Her lesson had finished over an hour ago, but Hettie was still sitting spellbound in the small but warm room where Madame Bertrice’s pupils waited for their lessons, listening to the last notes of the beautiful aria being practised by Madame’s current pupil fade into silence. Lifting her hand to wipe away the tears the powerful emotions of the aria had brought her, she breathed out slowly and stood up.
Listening to Madame’s opera singer pupils had become Hettie’s special and unexpected treat since she had started coming to Madame’s lodgings for her singing lessons. She had no idea what the words meant, but she did know that something within her reacted to them and to the music.
She was just about to leave when Madame herself came into the room, her full skirts giving her the appearance of one of Liverpool’s majestic liners triumphantly coming home. Madame Bertrice had not embraced the modern fashion for narrower, shorter skirts, and preferred to dress very much as though they were still living in a more old-fashioned era.
‘Hettie,’ she exclaimed when she saw her. ‘Why are you still here? Is something wrong?’
Feeling embarrassed, Hettie shook her head. ‘No. It was just the music,’ she explained simply. ‘And…and the voice.’
Immediately Madame smiled at her and nodded her head, for, as Hettie had quickly discovered, whilst she insisted on her pupils working hard, Madame was not the ogre Hettie had initially feared.
‘Ah yes. Who could not be moved by such an aria? It is a great pity, Hettie, that your own voice did not receive proper training when you were younger. Had you done so…But there is no point in us repining, for you did not. Besides,’ she added, ‘the life of an opera singer is not for everyone. It is very demanding and has broken more singers than it has lauded. It is a life that is especially hard for a woman. You are a good pupil, Hettie,’ she told her kindly, ‘and you will do very well in Mr Dalhousie’s musical operettas.’
Hettie hugged those words of praise and encouragement to herself all the way to the theatre.
She had been excused rehearsals on those days when she had a singing lesson. But because she was growing increasingly and uncomfortably conscious of the rift that seemed to be developing between herself and her friends, and their growing resentment that she seemed to be getting what they had crossly described as ‘special favours’, she was determined to prove that she was not, as she had heard them whispering, growing too big for her boots or thinking herself above them.
At least she and Babs had made up their small quarrel, she comforted herself as she shielded her eyes from the brightness of the March sunshine whilst she waited to cross Piccadilly Circus before hurrying down Shaftesbury Avenue.
She had expected to find the dressing room empty because she knew rehearsals would already have started, but to her surprise it was full and the chorus girls were standing around in their practice clothes, smoking and chattering, so that Hettie could hardly see a familiar face for the smoke or hear a familiar voice for the noise. But then she spotted Mary and Sukey, and managed to wriggle her way through the tight knots of girls towards them.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked when she reached them. ‘I thought you’d all be in rehearsal.’
‘So we should have been, but there’s been a problem with one of the sets and we can’t practise until it’s sorted. Seems like the set designer hasn’t turned in this morning, and he’s gonna find himself in a right load of trouble if he doesn’t get here soon,’ Mary prophesied darkly.
‘You mean Eddie?’ Hettie asked her, her heart bumping heavily in her chest.
‘Yes. He needs to lay off of the bottle, ’e does, leastways if he ’e wants to keep his job,’ Mary added.
Not even someone as innocent as Hettie could have remained unaware that Eddie was drinking too much. He had frequently turned up at the theatre over the past few weeks the worse for drink, and there had already been a good deal of gossip about his drunken rantings in which he talked wildly about his despair and the cruelty with which he had been treated, fortunately without mentioning any names.
‘’Ere, where are you going?’ Mary demanded when Hettie turned to hurry back to the door.
‘I’m going round to Eddie’s lodgings to tell him that he needs to be here,’ Hettie called back to her over her shoulder.
She knew where Eddie was lodging because he had happened to mention it to her, and for once as she plunged into the busy London streets Hettie’s attention was not drawn towards the poor injured ex-soldiers patiently begging for pennies; or the raggedly dressed children with their thin weasely faces and too knowing eyes, their intent gazes assessing passers-by for potential victims of their pick-pocketing skills. Even though she knew she should not do so, Hettie often gave them a few pennies, so that now when they saw her they followed her and begged her for more.
Eddie’s lodgings were in a tangle of streets off the Haymarket, in a down-at-heel and so very disreputable-looking building that Hettie hesitated before stepping through the open front door into a shabby hallway.
Unlike the lodgings she shared with the other girls, this boarding house did not seem to have a stout, stern landlady. An elderly man shuffling along the hallway stopped to stare at Hettie, the sunlight falling unkindly on his sunken overrouged cheeks and carmined mouth.
‘You won’t find anything to your taste here, dearie,’ he called out in a shrill, falsetto, overrefined voice, tittering as he did so and tossing his head, his sharp glance assessing her unkindly.
‘I’m looking for Eddie Ormond,’ Hettie told him, ignoring his rudeness. ‘He’s needed at the theatre.’
Immediately his expression changed. ‘Second floor, third door on the left,’ revealed. ‘You’ll have to knock loudly, though, if you’re going to wake him.’
Thanking him, Hettie made her way up the stairs and along the corridor, pausing outside Eddie’s door and knocking firmly on it.
When there was no immediate response she knocked again, and then leaned her head against the door, hoping to hear sounds of movement from inside the room.
‘Cheer up, ducks, it ain’t that bad,’ a sharp male voice mocked her.
Straightening up, Hettie turned round to find that she was being watched by a very dapper-looking middle-aged man, his clothes smart and his shoes polished.
‘She’s from the theatre, Charlie,’ the old man she had seen downstairs called up shrilly.
‘Oh, you are, are you?’
‘I’m a friend of Eddie’s as well,’ Hettie informed both men firmly. ‘There’s a problem with one of the sets and he’s needed.’
‘Well, you’ll be lucky to wake him. Poor bugger ’as half drunk himself to death already,’ the second man announced dryly, much to Hettie’s alarm.
‘Surely someone has a key to his room?’ she asked. ‘He’s going to be in some kind of dreadful trouble if he doesn’t come to work.’
‘Nellie, where’s the spare key to his room?’ the middle-aged man called downstairs to the older one. ‘And don’t you go pretending you don’t have one.’
Hettie tried not to reveal her angry impatience when the older man suddenly produced a large bunch of keys and started to puff his way up the stairs. Why on earth couldn’t he have told her that they had a spare key to Eddie’s room in the first place?
‘Nellie here likes to pretend that there aren’t any spare keys. That’s because he likes going through our things when we aren’t here, isn’t it, Nellie dear?’
‘You shut your mouth, you poxy Martha,’ ‘Nellie’ responded as he breathed heavily over the keys, finally and to Hettie painfully slowly selecting one which he inserted into Eddie’s locked door.
The smell of alcohol from inside the room as the door swung open gripped Hettie’s throat, but she forced herself to ignore it as she hurried inside.
The room itself was surprisingly neat and tidy – far more so than those of her chorus girl friends, she admitted. The girls were inclined to leave stockings and other items of apparel strewn over doors and chairs, whilst hairbrushes and the like cluttered up dressing table tops.
Eddie himself was still in bed, and obviously asleep.
Hettie hesitated. She had never been in a man’s bedroom before, never mind one where its occupant was actually in the bed. But she had matured a lot from the girl she had been, and so she took a deep breath and walked determinedly towards the bed.
Once there, she called Eddie’s name loudly and, when this got no response, she cleared her throat and forced herself to place her hand on his bare shoulder. His skin felt warm and soft. Her courage returning, she gave him a firm shake, just as though he had been one of the girls.
He moved reluctantly and so Hettie shook him again. This time he opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Hettie.’
‘You’ve got to get up and come to the theatre,’ she told him quickly. ‘There’s something wrong with one of the sets.’
‘What?’
He looked dazed, and very unwell, Hettie acknowledged. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin had an unhealthy yellowish cast to it.
‘You must come to the theatre, Eddie,’ she repeated firmly.
He was properly awake now, a dark-red surge of angry colour suddenly flooding his face. ‘Why?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘So that he can mock me and humiliate me? So that he can torture me and tear my heart out of my body? So that he can eviscerate me and…Do you know what he did yesterday?’ he demanded wildly, ignoring Hettie’s attempts to calm him. ‘He called me into his office and, when I got there, he had him, it…there with him, that little piece of shit he’s bedding.’
‘Eddie, please don’t distress yourself like this,’ Hettie begged him worriedly. She could see how upset he was and her heart felt heavy with sadness for him. ‘You must get dressed and come to the theatre,’ she repeated anxiously. ‘Otherwise…’
‘Otherwise what?’
‘Otherwise, duckie, you will lose your job, won’t he, Charlie? And we don’t none of us want that, do we?’
Hettie had forgotten about the other two men, and had not realised that they had been listening. However, it was plain to her that, rather than being embarrassed by their presence, Eddie was actually calmed by it.
‘You can leave him with us now, missie,’ Charlie told her. ‘Now that he’s awake we’all make sure he gets himself dressed and off to work.’
Hettie hesitated.
‘Yes, you go back, Hettie,’ Eddie muttered.
‘You will get up and come to work, won’t you?’ she begged him.
‘Course he will, missie,’ Charlie told her. ‘We’ll mek sure of that, never fear. He’s the only one ’ere who’s working and earning, ain’t you, Eddie? And if ’e don’t work, we don’t eat.’
‘Where are they? One of you ’as taken them, I know that you have. Well, you can just give them back to me.’
‘’Ere, Sukey, for gawd’s sake calm down! No one has taken your blinkin’ pills,’ Aggie protested.
‘Yes they have. I counted them last week and I had enough for this week and now I ’aven’. And I can’t afford to buy any more until next week!’
‘Well, you might have had enough when you counted them, but I’ve seen you taking them two at a time, and they get you in such a state I reckon you’d be hard put to remember your own name, never mind if’n you’d taken more than one.’
‘That’s a lie! You’ve never seen me taking two at a time. You’re making it up!’ Sukey was screaming at Aggie now, her face bright red, and her whole body trembling.
‘Gawd, Sukey, tek a look at yourself, you looks like yer about to ’ave a fit or sommat,’ Jenny told her unkindly.
Mary then protested grumpily, ‘Sukey, stop that noise, will yer? I’m trying to get some sleep, if’n you don’t mind!’
Suddenly, to everyone’s shock, Sukey flew across the room and flung herself at Mary, pulling her hair and screaming at her. ‘It were you, weren’t it? Don’t you go lyin’ to me, neither. I know now it were you as took them.’
Mary herself had also started screaming, whilst Sukey pulled so viciously at her hair that Hettie was afraid she would actually tear it from Mary’s scalp, her nails clawing the side of Mary’s face.
‘Bloody ’ell, Sukey,’ Aggie objected. ‘Give over, will you?’ She hurried across the room obviously planning to try to help Mary, but before she got there Sukey’s whole body suddenly contorted in a fierce convulsion, immediately followed by several more.
‘Oh my God, she’s dying,’ Jenny wailed as Mary managed to step back from Sukey.
‘No she ain’t, she’s ’avin’ a fit, just like you said she would,’ one of the other girls contradicted.
There was a sudden thud as Sukey collapsed on to the floor, her body continuing to twitch violently.
‘Gawd, what the ’ell are we going to do now?’ Babs asked anxiously.
The twitching stopped and Sukey went completely still.
‘She’s dead,’ Jenny wailed.’
‘No, she ain’t,’ Aggie insisted stalwartly. ‘Come on, let’s get her off the floor and into her bed.’
‘It’s them bloody pills,’ Mary concluded ten minutes later when Sukey, who had now come round and was moaning and weeping, had been carried over to her bed and placed on it. ‘We’ve all bin telling ’er she’s daft for taking them.’
‘Don’t you think we should get a doctor?’ Hettie suggested uncertainly.
‘What for?’ Aggie challenged her grimly. She shook her head. ‘No, Sukey won’t thank us for doing that. We’ll leave her to get some sleep and see ’ow she is in the morning. Let’s just ’ope she’ll see sense from now on and stop taking them bloody pills,’ Aggie added, stepping back from Sukey’s bed.
John was frowning as he closed the account book he had been studying and replaced it in his desk, carefully locking the drawer.
By rights he should have been smiling not frowning. Only three days ago Alfred had told everyone that, thanks to John, they now had so many new members joining the flying club that they had decided to employ another teacher – and that, from now on, John was not just to be their senior pilot but also the overall manager of the club itself. Alfred had added that John was to receive an increase in pay, and that he would be provided with an assistant to take over the more mundane clerical duties for which he was currently responsible.
‘We can’t praise you enough, John, for all that you have done here,’ Alfred had told him enthusiastically. ‘Fact is, old chap, that I’ve even had someone from the Air Force itself ask me if we could train up some of their young pilots for them. Seems like they do not have enough instructors themselves, and of course we’re pretty close to their base here.’
Oh yes, he had every reason not to be frowning, John admitted. But it wasn’t his work that was causing him angst.
Polly had arrived at the airfield earlier in the day, as usual driving in far too fast, leaving her roadster carelessly parked outside the clubhouse whilst she rushed into John’s office, insisting that she had to see him.
All too aware of exactly what the smirks the group of young men who had witnessed her arrival and her demand to see him meant, John had determinedly escorted her back outside, saying clearly as he did so, ‘Lady Polly, how kind of you. His Grace said he would ask you to drop those papers off for him.’
‘What on earth are you talking about, John?’ Polly had asked as soon as they were outside. ‘And why are you calling Alfred His Grace?’
‘It isn’t fitting that you behave so informally towards me,’ he told her quietly. ‘It’s bound to cause gossip.’
He didn’t want to put his concern to her any more bluntly, because he did not want to upset her.
‘Gossip?’ Polly had shrugged indifferently. ‘Pooh, who cares about that! John, I’ve had the most wonderful idea,’ she told him, her eyes sparkling. ‘I want you to fly me to the South of France for Easter. There’s this wonderful hotel there, you will love it, and…’
John had felt his heart sink as he listened to her. She was constantly coming up with madcap schemes and ideas, but none of them had been as impractical and impossible as this. He had started to shake his head but she immediately stopped him, telling him determinedly, ‘You can’t say no John, because I have already booked the hotel!’
‘What you’re suggesting is impossible,’ John had told her quietly.
The excitement in her eyes had been replaced by the sheen of tears. ‘Why is it impossible? And if you say it’s because of some silly social…’
‘It’s impossible because I have already arranged to spend Easter with my sister,’ John had cut in firmly.
‘Your sister…But…’
‘She hasn’t been well, and I am very anxious to see her,’ John had continued, steeling himself against the disappointment and despair he knew he would see in Polly’s eyes.
‘But John, I’ve got it all planned and…and I need you.’
‘Your brother has already agreed that I may take several days off over Easter,’ John had added, as though he hadn’t heard her plea and as though too he considered her emotional request nothing more than her desire to make use of him as an employee of her brother. ‘I shall ask around, if you wish, and see if there is a qualified pilot available who could…’
‘Don’t bother,’ Polly had shouted fiercely to him before turning and running to her car.
The truth was that Polly was making it increasingly plain that she wanted to be close to him. She didn’t love him, John suspected, but she did desperately need a confidant and a companion. And if things had been different, if there were not such a huge social gulf between them, he knew that he would have wanted to help her. And been tempted to turn their friendship into something more intimate?
It was not proper that he should have such thoughts, John told himself robustly as he left his office and closed the door.
Everyone else had gone home for the day now. It was gone six o’clock and growing dark. He had some letters he wanted to write and some articles on photography he wanted to read. They had been sent to him by his old employer and friend, and, although he did not have as much time for it as he would have liked, John still had a keen interest in photography.
The clubhouse was empty. One of the other things Alfred had mentioned to him was a request from certain club members that the clubhouse be opened in the evening, a bar installed, and a bar steward employed, in order that those members who wished to do so could meet together socially.
‘That might lead to some of them drinking before they fly,’ John had warned him. ‘And that is something I will not countenance.’
He could see a motor coming towards the clubhouse and his heart lurched as he recognised Polly’s roadster for the second time that day.
She was again driving far too fast, and he had to step back to avoid the pall of dust thrown up by the wheels as she brought the roadster to a halt. The light from the building revealed that the motor’s normally shiny red bodywork was filmed with dust. When Polly got out of the car he could see that she had been crying. She ran straight to him, flinging herself against him so that he had no option other than to take her in his arms.
‘Oh John, I am so glad that you are still here. I am sorry I was horrid before. Will you forgive me?’
‘There isn’t anything to forgive,’ he assured her.
‘Oh John.’ Her voice was muffled and he could feel the warmth of her breath seeping through his shirt to his flesh. ‘I had to come back. I have to talk to you…Can we go to your quarters?’
He should really send her away. He knew that. But as she lifted her head to look at him he could smell the gin on her breath and feel the anxious tremble of her body. She lived too recklessly for someone so desperately fragile.
‘We can talk, Polly, but I warn you I cannot and will not change my mind about Easter. My sister has been very ill.’ He didn’t want her to think he was simply making excuses. He paused and then said quietly, ‘There was to have been a child, but unfortunately it was not to be and she took it very hard…Polly, what is it?’ he begged her as she lifted her hand to her mouth and began to sob uncontrollably.
‘John, John, have you ever done something that you hate yourself for? Something so dreadful and so wrong that you can hardly bear to live with yourself?’
John guided her into the building and towards the door to his private quarters, remembering as he did so the last time Polly had asked him this question, at Moreton Place, at the New Year’s party. ‘Let’s go upstairs and I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ he told her comfortingly.
‘Tea? Don’t you have any gin?’ she asked him. ‘When I feel like this, when I feel so cold inside that nothing can take away the dreadful icy burn of that coldness, gin is the only thing that can warm me.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any,’ John told her as he ushered her up the stairs.
‘This room looks like a monk’s cell, John,’ she complained as he took her into the small parlour. ‘Do you wish you had been a monk? Is that why you live like one, without a woman in your life and your bed?’
It was the gin making her talk so wildly, and so improperly, John recognised as she dropped into one of the chairs and lay back, her face so pale it looked almost blue-white.
As he kneeled down to light the gas fire, John thought that Polly looked thinner and more fine boned every time he saw her, as though something inside her was burning her away.
‘I’ll go and make that tea.’
‘No!’ She reached out and grasped his hand with her own. ‘No, John, stay here with me, please. There’s something I want to tell you. I have to tell someone before I go mad, because the pain of it is driving me mad. It never lets go of me; it’s there all the time, night and day, and I can’t escape from it no matter how hard I try. It was my fault that Ollie died. God took him away from me to punish me because of the dreadful thing I did…’
The wildness of her words was beginning to alarm him, John admitted to himself as he sat down in the chair next to her own.
‘Promise me you won’t hate me because of what I’m going to tell you? she begged him.
‘I promise you,’ John assured her quietly, holding both her hands in his own.
Without looking at him, she began, ‘You know how much I loved Ollie and he loved me too?’
She was going to tell him that she felt she had betrayed Oliver because she wanted to love again, John decided.
‘We were so young and so very happy, and we thought…’ Polly plunged on. ‘Please don’t be shocked, John, but…’ She raised her head and looked at him. ‘I…I gave myself to Ollie. It was my idea. I wanted to do it. He tried to dissuade me.’ There was laughter in her eyes as well as tears. ‘But I was very determined and he loved me very much. You know, when you’re a girl and you don’t know anything, other girls tell you that your first time will hurt, but it wasn’t like that with us. It was wonderful, and perfect, and I thought I had found heaven.’
Her voice trembled. ‘I wanted us to be married straight away, but then Ollie told me that he had volunteered. I was so upset, so angry with him, and so afraid for him. But he said it was his duty and he had to do it. There was not going to be time to arrange a wedding, but he said that the war would soon be over and that we would be married then.
‘They sent him to a training camp and it was whilst he was there that it…’ She hesitated and then started to tremble, and a dreadful certainty seized John.
‘I realised that I was to have a child. I could not believe it at first. I did not want to believe it. All the men were given a twenty-four-hour pass at the end of their training. I told Ollie straight away. He was as shocked as I was. He told me, he wanted me…His family were so very strict and old-fashioned, and my own circumstances…
‘We did not know how long the war would last. It was unthinkable that I should have a child outside marriage, we both knew that. I was dreadfully upset but Ollie told me that there would be other children. I knew…there was a woman I had met socially…There had been, talk. We both agreed that it had to be and that it was for the best. Ollie gave me the money and I went to see her.
‘At first she pretended she didn’t know what I wanted, but in the end she gave me his name. The doctor, I mean. I went to see him.
‘It was horrid, John. Dreadful. This cold, cruel room, and this man with his icy eyes and cold hands. He gave me chloroform and it made me feel so dreadfully sick. I can still remember…’ Her voice tailed away and she started to tremble violently.
‘When I came round it was all over. I went home. The doctor had told me that I must stay in bed for three days. It was on the third day that the telegram came saying that Ollie had been killed. I had killed our baby and God had killed Ollie to punish me for my sin. I’d lost them both. My dearest love and the child that could have been my solace.’
She was sobbing wildly now and John managed to master his own shocked disbelief to try to comfort her.
He knew such things happened – but not to girls like Polly. Poor, down-trodden women with too many children visited back-street abortionists, as they were called, seeking illegal terminations of their unwanted pregnancies. And sometimes, too, frightened unmarried girls. But to deliberately end a pregnancy was against the law. Both in man’s eyes as well as God’s. And both the woman and her abortionist ran the risk of being prosecuted for manslaughter. It had never occurred to John that a decent young woman, never mind one of Polly’s elevated social position, would seek such a remedy.
Was this the reason for her drinking and her wild behaviour? It made sense to him that it must be, especially with such a terrible secret haunting her. He tried to put himself in her lover’s position and to imagine himself asking the woman he loved to take the life of his child, but his imagination simply could not take him that far. And yet he could well understand the circumstances which had driven them both to seek such a drastic remedy.
‘I am cursed, John. I am cursed for ever. I am haunted by the cries of my lost child and by my own longing to have that child back. But it is too late. Too late.’
‘Ivan said you wanted to see me?’
Although she herself wasn’t aware of it, the fact that Hettie now felt so comfortable using their director’s first name revealed the speed with which she had matured since she had come to London.
‘Yes.’ Jay agreed, getting up from his desk and smiling at her. ‘I’ve heard from Archie, and he says that he already has several ideas for a new musical.’
Jay had sent Archie to New York with the instruction that he wanted the composer to study what was happening on Broadway and to incorporate the best and biggest box-office draws in the musical he wanted him to write.
‘My prediction is that by this time next year you will be starring in your own musical, Hettie. Now what do you think of that?’ Jay enquired jovially.
Hettie gasped and coloured up, her eyes shining as she shook her head and protested, ‘So soon? I know you did say, but I hadn’t expected anything like this yet.’
‘I’m not a man to let the grass grow under my feet, Hettie,’ Jay told her.
Nor was he one to risk another man snatching so tempting a morsel as Hettie from out of his hand, Jay acknowledged inwardly. And Hettie was tempting. Deliciously and delightfully so.
‘So I can take it that the thought of us continuing our partnership pleases you then, can I?’ Jay teased her, walking up to her and sliding one arm round her waist, and then, before she could move, bending his head to kiss her very firmly and deliberately on the mouth.
It wasn’t the first time Jay had kissed her, and it wasn’t the first time either that the intimacy of his behaviour towards her had left her feeling both dizzily happy and at the same time horribly guilty. Jay was a married man after all. But whenever, in the aftermath of such intimacy, she resolved to reprove him for his familiarity towards her the next time she saw him, he always behaved in such a professional manner that she could not legitimately do so. In fact, she was often left thinking that maybe she had been overreacting.
And then, of course, there was the added problem that, shockingly, she was by no means averse to Jay’s kisses.
‘The thought of us continuing our business partnership does please me,’ Hettie told him primly now.
Jay gave a great shout of laughter, his eyes crinkling in that way that quite made Hettie’s heart somersault inside her chest. ‘Ah, but what if the partnership I want to pursue with you, pretty little Hettie, is not of a “business” nature?’ he challenged her softly.
‘I know very well that you are teasing me,’ Hettie responded.
‘And if I wasn’t just teasing?’ Jay pressed fiercely. ‘If I were instead very close to falling in love with you, Hettie. Then what?’
Hettie tensed and looked up at him. There was no amusement in the dark eyes now.
‘But that can’t be,’ she told him shakily. ‘It must not be. You are married. You have a wife…’
‘A wife, yes, but I do not have love, Hettie. I have a millstone around my neck that I cannot cast off, but I do not have a woman to love, a woman who loves me. I do not have all those things I know that you and I could have together.’
‘You must not say such things to me,’ Hettie protested. ‘It isn’t…’
‘It isn’t what? It isn’t proper?’ Jay mocked her.
‘It isn’t fair,’ Hettie corrected him bluntly. Something about the way Jay was looking at her made her heart hurt.
‘You are so honest, and so unflinching in that honesty,’ he told her ruefully. ‘Is it any wonder that I am falling in love with you? And is it fair that I should be forced to live my life without you by my side? Is it fair that we should both deny ourselves the pleasure, the happiness, I know we would share?’
Jay’s voice had thickened with emotion. Now, with his normal light-hearted teasing manner put to one side, with his allowing her to see his deeper emotions, Hettie knew that she had never been in more danger of falling in love with him in return. But she was still the product of a working class home where duty and decency and certain very strong moral values had been impressed upon her throughout her growing years.
‘Hettie, Hettie, why deny us both?’ Jay pleaded with her, reaching for her before she could move away.
She tried to stand stiffly and unyieldingly in his arms, but her tender heart couldn’t remain unmoved by the extent of his passionate despair as he whispered her name into her hair. Helplessly Hettie looked up at him, and just as helplessly she succumbed to the fierce passion of his kiss as he drew her to him.
‘You see, sweet Hettie,’ he whispered to her as he released her. ‘You see how wonderful it will be for us, and how foolish it would be to deny ourselves the gift fate has given us? I do not want to escape our fate, Hettie, and I promise you that I shall ensure that you do not want to escape either it or me.
‘Now, let me tell you about the surprise I have planned for you. You have worked so very hard and Madame is so pleased with your progress that I felt you deserved a reward.’
Hettie laughed. ‘You have rewarded me enough already in giving me the part of Princess Mimi,’ she assured him. When they were talking about work she felt on safer ground.
‘Princess Mimi is only the beginning,’ Jay told her. ‘You just wait and see. I am taking you to Paris for Easter, Hettie. We shall go to the opera whilst we are there and we shall see all the popular shows as well. We shall go to Chanel and I shall buy you one of Madame Coco’s stylish gowns, and then I shall take you somewhere equally stylish for dinner. Now, what do you have to say to that?’
He both looked and sounded as excited as a schoolboy, but Hettie’s heart had grown heavier with each word he had spoken. ‘I…I cannot go with you,’ she told him.
‘What? Don’t be silly! What nonsense is this, Hettie? Of course you will go with me. That is not negotiable. As to whether or nor you will share my bed whilst we are there, however…If that is what is worrying you, I have already booked a separate suite for you, so you need not fear that I am trying to trick you into…’
‘It isn’t that.’ Hettie stopped him unhappily.
The truth was that ordinarily she would have loved to spend Easter with him, and to do so in Paris of all places would have been sheer heaven. In Paris there would not be any knowing friends watching and warning her. In Paris, that most daring of all cities, or so she had heard, all manner of things could and did happen. In Paris, she suspected she could easily be tempted to forget that Jay was married and to remember only how her heart sang when he kissed her. In Paris…But she would not be in Paris, nor would she be with Jay. She would be in Preston, with her family, and she looked forward to that with much more longing.
‘No? Then what exactly is it?’ Jay demanded angrily.
‘I have already promised to spend Easter with my family,’ she told him quietly.
‘Your family? But surely both your parents are dead and…’
‘My adoptive family,’ Hettie corrected herself. ‘My…my step-mother hasn’t been well, and…’
Jay shook his head, silencing her as he took her hands in his and gave her a small shake. ‘Hettie, Hettie, your loyalty to her does you credit, but what about your loyalty to yourself? To your singing? To me? Be honest, sweet little Hettie, be honest and admit that you would much rather come to Paris with me?’
‘Yes, I think I would,’ Hettie agreed immediately. But when Jay’s hold on her hands tightened and he would have drawn her towards him to celebrate the triumph she could see in his eyes with another kiss, she drew back from him. ‘I would rather do so, Jay, but I cannot. I have already written to say that I will go home.’
She didn’t feel she could explain even to Jay just how dreadfully unhappy her estrangement from her family had made her feel, nor how something inside her she didn’t even fully understand herself was urging her to respond to the loving letter Ellie had sent to her, even though a part of her was still afraid that she might be rejected a second time.
‘Then write again and say that you have changed your mind,’ Jay told her promptly. ‘Or if you wish, write and tell them that your slave driver of an employer has insisted that you must work throughout Easter.’
‘Lie to them, you mean?’ Hettie’s mouth trembled, and she suddenly saw with heart-wrenching clarity that, were she to allow herself to fall in love with Jay, there would be many lies and deceits to be both told and endured.
‘And do you not think that I, too, will have to practise some deceit in order to be with you?’ Jay demanded, oblivious to her recognition of what their future together would be and her place in his life with it. ‘But unlike you, Hettie, I consider what we could have together to be worth it. Oh, Hettie…Don’t make up your mind now,’ he begged her. ‘Think about what I have said. Please?’
Jay was humbling himself to beg her to reconsider. A huge lump of emotion ached in Hettie’s throat, preventing her from speaking. Tears weren’t very far away and she longed to be able to tell Jay that she would do what he wanted and go to Paris with him. After all, wasn’t it really what she wanted as well?
She was a different person now from the girl she had been. She was living in a different world, with different rules to those from the world she had grown up in.
There was Eddie with his doomed passion for Ivan, and Mary who was so in love with her lord and so convinced that he would marry her. And there were others, whose names were whispered openly in theatre dressing rooms, famous stars adored by their public and fêted everywhere they went, but who were most definitely not married to the powerful men who shared their beds. Hettie could think of any number of such liaisons. There was indeed one very famous singer whose devoted lover was a prominent married politician. He openly visited the elegant Cheyne Walk house where she lived with the two children she claimed publicly to have adopted but who everyone knew were her children by her lover. His wife had retired to the country and it was his lover who accompanied him to balls and house parties and to whom he gave his time and his love.
Why should it not be the same for her with Jay? Why should she abide by the petty rules of a way of a life that no longer fitted her? Sometimes she felt so torn between her new life and Jay, and her old life and her family, that just worrying about what she should do made her head ache almost as much as her heart, Hettie admitted.
She wanted to go home and yet at the same time she was afraid of doing so. She wanted to go to Paris with Jay too, but she was also a little afraid of what it would lead to if she did.
Just thinking about going back to Preston aroused all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings inside her.
Yes, Ellie had written her the kindest and most loving letter in which she had been the mother Hettie had always known and loved. But what if she should change again? What if, when she saw Hettie, Ellie decided that she didn’t want to be close to her after all? Perhaps she shouldn’t go to Preston. Perhaps she should write to Gideon and say that she had changed her mind. That way at least she wouldn’t be hurt again.