word with the housekeeper. Tell her that yer can’t abide closed doors and that yer come over all faint because of them. Ask her if yer can have one of them pieces of wood wot yer slide under ’em to keep the door open – if she’s got anything about ’er she’ll know well enough why you want the door open.’

  ‘’Ere,’ one of the girls suddenly called out urgently, ‘looks like there’s going to be a new lodger.’

  All the girls including Hettie crowded round the small window to look down into the street at the woman who was about to mount the steps to the front door.

  ‘That’s Mrs Buchanan,’ Hettie gasped.

  ‘You mean that’s his wife?’

  Hettie nodded her head.

  ‘Well, you said as how old Misery Guts is her sister, didn’t you, Hettie, so like as not she’s just come on a visit,’ Babs said comfortingly. But Hettie couldn’t help feeling apprehensive.

  ‘’E’s the one who’s done wrong, Hettie, not you,’ Lizzie pointed out robustly.

  They could all see how anxious Hettie looked.

  Five minutes later, the door to their room opened and the grubby tweeny maid, whose adenoids gave her problems, snuffled thickly, ‘Hettie Walker, you’re to go downstairs this instant, on account of Mrs Buchanan is here to see you.’

  Hettie gave her friends an anguished, imploring look and whispered shakily, ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘You’d best go down and see what she wants, Hettie love,’ Babs told her gruffly, adding more firmly, ‘And mind you tell her what he did to you.’

  Hettie was shaking from head to foot by the time she had followed the tweeny back down the stairs and along the hallway.

  There was no need for her to knock on the parlour door because it was already open. Mrs Buchanan was standing there waiting for her, her face set in an expression of cold fury.

  ‘So what have you to say for yourself about your disgraceful behaviour then, Miss Walker?’ Mrs Buchanan demanded as she dragged Hettie into the room and closed the door behind her.

  ‘I…’

  ‘I could scarcely believe my ears when my dear husband informed me of his shocking discovery that you have been encouraging the attentions of a hotel guest. Indeed, more than encouraging them. Your mother assured me that you were a respectable young woman and now I find that you are anything but. How dare you behave in such a fashion and bring disrepute on respectable professional people? My husband could scarcely bring himself to tell me of the lewdness of the embrace in which he caught you – alone in an hotel room with a gentleman to whom, not a hour before, he had witnessed you secretly passing a note, no doubt to make the disgusting assignation.’

  Mrs Buchanan’s bosom heaved as she shuddered and then impaled Hettie with furious glare.

  ‘That is not true!’ Hettie burst out indignantly.

  ‘What, you impudent hussy? You dare to deny my husband’s accusation? When you were caught in the very act, en déshabillé, with a man holding you in his embrace? Mr Buchanan says that he had questioned one of the waiters who had confirmed that notes were passed between you.’

  ‘No. I only received one note, and I…’

  ‘That is enough! I will not tolerate any more lies from you. Mr Buchanan could hardly bring himself to sully my ears by describing to me the nature of your indelicate behaviour. Furthermore, for the sake of other vulnerable gentlemen and in order to protect our own good name Mr Buchanan wishes me to terminate your employment as of now. Indeed, he has confided to me that you have actually had the temerity to flaunt yourself before him and to suggest that your wages should be increased in return for certain unmentionable familiarities.’

  Hettie gasped. ‘No! That is not true.’ She could feel her eyes filling with shocked, humiliated tears.

  ‘Silence! You will not speak until I give you permission to do so. Your behaviour is an affront to all decent people. Were I to follow the inclinations of my own feelings you would, as Mr Buchanan has requested, be dismissed forthwith, and a letter sent to your family revealing exactly why your presence can no longer be tolerated in a respectable household.’

  Hettie couldn’t believe what was happening to her. How could she ever convince her Mam and Da it was a pack of lies?

  ‘However,’ Mrs Buchanan continued grimly, ‘as I have explained to my dear husband, we have a responsibility to the Adelphi hotel which means that until we can find someone to replace you we shall have to endure your unwholesome presence. As a punishment for your appalling behaviour, you will not receive any money from now on.’

  ‘I have done nothing wrong,’ Hettie blurted out passionately. ‘It is Mr Buchanan who has lied. He is the one who…Oh!’

  Hettie cried out in pain and lifted her hand to nurse her smarting cheek after Mrs Buchanan slapped her face with such force that Hettie staggered a little.

  ‘Do you dare to impugn the reputation of my husband, you little harlot! Who would believe you? No one! Mr Buchanan is a respectable married man, an Englishman,’ she emphasised, ‘whilst you are nothing but the filthy product of fornication, the issue of a suicide, and a foreign whore, from what I’ve heard. Mrs Fazackerly, as is a personal friend of mine from when we was at school together, told me all about you.’

  ‘Mrs Fazackerly?’ Hettie protested. ‘But I don’t know any Mrs Fazackerly.’

  ‘No, because she’s far too respectable to have anything to do with the likes of you. Her husband was cousin to your father, he who brought disgrace on his family by what he did. By rights you should be living in a whorehouse by the docks like the rest of your kind,’ she added malevolently.

  Hettie cowered away from the flood of verbal venom being directed at her. Thanks to Ellie’s protection and the sheltered life she had led, Hettie had never previously been exposed to hostility because of her parentage, or been told that she should be ashamed because of it.

  Now suddenly she was filled with bewilderment and shocked confusion, with a small cold kernel of unwanted knowledge. She was different. She had always
known that. She had, of course, heard her mother explaining her circumstances to Mrs Buchanan during her initial interview in answer to the music teacher’s request to know more about Hettie’s background. But she also knew that all Ellie had said was that she was her step-daughter, and the child of her first husband.

  Did other people secretly think the same as Mrs Buchanan? Was she an outcast, a misfit? Doubts and uncertainties swarmed over her, and misery gripped her stomach.

  ‘You will never, never repeat the vile insinuations you have just attempted to make,’ Mrs Buchanan told her coldly. ‘Otherwise it will be the worse for you!’

  Hettie stared back at her numbly. She knew the story of how her Japanese mother had come to England with her looking for the man she loved, and how out of unhappiness and despair her father had taken his own life before they got there. But when Ellie had related this story to her she had done so with kindness and respect for Hettie’s mother, and had said that Hettie should always remember that her parents had loved one another and that she, Hettie, was the child of that love. But the circumstances surrounding her birth lay in the past now, Ellie had said firmly, and it was best that they were left there and not spoken of in public.

  TWELVE

  ‘’Ere, ’Ettie, you’ve been ever so quiet these last few days, not sickening for something, are you?’ Babs asked her.

  Hettie shook her head. She had not told the other girls the full story of what Mrs Buchanan had said to her, only that Mr Buchanan was blaming her for what had happened and that Mrs Buchanan was refusing to hand over to her any of her wages.

  ‘It’s a pound to a penny she knows what he’s up to right enough, otherwise she’d have had you turfed straight out onto the street,’ had been Babs’s opinion, and the other girls had agreed.

  Hettie had followed their advice and a piece of wood had duly been provided in order that the door to the practice room could be wedged open. Hettie had not spoken one single word to Mr Buchanan since his wife’s visit to deliver her ultimatum, simply practising her songs and then singing them for her audience, steadfastly ignoring the pianist.

  But worst of all, somehow she could not bring herself to write home about what had happened. Suddenly it was as though there was a barrier between her and the family she had innocently always thought of as her own, but which she had now been forced to acknowledge was not.

  ‘They’re going to be auditioning for that new musical tomorrow, why don’t you come along and try for it, Hettie?’ Babs encouraged.

  She was tempted; after all, nothing could be worse than her present situation.

  ‘I’m too short for the chorus,’ she reminded Babs uncertainly.

  ‘There’s other parts, and you’ve got a lovely singing voice. Me and the twins are going to get our hair cut in that new bob this afternoon, why don’t you come along with us and do the same? It would fair suit you, and you’d look a lot more modern.’

  Cut her hair? Hettie’s eyes grew round.

  ‘You’d be bound to get a part then. Bobbed hair’s all the rage. Come on, give it a go,’ Babs coaxed.

  Hettie hesitated, but the other girls were urging her on, saying how much short hair would suit her, and somehow she heard herself saying breathlessly, ‘Very well then, I shall!’

  ‘Madame Francaise, that’s that hairdresser on Lord Street, will do our hair cheap for us, Hettie, if we let her girls use us as models,’ Babs explained an hour later as the four of them hurried across Lime Street. Then they cut down Roe Street, heading for Holy Corner, as the junction between Lord Street, Church Street, Whitechapel, and Paradise Street was known locally, the twins in front and Babs linking arms with Hettie behind them.

  As the twins turned a sharp corner the wind blasted their thin summer frocks, lifting their skirts and causing both girls to shriek in mock dismay whilst passers-by turned to watch.

  ‘’Ee, let’s give ’em something to look at, shall we?’ Jenny urged, but when she and Jess started to fool around, aiming a few high kicks from their chorus routine, Babs hissed at them fiercely.

  ‘That’s enough, you two! Me and Hettie don’t want to be made a show of, thank you very much.’

  ‘Spoilsport.’ Jess laughed as they were about to turn into Lord Street, breaking off to call out, ‘Ooh, look, Bunney’s!’

  Immediately the twins rushed over to the famous shop.

  ‘Look at them,’ Babs sighed. ‘They look more like kids than anything else with their noses pressed up against the window like that.’

  Bunney’s was famous throughout Liverpool for its exotic and oriental goods which it imported from all over the world.

  A one-legged sailor was standing outside the store, a parrot on his shoulder. The bird was shrieking and whistling, in between calling out insults, much to the delight of the children who paused to stare at it. Further along the road was an organ grinder, his little monkey chattering and waiting, cap in hand.

  Normally Hettie would have been only too happy to have pressed her own nose up against the window, but now suddenly she was acutely conscious of her own ‘oriental’ blood and she drew back into the shadows. Ever since she could remember, Ellie had told her she was pretty, but now she could see that her prettiness was not the same kind as that of other true English girls. She was smaller, her face was rounded, her hair darker and her eyes, despite their roundness, were still somehow slightly almond shaped.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Babs called out. ‘If we don’t get there soon there’ll be a queue and we won’t get in.’

  Madame Francaise’s establishment was halfway down Lord Street, elegant gilt lettering in its window proclaiming the excellence of permanent waving and the very latest French hairstyles.

  Inside, half a dozen girls wearing pink aprons were busy washing and snipping hair.

  Hettie examined her surroundings uncertainly. Ellie and Connie both had long hair, which they wore up, and she did not know of anyone other than her mother’s friend Iris who had had their hair bobbed.

  A very tall, very thin woman with a long pointed nose and thin carmined lips was bearing down on them, her own short hair immaculately sculpted in waves to frame her face.

  ‘Yes?’ she demanded sharply.

  ‘We’ve come about the advertisement in the paper,’ Babs answered her. ‘The one that said you could have your hair re-styled for half price.’

  Madame Francaise gave Babs a cold look. ‘You cannot have read the advertisement properly for if you had done so you would know that it said that those who wished to take advantage of my generous offer should present themselves for my inspection after hours.’

  Babs flushed and looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ she began, turning towards the door, the others all following her.

  ‘No, wait,’ Madame Francaise commanded catching up with them and, to Hettie’s discomposure, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘I will do your hair.’

  ‘Hettie isn’t staying without us,’ Jenny announced quickly. ‘Are you, Hettie?’

  Hettie shook her head. The truth was she did not want to stay without them.

  The thin carmined lips became even thinner. ‘Very well then. All of you, wait here. Marie will take you upstairs and get you ready.’

  As she swept away to summon one of the pink-uniformed young women Jenny dug Hettie in the ribs and grinned.

  Ten minutes later they were all seated together upstairs in a drafty room nowhere near as elegant or glamorous as the downstairs salon, whilst Marie and two other girls began to take the grips out of their hair.

  ‘Quick,’ Marie urged. ‘Madame will be up here in a minute and she won’t half go mad if we’re wasting time.’

  Once the grips were moved and the girls’ hair was loose, Marie, Josephine and Pauline, as the other girls had introduced themselves, began to tug it this way and that, causing Hettie to wince when her turn came.

  There was a sudden increase in tugging activity from all three girls when Madame’s head appeared at the top of the stairs, fol
lowed by her rail-thin body.

  ‘You, come and sit down here,’ she commanded Hettie. ‘And you three as well,’ she added. ‘Pauline, Marie and Josephine, you will watch and then follow what I have done exactly.’

  A little nervously Hettie sat down on the chair Madame pushed in front of her.

  ‘You will remain perfectly still,’ she warned Hettie before beginning to snip busily at her long hair.

  Hardly daring to breathe never mind move Hettie watched out of the corner of her eye as long strands of her hair fell to the floor, but it was not until she felt the coolness of air on the back of her neck that she began to wonder what on earth she had done.

  ‘Now, you three, do exactly the same,’ Madame instructed, leaving Hettie to watch as the apprentices busied themselves copying their mistress.

  ‘Oh my gawd,’ Jenny cried at one point when the floor all around them was covered in hair.

  ‘What ’ave you made us do, Babs?’ She started to sob noisily, quickly joined by her twin.

  ‘Go downstairs and get a jug of water, Josephine,’ Madame ordered coldly. ‘It is an excellent cure for hysteria.’

  As though by magic both girls stopped crying, sitting nervously clenching the arms of their chairs whilst Madame slowly and silently inspected the work of her young trainees.

  ‘Josephine, you have missed a bit there,’ she pointed out, adding, ‘And how many times must I tell you how important it is to keep your scissors sharp. This poor girl’s hair looks as though it has been hacked with a blunt knife and fork.’

  Babs, the ‘poor girl’, looked aghast but Madame ignored her, returning to Hettie and proceeding to push Hettie’s head forward so that her chin was resting on her chest.

  ‘Now for the second stage when we shape the hair into the new style,’ she intoned. ‘Watch me very carefully.’

  Obediently the three girls clustered around Hettie, watching as Madame began to snip painstakingly into her hair.