Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  ‘Mama,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Oh Mam.’

  ‘Hettie, love, there’s no need for you to tek on like this.’

  Hettie could see what an effort it was for Ellie even to speak and how much doing so was draining her fragile strength, and the fear that had been growing in her ever since she had received Gideon’s first telephone call exploded inside her like shrapnel tearing into her flesh. Her eyes stung with tears and her body shook. She wanted to cling to Ellie like a child and beg her not to be ill. She felt desperately afraid, and filled with panic.

  ‘Hettie…The baby…My little Hannah. I want you to look after her for me, and no one else. Promise me that, will you…’

  The thin words, spaced out between painful breaths, tore at Hettie’s heart. Unable to speak she bit down hard on her bottom lip and nodded her head.

  ‘You are a good girl, Hettie.’ Ellie smiled. ‘A good daughter.’

  Hettie could see the rapid jump of her pulse in the thin pale flesh of her throat.

  The nurse had got to her feet warningly. ‘That’s enough for now, if you don’t mind, miss,’ she told Hettie firmly, coming over to the bed.

  As Ellie’s eyes closed Hettie begged the nurse as she had already begged Gideon, ‘She will get better, won’t she?’

  ‘That’s for God to know, miss, and for us to pray for,’ the nurse told her quietly as she straightened Ellie’s bedclothes.

  Gideon was waiting for Hettie outside on the landing.

  ‘Mam has asked me to look after the baby,’ she told him emotionally. ‘Where is she? Where is Hannah?’

  ‘Upstairs in the nursery,’ Gideon answered her tiredly. ‘As I say, Ellie couldn’t feed her on account of the baby being early and Ellie herself being so weak. So we’ve been having to give her formula milk, but she cries that much whenever she’s near Ellie that the nurse has said she should be kept in the nursery so that Ellie can get some rest. I’ve got a nurse for her, but what with worrying about Ellie…’

  ‘Can I go up and see her?’ Hettie asked.

  Gideon nodded his head.

  To Hettie’s surprise the nursery looked much as it had always done, with no special decoration having been done for the new baby.

  ‘Ellie wanted to wait until the baby was born before she had it decorated,’ Gideon explained as though he had guessed what Hettie was thinking. ‘She said she was afraid it would be bad luck.’

  A stern-looking nanny was sitting beside the fire whilst the baby’s crib stood under the half open window, the curtains and crib drapes flapping in the cool evening breeze.

  ‘Babies need fresh air.’ The nanny sniffed sharply when Hettie shivered as she hurried over to the crib.

  Immediately the nanny spoke, the baby started to cry, a thin, sharp, high-pitched sound that tore at Hettie’s heart so fiercely that she had reached into the crib and lifted out the tightly swaddled little body before she could stop herself.

  The baby was tiny and thin, its limbs too brittle and delicate beneath the tightly wrapped swaddling cloths that held her arms to her body. A small cap covered her head, and the tiny red face was screwed up tightly as wail after wail filled the nursery.

  ‘I don’t approve of babies being picked up every time they cry,’ the nanny commented sharply, getting up and walking over to Hettie, plainly intending to take the baby from her.

  ‘Perhaps she’s crying because she’s hungry,’ Hettie suggested uncertainly.

  ‘If she’s hungry it’s her own fault. She refused her bottle at dinner time and babies, like everyone else, have to learn that if they don’t eat when they should then they have to go hungry until the next meal time.’

  ‘She’s very wet,’ Hettie worried.

  ‘I’ll thank you to give her to me please, miss. It isn’t time for a change yet. It helps them to understand what’s what if they aren’t changed every time they wet themselves.’

  The nanny was having to raise her voice to make herself heard above the baby’s anguished screams. On the point of handing her over to her, Hettie suddenly hesitated. Ellie had asked her to look after the baby. But she didn’t know anything about babies…

  ‘If you please, miss,’ the nanny was insisting impatiently, her mouth thinning as she glared at the baby. ‘You’ve got a real temper on you, haven’t you, missie. Well, we’ll soon teach you to curb that. Babies as wot screams in temper has to learn to mind their manners. Don’t you worry, Mr Walker,’ she added, her face softening as she looked almost maternally at Gideon. ‘I won’t let this little madam cause you any trouble. And there’s no need for you to worry yourself keep coming up these stairs neither. I’m sure you’ve got enough on your plate what with your poor wife at death’s door, and folks as wot should know better descending on you and making a nuisance of themselves.’

  Warning bells started to ring inside Hettie’s head. The nanny seemed to be more interested in ‘mothering’ Gideon than she was in mothering the poor little baby who was still screaming in Hettie’s arms. And as for her comment about Ellie being close to death’s door…Hettie hadn’t missed the anguished look in Gideon’s eyes as he listened to her. Despite her bossy manner the nanny was probably not all that much older than she was herself, Hettie decided as she studied her thin mouth and too pale, watery blue eyes.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sure we’re very grateful for everything you’ve done for the baby, but I’m here to look after her now. My father will pay you for the full month, of course, as is customary.’

  And with that Hettie swept past her and sat herself down in the chair she had vacated, cradling the baby against her shoulder as she whispered softly to her whilst determinedly ignoring both the furiously outraged look on the face of the nurse and the appalling stench emanating from the baby’s wrappings.

  ‘Hettie,’ Gideon protested worriedly.

  ‘It’s all right, Da,’ Hettie assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘Mam wants me to look after little Hannah.’

  ‘You! You don’t know the first thing about looking after a baby,’ the nanny snorted, tossing her head.

  ‘I know enough not to leave her lying hungry and cold in dirty wet things,’ Hettie retorted spiritedly before appealing directly to Gideon, saying fiercely, ‘Da, I can do it, I know I can, and it’s what Mam wants…’

  ‘Oh, don’t you bother about me, Mr Walker.’ The nanny sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t stay here now – not if’n you was to pay me a hundred pounds. I feels that sorry for you, I really do,’ she added spitefully as she glared at Hettie. ‘Aye, and sorry for the baby as well. Like as not she’ll be the death of it…’

  Hettie watched, forcing herself to remain outwardly impassive, whilst the other woman gathered together her belongings and pushed them into a carpet bag. It was the sight of that carpet bag – worn and shabby – that almost changed Hettie’s mind. The woman wasn’t much older than she was herself, after all, and no doubt she needed the work.

  The work, Hettie acknowledged, hardening her heart. But not Gideon. And it was obvious to Hettie that that was what the other woman was after. A well-to-do widower with a small baby to bring up and his wife only recently dead. Who should he turn to but the nurse who was already caring for his child?

  Well, Ellie wasn’t going to die and the baby didn’t need a nanny, because she had family to look after her. And she would look after her, Hettie decided fiercely, telling the scowling nanny, ‘I’ll ring for someone to take your bags down for you. Da, why don’t you take the nanny downstairs and pay her what’s owing to her?’

  She had never imagined she would ever see Gideon looking like this, Hettie acknowledged. Her tall, handsome adopted father looked stooped and dazed, older and weaker. A broken man.

  The nursery door opened and Tom Wood, the ex-soldier who Gideon had taken on out of charity to help out around the house, came in.

  ‘Nanny is leaving, Tom,’ Hettie told him. ‘Oh, and could you bring some kindling up for the nursery fire when you’ve got time, an
d tell Mrs Jennings that I’ll be coming down to the kitchen to have a word with her about little Hannah’s milk and formula.’

  Gideon, Tom and the nanny had barely gone, their feet still clattering on the stairs, when unexpectedly the baby opened her eyes and looked right into Hettie’s own – or at least so it seemed to Hettie.

  A fierce pang that seemed to physically wrench at her own womb gripped Hettie as she looked back into the baby’s dark blue eyes, oblivious to anyone and anything else, and fell immediately in love.

  Falling in love was one thing but dealing with the practicalities of caring for a very new and four-week early baby, plus gently picking up the reins of a household shocked into despair by what had happened, was quite another, Hettie recognised. Her heart started to thump unevenly at the thought of what she was taking on.

  But Mam had faith in her to do it, she reminded herself stoutly, and it wasn’t going to be for very long after all. Connie, with her experience of running her own nursery come orphanage – where Hettie herself had helped out during her school holidays – would surely be able to help Gideon to find a more suitable nurse for the baby than the one Hettie had just so determinedly turned out?

  And Ellie and Gideon’s housekeeper, Mrs Jennings, normally a well-organised, phlegmatic woman, would surely be able to run the household until Ellie herself was well enough to do so once again. Once she too had recovered from the distress.

  She heard slow, tired footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and Gideon came in, going straight to one of the nursery’s comfortable chairs and slumping into it. His eyes were red rimmed with lack of sleep and emotion.

  ‘Has she gone?’ Hettie asked him.

  ‘Aye, lass, but she weren’t very pleased about it.’ He paused and rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘Hettie, love, I know you meant it for the best, but that nanny…’

  ‘Mam wouldn’t have wanted her taking care of little Hannah, Da,’ Hettie told him fiercely, with all the conviction she truly felt in her voice. ‘And you do not need to worry about anything, Da,’ she told him more gently. ‘I can manage. I’m a woman now, Da, and besides I promised Mam,’ she repeated, trying to sound more confident than she was actually feeling. ‘I’m going to change Hannah now, and then I’m going to go downstairs and have a word with cook. It might be a good idea with so many people coming and going if she boiled up a pan of nourishing soup. Oh, and some chicken soup for Mam as well. Remember how she always said when we were little as how it was good for us…’

  ‘Eh, Hettie, lass. I’m that glad to have you here.’ Gideon got to his feet and wiped the emotional tears from his eyes.

  Half an hour later, as she stripped the swaddling bands off the baby, Hettie wrinkled her nose at the smell, immediately dropping the soiled things into the bucket of boiling hot water she had asked cook to send to the nursery via the tweeny maid.

  In order to wash the baby she had found an old-fashioned ewer and basin set and, carefully holding Hannah she held her in the basin and gently started to wash her, talking soothingly to her when the unfamiliar feeling of the water on her skin made the baby cry.

  ‘There you are,’ she told her tenderly when she had finished. ‘All nice and clean. Now I’m going to dry you and put some nice clean things on you.’

  Hettie had already found clean swaddling bands and nightgowns for Hannah. But she was going to need more clothes, she decided, as she patted her dry. Then on some impulse she couldn’t name she leaned forward and kissed her little hands.

  She must have learned more at Connie’s nursery during her enforced school holiday work there than she had realised, Hettie acknowledged when she had finished securing a fresh band over the baby’s navel, and then fastened her nappy.

  Now instead of smelling so unappealing, Hannah smelled sweetly of talcum powder and soap. Nanny might have chosen to wrap her from neck to toes in constraining swaddling bands in the old-fashioned way, but at Connie’s nursery even the smallest babies were allowed to have their arms and legs free to wave about.

  ‘Cook’s heated up the bottles like you asked for miss. One just wiv milk and one wiv formula. And I’ve brought them up for you like you wanted.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Molly,’ Hettie smiled at the tweeny.

  ‘Could you put them there on the table next to that chair for me, please?’

  As she did so the maid added, ‘And cook said to tell you that she’s mekkin’ some of your favourite biscuits and that there’ll be a nice chop for you when you’re ready. Oh, and she’s told Tom he’s to go out first thing in the morning and get some chickens from the poultry shop in Friargate.’

  ‘Please thank Mrs Jennings for me when you go back to the kitchen, Molly, and tell her that I said I shall be looking to her to help me keep house as Mam would want. Whilst I’m here standing in for her,’ Hettie added diplomatically.

  Once Molly had gone Hettie settled herself in the comfortable rocking chair beside the fire, and, holding Hannah in the crook of her arm reached for the bottle of warm milk.

  ‘I don’t suppose either of us are going to be very good at this, Hannah,’ she told her softly as she sprinkled a few drops of the warm milk on her own arm to test its temperature, as she had seen the nurses do at Connie’s, and then offered Hannah the rubber teat.

  The baby gave a thin wail, her small face screwing up. Hettie’s heart thudded with anxiety. What if the nurse had been right and she out of ignorance did cause Ellie’s new baby to die?

  And Hannah would die if she didn’t have her bottle. Hettie had seen how very thin she was when she had bathed her.

  ‘Hannah you must have your milk, sweetheart,’ she told her as she tried again, this time squeezing a few drops of milk from the teat into Hannah’s mouth when she opened it to cry.

  ‘Mmm, isn’t that good?’ Hettie whispered. ‘Want some more?’

  It took her ten minutes of patient coaxing to get Hannah to suck properly on the teat, by which time Hettie herself was stiff with anxious tension.

  She had read the instructions on the side of the tin of formula very carefully before mixing it, and, according to what she had read, Hannah was to drink the whole bottle. But already her eyes were closing and she was drifting off to sleep, and the bottle was only just over two thirds empty.

  Suddenly the teat slipped out of Hannah’s mouth and her whole body stiffened as she screamed in pain, her face bright red. Terrified, Hettie stared at her. What had she done?

  ‘That sounds like wind to me,’ she heard Gideon’s voice saying gently from the doorway.

  Wind…Of course!

  ‘Give her to me. I’all do it for you. Ellie always said that I was better at winding babies than she is.’

  ‘How is Mam?’ Hettie asked him as she handed Hannah to him. ‘Sleeping, thank the Lord,’ Gideon answered as he deftly laid the small baby against his shoulder and patted her back, both of them laughing when she suddenly produced a loud burp.

  ‘Hettie, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, or how proud of you I am for what you’re doing,’ Gideon told her emotionally as she took the baby back from him.

  ‘Mam asked me to do it,’ Hettie repeated. ‘And…and I want to. After all,’ she told him, looking up at him with tears in her own eyes. ‘It’s no more than what she did for me.’

  Inwardly Hettie contrasted her present life here at home to the life she had been living in London. In London she had had admiring crowds clapping her singing every night; singing lessons, the offer of her own little house, pretty clothes and jewellery, and of course Jay and all that he wanted to give her. Fame of the kind her parents could never really understand.

  Here, she suspected she would barely have time to leave the nursery, and she certainly would not be wearing exensive fashionable clothes; a sturdy cotton frock with a pinny over it would be more like it. Her hands would be in and out of hot water all day long, and like as not, when she wasn’t looking after Hannah she would be worrying about Ellie.

  And yet, ridiculously,
being here, holding Hannah, in her arms, witnessing Gideon’s joy and relief because she was there, was filling her with a sense of wonderfully happy purposefulness and satisfaction.

  As Gideon’s arms enfolded her, Hettie leaned her head on her adopted father’s chest and gave way to her tears, the baby held safely between them.

  And that was how John saw her when he pushed open the nursery door, having been told by Tom that that was where he would find Gideon.

  ‘John!’ Gideon exclaimed with pleasure, releasing Hettie.

  She stepped back from him, returning to the rocking chair, so that she could coax Hannah to finish her bottle.

  ‘I came as soon as I could. How is Ellie? How is the baby?’

  ‘Ellie is very weak,’ Hettie heard Gideon telling him soberly. ‘But little Hannah seems to be thriving now that she has Hettie here to take care of her.’

  Gideon’s praise was as premature as Hannah herself had been, Hettie acknowledged, and she could see from the look on John’s face that he probably thought so as well.

  But his arrival reminded her of her newly assumed duties and so she turned to Gideon and said calmly, ‘I’d better go down and tell Mrs Jennings that there will be one more for dinner, and then I’ll make sure that a bed’s made up for John. Mrs Jennings is going to make some chicken soup for Mam tomorrow. It will help to nourish her.’

  John couldn’t stop looking at Hettie. He had thought he had stored mental images of every mood he had ever seen her exhibit, but he admitted they did not include an image of her like this, a serene madonna determined to protect the child she was holding and those in her care.

  Where and when had the girl he remembered become the woman he saw now?

  A yearning ache seized his heart, and closed his throat so that he could not even trust himself to speak.