‘Come along, what’s the hold up?’ a sharp male voice called out from the stalls.
The pianist shrugged his shoulders and looked bored.
Hettie bit her lip.
The safety of the wings was just feet away, but if she gave in and ran to them she would be the quitter she had so proudly told Babs she wasn’t.
She took a deep breath and then announced into the darkness: ‘The accompanist hasn’t got my music, so I shall have to sing without it.’ She could hear the impatient rustle and movement of her unseen audience.
Before she could lose her courage she inhaled sharply and began to sing. Perfect pitch, that was what Miss Brown had always praised her for…Perfect pitch. She sang at home on her own without music, so why should this be any different?
Determinedly, Hettie tried to ignore that she was singing for the unseen judges in the darkness beyond the footlights, and to pretend instead that she was singing at home in Winckley Square.
Her nervousness faded as her delight in singing took over. The pure true sound of her voice rose and fell in a cascade of liquid harmony that had Babs, who had sneaked into the wings to listen, clasping her hands together and marvelling aloud.
Hettie had almost finished when she heard someone calling out from the stalls. ‘That’s enough, that’s enough. Next.’
She had been so engrossed in making herself believe she was at home that for a few seconds Hettie couldn’t register what was happening, and then suddenly and sickeningly she realised that her audition was over and she was being dismissed.
Hettie was vaguely aware of the sound of angry, raised male voices coming from the stalls, but the next girl was already coming out of the wings, giving a loud sniff of contempt as she hurried past her, and the pianist began to play her music.
She should never have allowed Babs to persuade her to come here today, Hettie told herself miserably. She should have known she would be turned down. She had known all along that she wouldn’t be good enough.
Babs was waiting for her in the wings, ready to give her hand a comforting squeeze and to whisper, ‘Gawd, ’Ettie, just listen to ’er.’ Grimacing and nodding her head in the direction of the stage, she added scornfully, ‘What a screech she’s making.’
‘Huh, well it don’t matter where she’s concerned how badly she sings,’ another girl commented overhearing Babs, ‘cos ’er cousin knows someone ’oo knows the director, and I overheard her saying in the dressin’ room as ’ow she’s already been promised a part.’
‘It’s not your fault if you ’aven’t been chosen, ’Ettie love,’ Babs tried to comfort Hettie. ‘That’s the way it is sometimes in this business. It’s a cryin’ shame an all cos you have ever such a pretty voice, and I’m really going to miss you when we tek off for London, like. Oh ’eck, is that the time? I’ve got ter go. We’re supposed to be rehearsing. We’ve got the bloody angel coming, and the director’s acting as nervous as a virgin on her weddin’ night. I suppose he’s worryin’ that this American chap is going to want to know what ’is money is being spent on.’
She’d gone before Hettie could say anything, leaving Hettie to make her way past the chattering groups of chorus girls hurrying from the dressing room, leaving the smell of chalk, scent and greasepaint hanging on the air. Dispiritedly Hettie watched the other girls. She couldn’t help feeling envious of them and wishing that her own audition had been successful.
She had almost reached the stage door when a good-looking, fair-haired young man hurried up to her, exclaiming, ‘Hey, you, Hettie Walker. You’re to come with me immediately.’
‘What? Why?’ Hettie asked apprehensively. ‘I…’
The young man shook his head and pulled a face. ‘Come along, we’ve got to hurry. It took me ages to find you, and he isn’t exactly in the best of moods, even if you have been lucky enough to catch his eye.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hettie began uncertainly, ‘but I don’t think…’
‘My dear, of course you don’t think; none of us ever admit to thinking. How could we when we have to dedicate ourselves to the muse?’
His languid manner of speaking bemused Hettie. She wasn’t sure if he was serious or trying to make fun of her. Whilst she was still debating what to do, he took hold of her hand and insisted, ‘Come along. I’ve been told to get you up to his office immediately. Quick,’ he instructed her, ‘let’s take these stairs here. They go right up to the office. Fair taken his nibs’ fancy, you have, Hettie Walker,’ he told her pointedly. ‘And no two ways about it. Here we are.’
He was knocking on a door before opening it and virtually pushing her inside the room before Hettie could even speak.
She could hear the door closing, shutting her inside the room with the man perched on the edge of the heavy mahogany partners desk that dominated the whole room.
‘You,’ she gasped, her eyes widening in recognition as she stared at the man who had sent her the note at the Adelphi and then commented on her singing at the chop house.
‘They say third time lucky, don’t they? I certainly hope they’re right, and that this time you don’t disappear on me.’
‘Who are you? Why have you had me brought here?’ Hettie demanded worriedly as she looked from his face to the closed door and then back again.
‘My name is Jay Dalhousie,’ he told her with a smile, ‘and I can assure you that you have nothing to fear from me, Hettie Walker, and that there is no need for you to look so longingly at the door – you can go any time you please, although I sincerely hope you won’t want to.’
‘I wasn’t…’ Hettie fibbed, and then, feeling bolder despite herself, said, ‘Your name is very unusual. I have never heard one like it before.’ And then she blushed when he laughed.
‘No? Well, it’s the one my Daddy gave me, and what was good enough for him is good enough for me.’
‘You’re an American.’ Hettie blushed again as she realised that her comment sounded almost like an accusation.
‘Creole,’ he corrected her, watching her confused frown before explaining laconically, ‘Way, way back when, my pa’s folks came from France to settle in New Orleans, and we like to think of ourselves as Americans with a dash of something extra – something hot and spicy, a bit like our Cajun cooking.’
Something about the way he was looking at her whilst he talked was making Hettie feel both alarmed and excited. Instinctively, she knew that he was the kind of man who would entice a woman to make dangerous and reckless decisions. Her heart started to beat far too fast, and the colour burning her face now had nothing to do with any embarrassment.
‘And your mother?’ she asked him, trying to make polite conversation.
Instead of answering her immediately, he removed a cigar from the box on the desk, clipping it neatly and then striking and lighting a match against the leather sole of his shoe. ‘These are the best cigars a man can buy. They say in Havana that their special richness comes from the fact that the women who make them roll the tobacco leaves between their thighs.’
The bright red burn across her cheekbones betrayed Hettie’s shock.
‘My mother’s grandmother grew up in one of Mississippi’s big plantation houses,’ he continued, amused and touched by Hettie’s sweet innocence. ‘“Belle Visage” was what they named it. My mother used to tell me about how her mother had told her stories of my great-grandmamma wearing gowns that were made in France, and jewels worth a prince’s ransom.’
‘You mean she was the mistress of a slave plantation?’ Hettie asked him, unable to conceal her disapproval. At school she had learned about William Wilberforce and his determination to put an end to the slave trade.
‘No,’ Jay told her laconically. ‘What I mean is that she was the mistress of the plantation owner. My great-grandmamma was an octoroon; that is to say she had “slave” blood, and was one-eighth black. In New Orleans they have a name for every degree of “black blood” a person can have.’
Hettie looked at him a little uncertainly. His
skin was very much the same shade of warm olive as Liverpool’s Italian immigrants, rather than the shiny, almost blue-black of the West Africans she had seen around the docks.
‘My mother was Japanese,’ she heard herself telling him without knowing why.
‘So, already our mixed-blood heritage is something we have in common. In fact, I think that you and I could get along very well with one another, Hettie. Very well.’
He got off the desk and started to walk towards her, causing Hettie to back away from him in panic and anger.
‘I’m not interested in that sort of thing,’ she told him fiercely. She had backed up as far as the door now and had nowhere else to go. ‘I’ll have you know I’m not that sort of person. I’m a decent, respectable girl…’
Jay Dalhousie had folded his arms across his admirably broad chest and now he was actually laughing at her. She could see the white flash of his big strong teeth, his eyes crinkling up in amusement as the sound of his mirth filled the small room.
‘I am sure you are, Hettie,’ he told her more soberly when he had stopped laughing. ‘But I think you may have misunderstood me. The role I wish you to take on is not that of my mistress, but that of the second lead in Princess Geisha. I thought when I heard you singing at the Adelphi that you would be perfect for the role, as much for your appearance as for your voice. However, when you did not respond to my note, I bowed to the wishes of our director and allowed him to choose his own artistes. I am, after all, merely the financial backer of the show and know very little of the intricacies of putting on a stage show, even if I do know what I like to look at and listen to.
‘When I heard you singing in that restaurant, I thought again how perfect you would be for the part of Princess Mimi, the younger cousin of the female lead, and the go-between who helps her in her secret love affair with Prince Hoi-hand. But by then the part had been cast.
‘However, since our second female lead has changed her mind and abandoned us, it seems almost a divine intervention that you should have attended today’s audition.’
‘But that was only for a very small minor part, and I didn’t even get it,’ Hettie protested. ‘I was told that the understudy would be taking over the vacant role…’
‘Certainly that was what Lucius Carlyle, our director, felt we should do, but having heard you singing again today I have insisted that the part should go to you,’ he informed her.
Was she dreaming? Could this really be happening? Was she really being offered the second female lead in an operetta the other girls had already told her was to be one of the most expensive extravaganzas the London stage had ever seen?
‘Well, Hettie, will you take the part?’
Eagerly, Hettie nodded her head, not daring to trust herself to be able to make any kind of lucid speech.
‘Excellent. Since rehearsals have already started you will need to work especially hard, I’m afraid, to catch up. Your wages will be seven shillings and sixpence per week.’
Hettie’s eyes rounded. ‘Are you sure that isn’t too much?’ she whispered anxiously.
Jay was laughing again. ‘You are certainly a one-off, Hettie. I don’t think I have ever been asked before if I am paying someone too much! Why don’t you go back down to the theatre and watch what’s left of the rehearsal? Eddie Ormond, who brought you up here to me, will be waiting for you. He will take you down to our director who will talk to you about your part and arrange for you to have any extra coaching he may think you need, so that you can catch up with the rest of the cast.’
She felt as though she were literally floating on air, and not walking on a piece of worn drugget, as Jay Dalhousie opened the door for her to leave.
How amusing that Hettie had suspected him of wanting to proposition her, Jay reflected after she had gone. Not that he didn’t find her attractive – he did, and were she a little older and rather a lot more worldly he doubted he would have bothered trying to resist the temptation of taking her to bed and thus mixing business and pleasure.
But she wasn’t and it was, after all, the fact that she was so perfect for the part of Princess Mimi that had first caught his attention, even before Lucius Carlyle – the stubborn and difficult but extremely experienced and highly recommended director they had taken on to bring this production to the stage – had refused to entertain the idea of anyone other than him deciding who would play each role.
There had been a terrible argument earlier when Jay had overruled Lucius and insisted that Hettie be offered not just a minor part, but the role of Princess Mimi. But Jay was a man who listened to and followed his instincts, and he was also a man who liked to take risks and to win.
‘The girl’s a nobody. We don’t even know if she can act,’ Lucius had protested, furious at having his decision questioned and then overruled.
‘But we do know that she can sing,’ Jay had told him firmly, ignoring the temper he could see burning in the other man’s eyes.
Lucius did not approve of theatrical backers involving themselves in the productions they helped to finance, and he had said so very plainly. Equally plainly Jay had told him that his own situation was very different from that of a normal theatrical ‘angel’.
And so it was.
Jay had first met Archie Leonard, the young composer and librettist who had created the operetta, in New York. The young Englishman had been working on Broadway, and he and Jay had attended the same party. They had fallen into conversation and when Archie had learned that Jay’s family had widely extensive interests in New Orleans which included several steamboats, and that Jay, like his father before him, was a well known and very successful gambler, Archie had proposed that Jay might like to gamble on him and provide the backing for the musical he had composed and written.
At first Jay had simply laughed, but he had been growing bored with his relationship with his mistress, and there was no way he had wanted to return to New Orleans and the sickly, complaining but very wealthy wife he had married to please his father – especially not now that he had done his duty and fathered two sons by her.
He had a yen to see Europe and what better place to start than England? And what better excuse than the kind of risky financially venture he most enjoyed? The financial rewards if he won – and he was determined that he would – would even bring a smile to his father’s face. And then, of course, there were the ‘extra benefits’.
Jay’s whole body shook with laughter as he remembered Hettie’s outrage. What a sweet pleasure it would be to teach her to beg him to want her instead of rejecting him! Was she still a virgin? A look of brooding sensuality darkened his eyes and stilled his body. Hettie aroused all those hotblooded desires that the iciness of his wife’s pallid body could only chill.
‘Offered you the part, has he?’
Hettie gasped and put her hand to her chest, protesting, ‘Oh! You scared me half to death,’ as Eddie Ormond, the young man who had escorted her to Jay’s office, suddenly appeared out of the shadows.
‘Oh, poor little girl!’ he mocked her. ‘If I scare you, you aren’t going to last a day once our director gets his teeth into you. He isn’t at all pleased at the way our angel has stepped on his toes,’ he warned Hettie.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked him nervously.
‘Why, only that darling Lucius our director is none too pleased that our angel has insisted on you being offered the ingénue part, when he had already earmarked it for one of his own favourites. And as for the lady herself, she’s spitting teeth and ready to scratch out your eyes. Anyway, Lucius wants to see you, and he hates being kept waiting.’
Hettie tried to ignore the anxiety gripping her tummy as she hurried to catch up with her guide, who had almost run down the stairs before disappearing into the darkness of the corridor.
She caught up with him just as he was about to knock on one of the several closed doors, her eyes widening questioningly at she looked at him.
‘This is Lucius’s lair,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’ll wait
outside for you because you’re to go and see Madame Cecile the choreographer.’
‘Come,’ a sonorously elegant male voice commanded.
Eddie opened the door and Hettie stepped through it with trepidation.
The man frowning intently over what he was reading was as different from Jay Dalhousie as it was possible to be. Small and slight, with polished dark hair, deep set dark eyes, and a large beak of a nose, he exuded an air of authority and hauteur that immediately made Hettie feel even more apprehensive.
Whatever he was reading must be very important, Hettie decided, because so far he hadn’t even looked up at her, never mind acknowledged her presence or asked her to sit down. Instead, he reached for a pen and proceeded to make notes on a piece of paper, whilst Hettie felt compelled to stand so ramrod still that she hardly dared to breathe.
Then he put down his pen, lifted his head and smiled at her.
Hettie exhaled gustily in relief, an answering smile lifting her own mouth.
‘So, my dear, we are to welcome you to our little family. Your name is?’
‘Hettie, Sir, Hettie Walker,’ Hettie almost stammered, half inclined to bob a small curtsey as he stood up.
‘Charmed, I am sure, Hettie. I, as I am sure you will know, am Lucius Carlyle, producer and director of our little show. To be sure, I am rather more familiar with the theatres of dear Shaftesbury Avenue and Drury Lane than those of the provinces, but…’ His voice trailed away.
‘You are to have the part of the second female lead, the Princess Mimi, the young female cousin of the heroine of our little operetta, I understand. At least your looks and lack of height will make you suited to the role, and I am sure we shall be able to persuade our composer to cut some of the songs from the part if you should find it too taxing. Unfortunately, you have missed our early rehearsals, so you will have to work hard to catch up. Tommy Harding our stage manager will provide you with a copy of your part, and everything else you will need, and he will also explain to you what will be required of you.’
Hettie of Hope Street Page 14