Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  Too over-awed to say anything Hettie could only gulp and nod her head, relieved to discover that the director was not the dreadful, fearful person that Eddie Ormond had so meanly implied.

  Perhaps this was going to work out all right after all, she reflected. Maybe Jay Dalhousie would prove to be an angel in every sense.

  Naturally Hettie could hardly wait to tell her friends, and especially Babs, her good news. She was practically hanging out of the window waiting for their return, shaking her head impatiently when they came upstairs, Babs already starting to commiserate with her.

  ‘Aw, ’Ettie, I am so sorry you did not get the part,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘Don’t be, because I’m not,’ Hettie interrupted her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No! I do not mind at all about not getting that chorus part – because I’m going to be Princess Mimi instead!’

  ‘What?!’ Babs exclaimed in patent disbelief.

  Every one of the girls turned to stare at her.

  ‘’Ettie, that’s impossible. Faye Wright ‘as got that part now. And we all know why,’ she added darkly. ‘It’s all on account of ’er and Lucius Carlyle having worked together before. First he gets poor Flo Bardesly that upset that she teks up and leaves, and then sweet as apple pie our Faye steps into the part. No, ’Ettie, you won’t be playing the second lead,’ Babs told her shaking her head decisively.

  ‘Well I am, so there,’ Hettie told her, sticking out her chin crossly, upset that Babs didn’t believe her. ‘Mr Jay Dalhousie, who is backing the operetta, told me so himself.’

  Six heads swivelled towards her, six pairs of eyes regarding her with similar expressions of disbelief.

  ‘You’ve met the angel?’ Mary demanded enviously. ‘And just how in ’eck’s name did you pull that one off, ’Ettie?’

  ‘Ooh, Hettie, you’ve really put our Mary’s nose out of joint now,’ Jenny giggled. ‘She’s bin fancying her chances wi’ him ever since she first eyes on him, ’aven’t you, Mary?’

  Mary tossed her head and flashed a murderous look at Jenny. ‘Certainly not. Wot kind of a girl do you tek me for? Everyone knows as how he is married…’

  ‘Well, that’s never stopped you afore,’ Hettie heard someone mutter, but fortunately Mary didn’t seem to have heard.

  ‘You want ter watch it, Hettie,’ she warned sharply. ‘If he has offered you the part it won’t be the pleasure of listening to your voice he’ll be after…’

  Hettie’s face had begun to burn with chagrin and anger. She had been so looking forward to telling the girls her good news and now here was Mary spoiling it for her. ‘Well, for your information, it’s nothing of the kind,’ she told Mary fiercely. ‘Jay…Mr Dalhousie, wanted me for the part the very first time he heard me singing at the Adelphi. He says that I’d be perfect for it…’

  ‘Perfect for his bed, you mean,’ Mary muttered.

  But Babs shook her head and told her firmly, ‘Leave off upsetting ’Ettie, will you, Mary? I’m not a bit surprised that Mr Dalhousie wants her for the second female lead, she’s perfect for it,’ she defended Hettie loyally, adding, ‘We all knows how well she can sing and just look at ’er…’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose she does ’ave a bit of a chinky look about her,’ Mary agreed sulkily.

  ‘I am not…’ Hettie began angrily but Babs, who was standing next to her, jabbed her so hard in the ribs with her elbow that she broke off from what she had been about to say to give her an indignant look.

  ‘But she can’t dance, and we’re halfway through rehearsals already, and if you was to ask me…’ Mary continued, still glowering.

  ‘But nobody is,’ Babs interjected, and the matter, for the time being, was left to rest.

  It wasn’t until later when she and Babs were on their own that Hettie was able to tell her friend how disappointed and upset she had been by Mary’s response to her news.

  ‘Well, it’s just a bit of jealousy, that’s all, ’Ettie, and you mustn’t tek it to heart. Mary’s been trying to break out of the chorus for bloody years, but they keep telling ’er that her voice isn’t strong enough, so you see for you to walk in and get the second lead just like that is bound to make her feel a bit sour. Don’t worry about it, though, she’s good-hearted enough and she’ll soon come round.’

  When Babs saw how upset Hettie still looked, she gave her a swift hug and coaxed her, ‘Come on, cheer up. If you think that Mary ’aving a bit of a go at you is sommat to get upset about, how the ’ell you’re going to manage when old Lucy starts on you, I don’t know.’

  ‘Lucy?’ Hettie queried uncertainly.

  ‘Lucius Carlyle, the director, remember? And then there’s Madame Cecile, a right Tartar she is and no mistake. Gawd, but she makes you work until you thinks your bloody legs will drop orf and then all she can say is as how we ain’t anything like as good as “Mr Cochran’s young ladies.”

  ‘That’s the trouble when a backer knows nowt about the theatre and goes and hires London management and provincial artistes. Them in London think they knows it all and o’ course they all ’ave their own favourites. If you ask me, it will be a bloody miracle if we even get to open here never mind get a full house and then move on to Drury Lane,’ Babs opined with a world-weary air.

  ‘I thought you’d all be pleased I’d got the part,’ Hettie told her miserably.

  Babs sighed heavily. ‘There’s a lot you’re going to have to learn about the theatre, Hettie. And I don’t just mean Madame Cecile’s bloody dance routines. You see, no matter ’ow much another girl likes you, when you get a plum part and she doesn’t it’s bound to leave ’er feeling a bit sore, like. Any of us ’ud feel the same. Now come on, cheer up,’ Babs commanded giving her another swift hug. ‘Mary ’ull soon come round. Have you told your family yet? Your ma and pa are bound to be pleased for you.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Hettie answered her. She was unwilling to discuss Ellie’s condition, even with a friend as close as Babs. ‘Babs, do you really think I am good enough for the part?’ she asked anxiously.

  Babs pursed her lips and tilted her head to one side as she studied her. ‘Well, let’s see. We all know as how you’ve got the voice; loud enough to drown out the whole bloody orchestra it is.’ She chuckled. ‘And you’ve certainly got the looks. But it isn’t just about being good enough, ’Ettie,’ she added seriously. ‘Sometimes it’s more about ’oo yer knows. Faye will kick up a right stink about you getting the part she wanted, yer can be sure of that. But don’t you worry.’ She gave Hettie’s arm a comforting little squeeze. ‘We’ll all be watching out for your back. Now, come on, I ’ope you haven’t forgotten that we’re all going to the picture house tonight to see Rudolph Valentino?’

  Immediately Hettie shook her head. Of course she hadn’t. Every woman in the country was in a fever of excitement about the risqué film which had just come to Britain and its handsome male lead.

  ‘Thank ’eavens we’re only rehearsing, otherwise we’d never have got to see the film,’ Babs added.

  Valentino’s effect was such that some women were reported to be swooning just at the sight of his photograph, never mind his actual presence on the screen. The newspapers had reported disapprovingly on the frenzied behaviour of his female admirers, and it was said that no woman could remain immune to a look from his dark eyes.

  And so it proved to be. In a cinema packed with women, every member of the audience gave an involuntary gasp of delicious shocked excitement when Rudolph turned to Agnes Ayres, his Arab robes lending an even more dangerous mystery to his already handsome features as he commanded, ‘Fly with me – into another dawn.’

  And one of the few male voices from the audience was heard to exclaim furiously, ‘Maud, I demand that you cover your ears and your eyes immediately.’ Much to the giggling delight of the girls, who nudged one another, their eyes shining with the heady pleasure of forbidden intimacy being offered to the film’s swooning heroine.

  ‘’Ere, Aggie, wha
t he just said, that means that…’

  ‘Oh, put a sock in it will yer, Mavis,’ Aggie advised her impatiently. ‘We all know what it means. Cor, what I wouldn’t give ter have ’im say that ter me!’ she added, returning her attention to the screen. ‘I’ve never been so shocked in all me life.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Jenny agreed dreamily.

  ‘No, nor me,’ someone else agreed.

  But Hettie didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She was too caught up in the film to even move, never mind speak, and had to be nudged by Babs who hissed at her as the credits came up, ‘Come on, we’re going…’

  Those thrilling words that Rudolph Valentino spoke had meant that he was going to make love to the heroine of the film. And they weren’t even married. A funny little twisting sensation of excitement and something else was aching through Hettie’s whole body. It made her feel rather like she had felt when John had kissed her.

  John! Her heart gave a fierce jump and banged against her chest wall. What was he doing now? Did he ever think of her? Did any of them? Emotional tears started to sting her eyes.

  It had been such as very exciting day and yet, somehow, deep down inside her there was a sharp ache of sadness, Hettie acknowledged, that would never go away.

  ‘You aren’t still reading them blessed lines, are you?’ Babs demanded good-naturedly as she leaned over Hettie’s shoulder to see what she was doing. ‘I thought you said as how you was going to your aunt’s for your Sunday dinner?’

  ‘Yes I am, but I just wanted to read through my part again before I go,’ Hettie told her importantly.

  She had read through her lines so many times she almost knew them by heart already; and as for her songs, she loved them and couldn’t wait to sing them for Lucius Carlyle. Already she was visualising the look of impressed delight in his eyes as he praised her singing voice and told her how pleased he was with her. The part could have been written just for her, Hettie admitted. It was perfect, even if Princess Mimi wasn’t the female lead part, and there was no romantic interest for her. Her role was that of a mischievous and sometimes forgetful but always well-meaning young cousin who genuinely wanted to bring the two lovers together.

  Her favourite song was her main solo when she had to sing about her frustration at the two lovers’ inability to cut through the tangled knots of misunderstanding and protocol and tell one another how they felt. She especially loved the fact that there was a touch of comedy about her character.

  ‘Oh Babs, it’s so exciting,’ Hettie told her, pink-cheeked with delight. ‘Just imagine, I’m going to be singing the second female lead, on a London stage!’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t start getting your hopes up too high yet, if I was you,’ Babs warned her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re still rehearsing and if the money runs out, as has been known to ’appen, we may not even get to open, and even if we do, if the critics don’t like us we won’t be going anywhere. It doesn’t do to take anything for granted in this business, ’Ettie. Aw, come on, don’t look so glum. You never know, this time next year it could be you wot is acting opposite Rudolph Valentino,’ she teased. ‘Oh, and watch out for that Faye as well,’ Babs added. ‘She’ll be as mad as fire that you’ve got the part, and think on, ’Ettie, as how she’s already got rid of one Princess Mimi. And there’s no getting away from the fact that old Lucy favours her. Gawd knows why, she’s as clumsy as an elephant and she can’t sing.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so unkind about poor Mr Carlyle,’ Hettie defended the director primly. ‘Eddie was really horrid about him, but Mr Carlyle was very kind when he spoke to me.’

  ‘Eddie?’ Babs queried. ‘You mean Eddie Ormond, the set designer?’

  ‘Is that what he does? He didn’t say.’

  ‘A youngish chap, tall and la de da with wavy hair and…’

  ‘Yes, that’s him’, Hettie agreed. ‘Mr Dalhousie sent him to find me, and then he waited with me before taking me to meet Mr Carlyle.’

  ‘Well, ’e seems a nice enough young chap,’ Babs admitted, ‘although he’s a bit too posh for my tastes. Oh ’eck, is that the time?’ she exclaimed looking at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m meeting someone at eleven.’

  ‘Someone? You mean a man?’ Hettie challenged her immediately.

  Babs tossed her head, her face bright pink. ‘So what if he is?’ she said nonchalantly. ‘It isn’t against the law, is it?’

  ‘Oh Babs, who is he, and why haven’t you said anything about him?’

  Babs gave her a coy look. ‘There isn’t anything too say. At least not yet. I met him last year when we were both working in the same panto. Stan Fisher his name is. He does a comedy turn with another chap. They’ve bin working in Blackpool all through the summer but now he’s booked to do a panto here again this winter. Bumped into ’im the other day, I did, and ’e told me that ’e and some other lads are all boarding just round the corner from us. He asked me out straight off, like. Cheek! I wouldn’t have accepted if he hadn’t caught me in a weak moment, and I told him so an’ all.’

  ‘Where’s he taking you?’ Hettie asked her, both curious and slightly envious. She had heard the other girls talking about their various beaux and giggling over the kisses they tried to steal, but this was the first time she had known Babs go out with anyone.

  ‘Oh, we’re only going to ’ave a bit o’ dinner somewhere and then go for a walk. He’s rehearsing at four, and I told him there was no way I was risking meself staying out wi’ the likes of him once it gets dark,’ Babs announced meaningfully, causing Hettie to giggle.

  The November day was cold and damp and had that kind of greyness that seemed to seep into everything. Hettie huddled deeper into her coat and started to walk a bit faster. Only another few minutes and she would be standing in Connie’s warm parlour toasting her cold hands and feet, she promised herself. Her stomach was already grumbling hungrily at the thought of Connie’s Sunday dinner. This would be the first time she had seen her since Connie had told her about Ellie, and Hettie was apprehensive, especially after what John had told her Connie had said to him. Would Connie be the same as Ellie, Gideon and John, and snub her?

  The children saw her first, throwing themselves at her with shrieks of enthusiastic welcome that brought Connie out of the kitchen to exclaim, ‘My, Hettie, but it seems an age since we last saw you. How are you, love?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Hettie told her. She was dying to give Connie her wonderful good news but there was something more important she had to do first.

  ‘How is Mam,’ she asked urgently. ‘Only whenever I telephone Da, he doesn’t say very much except that she’s resting and mustn’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Well, she’s really taken the loss of this baby very hard, Hettie, and that’s a fact. She still doesn’t even want to see me and I’m her blood family – her sister,’ Connie announced, oblivious that her throwaway comment cut through Hettie like a knife.

  ‘According to Iris, Ellie is making some progress,’ Connie continued. ‘And now that Gideon has taken her to the Lakes for the winter, to try to raise her spirits, we must just hope that she continues to do so and that we shall soon have our old Ellie back with us.

  ‘By coincidence I had a letter from John only yesterday morning asking very much the same question as you have just done.’

  A sharp pain bit into Hettie’s heart. John had written to his sister, but he had not written to her. And yet at one time, or so it seemed to Hettie now when she looked back, he had for ever been sending her silly jokey notes.

  ‘He is happy, then, working for his friend?’ Hettie forced herself to ask.

  ‘It certainly seems so, although like everyone else in the family he is concerned about Ellie. I had written to him asking if he had made any plans for Christmas and if he would like to come and stay here with us, but he has written back that he has already accepted an invitation for a house party, if you please, from this posh friend of his. If you ask me, it sound
s as though our John is going up in the world now he’s mixing with all these posh folk,’ Connie announced proudly.

  ‘Anyway, what about you, Hettie?’ she asked. ‘Are you still enjoying singing at the Adelphi?’

  ‘No, not any more. As it happens, Aunt Connie, I’m doing a bit of going up in the world of my own,’ Hettie told her proudly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ She wasn’t going to let on to her aunt just how upset she was that she’d had to learn about John’s new life from someone else. And she was also cruelly aware of the irony that John was putting his new friends above his family, just as he had falsely accused her of doing.

  ‘I’ve been taken on to play the second female lead in a new musical…’

  ‘A musical? You mean you are to go on the stage, like a music hall turn? Oh Hettie, I don’t think…’

  ‘It’s all perfectly respectable,’ Hettie stopped her quickly. ‘And it’s not music hall. It’s an operetta…’

  ‘An opera?’ Connie breathed, obviously impressed.

  Hettie knew that she should correct her aunt’s misinterpretation of what she had said, but suddenly, before she could do so, a mental image of John all dressed up to the nines at his house party, dancing with pretty girls in their flapper dresses, slid into her head, and her pride stopped her. If John could attend a house party with his posh new friends then she could be in an ‘opera’, she decided fiercely.

  ‘What a shame that Mr Caruso has just died,’ Connie mourned. ‘Otherwise you could perhaps have sung with him.’

  Hettie had to bite the inside of her mouth to silence her guilty laughter. It was sweet of Connie to rate her ability so highly. ‘I start rehearsals on Monday and then in the spring, if we take well here, the whole production could be moving to London.’

  ‘London! Oh, Hettie!’

  Hettie was so pleased with the effect her words were having on her aunt that, over lunch, encouraged by Connie’s eager questions, she started to tell her how impressed Jay Dalhousie had been with her voice.