Hettie of Hope Street
Annie Groves

To my father who we all loved and miss so much.

Thank you for being you, Dad.

Table of Contents

Cover page

Title page

Dedication

PART ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

PART TWO

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

PART THREE

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

Acknowledgements

About the author

Also by Annie Groves

Copyright

About the publisher

PART ONE

ONE

‘Mam, Mam, just wait until you see this.’ Excitement sparkled in Hettie’s dark eyes as she thrust the open page of the Liverpool Post underneath her mother’s nose. ‘They’re advertising for a “young lady” to sing to people during afternoon tea at the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. It says you have to write to this address here. Oh, Mam, I’m so excited. It would be the perfect job for me. Just imagine – I could sing every day and get paid for it!’

Ellie Walker looked at the advertisement her step-daughter had shoved in front of her, her face clouding slightly. ‘Oh Hettie, love.’ Ellie said uncertainly. ‘I don’t think…’

Immediately Hettie’s excitement gave way to anxiety. ‘But Mam, you know how much I love to sing and everyone said how good I was when I sang in The Mikado. Miss Brown said I had the best voice of any girl she had ever taught.’

Ellie sighed. ‘Yes, Hettie I know that, but singing in a small private theatre to help raise money for charity is a very different thing to singing in public and,’ she hesitated, ‘and for money.’

Ellie hated to see the excitement dying in Hettie’s eyes and being replaced by mutinous disappointment. But Ellie was very protective of all her children and even though Hettie was eighteen, she was still a child in so many ways. In so many ways, but not in all. Ellie glanced discreetly at her step-daughter’s body. Although slim and delicately boned, Hettie nevertheless had a very well-developed bosom. And then, of course, there was her unusual, sultry beauty – that mingling of the delicate bone structure Hettie had inherited from her Japanese mother together with some features from the Englishman who had been her father and Ellie’s first husband.

Ellie had waited until she had felt Hettie was old enough to understand properly before explaining to her step-daughter the troubled circumstances surrounding her own birth and her parents’ deaths.

Hettie had never known her father, having been born after he had left Japan to return to Liverpool. Her Japanese mother, as Ellie had explained to her, had pined so much for the English lover who had sworn undying love to her, and promised he would return to her, that she had set sail for Liverpool with her baby to find him. To arrive there and discover that her beloved Henry-san had taken his own life had broken her heart, Ellie had told Hettie gently, adding that two such sensitive people as her parents had suffered dreadfully because of the separation imposed on them.

‘But my father was married to you,’ Hettie had pointed out unhappily.

‘Indeed, Hettie,’ Ellie had concurred. ‘Unfortunately, as sometimes happens within families, both your father and I were pushed into marriage with one another even though our hearts lay with other people. Naturally, as Henry’s widow, I felt responsible for your mother and for you…’

‘You were kind to us,’ Hettie had interrupted her, remembering the comforting warmth of Ellie’s voice and arms.

‘Your poor mother had no wish to live with your father gone. She went out one cold winter night and accidentally fell into the dock and drowned there, poor lady.’

‘And then you married Gideon and he adopted me and I had a new mother and father,’ Hettie had stated matter of factly.

‘Indeed you did,’ Ellie had agreed tenderly. ‘And you must never forget how much we love you, Hettie.’

And Ellie did love Hettie, even though she sometimes feared for her a little, as all mothers must for a pretty, sometimes wilful daughter. With those flashing, faintly almond-shaped eyes, the rosebud fullness of her mouth, the thick poker-straightness of her long black hair in striking contrast to her pale, almost sweetly doll-like round face, it was no wonder the people of Preston turned their heads to look at her beloved Hettie.

Stubbornness now flashed in Hettie’s eyes, causing Ellie’s maternal heart to suffer fresh misgivings. She could well remember the turbulence of the early years of her own young womanhood, and the pain they could bring. The love of her own life at Ellie’s age had been her beloved Gideon, now her husband, but at that time he was the young man her mother had forbidden her to see.

‘But I want to do it so much. I have to do it. I need to sing.’ Tears glistened in Hettie’s eyes. ‘It’s all I want to do,’ she continued passionately to Ellie. ‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, you know that.’

Ellie sighed. Hettie was such a fiercely intense girl, her emotions like quicksilver, changing from laughter one minute to tears the next. Ellie couldn’t help but worry for her. She seemed to feel things so much more than other people, especially when it came to music, and her singing. Ellie had seen her reduced to anguished tears when listening to a particularly sad song and then the next minute dancing around happily when she heard a more gay one.

‘Hettie, I do understand.’

‘How can you say that? You don’t understand.’ Red spots of emotion burned in her pale face. Even when Hettie was angry she still looked so very pretty, Ellie acknowledged; coupled with her beautiful voice, it was little surprise that those who had bought tickets for the little show put on by Miss Brown, Preston’s foremost music and singing teacher, had given her a standing ovation.

‘To you singing is just…just a…a pretty accomplishment, something to pass a few pleasant hours,’ she told Ellie almost scornfully. ‘But to me it is so much more than that. To me it is everything, and if I cannot sing as I want to sing then I think a part of me will die!’ she finished dramatically before rushing out of the room.

Why couldn’t Ellie understand how she felt? Hettie wondered miserably half an hour later as she stood in front of her bedroom window, the view of Preston’s fashionable Winckley Square, which lay beyond it, blurred by the tears filling her eyes.

She loved her step-mother, of course she did. Ellie and Gideon were in reality the only parents and the only family she had ever known. And Ellie loved her, she knew that too, even if certain members of Ellie’s family – like Ellie’s starchy aunt, Amelia Barclay, who lived almost opposite them on the other side of the square – had made it plain that they did not approve of Ellie having brought up Hettie, the illegitimate child of her first husband’s Japanese mistress, as her own daughter.

Hettie could actually remember overhearing Amelia say to Ellie that Hettie’s birth was a scandal that could give the whole family a bad name. But Ellie had replied firmly and calmly that her aunt was mistaken and that, in Hettie’s mother’s land, it was perfectly respectable for a man to take a ‘pillow friend’ and for this lady to be treated with respect and included within the family, along with her children, and that only the ignorant and narrow minded would not be aware of this.

It had seemed to Hettie that, after this exchange, Amelia Barclay had ceased to make references to Hettie’s parentage and background.

But even though Ellie had treated her just as she did her own children, Hettie knew she was different to them. And not just because she looked different.

Music and singing were important to her in a way that was not shared by the rest of her adopted family. Not even Ellie’s younger sister, Connie, who was so much fun and who loved nothing better than a music hall show.

Hettie loved being asked to stand up and sing for people. It gave her such a wonderful rush of exhilaration and happiness and for as long as she could remember it had been her dream to become a singer. She could recall how much she had loved it as a young girl when Ellie’s younger brother, John, had called to see them, and Ellie had urged him to accompany her on the piano whilst she sang. There had been a special rapport between her and John in those days, but he no longer visited them as frequently, mainly because he was busy with the flying school he and two friends had set up. John, she knew, felt as passionately about his flying machines as she did about her singing.

John had been her best and most special friend for what seemed like for ever. She had always felt she could talk to him about anything and everything, and had spent many happy hours as a child strolling with John along Preston’s fine walks and the banks of the River Ribble whilst he photographed the countryside and taught her to appreciate its beauty. John had teased her and protected her. And she in turn had given him her heart and her trust.

‘What do you think, Gideon?’ Ellie asked her husband later that evening when they were alone in the comfort of their bedroom. They had been married for fourteen years now and, thanks to his inheritance from his mother, and his own hard work, Gideon had risen from being a mere drover – living virtually hand to mouth and nowhere near good enough to marry Ellie, the daughter of the butcher whose brother he had once worked for – to being a person respected and admired within the town. Ellie knew how much this meant to him, especially after his struggles; and she too, if she was honest, welcomed the manner in which she and her family were treated, especially when she remembered the hardship and poverty of the years following her own mother’s death when she and her siblings were separated and life seemed something to be endured not enjoyed.

‘No respectable family would allow their daughter to go on the stage,’ she continued without waiting for him to answer her, ‘and I can just imagine what my Aunt Amelia would have to say about it.’

‘Aye, she’d blame what she chooses to call Hettie’s “bad blood”, no doubt,’ Gideon agreed.

Ellie shook her head. ‘Hettie is so spirited, Gideon, and so very, very pretty. She looks so…’

‘Beautiful?’ Gideon supplied.

‘Vulnerable, I was going to say,’ Ellie told him.

Silently they looked at one another.

‘I worry for her, Gideon. She is reaching that age where a young girl’s thoughts and feelings can so easily lead her astray. Perhaps if her own mother had lived…’ Ellie sighed, remembering the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Hettie’s real mother. ‘I love Hettie so much but sometimes I fear she may feel that she is less loved than our own two boys, even though, if anything, I tend to favour her above our Richard and David.’

‘Ellie, my dearest love.’ Gideon took hold of his wife’s hands and looked at her tenderly. ‘I know you are only concerned for Hettie, and you want to protect her. But you and I know that, much as we love Hettie, we must be careful that in protecting we are not trying to re-create her as we wish her to be rather than as she actually is. Hettie is very gifted, we both know that, and her singing teacher has told us herself how very special Hettie’s voice is – that, after all, is why we agreed that she could have these extra lessons with her. Who knows what trouble we might cause by not allowing her to use that gift?’

‘What are you trying to say to me, Gideon?’

‘I think that first of all we should check with Miss Brown to see what she thinks, and then, if and only if she thinks it right, we should allow Hettie to apply for this position she has seen advertised – the Adelphi hotel is, after all, a highly respectable establishment. Hettie would only be singing during the afternoon and, I dare say, in front of a mainly female audience, for I cannot imagine that many men, never mind the unsavoury sort you fear her being exposed to, would be taking tea at the Adelphi hotel in the middle of the afternoon. Apart from anything else, such types would not be allowed in.’

Gideon watched as Ellie struggled to accept what he had said. He hated the thought of anything upsetting or hurting her – especially now – and he knew how much she loved and worried about Hettie. ‘Ellie, neither of us would want to see Hettie take the same path as Connie,’ he added quietly.

‘No,’ Ellie agreed, ‘although Connie is very happy and settled now with Harry and their children.’

‘Yes indeed. But both she and you had to suffer a great deal of pain before she found that happiness. Remember how she got herself involved with some awful types and we didn’t hear hide nor hair from her for years when she took off like that? Hettie, like Connie, possesses a certain stubbornness and a very strong will.’

‘She can be the sweetest girl, though, Gideon.’

‘You need not defend her to me,’ he assured her. ‘I love her as much as you do, and it is because I love her that I am saying these things to you, Ellie. She is very young. Who knows, she may very well find that she does not like singing and the stage as much as she now believes she does. And if that is the case, I know we would both want her to know that she will always have a home here with us.’

‘Yes, you are right. I suppose I am being selfish in wanting to keep her here by me. They are all growing up so quickly, though, Gideon. Richard is already talking about wanting to learn to fly, even though he is still at school, and…’ She placed a protective hand over her stomach.

‘Have you told Iris yet?’ he asked her, concerned.

Iris, in addition to being one of Ellie’s closest friends, was also a qualified doctor.

Ellie shook her head. ‘It is too soon, and after all it is not as though I have not had a child before,’ she reminded him with a small smile.

In the early days of their marriage they had both hoped there would be the proverbial quiverful of children, but there had only been the two, so to discover now that she had conceived again so many years later had been rather a shock.

‘Gideon, please don’t look like that. I want you to be happy about this new baby we are to have,’ she told him when she saw the anxiety he couldn’t hide. ‘I know why you are worrying.’

‘I am worrying because I think you worry too much about everyone else.’ Gideon stopped her with false heartiness, but both of them knew the real reason behind his anxiety.

Ellie had been just sixteen when her own mother had died in childbed, having been warned not to have any more children. Gideon knew how dreadfully the little family she had left behind her had suffered. But he was not Ellie’s father, and she was not her own mother. Ellie had not been warned, as her mother had, that she must not conceive more children because of the risk to her health. But the length of time since the birth of their last child had, Gideon admitted, brought home to him how relieved he had been to think there would not be any more, and that Ellie therefore wasn’t going to be exposed to even the slightest risk. He had said as much to Ellie only weeks before they had discovered that there was, after all, to be another child.

‘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.

‘So, minx,’ John teased Hettie expansively. ‘What charity is Miss Brown supporting this time? I dare say I shall have to buy tickets for it, even if I don’t get to come along and hear you caterwauling.’

‘It isn’t for charity and it isn’t for Miss Brown,’ Hettie answered him indignantly. ‘It’s a proper singing job, and in public, so there!’

‘Singing in public? What do you mean?’

The good humour vanished from John’s expression. Sensing her brother’s disapproval, and seeing Hettie begin to pout, Ellie was about to explain but Hettie spoke first.

‘I shall sing for the ladies of Liverpool whilst they take tea, and they will love me and I shall become famous,’ Hettie trilled giddily, oblivious to the shadow that had crossed John’s face.

‘What Hettie means, John,’ Gideon explained hurriedly, ‘is that Miss Brown is recommending her for a recently advertised position as a soloist to be accompanied by the pianist at the Adelphi Hotel.’

‘Oh John, just imagine.’ Hettie clasped her hands together and stood in front of him, her whole face alive with happiness, her eyes full of dreams. ‘It will be just as though I were on a stage. Only, of course, I shall not be because it is only a hotel, but who knows what it may lead to?’

‘I can’t see that any good will come of it, Hettie, other than filling your head with even more nonsense,’ John told her so sharply that her face flushed.

‘What are you saying?’ she demanded hotly, but Ellie hurriedly intervened before John could answer her.

‘Hettie, love, I was looking at your blue dress this morning and I thought we might re-trim it.’

‘Thanks for agreeing to home this little lass for me, Gideon,’ John said gruffly a few moments later, bending to rub the collie bitch’s ears. They had moved down to the kitchen so that John could introduce Gideon to his new charge before leaving, Ellie and Hettie having remained upstairs.

‘I’m sure both Philip and Richard will enjoy keeping her company when they’re at home,’ Gideon replied with a chuckle.

John smiled. Philip was the youngest of the Pride children, the baby whose birth had resulted in his mother’s death, and who Gideon had firmly insisted Ellie’s aunt hand over into Ellie’s care to be brought up alongside their own children.

‘Gideon, are you sure it’s wise for Hettie to go to this audition?’ John asked abruptly. ‘After all, she’s still so very young. Hardly more than a child.’

Gideon shook his head. ‘You may not be aware that she has become a young woman, John, but I can assure you that she believes she has, and so too do the young men who hang around after church on Sunday hoping to be introduced to her. She’s eighteen now, you know.’

‘Even so, she has led a very sheltered life, and for all that she claims to want to sing on the stage, I believe she has no real idea of what such a life entails.’

‘Maybe not, but I would far rather she discovers that in the safe environment of the Adelphi hotel, where she has Connie close at hand should she need her, than risk having her do as Connie herself did and run away from home.’

‘Connie left our aunt’s because she was ill-treated there, and fancied herself in love,’ John protested.

‘Well, whilst I hope Hettie will never feel that she has been ill-treated, she too is passionately in love, you know.’

‘What? She might fancy herself in love with some lad, but she’s too young even to know what love is.’

John’s voice was grim. ‘What I meant was that she feels very passionately about her music, just as you do about your flying machines. Besides, it may be that she is not called to audition for the post. Miss Brown, her singing teacher, believes there will be many applicants.’

Gideon was wrong in thinking he was not aware of how much Hettie had grown up, John reflected sombrely as he left the house. He was only too aware of it, and had been for some time. But it had been most obvious to him that, whilst his feelings for her had undergone a change, the old companionable affection he had always felt for her replaced by a man’s longing and love, Hettie’s feelings for him had remained as they always were. And nothing could have proved that more than her behaviour today, he admitted bleakly.

TWO

The much longed for and awaited letter from the Adelphi hotel had finally arrived, and as she watched Gideon opening it Hettie hardly dared to breathe, her breakfast left untouched as she waited in almost unbearable anxiety.

Whilst Gideon silently and slowly read the letter, Hettie looked appealingly at Ellie.

Loath as she was to lose Hettie’s company, Ellie couldn’t help but feel for her. ‘Gideon, please tell us what it says,’ she begged her husband.

‘It says,’ Gideon answered her, ‘that Miss Henrietta Walker is to present herself at the rooms of Mrs May Buchanan on Thursday of this week in order that Mrs Buchanan may assess her suitability to sing for the Adelphi’s guests.’

‘Oh!’ Such was the intensity of her emotions that Hettie was completely unable to speak. Instead tears poured from her eyes and, with a small choked sob, she got up from her chair and ran to Ellie’s side to bury her head against her shoulder, her whole body shaking.

‘I still can’t believe that I am actually to be auditioned,’ she confided to Miss Brown two hours later, having begged Ellie’s permission to visit her teacher to give her the good news. ‘And it is all down to you,’ Hettie told her teacher earnestly. ‘Mrs Buchanan must have taken note of your recommendation.’

‘I wrote no less than the truth, Hettie,’ Miss Brown assured her. ‘Nature has granted you a very special gift and given you a truly excellent voice.’

‘But it is because of you that I have learned how to use it,’ Hettie replied earnestly.

‘When is your audition?’ Miss Brown asked her excitedly.

‘It is this Thursday. I’m already feeling nervous. My mother has a sister who lives in Liverpool and so we are to take the train Wednesday to be there in plenty of time and stay with my Aunt Connie. What do you think Mrs Buchanan will ask me to sing?’

‘I am sure that she will expect you to have a piece ready prepared,’ Miss Brown answered her. ‘So we must choose something that both shows off the range of your voice and which will fall pleasantly on the ears of ladies taking afternoon tea. This is not a situation where I would recommend the singing of a complicated aria.’ Miss Brown pursed her lips thoughtfully and then said shrewdly, ‘Perhaps something pretty and sentimental would be best.

‘Oh, and I would advise you to wear something smart but loose, so that your voice is not constricted in any way. You will be apprehensive, of course, and anxious, that is to be expected. It is Monday already so we must decide quickly what you will sing so that you can practise it. What about “Auf Wiedersehen?”’ she suggested. ‘After all, Vivienne Segal was just your age when it made her a star.’

Hettie nodded in agreement. She was far too excited to be able to speak. She could hardly believe that in three days time she would be singing at the Adelphi!

The bus had set them down at the corner of the road, and Hettie moved closer to Ellie’s side as her apprehension grew. She had felt more and more nauseous and fearful with every minute that had passed since leaving her Aunt Connie’s.

The rooms where Hettie was to have her audition were in a street off Lime Street, not very far from the Adelphi. The house itself was halfway down the street, and like all its neighbours it had a clean if somewhat austere appearance, its front step donkey-stoned and the doorknocker well polished.

‘Oh, Mam…’ Hettie whispered shakily.

‘What is it, Hettie?’ Ellie asked her gently. ‘Have you changed your mind?’

Immediately Hettie shook her head, missing the faint sigh Ellie gave and the look of anxiety in her eyes.

A small, neatly dressed maid in a crisply immaculate apron and cap opened the front door to them and directed them to a dark back parlour, its furniture heavily festooned in dark brown material. Ellie and Hettie perched awkwardly on a bulging sofa.

The faintly worn areas in the turkey carpet made Hettie wonder just how many anxious feet had paced across it whilst their owners waited in the room’s sombre silence. Thick net curtains obscured what light could have entered the room, making it seem even more gloomily oppressive.

She reached out and placed her hand in Ellie’s. She wanted this more than she had ever wanted anything in the whole of her life, more than she would ever want anything ever again. She wanted it so much that it physically hurt, she told herself dramatically.

The door opened, making Hettie jump. The parlour maid announced, ‘You’re both to go in now, if you please.’

‘Good luck, my love,’ Ellie whispered to her as they both got up, kissing her lovingly whilst Hettie gripped her hand.

Hettie had never felt so clumsy, nor so awkward. Her face was burning, and her throat had gone so dry she was afraid she would not be able to sing at all.

The maid escorted them to the door of the front parlour and then whispered, ‘Knock on the door and then wait until she says to go in.’

When her step-mother’s knock went unacknowledged, Hettie cast her an anguished look. ‘Perhaps she didn’t hear,’ she began and then stopped as a firm contralto voice from the other side of the door called out commandingly.

‘Come.’

With Ellie pushing her firmly ahead, Hettie stepped in to the room. Here there was no overstuffed sofa but instead a row of uncomfortable looking hard-backed chairs. But it was the piano and, more dramatically, the woman seated at it, that commanded Hettie’s attention.

Mrs May Buchanan was almost the complete opposite of Miss Brown, being tall and stately where Miss Brown was small and thin; and her jet-black hair, unlike Miss Brown’s untidy grey bun, was drawn back into a formidably elegant chignon. Miss Brown’s manner was fussy yet gentle, whilst Hettie could tell, even on this first meeting, that Mrs Buchanan was chillingly distant.

Hettie could feel herself tremble as Mrs Buchanan’s merciless gaze focused sharply on her.

‘Your teacher has some very complimentary things to say about you, Miss Walker. She seems to think that you have a soprano voice of surpassing excellence.’

Hettie looked towards Ellie for reassurance, not sure how she was meant to respond.

‘Do you have the same high opinion of your voice as your teacher, Miss Walker?’

‘I know that I love to sing,’ was all Hettie could find to say. Mrs Buchanan was making her feel very small and unimportant; she was even beginning to wish that she had not put herself forward for her criticism.

‘Very well then. Please stand up.’

Obediently Hettie got to her feet. She felt sick with nervousness, and she just knew that she was going to do everything wrong.

As she sang the opening bars of the song, she could hear the uncertainty affecting her voice and her heart sank with distress and panic. The song was so familiar to her that she knew it by heart, and yet in her agitation she almost missed a note. But then, as always when she got into the song itself, the music began to take her over and she became lost in its enchantment and the role it had cast for her.

As she sang the last few notes she saw the emotional tears in Ellie’s eyes, and her spirits soared upwards in triumph and pleasure. But she was brought quickly back to earth when Mrs Buchanan commented coldly, ‘You were off key in the first bar.’

‘I was nervous.’

‘If you are nervous about singing in front of me then how do you think you will be able to sing in front of an audience of a hundred?’

Hettie did not dare look at her mother. She knew if she did she would burst into tears of shame and disappointment.

THREE

‘You have been gone such an age. What happened?’

‘Poor Hettie was very nervous,’ Hettie heard Ellie answering as Connie ushered them both into her cosy parlour.

‘I was off key in the opening bars,’ Hettie added, watching as Connie’s expression grew grave and sympathetic, and then laughing and saying, ‘But I am to have the job because Mrs Buchanan says that I am the best of all the applicants.’

‘Oh, you terror, letting me think that you hadn’t got it!’ Connie chided her, laughing back.

‘And I am going to board with Mrs Buchanan’s sister, aren’t I, Mam? She lives in the same street and only takes in female lodgers. I will have lessons with Mrs Buchanan every morning for a month and then I shall sing at the Adelphi hotel every afternoon. Except, of course, for Sunday, which will be my day off. Then after that I will have two days together off each month, which means I can go home to Preston.’

‘Well, inbetween times you must come here to us, then. You will enjoy listening to our school choir, and it will be so lovely to have you. Dr Kenton, the school’s music teacher, is very proud of them, and says they are far superior to the Bluecoat School boys.’

Connie’s husband Harry was the headmaster of a private boys’ school and he, Connie and their children lived in the headmaster’s house right next to the school. In addition to her responsibilities as a headmaster’s wife, Connie was also still very involved in the nursery for children whose parents were out at work or who, in some cases, had no parents to care for them at all. She had set up this nursery prior to her marriage to Harry.

‘So, when do you start your new job, Hettie?’

‘Next week, but I shall need to have a new dress first, shan’t I, Mam?’

‘Yes, my love, you will. Mrs Buchanan has told us that Hettie will need a proper tea dress to wear when she sings,’ Ellie explained to her sister.

‘Well, you will be certain to find something here in Liverpool. We shall go out together tomorrow and look.’

‘Connie, I wonder, would you mind taking Hettie to get a dress without me? Only I have already arranged to see Iris tomorrow.’

Hettie stared at her step-mother in consternation. ‘But you must come with me,’ she protested. ‘Please, Mam, I want you to,’ she pleaded desperately. For although she wanted her new life and its independence, inwardly Hettie felt vulnerable and uncertain, and very much in need of Ellie’s love and support. How could she think of putting seeing Iris before something so important as helping her to find the right dress for her new job? Even Connie was frowning at her.

‘Hettie, I am sorry,’ Ellie said, seeing the disappointed look on Hettie’s face. ‘But Iris is only in Liverpool for tomorrow, and it is important that I see her…’

‘But I need you to help me choose my dress.’ Hettie was ready to burst into tears.

After one look at her pale face and tear-filled eyes, Connie attempted to placate her by saying calmly, ‘Of course you are disappointed that your mother can’t go shopping with you, Hettie. But I can come with you and I’m sure between us we shall be able to find the right thing.’

Somehow Hettie managed to swallow back her tears and nod her head, but it just wouldn’t be the same fun without her.

Even worse was to come!

At four o’clock, the whole family, including Connie’s three young children and her husband, all sat down together to eat a traditional high tea as a treat. Afterwards, Hettie entertained the children by playing spillikins with them, and telling them jokes, until it was time for them to go to bed.

‘You’ve made a rod for your own back now, Hettie,’ Connie teased her when she returned to the parlour having tucked her children up in their beds.

‘They are already demanding to know when they will see you again, and I can see that from now on Sunday will definitely be their favourite day of the week.’

Hettie smiled. It was a comfort to know that Connie, Harry and the children were just around the corner. It made the whole move to Liverpool a little less daunting.

‘Connie, I’ve been thinking.’ Ellie broke in to her sister’s conversation. ‘It seems foolish for Hettie to return home to Preston with me, only to have to travel all the way back to Liverpool again within a matter of days. Could she possibly stay here with you until she moves into the lodging house next week?’

‘But Mam, I will need to go home with you to pack my things,’ Hettie protested anxiously. Her pride wouldn’t let her behave like a baby and say that she had just discovered she wasn’t quite ready to leave home so very quickly and that she wanted to say goodbye ‘properly’ to all her favourite things and, more importantly, her favourite people. An uncomfortable, unhappy feeling was lying like cold stone in her chest. For virtually all her life she had taken Ellie’s presence and love for granted. Now she was both hurt and shocked that Ellie should talk about parting with her so easily and casually.

‘It is just as easy for me to pack them for you, Hettie, and have your trunk sent direct to Mrs Foster’s,’ Ellie told her.

‘Of course Hettie is welcome to stay here,’ Connie said, smiling.

But Hettie couldn’t smile. A huge lump of misery was blocking her throat. At first, Mam hadn’t wanted her to leave home at all, but now it seemed as though she couldn’t wait to be rid of her. Hettie had to concentrate very hard to squeeze back the tears threatening to fill her eyes again. The dizzyingly intense feeling of happiness that had filled her when Mrs Buchanan had told her that she had got the job had been replaced by a forlorn sense of loss.

‘Ellie, you aren’t asleep yet, are you?’ Connie whispered, opening Ellie’s bedroom door and stepping inside. She looked questioningly at her sister as she lay in bed, propped up against the pillows. ‘Only it’s been such a busy day we haven’t had time to talk to each other properly.’

Ellie smiled as Connie sat down on the side of her bed, and put down the book she had been reading.

‘Hettie is very disappointed that you aren’t going to be able to go with her to choose her dress,’ Connie began, watching as a small shadow darkened Ellie’s eyes. She sighed. She too, in truth, had been surprised. She knew how much Ellie loved Hettie, the only girl in her family, whom she had brought up as her own from a very young age.

‘I know. I’d love to be able to go with her, Connie, but I have to see Iris.’

The shadow was there again and Connie’s heart missed a beat.

‘Ellie, something’s wrong. I can tell, what is it?’

‘I’m going to have another child.’

Connie frowned. ‘But, Ellie, surely that’s good news?’

Ellie gave her a wan smile. ‘Connie, I’m thirty-five, and my youngest child is ten. Gideon and I wanted there to be more children, but after so long without there being one…’ Ellie paused and looked at her sister. I can’t say any of this to Gideon because he is already worrying enough…because of our mother.’

‘Our mother? But she was older than you and had been warned not to have any more children,’ Connie protested, and then looked anxiously at her. ‘Ellie, tell me you have not been given the same warning?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. But…This time somehow it feels different – not right in some way. I can’t explain it properly, Connie, but I just feel so worried, and I thought if I could see Iris and talk to her about it…The problem is that she’s been away, and she’s only going to be in Liverpool for a few hours inbetween journeys. I’m to see her at her father’s Rodney Street Chambers. Naturally, I don’t want to say anything to Hettie about my reasons for wanting to see Iris. She would worry and feel that she had to stay at home with me and the last thing I want is for her to have to carry the same burden of guilt our mother’s death left to me.’

‘But Ellie, you are not our mother, and you must not think such dreadful things. There is no reason for you to fear there is anything amiss,’ Connie told her bracingly, causing a small smile to flicker across Ellie’s face. How very typical it was of Connie’s training as a nurse that she should adopt such a stalwart and reassuring manner! ‘You are right, though, to see Iris. She is a wonderful doctor and very highly thought of. I do think, though, that it might be better if you explained to Hettie why you want to see Iris. She’s feeling very hurt.’

‘It isn’t as straightforward as that, Connie. At first when Hettie said that she wanted to apply for this audition I was against it. And I admit that a large part of me would still prefer her to remain at home. I had looked forward to having her at home with us until she marries, to be my friend as well as my daughter. But Gideon is concerned that if we refuse she might…’

‘Run away as I did?’ Connie suggested before shaking her head. ‘Hettie loves you and Gideon, Ellie, and is loved by you – you needn’t worry that she is going to flee the nest and cut her ties.’

‘I know that, and I know too that if she felt I needed her she would stay, but it would be wrong of me to allow her to do that when I know how much her singing means to her. And it is because of that I cannot tell her why I need to see Iris. Please don’t tell her, I beg of you,’ Ellie beseeched her younger sister.

‘Very well, Ellie, if that is what you wish,’ Connie agreed, unwilling to add to her sister’s distress by telling her of her own belief that nothing good could come of keeping something so important a secret from Hettie. With reluctance, Connie agreed she would remain silent.

Alone and unable to sleep in the pretty guest bedroom her new grown-up status had entitled her to occupy, instead of sharing the nursery with Connie’s children like she normally did, Hettie sat up in bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. A tear trickled down her cheek followed by another. She had been so happy hours before but now she was so unhappy, and all because Mam had told her that she wouldn’t be going back to Preston.

Didn’t Mam care about her any more? Didn’t she love her any more? Suddenly Hettie longed to be a little girl once again, able to pad barefoot from her narrow bed in the nursery downstairs to the big bedroom Mam and Dad shared, and then to find her way through the darkness to Mam’s side of the bed where somehow she was always awake and waiting for her, ready to lift her up and tuck her against her side. There, secure in Ellie’s arms and Ellie’s love, Hettie had easily forgotten whatever it was that had woken her and gone contently back to sleep.

Hettie looked hesitantly towards the door, wondering if she should go and find Ellie now. But she was not a little girl any more, was she? It was time to stand on her own two feet.

FOUR

‘We’ll go straight to Bon Marche, I think, Hettie,’ Connie decided vigorously as the three of them sat around the breakfast table. Harry had already left for work, whilst the children had been despatched to the nearby park for some fresh air in the charge of the young orphan girl Connie had taken in who helped her with them.

Hettie forced herself to smile and nod her head, knowing that normally she would have enjoyed the thought of a shopping trip with Connie, and not wanting to be thought rude. But both Connie and Ellie noticed how strained she looked and how her mouth trembled as she tried to smile.

‘We don’t want to lose any time so if you’ve finished your breakfast I think we should make an early start. If we do, we will have time to go into Bon Marche. They have all the very latest fashions in that department store,’ she added importantly. ‘Not that I am suggesting you should have anything from there, Hettie, it would be far too expensive, but there would be no harm in just looking round to get some ideas.’

Obediently Hettie pushed back her chair and stood up.

‘What time are you meeting Iris, Ellie?’ Connie asked her sister.

Ellie put down her teacup and said lightly, ‘Actually, Connie, I’ve changed my mind about that, and decided to come along with you and Hettie instead. Your shopping trip sounds too much fun for me to miss and I know that Iris will understand. I’ll telephone her, though, if I may. She’s staying with her parents, and I was going to see her there.’

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.

Couldn’t Gideon and Ellie see the danger of allowing Hettie to parade herself around as though she were a grown woman and not still in reality a girl? Couldn’t they see, as he so plainly could, that Hettie would lure men to her with her beauty and innocence and that for her own sake she needed to be protected?

His angry thoughts had taken him past the Bluecoat School, Connie’s husband Harry’s ‘rivals’, without him noticing. Rather than wait for a bus, he decided he might as well walk the whole way to the Adelphi – it might help him clear his head of the mass of confusing and unhappy thoughts which besieged it.

The hotel had been rebuilt in 1912 to the designs of Frank Atkinson, and was still considered by Liverpudlians to be, as Charles Dickens had once written, ‘the best hotel in the world’. The turtles for its famous turtle soup were, so it was said, kept in a tank in the basement.

As he reached the hotel, the liveried doormen were busy opening hackney cab doors and assisting elegantly dressed guests to alight whilst another doorman whistled up porters to take charge of the luggage. Skirting past them John walked into the marble foyer and glanced absently at the listing of transatlantic crossings prominently displayed.

Beyond the entrance hall, thronged with a confusion of arriving and departing travellers, a flight of steps led up to the large top-lit Central Court with its pink pilasters.

Ignoring the glazed screens with their French doors that filled the arches and opened up into the large restaurants on either side of the Central Court, John made his way to the Hypostyle Hall, which was where Alfred had suggested they meet.

Several of the tables in the large square empire-style hall were already filled with people taking afternoon tea, and as John surveyed them he was approached by an imposing flunkey who demanded condescendingly, ‘H’excuse me, sir, but h’if you was wanting to take…’

‘I’m here to meet a friend,’ John stopped him calmly.

‘Oh, and ‘oo would that be, sir?’

‘The Earl of Camberley,’ John told him.

The immediate change in the flunkey’s attitude towards him would normally have made John chuckle, but on this occasion he was still too heart-sore from his earlier outburst to do more than ignore the man’s pleasantries as he led him to a table.

‘Shall you be wishing me to ’ave His Lordship called, Sir, or…’

‘No, that won’t be necessary. I’m a few minutes early.’ He looked past the flunkey to the area just in front of the entrance to the open-air courtyard where a large grand piano stood on the shiny marble floor.

Was this where Hettie was going to be singing?

Refusing the waiter’s offer of tea, John studied the occupants of the other tables. They were in the main family groups, passengers, he guessed, for tomorrow’s Atlantic crossing, although there were some tables filled exclusively by ladies sipping tea and busily talking to one another.

‘John, old chap.’

He had been so engrossed that he hadn’t seen Alfred, and as he stood up to shake his hand his friend drew the young woman at his side forward and announced, ‘Polly, allow me to introduce to you my very good friend, John Pride. Pride, this is my sister, Lady Polly Howard.’

‘Pooh, Alfie, you have scared poor Mr Pride half to death by being so formal! Since I am going to be living in America for a while, Mr Pride, where everyone is of equal status and there are thank goodness no archaic stuffy titles, I intend to be known simply as Polly Howard, and that is what you shall call me.’

John smiled as she shook his hand but knew he would do no such thing.

He had thought Hettie’s dress was shockingly short, but Lady Polly’s was even shorter, a narrow tube of emerald green satin, sashed in black, which showed off her narrow boyish figure.

‘Polly, I know you have some letters to write so we will not keep you.’

‘Oh pooh, I know you are just saying that because you want to be rid of me, Alfie. Well, you shall not be. I intend to sit here and order a delicious afternoon tea and enjoy myself. But you need not worry I shall eavesdrop on your conversation with Mr Pride.’

‘My sister is one of these very stubborn and modern young women, I’m afraid, John.’

She laughed as she opened her bag and removed a long cigarette holder into which she fitted a cigarette whilst John tried not to look shocked. ‘Alfie, do be a dear and light this for me. Do you think I am very fast and shocking for smoking, Mr Pride? I assure you that my dear darling brother does. He thinks it dreadful that his sister is so modern and daring. Do you have a sister, Mr Pride?’

‘I have two.’

‘Oh, what fun! And are they modern?’

‘Polly, you ask far too many questions. I apologise for her, John. I am afraid she has been dreadfully spoiled.’

‘And whose fault is that? If I had been allowed to go up to Girton as I wished, instead of being forced to stay at home, then I would not have nanny to pet me, would I, and then I would have become a bluestocking. Do you dance, Mr Pride?’

She was like quicksilver, John thought, mercurial and dizzying, not to mention droll, with her carmined lips and short bobbed hair.

‘John is far too busy to waste time on dancing.’

‘Alfie, how can you say such a thing? No one should be too busy to dance. What do you do then, Mr Pride, that makes you too busy to dance?’

‘He teaches fortunate fellows to fly,’ Alfie said before John could even open his mouth to answer.

‘You do? Oh how whizzy…Could you teach me? I would love to fly. It must be so much fun. Wait! I have the most terrific idea. Why don’t you teach me to fly and I shall teach you to dance?’

‘You are leaving for New York tomorrow,’ Alfred reminded her.

Immediately she pouted. ‘Oh, but maybe not. Maybe I shall change my mind.’

‘I apologise for my sister, John,’ Alfred said later when Polly had finally been persuaded to leave them alone.

‘There’s no need.’ John couldn’t help smiling. Lady Polly had been fun and he had enjoyed her company.

‘Now tell me more about this flying school of yours. You will have more eager pupils than you can take, no doubt.’

John shook his head. ‘Not at the moment. Business is slow and with the Depression…’

‘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.

SIX

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!’

As Hettie listened to this impassioned speech she acknowledged that, appalled as she was by her landlady’s deceit, if she were to inform her parents of it they would insist on her returning home immediately. Upset and intimidated though she had felt by the landlady’s manner towards her, and the other revelations from the other girls, she couldn’t bear to lose the job she had wanted so badly for years.

‘There’s a lad down at the ironmongers who’s a bit sweet on Aggie, he’ll put yer a padlock on yer trunk for yer if she asks him nice enough.’

A tall, blonde-haired girl who had been examining her feet straightened up and screwed up her face. ‘Well, you’ll have to come with me, I ain’t going to be left on me own with ’im. Nasty clammy hands he’s got!’

‘Aw, listen to it. Bet they ain’t anywhere near as clammy as old Basher’s. Calls himself an impresario. A dirty old man, more like. You should ’ave seen them costumes he wanted us to wear for that bloody revue in Blackpool, d’yer remember, Lizzie?’ another girl chipped in.

‘’Ow could I forget, Babs, mine felt like it were cutting me in two,’ Lizzie answered whilst Hettie looked on perplexed when they all burst out laughing.

‘Gawd, my feet,’ Babs complained. ‘But that’s what you get for being a chorus girl – corns and blisters.’

‘Are you all in the same chorus?’ Hettie asked her a little timidly. These girls were nothing like any of the girls she knew back in Preston. Their language, for one thing, and their loud confidence. But nevertheless, she liked them, she decided.

‘At the moment there’s a big panto coming off at the Royal Court Palace, and there’s two hundred girls in the chorus, plus the understudies. We’ve bin rehearsing for the last six weeks, plus doing our ordinary shows as well – six nights and six matinées. It’s damn near killin’ me. So what do yer sing, then, Hettie?’ Babs asked.

‘Soprano,’ Hettie replied automatically.

‘Oh, soprano is it,’ Lizzie mocked, putting on an exaggeratedly posh accent.

‘Oh leave off, Lizzie, give the poor kid a break,’ Babs told her, giving Hettie a friendly smile.

‘Don’t mind Lizzie. Her tongue’s sharper than her wit sometimes. No, I meant what sort of songs do you sing. You know, what’s your repertoire?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t got one,’ Hettie admitted.

‘Well, you should have,’ Babs reproved her. ‘And with them dark looks of yours being all the rage right now, you want to cash in on them and get yourself a repertoire that will get you some decent parts. Lor, but I’m hungry,’ she moaned, changing the subject and taking the spotlight off Hettie, for which she was very grateful. ‘Anyone else want to go out and get some supper?’ she called out.

‘Go out for supper?’ Hettie repeated, concerned. ‘But I thought that all our meals were included in the rent?’

‘Did you hear that, girls?’ Lizzie called out, shaking her head and laughing mirthlessly. ‘The only supper you’ll get here is a bit o’ mouldy bread and some soup wot looks as though Misery Guts peed in it.’

Hettie made sure she joined in the others’ laughter as though such coarse talk was as familiar to her as it obviously was to them.

‘You don’t ’ave to come with us if you don’t want,’ Babs told her. ‘I’ll bring you back a nice bit o’sommat if you want – not fish, though, cos if Misery Guts smells it she’ll be wanting more rent off all of us – it’s extra if you bring in your own grub. Still, at least ’ere’s clean, not like some of the digs you can get. Lor, but I were scratching for months after one place where I stayed, covered in bites I were and me hair full o’nits.’

When Hettie shuddered, Babs laughed and shook her head. ‘My, but you’re a green un, aren’t you? Never mind, we’ll tek care of you and you’ll soon find yer feet. Just don’t let Ma Buchanan boss yer around. Dance do yer as well as sing?’

‘A little,’ Hettie agreed.

‘That’s good,’ she approved, getting up off her bed.

Lizzie called out impatiently, ‘’Ere Babs, are you coming wi’ us or what?’

‘Give us a minute,’ she called back before coaxing Hettie, ‘Go on, come wi’ us. A bit o’ fresh air will do you good.’

Uncomfortably aware that both her parents and John would have been shocked by and disapproving of Babs and the others, Hettie gave in to the hunger in her stomach. Besides, if this was to be her home for the foreseeable future, she would have to try and fit in.

The street might have been quiet when they all spilled out on to it, but its silence was quickly shattered by the laughter and chatter of the girls. Despite their aching feet, two of them suddenly took hold of one another and danced along, performing a high-stepping routine that caused two men on the opposite side of the street to stop and stare.

‘Ere, Lizzie, go over and tell those two gawpers over there that that’s two shilling and sixpence worth they’ve just had.’

‘Mary, you’re out of time and you missed a step,’ another criticised, causing the dancing pair to stop as one of them – Mary, Hettie assumed – turned on her critic.

‘Sez who?’ she demanded. ‘You couldn’t keep time even if it was beaten into yer. That’s why yer at the back of the line and I’m at the front!’

‘Who does she think she’s kidding?’ Hettie heard someone else mutter. ‘The only reason she’s still in the bloody chorus at all is because she’s been keeping old Charlie sweet.’

Fifteen minutes later, squashed up on the narrow wooden bench seats in the snug between Babs and Lizzie, a plate of appetising beef and dumpling stew on the table in front of her, Hettie felt a world away from the person she had been this morning. Her eyes widened as she saw the relish with which the other girls were drinking the port wine they had also ordered.

‘Try it,’ Babs urged her.

Unwilling to be mocked yet again by sharp-eyed Lizzie, Hettie dutifully sipped at the liquid Babs had poured into her empty glass, and then fought not to show how sour and unpleasant she found it, valiantly emptying her glass.

It was shortly after that she became aware of how very tired she was, and now her eyes were starting to close as her head dropped toward Babs’s shoulder.

‘Look at ’er, Babs,’ whispered one of the others. ‘Poor little kid. What a bloody shame.’

After studying Hettie’s sleeping profile Babs sighed and said determinedly, ‘Come on, we’d better get her back.’

‘Lor, Babs, we ain’t bloody nursemaids,’ Lizzie protested, but even her expression softened a little as she looked down at Hettie, sleeping peacefully as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

SEVEN

It was almost two weeks since Hettie had moved into the boarding house, and in that time she had learned that, behind her sharp manner, Lizzie hid the kindest of hearts, and that she had not just herself to support but her mother and a sick sister as well; that Babs with her easy-going nature was the one who always calmed the others if trouble threatened to erupt; that quiet, blonde Aggie was nursing a broken heart having fallen in love with a theatre manager who was married; that shrewd Mary wasn’t averse to leading on any man if she thought it would benefit her; and that the twins Jenny and Jess were the naughty girls of the troupe, continually playing practical jokes on everyone and getting up to all manner of japes.

She was now as familiar with the girls’ dance routine and songs as they were themselves, and Babs had taught her all the steps of the modern new dances, including the tango, claiming that she would need to know them just in case, as she had put it, ‘some young spark teks it into ’is head to dance with yer one afternoon. I mean, yer wouldn’t want ter make a fool of yerself by not knowing all the newest steps, would yer?’

‘No one would do that,’ she had protested, half shocked, half giggling at the thought of whirling around the Adelphi.

‘You’ud be surprised what these young blades will do,’ Babs had warned her darkly.

But she had not mentioned any of this either on her visit to Connie or in her letters home. Neither had she mentioned the lack of her own bedroom, or the poor food, or the fact that Mrs Buchanan was nowhere near as good or thorough a teacher as Miss Brown, for all the airs she had put on for Ellie’s benefit, and moreover that she frequently cut Hettie’s lessons short so that she could fit in another pupil.

It was not that she wanted to deceive her family, she assured herself; it was simply that she didn’t want to worry them. Nor had she spoken of the camaraderie that existed between the girls, or what fun they were to be with. Mam and Da were a bit old-fashioned about some things and Hettie thought they might not see beneath the girls’ stage paint and ripe language to the good-heartedness that lay beneath them.

‘’Ow did the lesson go today?’ Babs asked her over an illicit cup of tea made in their attic room, dunking a Rich Tea biscuit into the hot liquid before demanding, ‘is she still making yer do them scales?’

‘She didn’t today. She said that I’m to go to the Adelphi tomorrow morning and practise there with Mr Buchanan, because the singer I’m to replace has decided to leave sooner than she originally said. Next week I am to make my debut.’ She gave a small shiver of nervous excitement. ‘I do hope that Mam and Da will be able to come over from Preston to hear me.’

‘And ’ow are they goin’ to do that, then?’ Lizzie demanded. ‘Cos them bloody waiters turn their noses up at the likes o’ us.’

‘My parents are very respectable,’ Hettie protested, pink-cheeked, wanting to defend them without offending Lizzie.

‘I ain’t saying they ain’t, but there’s a difference between being respectable and being a toff,’ Lizzie pointed out. ‘And yer ma and pa will need pretty deep pockets if’n they’re to sit at one o’ them tea tables.’

‘Stop upsettin’ her, Lizzie,’ Babs ordered. ‘Don’t you worry, ’Ettie, if your folks can’t make it then ’appen some of us u’ll manage to be there. Even if we ’ave to find some way to persuade one o’ them snotty waiters, eh Mary?’

Hettie smiled, but inwardly she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea for her new friends to be there at her debut. However, since she didn’t want to hurt their feelings, she enquired instead, ‘What about your corn, Babs, is it any better?’

‘No, it’s them damned shoes, but if I tell old Basher I need a bigger pair, he’ll give me the ’eave.’

‘What? Surely not?’ Hettie protested, indignant on her friend’s behalf.

‘’E gets a good deal because he buys all the same size shoes for us,’ Babs told her matter of factly. ‘If’n they don’t fit, you’re out, so we have to pretend they do even if they don’t.’

‘But anyway, if yer at a loose end, why don’t you come down to the theatre with us and watch us rehearsin’? It’ud be a sight more fun for you than sitting here on yer own.’

‘Could I?’ Hettie asked her enthusiastically.

‘Of course, we can allus smuggle yer in, like, if we have to.’

Hettie could hardly wait to see the girls at work, and a proper stage show being rehearsed. Maybe she would even be able to sing on a stage one day!

EIGHT

‘I am to have my first proper rehearsal at the Adelphi tomorrow and I am to sing there on Thursday afternoon,’ Hettie told Connie excitedly after church on Sunday, as she helped her with the little ones whilst they walked back to the house.

‘It all sounds very exciting,’ Connie agreed.

‘I have written home to tell Mam. Oh, I do hope they will be able to be there.’ Hettie’s face clouded slightly. She bet someone wouldn’t be coming, and that someone was John. She hadn’t heard from him since their argument and she wondered if they would ever go back to being the close friends they had always been.

‘I am sure they will be. I am certainly looking forward to it. I think the last time I went to the Adelphi was when cousin Cecily took us there. You can be sure she will want to come and hear you as well, Hettie, and I dare say she will bring her mama-in-law along too, so you will have some sturdy support from your family for your debut.’

‘I think that will make me even more nervous.’ Hettie laughed, and then said uncertainly, unable to shake him from her thoughts, ‘Is John still angry with me, do you know? I know that he doesn’t approve of what I’m doing, but I would so much like him to be there.’

Connie gave her a swift hug. ‘And so he shall be. I shall be with him myself. And as for him not approving, I dare say it just gave him a bit of a shock to see you looking so grown up. Men can be the oddest of creatures at times.’

Connie herself had enjoyed the fun she had had as a girl training to be a nurse, and she could see how much Hettie was enjoying her new independent life and the different friends she had made. She had blossomed in less than a month and had a new kind of worldliness about her.

‘I just hope that Mam will be well enough to come,’ Hettie continued. ‘When I telephoned yesterday, Mrs Jennings said that she was in bed and feeling sickly.’

‘Yes, the unseasonable heat has been pulling her down a little,’ Connie replied hastily. Ellie had said specifically that she did not wish to make it widely known yet that there was to be a new baby. Thankfully, though, she was no longer worrying so much about her own health or that of the coming baby.

Later in the day Connie watched indulgently whilst Hettie tucked hungrily into her dinner. All this singing was obviously giving her a good appetite. She was happily unaware that her Sunday dinners were the culinary highlight of Hettie’s week because the meagre amount of ‘pocket money’ she received from Mrs Buchanan was barely enough to buy her one decent meal a day.

‘You are enjoying that Madeira cake, Hettie, would you care to take a couple of slices with you to share with your friends?’ Connie invited her.

‘Oh yes, please,’ Hettie accepted, unblushingly allowing Connie to parcel up the whole lot for her, knowing that she herself would be the one to eat the lion’s share of it. Then she felt guilty at not sharing with Connie what life was really like at Ma Marshall’s. But as Babs had told her wryly, ‘sometimes it’s best not to let folks at ’ome know just how things are, ’Ettie. Saves ’em worrying then, like.’

‘My husband will be waiting for you at the Adelphi, Miss Walker. You will enter the hotel via the staff entrance at the rear of the hotel and not the main entrance – that is reserved for hotel guests. Once you are inside you will ask for the housekeeper and she will see to it that you are escorted to the room Mr Buchanan uses for practice. It would not do at all for the Adelphi’s guests to have their ears subjected to the noise of scales in the main salons.

‘You will present yourself at the hotel every morning this week at 10.00 a.m. and you will remain there until Mr Buchanan says that you may leave. Then, provided that he is satisfied with you, on Thursday you will bring with you your stage dress ready for the afternoon’s musical entertainment. Do you understand all of that?’

‘Yes, Mrs Buchanan,’ Hettie confirmed obediently. She could hardly believe the wait was nearly over!

‘Gideon – we don’t often see you up here,’ John greeted his brother-in-law warmly as Gideon stepped out of his car.

‘Aye, well if you will choose to make a living in such an outlandish way,’ Gideon joked, automatically ducking as one of John’s students took off, the wings of his flying machine wiggling alarmingly.

‘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.

From one of the shorter walls, a door opened into the domain of the wardrobe mistress, and what space there was left was filled with racks of costumes all jumbled together.

The air in the room smelled stalely of cheap scent and sweat, but despite that Hettie loved the atmosphere of the dressing room with its frantic bustle and sense of excitement and urgency.

‘’Ere, help me get out of these bloody feathers, will yer?’ Lizzie puffed, tugging at her headdress and heaving a sigh of relief when it was finally removed.

‘So what was ’e like then, ’Ettie?’ Babs asked her.

‘Well, he was…’

Suddenly the dressing room door burst open and a woman rushed in still in full costume and make-up.

‘Oh gawd,’ Sukey muttered. ‘Now we’re in for it.’

‘Who is she?’ Hettie whispered curiously, as immediately all the girls seemed to be very busy ignoring the newcomer.

‘She’s the bloomin’ star, that’s wot, and she’s ’ere to mek trouble,’ Sukey told her.

‘Where is she, then?’ The imperious contralto voice rang theatrically round the now silent room.

‘Come on, you little sluts, no way are yer all deaf, even if yer dance like yer’ve never heard a tune in yer lives. Where’s the little slut wot’s bin making sheep’s eyes at my man?’

‘Just as well Maureen’s already left otherwise Gertie’d rip her to pieces,’ Babs muttered to Hettie.

‘Gertie, my darling, what on earth are you doing in here?’

Hettie goggled as a tall, handsome, blond-haired man walked into the room, ignoring the chorus girls and approaching the infuriated contralto.

‘You know bloody well what I’m doing,’ the contralto howled. ‘I’m looking for that little whore you’ve been seeing behind me back, that’s what. Well, you won’t be doing it no more, matey.’

Before he could move, she had picked up one of the heavy hand mirrors the girls used to check the back of their costumes and brought it down hard on a place no lady ever looked at on a gentleman. As he doubled up in pain Babs whispered, ‘Gawd, she’s cracked ’im one right in the Kaisers,’ sounding more impressed than shocked. ‘Bloody ’ell that will put an end to his messing about.’

‘If you touch that little tart again, I’m cutting it right…’

As they both left the dressing room still arguing, Hettie looked at Babs and asked her curiously, ‘What was all that about?’

‘Well, she’s the star of the show, see, and ’e’s one of the angels.’

‘What’s an angel?’ Hettie interrupted.

Lizzie, who had been listening, sighed and explained, ‘An angel is wot we calls someone wot puts up the money to put on a show. Bertie has a bankful of money he got for marrying his wife.’

‘He’s married but…’

‘Gawd, but you’re a know-nothing, ain’t yer, Miss Innocent. Of course he’s married. They allus are. But that don’t stop any of them messing about, like. Of course, the moment Gertie clapped eyes on him she’d got her mind set on ’im and ’oo can blame her? It’s part of tradition, see, that the leading lady gets her choice of the men, and ’eaven help any hoofer wot steps out of line on to her territory. Mind you, it’s past time Gertie retired, and if you want my opinion it’s because she’s so old that he’s bin messin’ around with Maureen behind Gertie’s back.’

‘She didn’t look very old,’ Hettie had to protest. She had looked very glamorous with her rouged cheeks, cherry-red lips, and her short skirt revealing her legs.

‘That’s on account of all the greasepaint. You oughta see ’er close up. More lines on her face than a tram station, she’s got. Anyway it was when we wus doing Cinderella a couple of seasons back that Bertie first come on the scene. Madam there was swarming all over ’im right from the start, and of course it weren’t too long before ’e got the message and the two of ’em became an item, like. But now he’s getting fed up wi’ her and he’s got a bit of an eye for our Maureen who better watch out because that thump she gave him in the balls is nothing to what Gertie’s likely to do to her. Gawd, she left the girl who made eyes at her last fella wi’ a right nasty scar on her face. Threw acid at her, so I ’eard.’

Hettie gasped with shock.

‘There, don’t look so scared, young un,’ Lizzie comforted her. ‘She won’t do owt to ’arm you, why should she? So, what did you think of ’im, then, Ma Buchanan’s ’usband?’

‘He was kind and very jolly, not like I expected at all,’ Hettie told her innocently.

‘Was he now. Well, you just look out for men wot is kind to yer, cos like as not they’ll want sommat from yer, if yer knows what I mean,’ Lizzie warned her darkly.

Half an hour later, they all trooped out into the autumn sunshine, laughing and joking as they hurried to the chop house a short walk away from the theatre. The owner of the chop house gave them a good reduction off his normal prices on the understanding that they came in to eat earlier than the other customers, and brought their gentleman admirers in whenever they were asked out to dinner by them.

Hettie was hungry and she breathed in the warm, roasting-meat scented air appreciatively as she slid into one of the banquettes.

‘’Ere comes your admirer.’ Sukey nudged her when the owner’s young son suddenly appeared at their table.

He was still at school, and only just beginning to shave, but he had still Brilliantined his hair and he blushed bright red as he looked at Hettie. ‘’Ave the steak pie,’ he advised her in a mutter. ‘Me Da has ’ad the chops in for so long they’re about to get up and walk out of their own accord.’

‘Yes, we’ll all have a bit o’ it, young Max, and make sure we gets plenty of gravy and ’taters wi’ it,’ Lizzie told him firmly. ‘And yer can stop gawking at our ’Ettie as well, otherwise yer ears will be getting a rare boxing. Cheek of it!’

They all laughed, including Hettie, but the truth was that she was grateful to her new friends for their protection of her, not from Max, of course, but from everything that was so new and alien to her. She didn’t know what she would have done without them.

‘I’ll be right glad when that red-headed lad is gone,’ Jim told John grimly as they stood watching the group of young men sauntering across the airstrip in the direction of their accommodation. ‘You can’t tell him anything. He thinks he knows it all, and he’s beginning to get the others thinking the same way. It’s not even as though he’s going to make a good flyer. Too much of a risk-taker by half, he is. I caught him trying to get into the hangar this morning when his lesson wasn’t until after dinner.’

John frowned. ‘Did he say what he was doing there?’

‘Aye, sommat about having left his helmet in there, but I’d been in there working meself and there was no helmet there.’

‘Would you prefer me to take him up for the rest of his lessons?’ John offered. Normally they split the students into two and then kept them in those groups so that they could monitor their progress individually.

‘Nah. I’ve made sure he knows I’m on to him, and I gave him a bit of dressing down in front of the others this afternoon, told him that the only way he’d ever be good enough to loop the loop would be with a toy flying machine. By the way, did you manage to get the photographs you wanted?’

John had spent most of the day photographing the North West coastline for a government department whilst one of his previous students had come over for the day to fly the machine for him. The Ministry paid well and promptly, and he certainly needed the money.

He had read in the papers that a certain type of wealthy young rip was now making flying lessons extremely fashionable, and that flying clubs were springing up all over the country to cater for their new passion. These wealthy young socialites apparently liked nothing better than to drive up to their flying club in their expensive motors, and then take to the skies to show off their skills to their admiring friends and ‘popsies’, as the article had referred to their lady friends. He suppose he shouldn’t have been surprised after what Alfie had said about his new venture when they had met up at the Adelphi, the same weekend as his quarrel with Hettie. He may not have seen Hettie since, John admitted, but that did not mean he hadn’t been thinking about her – and worrying about her, too.

Them as who had written that article ought to come up to Lancashire and see how real people lived. But of course the likes of the young toffs the article had referred to did not have to concern themselves with the problem of the country’s two million unemployed, John acknowledged bitterly. He had never thought of himself as an activist of any kind, but he had seen at first hand what poverty did to people. As a lad growing up under the roof of a father who was a butcher, his belly had always been full; but after their mother’s death, with the four of them – Ellie, Connie, baby Philip and himself – shared out amongst his mother’s sisters to be brought up by them, he had come to discover what hardship was.

You only had to go to Liverpool’s once proud docks and look into the pinched bitter faces of its working men to know the true state of the country, John reflected. The country was in a sorry way and his business with it. Tomorrow, instead of dressing himself up in the cast-off suit of Gideon’s that Ellie had sent up for him and sitting watching Hettie sing, he should by rights have been working on his figures and thinking of ways to bring in some much needed extra money. His flying machines were sound enough but getting old. He thought enviously of the new machines Alfred had told him he was ordering for his own club. The science of building flying machines was changing almost by the day. Only weeks ago the Americans had stunned the world by announcing that they had used flying machines to drop bombs on a captured German boat.

If the unthinkable happened and there should be another war, would his beloved flying machines be used to rain death down out of the skies? If so, John prayed he would not be there to witness it.

NINE

Having refused Connie’s suggestion that she come to her house to prepare for her debut, and that Connie and Harry escort her to the Adelphi, Hettie was now wishing she had agreed and was longing for the support of those closest to her as she stood in her shift and gazed anxiously at her red gown.

‘’Ee tha looks that pale, ’Ettie. Not getting nervous, are yer?’ one of the girls asked her sympathetically.

‘Only a little,’ Hettie fibbed.

‘Everyone gets stage-fright, Hettie,’ Babs comforted her. ‘But yer family are going to be there, didn’t yer say?’

‘Yes. Mam and Da, and Aunt Connie, and Mam’s cousin Cecily. And John has promised to be there as well,’ Hettie added.

‘John? So ’oo’s this John, then?’ Babs teased.

‘He’s Mam’s younger brother,’ Hettie explained.

‘So ’e’s yer uncle, then?’

Hettie shook her head. ‘No, because Mam is my step-mother – I’m adopted, you see. John and I are the best of friends, thick as thieves – or we used to be anyway,’ Hettie trailed off.

‘Oh ho, I see now, and yer sweet on this ’ere John, are yer?’

‘No,’ Hettie denied, but she still couldn’t help blushing as Babs laughed at her.

‘Oh yes you are, I can tell. Tell us all about him then, ’Ettie. Good-looking, is he?’ Mary demanded.

‘Yes,’ Hettie admitted honestly. ‘But it isn’t like that, Mary.’

‘No, of course it ain’t, and I’m a monkey’s uncle.’ She laughed and winked. ‘I wish we wasn’t doing a matinée and then we could come along and get a look at this ’ere John of yours.’

Hettie bit her lip, uncomfortably aware that she was actually relieved the girls would not be there. She loved them dearly and they were terrific fun, but somehow she suspected Ellie would not see them in the same light as she did.

‘Who are you kidding, Mary?’ Lizzie challenged her. ‘No way would they let the likes of us in the Adelphi for afternoon tea.’

‘Why not? My money’s as good as the next person’s, I’ll thank you to know,’ Mary responded pertly in a mock posh voice, tossing her hair as she did so.

‘Come on, let’s get Hettie into her frock and get a bit of rouge on her face to liven her up a bit,’ Babs broke in.

Hettie held her breath as Babs took control.

‘Ooh. Yer look a real treat,’ Babs breathed approvingly. ‘Doesn’t she, girls?’

‘Aye, a real treat for some masher, who will want ter gobble her up whilst his wife’s sipping her tea,’ one wit chirped up, making the others laugh and Hettie blush nervously. She felt uncomfortable at the constant talk of men leering at women and especially at her. Maybe at the Royal Court but she couldn’t imagine such a thing happening at the Adelphi.

‘You watch out for them posh chaps, Hettie. They’ll only be after one thing, mind, no matter what they tells yer. And then before yer know it you’ve got a swelling belly and no wedding ring.’

‘Leave off, Mavis, that’s enough of that vulgar talk,’ Lizzie scolded. ‘Hettie isn’t like that…’

‘Mebbe she ain’t, but show me a fella who ain’t and I’ll show yer an Ethel,’ Mavis, one of the other girls Hettie hadn’t spoken to much so far, chortled.

‘What’s an Ethel?’ Hettie asked Lizzie in bewilderment.

‘Oh now see what yer’ve done, Mavis,’ Lizzie complained.

‘It ain’t my fault if the kid’s too green to know what’s what.’ Mavis shrugged.

‘Well, I suppose it u’ll have to be me who has to tell her then.’ Lizzie sighed. ‘An Ethel, ’Ettie, is what we calls a man who isn’t a proper man, like.’

‘Not a proper man?’ Hettie was still confused.

‘What Lizzie means is that an Ethel is a chap wot only does it with other men,’ Mavis clarified, adding bluntly in case Hettie still hadn’t grasped what she was trying to say: ‘Instead of shoving it up a woman like other men, he wants to shove it up another chap’s arse.’

Hettie’s face went brick red with embarrassment and shocked disbelief. She knew in a vague sort of way what happened between married couples, although it had never been fully explained to her, but now Mavis’s brutally frank explanation had shocked her on two counts.

‘’Ere, that’s enough, Mavis. The poor kid doesn’t need to know about that,’ Babs told her, adding, ‘Come on, ’Ettie, let’s brush yer hair for yer, and put this flower in it’.

She had to say one thing for her chorus line friends: they were expert ladies’ maids, Hettie admitted, as her hair was brushed and then rolled into sleek elegance and a pretty red silk flower pinned into it.

‘All yer needs now is a touch of carmine on yer lips – yer don’t need no blackin’ on yer eyelashes like blondes do.’

Hettie wasn’t sure she should be wearing the carmine either but she didn’t want to offend kind-hearted Babs by saying so. She could always rub it off before her family saw her, she consoled herself as her helpers finally decided she was ready for her debut.

John stepped out of the tin bath and reached for one of the cans of water he had filled earlier, leaning over the bath to sluice his head and torso with it before repeating the exercise for the lower half of his body whilst standing in the now tepid bath water itself.

The sunlight coming in through the cottage’s small windows gleamed on flesh pulled taut against firm muscles, his arms and chest tanned brown from the hours he spent shirtless, working to ensure that the grass his sheep didn’t crop was kept short enough for the flying machines to land on.

John was not a vain man – he had more important things to worry about than silly lasses – but Ellie was for ever sighing over him and telling him he was the image of their good-looking father, and John had seen the looks young women gave him.

He reached for a towel and started to dry himself. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the thought of spending such a perfect flying day sitting togged up in a straitjacket of a suit, sipping tea, was not one that appealed to him. But Connie had told him how Hettie had begged her to ask him to go.

Luckily there were no flying lessons on today’s schedule, the students instead receiving instruction from Jim on the maintenance of flying machines.

John dressed quickly, smoothing his hair straight, and wondering if he would have time for a bite to eat when he got to the station. He had decided to cycle there rather than walk which meant he would have to fold up his suit jacket instead of wearing it.

He looked at his watch. Jim would have started his lecture, and rather than go and interrupt him John decided he would leave without saying goodbye to him.

He was half a mile from the station when he heard the familiar sound of the flying machine’s engine. Frowning, he stopped pedalling and got off his bike to look up. Suddenly, with an awkward movement, the pilot took the machine into an amateurish and unsafe loop.

‘Christ, you fool, you’re too low; you’re too bloody low, climb. Get back up. Get back up!’

John was screaming the words into the sky as he got back on his bike and started to cycle as fast as he could back to the airfield. The flying machine was floating in the sky belly up, the engine stuttering as the machine lost height while it slowly rolled over.

John prayed as he had never prayed in his life, even though he knew it was futile. The machine was so low that he could see the four helmeted heads in the cockpit.

‘Ease back, ease back, give her a chance to get some air and then take her up, take her up…Oh God, Oh God,’ he heard himself cry.

The engine coughed, and then the machine surged forward, before the engine coughed again and then died, the sounds of its struggle followed by an eerie silence, and then a mighty bang.

John could see the plume of black smoke rising like a pall, but then there was a second horrific explosion, with flames and smoke shooting up into the sky.

Ahead of him lay the airfield. Where the flying machine hangar had been there was now merely flames and smoke.

Leaving his bike he ran towards the inferno. Jim was in there somewhere. Jim, his friend and partner. Jim, who had warned him that he feared their rebellious student would do something reckless. Jim, who he hadn’t listened to, because he had had more important things on his mind. Jim, who was now being burned alive because of him…

John could hear the clang of the fire engine bell, and people were coming running from all directions; farm workers out of the fields; villagers who had seen and heard the explosion. He could feel strong hands dragging him back from the fire, whilst tears ran down his face.

He would bear the burden of the guilt of this day for ever.

Why had she ever thought she wanted to sing at the Adelphi? Hettie wondered nervously as she stood, trembling from head to foot, behind the screen that shielded the doorway to the staff stairs from the guests.

This morning Mr Buchanan had taken her down to the Hypostyle Hall – where she had gazed up in awe to where the four massive Ionic columns supported the ceiling, hardly able to take in the grandeur of her surroundings – so that she could practise her songs there and familiarise herself with the hall. She knew that after he had played a few introductory notes she was to walk in and go to stand in front of the piano, but to one side of it so as not to obstruct anyone’s view of Mr Buchanan, and that he would then play a piece of Bach during which she was to turn and gaze admiringly at him until he had finished.

Then he would play the first of her songs and she was to remember that if there were any gentlemen seated at the tables she was not to look towards them.

This, Mrs Buchanan had already given her to understand, had been the cause of her predecessor’s downfall, and a shameful reflection on the moral laxity of modern young women.

Hettie wished she could see through the screen. Had her family arrived? Would John be with them? Connie had assured her he would but what if he changed his mind? His anger had hurt her and she very much wanted them to be good friends again.

Mr Buchanan came down the stairs, his ‘patented’ strands of hair gleaming in the light of the chandeliers, the tails of his morning coat almost sweeping the floor.

‘My goodness, Hettie, I scarcely recognised you,’ he told her with a smile, adding warmly, ‘You look very pretty, my child.’

The way he was looking at her made Hettie feel slightly self-conscious, but she told herself she was being silly as he strode towards the screen and then walked beyond it.

Hettie could hear the polite applause of the guests. In another moment she would have to follow him past the screen. She couldn’t do it. How on earth could she sing so much as a note feeling like this? She…

She froze as she heard the opening notes to the Bach and then, as though someone else were controlling her movements, she discovered she was walking past the piano, keeping her face towards the guests as Mr Buchanan and, more helpfully, the chorus girls had taught her to do, acknowledging the applause with a demure hint of recognition before taking her place to one side of the piano, her gaze fixed as she had been instructed on Mr Buchanan.

‘Oh look at Hettie, doesn’t she look beautiful?’ Connie whispered emotionally to Ellie as she reached for her handkerchief.

Thanks to Cecily and her mother-in-law’s intervention, they had all been accommodated at two tables right in front of the piano, and now Connie grasped Ellie’s hand as she saw her sister bite her lip to stop it trembling, her gaze focused on Hettie.

‘My goodness, I hadn’t realised she would be wearing such a very modern frock’, Cecily whispered half disapprovingly to Connie. ‘I would never allow either of my two girls to show so much ankle.’

‘Cecily, you get more like your mother every time I see you,’ Connie told her forthrightly, ignoring the mantle of angry colour that stained her cousin’s pretty face.

Cecily’s mother was Connie’s least favourite aunt and she had, until Ellie had moved into Gideon’s mother’s far grander house in Winckley Square, lorded over the rest of her family with her status as a doctor’s wife, plus the fact that she lived in the most exclusive part of Preston.

The Pride siblings’ mother had been one of Preston’s famously beautiful Barclay sisters, but unfortunately Cecily’s daughters, although good-hearted girls, had not inherited those good looks, Connie decided smugly. Unlike her own daughter, Lyddy, whose resemblance to her mother and her Aunt Ellie was always much commented on by people.

‘I thought you said John was going to be here,’ Cecily whispered to Connie.

‘He should have been and in fact I cannot think why he isn’t,’ Connie replied.

‘Hettie will be disappointed.’

‘Ellie, my dear, what a lovely sprite of a child your step-daughter is,’ Cecily’s mother-in-law commented warmly. ‘I am so sorry that Iris could not be here to see her.’

‘She wrote to me the other week to tell me she is very busy helping her friend, Dr Marie Stopes, with her newly opened clinic,’ Ellie responded.

‘Indeed. Iris has always been vigorous in her support of birth control,’ the older woman agreed without any trace of embarrassment.

Ellie sighed. She herself had always followed the advice Iris had given to her as a new young wife, but obviously she had not been vigilant enough lately which was why she now had this new life growing under her heart. Unlike her other babes this one lay still and quiet, but somehow more heavily, causing her far more discomfort than she had with her others. The disquieting symptoms she had experienced earlier on had thankfully now ceased, although she did not feel quite as well as she tried to pretend.

‘The hotel is very grand, isn’t it?’ she whispered to Gideon without taking her gaze off Hettie, who was standing perfectly still with her face turned towards the pianist.

‘Aye, and very expensive, far too expensive for the ordinary folk of Liverpool.’

‘You are still thinking of this dreadful Depression,’ Ellie guessed. ‘Do you think it will end soon, Gideon, and things will get better?’

‘I wish that they might, Ellie, but I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet.’ He patted her hand and told her firmly, ‘But we won’t talk of such things today, eh, my love? Let’s enjoy listening to our Hettie singing her heart out instead. After all, that’s why you’ve forced me into wearing these damnably uncomfortable clothes.’

Ellie laughed softly ‘Uncomfortable, are they? You looked as proud as a turkey cock when you wore them to the Lord Mayor’s dinner,’ she reminded him affectionately.

‘Aye, well. That was in January, when it was cold.’

‘Shush. I think Hettie is about to sing,’ Ellie warned him as the pianist finished his piece and stood up to sweep a bow to the applauding audience.

Oh, but she was so nervous and she felt so sick. Hettie had seen her family and felt a momentary surge of pride in them, especially Ellie who looked so pretty. But then she had noticed that John wasn’t there and immediately she had felt upset. Where was he? He had promised he would come and now he wasn’t here, and she had so much wanted him to see her and hear her sing.

But Mr Buchanan was playing her introductory notes. Hettie turned away from him to face her audience, tentatively took a deep breath, and began.

‘Oh, but when those ladies at the next table said that Hettie had the prettiest voice they had ever heard, I was so proud I wanted to burst,’ Ellie exclaimed, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

‘And then to give you an encore, Hettie. The waiter serving us told us he had never ever seen that happen before,’ remarked Connie.

‘Aye, lass, you’ve got a lovely voice,’ Gideon said proudly.

‘Well, Hettie, I must say I was concerned when Ellie first told me what you were to do and certainly I would never allow one of my daughters to sing in public, but having said that the Adelphi is a first class hotel and not some common playhouse,’ even Cecily grudgingly admitted.

Her face flushed with happiness and excitement, Hettie listened to the praise of her family as she stood close to Ellie, her step-mother’s arm around her waist as she held her close.

She had not, of course, been able to go to them afterwards in the Hall, but they had been waiting for her in the hotel lobby and now they were all on their way to Cecily’s mother-in-law’s for a special dinner.

‘Mam, where is John?’ Hettie demanded. ‘He promised he would come to hear me sing.’

The first person she had looked for after Ellie had been John and she had been bitterly disappointed not to see his face amongst the others.

‘Well, Hettie…’ Ellie began gently, unsure of what to say.

‘Hettie, you are too selfish. John is a very busy man,’ Cecily interrupted Ellie. ‘He cannot be expected to leave his business on the whim of a mere girl. Goodness me, imagine the state the country would be in if our men folk all behaved so foolishly.’

Anger flashed in Hettie’s eyes as she listened to Cecily’s disapproving words. ‘It is John who is the selfish one and not me. He promised he would be here.’

Suddenly she was close to tears. Why hadn’t John come as he had promised he would? He may not have approved of her dress, but surely he would have had to add his praise and applause to those of everyone else if he had been here to hear her sing?

‘Hettie, you are becoming overwrought. This is your special day, don’t upset yourself,’ Ellie told her gently, looking anxiously at Gideon as she did so. He gave her a small negative shake of his head that Hettie was too distressed to notice.

‘I wanted John to be here. I shall hate him for ever now that he has not come,’ she announced pettishly, oblivious to Ellie’s sigh and the despairing look she exchanged with Gideon.

Correctly interpreting his wife’s glance, Gideon put his arm around Hettie and turned her to face him. ‘There is obviously a very good reason why John could not be here, Hettie,’ he told her sombrely.

He and Ellie had discussed at some length the shocking telephone call they had received from John telling them of the accident and insisting that they were not to say a word to Hettie about it so as to avoid spoiling her special day. Ellie typically had been torn between her love for Hettie and her anxiety for her young brother, but in the end she had agreed to abide by John’s wishes.

TEN

‘Mr Buchanan, may I ask you something, please?’

‘Of course, Hettie my dear. Did I tell you how very pleased I am with you, by the way? Several of the ladies have commented most favourably on your choice of songs as well as your voice.’

Hettie gave him a small nervous smile.

It was over two weeks now since she had made her debut at the Adelphi, and two more frocks had been added to her wardrobe, via a shopping trip with Connie. Connie had wanted to treat her niece to something special after her successful debut and Hettie reluctantly agreed, but only after Connie said it would be an early Christmas gift from her.

They had gone to George Henry Lee’s where Connie had bought her a modern sleeveless silky dress in green with white spots on it, its neckline dipping to a ‘V’ at both front and back, trimmed with white braid with its dropped waist also sashed in white. Plus a second dress – in deep cornflower blue, with a big white collar and pin tucking all down the front – which they found reduced in price because of a small mark on the back which Connie had said could easily be removed. The advantage of their choices was that Hettie was able to wear her white t-bar shoes, and her long white gloves, with both frocks.

She tried to tell herself that if John wanted to be nasty and not get in touch to explain why he had not come to her debut, then that was his affair, and she certainly wasn’t going to waste her time worrying about it. But she had been upset and a part of her still was.

Mr Buchanan was patting her arm, and Hettie longed to move away from him.

‘I have applauded Mrs Buchanan, my dear helpmate and wife, for her excellent choice. You are a pleasure to have around, my dear, unlike your ungrateful predecessor. Now, what is it you wish to ask me? If you wanted my opinion on whether or not you should add another song to your repertoire, then…’

‘No, it isn’t that.’ Hettie stopped him hastily, taking a deep breath before plunging doggedly into the speech she had been rehearsing all week. ‘When Mrs Buchanan spoke with my mother, she told us that once I was singing here at the Adelphi you would give me the whole of my wages, less my bed and board, and not just a small amount of spending money because then I would not have to pay for any lessons.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, it has been two weeks now and I have not had any wages…’

Mr Buchanan had started to scowl at her and Hettie could feel her stomach churning nervously. ‘I see. Well, yes of course you must have your wages, Hettie, since you have been promised them. But I am surprised that my good lady wife seems to have forgotten to have told you that there are certain expenses that have to be deducted from them first.’

‘Expenses?’ Hettie faltered.

‘Indeed. There is the cost of your sheet music for one thing, and then the cost of the room we use to practise, plus the refreshments you have.’

Hettie could feel her spirits sinking lower with every word he spoke. Her spending money had not even covered the cost of her food and she knew that without the good-hearted generosity of the other girls many a night she could have gone to bed on an empty stomach. She had been looking forward not just to having a little bit more money in her pocket but also to repaying them for their generosity, but now, from what Mr Buchanan was saying to her, it looked as though she was not going to be any better off.

‘There, Hettie, I can see how glum you are looking. You are a good girl and I don’t want to see you upset. Let me have a little think and see if there isn’t some way we can make things a bit better for you. It is a pleasure to have the company of such a pretty, biddable girl, and I dare say you know how to make a man appreciate your beauty to its full, my dear. But no saying anything to Mrs Buchanan, mind, she will chastise me if she thinks that I am being over generous to you.’ Smiling genially at her, Mr Buchanan slid his hand down her back to her bottom and very determinedly squeezed one cheek, causing Hettie to cry out in protest and jump away from him.

‘Now, Hettie, that wasn’t very appreciative of you,’ he chided her sharply. ‘I had looked for a more grateful response to my generosity. We will say no more about it on this occasion but I hope you will remember in future that if I am to be generous to you, then you will have to be correspondingly generous to me. Ah, poor child, I can see that I have upset you. Come here and let me make you feel better.’

To Hettie’s horror, he had grabbed hold of her before she could escape, forcing her back against the piano with the weight of his body. She could feel his moist, panting breath against her neck, and as she tried to push past his restraining arm he put his free hand on her breast, and squeezed it.

No man had ever attempted such an intimacy with her and nor had she ever imagined that they might do so. Ellie had been a loving and very protective mother, anxious, although Hettie did not realise it, to safeguard her children from the unhappiness and danger she herself had experienced as a young girl, vulnerable and alone after her mother’s death.

Hettie felt close to fainting. The sensation of Mr Buchanan’s slack wet mouth pressing against her skin made her feel sick with loathing.

‘I knew you would be a hot-blooded little thing. I’ve heard how you orientals know a thing or two about pleasing a man.’ Mr Buchanan was panting. ‘Come, my dear, and give me your hand and let me find pleasure in your hold…’

Mr Buchanan’s voice had gone thick and both it and he were shaking with excitement as he pressed his body into hers, Hettie recognised in trembling fear. He was plucking, no tearing at the fabric of her blouse, and her breast hurt from his rough handling of it.

‘Mr Buchanan. No…Please, let me go,’ she begged him frantically, but instead of obeying her he simply grunted and pushed himself harder against her.

Her head had begun to swim with panic, a horrible cold, weakening feeling taking her strength, and Hettie was mortally afraid that she might actually faint and be left to his mercy. But then to her relief someone started to turn the door handle of the practice room and, with a speed that astonished her, Mr Buchanan not only released her but stepped away from her, smoothing the black strands of hair over his forehead and keeping his back to the door as he intoned, ‘Yes. As I was saying, Hettie, about adding another song…’

When he broke off, feigning surprise at the entrance of the housekeeper, Hettie took advantage of her opportunity to escape, hurrying out of the room, not caring that her housekeeper might think her behaviour odd.

She was still trembling several minutes later when she had left the hotel and was standing on Lime Street, longing for the comfort of Ellie’s arms around her and her soothing voice assuring her that what had happened would never happen to her again.

Mr Buchanan had mentioned her red dress, though, and she hadn’t forgotten how angry John had been when he had seen her wearing it. Was it somehow her own fault that Mr Buchanan had behaved the way he had? He had certainly given her to understand that it was.

Her head ached and she felt sick. If she couldn’t go home to Ellie then at least she could telephone her. There was a public telephone box in the station and she hurried over to it, pulling open the heavy door and stepping inside.

When the telephonist asked her what number she required, she was trembling so much she could hardly speak, but at last she managed to say the number. Gripping the receiver with one hand and her money ready in the other, Hettie waited for someone to answer.

When at last they did it wasn’t, as she had hoped, Ellie’s voice she heard but instead that of Mrs Jennings, her cook-come-housekeeper.

‘Oh what a shame, Hettie, yer ma and pa have gorn up to the Lakes,’ she told Hettie.

Tears filled Hettie’s eyes. She replaced the receiver and walked back to Lime Street, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life.

John re-read the letter he had just written, and then got up to go and stand at the cottage door and look across the airfield. At the far end where the flying machine hangar had once stood, there was now a pile of twisted metal and charred rubble, all that remained of his hopes and dreams.

He had attended the funerals of each of the young men who had lost their lives, and suffered the accusatory looks of their families at every one. He could have defended himself from them by pointing out that the person responsible for their deaths was not him but one of their own friends, but what was the point now with them dead and their families already burdened with the pain of their grief? He had no wish to add to it by telling them that they had brought the deaths on themselves by breaking the rules.

Far worse, though, had been Jim’s funeral. He and Jim had been friends for almost half of John’s life. It had been Jim who had tolerated his questions and curiosity when, as a young boy, he had hung around him and the other men with their flying machines, coaxing Jim to tell him everything he knew about them. Jim had been the best of men and the best of friends, and John knew he would never forgive himself for what had happened to him.

As soon as Gideon and Ellie returned from the Lakes, John intended to tell them he was leaving the area. He knew Gideon and Ellie understood why he had insisted Hettie was not to be told about what had happened, and that he had not wanted to spoil her debut with his own dreadful news. She had probably not even missed him anyway, he decided bitterly, not with all the admirers she no doubt had now, paying her compliments and wanting to walk out with her. Hettie was young. She wanted fun and laughter, and they were the last things he felt like right now.

In fact, he felt as though he had the cares of the world on his shoulders. Even if he had had the money to do so, at this moment he had neither the heart nor the stomach for starting again and building another flying school here.

He couldn’t stay here because if he did there would never be a day when he didn’t look across to the charred ruin and know that, if he hadn’t selfishly agreed to go and listen to Hettie singing, because he had been so desperate to see her, four foolish young men and his best friend would still be alive.

The blame wasn’t Hettie’s – how could it be? – but it was his for putting his desire to see her before his duty.

The letter he had just finished writing was a request to Alfred asking if the job he had mentioned to him was still open. The sooner he was away from this place and its painful memories the better.

‘Gawd, ’Ettie, yer look like you’ve been bawling yer eyes out, what’s up?’

Hettie had hoped that she would have the attic room to herself as she returned to the boarding house, but she had forgotten that Mavis had had a fall-out with the producer and was currently understudying, which meant she was refusing to go to the theatre for rehearsals.

‘It’s nothing,’ she mumbled.

‘Nothing? Give over, come on, what’s to do? Old man Buchanan hasn’t been trying it on wiv yer, has he?’

Hettie promptly burst into tears and within less than five minutes Mavis had dragged the whole sorry story out of her.

‘Ee, he’s a right nasty piece of work, doing that to yer. Only that’s the way it is in this business! But keeping yer wages back, so as to get yer to give ’im what he wants…That’s right mean, that is. Ee ’Ettie, yer didn’t let him have his way wiv yer, did yer?’

‘No.’ Hettie told her vehemently as she shuddered at the very thought of the man.

‘Well that’s all right then, lass. Now dry them tears and I’ll tell yer what yer have to do.’

Obediently Hettie did as she was instructed whilst Mavis settled herself comfortably on her bed and lit up a cigarette, in flagrant breach of one of Mrs Marshall’s most stringent rules.

‘Now listen to me, the next time he tries anyfink like that on yer, yer ’as ter to tell him that you’re going straight to Mrs B to tell ’er what he’s doing.’

Hettie gazed at her in disbelief. ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’

‘Yer won’t have to,’ Mavis assured her with a grin. ‘All yer have to do is say it like yer mean it, that will put the s…the fear of God right up him,’ she amended hastily.

‘But what about my wages?’ Hettie asked her miserably.

‘Aye, well I fink yer can kiss goodbye to them, ’Ettie. His missus might call him ter order for messin’ wiv yer, but she won’t be willing to hand over yer money. Tight arsed old bat. Oh, and ’ere’s another tip for yer. Allus carry an ’at pin wiv yer…’

Hettie’s forehead crinkled in confusion.

‘Yer sticks it into any fella who gets too frisky wiv yer,’ Mavis explained patiently. ‘Works every time, especially if yer sticks it into his best friend.’

Hettie’s confusion deepened. ‘But why would sticking it into his friend help if he’s the one…’

When Mavis burst into raucous laughter, Hettie gave her a pink-cheeked look of enquiry.

‘Oh, ’Ettie. Gawd but yer wet behind the ears, aren’t yer. A man’s best friend is his old man.’

When Hettie still looked confused, Mavis heaved a large sigh and said, ‘’Ettie, afore you came here how much exactly did yer ma tell yer about the birds and the bees?’

Hettie’s face grew even hotter. ‘I know where babies come from, if that’s what you mean,’ she said quellingly.

But if she had expected to stop Mavis from laughing she was disappointed because instead Mavis laughed even harder, pausing eventually to wipe the tears of mirth from her eyes and to splutter, ‘Aye, but do yer know how they gets there in the first place?’

When Hettie continued to blush Mavis told her in a more kindly voice, ‘Well, his best friend, or his old man, is what a chap puts into yer…well, yer privates. It’s down there his privates are, like. He’s got his old man and his balls, and we’ve got our privates and they fit together like they was made for one another. Which they was, of course,’ she announced matter of factly.

‘First time he does it, he teks yer virginity,’ she continued, ‘and that can ’urt a fair bit if he’s a bit rough, like, but after that it can feel good like as well,’ Mavis revealed fairly. ‘Specially if yer sweet on him, like. Anyway, it’s his old man that gives yer what babies come from. So that’s why if yer lets one of ’em have his way with yer, yer have to be careful to mek sure he doesn’t leave it inside yer.’

Hettie had been nodding her head vigorously throughout this explanation but the truth was that she wasn’t very much the wiser. What she did know, however, was that the thought of any man, but most of all Mr Buchanan, attempting to put his ‘best friend’ into her ‘privates’ was one she found thoroughly disgusting.

Later on, when the other girls had returned, Mavis insisted on telling them all what had befallen Hettie.

‘Poor little kid,’ Lizzie sympathised with her. ‘He wants it chopping off, he does. So what are yer going to do if they don’t give yer yer wages, then, ’Ettie?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hettie admitted.

She had had time now to rethink her first frightened impulse to tell her mother what had happened. She knew that Ellie’s reaction would be to insist she came home, and that wasn’t really what she wanted to do. Besides, the other girls had laughed her out of her fear now and made the whole situation somehow seem so much less frightening. And, of course, she felt so very grown up having been admitted to that world where she knew all about the kind of things that young girls did not know about.

‘Well, if you do want to earn a bit extra money, Hettie, Jack at the chop house was saying that he was desperate for someone to help clear the tables and wash up,’ Babs told her. ‘I’all have a word with him for you, if you like. It won’t be much money and it will be hard work, mind,’ she cautioned as Hettie’s face immediately lit up.

‘I don’t mind that,’ Hettie assured her. In fact, she wouldn’t mind anything so long as it helped to made up her lost wages and meant that she didn’t have to worry about the prospect of Mr Buchanan pushing his ‘best friend’ into her.

‘I’ll have a word with him for you, then,’ Babs promised her, adding quietly so that only Hettie could hear, ‘And as for what Mavis has been telling you, later on when it’s a bit quieter, you and me are going to have a proper talk about that, Hettie.’

‘So you’re definitely going to take this job, then, John?’ Gideon asked quietly as Ellie poured her younger brother a fresh cup of tea.

John had arrived unannounced at the house Gideon owned in the Lake District just over half an hour ago to tell them that he had been to see Alfred, and it had now been agreed that he would take over his new duties as the chief flying instructor at the club in just over a month’s time.

‘Yes,’ John confirmed tersely before adding, ‘I know you don’t want to sell the land we bought, Gideon.’

‘There’s no need for you to worry about that, John. I dare say we can lease it to a farmer for the time being.’

‘I’d like to have some kind of memorial plaque put on it once all the mess has been cleared away. It’s the least I can do for Jim. He didn’t deserve to die like that, and it’s my fault that he did.’

Ellie made a small sound of distress and put her hand on his arm. ‘John, you must not say that. There was nothing you could have done. The other students all confirmed that Alan Simms was a very headstrong and reckless young man who had made it plain that nothing was going to stop him from taking up a flying machine and making good his boast that he already knew everything there was to know about flying and didn’t need to listen to either you or Jim. Didn’t they? You said so yourself.’

‘But don’t you see? If I’d been there, Alan wouldn’t have been able to take the machine in the first place because I would have been using it for a lesson,’ John protested in an anguished voice.

‘On that occasion maybe,’ Gideon intervened firmly. ‘But by all accounts he was the kind of young fool who would have kept on until he got what he wanted. The pity of it is that he managed to persuade three other young idiots to go with him and, even worse, that the machine crashed onto the hangar and killed poor Jim. But none of that is your fault, John, and if you take my advice you must accept that.’

‘Hettie was very distressed that you weren’t there at her debut as she had hoped,’ Ellie told him.

‘You didn’t tell her…what happened, or about Jim?’ John immediately asked anxiously. ‘I know how much this singing business means to her and I didn’t want to spoil it for her with bad news.’

‘No. We did as you had begged us to, John, and said nothing,’ Gideon assured him.

‘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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