‘I’m sorry to have to drag you out here and away from your work, John, but as what I wanted to talk to you about concerns Polly and is rather personal, I felt it would be more appropriate for us to discuss it here.’
As he listened to Alfred, John was guiltily aware that he had not said anything to his friend about Polly’s illicit flying lesson. He had thought long and hard about how to break the news to Alfred but kept drawing a blank as to how to do so and avoid getting Polly – and himself – into hot water.
They were in the library at Moreton Place, a shabbily comfortable, book-filled room that smelled of old books, tweed and tobacco. In short, a man’s room.
‘Polly has owned up to me about the way she tricked you into giving her a flying lesson, and I apologise to you on her behalf for putting you in such a difficult position.’
‘I had intended to tell you…’ John admitted readily. ‘But the opportunity hadn’t arisen.’
‘Polly is inclined to be recklessly headstrong, I’m afraid. My father doted on her and spoiled her dreadfully, and I dare say I have done the same. It is very hard not to do so,’ Alfred confessed ruefully. ‘She is inclined to be a trifle wild at times, but she has the warmest heart and she means no harm. I do confess, though, that I wish she would be little less modern and outspoken in her views.’
He was beginning to look and sound awkward and John wondered what he was leading up to.
‘Polly had also confessed to me that she conducted herself most improperly towards you,’ Alfred told him uncomfortably.
It took several seconds for John to grasp what he was trying to say, and that he was referring to Polly’s impulsive embrace. But why? Because he feared that he might have got the wrong impression and be getting ideas above his station, and because of that felt he needed to warn him off? But John already knew the ‘rules’. It might be perfectly permissible for Alfred to befriend him, despite John’s much lower social status, but there could be no question of John befriending Alfred’s sister.
‘It was nothing,’ John told Alfred immediately. ‘Lady Polly has a natural warmth and spontaneity, and I did not for one minute imagine…’
‘You are a good chap, Pride,’ Alfred stopped him gruffly. ‘Must admit I felt a bit shocked when Polly admitted what she had done. Not the done thing at all, and I told her that. Thought I’d better have a word with you about it. Well, I know you understand the situation. Had hoped to have seen Polly suitable settled by now, but she claims she won’t marry anyone if she can’t have Oliver. Damned shame him being killed like that, right at the end of the war. Don’t think she’s ever really got over it. Oh, she puts on a a good show most of the time, but…I dare say that’s part of the reason I’m over-lenient with her. Anyway, no need to say any more about the matter, eh?’
John nodded wordlessly, relieved but not a little disappointed that a line had been drawn underneath the whole Polly matter.
‘Bravo, Hettie. That was first rate!’
Hettie gave Archie, the composer, a relieved smile as she hurried into the wings, almost bumping into Jay as she did so.
‘Everything all right now, Hettie?’ he asked her in a kind voice as he caught hold of her to steady her.
Hettie nodded her head and tried not to look self-conscious. He was even more handsome than Rudolph Valentino, she thought dizzily.
‘Is it true that we’re to go to London straight after Christmas now instead of later in January?’ she burst out and then blushed as Jay looked quizzingly at her and started laughing.
‘You’ve heard about that already, have you? Yes, we are.’ He released her and reached into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket to withdraw a monogrammed silver cigarette case, opening it and offering her a cigarette.
A little awkwardly, she took one. She didn’t smoke as a rule, although nearly all of the other girls did, but she had no wish to look gauche and immature.
Taking one himself, he produced his lighter, shielding the flame for Hettie as he leaned towards her, just like she had seen actors do in films. She could smell the clean fresh scent of his cologne and suddenly her heart began to beat far too fast.
‘The theatre has become available now so we might as well use it.’
Was he moving them down there so soon because he was missing his ‘girlfriend’? Hettie wondered, and then chided herself guiltily for her thoughts.
‘I’ve engaged a new director and a new choreographer to work with the cast once we get to London. I’m sorry you had such a rotten time of it, Hettie.’
Her heart was beating even faster. There was no one else in the corridor but that hadn’t stopped Jay from moving closer to her. ‘I was afraid that I would lose the part,’ she admitted shyly.
‘That’s certainly what that Machiavellian pair were aiming for,’ Jay told her. ‘I’ve been asking a few questions about them and it seems this isn’t the first time they’ve altered scores and scripts to suit their own ends. I guess they thought they’d got a real greenhorn in me, but any gambling man worth his salt knows how to recognise a sharp from a flat.’
Hettie could hear the clatter of feet on the staircase above them. As she looked upwards, Jay looked at his watch and told her, ‘I must go but I want you to know that you’re doing fine, Hettie, and that Archie agrees with me that your voice is perfect for Princess Mimi.’
He had gone before she could thank him, leaving her to be swallowed up in the gaggle of chorus girls hurrying towards the stage door.
This was far from the first time he had visited Moreton Place, John had reminded himself stalwartly as he’d parked the sturdy little Morris he had just bought for himself out of sight of the main entrance. Maybe not, his inner critic had conceded, but this was the first time his visit would be purely social; the first time be would be mingling with people he knew belonged to a social class far above his own; the first time he would be a ‘house guest’. He was desperately afraid that he wouldn’t fit in, or that he would say or do something to show himself up. Not that he thought money and position made other people better than he was himself.
He didn’t, but if he had been able to get out of accepting the invitation he knew that he would have done so. But like any other man, he had his pride and he wasn’t about to admit that he was afraid of being humiliated because he didn’t talk ‘posh’ and had had to call upon the expertise of Messrs Moss Bros in order to equip himself with the right clothes.
He had spent enough time with toffs and nobs during the war to know how much store such people put on etiquette and doing things right.
He had opened the boot of the car and removed his battered leather case. It had started to snow, soft fat white flakes of it tumbling from a leaden grey sky.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Pride.’
‘Afternoon, Bates,’ John had responded, giving the butler a warm smile. He had at one stage attempted to address Bates by his Christian name, feeling that it showed him proper respect, but Alfred had told him that it made the butler feel uncomfortable to be addressed by anything other than his surname.
Automatically John had allowed the butler to remove his coat and hand it to the waiting footman.
‘James will show you to your room, and then when you are ready His Grace will be waiting for you in the library.’
The footman had already taken possession of his case, so John had dutifully followed him up the wide marble staircase and down a long corridor where he’d come to a halt outside one of the doors.
Opening it, he had stood back to allow John to precede him inside the room.
Ellie, whose husband had inherited from his long-lost birth mother a very handsome house in the best part of Preston, would no doubt have been shocked by the worn turkey carpets and old-fashioned furniture, John had suspected ruefully as James placed his well-worn case on a luggage rack as tenderly and reverently as though it were made of the finest quality materials.
‘Mr Bates said as ’ow I was to tell you that His Grace’s valet Peebles will be ’appy
to attend to your needs, Sir, seeing as you ’aven’t brought your own valet with you. And he said I was to mention to you that there would be no need for you to change your clothes before going down to the library.’
His own valet! John knew he should not have accepted Alfred’s invitation. He was going to be utterly out of his depth. Unlocking his case, he had pushed back the lid and frowned over its contents; stiff starched collars, equally stiff shirts, a dinner jacket, and all the other accoutrements Messrs Moss Bros has insisted were essential.
John was not a man who enjoyed wearing formal clothes. He had looked down at the comfortable Harris tweed jacket he was wearing, which he had spotted on a market stall, its fabric well worn in by its previous owner. His brogues, although well polished, were far from new, as were his shirt and trousers. But he liked them, and he felt comfortable in them.
He had tensed as his bedroom door opened suddenly and Polly hurried into the room, closing the door behind her, exclaiming, ‘John, I saw you arrive from my bedroom and…What are you doing? You don’t need to unpack. One of the maids will do that for you.’
‘Lady Polly, I don’t really think you should be in here,’ John had told her formally.
‘Oh stuff! I just wanted to tell you that I’ve come clean to Alfie and told him how I tricked you into taking me flying. I do mean to learn to fly, you know, even if I have to buy my own flying machine in order to do so! Do you have a light?’ she had asked him as she opened the bag she was carrying and removed a jewelled cigarette case.
John shook his head, and frowned. He didn’t smoke. Cigarettes cost money and as a young man he had not been in a position to afford them.
‘What’s wrong?’ Polly had demanded. ‘Don’t you approve of women smoking?’
She wasn’t just smoking, she had obviously been drinking as well, John had realised as he caught the scent of gin on her breath. As she stepped closer to him he could see a wild glitter in her eyes that caused his frown to deepen.
‘What is it about you men that makes you so unkind and disapproving?’ Polly had asked huffily. ‘You may do as you wish, and behave as you wish, but you deny us the same freedom!’
For some reason, she suddenly reminded John very much of Hettie.
‘That was what I loved so much about my darling Oliver. He understood me so well.’ Tears had welled up in her eyes. ‘Alfie thinks I will forget Oliver and marry someone else, but I won’t. I couldn’t. His birthday was on Christmas Day. He would have been twenty-six this year.’ Tears were running down her face and splashing on to the floor.
John’s initial discomfort that she should have come into his room was swept aside by his compassion for her.
‘Death is so final, isn’t it, John? It doesn’t allow us to go back and say or do those things we wish we had said and done. I cannot bear it that I will never again share the most intimate of all embraces with Oliver. God can be so cruel. Do you believe in God, John? Because I don’t think that I do. Not any more.’
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he had told her gruffly. ‘It isn’t fitting.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You knows what I mean, right enough, Lady Polly,’ John had told her, once again emphasising his accent. ‘You’m a Lady and I’m just a working man.’
Her eyes widened and she shook her head. ‘John that is ridiculous, and you know it. You are Alfie’s friend and I very much want you to be mine as well. Please say that you will?’ she coaxed him, immediately crossing to the bed and sitting on it as she added emphatically, ‘In fact, I am not going to leave until you do.’
John shook his head, but he couldn’t help smiling at her. ‘Your brother is expecting me to join him downstairs,’ he had told her.
‘Yes, and I should be serving tea in the drawing room to Great-Aunt Beatrice, who smells of cats and complains that she does not approve of modern young gals, and her poor daughter Florence, whom she bullies so dreadfully. And our cousin Thomasina will be there as well. She will want to know why I am not married yet, and she will tell me yet again how she could have married a royal duke had she so wished. It is the same every Christmas and I hate it. I hate everything, and everyone, but most of all I hate myself because I am alive and Oliver is dead…’
John hadn’t known either what to say or do. Neither of his sisters ever drank spirits, and certainly neither of them would ever have behaved in the way Polly was doing; but then the aristocracy were a law unto themselves, everyone knew that.
‘Have you ever loved anyone, John? Really loved them so much that you cannot bear the thought of life without them?’ Polly demanded passionately.
John stiffened. He had once thought he loved Hettie, but she had changed from the sweet girl he had thought her into a young woman who had made it clear that he meant nothing to her. As to living without her…Well, he had proved well enough that he could do that, hadn’t he?
‘I must go, otherwise my aunts will be sending out a search party,’ Polly had announced as though John and not she were responsible for her presence in his room.
‘You had best dry your face first,’ he’d told her automatically, handing her his handkerchief.
A small smile touched her mouth as she took it from him.
‘Dear John. You are so kind.’
‘And have you heard anything from John, Aunt Connie?’ Hettie asked, trying to seem casual although her heart was beating wildy at the mere thought of John.
It was Christmas Day and, whilst the other girls who had not been able to return home to their families were having fun together at Jack and Sarah’s chop house, with a party to enjoy afterwards, she was at her aunt’s trying to make herself heard above the excited noise of the children.
‘John. Yes, we had a card and a letter. Did I tell you that he has been invited to spend the whole of Christmas with that posh friend of his and his sister?’
‘I can’t remember,’ Hettie fibbed, feigning indifference and bending down, pretending to examine one of the children’s toys to hide the sudden burn of her hot face.
Why should she care who John spent Christmas with? she asked herself crossly. He could be with as many posh friends and their sisters as he chose, she had her own friends now, after all. And tomorrow night she would be joining them for a big farewell party before they all went their separate ways, some of them to London with the new musical whilst those who were in pantos would be staying here in Liverpool.
Lord, had she wanted to do so, she could have gone out with a different lad every day of the week, Hettie assured herself. Only the other day she had had two boys plead with her to let them take her to a tea dance, and two more had begged her to join them as their mascot when they took part in a car race to Blackpool. No, she had no need to envy John his life, not when she had such a happy, exciting life of her own to enjoy.
‘And you’re off to London the day after Boxing Day? Well, we shall all miss you, Hettie,’ Connie told her. ‘You must let me know your address as soon as you are settled there. And don’t forget to write and let your mother know, will you?’
‘Why should I? She doesn’t care for me. She wouldn’t even let me see her,’ Hettie announced bitterly.
‘Hettie! How can you be so ungrateful? You must not say such things,’ Connie objected sharply. ‘Ellie has loved you as dearly as if you were her own.’
White-faced, Hettie dropped her eyelashes to conceal the sudden sharp spurt of her tears. Connie had been cross and not at all like herself all day, and had talked of nothing except how worried she was that the whole of the school would go down with the influenza that was already responsible for several of the boys having to be quarantined in the school sanatorium.
Hettie couldn’t help contrasting this Christmas with those she had enjoyed at Winckley Square. How different everything was now. Then she had been so happy, believing that Ellie loved her. Whereas now…
She made her excuses and farewells far earlier than she had originally planned, choosing to walk back rather than
wait for a bus. The city was unfamiliarly quiet and empty, and Hettie shivered in the cold. It was hard to imagine that this time next week she would actually be in London.
London! She would have a whole new life there. A life where she would be a proper stage singer. Her spirits started to lift. The other girls would still be partying at the chop house and she was wearing her new dress. She had bought it from a neighbour of one of the chorus girls’ cousins, a machinist in a dress factory, who made copies of their posh frocks for special customers who got to know about her by word of mouth.
Hettie’s was the very latest style with a short skirt and a dropped waist. It was perfect for all those exciting modern dances she and the other girls practised in their attic bedroom and then taught the boys amidst much joking and laughter.
She had reached Jack and Sarah’s chop house and, as she pushed open the door, she was enveloped in warm goose-scented air, and above the noise of the party goers she heard Babs yelling her name.
She could feel the tightness of misery and anger loosening its grip on her heart to be replaced by warmth and relief. She was home, because home was here now, with her friends, and not Winckley Square and the Pride family.
EIGHTEEN
‘It seems so funny, Lizzie not being here.’
‘Well, like she said, ’Ettie, it ’ud tek too long for her to get back to her mum and ’er sister from London, and that’s why she auditioned for the panto instead of trying for the musical like us,’ Babs pointed out cheerfully before adding, ‘Isn’t it time we ’ad our sandwiches? I’m fair famished. Sukey, go and find the lads and tell ’em that if they want anything to eat they’d better be quick.’
The chorus girls and the new friends they had made amongst the young men from the orchestra were all travelling down to London on the same train, and it had been in a mood of light-hearted excitement that they had boarded the train earlier in the day – even Babs, who had had to part from Stan as he was booked to appear in a pantomime.
Hettie of Hope Street Page 18
