Hettie of Hope Street
Couldn’t Gideon and Ellie see the danger of allowing Hettie to parade herself around as though she were a grown woman and not still in reality a girl? Couldn’t they see, as he so plainly could, that Hettie would lure men to her with her beauty and innocence and that for her own sake she needed to be protected?
His angry thoughts had taken him past the Bluecoat School, Connie’s husband Harry’s ‘rivals’, without him noticing. Rather than wait for a bus, he decided he might as well walk the whole way to the Adelphi – it might help him clear his head of the mass of confusing and unhappy thoughts which besieged it.
The hotel had been rebuilt in 1912 to the designs of Frank Atkinson, and was still considered by Liverpudlians to be, as Charles Dickens had once written, ‘the best hotel in the world’. The turtles for its famous turtle soup were, so it was said, kept in a tank in the basement.
As he reached the hotel, the liveried doormen were busy opening hackney cab doors and assisting elegantly dressed guests to alight whilst another doorman whistled up porters to take charge of the luggage. Skirting past them John walked into the marble foyer and glanced absently at the listing of transatlantic crossings prominently displayed.
Beyond the entrance hall, thronged with a confusion of arriving and departing travellers, a flight of steps led up to the large top-lit Central Court with its pink pilasters.
Ignoring the glazed screens with their French doors that filled the arches and opened up into the large restaurants on either side of the Central Court, John made his way to the Hypostyle Hall, which was where Alfred had suggested they meet.
Several of the tables in the large square empire-style hall were already filled with people taking afternoon tea, and as John surveyed them he was approached by an imposing flunkey who demanded condescendingly, ‘H’excuse me, sir, but h’if you was wanting to take…’
‘I’m here to meet a friend,’ John stopped him calmly.
‘Oh, and ‘oo would that be, sir?’
‘The Earl of Camberley,’ John told him.
The immediate change in the flunkey’s attitude towards him would normally have made John chuckle, but on this occasion he was still too heart-sore from his earlier outburst to do more than ignore the man’s pleasantries as he led him to a table.
‘Shall you be wishing me to ’ave His Lordship called, Sir, or…’
‘No, that won’t be necessary. I’m a few minutes early.’ He looked past the flunkey to the area just in front of the entrance to the open-air courtyard where a large grand piano stood on the shiny marble floor.
Was this where Hettie was going to be singing?
Refusing the waiter’s offer of tea, John studied the occupants of the other tables. They were in the main family groups, passengers, he guessed, for tomorrow’s Atlantic crossing, although there were some tables filled exclusively by ladies sipping tea and busily talking to one another.
‘John, old chap.’
He had been so engrossed that he hadn’t seen Alfred, and as he stood up to shake his hand his friend drew the young woman at his side forward and announced, ‘Polly, allow me to introduce to you my very good friend, John Pride. Pride, this is my sister, Lady Polly Howard.’
‘Pooh, Alfie, you have scared poor Mr Pride half to death by being so formal! Since I am going to be living in America for a while, Mr Pride, where everyone is of equal status and there are thank goodness no archaic stuffy titles, I intend to be known simply as Polly Howard, and that is what you shall call me.’
John smiled as she shook his hand but knew he would do no such thing.
He had thought Hettie’s dress was shockingly short, but Lady Polly’s was even shorter, a narrow tube of emerald green satin, sashed in black, which showed off her narrow boyish figure.
‘Polly, I know you have some letters to write so we will not keep you.’
‘Oh pooh, I know you are just saying that because you want to be rid of me, Alfie. Well, you shall not be. I intend to sit here and order a delicious afternoon tea and enjoy myself. But you need not worry I shall eavesdrop on your conversation with Mr Pride.’
‘My sister is one of these very stubborn and modern young women, I’m afraid, John.’
She laughed as she opened her bag and removed a long cigarette holder into which she fitted a cigarette whilst John tried not to look shocked. ‘Alfie, do be a dear and light this for me. Do you think I am very fast and shocking for smoking, Mr Pride? I assure you that my dear darling brother does. He thinks it dreadful that his sister is so modern and daring. Do you have a sister, Mr Pride?’
‘I have two.’
‘Oh, what fun! And are they modern?’
‘Polly, you ask far too many questions. I apologise for her, John. I am afraid she has been dreadfully spoiled.’
‘And whose fault is that? If I had been allowed to go up to Girton as I wished, instead of being forced to stay at home, then I would not have nanny to pet me, would I, and then I would have become a bluestocking. Do you dance, Mr Pride?’
She was like quicksilver, John thought, mercurial and dizzying, not to mention droll, with her carmined lips and short bobbed hair.
‘John is far too busy to waste time on dancing.’
‘Alfie, how can you say such a thing? No one should be too busy to dance. What do you do then, Mr Pride, that makes you too busy to dance?’
‘He teaches fortunate fellows to fly,’ Alfie said before John could even open his mouth to answer.
‘You do? Oh how whizzy…Could you teach me? I would love to fly. It must be so much fun. Wait! I have the most terrific idea. Why don’t you teach me to fly and I shall teach you to dance?’
‘You are leaving for New York tomorrow,’ Alfred reminded her.
Immediately she pouted. ‘Oh, but maybe not. Maybe I shall change my mind.’
‘I apologise for my sister, John,’ Alfred said later when Polly had finally been persuaded to leave them alone.
‘There’s no need.’ John couldn’t help smiling. Lady Polly had been fun and he had enjoyed her company.
‘Now tell me more about this flying school of yours. You will have more eager pupils than you can take, no doubt.’
John shook his head. ‘Not at the moment. Business is slow and with the Depression…’
‘Indeed, a nasty business and not likely to get much better very quickly, I’m afraid. So, if you are not getting as many pupils as you would like, maybe you would care to think about joining my own little venture?’
John frowned. ‘I thought you weren’t flying any more?’
‘I’m not, but I’ve been asked to take over a local flying club. It’s on our land, after all, and we need a new instructor, someone modern who knows what’s what. I thought immediately of you.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ John told him truthfully.
‘Then don’t say anything right now, but promise me you will think about it. We’ve got a good bunch of chaps at the club, and plenty of young blood coming in eager to learn. I’m going to look at a new flying machine next week. She’s a beauty. Tiger Moth.’
John listened enviously as Alfred extolled the virtues of the new machine, and then frowned as he suddenly broke off and exclaimed admiringly, ‘Oh I say!’
Whilst they had been talking a short, overweight, middle-aged man dressed formally in tails had seated himself at the piano, with a stunningly pretty blonde-haired young woman standing next to it, obviously about to sing.
Alfred raised his monocle in order to study her more closely.
John felt the return of his earlier anger and misery. The girl wasn’t Hettie but she might just as well have been. Her dress was even shorter than the one Hettie had been wearing, showing a provocative amount of slender calf, and even from this distance John could see that she was heavily made-up, whilst her short hair was crimped into head-hugging waves.
‘What a corking looking girl. And a bit of a goer by the looks of it. Pity I’ve got Polly on my hands otherwise I might have been tempted to ask her to join me for dinner, although I dare say a girl like that has plenty of admirers already.’
The young woman was looking towards them and when, a few seconds later, she started to sing, she made sure that it was in the direction of their table that she turned the most.
When she had finished, Alfred clapped enthusiastically and the singer smiled and inclined her head, and John knew that he was witnessing a transaction as old as Eve herself.
And this was the life Hettie had chosen for herself. He had thought he knew her but now, John decided bitterly, he realised he had never known her properly at all.
SIX
Hettie stared uneasily around the room to which she had just been shown. A long, narrow attic room with a row of equally narrow beds, each separated by a small cupboard. There were threadbare rag rugs on the dusty wooden floor, and equally threadbare covers on the beds. Her trunk, which had been carried up the stairs by two disgruntled and sweating men with dirty hands and clothes, called in from the street by her landlady, was on the floor at the bottom of the bed furthest from both the door and the window and thus from any fresh air. Already the heat of the autumn sun and the low ceiling had made the room uncomfortably warm, its air clogging the back of Hettie’s throat. Or was that her tears?
This was not the pretty, well-furnished room she and Mam had been shown when they had visited before, but when she had tried to say as much to Mrs Buchanan’s sister, the landlady had simply told her sharply, ‘Them rooms are three times what you are paying, miss, so if you’ve any complaints to make then make them to yer ma.’
Hettie had tried to stand her ground, remembering that Mrs Buchanan had told her mother that her ‘keep’ would be deducted from her wage and that what was left would be handed over to her in spending money. But when she had mentioned this, the landlady had given her a contemptuous look and announced, ‘Your mother must have misunderstood. Only those who can afford it get to sleep in my best rooms and they are always top artists, not little nobodies like you.’
Hettie’s stubborn streak had reared itself and she had wanted to stand her ground, but the landlady had simply not given her the opportunity to do so and now she was up here in this dreadful, dingy dormitory of an attic room.
The sound of several sets of footsteps on the stairs and female voices made her turn round and face the door as it was thrust open and half a dozen or more laughing, chattering young women came rushing in, only to stop and stare in silence at Hettie.
‘So ’oo might you be, then?’ the tallest and, Hettie guessed, the oldest of them demanded, her hands on her hips as she surveyed Hettie.
‘Hettie Walker,’ Hettie introduced herself hesitantly.
‘Leave off, Lizzie,’ one of the other girls protested. ‘You’re half scaring the poor little thing to death. Tek no notice of Lizzie, Hettie, she’s allus like this when she starts on her monthlies.’
‘Oh, and you ain’t, I suppose, Sukey Simmons?’ Lizzie turned away from Hettie to demand sarcastically, before adding, ‘Lor, but I ’ate bloody Monday matinées. Why the hell does management do them, it’s not as though anyone comes in, especially now there’s a Depression going on.’
‘P’raps you should tell ’em that they don’t know how to run their own business, Lizzie,’ another girl called out, laughing.
‘Oh aye, and lose me job. No thanks,’ Lizzie retorted, but she was smiling, Hettie noticed, and she relaxed slightly.
‘So what show are you in then, ’Ettie?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I know they were looking for a couple more chorus girls for the show at the Empire, and no wonder, since ’e pays even less than that bloody so and so we work for. But you don’t look tall enough for a chorus girl.’
‘I’m going to be singing at the Adelphi,’ Hettie explained shyly, trying not to look shocked by the girl’s coarse language. ‘During the afternoon, accompanied by Mr Buchanan.’
‘Wot, that old…’ Lizzie began scornfully, only to stop when Sukey gave her a quick dig with her elbow.
‘So you’re a singer, then?’ Sukey asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Where have you appeared before?’ another one of the girls asked as they all began to move around the room, some of them going over to fling themselves on their beds, others sitting down on them and bending to massage their weary feet.
‘Nowhere,’ Hettie admitted.
‘First time away from home, is it?’ Sukey asked her sympathetically.
Hettie nodded, relieved to see that it was Sukey who had the bed next to her own and not Lizzie.
‘Well, mind you don’t let Ma Buchanan cheat you,’ Sukey warned. ‘If she’s anything like ’er sister, she’all be as tight as a duck’s arse. What’s Ma Marshall charging you here for your bed, by the way?’
Hettie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Mrs Buchanan said that she would deduct all my expenses from my wage and that I could have the rest. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, though, because I thought I was going to have a room to myself.’
A couple of the girls started to laugh, although not unkindly.
‘Pulled that old one on yer, did she kid?’ Lizzie chuckled. ‘I suppose old misery guts Marshall showed yer ma one of her best rooms and let ’er think you’d be ’aving one o’ them instead of kipping in here with us?’
Hettie nodded, embarrassed.
‘Yer should have asked to have all yer wages handed over to yer and then divvied them out to pay for yer room. And mind that yer don’t leave nothing valuable lying around in here, or she’ll have that off yer as well.’
‘But surely if you complained…’ Hettie began, shocked.
‘Complain? To her? She’d have anyone who tried out on the street, and bad mouth them as well so as they’d never get digs anywhere else in town, and then what’ud happen – they’d be out of work, that’s wot!’
As Hettie listened to this impassioned speech she acknowledged that, appalled as she was by her landlady’s deceit, if she were to inform her parents of it they would insist on her returning home immediately. Upset and intimidated though she had felt by the landlady’s manner towards her, and the other revelations from the other girls, she couldn’t bear to lose the job she had wanted so badly for years.
‘There’s a lad down at the ironmongers who’s a bit sweet on Aggie, he’ll put yer a padlock on yer trunk for yer if she asks him nice enough.’
A tall, blonde-haired girl who had been examining her feet straightened up and screwed up her face. ‘Well, you’ll have to come with me, I ain’t going to be left on me own with ’im. Nasty clammy hands he’s got!’
‘Aw, listen to it. Bet they ain’t anywhere near as clammy as old Basher’s. Calls himself an impresario. A dirty old man, more like. You should ’ave seen them costumes he wanted us to wear for that bloody revue in Blackpool, d’yer remember, Lizzie?’ another girl chipped in.
‘’Ow could I forget, Babs, mine felt like it were cutting me in two,’ Lizzie answered whilst Hettie looked on perplexed when they all burst out laughing.
‘Gawd, my feet,’ Babs complained. ‘But that’s what you get for being a chorus girl – corns and blisters.’
‘Are you all in the same chorus?’ Hettie asked her a little timidly. These girls were nothing like any of the girls she knew back in Preston. Their language, for one thing, and their loud confidence. But nevertheless, she liked them, she decided.
‘At the moment there’s a big panto coming off at the Royal Court Palace, and there’s two hundred girls in the chorus, plus the understudies. We’ve bin rehearsing for the last six weeks, plus doing our ordinary shows as well – six nights and six matinées. It’s damn near killin’ me. So what do yer sing, then, Hettie?’ Babs asked.
‘Soprano,’ Hettie replied automatically.
‘Oh, soprano is it,’ Lizzie mocked, putting on an exaggeratedly posh accent.
‘Oh leave off, Lizzie, give the poor kid a break,’ Babs told her, giving Hettie a friendly smile.
‘Don’t mind Lizzie. Her tongue’s sharper than her wit sometimes. No, I meant what sort of songs do you sing. You know, what’s your repertoire?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got one,’ Hettie admitted.
‘Well, you should have,’ Babs reproved her. ‘And with them dark looks of yours being all the rage right now, you want to cash in on them and get yourself a repertoire that will get you some decent parts. Lor, but I’m hungry,’ she moaned, changing the subject and taking the spotlight off Hettie, for which she was very grateful. ‘Anyone else want to go out and get some supper?’ she called out.
‘Go out for supper?’ Hettie repeated, concerned. ‘But I thought that all our meals were included in the rent?’
‘Did you hear that, girls?’ Lizzie called out, shaking her head and laughing mirthlessly. ‘The only supper you’ll get here is a bit o’ mouldy bread and some soup wot looks as though Misery Guts peed in it.’
Hettie made sure she joined in the others’ laughter as though such coarse talk was as familiar to her as it obviously was to them.
‘You don’t ’ave to come with us if you don’t want,’ Babs told her. ‘I’ll bring you back a nice bit o’sommat if you want – not fish, though, cos if Misery Guts smells it she’ll be wanting more rent off all of us – it’s extra if you bring in your own grub. Still, at least ’ere’s clean, not like some of the digs you can get. Lor, but I were scratching for months after one place where I stayed, covered in bites I were and me hair full o’nits.’
When Hettie shuddered, Babs laughed and shook her head. ‘My, but you’re a green un, aren’t you? Never mind, we’ll tek care of you and you’ll soon find yer feet. Just don’t let Ma Buchanan boss yer around. Dance do yer as well as sing?’
‘A little,’ Hettie agreed.
‘That’s good,’ she approved, getting up off her bed.
Lizzie called out impatiently, ‘’Ere Babs, are you coming wi’ us or what?’
‘Give us a minute,’ she called back before coaxing Hettie, ‘Go on, come wi’ us. A bit o’ fresh air will do you good.’
Uncomfortably aware that both her parents and John would have been shocked by and disapproving of Babs and the others, Hettie gave in to the hunger in her stomach. Besides, if this was to be her home for the foreseeable future, she would have to try and fit in.
The street might have been quiet when they all spilled out on to it, but its silence was quickly shattered by the laughter and chatter of the girls. Despite their aching feet, two of them suddenly took hold of one another and danced along, performing a high-stepping routine that caused two men on the opposite side of the street to stop and stare.
‘Ere, Lizzie, go over and tell those two gawpers over there that that’s two shilling and sixpence worth they’ve just had.’
‘Mary, you’re out of time and you missed a step,’ another criticised, causing the dancing pair to stop as one of them – Mary, Hettie assumed – turned on her critic.
‘Sez who?’ she demanded. ‘You couldn’t keep time even if it was beaten into yer. That’s why yer at the back of the line and I’m at the front!’
‘Who does she think she’s kidding?’ Hettie heard someone else mutter. ‘The only reason she’s still in the bloody chorus at all is because she’s been keeping old Charlie sweet.’
Fifteen minutes later, squashed up on the narrow wooden bench seats in the snug between Babs and Lizzie, a plate of appetising beef and dumpling stew on the table in front of her, Hettie felt a world away from the person she had been this morning. Her eyes widened as she saw the relish with which the other girls were drinking the port wine they had also ordered.
‘Try it,’ Babs urged her.
Unwilling to be mocked yet again by sharp-eyed Lizzie, Hettie dutifully sipped at the liquid Babs had poured into her empty glass, and then fought not to show how sour and unpleasant she found it, valiantly emptying her glass.
It was shortly after that she became aware of how very tired she was, and now her eyes were starting to close as her head dropped toward Babs’s shoulder.
‘Look at ’er, Babs,’ whispered one of the others. ‘Poor little kid. What a bloody shame.’
After studying Hettie’s sleeping profile Babs sighed and said determinedly, ‘Come on, we’d better get her back.’
‘Lor, Babs, we ain’t bloody nursemaids,’ Lizzie protested, but even her expression softened a little as she looked down at Hettie, sleeping peacefully as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
SEVEN
It was almost two weeks since Hettie had moved into the boarding house, and in that time she had learned that, behind her sharp manner, Lizzie hid the kindest of hearts, and that she had not just herself to support but her mother and a sick sister as well; that Babs with her easy-going nature was the one who always calmed the others if trouble threatened to erupt; that quiet, blonde Aggie was nursing a broken heart having fallen in love with a theatre manager who was married; that shrewd Mary wasn’t averse to leading on any man if she thought it would benefit her; and that the twins Jenny and Jess were the naughty girls of the troupe, continually playing practical jokes on everyone and getting up to all manner of japes.
She was now as familiar with the girls’ dance routine and songs as they were themselves, and Babs had taught her all the steps of the modern new dances, including the tango, claiming that she would need to know them just in case, as she had put it, ‘some young spark teks it into ’is head to dance with yer one afternoon. I mean, yer wouldn’t want ter make a fool of yerself by not knowing all the newest steps, would yer?’
‘No one would do that,’ she had protested, half shocked, half giggling at the thought of whirling around the Adelphi.
‘You’ud be surprised what these young blades will do,’ Babs had warned her darkly.
But she had not mentioned any of this either on her visit to Connie or in her letters home. Neither had she mentioned the lack of her own bedroom, or the poor food, or the fact that Mrs Buchanan was nowhere near as good or thorough a teacher as Miss Brown, for all the airs she had put on for Ellie’s benefit, and moreover that she frequently cut Hettie’s lessons short so that she could fit in another pupil.
It was not that she wanted to deceive her family, she assured herself; it was simply that she didn’t want to worry them. Nor had she spoken of the camaraderie that existed between the girls, or what fun they were to be with. Mam and Da were a bit old-fashioned about some things and Hettie thought they might not see beneath the girls’ stage paint and ripe language to the good-heartedness that lay beneath them.
‘’Ow did the lesson go today?’ Babs asked her over an illicit cup of tea made in their attic room, dunking a Rich Tea biscuit into the hot liquid before demanding, ‘is she still making yer do them scales?’
‘She didn’t today. She said that I’m to go to the Adelphi tomorrow morning and practise there with Mr Buchanan, because the singer I’m to replace has decided to leave sooner than she originally said. Next week I am to make my debut.’ She gave a small shiver of nervous excitement. ‘I do hope that Mam and Da will be able to come over from Preston to hear me.’
‘And ’ow are they goin’ to do that, then?’ Lizzie demanded. ‘Cos them bloody waiters turn their noses up at the likes o’ us.’
‘My parents are very respectable,’ Hettie protested, pink-cheeked, wanting to defend them without offending Lizzie.
‘I ain’t saying they ain’t, but there’s a difference between being respectable and being a toff,’ Lizzie pointed out. ‘And yer ma and pa will need pretty deep pockets if’n they’re to sit at one o’ them tea tables.’
‘Stop upsettin’ her, Lizzie,’ Babs ordered. ‘Don’t you worry, ’Ettie, if your folks can’t make it then ’appen some of us u’ll manage to be there. Even if we ’ave to find some way to persuade one o’ them snotty waiters, eh Mary?’
Hettie smiled, but inwardly she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea for her new friends to be there at her debut. However, since she didn’t want to hurt their feelings, she enquired instead, ‘What about your corn, Babs, is it any better?’