Читать книгу Hettie of Hope Street - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 10

‘These young buggers come here and think they know everything. They don’t know how to treat a flying machine with proper respect, that they don’t.’

John smiled as he listened to Jim Ryley, his mechanic, grumbling about their latest intake of pupils. ‘They’re eager and enthusiastic, Jim.’

‘Aye, and some of them are downright reckless. That lanky red-headed lad for one. You want to watch him, John. He’s a right wild ‘un, and a troublemaker.’

John’s smile turned into a frown. It was true that Alan Simms was inclined to be reckless and overconfident. When John had taken him up for a lesson earlier in the week he had tried to ignore John’s instructions and wanted to loop the loop. As John had pointed out to him then, the skies were not a forgiving place in which to make an error of judgement or skill.

‘Still, he’ll be on his way soon and we’ll have the next lot coming in. How many will there be this time?’

‘Not as many as I’d like,’ John admitted.

It was a perfect day for flying, with a light wind and a clear sky, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the small problem which had caused the prop to stutter so badly yesterday meant he was grounded until he could fix it, John would have been up there enjoying it. Not that, for once, his thoughts were entirely on flying.

He picked up the letter he had received earlier in the week and re-read it. It was from a friend, a fellow flyer he had met during the war, their mutual love of flying machines giving them a shared passion which had transcended their social differences and given rise to an unlikely friendship between John, with his working class background, and Alfred, who was a member of the aristocracy. It was Alfred and not John who had initiated the friendship, brushing aside John’s awkward protests and objections about their social differences.

Alfred had written that he intended to escort his sister to Liverpool where she was boarding a liner to travel to New York this coming weekend, and they would be staying at the Adelphi hotel for a few days prior to her departure.

‘Thing is, old chap, I thought that maybe we could get together. Fact is, there’s a small business matter I’d like to discuss with you. Must say I envy you – your flying, I mean. Unfortunately, I’m grounded now. Responsibilities and all that. Still, mustn’t grumble, I suppose.’

Alfred always looked on the bright side of life – it was one of the things John admired about him – but maybe it was easy to be optimistic when you didn’t have to worry constantly about making ends meet. Alfred was, after all, an earl, whilst he was merely an ordinary working man. No, he was even less than that, John acknowledged as he looked round the rundown and shabby cottage that was his home. No self-respecting working man would live somewhere like this.

The cottage had an earth floor over which stone slabs had been laid, the result being that, when it rained, water seeped up over them and even froze when the temperature dropped sharply.

But he had slowly improved the conditions. When he had bought the property a standpipe outside had provided water for both the cottage and the livestock, but John now had water piped into the cottage itself. The outside lavvy had been little better than a latrine and a health hazard until he had built his own cesspit to accommodate not just his own needs but those of the men who came to him to learn how to fly. Indeed, their quarters were equipped with modern if basic bathrooms and sanitaryware, thanks to the generosity of his brother-in-law, Gideon. Since the cottage did not have its own bathroom it was simpler for him to use the pupils’ facilities rather than to struggle with the tin bath that hung in the washhouse.

One day, of course, he would find the time and money to install that range Ellie was always cajoling him to buy, and then he would be able to have the luxury of hot water, as well as hot food. One day…Maybe…If the business ever made him any profit.

‘Put up your fees, John,’ Gideon had advised him. But he knew if he did that then those young men who, like him, were captivated and driven by the lure of flight, would not be able to afford them. The truth was that at the moment he earned more by taking aerial photographs for those government bodies that required them than he did from giving flying lessons.

Travelling to Liverpool would mean leaving Jim on his own to sort out the problem with the prop and cancelling some of the lessons. It would also mean struggling to wash and iron one of his few remaining decent shirts, because Jenny Black, the kind-hearted soul from the village who had taken it upon herself to ‘look after him’, couldn’t be trusted not to scorch them, as he already knew to his cost. And then he would have to dig deep into his pockets to find the means to travel to Liverpool at all.

But Hettie was in Liverpool, and if he were to agree to meet up with Alfred then he would have a cast-iron excuse for calling on Connie and seeing Hettie again.

‘What time will Da be here?’ Hettie asked her step-mother anxiously. They had just finished breakfast and were in Ellie’s room where Hettie was helping her pack ready for her return to Preston.

‘He said he would be leaving early.’

‘He won’t forget about my things, will he?’

‘No, of course not. I posted him a list to give to Mrs Jennings. Oh, and guess what? He is to bring John with him.’

Hettie beamed at this unexpected news. ‘Oh! May I put on my new dress for him and Da to see?’

‘If there is time. Now, where did I put those new handkerchiefs I bought, Hettie?’

Obligingly, Hettie searched for the missing items, finding them on top of a chest of drawers. Sunshine splashed through the windows and across the floor, matching her own happiness. She was going to miss home and her family, of course she was, but the fear and misery that had beset her earlier in the week had now gone and she was beginning to look forward to her new life.

‘You will make sure that Miss Brown gets the “Parma Violets” scent I bought for her to say thank you, won’t you?’ she asked Ellie anxiously.

‘I shall take it to her myself,’ Ellie assured her.

Should she tell Mam about the small vial of ‘Attar of Roses’ bought with the precious store money she had saved and carefully hidden in Ellie’s valise? Hettie wondered. Or should she do as she had originally planned and leave it as a surprise for Ellie once she reached home? She imagined Ellie’s pleasure on finding it when she unpacked and decided to keep quiet.

Hettie hoped she would like the card she had chosen to go with it, bearing the words, ‘thinking of you always, dearest mother’. And it was true that she would be thinking of her and of home every day.

‘Oh Da.’

‘There, there, Hettie lass, there’s no need to tek on so!’ Gideon soothed, patting her on the back as she clung to him and wept, overwhelmed by her own emotions now that the final moment of parting was so close.

‘I’ll bet you’ll be to-ing and fro-ing that often from Liverpool to Preston and back again that the railways will give you your own special seat,’ he teased her when Hettie had finally been persuaded to release him.

‘We left her trunk at the lodging house like you asked us to, Ellie.’

‘And what did you think of the place, Gideon? Did you see the landlady?’ Ellie asked fretfully.

‘We did and she was very pleasant. The house looked clean and tidy. You should be comfortable and well looked after there, Hettie, shouldn’t she, John?’

John! Hettie dimpled a smile at him, but did not run to him like she used to, self-consciously aware of the fact that she was now a young woman and no longer a mere girl. Instead she said importantly, ‘Just wait until you see the dress Mam has bought for me to wear – I am going to put it on after tea to show you.’

‘Oh John, it is so lovely to see you. You don’t come to Liverpool often enough,’ Connie reproached her brother as she bustled into the parlour.

‘That is because there is nowhere for him to land his flying machine, Connie,’ Harry joked.

Soon their chatter and laughter filled the small room, but Hettie’s was the voice John could hear most clearly, and her pretty, excited face the one he looked to most frequently, John admitted reluctantly, torn between conflicting feelings as he saw how the girl who had doted on him was turning into a beautiful young woman.

Gideon had confided to him as they drove over to Liverpool that Ellie was to have another child and that news too had added to the sombreness of John’s mood. The death of their mother after giving birth to Philip had left its mark on all of them. Certainly he knew that for him there was always that feeling of anxiety when he knew one of his sisters was with child. But Ellie was strong, in body and spirit, and he hoped that she would come through this unexpected pregnancy without any problems.

As soon as tea was over, Hettie ran upstairs to change into her new dress, having first begged her mother’s services as a lady’s maid.

When the dress was safely on and the sash tied, Ellie smoothed Hettie’s thick dark hair and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

‘You are smiling but you look sad, why?’ Hettie asked her.

‘I was just thinking of your mother,’ Ellie explained. She had always felt it important that Hettie know about her birth mother and so had never shied away from mentioning her.

‘I can hardly remember her. Only that she cried a lot and was sick on the ship,’ Hettie told her pragmatically. So far as she was concerned, Ellie was her mother, and her memories of warm loving arms holding her as a child were always of Ellie’s arms.

For all that, physically, she looked so unique, with the compelling blend of her English and Japanese features, Hettie’s nature was entirely English, Ellie acknowledged. She certainly could not imagine Hettie with her determination and high spirits ever behaving towards a husband in the subservient manner that Ellie’s own first husband, Hettie’s father, had told her was traditional amongst Japanese women.

When Hettie had been growing up, Ellie had dutifully bought her books to read about her mother’s homeland, but for Hettie’s own sake she had not wanted her to be singled out as ‘foreign’ or ‘different’. If Minaco were able to see her daughter, would she feel as proud of her as Ellie herself did right now? Or would Minaco resent her and think that she had usurped her role from her? What would a mother want for the child she had to leave behind?

‘Come on, Mam,’ Hettie urged, disrupting Ellie’s thoughts. ‘Let’s go downstairs so that I can show Da and John my dress.’

Connie had cleared a space for her right inside the door so that she could make a grand entrance and that she did, pirouetting in front of her audience with flushed cheeks and shining eyes.

Hettie could see Gideon frowning slightly as he looked at her exposed arms and calves, but it was towards John she turned in happy anticipation, awaiting his awed recognition of her metamorphosis. However, the look of grim anger on his face was such a shock that it caused her to teeter in mid pirouette and almost stumble, her face paling as John got up to leave the room.

‘John!’ She caught the door as it slammed behind him, and pulled it back, following him into the hallway. ‘What is it?’ she begged him. ‘Why did you look at me so? Don’t you like my dress?’ Her eyes were more sparkling than ever with her shocked bewilderment and confusion, the small hand she extended towards him in desperate appeal trembling.

‘How can you even think of parading yourself in public in such a garment? Where is your modesty?’ John could see that his harsh words had shocked her, but she had shocked him. How could he explain to her that seeing her like that had suddenly reminded him of the poor, too young girls he had seen during the war around the camps, selling themselves for the price of a loaf of bread? How could he explain to her that his reaction was caused by his own contradictory feelings – part male arousal and part fierce desire to protect her from that arousal?

Hettie snatched back the hand she had extended to him and tucked it behind her back as a child would have done. ‘What do you mean? It is the fashion…modern…everyone is wearing shorter skirts now.’

‘Maybe so but they are not wearing them to expose themselves for the pleasure of every man who cares to walk in off the street to ogle them, are they?’ John couldn’t help saying jealously.

Hettie could see that John wasn’t convinced but rather than argue with him she tossed her head and said determinedly, ‘Well, Mam chose this dress for me, so there! Thank you very much! Besides, it is only ladies taking their afternoon tea who will see me.’

‘Aye, and their husbands, sons, and fathers, when they come to join them, which they will do, especially when they learn that there is a singer to be found all tricked out in a costume designed to entice them,’ John muttered unkindly.

‘Oh! Why are you being so horrible to me? I am grown up now, John, and not a child any more, and I won’t be treated as one,’ Hettie burst out defiantly, unaware of the fact that John had only wanted to protect her.

Unable to understand what was happening – why John, who was supposed to care about and be happy for her, was being so mean – Hettie declared crossly, ‘I hate you, John Pride, and I shall hate you for ever!’ before turning round and running up the stairs to throw herself full length on her bed and sob out her hurt feelings.

He shouldn’t have walked out of Connie’s parlour like that, John acknowledged bleakly, and nor should he have spoken so unkindly to Hettie, but the sight of her tricked out in her fancy frock and looking like a stranger had done something to him he couldn’t understand himself. He felt ashamed of himself for the way he had behaved. His sisters sometimes scolded him that, whilst he had generally inherited their father’s amiable and kind nature, sometimes he could be as they put it ‘as stubborn as a mule’.

Somewhere in amongst his anger there had also been pain. But although John could understand the reason for his fierce anger, he could not understand why he also felt such a sharp sense of loss and despair.

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.