Hettie of Hope Street. Annie Groves
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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.
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