Annie Groves - Hettie of Hope Street

‘There is a letter here for you from Hettie,’ Ellie told him quietly.

Reluctantly John took the envelope she was holding out to him, and then opened it. Although the notepaper wasn’t scented it seemed to John that somehow it carried a soft sweet fragrance that was in some way the essence of Hettie herself.

‘Dear John,’ she had written. ‘I was very sorry that you could not come to hear me sing at the Adelphi. Mam and Da and Connie had all said that you would be there but then you didn’t come. I hope that you are not still cross with me because of my frock and because I want to sing. Most sincerely, Hettie.’

‘She was very disappointed that you weren’t there,’ Ellie repeated as John folded up the letter and tucked it back in its envelope.

‘She is so very young,’ John answered her seriously. ‘A child still in many ways, Ellie.’ His own problems and feeling of guilt were weighing very heavily on his shoulders, and the laughter he had once shared with Hettie now seemed to belong to another life and another person.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked Ellie meaningfully. He didn’t want to cause his sister anxiety when she was in a delicate condition. That would be even more guilt than he could bear.

She gave him an affectionate smile and assured him, ‘I am fine. Gideon fusses over me so much you’d think this was to be our first child and not our third. I am hoping that Iris will be able to attend me during the confinement. She has promised that she will, but I know how busy the clinic is keeping her. But tell us some more about your friend Alfred and his flying club, John. I feel I hardly know anything about it,’ Ellie pressed him.

‘The flying club does not belong to Alfred as such, but he has given the club the land. It is very well organised,’ he explained ‘and they are soon to take delivery of two new machines. I am to live in an apartment, as they call it, in a building adjoining the flying club. I have half of the whole of the upper floor, and down below me is an office and the clubroom, over the flying club. The chap who does most of the bookwork has the other half, whilst the engineers and maintenance crew work in shifts and do not live on site so that there is always a maintenance crew there. It has all been very well thought out and organised,’ John reiterated.

‘This is a new start for you, John,’ Ellie told him lovingly. ‘I pray that you will be happy.’

He smiled weakly at her but inside he felt despair. He had no right to look for happiness. Not when five men were dead because of him. He had no right to want happiness, and no right either to yearn for the sound of Hettie’s laughter.

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