Читать книгу Hettie of Hope Street - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 9

‘We’ll go straight to Bon Marche, I think, Hettie,’ Connie decided vigorously as the three of them sat around the breakfast table. Harry had already left for work, whilst the children had been despatched to the nearby park for some fresh air in the charge of the young orphan girl Connie had taken in who helped her with them.

Hettie forced herself to smile and nod her head, knowing that normally she would have enjoyed the thought of a shopping trip with Connie, and not wanting to be thought rude. But both Connie and Ellie noticed how strained she looked and how her mouth trembled as she tried to smile.

‘We don’t want to lose any time so if you’ve finished your breakfast I think we should make an early start. If we do, we will have time to go into Bon Marche. They have all the very latest fashions in that department store,’ she added importantly. ‘Not that I am suggesting you should have anything from there, Hettie, it would be far too expensive, but there would be no harm in just looking round to get some ideas.’

Obediently Hettie pushed back her chair and stood up.

‘What time are you meeting Iris, Ellie?’ Connie asked her sister.

Ellie put down her teacup and said lightly, ‘Actually, Connie, I’ve changed my mind about that, and decided to come along with you and Hettie instead. Your shopping trip sounds too much fun for me to miss and I know that Iris will understand. I’ll telephone her, though, if I may. She’s staying with her parents, and I was going to see her there.’

The two sisters exchanged silent looks whilst Hettie, oblivious to their exchange, rushed towards her step-mother, her face breaking into a wide smile as she exclaimed, ‘Oh Mam, I’m so happy that you’re going to come with us.’

‘So am I, my love,’ Ellie responded gently. ‘Now go upstairs and make yourself tidy, we don’t want the posh sales ladies in Bon Marche to think we’ve taken you to the wrong department and that you’re a schoolgirl still and not a young lady!’

Humming happily under her breath Hettie almost danced from the room, the sound of her happiness as she sang to herself all the way up the stairs drifting down to Ellie and Connie as they stood together in the parlour.

‘Ellie…’ Connie began, but Ellie shook her head.

‘Connie, I could hear Hettie crying in her sleep last night, just like she used to do when she was little. I forget sometimes just how sensitive she is, one minute up in the heights of happiness, the next in the depths of despair, but always no matter what her mood so very loving. Besides, as you pointed out to me yourself, there is no real reason for me to worry, and I am sure Iris would say as much herself.’

‘Well, if you are sure.’

‘I am,’ Ellie answered her firmly. ‘Now, I’d better go upstairs and make myself tidy as well. But first I’ll telephone Iris.’

‘Oh, how lovely it smells in here,’ Hettie exclaimed as she took a deep breath of Bon Marche’s perfumed air, one arm tucked into her step-mother’s and the other into her aunt’s, her face alight with happy anticipation.

‘All the wealthy ladies of Liverpool come here to buy their clothes,’ Connie told her importantly. ‘Why, one can even buy gowns here that have come all the way from Paris, made by Mr Worth himself.’

‘Connie, don’t put ideas into Hettie’s head, please.’ Ellie laughed. ‘Gideon is a generous husband and father, but even his generosity does not stretch as far as a couture gown. This is a special treat to celebrate Hettie’s new job but we must still be sensible.’

‘Mm. Remember that dress you made for me before you were married, Ellie? It was so very pretty. The fabric was cream with small bunches of cherry-coloured flowers, and you’d trimmed it with cherry-red ribbons.’

In the years when she had had to struggle to support herself and her brothers and sister, Ellie had managed by sewing things for other people, at first by hand and then later with the sewing machine she had bought by selling off locks of her long hair.

‘Ooh, look at that!’ Hettie exclaimed, looking round-eyed at a display of rouges and other cosmetics.

‘You are pretty enough without needing to use any of that, Hettie,’ Ellie warned firmly, determinedly drawing her away.

It took them over an hour to make their way through the exclusive department store as Hettie was constantly distracted and delighted by the luxurious goods on sale. She had never seen clothes such as these. Gowns in rich jewel-coloured delicate fabrics. Silks and satin, and all in the very latest bias-cut style. So very different from the far more sturdy garments in stout, sensible worsted woollens and brightly printed cottons that Hettie was used to.

These fabrics shimmered and danced beneath the chandeliers with every passing movement. Hettie longed to reach out and touch them but did not dare to do so. These were clothes for women who lived a life very different from the one her family led, Hettie acknowledged. These were clothes for rich ‘ladies’ not working class women like themselves. And the styles! Dropped waists, short skirts, huge bowed sashes – dresses for every imaginable occasion.

Under the eagle eyes of the hovering sales assistant, she gazed in awe at the evening gowns and luxurious furs on display, for once lost for words.

‘That would suit you, Hettie,’ Ellie murmured, pointing out to her a red silk tea dress displayed on a mannequin, the fabric overprinted with orange poppies and the hem of the dress fashionably short to display not just the mannequin’s ankles, but also her calves. Hettie reached out and touched the silk gently, and then looked uncertainly up at her step-mother.

‘But you said we would buy my dress from George Henry Lee’s and that we were only coming in here to look,’ she reminded her.

‘I’ve changed my mind.’ Ellie smiled. ‘This dress would be perfect for you, wouldn’t it, Connie?’

Hettie could not believe she was serious. The ravishingly pretty dress was beyond anything she had ever even dared to dream of possessing.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Connie agreed immediately. ‘And the colour would be perfect for Hettie with her dark hair and lovely pale skin.’

Hettie looked from one smiling face to the other. Her da was always teasing her mother that the women of the Pride family were strong and determined to get their own way, and now Hettie could see how right he was.

An assistant was sailing majestically towards them, sniffing out a potential sale. ‘Mam, I think we should go,’ Hettie hissed.

But Ellie ignored her and turned instead towards the assistant, saying firmly, ‘My daughter needs a tea dress. I would like her to try on this one.’ She indicated the red silk.

Immediately the assistant’s smile widened and her voice when she spoke was warm. ‘An excellent choice, if I may say so, madam, especially for your daughter’s colouring. The dress is French, and its designer was apprenticed to Monsieur Worth himself, as I am sure you will already have guessed. And red is very modern this season, although of course not all young ladies can carry it as well as your daughter will. Is it to be for a special occasion?’ she asked.

‘A very special occasion,’ Ellie confirmed, giving Hettie a tender look.

Ten minutes later, standing before her mother and aunt, her cheeks almost as poppy red as the dress, Hettie waited anxiously for their opinion. When neither of them spoke, her heart thudded to the bottom of her chest. As she had looked at herself in the mirror after the assistant had arranged the deceptively simple straight lines of the dress to her satisfaction, and tied the wide sash around Hettie’s slender hips, Hettie had hardly been able to believe that the reflection staring back at her was her own. Were her throat and arms really so slender and white, her wrists so ethereally fragile? And were those shapely calves and fine-boned ankles really hers? Surely even her lips looked a deeper colour than before. But now the silence from both Connie and, more significantly, Ellie made her wonder what she really looked like.

‘Oh, Connie!’

To Hettie’s consternation, Ellie’s eyes had filled with tears.

‘Mam,’ she protested quickly. ‘It’s all right. If you don’t like it I don’t mind. I’m sure we shall find something else.’

‘Not like it? Oh, Hettie, Hettie. Of course I like it.’

‘Then why are you crying?’

Dabbing her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief, Ellie laughed. ‘I’m crying, my love, because you look so beautiful.’

‘Indeed she does, madam,’ the sales assistant agreed eagerly. ‘And if I may suggest, a nice pair of the new shoes we’ve just had in will set off the dress a treat – silver, with the new heel. Oh, and perhaps just a small bow for her hair?’

‘We’ll just take the dress for now,’ Hettie heard Ellie break into the sales assistant’s suggestions. ‘And we shall think about the shoes. Hettie, my love, go and get changed back into your own clothes.’

Later, with the dress paid for and swathed in layers of tissue paper, the three women left the shop and Connie announced, ‘Well, I don’t know about you two but I am parched.’

They found a small tea shop a short distance away from Bon Marche where Hettie, despite claiming she was far too excited to eat, managed to speedily dispose of several delicate sandwiches, a piece of slab cake and two fancies. Ellie, on the other hand, merely sipped at her tea, smiling at Hettie who thanked her over and over again for her dress.

‘When you look back on this time of your life, Hettie, I want all of your memories to be happy ones.’

‘Oh they will be, Mam. In fact, I am so happy right now I could burst.’

‘That isn’t happiness, Hettie, it’s too much cake!’ Connie teased her, and although Ellie joined in their laughter she had to place her hand against the side of her stomach to quell the discomfort nagging at her.

She was just tired, she assured herself, that was all. Connie had been right to say that she was worrying unnecessarily, and even if she had seen Iris what more could her friend have done than echo Connie’s reassurance? Besides, she wouldn’t have wanted to have missed this special time with Hettie. She had no regrets on that score. No, not even about the shocking expense of Hettie’s dress. For all that she could be wilful and tempestuous at times, Hettie had never been greedy or asked for anything.

When they had finished their tea, she would take Hettie back to Bon Marche and get her those shoes the sales assistant had suggested, Ellie decided, and perhaps she might even be able to buy some pretty little surprises to hide in Hettie’s trunk as well.

To Hettie’s delight, instead of returning to Preston when she had originally planned, Ellie decided she would spend a couple more days in Liverpool. It was arranged that Gideon would drive over to pick her up on Saturday, so that she would have time to pack Hettie’s trunk and have it despatched to her.

‘P’raps now that you are staying longer you will be able to see Iris after all, Ellie,’ Connie suggested as they were clearing the breakfast things one morning.

Ellie dipped her head so that Connie wouldn’t see her face. She didn’t want her sister to guess how much her own forebodings still troubled her, and how much she wished she had been able to see Iris. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of her own fears. Trying to ignore them she said as lightly as she could, ‘No, she will already have left Liverpool by now, but it doesn’t matter. I have been feeling much better.’

Much better but still not entirely ‘well’.