Hettie of Hope Street (33 page)

‘Hettie, what's
wrong
with you? You used to be such fun to be with' Jay objected irritably.

Obediently Hettie forced herself to smile, but the thought crossed her mind that, increasingly when she was with Jay, she was having to pretend she felt differently than she actually did in order to please and placate him.

‘This time next week we shall be embarking at Southampton and on our way to New York.'

Hettie's smile was genuine now. She was as eager as Jay to leave London behind and start their new shared life together.

It seemed that every day more of the new clothes Jay had ordered for her were being delivered to his Ritz apartment, where the new trunks he had also bought for her were waiting ready to receive them.

Jay had planned a big farewell dinner the night before they left for Southampton, to which he had invited everyone involved with
Princess Geisha
,
and, although she knew she should be looking forward to the dinner, Hettie was dreading it.

For one thing Eddie would not be there, and there would be other absent faces she would miss as well: Babs, who had been such a good friend to her but who had turned against her; and Mary, who, although she was now recovering from her illegal abortion, was still too weak to return to work and had instead gone to stay with a cousin who kept a guest house in Blackpool.

The same fate that had befallen Mary must not befall her, Hettie warned herself. But what if it did? What would she do? What
could
she do? Jay had said that he loved her, but he was a married man after all.

Somehow Jay's reaction to Eddie's death had planted a small seed of doubt inside Hettie's heart about him. Sometimes he could display a ruthlessness that shocked her. But he
had
rescued her from Harvey Meyerbrock, she reminded herself, and when they were out together he always treated her like a lady and was wonderfully protective, even if she had seen from the looks in other people's eyes that they recognised she was not due the respect they would have accorded a married woman.

In America it would be different, Hettie assured herself. After all, Jay had told her that it would be. Only yesterday she had made some purchases of her own for her forthcoming trip, whisper-fine silk camisoles and delicately pleated French knickers in palest peaches and creams, lavishly trimmed
with Chantilly lace. Brassieres and silk stockings, a bed jacket in ecru trimmed with swansdown, and a breathtakingly beautiful satin nightgown with a matching peignoir.

Jay had told her that when they got to New York he would buy her sables for New York's cold winters, and then he had shocked and delighted her when he had whispered to her that he would lie her naked upon a sable robe and make love to her.

‘You blush so delightfully, little Hettie,' he had whispered to her as he kissed her. ‘For sure those blushes will light our whole cabin the first night we are together. And you need not fear that I will be unkind when I take your maidenhead, Hettie. Your only cries will be those of sweet pleasure.'

Even now, remembering his thick impassioned words, her blood sang hotly and wantonly through her veins and her breath came a little faster. But even when she was wanting Jay with such reckless and urgent excitement a small part of her hung back in anxious fear and shame, as she thought about how Ellie and Gideon would feel if they knew what she was doing. And what John would think.

John, who had sent her the kindest and most compassionate of letters in response to her own to him. So kind, in fact, that it brought tears to her eyes now just to think of it.

‘I have some business to attend to,' she heard Jay telling her. ‘But we can meet later for tea at
Fortnum & Mason's, Hettie. I haven't forgotten that there was a very pretty hat there that suited you particularly well,' he added indulgently.

Hettie shook her head and told him firmly, ‘I have enough hats already, Jay.'

‘'Ettie, there's bin a telephone call for you and you are to ring back immediately,' Jenny announced importantly the moment Hettie walked into the dressing room.

‘Yes,' Jess chimed in. ‘It were from your dad and…'

Gideon? A huge, sharp-nailed fist seized her stomach in a cramping grip. Hettie could think of only one reason why Gideon would telephone her and leave such a message. Ellie was still a month off her due time and, although Ellie had written the happiest and most reassuring of letters to her, Hettie had been secretly worrying that something might go amiss with this baby as it had done with the poor little one Ellie had lost.

Now it seemed her dreadful fears might be confirmed.

‘What did he say?' she demanded. ‘Did he leave a message? Did he…'

‘'E said as how you was to ring home urgently,' Jenny repeated. But as Hettie whirled round and headed for the dressing room door, Jenny insisted, ‘'Ere 'Ettie, you can't do it now. We're about to go on for rehearsal.'

But Hettie wasn't listening. Jay wasn't in his
office which meant that it would be locked so she could not use the telephone in there, and she certainly wasn't going to ask Ivan if she could use the telephone in his office. But there was a public telephone box in Piccadilly Circus, and Hettie ran out of the theatre, dodging in and out of the press of people thronging the streets, her heart pounding with sick despair.

To her relief the telephone box was empty. She hurried inside and picked up the receiver, asking the telephonist who answered her to put her through to Preston's telephone exchange. Her hands were trembling so much that she dropped the pennies she needed to pay for the call. As she bent down to pick them up she heard the telephone whirring and clicking and then a voice with the familiar Preston accent asking her what number she required. Anxiously Hettie told her.

‘I'm sorry but the line is busy,' the operator informed her.

‘But I must speak to my father. My mother. I
have
to speak to them,' Hettie told her tearfully.

‘'Old on a minute, dearie, I'll see what I can do.'

There were more clicks and silences and then suddenly Hettie heard Gideon's tired and strained voice.

‘Oh Da, it's me, Hettie. I've just got your message. What's happened? Mam…Is she…'

‘Ellie's very weak, Hettie, and she's asking for you. The baby came early, a little girl. Ellie has
been through a right bad time of it and she's afraid that the baby won't thrive on account of her being early and so small.'

Hettie could hear the exhaustion and the tears in Gideon's voice. ‘She wants you to come home, Hettie. We need you. Ellie needs you, and so too does the new baby.'

‘Hettie, are you still there?'

‘I'm here, Da,' Hettie assured him shakily as she struggled to take in what she was hearing.

Ellie. Her mother was asking for her. Ellie and the new baby needed her.

But in five days' time she was due to leave England for New York, and the exciting new life waiting for her there. A life where she would be able to show the world how well she could sing. A life she had spent the last six months working towards. A life that included Jay and Jay's love. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her face to splash unregarded on the black Bakelite telephone.

‘You don't mean that.' Jay's voice harsh with shock filled the tense space of the trunk-filled room.

Hettie hung her head, her own voice low and trembling. ‘Yes, Jay, I do mean it,' she told him. ‘I have to go home to be with my mother.'

‘I'm not going to let you go,' Jay told her angrily. ‘For Chrissake, Hettie, use some sense. Sure right now your mother isn't too well. But you
wait and see, a couple of months from now she'll be fine. Hell, if it helps I'll even pay for a nurse to make sure that she is.' He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘But what I am
not
prepared to do is to rearrange my plans so that you can go and hang around her sick bed taking care of some mewling brat.'

When Hettie recoiled he looked at her angrily.

‘Aw come on, Hettie. Don't try to bamboozle me that this kid really matters to you. It isn't even a blood relation. And besides, you've got more important things to worry about than an ailing step-mother.'

Hettie stared at him, unable to comprehend how he could be so unfeeling. Couldn't he understand that nothing could be more important to her right now than being with Ellie? She had expected him to be irritated by her decision not to travel to New York when they had planned, but she had assumed that once he had calmed down he would reorganise their sailing dates, thus giving her time to be with Ellie when she most needed her.

But Jay wasn't merely irritated. He was furiously and implacably angry, more angry in fact than Hettie had ever seen him. Tears filled her eyes and, seeing them, Jay cursed beneath his breath and came over to her.

‘Hettie, honey, I can see that you're upset, but listen to me and trust me. I promise you I know what I'm doing. Sure, if we weren't due to leave next week you could take some time off to be with
your ma, but right now that just isn't possible. We've got more important things to do. New York is waiting for us. I've arranged meetings, made plans…

‘This is your big chance, Hettie, our big chance, and if you turn it down there won't ever be another one. You once told me that singing was as important to you as breathing.'

How was it possible for words to hurt as much as though they were sharp stones, Hettie wondered miserably. ‘But…but Ellie needs me. She's been asking for me. Surely you can understand how I feel?' she appealed to him.

‘No, I'm not sure that I can,' Jay told her shockingly. ‘You see, Hettie, I thought that you and I, we were two of a kind. I thought we shared the same outlook on life, the same kind of ambition, the same kind of hunger for success. But now seemingly you're telling me that you're prepared to throw all that away for the sake of a woman who isn't even your real mother.'

‘But she needs me.' Hettie wept.

Jay shrugged coldly, ‘Sometimes in life we have to make hard choices, Hettie, and let me tell you that if your career means as much to you as I thought it did you wouldn't even think twice. Sure you're upset and worried, but you can be just as upset and worried in New York.'

‘I owe Ellie and Gideon so much…'

‘And what about what you owe me?' Jay demanded savagely. ‘Or haven't you thought about
that? I've put one hell of a lot on the line for you, Hettie. I've called in favours and swung deals, taken risks to get you top billing in a show like no other that New York has ever seen. And that costs.'

‘Is
that
why you want me to go to bed with you?' Hettie suddenly heard herself asking him in an unfamiliar, tight, cold little voice she hardly recognised as her own.

A small ugly silence followed her words and then Jay drawled unpleasantly, ‘Well, I sure as hell wouldn't be laying out the money for gowns from Worth and Chanel for you if I wasn't looking forward to having the pleasure of taking them off you, Hettie. No investment is ever interest free, and I guess you could say that you are my little bonus payment to myself.'

Hettie stared at him in shock as the meaning of his words dripped into her heart like icy poison.

‘So you didn't…You don't
really
love me at all,' she managed to say, white-faced.

‘Do you love me?' Jay shot back. ‘Because it seems to me that if you did, it would be our future together you'd put first, Hettie.'

‘Jay, all I'm asking is that you delay our sailing for a month,' Hettie pleaded with him. She couldn't believe she was actually hearing what he was saying to her. She didn't want to believe it, Hettie admitted to herself.

Although she had been apprehensive about telling Jay that she wanted to go home for a week
or so to be with Ellie, she had never imagined that he would react like this. Yes, it was true that she had recognised he was not always a compassionate man, but she had believed that their own relationship was special and that he genuinely cared for her.

‘And I'm telling you that either we sail next week together or I sail back to New York without you. There are plenty of singers who'll jump at the chance you're being given, Hettie,' he warned her.

Hettie lifted her head and looked at him. ‘Yes, I'm sure there are,' she agreed quietly.

The harshness started to leave Jay's face. ‘That's a sensible girl,' he approved, patting her arm. ‘I knew you would see sense in the end. Why don't we go out and have another look at that pretty diamond necklace we were looking at the other day?' he added softly as he bent his head to kiss her.

Tears burned at the back of Hettie's throat and eyes. She longed to throw herself into his arms and to feel him cover her mouth with his own; to feel him sweep away all her doubts and fears and to take her and burn them away from her in the fierce heat of his possession. Her body ached and hungered for that so desperately that it hurt.

Closing her eyes Hettie clung to Jay and kissed him back as fiercely as he was kissing her. She could feel the heavy, uneven thud of his heart as though it were trying to beat within her own body
as well as his. She could feel too the shallow excited counter pattern of her own heart racing.

‘I knew you'd see sense,' Jay whispered exultantly against her mouth.

Hettie kept her eyes closed, wanting to steal just a few seconds more happiness. And then she opened them and stepped back from him, her voice brave but her heart bleak with pain as she told him, ‘I won't be going to New York with you, Jay. I've already booked my train ticket and I'm leaving for home tomorrow morning…'

The train journey seemed to take for ever, and the fact that she had had to pack everything and bring it home with her meant that she had to wait for a hackney carriage instead of being able to run straight home. But now at last she was here.

The door opened and Gideon was standing there, looking thinner and worried but his arms still opened to hold her as Hettie hurled herself into them, sobbing, ‘Da. Oh Da…'

‘Hettie, lass. I'm right glad you've come back,' Gideon, told her gruffly as he held her tightly. ‘Ellie has never stopped asking for you.'

‘How is she?' Hettie asked urgently.

‘She scared us all half to death,' Gideon replied without answering her question. ‘She kept on saying that the cheese she'd eaten for supper must have given her indigestion and then, two o'clock in the morning it was, she woke me up and said that she thought the baby was coming.'

‘Da, how
is
she?' Hettie interrupted him fiercely.

Gideon shook his head. ‘She's very poorly, Hettie. Very poorly. I didn't want to tell you how bad she is over the telephone, lass, because I didn't want you to be worried. We've feared the worst. The doctor says it's a miracle that the baby was born at all. And the midwife thought the same as well, I could see it in her eyes. The baby was turned the wrong way you see, and couldn't be born, no matter how hard the midwife tried to turn her back.'

Gideon's voice thickened with tears. ‘I thought I was going to lose them both, Hettie. We had to get the doctor out, and what with Ellie getting weaker with every breath, and the pain she was in, all day and then into the night again as well. But then seemingly like a miracle the midwife managed to get the baby turned so she could be born.'

‘But Mam will be all right, won't she?' Hettie asked anxiously. ‘They'll both be all right? Mam and the baby?'

Gideon hesitated and his eyes filled with fresh tears. ‘I don't know, Hettie. The baby's that small and Ellie can't feed her, and now Ellie's got a fever, burning up with it, she is. Your uncle's sent a nurse to be with her, but he says there's nothing we can do now other than wait and pray. Eee, lass, I'm that glad you're here,' Gideon told her again emotionally.

‘Connie's wanted to come over, but her youngest's gone down with scarlet fever and even
though he's on the mend now he isn't well enough yet for Connie to be able to leave him.'

‘Can I go up and see Mam?' Hettie asked him.

Gideon nodded.

Pausing only to remove her hat and light summer coat, Hettie ran up the stairs to her parents' room, followed more slowly by Gideon.

As she opened the door the first thing she noticed was the familiar smell of Ellie's scent, light and delicate and sweetly fresh on the soft air filling the room through the open windows.

A nurse in a stiffly starched uniform was seated in the shadows watching over Ellie, but Hettie barely noticed her, hurrying instead to the bed itself where Ellie was lying propped up against the pillows, her eyes huge in her thin and worn face, her gaze fixed on Hettie as she ran to the bed and kneeled down beside it, putting her hand over Ellie's.

‘Mama,' she whispered brokenly. ‘Oh Mam.'

‘Hettie, love, there's no need for you to tek on like this.'

Hettie could see what an effort it was for Ellie even to speak and how much doing so was draining her fragile strength, and the fear that had been growing in her ever since she had received Gideon's first telephone call exploded inside her like shrapnel tearing into her flesh. Her eyes stung with tears and her body shook. She wanted to cling to Ellie like a child and beg her not to be ill. She felt desperately afraid, and filled with panic.

‘Hettie…The baby…My little Hannah. I want you to look after her for me, and no one else. Promise me that, will you…'

The thin words, spaced out between painful breaths, tore at Hettie's heart. Unable to speak she bit down hard on her bottom lip and nodded her head.

‘You are a good girl, Hettie.' Ellie smiled. ‘A good daughter.'

Hettie could see the rapid jump of her pulse in the thin pale flesh of her throat.

The nurse had got to her feet warningly. ‘That's enough for now, if you don't mind, miss,' she told Hettie firmly, coming over to the bed.

As Ellie's eyes closed Hettie begged the nurse as she had already begged Gideon, ‘She will get better, won't she?'

‘That's for God to know, miss, and for us to pray for,' the nurse told her quietly as she straightened Ellie's bedclothes.

Gideon was waiting for Hettie outside on the landing.

‘Mam has asked me to look after the baby,' she told him emotionally. ‘Where is she? Where is Hannah?'

‘Upstairs in the nursery,' Gideon answered her tiredly. ‘As I say, Ellie couldn't feed her on account of the baby being early and Ellie herself being so weak. So we've been having to give her formula milk, but she cries that much whenever she's near Ellie that the nurse has said she should be kept in
the nursery so that Ellie can get some rest. I've got a nurse for her, but what with worrying about Ellie…'

‘Can I go up and see her?' Hettie asked.

Gideon nodded his head.

To Hettie's surprise the nursery looked much as it had always done, with no special decoration having been done for the new baby.

‘Ellie wanted to wait until the baby was born before she had it decorated,' Gideon explained as though he had guessed what Hettie was thinking. ‘She said she was afraid it would be bad luck.'

A stern-looking nanny was sitting beside the fire whilst the baby's crib stood under the half open window, the curtains and crib drapes flapping in the cool evening breeze.

‘Babies need fresh air.' The nanny sniffed sharply when Hettie shivered as she hurried over to the crib.

Immediately the nanny spoke, the baby started to cry, a thin, sharp, high-pitched sound that tore at Hettie's heart so fiercely that she had reached into the crib and lifted out the tightly swaddled little body before she could stop herself.

The baby was tiny and thin, its limbs too brittle and delicate beneath the tightly wrapped swaddling cloths that held her arms to her body. A small cap covered her head, and the tiny red face was screwed up tightly as wail after wail filled the nursery.

‘I don't approve of babies being picked up every
time they cry,' the nanny commented sharply, getting up and walking over to Hettie, plainly intending to take the baby from her.

‘Perhaps she's crying because she's hungry,' Hettie suggested uncertainly.

‘If she's hungry it's her own fault. She refused her bottle at dinner time and babies, like everyone else, have to learn that if they don't eat when they should then they have to go hungry until the next meal time.'

‘She's very wet,' Hettie worried.

‘I'll thank you to give her to me please, miss. It isn't time for a change yet. It helps them to understand what's what if they aren't changed every time they wet themselves.'

The nanny was having to raise her voice to make herself heard above the baby's anguished screams. On the point of handing her over to her, Hettie suddenly hesitated. Ellie had asked
her
to look after the baby. But she didn't know anything about babies…

‘If you please, miss,' the nanny was insisting impatiently, her mouth thinning as she glared at the baby. ‘You've got a real temper on you, haven't you, missie. Well, we'll soon teach you to curb that. Babies as wot screams in temper has to learn to mind their manners. Don't you worry, Mr Walker,' she added, her face softening as she looked almost maternally at Gideon. ‘I won't let this little madam cause you any trouble. And there's no need for you to worry yourself keep
coming up these stairs neither. I'm sure you've got enough on your plate what with your poor wife at death's door, and folks as wot should know better descending on you and making a nuisance of themselves.'

Warning bells started to ring inside Hettie's head. The nanny seemed to be more interested in ‘mothering' Gideon than she was in mothering the poor little baby who was still screaming in Hettie's arms. And as for her comment about Ellie being close to death's door…Hettie hadn't missed the anguished look in Gideon's eyes as he listened to her. Despite her bossy manner the nanny was probably not all that much older than she was herself, Hettie decided as she studied her thin mouth and too pale, watery blue eyes.

She took a deep breath. ‘I'm sure we're very grateful for everything you've done for the baby, but I'm here to look after her now. My father will pay you for the full month, of course, as is customary.'

And with that Hettie swept past her and sat herself down in the chair she had vacated, cradling the baby against her shoulder as she whispered softly to her whilst determinedly ignoring both the furiously outraged look on the face of the nurse and the appalling stench emanating from the baby's wrappings.

‘Hettie,' Gideon protested worriedly.

‘It's all right, Da,' Hettie assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘Mam wants
me
to look after little Hannah.'

‘You! You don't know the first thing about looking after a baby,' the nanny snorted, tossing her head.

‘I know enough not to leave her lying hungry and cold in dirty wet things,' Hettie retorted spiritedly before appealing directly to Gideon, saying fiercely, ‘Da, I can do it, I know I can, and it's what Mam wants…'

‘Oh, don't you bother about me, Mr Walker.' The nanny sniffed. ‘I wouldn't stay here now – not if'n you was to pay me a hundred pounds. I feels that sorry for you, I really do,' she added spitefully as she glared at Hettie. ‘Aye, and sorry for the baby as well. Like as not
she'll
be the death of it…'

Hettie watched, forcing herself to remain outwardly impassive, whilst the other woman gathered together her belongings and pushed them into a carpet bag. It was the sight of that carpet bag – worn and shabby – that almost changed Hettie's mind. The woman wasn't much older than she was herself, after all, and no doubt she needed the work.

The work, Hettie acknowledged, hardening her heart. But not Gideon. And it was obvious to Hettie that that was what the other woman was after. A well-to-do widower with a small baby to bring up and his wife only recently dead. Who should he turn to but the nurse who was already caring for his child?

Well, Ellie wasn't going to die and the baby
didn't need a nanny, because she had family to look after her. And she
would
look after her, Hettie decided fiercely, telling the scowling nanny, ‘I'll ring for someone to take your bags down for you. Da, why don't you take the nanny downstairs and pay her what's owing to her?'

She had never imagined she would ever see Gideon looking like this, Hettie acknowledged. Her tall, handsome adopted father looked stooped and dazed, older and weaker. A broken man.

The nursery door opened and Tom Wood, the ex-soldier who Gideon had taken on out of charity to help out around the house, came in.

‘Nanny is leaving, Tom,' Hettie told him. ‘Oh, and could you bring some kindling up for the nursery fire when you've got time, and tell Mrs Jennings that I'll be coming down to the kitchen to have a word with her about little Hannah's milk and formula.'

Gideon, Tom and the nanny had barely gone, their feet still clattering on the stairs, when unexpectedly the baby opened her eyes and looked right into Hettie's own – or at least so it seemed to Hettie.

A fierce pang that seemed to physically wrench at her own womb gripped Hettie as she looked back into the baby's dark blue eyes, oblivious to anyone and anything else, and fell immediately in love.

Falling in love was one thing but dealing with the practicalities of caring for a very new and
four-week early baby, plus gently picking up the reins of a household shocked into despair by what had happened, was quite another, Hettie recognised. Her heart started to thump unevenly at the thought of what she was taking on.

But Mam had faith in her to do it, she reminded herself stoutly, and it wasn't going to be for very long after all. Connie, with her experience of running her own nursery come orphanage – where Hettie herself had helped out during her school holidays – would surely be able to help Gideon to find a more suitable nurse for the baby than the one Hettie had just so determinedly turned out?

And Ellie and Gideon's housekeeper, Mrs Jennings, normally a well-organised, phlegmatic woman, would surely be able to run the household until Ellie herself was well enough to do so once again. Once she too had recovered from the distress.

She heard slow, tired footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and Gideon came in, going straight to one of the nursery's comfortable chairs and slumping into it. His eyes were red rimmed with lack of sleep and emotion.

‘Has she gone?' Hettie asked him.

‘Aye, lass, but she weren't very pleased about it.' He paused and rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘Hettie, love, I know you meant it for the best, but that nanny…'

‘Mam wouldn't have wanted her taking care of little Hannah, Da,' Hettie told him fiercely, with
all the conviction she truly felt in her voice. ‘And you do not need to worry about anything, Da,' she told him more gently. ‘I can manage. I'm a woman now, Da, and besides I promised Mam,' she repeated, trying to sound more confident than she was actually feeling. ‘I'm going to change Hannah now, and then I'm going to go downstairs and have a word with cook. It might be a good idea with so many people coming and going if she boiled up a pan of nourishing soup. Oh, and some chicken soup for Mam as well. Remember how she always said when we were little as how it was good for us…'

‘Eh, Hettie, lass. I'm that glad to have you here.' Gideon got to his feet and wiped the emotional tears from his eyes.