Hettie of Hope Street. Annie Groves

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ