Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  ‘Oh Hettie,’ Connie began, starting to look uncertain and anxious. ‘This Mr Dalhousie, I don’t know that…’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Aunt Connie,’ Hettie assured her. ‘Mr Dalhousie is a gentleman and he is married. He told he that when he heard me singing at the Adelphi he knew right then that I would be a perfect Princess Mimi,’ she added, mentally persuading herself that she was only slightly exaggerating what Jay Dalhousie had said to her.

  She had no idea why it had suddenly become so important that when Connie wrote to John she was able to tell him how well she, Hettie, was doing and what a success she was becoming, any more than she had about why just thinking this could cause such a sharp angry pain so deep inside her heart.

  The grey afternoon was just beginning to give way to an early dusk when Hettie finally got up to leave. ‘You will tell Mam that I keep asking after her, won’t you, Aunt Connie?’ she begged.

  ‘Of course I will, Hettie love,’ Connie assured her.

  Hettie had the dormitory to herself when she got back as the other girls were either at work or still out, and after having her regular weekly bath she curled up in her bed with her script, and tried not to think about John and the new life he was enjoying.

  She wasn’t left in peace for very long, though.

  Within half an hour of her getting into bed, the attic door burst open and the twins came hurrying in followed by Mary and Babs, all four of them laughing and chattering.

  ‘Well I never, what a piece of luck that was, Babs, us bumping into you and and Stan like that. I’all say one thing for them lads, they certainly know how to ’ave a bit of fun.’

  ‘Ooh, me and Jenny were scared to death when that Billy Wainwright was driving. He went ever so fast. You missed out on a real treat, Hettie,’ Jenny added. ‘Didn’t she, girls?’

  ‘Huh, if you can call it a treat having your toes trod on by a clumsy great dolt of a chap who couldn’t dance properly to save ’is life,’ Mary complained.

  ‘Oh ho, you didn’t seem to be too concerned about his dancin’ when you was all cuddled up with him in the back of the motor on the way back,’ Babs pointed out pithily.

  Amidst renewed giggles, Hettie learned that a chance meeting between Babs and her new beau and the other three girls had led to Stan suggesting they call back at his boarding house to meet some of his friends, and that from there the whole party had set off for Blackpool in the two cars the boys had managed to borrow.

  ‘And then when we hid from Billy and Ian…Oh, the look on their faces when they couldn’t find us and then we jumped out at them…’

  ‘It sounds as though you had fun,’ Hettie said a little wistfully.

  ‘Oh my, but we did. That Stan of yours is a real card, Babs.’ Jenny laughed.

  ‘Mebbe, but he could well be a real card without any lodgings tomorrow if his landlady finds out about him smuggling the lot of us into their digs, and all on account of you saying you fancied a cup of cocoa,’ Babs retorted.

  ‘It were Mary wot said that not me,’ Jenny protested indignantly.

  ‘Yes, but it was you who spilled the cocoa powder and then decided to paint the boys’ faces with it,’ Mary pointed out.

  ‘Ooh but when Stan started crackin’ them jokes, and doing them tricks, I laughed so hard I got a stitch,’ Jess broke in.

  The girls’ day did sound as though it had been fun, Hettie decided, feeling even more envious. Well, hopefully once the musical started there would be time for some of that for her, too.

  ‘No! Stop!’

  Hettie’s stomach cramped sickly as she heard the anger in Madame Cecile’s voice. She had spent all morning with the choreographer trying to learn the complicated steps for the solo dance. She hadn’t realised the movements she would have to perform were more ballet than mere dance – there was no mention of it in her own script – but when she had tried to say so, Madame Cecile had flown into a furious rage and called Hettie an imbecile.

  Hettie’s whole body ached, especially her poor toes, and she felt like bursting into tears of misery and despair. She had no idea what most of the frightening-sounding ballet terms Madame Cecile was shouting at her even meant. What she was being asked to do was completely outside her experience.

  Madame’s sharp voice called out coldly, ‘Arabesque, avec attitude,’ followed by the even colder and more contemptuous, ‘Non, non, you do eet like zees…en pointe,’ as she rose up on her toes and demonstrated an impossibly swift and complicated twirl.

  Hettie had done her best to copy her, but she was not a ballet dancer and everything she did seemed to add to Madame’s fury.

  And then, to Hettie’s humiliation, as she wobbled uncomfortably on her toes the choreographer gave a hiss of disgust that caused Hettie to completely lose her balance.

  ‘Oh, Babs, don’t laugh,’ Hettie begged miserably now as she told her friend what had happened.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’Ettie,’ Babs apologised, giving her a comforting hug. ‘Madame Cecile has a real nasty temper on her and we’ve all ’ad a taste of it, I can tell you. I did hear as how it’s on account of her wanting to be a ballet dancer, and then not being able to ’cos of having a fall and hurting her hip. That’s why she ’as that limp, see.’

  ‘But Babs, it doesn’t say anything in the script about me having to do a solo ballet,’ Hettie protested.

  ‘Well, sometimes they change things, and o’ course Faye does a bit o’ ballet, like, and I suppose they was thinking that with Marilyn Miller doing so well on Broadway with Sally, and that ’aving a ballet solo, they would put one in. That’s what ’appens sometimes. Maybe they’ll take it out again now that you’ve got the part,’ Babs added, but Hettie could hear the doubt in her friend’s voice.

  ‘Where are you going now?’ Babs asked her. ‘Only a few of us are going to meet up with the boys and go for a bit o’ sommat to eat, and you’d be welcome to come with us.’

  Hettie shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’ve got to go and see Mr Carlyle. He wants to hear me sing Princess Mimi’s solo songs.’

  ‘Well, at least you won’t have any trouble with those,’ Babs tried to comfort her.

  ‘Oh dear…’

  Hettie could hear the patient sympathy and commiseration in Lucius Carlyle’s voice as he shook his head and got up from the piano stool to cross the stage and place a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You have a very pretty voice, Hettie, and I am sure that, given the right setting, it will certainly show to its advantage. But I’m afraid that a stage and a theatre audience require something rather more. However, since our backer has insisted that you are to be our Princess Mimi, and we cannot afford to offend him, we must work together to find a way round the problems, mustn’t we? Now, my dear. Let’s try again. And perhaps this time if we try a different key? You are, we must remember, a young girl, with a young girl’s trilling sweet voice.’

  Hettie heard him exhaling tiredly and the weight of her burden of humiliation and despair grew even heavier. It had been bad enough that Madame Cecile had been so contemptuous of her inability to do ballet, but this was even worse. She had thought that she had sung well, but it seemed she was wrong.

  ‘Of course, it does not help that our composer has written these songs for a soprano soubrette.’

  ‘But it says in my script that the composer’s preferred voice for Princess Mimi is like mine, a soprano lyric,’ Hettie told him in confusion.

  ‘Let me see!’ Almost snatching the script from her, he studied it frowningly before tearing it in half and saying dismissively, ‘There has obviously been some error. Anyone who knows anything about opera can see that the part is designed for a soubrette.’

  Hettie sighed. Her dreams of success seemed to be evaporating with every passing minute.

  ‘Madame Cecile says that she can’t dance a single step and Lucy says she can’t even sing properly, so if you ask me if won’t be two minutes before she’s out on her ear, and good riddance, I say.’
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br />   ‘Well, I had heard as how she’s never really done any stage work before, and that she only got the part on account of the backer tekkin’ a fancy to her voice.’

  ‘Are you sure it were just her voice he took a fancy to?’

  Standing outside the half-open dressing room door, Hettie felt her face burn as she overheard what was being said about her. Should she simply walk away and pretend she had not heard? She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. The immediate silence which descended on the room was more unnerving than the girls’ criticism of her, Hettie decided shakily as she hurried to collect her coat.

  A pair of shabby ballet shoes suddenly sailed past Hettie’s ear to land on the floor a few feet away. Hettie ignored them, the tips of her ears burning as someone gave a muffled giggle.

  ‘Oh, sorree…’ a mocking voice announced as a sharp-featured young woman came to retrieve them. ‘You aren’t a dancer, are you?’

  ‘And she ain’t much of a singer, either,’ another voice joined in unkindly.

  Hettie’s hands shook as she pulled on her coat, but she wasn’t going to give her tormentors the satisfaction of seeing how much they had upset her.

  ‘Seems to me like it won’t be long before you’ve got your part back, Faye,’ Hettie heard someone saying pointedly as she walked back to the door.

  ‘And I should think so as well. We don’t want upstarts like ’er pushing their way in where they aren’t wanted. Blinking cheek of it.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘I say, Pride, that was the most terrific lesson. First time I’ve managed to loop the loop, don’t y’know. Good sport, eh? Can you fit me in again later this week?’

  ‘I’ll just have a look at the diary, Your Grace,’ John answered him. At seventy-one, The Duke of Saltarn was his oldest pupil, and since as a hunting man the duke believed in throwing himself and his mount over whatever obstacle stood in their way, John always heaved a small sigh of relief once he had him safely back on terra firma.

  ‘I could manage 2.00 p.m. on Friday, Your Grace,’ he told him after he had studied the leatherbound, gold-lettered diary Alfred had given to him the evening before his first day officially working at the flying club. The diary cover had John’s initials stamped on one corner, and already its pages were filling up as word got around that the flying club had a talented new instructor.

  The duke’s batman and valet was waiting patiently to guide his master to the waiting Rolls Royce.

  John’s next appointment was for the first of a dozen lessons with a young man – a novice – who had apparently been recommended to the club by a friend.

  The short grey November days might not appeal to him as a flyer, but they certainly appealed to the searing bleakness inside him, John acknowledged as he left his office to walk across to the hangar where the small sturdy flying machine he used to teach beginners was being made ready for him by the team of highly trained mechanics the flying school employed.

  The morning’s post had brought a letter from Connie letting him know that Gideon and Ellie had left for the Lakes a week earlier than planned. Would the change of scene help his sister to overcome her grief at the loss of her unborn child, as Gideon so desperately hoped it might? John certainly shared his brother-in-law’s hopes, but he knew from his own experience that neither grief nor guilt were demons easily appeased.

  Connie’s letter has also contained news of Hettie and her forthcoming stage appearance. John frowned. Thinking about the last time he had seen Hettie gave him the same sort of sharp pain in his heart as probing an aching tooth with his tongue did to his face, only the pain in his heart was mixed with anger. He should not have kissed Hettie. He knew that. The old easy friendship he and Hettie had once shared had gone, and that was just as much Hettie’s fault as his, John told himself stubbornly. She was the one who had changed, not he. She was the one who had not been content with her life but had instead plunged into this wild folly of singing in public.

  And now John’s own deepest fears had been confirmed. Hettie was, Connie had written, going to be touring in a show, albeit an opera, flaunting herself on a stage for men to ogle and admire. How little he had really known her, John acknowledged bitterly.

  He sensed from the tone of Connie’s letter that his sister did not understand that an operetta was a vastly different affair from an opera, as indeed he himself probably would not have done up until a week ago. Then, he had heard Alfred protesting to his sister that he was damned if he was going to be dragged to London to hear some ruddy opera, whereupon Lady Poppy had told him firmly, ‘Don’t be silly, Alfie dearest, we are not going to listen to an opera, but to see one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s funny little operettas, and I promise you that you will enjoy it hugely.’

  Alfred had told John afterwards that he would far rather have seen a decent revue, with ‘lots of pretty girls’, adding, ‘But I daren’t tell Polly that, for she would be sure to insist that she wanted to go as well, and it wouldn’t be the thing. I keep telling Polly that she’s shocking the old guard with these modern ideas of hers, but she won’t listen,’ Alfred had concluded gloomily.

  Although Alfred had not said so directly, he had hinted to John that he was not too happy about his sister’s unexpectedly early return from New York. And John could understand why.

  Earlier in the week John had been summoned to Moreton Place by Alfred, who told him that he was at his wits’ end with his sister, who was insisting that she wanted to learn to fly.

  ‘Upon my word, John, I don’t know what mad high jinks she will want to get up to next. I have, of course, told her that it is out of the question for her to have flying lessons.’

  ‘And why should I not, brother dear?’ Polly herself had demanded, bursting into the room to interrupt their conversation. ‘John, tell my brother please that he is an old-fashioned fuddy duddy and that there is no reason why a woman should not learn to fly. After all, Daddy had no objection to my learning to drive.’

  ‘Polly, this is ridiculous,’ Alfred had spluttered.

  ‘You will give me flying lessons, won’t you, John?’ Polly had wheedled, ignoring her brother.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lady Polly, but since it is your brother who employs me…’

  ‘Oh stuff,’ Polly had stopped him, stamping her foot.

  ‘Polly, that is enough,’ Alfred had told her sharply. ‘I forbid you to continue.’

  ‘You are my brother, Alfred, and not my keeper,’ Polly had retorted, flying into a furious passion, ‘and I shall learn to fly, just see if I don’t.’

  She had whirled out of the room before Alfred could say anything further.

  The mechanics had brought the small, special modified teaching flying machine out of the hangar. Immediately John started to walk a little faster, his spirits lifting. Nothing had ever changed or diminished the sense of excitement and delight flying brought him, or his sense of wonder, not even the tragedy months before. Even though he understood every single principle that made man’s flight possible, a tiny part of him still felt there was something almost magical about it.

  As he reached the machine he lifted his hand to stroke the sturdy lines of its body. The flying machines commissioned by Alfred’s flying school were a miracle of modern science, and could in John’s opinion almost fly themselves.

  He looked up as he heard the sound of a car engine and saw a gleaming roadster racing towards him, its driver barely visible. The car came to a halt, and his pupil got out, small and slender and already togged up in the necessary protective flying clothes, pulling on goggles to protect his eyes as he hurried to John’s side.

  ‘Po…Paul Mainwaring. Sorry I’m late. Better get going, what ho?’ he introduced himself gruffly, extending a gauntleted hand for John to shake before turning towards the flying machine, leaving John to follow him.

  Since it was to be Paul Mainwaring’s first lesson, John would be flying the machine. He began explaining carefully to his pupil what he was doing and why, as the mechanics stepped back a
nd the stout little craft raced down the runway and lifted obediently into the greyness, her engine humming as busily and happily as a little bee as she chugged importantly over the late autumn browns and tans of the newly turned fallow fields below them.

  Suddenly a gauntleted hand clutched at John’s arm and a shockingly familiar female voice exclaimed excitedly, ‘Oh John, this is just too, too spiffing!’

  ‘Polly! I mean, Lady Polly,’ John corrected himself as he battled against his shocked disbelief.

  ‘John, you should see your face.’ Polly giggled. ‘I told you and Alfie that he wouldn’t be able to stop me from learning to fly. I really fooled you, didn’t I? Oh this is the most wonderful feeling. Even better than driving. Can we go faster? I do so adore speed, don’t you? It is just the best feeling, even better than falling in love, and so much safer.’

  Even over the sound of the engine he could hear the emotion in her voice as it trembled at those last betraying words.

  ‘Have you ever been in love, John?’ she called out to him. ‘Oh, you are pretending not to have heard me because you do not want to answer me. I am being too forward, aren’t I? It isn’t the done thing for a girl to ask a man such questions.’

  He could just about see the face she was pulling beneath her cap and goggles.

  ‘I hate the done thing, John, do you know that?’ she continued. ‘And sometimes I hate being a girl as well. I was in love – but it hurts so dreadfully that I never want to be again,’ she yelled at him wildly.

  She shouldn’t be up here with him, and she shouldn’t be telling him such things, but John didn’t have the heart to tell her so.

  ‘I wish we could stay up here for ever and never, ever have to go back down.’

  ‘Well, we cannot,’ John told her sternly. ‘I am turning round and taking you right back to the airfield.’