Hettie of Hope Street

by Groves, Annie

  The champagne had been poured and was sparkling palely in their glasses.

  ‘To us, Hettie!’ Jay toasted, lifting his glass. He was holding it in the palm of his hand, caressing it almost, and when Hettie glanced at his glass he laughed softly and told her, ‘Didn’t you know, Hettie, that the champagne glass was originally modelled on a woman’s breast? And, for that reason, whenever a man holds one he is immediately filled with a longing to caress the beautiful breasts of the woman he loves in the same way that he is caressing his glass.’

  As he spoke Jay’s gaze dropped from her face to her own breasts, causing Hettie’s heart to pitter patter frantically fast.

  She was wearing a new gown that was rather more daring than anything she had ever worn before. Hettie had spotted it on a market stall close to Covent Garden. And the thin, hard-eyed stallholder with the shrill Cockney accent had insisted that it was an exact copy of one of Worth’s newest designs, and that she could make it up exactly to fit Hettie’s slender frame.

  All the chorus girls had their own, often jealously guarded secret sources of copied couture clothes, not the discreet ‘little dressmakers’ favoured by the aristocracy but cockneys, like the girl who had sold Hettie her gown.

  In order for the new tube-like gowns to fit properly, young women were discarding the now old-fashioned heavy corsetry favoured by previous generations. Beneath the fine silk of her gown, with its beading and diamanté embroidery, Hettie was wearing a pair of new and very risqué silk satin French knickers, and a matching, equally shocking fine camisole top. Now with Jay looking so hotly and deliberately at her, her face burned with a mixture of confusion and excitement. She could feel her nipples tightening and pushing against the delicate fabric, and a seething molten sensation was filling her lower body.

  Jay released her hand and leaned across the table to whisper wickedly to her, ‘Hettie, once we are on board the liner and on our way to New York, I promise you that I am not going to be denied the pleasure of seeing your breasts as nature intended me to see them. And I won’t just be looking at them, my little Hettie. I fully intend to hold them and to stroke them and to taste the sweet ambrosia of them, whilst I whisper soft kisses against the little buds of your nipples…’

  ‘Jay. I…I would have liked to go home to see my family before we leave,’ Hettie told him, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I have written to tell them that I am to visit New York, of course, but…My step-mother is to have another child, and I would just like…’

  Hettie had no idea why she felt so awkward and embarrassed not only discussing Ellie’s pregnancy with Jay – especially when in a very few short weeks now she would be sharing the most intimate of physical relationships with him – but also about disclosing to him her feelings of love for her family. Jay never discussed his family with her, and she had never heard him speak about his sons.

  ‘We are only going to be gone two months and you will be able to visit them when we come back, Hettie,’ Jay pointed out. ‘There is a great deal we need to do together before we leave. Archie has sent two more songs, and I want you to learn them before we go. I have alerted the purser to the fact that we shall be travelling and I have suggested to him that the captain may want to invite you to sing for certain specially chosen guests.’

  Hettie stared at him. ‘I can’t do that,’ she protested.

  ‘Of course you can.’ Jay laughed. ‘They will love you, Hettie, and even before we reach new York they will be wanting to hear you sing. Everything is arranged now for Princess Geisha to open there the week after we arrive. You will, of course, be singing, and I have made sure that the press over there have seen your reviews. The whole of New York will be flocking to hear you, and then, when we open with the new musical next year, they will come back.’

  Hettie hoped Jay was right. To her, it seemed an extraordinary thing to do, to take her to New York to sing there for a mere six weeks and then come back, instead of waiting to go to New York until the new musical had been fully written.

  ‘And remember,’ Jay cautioned her, ‘not a word to anyone else of our plans for the new musical.’

  Hettie nodded.

  So far as anyone else knew she was simply going to New York to sing for six weeks whilst Jay found a suitable American singer to take over the role.

  ‘Eddie!’ Hettie smiled in pleasure. ‘I haven’t seen you in ever such a long time.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t do, would you? Eddie answered her sourly. ‘After all, you’re hardly ever here any more, are you?’

  Hettie flushed a little at the accusatory tone of his voice.

  ‘I’ve been having extra singing lessons,’ she explained, her expression brightening as she continued, ‘But it’s good news that the run has been extended, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ Eddie demanded bitterly. ‘It might be for you, Hettie, but I certainly don’t consider the thought of having to endure Ivan’s cruelty for another three months as good news.’

  ‘Oh, Eddie.’ They had been standing in the shadows but now as someone pushed past them they had moved and a harsh beam of sunlight coming in through one of the skylights suddenly illuminated Eddie’s face for Hettie to see properly. He was unshaven, and his skin looked grey, his face thinner and his eyes bloodshot. Despite the warmth of the summer air, he was shivering and Hettie couldn’t help but see how much his hands shook as he tried to light a cigarette.

  Everyone was talking about how much he was drinking and his frequent outbursts of drunken fury, and there was other more hushed gossip as well about his growing use of drugs.

  She reached out and touched his arm, and then sucked in her breath in shock as she discovered how thin it felt beneath the sleeve of his shirt. Immediately he pulled away from her and pushed past her.

  ‘’E’s going to get hisself in trouble if he doesn’t watch it,’ one of the girls commented darkly, whilst Hettie watched him anxiously and then turned to look at Mary who was hurrying down the corridor towards the dressing room. As she pushed open the dressing room door, Hettie saw that she wasn’t wearing her ring.

  It was three days now since Polly had been laid to rest, but John still could not really believe that she was dead. A part of him was still expecting the door to open and Polly herself to come hurrying in, bringing with her laughter and excitement.

  But she was dead, no matter how little he wanted to accept that fact, and he still had a duty to perform on her behalf, even though it was not the duty she had originally given him.

  In his pocket was the money she had left with him. He had telephoned Moreton Place and asked Alfred if he might see him, but now as he left his parked car and approached the familiar door he admitted to himself that he was not looking forward to what lay ahead.

  Sir Percival Montford had not visited the flying club since Polly’s death and John had heard a rumour that he had actually left the country. True or not, he was glad that he would not be forced to endure the presence of the other man, because were he to have to do so John was not sure he could trust himself not to take him outside and quite literally beat him to a pulp.

  Bates opened the door to his ring. The house was still dressed in mourning, a black ribbon attached to the door and the curtains closed.

  Alfred came into the hall to shake John’s hand and show him into the library.

  ‘I wanted to give this to you,’ John told him abruptly, removing the semi-wrapped money from his pocket and putting it down on Alfred’s desk.

  Alfred frowned as he looked at it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s some money that Lady Polly left with me,’ John told him quietly. He took a deep breath and then continued firmly, ‘She told me that it would not fit into her handbag and she asked me to keep it for her until she returned from seeing Lord Ralph.’

  He had practised the lie every day since the funeral, fiercely determined not to break the confidence Polly had given him but equally determined that her money must be returned to Alfred.

  ‘I cannot
for the life of me think what Polly would be doing with so much money,’ Alfred told him unsteadily. ‘But I thank you for returning it to me, John. I spoke with Lord Ralph yesterday,’ he added quietly. ‘The poor chap is in the most dreadful state.’

  John bowed his head in silence. Alfred had already told him that Lord Ralph had informed the police that he and Polly had had ‘a tiff’ and that she had announced that, instead of going to visit his mother, she was going to return home.

  ‘At least now she is at peace, and with Oliver,’ John told him thickly.

  Alfred put his hand on John’s shoulder. ‘Yes, that is what I am trying to think as well. I confess to you, John, that I was not convinced this engagement of hers to young Lascelles would have worked. But he, poor fellow, blames himself, and says that if they had not quarrelled…’

  John ached to be able to say that if anyone was to carry the blame that it should not be Lord Ralph Lascelles but Sir Percival Montford, because deep down inside himself John felt bitterly sure that the other man’s relentless hounding of Polly had been the cause of her death, if only indirectly.

  But for Polly’s own sake he could not say so.

  Hettie put down the letter she had just been reading and wiped the tears from her eyes. It was from Ellie and it contained the news of Lady Polly’s tragic death.

  ‘Her poor young fiancé is heart-broken and poor John is, as you can imagine, most affected by it,’ Ellie had written.

  Had John secretly loved Lady Polly? Hettie wondered compassionately as she re-read the letter and then folded it carefully and put it back in her pocket, hearing the girls coming up the stairs after their morning’s rehearsal.

  ‘Fancy coming out with us for a bite of lunch, ’Ettie?’ Jenny asked, adding before Hettie could answer, ‘’Ere, you’ll never guess as what ’as happened, will she girls?’

  ‘What?’ Hettie asked her, her mind still on John, and more to humour Jenny than because she really wanted to know.

  ‘It’s Eddie,’ Jenny told her. ‘Only gone as mad as a hatter he has and…’

  ‘’Ere, Jenny, you don’t half go round the ’ouses to tell a tale,’ Aggie interrupted her. ‘Let me tell her what’s happened…There were a real to-do with Eddie and Ivan this morning, ’Ettie, and Jay come down and told Eddie he ’ad to collect his things and go.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s not all,’ Jenny butted in excitedly. ‘Eddie only went and ’ad another screaming fit with Ivan, and then he starts throwing pots of paint all over one of the sets. Like a madman he were, weren’t he, Jess?’

  ‘Yes,’ her twin agreed eagerly. ‘And then he threw one at at Ivan, red paint and all, and it were dripping all over him and you know what a dandy he is! Eddie were screaming all sorts of stuff and crying like he were a girl, one minute telling Ivan as how he hated him, and wanted to kill him, and the next saying as ’ow he loved him and couldn’t live wi’out him.’

  Hettie went cold as she listened to the three of them describing what had happened, and how Jay had been sent for again but how Eddie had fled the theatre before Jay could have him physically ejected.

  Hettie knew Jay well enough now to know how furious he would be.

  ‘Hettie, where are you going?’ one of the girls called out as Hettie suddenly started hurrying towards the door.

  ‘I’m going to see Eddie,’ she told them.

  Since it was a Saturday afternoon the city was busy, the streets filled with people, and it seemed to Hettie that in every street she turned down she was having to fight her way against the flow of people going the other way. Piccadilly Circus was indeed a circus today – a circus of trams disgorging their passengers whilst others waited to get on.

  Finally Hettie managed to make her way through the tightly packed mass of people. As she bypassed the theatre she saw that a queue was already beginning to form for the matinée performance, for which she would not be needed since her understudy was now doing the afternoon performances – a fact which had caused some sideways looks to be cast in her direction, as well as several comments about ‘some people getting special treatment’.

  She half hesitated outside the public house she knew to be one of Eddie’s favourite haunts, but as a woman on her own she could hardly enter the main bar area, and she doubted that she would find Eddie in one of the small snugs set aside for women to use. Besides, her instincts were telling her that, with Eddie in the distressed state the girls had so graphically described, he would be turned away from any public house and was more likely to have gone to ground at his lodgings.

  As she made her way through the warren of interlinked and increasingly poor streets, the crowds thinned out until there was only the odd solitary beggar standing on a street corner. As always Hettie stopped to give what she could, before hurrying on.

  There was no need for her to knock on the heavy door to the lodging house since it was already open, but she did have to squeeze her way past a heavily made-up and extremely odd-looking woman, who was standing in the doorway smoking, her mannerisms more those of a man than a woman, Hettie decided, and her appearance that of a pantomime dame. But despite her observations it still shocked her to hear a passer-by call out, ‘Wotcha, Frank,’ as he walked past.

  The stairway and landing were empty and the door to Eddie’s room closed. Hettie knocked firmly on it and waited anxiously. Even if Eddie were here and opened the door for her, she had no idea what she was going to say to him or indeed what she could do to help him.

  She was just about to knock a second time when she heard him call out, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Hettie, Eddie,’ she answered. ‘Please let me in…’

  She held her breath as she heard sounds of movement, bedsprings squeaking and then the soft shuffle of feet followed by the click of the key turning in the lock.

  She turned the door handle herself without waiting for Eddie to open the door for her and hurried inside the room.

  ‘I take it that you’ve heard what’s happened,’ Eddie drawled as he stood back to let her in.

  Hettie nodded. He was calmer than she had expected, and actually smiling, even if it was an odd, vacuous sort of smile. ‘Are you all right, Eddie?’ she asked him anxiously.

  He seemed to be having trouble focusing on her, Hettie realised as he frowned and then blinked before telling her slowly, ‘Not yet, but I am going to be soon…Very soon now, Hettie. You shouldn’t have come here.’

  ‘I was worried about you,’ Hettie told him. ‘You know that you won’t be able to come back, don’t you, Eddie? I’ll talk to Jay but…’

  ‘It’s too late,’ He told her. ‘In fact, it’s too late now for anything, Hettie.’ He looked at her and started to laugh. ‘Do you know, when you knocked I actually thought it might be him…I thought that somehow he might have guessed and that he would come to be with me out of remorse, if not love. Perhaps he will still come.’

  He walked away from Hettie and went and sat on the bed. ‘I want him to come, Hettie. I want him to be here with me when it happens. I want him to see what he has done to me. I want him to see me take that last breath and to feel my body grow cold beneath his touch. I want him to beg me not to die, to plead with me to live. To weep and tear at his clothes, to…’

  A horrible, unthinkable fear had taken hold of Hettie. ‘What do you mean your last breath?’ she demanded urgently.

  Eddie turned to look at her and gave her a shockingly sweet smile. ‘I mean that I have taken steps to bring my life to an end, Hettie. It won’t be long, I don’t think. Already I can feel how my heart is slowing…Don’t cry, Hettie.’

  ‘Eddie, what have you done? Let me go and find a doctor…’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he told her simply. ‘No doctor can reverse what I have put in train, Hettie. The silent mercy of death is already in my veins.’

  He was speaking and moving so slowly that Hettie felt her own anguished fear increase. She looked blankly at him, not understanding what he meant.

  ‘I have take
n the ultimate panacea for my pains, Hettie, and am going to join the opium eaters amongst the heavenly fields of poppies,’ he told her drowsily. ‘Opium is such a Machiavellian drug – take just a little and one merely enters paradise temporarily, but once paradise has been entered one longs constantly to return. Now I have ensured that this time I shall stay there for ever…You will not mind if I lie down, will you, Hettie? Only…’ He stopped speaking as they both heard footsteps on the landing outside his room.

  Immediately his thin face flushed and a look burned in his eyes that Hettie could hardly bear to see.

  ‘You must go, that will be him, my beloved Ivan. I knew he would come back to me. I knew he would not leave me to die alone! Open the door for him, Hettie…’

  Hettie had heard the footsteps continuing down the landing but she still got up and opened the door.

  ‘Ivan!’ Eddie called out feebly.

  ‘There is no one there, Eddie,’ Hettie told him.

  ‘There must be. He must be there, Hettie…He must be! Ivan…Ivan!’ Eddie was struggling to sit up but his strength was fading so rapidly that watching him was like watching water run from a leaking vessel, Hettie acknowledged in despair.

  She closed the door and hurried back to the bed but, by the time she got there, Eddie had slipped into unconsciousness.

  Cold and sweating at the same time, Hettie didn’t know what to do. Her instinct was to run and find a doctor but some deeper awareness told her that there would be no point.

  She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed, reaching for one of Eddie’s cold hands and holding it within her own. As though her touch disturbed him, he shuddered violently and called out something in a language she could not understand, his whole body arching off the bed and then dropping back on to it so quickly that she didn’t even have time to register her own horror.

  This time he lay there rigidly, breathing harshly whilst Hettie trembled with shocked anxiety. She wanted to leave him and find someone to help but she was afraid that he might die whilst she was gone and she didn’t want to leave him to die alone. Instead she stayed where she was, praying that someone would walk past the door and that she would be able to call out to them.