Hettie of Hope Street. Annie Groves

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ