Hettie of Hope Street

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’.

FIVE

‘These young buggers come here and think they know everything. They don’t know how to treat a flying machine with proper respect, that they don’t.’

John smiled as he listened to Jim Ryley, his mechanic, grumbling about their latest intake of pupils. ‘They’re eager and enthusiastic, Jim.’

‘Aye, and some of them are downright reckless. That lanky red-headed lad for one. You want to watch him, John. He’s a right wild ‘un, and a troublemaker.’

John’s smile turned into a frown. It was true that Alan Simms was inclined to be reckless and overconfident. When John had taken him up for a lesson earlier in the week he had tried to ignore John’s instructions and wanted to loop the loop. As John had pointed out to him then, the skies were not a forgiving place in which to make an error of judgement or skill.

‘Still, he’ll be on his way soon and we’ll have the next lot coming in. How many will there be this time?’

‘Not as many as I’d like,’ John admitted.

It was a perfect day for flying, with a light wind and a clear sky, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the small problem which had caused the prop to stutter so badly yesterday meant he was grounded until he could fix it, John would have been up there enjoying it. Not that, for once, his thoughts were entirely on flying.

He picked up the letter he had received earlier in the week and re-read it. It was from a friend, a fellow flyer he had met during the war, their mutual love of flying machines giving them a shared passion which had transcended their social differences and given rise to an unlikely friendship between John, with his working class background, and Alfred, who was a member of the aristocracy. It was Alfred and not John who had initiated the friendship, brushing aside John’s awkward protests and objections about their social differences.

Alfred had written that he intended to escort his sister to Liverpool where she was boarding a liner to travel to New York this coming weekend, and they would be staying at the Adelphi hotel for a few days prior to her departure.

‘Thing is, old chap, I thought that maybe we could get together. Fact is, there’s a small business matter I’d like to discuss with you. Must say I envy you – your flying, I mean. Unfortunately, I’m grounded now. Responsibilities and all that. Still, mustn’t grumble, I suppose.’

Alfred always looked on the bright side of life – it was one of the things John admired about him – but maybe it was easy to be optimistic when you didn’t have to worry constantly about making ends meet. Alfred was, after all, an earl, whilst he was merely an ordinary working man. No, he was even less than that, John acknowledged as he looked round the rundown and shabby cottage that was his home. No self-respecting working man would live somewhere like this.

The cottage had an earth floor over which stone slabs had been laid, the result being that, when it rained, water seeped up over them and even froze when the temperature dropped sharply.

But he had slowly improved the conditions. When he had bought the property a standpipe outside had provided water for both the cottage and the livestock, but John now had water piped into the cottage itself. The outside lavvy had been little better than a latrine and a health hazard until he had built his own cesspit to accommodate not just his own needs but those of the men who came to him to learn how to fly. Indeed, their quarters were equipped with modern if basic bathrooms and sanitaryware, thanks to the generosity of his brother-in-law, Gideon. Since the cottage did not have its own bathroom it was simpler for him to use the pupils’ facilities rather than to struggle with the tin bath that hung in the washhouse.

One day, of course, he would find the time and money to install that range Ellie was always cajoling him to buy, and then he would be able to have the luxury of hot water, as well as hot food. One day…Maybe…If the business ever made him any profit.

‘Put up your fees, John,’ Gideon had advised him. But he knew if he did that then those young men who, like him, were captivated and driven by the lure of flight, would not be able to afford them. The truth was that at the moment he earned more by taking aerial photographs for those government bodies that required them than he did from giving flying lessons.

Travelling to Liverpool would mean leaving Jim on his own to sort out the problem with the prop and cancelling some of the lessons. It would also mean struggling to wash and iron one of his few remaining decent shirts, because Jenny Black, the kind-hearted soul from the village who had taken it upon herself to ‘look after him’, couldn’t be trusted not to scorch them, as he already knew to his cost. And then he would have to dig deep into his pockets to find the means to travel to Liverpool at all.

But Hettie was in Liverpool, and if he were to agree to meet up with Alfred then he would have a cast-iron excuse for calling on Connie and seeing Hettie again.

‘What time will Da be here?’ Hettie asked her step-mother anxiously. They had just finished breakfast and were in Ellie’s room where Hettie was helping her pack ready for her return to Preston.

‘He said he would be leaving early.’

‘He won’t forget about my things, will he?’

‘No, of course not. I posted him a list to give to Mrs Jennings. Oh, and guess what? He is to bring John with him.’

Hettie beamed at this unexpected news. ‘Oh! May I put on my new dress for him and Da to see?’

‘If there is time. Now, where did I put those new handkerchiefs I bought, Hettie?’

Obligingly, Hettie searched for the missing items, finding them on top of a chest of drawers. Sunshine splashed through the windows and across the floor, matching her own happiness. She was going to miss home and her family, of course she was, but the fear and misery that had beset her earlier in the week had now gone and she was beginning to look forward to her new life.

‘You will make sure that Miss Brown gets the “Parma Violets” scent I bought for her to say thank you, won’t you?’ she asked Ellie anxiously.

‘I shall take it to her myself,’ Ellie assured her.

Should she tell Mam about the small vial of ‘Attar of Roses’ bought with the precious store money she had saved and carefully hidden in Ellie’s valise? Hettie wondered. Or should she do as she had originally planned and leave it as a surprise for Ellie once she reached home? She imagined Ellie’s pleasure on finding it when she unpacked and decided to keep quiet.

Hettie hoped she would like the card she had chosen to go with it, bearing the words, ‘thinking of you always, dearest mother’. And it was true that she would be thinking of her and of home every day.

‘Oh Da.’

‘There, there, Hettie lass, there’s no need to tek on so!’ Gideon soothed, patting her on the back as she clung to him and wept, overwhelmed by her own emotions now that the final moment of parting was so close.

‘I’ll bet you’ll be to-ing and fro-ing that often from Liverpool to Preston and back again that the railways will give you your own special seat,’ he teased her when Hettie had finally been persuaded to release him.

‘We left her trunk at the lodging house like you asked us to, Ellie.’

‘And what did you think of the place, Gideon? Did you see the landlady?’ Ellie asked fretfully.

‘We did and she was very pleasant. The house looked clean and tidy. You should be comfortable and well looked after there, Hettie, shouldn’t she, John?’

John! Hettie dimpled a smile at him, but did not run to him like she used to, self-consciously aware of the fact that she was now a young woman and no longer a mere girl. Instead she said importantly, ‘Just wait until you see the dress Mam has bought for me to wear – I am going to put it on after tea to show you.’

‘Oh John, it is so lovely to see you. You don’t come to Liverpool often enough,’ Connie reproached her brother as she bustled into the parlour.

‘That is because there is nowhere for him to land his flying machine, Connie,’ Harry joked.

Soon their chatter and laughter filled the small room, but Hettie’s was the voice John could hear most clearly, and her pretty, excited face the one he looked to most frequently, John admitted reluctantly, torn between conflicting feelings as he saw how the girl who had doted on him was turning into a beautiful young woman.

Gideon had confided to him as they drove over to Liverpool that Ellie was to have another child and that news too had added to the sombreness of John’s mood. The death of their mother after giving birth to Philip had left its mark on all of them. Certainly he knew that for him there was always that feeling of anxiety when he knew one of his sisters was with child. But Ellie was strong, in body and spirit, and he hoped that she would come through this unexpected pregnancy without any problems.

As soon as tea was over, Hettie ran upstairs to change into her new dress, having first begged her mother’s services as a lady’s maid.

When the dress was safely on and the sash tied, Ellie smoothed Hettie’s thick dark hair and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

‘You are smiling but you look sad, why?’ Hettie asked her.

‘I was just thinking of your mother,’ Ellie explained. She had always felt it important that Hettie know about her birth mother and so had never shied away from mentioning her.

‘I can hardly remember her. Only that she cried a lot and was sick on the ship,’ Hettie told her pragmatically. So far as she was concerned, Ellie was her mother, and her memories of warm loving arms holding her as a child were always of Ellie’s arms.

For all that, physically, she looked so unique, with the compelling blend of her English and Japanese features, Hettie’s nature was entirely English, Ellie acknowledged. She certainly could not imagine Hettie with her determination and high spirits ever behaving towards a husband in the subservient manner that Ellie’s own first husband, Hettie’s father, had told her was traditional amongst Japanese women.

When Hettie had been growing up, Ellie had dutifully bought her books to read about her mother’s homeland, but for Hettie’s own sake she had not wanted her to be singled out as ‘foreign’ or ‘different’. If Minaco were able to see her daughter, would she feel as proud of her as Ellie herself did right now? Or would Minaco resent her and think that she had usurped her role from her? What would a mother want for the child she had to leave behind?

‘Come on, Mam,’ Hettie urged, disrupting Ellie’s thoughts. ‘Let’s go downstairs so that I can show Da and John my dress.’

Connie had cleared a space for her right inside the door so that she could make a grand entrance and that she did, pirouetting in front of her audience with flushed cheeks and shining eyes.

Hettie could see Gideon frowning slightly as he looked at her exposed arms and calves, but it was towards John she turned in happy anticipation, awaiting his awed recognition of her metamorphosis. However, the look of grim anger on his face was such a shock that it caused her to teeter in mid pirouette and almost stumble, her face paling as John got up to leave the room.

‘John!’ She caught the door as it slammed behind him, and pulled it back, following him into the hallway. ‘What is it?’ she begged him. ‘Why did you look at me so? Don’t you like my dress?’ Her eyes were more sparkling than ever with her shocked bewilderment and confusion, the small hand she extended towards him in desperate appeal trembling.

‘How can you even think of parading yourself in public in such a garment? Where is your modesty?’ John could see that his harsh words had shocked her, but she had shocked him. How could he explain to her that seeing her like that had suddenly reminded him of the poor, too young girls he had seen during the war around the camps, selling themselves for the price of a loaf of bread? How could he explain to her that his reaction was caused by his own contradictory feelings – part male arousal and part fierce desire to protect her from that arousal?

Hettie snatched back the hand she had extended to him and tucked it behind her back as a child would have done. ‘What do you mean? It is the fashion…modern…everyone is wearing shorter skirts now.’

‘Maybe so but they are not wearing them to expose themselves for the pleasure of every man who cares to walk in off the street to ogle them, are they?’ John couldn’t help saying jealously.

Hettie could see that John wasn’t convinced but rather than argue with him she tossed her head and said determinedly, ‘Well, Mam chose this dress for me, so there! Thank you very much! Besides, it is only ladies taking their afternoon tea who will see me.’

‘Aye, and their husbands, sons, and fathers, when they come to join them, which they will do, especially when they learn that there is a singer to be found all tricked out in a costume designed to entice them,’ John muttered unkindly.

‘Oh! Why are you being so horrible to me? I am grown up now, John, and not a child any more, and I won’t be treated as one,’ Hettie burst out defiantly, unaware of the fact that John had only wanted to protect her.

Unable to understand what was happening – why John, who was supposed to care about and be happy for her, was being so mean – Hettie declared crossly, ‘I hate you, John Pride, and I shall hate you for ever!’ before turning round and running up the stairs to throw herself full length on her bed and sob out her hurt feelings.

He shouldn’t have walked out of Connie’s parlour like that, John acknowledged bleakly, and nor should he have spoken so unkindly to Hettie, but the sight of her tricked out in her fancy frock and looking like a stranger had done something to him he couldn’t understand himself. He felt ashamed of himself for the way he had behaved. His sisters sometimes scolded him that, whilst he had generally inherited their father’s amiable and kind nature, sometimes he could be as they put it ‘as stubborn as a mule’.

Somewhere in amongst his anger there had also been pain. But although John could understand the reason for his fierce anger, he could not understand why he also felt such a sharp sense of loss and despair.