Annie Groves - Hettie of Hope Street

‘You really mean it. You really mean that I can audition? Oh Mam, thank you, thank you, thank you . Oh, I love you so much.’

Giddy with excitement and happiness, Hettie ran to her step-mother, hugging her fiercely and kissing her, before turning to dance round the sitting room, singing as she did so.

‘Hettie, dearest, do calm down a little and listen to me,’ Ellie protested lovingly.

Gideon told her a little more firmly, ‘Hettie, that is enough. Come and sit down, please.’

Hettie sat down next to Ellie, taking a tight hold of her hand, her whole body almost quivering with excited impatience as Gideon explained: ‘I have spoken with Miss Brown and she has assured me that she knows of no reason why we should feel concern. She knows the pianist at the Adelphi, and his wife, who are both fellow music teachers. Miss Brown has asked us to warn you, though, that even if the Adelphi Hotel does grant you an audition, such a position is bound to attract many applicants.’

Gideon glanced at Ellie, well aware that she was half hoping Hettie would not be accepted and would remain at home with them in Preston where Ellie could keep her under her motherly eye.

‘Oh yes, I know that.’ Hettie was all impatience and excitement. ‘But did Miss Brown say whether or not she thought I might get the job?’

‘She said you are an accomplished pupil, but that you have a tendency to consider – what were her exact words? – “little acorns to be fully grown trees”.’ Gideon answered her with restraint, mindful of the music teacher’s additional comment to him that Hettie was extremely talented but not wishing his adopted daughter to spoil herself by becoming swollen headed. ‘But Miss Brown has suggested she should write in response to the advertisement, recommending you as a possible candidate,’ he continued, unable at last to conceal his pride.

Hettie glowed with fresh excitement. ‘You mean that Miss Brown is willing to recommend me?’ Immediately she was off again, springing up from the sofa, trying to drag Ellie with her and, when Ellie resisted, whirling into a dizzy polka, her cheeks flushed with happiness.

‘My goodness, what’s this?’

‘John!’ Hettie exclaimed in delight at the sight of her old partner-in-crime, laughing herself as she heard the amusement in his voice and saw the teasing look in his eyes, and abandoning her impromptu dance to run to his side.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘It seems an age since we last saw you. I suppose you’ve been too busy taking photographs from your flying machine and teaching other young men to be as besotted with them as you are to think about coming to see us.’

‘Oh, besotted is it? Well, that’s rich coming from you.’ John grinned. ‘Does she still terrify the neighbours practising her scales before cockcrow, Ellie?’

Ellie’s heart warmed at the sight of John and Hettie slipping instantly into their old banter and routine, and she acknowledged that her younger brother and her adopted daughter, with no blood tie and only a mere eleven years between them, were the closest thing she had even witnessed to a true friendship between the opposite sexes.

Right from the start John and Hettie had formed a close bond. There had never been a time when Hettie had not been able to wind John around her little finger, but Ellie knew that Hettie was equally fond of John and would do anything for him.

Pouting flirtatiously and tossing her head, Hettie informed him pertly, ‘Well, for your information, soon I shall be singing a lot more than just scales!’

‘Oh?’ John cocked an enquiring eyebrow in Ellie’s direction. ‘Is Miss Brown to put on another charity piece? I was – ahem – disappointed to have missed the last one.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ Hettie told him forthrightly. ‘Why don’t you admit it, John? You have no ear for music, unless it’s the horrid whine of your flying machine engines.’

‘I’ll have you know that requires a very finely tuned ear indeed. In fact, a flyer’s good ear for the healthy sound of his engine can make the difference between life and death.’

‘Oh John, I wish you wouldn’t remind me of just how dangerously you live,’ Ellie protested.

‘Flying is not dangerous at all if you obey the rules, Ellie.’

Behind Ellie’s back Hettie shot John a look of pure enchanting mischief and challenge. ‘You are such a fibber, John,’ she accused him. ‘I haven’t forgotten you telling me that the reason you love flying is because it is so thrilling and exciting.’

John shook his head. ‘Indeed it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s dangerous.’

‘So, what brings you to Winckley Square,’ Gideon asked him cheerfully, desperate to change the subject and stop Ellie worrying even more about her impetuous younger brother.

John gave him a sheepish look. ‘I have a favour to ask you, Gideon.’

Gideon frowned slightly. Of all of Ellie’s family, John was his favourite, and he had happy memories of the friendship John had shown him years before when he had been Ellie’s poor and, in her mother’s eyes at least, unwanted suitor.

‘If you’re going to try to persuade me to take on another of your lame dogs, John, let me tell you that the last ruffian you persuaded me to hire turned up for work so drunk that it took three days for him to sober up.’

The whole family knew that John had a soft heart and was inclined to take up the cause of anyone he thought was hard done to.

A faint tinge of guilty colour crept over John’s handsome face. Like his father, John was an extremely handsome man, tall and broad shouldered with bright blue eyes, strong white teeth, and thick dark curly hair.

‘Well, she is neither a ruffian, nor lame…’ John began awkwardly.

‘ She ?’ Gideon and Ellie demanded in unison.

A big grin split John’s face. ‘Yes “she”,’ he replied. ‘Just wait until you see her. I’ve left her in the kitchen with Mrs Jennings. Gideon, she is just the prettiest thing and so affectionate, you will have her eating out of your hand in no time at all. She’s only young, not fully grown, and with no bad habits. I’d keep her with me but I’m away such a lot that it just doesn’t seem fair. I confess I had no intention of having her, but when I saw the way she was being abused. The poor little thing was cowering and shaking…’

Ellie was looking unhappier with every word her brother uttered, but Gideon had begun to relax. It was Hettie, though, who burst out laughing and exclaimed, ‘Mam, don’t look so worried. John is talking about a dog, aren’t you, John?’

‘What? Oh yes, of course. She is the prettiest little collie bitch, Gideon, and the chap I bought her off was treating her dreadfully.’

‘Oh John!’ Ellie scolded him, shaking her head.

‘I must leave soon,’ John told them. I have some new pupils to collect from the station and take back to the airfield.’

‘How is business?’ Gideon asked him.

‘We are not yet making a profit, and I doubt I shall ever be able to match your success.’ John smiled. ‘But we are just about managing to make ends meet, thanks to you. Without your help I’d never have been able to set up the school in the first place.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Gideon assured him clapping him on the shoulder. ‘I suspect Ellie thinks I’ve done you more of a bad turn than a good one by helping you. She worries that living in a wretchedly ill-equipped and damp farm worker’s cottage will ruin your health.’

John laughed. ‘The cottage may not be Winckley Square but it suits me.’

It was now three years since, with Gideon’s help, he had bought the large area of flat farmland with its worker’s cottage. The flatness of the land meant it was perfect as an airfield, and, whilst neither the cottage nor the barracks-like building which housed the pupils could be described as anything other than extremely basic, John had lavished as much money as he could spare on the hangars for his two aeroplanes.