Hettie of Hope Street (10 page)

‘I don't know,' Hettie admitted. ‘It just felt right.'

A serious look crossed Jenny's face. ‘Did it an' all. Well, that's what we call having greasepaint
in yer blood, 'Ettie, when yer just know how to play to an audience…'

Greasepaint in her blood. Hettie exhaled happily as she sat on the banquette almost half asleep. The sound of the applause she had received for her evening's and final performance was still ringing blissfully in her ears.

‘Mary Jane' had made another visit to the dressing room after the second show, his pale blue gaze raking down the line of undressing girls until, or so it seemed to Hettie, it came to rest on the girl behind whom she had concealed herself. He hadn't said a word, simply standing there before turning on his heel and going back to the door where he had paused to turn round and say coldly, ‘I meant what I said earlier.'

‘Thank 'eavens Lizzie's coming back tomorrow,' Jess had muttered as she wiped off her stage make-up, ‘otherwise he'd sack the bloody lot of us.'

‘Well, I don't see why he should, just because Hettie sings better than lardy face Amy.'

‘Much you know, then, because she's our Mary Jane's cousin, that's wot!'

‘Come on, sleepy head, let's get you back and into yer bed,' Hettie heard Babs saying affectionately.

Of course, when Lizzie returned she had to be told the whole story, including Hettie's triumph and Mary Jane's dictat.

‘Oh, Hettie, I am so grateful to you,' she exclaimed as she laughed and hugged Hettie and told them all how her sister was.

‘Well, 'Ettie does have a lovely voice, Lizzie, and no mistake, but she's never going to make a proper hoofer,' Jenny opined.

‘Mebbe not, but it's a shame with a voice like that, Hettie, that you aren't on the stage yourself instead of just singing at the Adelphi,' Lizzie, who was now far more kind and friendly towards Hettie, announced.

The same thought had crossed Hettie's own mind. She had got such a buzz from performing on stage, which was nothing like how she felt singing at the Adelphi. The thought of returning to sing in front of the genteel ladies there filled her with an unexpected gloom.

She craved the attention, the excitement of the stage again. But she knew that she had had a hard enough time convincing Ellie and Gideon to let her sing at the hotel and they would never give their approval for her to join the chorus line. Aunt Amelia would never let them live it down!

‘The fancy pants at the third table on the right just asked me to give you this.'

Hettie blushed as the waiter handed her the small, carefully folded note. It was a month now since she had first started to sing at the Adelphi and in that time she had already received several notes from gentlemen who had heard her sing and
then requested the pleasure of being allowed to offer her some refreshment.

Hettie had, of course, always refused these approaches, having been warned by the other girls that her admirers had a more devious purpose in mind than sharing a mere cup of china tea. But this particular gentleman had sat at the same table every afternoon for the past week, his gaze fixed on her and never moving from her whilst she sang.

Naturally, she had pretended not to be aware of his attention on her, and also naturally she had been. Who would not? For one thing he was exceptionally handsome, with his slightly olive-toned skin, thick black hair, and oddly piercing dark eyes. And rich, too, by all accounts. Certainly the head waiter seemed to think so.

‘An American gentleman he is, and he's got the best suite in the hotel. Says he's here on business but he ain't said what manner of business he's in.'

All in all there seemed to be an exciting air of mystery surrounding Mr Jay Dalhousie.

Hettie read his note as she hurried upstairs to change out of her dress and into her street clothes, wondering what on earth he could mean by the words, ‘There is a business proposition I would like to put before you.'

Whatever it was, she could not possibly accept his invitation to have dinner with him.

The room the housekeeper had allocated to Hettie to change in was up several flights of stairs and next to the maids' quarters. She hurried into
it, closing the door which did not possess a lock behind her.

She had just removed her dress when she heard the door opening. Clutching her dress to her body, she turned round expecting the intruder to be one of the maids, but to her horror instead it was Mr Buchanan, his face red and shiny, and his breathing laboured.

‘Getting ready to meet your lover, are you, you little jade. Well, he shall not have you until I have had my fill of you. Did you think I couldn't see what was going on? How he looked at you…' As he spoke he was coming toward her,
launching
himself at her, Hettie recognised, as she made a panic-stricken attempt to evade him and get to the door.

For a short, overweight man he was surprisingly light on his feet and as he guessed what Hettie was trying to do he hurried to place himself between her and the door.

‘You have enflamed me beyond all endurance with your mock modest looks and your wanton body. I must have you. I shall have you…'

He was mad, Hettie decided, terrified as he lunged towards her and his fingers clawed into the silk of her dress as she held it in front of her. She screamed as she heard the fabric rip, but her terror only seemed to increase his ardour. Words she had never heard before but whose meaning was shockingly plain fell from his lips along with his spittle. His face was so red and shinily tight that Hettie thought his skin might actually split.

‘See what you have done to me,' he told her thickly, his hand going to his own body as he tore at his trouser buttons.

Panic filled Hettie. Instinctively she turned her head so that she wouldn't have to see what he was doing.

‘Look at it. Look at it, you little whore. Look! You will look at it, and you will feel it mastering you and teaching you a well-deserved lesson.'

If only she could get to the door. Hettie started to inch towards it, shaking with relief as her fingers found the edge of it. If she could just pull it open and then slip through it…

‘Whore. Whore…Why do you give yourself to him and not to me?'

Hettie screamed as he saw what she was doing and tried to slam the door shut on her hand with the weight of his body whilst his other hand tore at the fragile strap of her petticoat, his nails leaving raised marks on the white skin of her breast.

‘Please, Mr Buchanan, you must not do this,' she begged him in terror. ‘I have not given myself to anyone.'

‘Liar! I saw the way he looked at you today. I saw the note he passed to you. A note that no doubt contained all manner of lewd thoughts and suggestions…'

‘No. No, you are wrong.'

Hettie could feel his hot sour breath on her face and then on her throat. Something that looked like
a fat white grub was dangling from the opening in his trousers.

Hettie's stomach heaved.

‘You must go away and let me get dressed,' she told him. ‘Otherwise I shall tell Mrs Buchanan.'

‘Tell her, then, for I have to have you, Hettie. I cannot sleep for my need of you.'

He was gabbling now, a wild look in his eyes. Hettie panicked. She had thought the mention of his wife would stop him in his tracks but he was evidently beyond that. Hettie could hear footsteps on the stairs outside the door, and two girls talking. She could see Mr Buchanan looking warily towards the door, and she took advantage of his momentary lapse in concentration to pull it open and slip through it.

The housemaids on their way down the stairs stared open-mouthed at her dishevelment, but Hettie didn't care. There was no way she would risk going back for her day clothes, Hettie decided shakily as she pulled on her dress and hurried down the steps, far too terrified to look back in case she should see Mr Buchanan coming after her.

‘It has been the loveliest time here, Gideon dearest.'

‘Aye, I own I shall be sorry to leave and go back to Winckley Square.'

Ellie and Gideon were seated in the garden of their Lake District house, enjoying the view out over the lake itself.

‘By, Ellie, I never thought when I used to work as a drover for your uncle that one day I would have me own place up here.'

Ellie smiled lovingly as he took her hand in his.

‘We have been so blessed, my love,' she told him gently. ‘Connie and I have been lucky enough to find happiness and love. I wish that John might do the same. He has taken this tragedy very hard, Gideon.'

‘Aye, he blames himself for what happened.'

‘But why should he blame himself? It was not his fault.'

Gideon sighed. ‘It's part of what comes with being a man, Ellie my love. The responsibility, the duty. And John
is
now a man.'

‘He is also my brother and I wish he was not going to live and work in Oxfordshire. It's so very far away.'

‘Always the little mother, eh Ellie.'

She laughed. ‘I cannot forget that they suffered so cruelly when our mother died. Oh…' She gasped as suddenly a spasm of pain seized her.

Gideon demanded sharply, ‘Ellie, what is it?'

Her face had gone pale and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. ‘I – I don't know.'

Another pain seized her and she cried out and tried to stand up. As Gideon rushed to help her, she gasped, ‘Gideon, I think it's the baby, but it is much too soon.'

Beneath her loose thin summer dress Gideon could see the gentle swelling of her belly suddenly
contort and fear filled him. Ellie was gasping and moaning, leaning heavily on him as the pain seized her.

‘Ellie. We must get you back to the house…'

The pain came in black waves edged with jagged red teeth that tore into her body, savaging it in surge after surge of red-hot agony. She cried out against it and tried to escape from it, but there was no escape. She could smell blood and the visceral scent stirred memories that knifed her with fear. She cried out for Iris and then for her mother as nature tore the life from within her womb and destroyed it.

‘Oh Hettie, you poor little love. Don't worry about your frock, Cissy in wardrobe will be able to mend it for you so as you'd never know it had been torn. But from now on you'll have to go to the hotel wearing your singing dress.'

Hettie gulped and sniffed, the near hysterical state of distress in which she had arrived back at the lodging house calmed by the practical concern of the other girls as she sobbed out her story to them.

‘But what about when I have to go to practice, and it's just the two of us in the room?' Hettie whispered shakily as she kept the cotton pad soaked in witchhazel one of the girls had made for her pressed to her scratches.

‘If I was you I'd go and have a quiet word with
the housekeeper. Tell her that yer can't abide closed doors and that yer come over all faint because of them. Ask her if yer can have one of them pieces of wood wot yer slide under 'em to keep the door open – if she's got anything about 'er she'll know well enough why you want the door open.'

‘'Ere,' one of the girls suddenly called out urgently, ‘looks like there's going to be a new lodger.'

All the girls including Hettie crowded round the small window to look down into the street at the woman who was about to mount the steps to the front door.

‘That's Mrs Buchanan,' Hettie gasped.

‘You mean that's his wife?'

Hettie nodded her head.

‘Well, you said as how old Misery Guts is her sister, didn't you, Hettie, so like as not she's just come on a visit,' Babs said comfortingly. But Hettie couldn't help feeling apprehensive.

‘'E's the one who's done wrong, Hettie, not you,' Lizzie pointed out robustly.

They could all see how anxious Hettie looked.

Five minutes later, the door to their room opened and the grubby tweeny maid, whose adenoids gave her problems, snuffled thickly, ‘Hettie Walker, you're to go downstairs this instant, on account of Mrs Buchanan is here to see you.'

Hettie gave her friends an anguished, imploring look and whispered shakily, ‘I don't want to go.'

‘You'd best go down and see what she wants, Hettie love,' Babs told her gruffly, adding more firmly, ‘And mind you tell her what he did to you.'

Hettie was shaking from head to foot by the time she had followed the tweeny back down the stairs and along the hallway.

There was no need for her to knock on the parlour door because it was already open. Mrs Buchanan was standing there waiting for her, her face set in an expression of cold fury.

‘So what have you to say for yourself about your disgraceful behaviour then, Miss Walker?' Mrs Buchanan demanded as she dragged Hettie into the room and closed the door behind her.

‘I…'

‘I could scarcely believe my ears when my dear husband informed me of his shocking discovery that you have been encouraging the attentions of a hotel guest. Indeed, more than encouraging them. Your mother assured me that you were a respectable young woman and now I find that you are anything but. How dare you behave in such a fashion and bring disrepute on respectable professional people? My husband could scarcely bring himself to tell me of the lewdness of the embrace in which he caught you – alone in an hotel room with a gentleman to whom, not a hour before, he had witnessed you secretly passing a note, no doubt to make the disgusting assignation.'

Mrs Buchanan's bosom heaved as she shuddered and then impaled Hettie with furious glare.

‘That is not true!' Hettie burst out indignantly.

‘What, you impudent hussy? You
dare
to deny my husband's accusation? When you were caught in the very act,
en déshabillé
, with a man holding you in his embrace? Mr Buchanan says that he had questioned one of the waiters who had confirmed that notes were passed between you.'