Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  They were all at the theatre – apart from Mary herself, who had said she had a bad headache and felt too sick to go to rehearsal.

  ‘Well, she might have brung it on herself, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling sorry for her,’ Jess put in.

  ‘Me neither,’ her twin agreed.

  ‘Well, ’appen you’re right,’ Aggie agreed, softening. ‘But let this be a warning to you, ’Ettie,’ Aggie urged. ‘They’re all the same, these toffs, and just because Jay Dalhousie is an American that don’t mean that he’s any different. And what’s more, he’s married already.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no point in talking to ’Ettie, Aggie,’ Babs chipped in, tossing her head. ‘She thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us now.’

  ‘Babs, that isn’t true,’ Hettie protested unhappily.

  ‘Yes it is,’ Babs snapped back immediately. ‘’As she told the rest of you yet that she’s movin’ in to her own place?’ she asked whilst Hettie’s skin coloured up, betraying her instantly.

  ‘Singing lessons. Dinner at the Ritz nearly every bloody night. Now your own lodgings. We wasn’t born yesterday, you know, ’Ettie,’ Babs told her sharply.

  ‘Your own house? And you never said so much as a word about it to us, ’Ettie,’ Jessie reproached her.

  ‘It isn’t definite…about the house,’ Hettie protested guiltily. ‘Jay only mentioned it the other day…’

  ‘Oh, it’s “Jay” now, is it?’ Babs mocked her unkindly.

  Why was Babs treating her like this? Hettie wondered miserably.

  ‘Not that I cares wot you do because I’m going back to Liverpool,’ Babs announced with a toss of her head. ‘Given in me notice, I have, and I’m leavin’ at the end of the week.’ She looked down at her left hand and twisted her small engagement ring.

  ‘You’re missing your Stan, that’s what it is, isn’t it?’ Aggie guessed immediately.

  ‘So what if I am? We don’t all want to be bloody famous singers, you know…’

  ‘’Ere, Babs. There’s no call to go flying orf the handle wi’ me,’ Aggie objected.

  ‘Mebbe not,’ Babs agreed grudgingly, giving Hettie a cold and pointed look.

  Hettie had to wait until bedtime to speak privately with Babs. Her friend’s sharp words to her had hurt, but where previously she had been reluctant to raise the subject Hettie now felt that she didn’t want them to part without at least making an attempt to find out what had gone wrong between them.

  Babs had undressed in silence, blocking all Hettie’s attempts to talk to her, and now that they were both in bed Hettie took a deep breath and begged her anxiously, ‘Babs, I thought you and me were friends, but…’

  ‘So did I, ’Ettie. But you’ve changed,’ Babs told her sharply. ‘You aren’t the girl you was in Liverpool, and if you ask me it’s all on account of you gettin’ a bit above yourself, and thinking you’re too good for the rest of us now.’

  ‘Babs, I don’t think that,’ Hettie insisted humbly. ‘Honest…’

  ‘Yes you do. You don’t want to be bothered with us any more. You wouldn’t even come to ’Yde Park with us yesterday.’

  ‘But that was because…’ Hettie began eagerly and then stopped. Things had changed, she admitted sadly, because now she felt reluctant to expose herself by telling Babs what Jay had said to her, whereas once Babs would have been the first person she would have taken her fears to. But how could she now when Babs had made it so obvious that she disapproved of Hettie’s relationship with Jay?

  ‘I know what it was “because” of, ’Ettie,’ Babs told her. ‘I’ve seen it ’appen before. Me own cousin were just like you. Started orf in the chorus together, we did, and then the next thing was she didn’t want anythin’ more to do wi’ me because she’d been given a solo spot. That full of herself, she was, she couldn’t get ’er head through the door it had got that swelled.’

  ‘I didn’t know your cousin was on the stage. Where is she now, Babs?’ Hettie asked her.

  Babs gave a bitter laugh. ‘I don’t know. Last I ’eard of her, she’d run off wi’ some chap from Manchester. Good riddance an’ all, if you ask me. I saw the way you was lookin’ down your nose at my Stan, ’Ettie.’

  ‘Babs, no. I didn’t…’

  ‘Yes you did. At Christmas when he asked if you wanted ter sit on his knee. Turned yer back on ’im, you did, and walked orf with yer nose in the air.’

  Hettie stared at her. ‘But that was because…’ She broke off, recognising that she could not tell this new Babs who had taken the place of her friend that she had refused Stan’s offer of his knee as a seat because she hadn’t wanted her friend to think she was flirting with her man.

  An aching sense of loss filled Hettie. Was this the price she was going to have to pay for success? The loss of her friends? Her family? Her identity? She gave a small shiver of apprehension.

  Reluctantly John acknowledged that with the light already fading it was time for him to return to the flying club. The sky was a miraculous colour of deep dense blue fading away to palest lemon against the horizon where the sun was setting. It had been a perfect afternoon for flying, and he had ached to have his camera and a co-pilot so that he could have captured the beauty of it all.

  He missed the life he had lived in Preston, he acknowledged as he brought the small plane down safely and taxied her to a standstill. The more gentle pace of his old life there may have brought him less money but it had also allowed him time for his photography; time to be with his family and his friends.

  The harsh, agonising pain and guilt of Jim’s death had eased to a more bearable sense of sadness and loss, which was ironic, he admitted, because the feelings of sadness and loss he felt with regard to Hettie had actually intensified.

  The ground staff had all gone home for the day, and the airfield was deserted. John did not normally mind the solitude of his own company, but tonight the warmth of the balmy air, the sense of summer coming, and life flowering all around him made him sharply aware of his loneliness.

  There was a small pub on the other side of the village, which somehow reminded him of The Lamb and Shepherd, an ancient drovers pub on the outskirts of Preston and a favourite haunt of his late father and uncle.

  The Pride children’s Uncle Will had been a real character – a sheep drover who had kept two families, one in Preston and another close to Lancaster.

  John grinned to himself as he got into his motor and started the engine. Their mother had thoroughly disapproved of her disreputable brother-in-law, but John had loved him. It had been through Uncle Will that Gideon had brought John his first and much longed for collie pup.

  Boys and pups, they were meant to be together, John reflected ruefully as he drove down the now darkening country lanes. He still missed Rex, the collie pup Gideon had given him when he was ten, even though the dog had gone to his rest over four years ago now.

  Overhead the full moon was illuminating the landscape with soft silver blue light, the sky a vast bowl of darker blue broken up by the various stars and their constellations.

  John had been keenly interested in astronomy as a boy. Will Pride had had every countryman’s knowledge of the stars and their movements, which he had passed on to his nephew, and later John had spent many happy hours studying them through the telescope owned by the photographer for whom he had worked. As a little girl Hettie had loved looking up at the sky and listening to him whilst he taught her the names of the great constellations. Hettie…Would she never leave his thoughts?

  The public house was only a couple of miles outside the village, and as John stopped his car he saw Polly and Sir Percival Montford standing several yards away from him beside their own motors, so engrossed in the argument they were obviously having that neither of them had seen him.

  Polly with Sir Percival? What were they arguing about and why were they meeting here at this remote country public house?

  Sir Percival had started to walk away and John watched as Polly ran after him, obviousl
y still arguing with him. But Sir Percival pushed past her. She then turned round and started to walk towards her roadster, getting into it and immediately starting the engine and driving off in her normal dashing way, leaving Sir Percival to stare after her before getting into his Daimler and driving off in the opposite direction.

  What was going on? Why should Polly, who John had seen making her dislike of Sir Percival all too plain, be meeting him here?

  It was none of his business, John said to himself. Polly had a fiancé now to protect her and look after her. But somehow worrying about her and feeling protective towards her had become a habit he couldn’t break, John acknowledged ruefully half an hour later as he tucked into the steak and ale pie the landlady had brought him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Even though they had not parted as the close friends they had once been, Hettie still missed Babs. The small room they had shared felt empty without her, and Hettie – to her own chagrin – had even found that at bedtime she was chattering out loud about the events of her day, just as though Babs were still there.

  Her skin had almost returned to its normal colour, and although nothing had been said between them about how angry he had been with her, Jay had been hinting to her about wanting to buy her ‘something pretty’, and he was also pressing her to agree to move into the house down by the river in Chelsea, which he had described as ‘small and simple’ but which to Hettie had seemed far too luxurious. So much so in fact that the second time Jay had insisted on taking her to view it she had actually felt uncomfortable being there.

  ‘What is it about it you don’t like?’ Jay had pressed her when she had shaken her head and cut their inspection short.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she had told him honestly. ‘It just feels so…’ She had shrugged, giving up her struggle to find the words to express to him how uncomfortable the house, with its heavily flounced curtains and furnishings, its too thick rugs and its too delicate furniture, had made her feel. In the same way Hettie felt unable to explain to Jay that the rooms, with their heavy, still over-perfumed air, made her feel as though she were trapped in some kind of cage.

  In Preston, in Winckley Square, the house, the home in which she had grown up, had had rooms that smelled of male tobacco and leather, rooms delicately scented with Ellie’s favourite rose water, a kitchen rich with the delicious smell of cooking food, and a nursery that smelled of baby powder. All those different scents had made the Winckley Square house a home, whereas the Chelsea house felt more like a prison.

  She had told Jay that she wanted to stay where she was.

  ‘Ah, you are still angry with me, aren’t you?’ he had commented.

  Was she? Hettie didn’t really know sometimes how she felt about him now. Part of her felt dizzyingly excited and grown up, knowing that he desired her. Part of her felt thrilled and shocked because of the eager curiosity he made her feel to break the rules she had been brought up with and give herself to him. But part of her, too, shrank from that, especially now after what had happened to Mary. And yet another part of her, perhaps the most important one of all, couldn’t stop thinking of John and the stolen kiss.

  ‘No, I’m not angry,’ she had told him. ‘But…’

  ‘But what?’ he had challenged her.

  ‘But maybe we should wait until we go to New York to live together,’ she had answered him.

  ‘Do you realise how cruel that would be?’ he had asked her softly. ‘I don’t know if I can wait that long for you, my little Hettie. My body is so hungry for your sweetness,’ he had told her, and then shockingly he had taken hold of her hand and placed it firmly against his body.

  The great throb of that most male part of him beneath her nervous fingers had sent a burn of colour up over her skin that had remained even after Jay had allowed her to snatch her hand away.

  So much was changing so very fast, Hettie acknowledged uneasily as she crossed Trafalgar Square, making her way past a brewery dray pulled up outside a public house. The landlady, plump arms akimbo, was standing over a thin skivvy, watching her scrub the stone step. Hettie gave a small sigh, thinking of Liverpool where its houseproud women not only scrubbed their front steps but donkey-stoned their edges as well to make them look white.

  Shaftesbury Avenue and Drury Lane were always busy at this time of the morning – not with theatre-goers, of course, but with delivery boys on their bicycles, theatre workers yawning their way to early rehearsals, landlords and restaurateurs setting their premises to rights for the day and evening’s trade, and, of course, the area’s nightshift workers making their way home. Hettie quickly averted her gaze from the sight of a still drunken prostitute lurching along the pavement. The girl, although only around Hettie’s own age, had open running sores around her mouth and bruises on her too thin arms. She also had a small baby in her arms, and on a sudden impulse Hettie stopped and opened her purse, turning back to give the girl a few pennies.

  The blank eyes widened and the girl stared at Hettie in disbelief.

  ‘For the baby. Buy it some milk,’ Hettie told her quickly before hurrying away.

  She had no idea what had prompted her action. Many of the area’s prostitutes were loud mouthed and sometimes violent, and often hurled not just insults but sometimes even missiles at the girls when they left the theatre at night.

  With two of the understudies now taking the place of Sukey and Babs, two new girls had joined the troop, Londoners with sharp cockney accents who made it clear that they thought themselves a cut above the show’s northerners.

  Already there was a different and sometimes hostile atmosphere in the dressing room, with barbed comments being made, and antagonism crackling on the cheap-scent laden air.

  Everyone was beginning to say they wanted the run to end, and since audiences were now beginning to dwindle Jay had told Hettie that he did not intend to keep the show going until the end of September, which was when the lease ran out.

  If Babs had only waited another few weeks she might have been returning to Liverpool and her Stan anyway, Hettie reflected as she crossed the road and headed for the theatre and the busy dressing room where she still looked instinctively for Babs before remembering she was now hundreds of miles away.

  Mary was standing several feet away from her, her whole body bristling with defensive anger as one of the other chorus girls taunted her, ‘So, His Lordship is going to mek someone else Her Ladyship then, eh Mary, and not you!’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Dinah. And keep that long ugly nose of yours out of my business, otherwise I’ll be pushing it out of it for you,’ Mary warned her viciously.

  Dinah tossed her head and refused to be cowed, saying sneeringly, ‘So much for that bloody ring you’ve been flashing in front of us. I’ll bet it ain’t even real.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Mary told her, red-faced.

  ‘Huh. That’s what you say. Here, girls, come and look at this,’ Dinah called out, rummaging in her bag and producing a newspaper. ‘It’s all in ’ere. An announcement of the engagement and a picture as well.’

  Ignoring Mary, several of the girls pushed forward to look at the page Dinah was brandishing with such glee, whilst Hettie’s heart ached for Mary. She went over to her and stood protectively at her side.

  ‘’E did love me, ’Ettie,’ Mary told her quietly. ‘’E swore he did and he swore he were going ter marry me an’ all, else I would never…It’s that bloody mother of his wot made ’im change ’is mind. If’n I could just talk to ’im, ’Ettie. But he’s refusing to see me.’ Tears filled her eyes.

  The hot weather seemed to have put everyone’s tempers on edge, Hettie decided later when the director had called a halt to the rehearsal.

  ‘This isn’t the correct piece of scenery,’ he complained angrily. ‘I gave orders that it was to be changed. Where is the new piece?’

  The stage manager was sent for, and whilst they were waiting for him Hettie could not help noticing how immediately and intimately Ivan had gone to talk to the young male d
ancer who was his constant companion. He even continued to stand with him when the stage manager arrived, ignoring the other man for several minutes before finally turning towards him.

  ‘I gave instructions that this piece of scenery was to be repainted,’ Ivan announced.

  The stage manager mopped his face with a large spotted red handkerchief. ‘Yes, Ivan, I know,’ he agreed. ‘And I passed on your instructions.’

  ‘So why have they not been carried out?’

  The stage manager mopped his forehead again. ‘Unfortunately, our set designer isn’t very well at the moment.’

  Hettie tensed as she listened, anxiety gripping her stomach. Eddie had been at the theatre earlier in the week because she had seen him, although not to talk to.

  ‘Not well? You mean he is sick?’

  Someone behind Hettie sniggered and muttered, ‘Aye, sick from drink. He spends more time in the Flag and Drum than he does in here.’

  To Hettie’s relief the director was too far away to have overheard.

  The young dancer tugged on the director’s sleeve. Ivan bent his head towards him and the boy whispered something in his ear.

  ‘It seems that the set designer is not so sick that he cannot leave his sick bed to carouse in every filthy drinking den between the theatre and Piccadilly Circus,’ the director spat out acidly.

  Eddie was well liked by those who worked with him, unlike the director, and Hettie saw how anxious and uncomfortable the stage manager looked. ‘I’ll send someone round to his lodgings and tell him to get here,’ he offered.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ the director told him coldly. ‘But you can tell him that I intend to talk to Mr Dalhousie about his inability to do as he is told.’

  The director was going to tell Jay about Eddie? Hettie exhaled slowly. Well, she too could talk to Jay about Eddie and she would make sure that Jay knew how Ivan had tormented and persecuted his former lover, flaunting his new partner in front of him and treating him so cruelly that Hettie was not surprised poor Eddie was drinking more and more.