Hettie of Hope Street

FIVE

‘These young buggers come here and think they know everything. They don’t know how to treat a flying machine with proper respect, that they don’t.’

John smiled as he listened to Jim Ryley, his mechanic, grumbling about their latest intake of pupils. ‘They’re eager and enthusiastic, Jim.’

‘Aye, and some of them are downright reckless. That lanky red-headed lad for one. You want to watch him, John. He’s a right wild ‘un, and a troublemaker.’

John’s smile turned into a frown. It was true that Alan Simms was inclined to be reckless and overconfident. When John had taken him up for a lesson earlier in the week he had tried to ignore John’s instructions and wanted to loop the loop. As John had pointed out to him then, the skies were not a forgiving place in which to make an error of judgement or skill.

‘Still, he’ll be on his way soon and we’ll have the next lot coming in. How many will there be this time?’

‘Not as many as I’d like,’ John admitted.

It was a perfect day for flying, with a light wind and a clear sky, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the small problem which had caused the prop to stutter so badly yesterday meant he was grounded until he could fix it, John would have been up there enjoying it. Not that, for once, his thoughts were entirely on flying.

He picked up the letter he had received earlier in the week and re-read it. It was from a friend, a fellow flyer he had met during the war, their mutual love of flying machines giving them a shared passion which had transcended their social differences and given rise to an unlikely friendship between John, with his working class background, and Alfred, who was a member of the aristocracy. It was Alfred and not John who had initiated the friendship, brushing aside John’s awkward protests and objections about their social differences.

Alfred had written that he intended to escort his sister to Liverpool where she was boarding a liner to travel to New York this coming weekend, and they would be staying at the Adelphi hotel for a few days prior to her departure.

‘Thing is, old chap, I thought that maybe we could get together. Fact is, there’s a small business matter I’d like to discuss with you. Must say I envy you – your flying, I mean. Unfortunately, I’m grounded now. Responsibilities and all that. Still, mustn’t grumble, I suppose.’

Alfred always looked on the bright side of life – it was one of the things John admired about him – but maybe it was easy to be optimistic when you didn’t have to worry constantly about making ends meet. Alfred was, after all, an earl, whilst he was merely an ordinary working man. No, he was even less than that, John acknowledged as he looked round the rundown and shabby cottage that was his home. No self-respecting working man would live somewhere like this.

The cottage had an earth floor over which stone slabs had been laid, the result being that, when it rained, water seeped up over them and even froze when the temperature dropped sharply.

But he had slowly improved the conditions. When he had bought the property a standpipe outside had provided water for both the cottage and the livestock, but John now had water piped into the cottage itself. The outside lavvy had been little better than a latrine and a health hazard until he had built his own cesspit to accommodate not just his own needs but those of the men who came to him to learn how to fly. Indeed, their quarters were equipped with modern if basic bathrooms and sanitaryware, thanks to the generosity of his brother-in-law, Gideon. Since the cottage did not have its own bathroom it was simpler for him to use the pupils’ facilities rather than to struggle with the tin bath that hung in the washhouse.

One day, of course, he would find the time and money to install that range Ellie was always cajoling him to buy, and then he would be able to have the luxury of hot water, as well as hot food. One day…Maybe…If the business ever made him any profit.

‘Put up your fees, John,’ Gideon had advised him. But he knew if he did that then those young men who, like him, were captivated and driven by the lure of flight, would not be able to afford them. The truth was that at the moment he earned more by taking aerial photographs for those government bodies that required them than he did from giving flying lessons.

Travelling to Liverpool would mean leaving Jim on his own to sort out the problem with the prop and cancelling some of the lessons. It would also mean struggling to wash and iron one of his few remaining decent shirts, because Jenny Black, the kind-hearted soul from the village who had taken it upon herself to ‘look after him’, couldn’t be trusted not to scorch them, as he already knew to his cost. And then he would have to dig deep into his pockets to find the means to travel to Liverpool at all.

But Hettie was in Liverpool, and if he were to agree to meet up with Alfred then he would have a cast-iron excuse for calling on Connie and seeing Hettie again.

‘What time will Da be here?’ Hettie asked her step-mother anxiously. They had just finished breakfast and were in Ellie’s room where Hettie was helping her pack ready for her return to Preston.

‘He said he would be leaving early.’

‘He won’t forget about my things, will he?’

‘No, of course not. I posted him a list to give to Mrs Jennings. Oh, and guess what? He is to bring John with him.’

Hettie beamed at this unexpected news. ‘Oh! May I put on my new dress for him and Da to see?’

‘If there is time. Now, where did I put those new handkerchiefs I bought, Hettie?’

Obligingly, Hettie searched for the missing items, finding them on top of a chest of drawers. Sunshine splashed through the windows and across the floor, matching her own happiness. She was going to miss home and her family, of course she was, but the fear and misery that had beset her earlier in the week had now gone and she was beginning to look forward to her new life.

‘You will make sure that Miss Brown gets the “Parma Violets” scent I bought for her to say thank you, won’t you?’ she asked Ellie anxiously.

‘I shall take it to her myself,’ Ellie assured her.

Should she tell Mam about the small vial of ‘Attar of Roses’ bought with the precious store money she had saved and carefully hidden in Ellie’s valise? Hettie wondered. Or should she do as she had originally planned and leave it as a surprise for Ellie once she reached home? She imagined Ellie’s pleasure on finding it when she unpacked and decided to keep quiet.

Hettie hoped she would like the card she had chosen to go with it, bearing the words, ‘thinking of you always, dearest mother’. And it was true that she would be thinking of her and of home every day.

‘Oh Da.’

‘There, there, Hettie lass, there’s no need to tek on so!’ Gideon soothed, patting her on the back as she clung to him and wept, overwhelmed by her own emotions now that the final moment of parting was so close.

‘I’ll bet you’ll be to-ing and fro-ing that often from Liverpool to Preston and back again that the railways will give you your own special seat,’ he teased her when Hettie had finally been persuaded to release him.

‘We left her trunk at the lodging house like you asked us to, Ellie.’

‘And what did you think of the place, Gideon? Did you see the landlady?’ Ellie asked fretfully.

‘We did and she was very pleasant. The house looked clean and tidy. You should be comfortable and well looked after there, Hettie, shouldn’t she, John?’

John! Hettie dimpled a smile at him, but did not run to him like she used to, self-consciously aware of the fact that she was now a young woman and no longer a mere girl. Instead she said importantly, ‘Just wait until you see the dress Mam has bought for me to wear – I am going to put it on after tea to show you.’

‘Oh John, it is so lovely to see you. You don’t come to Liverpool often enough,’ Connie reproached her brother as she bustled into the parlour.

‘That is because there is nowhere for him to land his flying machine, Connie,’ Harry joked.

Soon their chatter and laughter filled the small room, but Hettie’s was the voice John could hear most clearly, and her pretty, excited face the one he looked to most frequently, John admitted reluctantly, torn between conflicting feelings as he saw how the girl who had doted on him was turning into a beautiful young woman.

Gideon had confided to him as they drove over to Liverpool that Ellie was to have another child and that news too had added to the sombreness of John’s mood. The death of their mother after giving birth to Philip had left its mark on all of them. Certainly he knew that for him there was always that feeling of anxiety when he knew one of his sisters was with child. But Ellie was strong, in body and spirit, and he hoped that she would come through this unexpected pregnancy without any problems.

As soon as tea was over, Hettie ran upstairs to change into her new dress, having first begged her mother’s services as a lady’s maid.

When the dress was safely on and the sash tied, Ellie smoothed Hettie’s thick dark hair and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

‘You are smiling but you look sad, why?’ Hettie asked her.

‘I was just thinking of your mother,’ Ellie explained. She had always felt it important that Hettie know about her birth mother and so had never shied away from mentioning her.

‘I can hardly remember her. Only that she cried a lot and was sick on the ship,’ Hettie told her pragmatically. So far as she was concerned, Ellie was her mother, and her memories of warm loving arms holding her as a child were always of Ellie’s arms.

For all that, physically, she looked so unique, with the compelling blend of her English and Japanese features, Hettie’s nature was entirely English, Ellie acknowledged. She certainly could not imagine Hettie with her determination and high spirits ever behaving towards a husband in the subservient manner that Ellie’s own first husband, Hettie’s father, had told her was traditional amongst Japanese women.

When Hettie had been growing up, Ellie had dutifully bought her books to read about her mother’s homeland, but for Hettie’s own sake she had not wanted her to be singled out as ‘foreign’ or ‘different’. If Minaco were able to see her daughter, would she feel as proud of her as Ellie herself did right now? Or would Minaco resent her and think that she had usurped her role from her? What would a mother want for the child she had to leave behind?

‘Come on, Mam,’ Hettie urged, disrupting Ellie’s thoughts. ‘Let’s go downstairs so that I can show Da and John my dress.’

Connie had cleared a space for her right inside the door so that she could make a grand entrance and that she did, pirouetting in front of her audience with flushed cheeks and shining eyes.

Hettie could see Gideon frowning slightly as he looked at her exposed arms and calves, but it was towards John she turned in happy anticipation, awaiting his awed recognition of her metamorphosis. However, the look of grim anger on his face was such a shock that it caused her to teeter in mid pirouette and almost stumble, her face paling as John got up to leave the room.

‘John!’ She caught the door as it slammed behind him, and pulled it back, following him into the hallway. ‘What is it?’ she begged him. ‘Why did you look at me so? Don’t you like my dress?’ Her eyes were more sparkling than ever with her shocked bewilderment and confusion, the small hand she extended towards him in desperate appeal trembling.

‘How can you even think of parading yourself in public in such a garment? Where is your modesty?’ John could see that his harsh words had shocked her, but she had shocked him. How could he explain to her that seeing her like that had suddenly reminded him of the poor, too young girls he had seen during the war around the camps, selling themselves for the price of a loaf of bread? How could he explain to her that his reaction was caused by his own contradictory feelings – part male arousal and part fierce desire to protect her from that arousal?

Hettie snatched back the hand she had extended to him and tucked it behind her back as a child would have done. ‘What do you mean? It is the fashion…modern…everyone is wearing shorter skirts now.’

‘Maybe so but they are not wearing them to expose themselves for the pleasure of every man who cares to walk in off the street to ogle them, are they?’ John couldn’t help saying jealously.

Hettie could see that John wasn’t convinced but rather than argue with him she tossed her head and said determinedly, ‘Well, Mam chose this dress for me, so there! Thank you very much! Besides, it is only ladies taking their afternoon tea who will see me.’

‘Aye, and their husbands, sons, and fathers, when they come to join them, which they will do, especially when they learn that there is a singer to be found all tricked out in a costume designed to entice them,’ John muttered unkindly.

‘Oh! Why are you being so horrible to me? I am grown up now, John, and not a child any more, and I won’t be treated as one,’ Hettie burst out defiantly, unaware of the fact that John had only wanted to protect her.

Unable to understand what was happening – why John, who was supposed to care about and be happy for her, was being so mean – Hettie declared crossly, ‘I hate you, John Pride, and I shall hate you for ever!’ before turning round and running up the stairs to throw herself full length on her bed and sob out her hurt feelings.

He shouldn’t have walked out of Connie’s parlour like that, John acknowledged bleakly, and nor should he have spoken so unkindly to Hettie, but the sight of her tricked out in her fancy frock and looking like a stranger had done something to him he couldn’t understand himself. He felt ashamed of himself for the way he had behaved. His sisters sometimes scolded him that, whilst he had generally inherited their father’s amiable and kind nature, sometimes he could be as they put it ‘as stubborn as a mule’.

Somewhere in amongst his anger there had also been pain. But although John could understand the reason for his fierce anger, he could not understand why he also felt such a sharp sense of loss and despair.