‘I say, Pride, that was the most terrific lesson. First time I’ve managed to loop the loop, don’t y’know. Good sport, eh? Can you fit me in again later this week?’
‘I’ll just have a look at the diary, Your Grace,’ John answered him. At seventy-one, The Duke of Saltarn was his oldest pupil, and since as a hunting man the duke believed in throwing himself and his mount over whatever obstacle stood in their way, John always heaved a small sigh of relief once he had him safely back on terra firma.
‘I could manage 2.00 p.m. on Friday, Your Grace,’ he told him after he had studied the leatherbound, gold-lettered diary Alfred had given to him the evening before his first day officially working at the flying club. The diary cover had John’s initials stamped on one corner, and already its pages were filling up as word got around that the flying club had a talented new instructor.
The duke’s batman and valet was waiting patiently to guide his master to the waiting Rolls Royce.
John’s next appointment was for the first of a dozen lessons with a young man – a novice – who had apparently been recommended to the club by a friend.
The short grey November days might not appeal to him as a flyer, but they certainly appealed to the searing bleakness inside him, John acknowledged as he left his office to walk across to the hangar where the small sturdy flying machine he used to teach beginners was being made ready for him by the team of highly trained mechanics the flying school employed.
The morning’s post had brought a letter from Connie letting him know that Gideon and Ellie had left for the Lakes a week earlier than planned. Would the change of scene help his sister to overcome her grief at the loss of her unborn child, as Gideon so desperately hoped it might? John certainly shared his brother-in-law’s hopes, but he knew from his own experience that neither grief nor guilt were demons easily appeased.
Connie’s letter has also contained news of Hettie and her forthcoming stage appearance. John frowned. Thinking about the last time he had seen Hettie gave him the same sort of sharp pain in his heart as probing an aching tooth with his tongue did to his face, only the pain in his heart was mixed with anger. He should not have kissed Hettie. He knew that. The old easy friendship he and Hettie had once shared had gone, and that was just as much Hettie’s fault as his, John told himself stubbornly. She was the one who had changed, not he. She was the one who had not been content with her life but had instead plunged into this wild folly of singing in public.
And now John’s own deepest fears had been confirmed. Hettie was, Connie had written, going to be touring in a show, albeit an opera, flaunting herself on a stage for men to ogle and admire. How little he had really known her, John acknowledged bitterly.
He sensed from the tone of Connie’s letter that his sister did not understand that an operetta was a vastly different affair from an opera, as indeed he himself probably would not have done up until a week ago. Then, he had heard Alfred protesting to his sister that he was damned if he was going to be dragged to London to hear some ruddy opera, whereupon Lady Poppy had told him firmly, ‘Don’t be silly, Alfie dearest, we are not going to listen to an opera, but to see one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s funny little operettas, and I promise you that you will enjoy it hugely.’
Alfred had told John afterwards that he would far rather have seen a decent revue, with ‘lots of pretty girls’, adding, ‘But I daren’t tell Polly that, for she would be sure to insist that she wanted to go as well, and it wouldn’t be the thing. I keep telling Polly that she’s shocking the old guard with these modern ideas of hers, but she won’t listen,’ Alfred had concluded gloomily.
Although Alfred had not said so directly, he had hinted to John that he was not too happy about his sister’s unexpectedly early return from New York. And John could understand why.
Earlier in the week John had been summoned to Moreton Place by Alfred, who told him that he was at his wits’ end with his sister, who was insisting that she wanted to learn to fly.
‘Upon my word, John, I don’t know what mad high jinks she will want to get up to next. I have, of course, told her that it is out of the question for her to have flying lessons.’
‘And why should I not, brother dear?’ Polly herself had demanded, bursting into the room to interrupt their conversation. ‘John, tell my brother please that he is an old-fashioned fuddy duddy and that there is no reason why a woman should not learn to fly. After all, Daddy had no objection to my learning to drive.’
‘Polly, this is ridiculous,’ Alfred had spluttered.
‘You will give me flying lessons, won’t you, John?’ Polly had wheedled, ignoring her brother.
‘I’m sorry, Lady Polly, but since it is your brother who employs me…’
‘Oh stuff,’ Polly had stopped him, stamping her foot.
‘Polly, that is enough,’ Alfred had told her sharply. ‘I forbid you to continue.’
‘You are my brother, Alfred, and not my keeper,’ Polly had retorted, flying into a furious passion, ‘and I shall learn to fly, just see if I don’t.’
She had whirled out of the room before Alfred could say anything further.
The mechanics had brought the small, special modified teaching flying machine out of the hangar. Immediately John started to walk a little faster, his spirits lifting. Nothing had ever changed or diminished the sense of excitement and delight flying brought him, or his sense of wonder, not even the tragedy months before. Even though he understood every single principle that made man’s flight possible, a tiny part of him still felt there was something almost magical about it.
As he reached the machine he lifted his hand to stroke the sturdy lines of its body. The flying machines commissioned by Alfred’s flying school were a miracle of modern science, and could in John’s opinion almost fly themselves.
He looked up as he heard the sound of a car engine and saw a gleaming roadster racing towards him, its driver barely visible. The car came to a halt, and his pupil got out, small and slender and already togged up in the necessary protective flying clothes, pulling on goggles to protect his eyes as he hurried to John’s side.
‘Po…Paul Mainwaring. Sorry I’m late. Better get going, what ho?’ he introduced himself gruffly, extending a gauntleted hand for John to shake before turning towards the flying machine, leaving John to follow him.
Since it was to be Paul Mainwaring’s first lesson, John would be flying the machine. He began explaining carefully to his pupil what he was doing and why, as the mechanics stepped back and the stout little craft raced down the runway and lifted obediently into the greyness, her engine humming as busily and happily as a little bee as she chugged importantly over the late autumn browns and tans of the newly turned fallow fields below them.
Suddenly a gauntleted hand clutched at John’s arm and a shockingly familiar female voice exclaimed excitedly, ‘Oh John, this is just too, too spiffing!’
‘Polly! I mean, Lady Polly,’ John corrected himself as he battled against his shocked disbelief.
‘John, you should see your face.’ Polly giggled. ‘I told you and Alfie that he wouldn’t be able to stop me from learning to fly. I really fooled you, didn’t I? Oh this is the most wonderful feeling. Even better than driving. Can we go faster? I do so adore speed, don’t you? It is just the best feeling, even better than falling in love, and so much safer.’
Even over the sound of the engine he could hear the emotion in her voice as it trembled at those last betraying words.
‘Have you ever been in love, John?’ she called out to him. ‘Oh, you are pretending not to have heard me because you do not want to answer me. I am being too forward, aren’t I? It isn’t the done thing for a girl to ask a man such questions.’
He could just about see the face she was pulling beneath her cap and goggles.
‘I hate the done thing, John, do you know that?’ she continued. ‘And sometimes I hate being a girl as well. I was in love – but it hurts so dreadfully that I never want to be again,’ she yelled at him wildly.
She shouldn’t be up here with him, and she shouldn’t be telling him such things, but John didn’t have the heart to tell her so.
‘I wish we could stay up here for ever and never, ever have to go back down.’
‘Well, we cannot,’ John told her sternly. ‘I am turning round and taking you right back to the airfield.’
‘Why? I have paid for my lessons! Why shouldn’t I learn to fly, just because I’m a girl?’ Polly demanded passionately. ‘Please don’t take me back yet, John. I’ve been longing to fly so much. Oh, look down there, at the river. How pretty it looks. You know, when I was a little girl I used to try to imagine how it would feel to be a bird and to be free like this, and now I am. I never, ever want to go down…’
It was impossible for him not to be infected by her enthusiasm, John admitted, as she rattled off question after question, pausing only to draw breath and to say over and over again how much she was enjoying herself.
In the end, John kept the little aircraft up for almost a full hour, telling himself that, since she had paid for his time, he owed her something. It would have been fun teaching her, he acknowledged reluctantly, if only because her enthusiasm and excitement so exactly mirrored his own. But of course he could do no such thing, since Alfred had expressly forbidden it.
‘Oh, we can’t be going down so soon,’ he heard her objecting as she realised what he was doing.
‘We’ve been flying for over an hour,’ he pointed out before warning her: ‘And remember when we do land that you are supposed to be a young man.’
‘Of course I will,’ she assured him.
But ten minutes later after they had landed and were out of the plane it seemed she had completely forgotten his warning. She rushed up to him and, in full view of the mechanics, hugged him fiercely and kissed him on the cheek, exclaiming giddily, ‘I am so very, very happy. When can we go up again, John? And this time, you must really teach me something…’
‘I can’t do that,’ John began firmly as he removed her arms from round his neck.
‘Why not?’
‘You know why, Lady Polly. Your brother has already said that he does not wish you to have lessons.’
‘Oh stuff! And don’t call me Lady Polly,’ she corrected him with a small pout. ‘I will not be called Lady Polly by you, John. It is far too formal when you are such a close family friend.’
John could feel his face starting to burn. ‘I am working for your brother,’ he pointed out stiffly, ‘and not…’
‘Well, Alfie says you are the best flyer he has ever known. But you are his friend as well, John, and you must not think otherwise. He is always saying how much he respects you and what a grand fellow he thinks you…Oh, why must there still be this wretched ridiculous class thing, when it must be obvious to anyone with any sense that the war has changed everything. I had thought you a modern man, John, and above all that silly mediaeval forelock-tugging, I-knows-me-place nonsense.’
‘If I didn’t know my place, Lady Polly, I can assure you that there are plenty of people who would very quickly show me what it is, aye, and tek pleasure in doing so an’ all,’ John returned curtly, deliberately emphasising his northern accent.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘No reason,’ John told her quickly, mentally cursing himself for betraying how much he resented the arrogant and patronising manner of some of Alfred’s friends and fellow club members.
‘You won’t snitch on me to Alfie, will you, John?’ Polly wheedled at him.
‘This mustn’t happen again,’ was all John felt he could say to her.
But it seemed it was enough because she smiled happily at him and exclaimed, ‘I am so pleased you have accepted Alfie’s invitation to be our guest over Christmas. We are going to have such fun. Do you like charades, John? I do, and sardines, too, and we shall have dancing as well. And I warn you that next time I come for my lesson I shall expect you to teach me properly.’
Her moods were as mercurial as an April day, John acknowledged wryly as he watched her speed off to her car. But it was, of course, his duty to inform Alfred of what she had done, a duty he could not and would not seek to avoid. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment at the prospect of not teaching Polly, though.
‘Going home?’
‘Eddie!’ Hettie exclaimed wearily, nodding her head and pushing the heavy weight of her hair back off her face as she looked up at him.
‘Fancy going for a cup of tea first?’ he asked her.
Hettie hesitated and then nodded her head again.
‘And then Madame Cecile said that I was an imbecile.’ Tears welled up in Hettie’s eyes as she recalled her earlier humiliation. ‘I didn’t know that Princess Mimi had a solo ballet spot. It wasn’t marked on the script I was given…’
‘Poor you,’ Eddie sympathised. ‘Of course, Faye is pretty hot on ballet.’
‘Oh, please don’t tell me that,’ Hettie begged him wretchedly. She hardly knew Eddie really, but he was so easy to talk to and so understanding, and she was desperately in need of a sympathetic ear right now.
‘Madame Cecile has said that I am to have two extra hours of ballet practice every day.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘And I am frightened that if she complains to Mr Dalhousie about me he will wish that he had not given me the part.’
‘Well, she won’t be able to complain to him at the moment,’ Eddie assured her, ‘because he has gone to London, supposedly to sort out some problem with the theatre he has hired for the show. But of course we all know that in reality he has gone to see his girlfriend.’
‘His girlfriend? But I thought he was married?’ Hettie said innocently.
Eddie gave a careless shrug. ‘He is. Perhaps I should have said that he has gone to London to see the mistress he keeps there,’ he corrected himself. When he saw Hettie’s expression he shook his head. ‘He’s a very rich man, Hettie, and rich men live by different rules from the rest of us.’
‘Well, if that’s what being rich means, then I’m glad that I’m not,’ Hettie told him robustly. She had grown up amongst ordinary decent working folk, and she couldn’t help contrasting the happy loving marriages of Ellie and Gideon, and Connie and Harry, with the kind of marriage Jay Dalhousie and his wife obviously had, which in her opinion was no kind of marriage at all.
‘Rich men marry for sons to pass their riches on to,’ Eddie told her bluntly. ‘And then they look for their pleasure outside their marriages. You’ll find that out soon enough for yourself,’ he warned her. ‘Once we get to London you’ll be besieged by stage door Johnnies wanting to take you out to dinner.’
‘I shan’t go with them if they are married.’ She frowned as she saw Eddie trying to smother a yawn. ‘You look tired.’
‘Yes, I am,’ he agreed. ‘Tommy Harding the stage manager told us this morning that he wanted a new set designing for the first act, so I’ve spent all day painting scenery.’
‘Is it always like this?’ Hettie asked him. ‘Things going wrong, last-minute changes…’
Eddie laughed. ‘This is nothing,’ he told her. ‘I worked on a new opera in Paris last year. It had eight different scenes and the director changed his mind about the stage sets for four of them two days before we opened.’
‘Paris,’ Hettie exclaimed, impressed.
‘Yes.’
‘That must have been so exciting. When you were there did you…’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Eddie told her abruptly, signalling to the waitress to bring them the bill, his manner suddenly curt and cold.
‘’Ere, ’Ettie. It looks like you’ve got an admirer,’ Sukey Simmonds told her as they all huddled over the cups of tea she had just made them. ‘When we was out today, one of the boys said as how he’d noticed you at the theatre and was asking ever such a lot of questions about you, wasn’t he, Mary?’
‘I’ll say,’ Mary agreed readily.
Hettie blushed and they all laughed, Jenny telling her teasingly that her ‘beau’ was in the orchestra and played the trumpet.
‘You should see the lips on ’im, ’Ettie. Bet he can give a girl a real smacker with lips like them.’
‘Oh, give over, Jenny,’ Babs protested amidst Hettie’s fiery blushes and the other girls’ gales of laughter.
‘Tek no notice, ’Ettie,’ Babs comforted her. ‘Sukey is just teasing you. All the poor lad said was how he had noticed you, and thought as how pretty you are.’
‘The boys was saying as how we should all go out for a bicycle ride on our next half day,’ Jessie put in.
‘A bicycle ride? Me legs ache enough with all them high kicks we’re ’avin’ to do, without doing any bicycle riding, ta ever so much,’ Aggie protested.
‘It’s Jenny and Jessie’s birthday soon, so I reckon we should ’ave a bit of a party and invite the boys to join in,’ Mary announced.
‘A party? And how are we going to do that, Miss Clever Clogs?’ Babs demanded. ‘We can’t invite them back here. The minute the old battleaxe got word of anything like that, she’d turf us out and no mistake. And if you think I’m going to go round to their lodgings, you can think again. I’ve got me reputation to think about.’
‘Oh, hoighty toighty! It didn’t look much like you was worrying about your reputation when you was sparkin’ with that Stan this afternoon,’ Mary sniffed.
‘We could ask Jack and Sarah if we could use that room off the chop house dining room, perhaps,’ Aggie suggested, stepping in adroitly to avert a quarrel. ‘I remember as how Sarah was saying they was thinking of hiring it out for parties, like.’
‘’Ere, Aggie, that’s a brilliant idea,’ Sukey approved excitedly. ‘We could put on a bit o’ supper and mebbe we could ’ave some music so that we could dance. I could buy mesef a new frock, one of them flapper frocks that are all the rage…You know, I was feeling really miserable on account of us not being able to go home at Christmas because we’re in the panto, but now that we’ve met the boys, I reckon we’re going to have a really good time.’
‘You speak for yourself, Sukey Simmonds,’ Lizzie told her sharply. ‘But I’ll thank you to remember that we aren’t all boy mad.’
‘What’s up wi’ her?’ Sukey demanded, red-faced, as Lizzie slammed down her cup and stalked off to the other side of the room to stand with her back to them as she stared out of the window.
‘Lizzie’s got her ma and her sister to think of, Sukey,’ Babs reminded her.
‘Oh aye, I were forgetting about them,’ Sukey acknowledged immediately. ‘’Ere, Lizzie, don’t go off in a sulk like that,’ she called out. ‘I’m sorry if I put me foot in it. Be a good sport and come back.’