Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  ‘Help yourself,’ Hettie offered, changing into her street clothes whilst Mary sat down, lit a Craven and then proceeded to inspect her reflection in the mirror.

  The rain they had been having earlier in the day had turned to sleet, and the wind whipping round the corner of the theatre was so bitterly cold Hettie felt as though it were stripping her skin from her bones as she hurried along the pavement towards the waiting car.

  As Hudson opened the door for her she heard Jay’s voice saying welcomingly from its dark leather-scented interior, ‘Hettie, poor girl, you must be frozen. Hudson, the Ritz and as fast as you like. I had another talk with Madame after you had gone, Hettie, but…’

  ‘Oh please, don’t worry about that. I truly don’t mind that she doesn’t think I’m good enough and doesn’t want to teach me. To tell the truth,’ she admitted, ‘I would far rather have a different teacher. She scared me so much I’m sure even if she had wanted to teach me I would have been too nervous to learn anything.’

  ‘I hope that isn’t true, Hettie,’ Jay told her lightly. ‘Because Madame Bertrice has changed her mind and is now willing to take you on as a pupil. And there I was imagining how pleased you would be with my good news,’ Jay continued nonchalantly.

  Guiltily, Hettie looked at him. ‘Well, I am sure that if she has changed her mind about me, I shall be able to change mine about her,’ she told Jay valiantly.

  It was wonderful to hear the approval in his voice as he reached out in the darkness and took hold of her hand, giving it a little squeeze as he said warmly, ‘That’s my girl, Hettie.’

  His girl. She gave a small excited shiver and immediately his hand tightened on hers. Jay had such nice hands, Hettie decided. They were large and manly, his grip comforting and warm in a way that reminded her of how she had felt as a little girl with her hand held tightly in John’s.

  ‘You will have to work hard, of course,’ Jay continued. ‘But I know that you can and will do so, Hettie.’

  They had reached the Ritz and, just like before, a uniformed doorman was waiting to hand Hettie out of the car whilst another held one of the doors for them.

  ‘We really must see about getting you some new clothes,’ Jay mused aloud as he guided her towards the lift.

  ‘For my lessons?’ she enquired innocently. ‘Oh no, that won’t be necessary, Jay, I have plenty of things.’

  ‘Really? So then why are you wearing the same frock this evening as you were the last time we had dinner together?’ Jay asked her gently.

  They had reached the lift and, since they would be overheard by the lift attendant, Hettie had to wait to answer him until they were inside his suite.

  ‘This is my best frock,’ she told him with great dignity. ‘I won’t be wearing it for my lessons and, anyway, why should it matter if I do wear it more than once?’

  ‘Why should it indeed?’ Jay agreed. ‘But has it not occurred to you, Hettie, that you are being a mite selfish?’

  ‘Selfish?’ Hettie felt confused.

  ‘Very selfish,’ Jay continued. ‘Firstly in denying pretty clothes the pleasure of being worn by you.’ Jay paused as Hettie started both to laugh and blush. ‘And secondly in denying me the pleasure of buying them for you,’ he concluded softly.

  Immediately Hettie stopped laughing. She might be naive, but she was not that naive.

  ‘I would not want you to do that,’ she told him quietly, very much on her dignity.

  ‘Ah. I see that I have offended you. Forgive me, Hettie, that was the last thing I intended. You will think me a very poor shallow fellow I know, but I confess that I do think it is essential that you dress appropriately for the new role you are about to embark on. For instance, it may very well be that when she was merely a second lead Cecile Courtly only had one best frock to her name. But I think you will agree that she would not be the Cecile Courtly the audience reveres were she still to dress in that fashion.’

  Cecile Courtly was one of the London stage’s most famous actresses and singers, and Hettie could not help but be entranced that Jay should suggest that, one day, she herself might be equally famous. Neither could she help but see the practicality of what Jay was saying. But she still had to point out. ‘Only she will buy her own clothes, and not have them bought for her, and if you…’

  ‘I see what you are trying to say, Hettie,’ Jay acknowledged. ‘You fear that were it to become known that I had bought your clothes, people might assume that I had also bought you.’

  Hettie went bright red.

  ‘Now I have upset you,’ Jay said ruefully. ‘And that is the last thing I want to do. In fact, what I want to do more than anything else,’ he continued softly, reaching for her hands and taking hold of them in his own before Hettie could stop him, ‘is make you happy. Do you think I could do that, pretty little Hettie? Do you think I could make you smile for me and look upon me and my foolishness with compassion?’

  The sleet had turned to snow when Hettie finally let herself into her lodgings, but, late though it was, the others had still not returned and the room she shared with Babs felt cold and empty. After quickly washing her hands and face, Hettie undressed and got into bed. Was she right in thinking that Jay had actually been flirting a little with her tonight? If only Babs were here so that she could confide in her and ask her opinion. But would Babs give it? Or did the angry way Babs had spoken to her earlier mean their friendship was damaged for ever?

  TWENTY-TWO

  Her lesson had finished over an hour ago, but Hettie was still sitting spellbound in the small but warm room where Madame Bertrice’s pupils waited for their lessons, listening to the last notes of the beautiful aria being practised by Madame’s current pupil fade into silence. Lifting her hand to wipe away the tears the powerful emotions of the aria had brought her, she breathed out slowly and stood up.

  Listening to Madame’s opera singer pupils had become Hettie’s special and unexpected treat since she had started coming to Madame’s lodgings for her singing lessons. She had no idea what the words meant, but she did know that something within her reacted to them and to the music.

  She was just about to leave when Madame herself came into the room, her full skirts giving her the appearance of one of Liverpool’s majestic liners triumphantly coming home. Madame Bertrice had not embraced the modern fashion for narrower, shorter skirts, and preferred to dress very much as though they were still living in a more old-fashioned era.

  ‘Hettie,’ she exclaimed when she saw her. ‘Why are you still here? Is something wrong?’

  Feeling embarrassed, Hettie shook her head. ‘No. It was just the music,’ she explained simply. ‘And…and the voice.’

  Immediately Madame smiled at her and nodded her head, for, as Hettie had quickly discovered, whilst she insisted on her pupils working hard, Madame was not the ogre Hettie had initially feared.

  ‘Ah yes. Who could not be moved by such an aria? It is a great pity, Hettie, that your own voice did not receive proper training when you were younger. Had you done so…But there is no point in us repining, for you did not. Besides,’ she added, ‘the life of an opera singer is not for everyone. It is very demanding and has broken more singers than it has lauded. It is a life that is especially hard for a woman. You are a good pupil, Hettie,’ she told her kindly, ‘and you will do very well in Mr Dalhousie’s musical operettas.’

  Hettie hugged those words of praise and encouragement to herself all the way to the theatre.

  She had been excused rehearsals on those days when she had a singing lesson. But because she was growing increasingly and uncomfortably conscious of the rift that seemed to be developing between herself and her friends, and their growing resentment that she seemed to be getting what they had crossly described as ‘special favours’, she was determined to prove that she was not, as she had heard them whispering, growing too big for her boots or thinking herself above them.

  At least she and Babs had made up their small quarrel, she comforted herself as she shield
ed her eyes from the brightness of the March sunshine whilst she waited to cross Piccadilly Circus before hurrying down Shaftesbury Avenue.

  She had expected to find the dressing room empty because she knew rehearsals would already have started, but to her surprise it was full and the chorus girls were standing around in their practice clothes, smoking and chattering, so that Hettie could hardly see a familiar face for the smoke or hear a familiar voice for the noise. But then she spotted Mary and Sukey, and managed to wriggle her way through the tight knots of girls towards them.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked when she reached them. ‘I thought you’d all be in rehearsal.’

  ‘So we should have been, but there’s been a problem with one of the sets and we can’t practise until it’s sorted. Seems like the set designer hasn’t turned in this morning, and he’s gonna find himself in a right load of trouble if he doesn’t get here soon,’ Mary prophesied darkly.

  ‘You mean Eddie?’ Hettie asked her, her heart bumping heavily in her chest.

  ‘Yes. He needs to lay off of the bottle, ’e does, leastways if he ’e wants to keep his job,’ Mary added.

  Not even someone as innocent as Hettie could have remained unaware that Eddie was drinking too much. He had frequently turned up at the theatre over the past few weeks the worse for drink, and there had already been a good deal of gossip about his drunken rantings in which he talked wildly about his despair and the cruelty with which he had been treated, fortunately without mentioning any names.

  ‘’Ere, where are you going?’ Mary demanded when Hettie turned to hurry back to the door.

  ‘I’m going round to Eddie’s lodgings to tell him that he needs to be here,’ Hettie called back to her over her shoulder.

  She knew where Eddie was lodging because he had happened to mention it to her, and for once as she plunged into the busy London streets Hettie’s attention was not drawn towards the poor injured ex-soldiers patiently begging for pennies; or the raggedly dressed children with their thin weasely faces and too knowing eyes, their intent gazes assessing passers-by for potential victims of their pick-pocketing skills. Even though she knew she should not do so, Hettie often gave them a few pennies, so that now when they saw her they followed her and begged her for more.

  Eddie’s lodgings were in a tangle of streets off the Haymarket, in a down-at-heel and so very disreputable-looking building that Hettie hesitated before stepping through the open front door into a shabby hallway.

  Unlike the lodgings she shared with the other girls, this boarding house did not seem to have a stout, stern landlady. An elderly man shuffling along the hallway stopped to stare at Hettie, the sunlight falling unkindly on his sunken overrouged cheeks and carmined mouth.

  ‘You won’t find anything to your taste here, dearie,’ he called out in a shrill, falsetto, overrefined voice, tittering as he did so and tossing his head, his sharp glance assessing her unkindly.

  ‘I’m looking for Eddie Ormond,’ Hettie told him, ignoring his rudeness. ‘He’s needed at the theatre.’

  Immediately his expression changed. ‘Second floor, third door on the left,’ revealed. ‘You’ll have to knock loudly, though, if you’re going to wake him.’

  Thanking him, Hettie made her way up the stairs and along the corridor, pausing outside Eddie’s door and knocking firmly on it.

  When there was no immediate response she knocked again, and then leaned her head against the door, hoping to hear sounds of movement from inside the room.

  ‘Cheer up, ducks, it ain’t that bad,’ a sharp male voice mocked her.

  Straightening up, Hettie turned round to find that she was being watched by a very dapper-looking middle-aged man, his clothes smart and his shoes polished.

  ‘She’s from the theatre, Charlie,’ the old man she had seen downstairs called up shrilly.

  ‘Oh, you are, are you?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Eddie’s as well,’ Hettie informed both men firmly. ‘There’s a problem with one of the sets and he’s needed.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be lucky to wake him. Poor bugger ’as half drunk himself to death already,’ the second man announced dryly, much to Hettie’s alarm.

  ‘Surely someone has a key to his room?’ she asked. ‘He’s going to be in some kind of dreadful trouble if he doesn’t come to work.’

  ‘Nellie, where’s the spare key to his room?’ the middle-aged man called downstairs to the older one. ‘And don’t you go pretending you don’t have one.’

  Hettie tried not to reveal her angry impatience when the older man suddenly produced a large bunch of keys and started to puff his way up the stairs. Why on earth couldn’t he have told her that they had a spare key to Eddie’s room in the first place?

  ‘Nellie here likes to pretend that there aren’t any spare keys. That’s because he likes going through our things when we aren’t here, isn’t it, Nellie dear?’

  ‘You shut your mouth, you poxy Martha,’ ‘Nellie’ responded as he breathed heavily over the keys, finally and to Hettie painfully slowly selecting one which he inserted into Eddie’s locked door.

  The smell of alcohol from inside the room as the door swung open gripped Hettie’s throat, but she forced herself to ignore it as she hurried inside.

  The room itself was surprisingly neat and tidy – far more so than those of her chorus girl friends, she admitted. The girls were inclined to leave stockings and other items of apparel strewn over doors and chairs, whilst hairbrushes and the like cluttered up dressing table tops.

  Eddie himself was still in bed, and obviously asleep.

  Hettie hesitated. She had never been in a man’s bedroom before, never mind one where its occupant was actually in the bed. But she had matured a lot from the girl she had been, and so she took a deep breath and walked determinedly towards the bed.

  Once there, she called Eddie’s name loudly and, when this got no response, she cleared her throat and forced herself to place her hand on his bare shoulder. His skin felt warm and soft. Her courage returning, she gave him a firm shake, just as though he had been one of the girls.

  He moved reluctantly and so Hettie shook him again. This time he opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Hettie.’

  ‘You’ve got to get up and come to the theatre,’ she told him quickly. ‘There’s something wrong with one of the sets.’

  ‘What?’

  He looked dazed, and very unwell, Hettie acknowledged. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin had an unhealthy yellowish cast to it.

  ‘You must come to the theatre, Eddie,’ she repeated firmly.

  He was properly awake now, a dark-red surge of angry colour suddenly flooding his face. ‘Why?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘So that he can mock me and humiliate me? So that he can torture me and tear my heart out of my body? So that he can eviscerate me and…Do you know what he did yesterday?’ he demanded wildly, ignoring Hettie’s attempts to calm him. ‘He called me into his office and, when I got there, he had him, it…there with him, that little piece of shit he’s bedding.’

  ‘Eddie, please don’t distress yourself like this,’ Hettie begged him worriedly. She could see how upset he was and her heart felt heavy with sadness for him. ‘You must get dressed and come to the theatre,’ she repeated anxiously. ‘Otherwise…’

  ‘Otherwise what?’

  ‘Otherwise, duckie, you will lose your job, won’t he, Charlie? And we don’t none of us want that, do we?’

  Hettie had forgotten about the other two men, and had not realised that they had been listening. However, it was plain to her that, rather than being embarrassed by their presence, Eddie was actually calmed by it.

  ‘You can leave him with us now, missie,’ Charlie told her. ‘Now that he’s awake we’all make sure he gets himself dressed and off to work.’

  Hettie hesitated.

  ‘Yes, you go back, Hettie,’ Eddie muttered.

  ‘You will get up and come to work, won’t you?’ she begged him.

  ‘Course he will, missie,�
�� Charlie told her. ‘We’ll mek sure of that, never fear. He’s the only one ’ere who’s working and earning, ain’t you, Eddie? And if ’e don’t work, we don’t eat.’

  ‘Where are they? One of you ’as taken them, I know that you have. Well, you can just give them back to me.’

  ‘’Ere, Sukey, for gawd’s sake calm down! No one has taken your blinkin’ pills,’ Aggie protested.

  ‘Yes they have. I counted them last week and I had enough for this week and now I ’aven’. And I can’t afford to buy any more until next week!’

  ‘Well, you might have had enough when you counted them, but I’ve seen you taking them two at a time, and they get you in such a state I reckon you’d be hard put to remember your own name, never mind if’n you’d taken more than one.’

  ‘That’s a lie! You’ve never seen me taking two at a time. You’re making it up!’ Sukey was screaming at Aggie now, her face bright red, and her whole body trembling.

  ‘Gawd, Sukey, tek a look at yourself, you looks like yer about to ’ave a fit or sommat,’ Jenny told her unkindly.

  Mary then protested grumpily, ‘Sukey, stop that noise, will yer? I’m trying to get some sleep, if’n you don’t mind!’

  Suddenly, to everyone’s shock, Sukey flew across the room and flung herself at Mary, pulling her hair and screaming at her. ‘It were you, weren’t it? Don’t you go lyin’ to me, neither. I know now it were you as took them.’

  Mary herself had also started screaming, whilst Sukey pulled so viciously at her hair that Hettie was afraid she would actually tear it from Mary’s scalp, her nails clawing the side of Mary’s face.

  ‘Bloody ’ell, Sukey,’ Aggie objected. ‘Give over, will you?’ She hurried across the room obviously planning to try to help Mary, but before she got there Sukey’s whole body suddenly contorted in a fierce convulsion, immediately followed by several more.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s dying,’ Jenny wailed as Mary managed to step back from Sukey.