Annie Groves - Hettie of Hope Street

‘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 half scaring the poor little thing to death. Tek no notice of Lizzie, Hettie, she’s allus like this when she starts on her monthlies.’

‘Oh, and you ain’t, I suppose, Sukey Simmons?’ Lizzie turned away from Hettie to demand sarcastically, before adding, ‘Lor, but I ’ate bloody Monday matinées. Why the hell does management do them, it’s not as though anyone comes in, especially now there’s a Depression going on.’

‘P’raps you should tell ’em that they don’t know how to run their own business, Lizzie,’ another girl called out, laughing.

‘Oh aye, and lose me job. No thanks,’ Lizzie retorted, but she was smiling, Hettie noticed, and she relaxed slightly.

‘So what show are you in then, ’Ettie?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I know they were looking for a couple more chorus girls for the show at the Empire, and no wonder, since ’e pays even less than that bloody so and so we work for. But you don’t look tall enough for a chorus girl.’

‘I’m going to be singing at the Adelphi,’ Hettie explained shyly, trying not to look shocked by the girl’s coarse language. ‘During the afternoon, accompanied by Mr Buchanan.’

‘Wot, that old…’ Lizzie began scornfully, only to stop when Sukey gave her a quick dig with her elbow.

‘So you’re a singer, then?’ Sukey asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where have you appeared before?’ another one of the girls asked as they all began to move around the room, some of them going over to fling themselves on their beds, others sitting down on them and bending to massage their weary feet.

‘Nowhere,’ Hettie admitted.

‘First time away from home, is it?’ Sukey asked her sympathetically.

Hettie nodded, relieved to see that it was Sukey who had the bed next to her own and not Lizzie.

‘Well, mind you don’t let Ma Buchanan cheat you,’ Sukey warned. ‘If she’s anything like ’er sister, she’all be as tight as a duck’s arse. What’s Ma Marshall charging you here for your bed, by the way?’

Hettie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Mrs Buchanan said that she would deduct all my expenses from my wage and that I could have the rest. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, though, because I thought I was going to have a room to myself.’

A couple of the girls started to laugh, although not unkindly.

‘Pulled that old one on yer, did she kid?’ Lizzie chuckled. ‘I suppose old misery guts Marshall showed yer ma one of her best rooms and let ’er think you’d be ’aving one o’ them instead of kipping in here with us?’

Hettie nodded, embarrassed.

‘Yer should have asked to have all yer wages handed over to yer and then divvied them out to pay for yer room. And mind that yer don’t leave nothing valuable lying around in here, or she’ll have that off yer as well.’

‘But surely if you complained…’ Hettie began, shocked.

‘Complain? To her? She’d have anyone who tried out on the street, and bad mouth them as well so as they’d never get digs anywhere else in town, and then what’ud happen – they’d be out of work, that’s wot!’