Annie Groves - Hettie of Hope Street

‘Ellie sent me up with a message for you.’

‘Ellie? Is she…’ John began anxiously.

‘She’s fine,’ Gideon assured him immediately. ‘It’s Hettie I’m here about. She’s to have her debut performance at the Adelphi this Thursday and she’s said special like that she wants you to be there. Seems she took what you said to her about her frock to heart.’

‘I can’t pretend I’m happy about what she’s doing,’ John replied. ‘Or the kind of life she’ll be exposing herself to…’

‘Aye, well you’d best blame me for that, John. My thinking is that the lass will soon tire of it and want to come home. Having Connie run off like she did was that upsetting for Ellie I didn’t want to risk it happening again. And Hettie can be headstrong just like all the other Pride women.’

Reluctantly John allowed himself to smile. Both his sisters were headstrong in their own individual way, and perhaps it was unfair of him to expect Hettie to be any less determined than her adopted mother and aunt.

‘Well, that’s as mebbe, Gideon, but it’s my belief that the stage is no place for a decent woman.’

‘Aye, but the difference is that Hettie is a singer not an actress. The lass has to have her chance, John. That’s only fair. I’ve seen what happens when a person is denied the right to make their own free choice,’ he added heavily, and John knew he was thinking of the way their own mother had forced Ellie to part from Gideon so many years ago and the unhappiness that had caused them both.

‘How’s business?’ Gideon asked him, changing the subject.

‘Not as good as I’d like.’

‘Having so many men out of work is hurting us all. I’m getting closer to having to lay men off meself, but Ellie is adamant that we’ll cut back at home before she’ll see a working man laid off and his wife and children going hungry. Fortunately, I’ve got a bit put by and even if I have to cut the rents on the properties we should be able to pull through. There’s many a business as won’t, though. They’re saying already that Liverpool has been hit very badly. There’s no shipping to speak of, the docks are lying empty and there’s not much of any other kind of work either. It’s a bad business and no mistake, and the politicians don’t seem to be doing anything about it.’

‘There’s a lot of men asking if they survived the war only to be left to starve to death,’ John agreed sombrely.

‘Anyway, lad.’ Gideon returned swiftly to his real reason for being there. ‘You’ll be there for Hettie’s debut, won’t you? Only your Ellie will give me a real telling off if you aren’t.’

John laughed. ‘Yes I’ll be there,’ he promised, even if the thought of seeing Hettie again, and in such a way, caused his heart to skip a beat.

It was hard for Hettie not to feel both nervous and excited as she hurried across Lime Street towards the Adelphi hotel, skirting the imposing main entrance and going instead to the staff entrance, where she found a group of chambermaids complaining about the meanness of the guests whose rooms they had just been cleaning.

‘Not so much as a farthing, they give us, and ’er dripping in diamonds and furs.’

‘Just as well then that you helped yourself to her fancy perfume, eh Nancy?’ Hettie heard one of them joke as she squeezed past them.

‘’Ere, where do you think you’re going?’ A fat bald uniformed doorman stopped her.

‘I’m here to see the housekeeper, Mrs Nevis. I’m the new singer for afternoon tea,’ Hettie explained.

‘Well, next time make sure you have a number so as we can sign yer in,’ he warned her before giving her directions for the housekeeper’s room.

Mrs Nevis told her that she was far too busy to bother herself with her and gave Hettie directions for the room where she would find Mr Buchanan.

These proved to be so complicated that Hettie had begun to fear she must have misunderstood them as she trudged up endless flights of stairs and along equally endless corridors before finally coming to an open door through which she could hear music being played.

Having knocked and received no response, she walked hesitantly through the door and into the room. Immediately, the pianist stopped playing and looked at her.

‘Mr Buchanan?’ Hettie asked him shyly.

‘Yes indeed, and you must be the delightful new protégée whose company I am to have the pleasure of.’

He was nothing like she had imagined, being small and rotund with black hair as shiny as patent leather pulled in strands across his bald head. But at least he was much jollier and kinder than his wife, Hettie acknowledged with relief.

‘Well, my dear wife has excelled herself – you are indeed a pretty child. The ladies will all envy you and their husbands will insist that their wives are to take tea here every day so they can join them and secretly admire you. I hope, my dear, that you have a gown that will do more for that pretty face than the clothes you are currently wearing, eh?’ he asked jovially, pinching Hettie’s cheek. ‘A gentleman likes nothing more than to be able to admire a neat ankle and a delicate shoulder.

‘And a word to the wise. When you sing, it is towards the ladies you must look, but making sure when you do that the gentlemen can also see you at your best advantage. Maisie knew to a nicety how it should be done, but unfortunately she has grown above herself and must go. So, my beloved helpmate has been making you practise your scales, I hope, and now today you will sing them for me.’

Obediently Hettie took off her jacket and turned to face him.

‘No, no.’ Immediately, and to Hettie’s shock, he placed his hands on her body, one on her arm and the other on her waist, holding her so tightly she could feel their hot clamminess through her clothes.

‘You must stand by the piano like so,’ he told her, manipulating her so that she was turned away from the instrument and with her back to it. ‘You are to sing to the ladies, and not to me. However, if you were to be asked to sing in the evening then you would stand close to my shoulder and perhaps even lean forwards to turn my music for me. But then an evening audience is a very different thing and mostly for the gentlemen guests. Now, shall we try again?’

It was four o’clock before Mr Buchanan declared himself satisfied enough with her progress to dismiss her for the day, by which time Hettie was starving, since they had not stopped for any lunch.

Rather than go back to the boarding house she decided that, since it was virtually only across the road, she might as well go to the Royal Court and walk back with the other girls as their matinée performance would now have finished.

Frankie the doorman knew her by now and grinned as he let her in through the stage door. ‘They’ve just come orf,’ he told her.

Squeezing past him, Hettie made her way backstage to the large communal dressing room shared by the chorus.

‘’Ere ’Ettie, come over ’ere and tell us ’ow you’ve gorn on,’ Lizzie called out when she saw her.

Eagerly Hettie made her way through the busy room filled with chorus girls, no longer embarrassed as she would once have been by their various states of undress.

A mirror ran the length of one whole wall of the long rectangular room, with an equally long ‘dressing table’ top beneath it. Each girl was supposed to have her own small section of this table and her own chair, just as each girl was also supposed to have to herself one of the lockers on the opposite wall, and a coat hook. But as Babs had explained to Hettie, since there was never enough dressing table and mirror space or lockers, it was a case of first come first served, and frequent arguments and fights broke out amongst the girls over who owned what.