Spring had well and truly arrived, and the aristocratic London season was in full swing, the newspapers and society magazines filled with photographs of expectant debutantes, and of course the newly engaged Edwina Ashley and her fiancé Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Young men sporting the newly fashionable wide Oxford bags were photographed with pretty girls wearing tennis dresses and looking very sporting. Whilst the temperatures rose, Madame Coco Chanel pronounced that no fashionable young lady should be without the latest accessory of a ‘suntan’.
Hettie and the other girls had taken to spending as much of their free time as they could sunning themselves in Hyde Park, where Hettie, to everyone else’s envy, quickly turned the prettiest and most enviable shade of golden brown.
‘Ooh, ouch,’ Aggie complained late one afternoon as she, Mary and Hettie walked back to their lodging house. ‘I ’aven’t half gorn and burned meself. Me face looks as red as fire. It’s all right for you, ’Ettie,’ she protested as Hettie giggled. ‘Just look at you, you lucky thing.’
Hettie was wearing a pretty sundress with a matching short-sleeved bolero that showed off her toasted arms. She had removed the bolero in the park the better to ‘tan’ her skin, and she couldn’t help preening a little as a group of young men whistled cheekily as the three girls walked past them.
‘Look, I’m going to get meself some calamine lotion,’ Aggie told the other two. ‘I’ll catch up with you in a minute.’
‘Are you seeing His Lordship tonight, Mary?’ Hettie asked conversationally, once Aggie had gone.
Mary shook her head. ‘No, ’e’s away at the moment. ’E’s gorn to H’Inchfield, that’s ’is family seat,’ she explained proudly. ‘His mam and dad wanted to see him about sommat.’
‘Is it very grand, the family seat, I mean?’ Hettie asked her.
‘Oh yes, ever so,’ Mary confirmed brightly. ‘It’s got over a hundred rooms, you know.’
Although Mary was smiling, it seemed to Hettie that her smile was strained, and she certainly looked thinner, Hettie decided,
‘Mary, you aren’t taking those pills that Sukey was taking, are you?’ she asked her urgently.
‘Course not,’ Mary denied, but then to Hettie’s surprise her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
‘Oh Mary,’ Hettie soothed. ‘Whatever is it, what’s wrong?’
‘Nuffink,’ Mary denied vehemently, sniffing and wiping the back of her hand over her eyes. ‘And don’t you go saying anything about this to the others, ’Ettie,’ she ordered fiercely.
Hettie had been due to spend the day with Jay, who had promised to drive her to Brighton, but he had had to cancel their outing at the last minute because of some urgent business. However, he was waiting for Hettie when she left the theatre after the evening performance.
‘Hettie, I have received the best of news from Archie. He has already written two songs for you for the new musical, and he intends to post copies to me.’
‘Two songs? But I thought you had still to decide upon a story for the musical?’ Hettie protested as Jay hurried her into the waiting motor – a new Rolls Royce, Hettie noticed admiringly as she sank into its cream leather seating.
‘Yes, that is so, but Archie and I are both agreed that no time must be lost in taking advantage of the success we have had with Princess Geisha, and so if necessary we can open on Broadway with that if we can’t get the new musical ready in time.
‘And I have another surprise for you as well, Hettie,’ Jay announced.
He was obviously in very high good humour, Hettie recognised as he laughed at her bewilderment and caught hold of her hands.
‘Hettie, you and I are going to go to New York!’
‘New York!’ Hettie could only stare at him.
‘Ah ha, now I have silenced you, my little song bird.’ Jay grinned. ‘Yes, Hettie, New York. It is all arranged. I have already instructed my agents to book us a passage to New York. And that is not all.’ He glanced towards Hudson’s rigid back and whispered to her, ‘I have listened to what you have said to me, Hettie, and I have also instructed my agents to find you an apartment.’
‘An apartment?’ Hettie was still trying to come to terms with the news that she was to go to New York. It seemed like another planet.
‘Yes. As the star of my new show it is unthinkable, of course, that you should lodge with chorus girls as you do here in London. New York does not care for cheapskates, and besides, an apartment will give us privacy, Hettie, and I shall be able to visit you…frequently.’
They had reached the Ritz, and the doorman was opening the car door for her.
‘In fact,’ Jay told her, placing his hand over her own beneath the cover of her coat and squeezing her fingers gently, ‘I have also arranged for us to look at a pretty little house in Chelsea tomorrow. It has its own small music room where you can practise, and a delightful bedroom where we can be alone. But we’ll speak more of this later,’ he told her, releasing her hand so that she could get out of the car.
Hettie’s head was spinning. New York. An apartment. A house in Chelsea.
She had known, of course, what Jay’s intentions towards her were. She knew too that she found him very attractive. Jay created an atmosphere of excitement around him that she suspected few women would be immune to, and they had a shared interest in their work. With Jay she could achieve her dreams. And prior to returning home to Preston to see her family, she would have said that there was nothing she wanted more than that.
But now…Ellie and Gideon would hate the thought of her becoming Jay’s mistress. Ellie would be shocked and hurt. Gideon would be shocked and angry. They would want to protect her from what they would see as a shameful liaison, and she would not be able to make them understand that things were different in the theatrical world and that, whilst her relationship with Jay could never be acceptable in their world it was in hers.
But what if she were able to keep her relationship with Jay a secret from her family? In London that might not have been possible, but surely in New York it would be? Her heart started to beat faster. Jay excited her in a way that she only half understood. His touch made her flesh tingle and her whole body feel as though it were holding its breath waiting for something, some pleasure she did not as yet know.
Impulsively Hettie turned towards him, wanting to express what she was feeling, but as she did so, Jay stared at her, and then stepped back from her, his whole body rigid with anger.
‘Jay, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Hettie demanded as he hurried her down the now familiar corridor and into the lift which would take them to his suite. But instead of answering her, he gave a tight-lipped shake of his head, and then didn’t speak to her again until they were inside the suite.
Then he demanded savagely, ‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’
‘What do you mean?’ Hettie asked him worriedly. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘Yes you have.’ He grabbed hold of her and turned her round so that she could see her own reflection in the mirror behind them.
‘Look at yourself,’ he instructed her. ‘Look at your skin,’ he persisted when Hettie gave him a puzzled look.
‘My skin? Jay, I don’t understand.’
‘It’s dark…brown. Like a…’ His mouth compressed and he shook his head as though unable to trust himself to say any more. Then he released her and walked away, only to turn round and tell her bitterly, ‘Don’t you know what you look like with your skin that colour?’
‘It’s the fashion,’ Hettie protested. ‘Coco Chanel says…’
‘I don’t give a damn what some bloody French dressmaker might say. Where I come from a woman’s white skin is more important – of more value – than her virtue.’
‘Her white skin?’ Hettie repeated as she struggled to understand why Jay should get in such a state of fury simply because she had been sunbathing.
‘Come with me,’ Jay ordered, taking hold of her arm and almost dragging her into the salon where he picked up a copy of the New York Times, and turned over a few pages before thrusting it beneath her nose. ‘Read this,’ he told her furiously.
Apprehensively Hettie began to read the article he was showing her which reported that a ‘black’ boy had been tortured and then burned at the stake for allegedly raping a white woman.
By the time she got to the end of the article, Hettie was crying and shaking with shocked, numbing anguish. It was one of the most awful things she had ever heard.
‘Do you know why they did that to him, Hettie?’ Jay demanded. Without waiting for her to answer he told her, ‘They did it because he was “black” and she was white. Do you think they would have done the same thing to a white man who had been accused of raping a black woman?’
‘Jay, it’s horrible…awful. That such a dreadful thing should have happened, I agree it’s terrible. But what has this to do with us and my…me?’ she asked him.
‘I’ve told you about my family history, Hettie. Where I come from, a woman with brown skin is deemed to come from slave stock. The richest men in New Orleans want to be seen with only the palest skinned women.’ He paused and then looked away from her before saying in low voice, ‘I loved the pale milk whiteness of your skin.’
Hettie could feel the hot tears burning her eyes. ‘It’s only a suntan,’ she told him, trying to smile as she added, ‘It isn’t for ever and if I don’t sunbathe any more then it will go away.’
But something inside her was hurting very badly. If Jay was not married would he still only want her as his mistress because of the colour of her skin? Because of her mixed race heritage? Suddenly Hettie was seeing the superficiality of Jay, of his world, and she didn’t like it, not one bit.
‘Ralphie, darling, do please let me introduce John to you. John is the wicked unkind person who refused to give me flying lessons,’ Polly announced as the tall young man standing at her side inclined his head a little awkwardly in John’s direction.
He was, John admitted, a strikingly handsome boy and it was obvious from the way he was looking at her that he adored Polly. But it worried John to see the almost desperate determination in Polly’s eyes as she smiled back at him and then turned to John to say, ‘Ralphie has proposed to me, John, and I have accepted his proposal, so even if I cannot lay claim to being a lady, I shall at least become a countess. John, do you think I shall make a good one?’
It was plain to John that Polly’s comments were embarrassing her companion, but etiquette prevented him from doing anything other than remaining where he was, and inclining his own head slightly as he said formally, ‘May I offer my congratulations, Your Grace.’
Immediately Polly gave a peal of laughter. ‘Oh John, how absurd you sound, and besides, Ralphie is not a “Your Grace” as yet since his grandfather is still alive. But see, he has given me the most beautiful ring.’
Still smiling she displayed the huge emerald surrounded by sparkling diamonds which flashed on her wedding ring finger.
‘I say, Polly,’ John could hear her new fiancé protesting awkwardly.
‘Oh, it’s all right, Ralphie, John isn’t merely employed by my brother. He is one of Alfie’s friends as well.’
She was fitting a cigarette into an elegant holder, and immediately Ralph Lascelles leaped up to light it for her, his movements as eager and awkward as those of a young untrained puppy.
‘Now come along, darling, you’ve spent enough time here talking with your chums,’ Polly chided him. ‘And I’m taking you to that new roadhouse tonight. Remember?’
They had almost reached the door to the clubhouse when it opened to admit one of John’s least favourite pupils.
Sir Percival Montford was a heavily built middle-aged man with cold, too pale blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. He treated all those he considered lower down the social scale than himself so unpleasantly that he never managed to keep any staff for more than a year. He was both a heavy drinker and a heavy gambler, and some very unpleasant rumours about him had begun to circulate, suggesting that he was not always honourable in both his dealings at the card table and his treatment of women.
Although not married himself, it seemed that he preferred the company of married women to that of single young ladies, and, like any other man, John had drawn his own conclusions from the gossip he had heard about him. Alfie had mentioned to him that he would have liked to have barred Sir Percival from joining the flying club, but had felt it was not politic to do so.
‘Dashed difficult to prove anything against him, what!’ had been his rueful comment.
Now as Sir Percival walked into the club, he looked immediately at Polly and seemed about to step in front of her until she moved quickly to her new fiancé’s side, tucking her hand through his arm whilst giving Sir Percival a defiant look. But John, who was standing to one side of them, saw that beneath her defiance she was afraid.
He was probably worrying unnecessarily about Polly, John tried to reassure himself, but she was still in his thoughts later in the day when the oppressive heat had driven him out of his small office in an attempt to find somewhere cooler.
The sky was a brassy shade of intense blue. He had a free afternoon and suddenly more than anything else he wanted to be up there where there were no limits and complications, just the never-ending magic of the thrill of flight.
‘Gawd but it’s ’ot.’ Aggie puffed. ‘Anyone fancy coming to Hyde Park with me?’
Jenny and Jess shook their heads, giggling as they looked at one another and then explained that they were spending the afternoon with two admirers.
‘What about you, ’Ettie?’
Hettie also shook her head. Ever since Jay’s outburst about her tan earlier in the week she had been doing her best to keep out of the sun and to return her skin to its previous pearly translucence. She had even gone to the trouble of rubbing handfuls of salt into her skin until it glowed red and stung in an effort to rub the tan away. But deep down inside herself, Hettie knew that Jay’s horrified reaction to her suntan had left her feeling upset and very unhappy.
She had been brought up in a home where it was the kind of person you were inside that mattered, not the way you looked on the outside. She wanted to please Jay, of course she did, but somehow what she was now doing was rubbing a little sore place inside her heart.
They were saying in the papers that the country was having the highest May temperatures for fifty years, and the air in the small room Hettie was sharing with Babs was stifling, even with the window opened to its widest extent.
Outside in the street she could hear an ice-cream man crying his wares, and her mouth watered.
She was half way down the stairs when the front door opened and Mary came rushing in, her head bent, oblivious to Hettie’s presence until Hettie spoke to her.
‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d all be in the park,’ Mary exclaimed.
‘It’s too hot for me,’ Hettie fibbed. ‘I was just going to get myself an ice. Do you fancy one? Mary, what is it, what’s wrong?’ she demanded urgently when she saw that Mary was crying.
‘Nothing…Nothing’s wrong,’ Mary told her fiercely, but Hettie could tell she was lying.
Mary had pushed past her and continued to hurry up the stairs, though, before Hettie could challenge her. Hettie hesitated in the hallway, wanting to go after her, but longing for the cooling freshness of an ice-cream.
Opening the front door she hurried to the end of the street where the ice-cream cart was stopped, and asked the smiling Italian man who was watching her to put two helpings of ice-cream, instead of one, into the bowl she was holding out to him.
‘Want to share it with me?’ he asked her with a wink.
‘No thanks, my friend is waiting for me to get back,’ Hettie told him firmly, handing over her money and taking the bowl from him.
Mary’s room was on the floor above her own and Hettie hesitated outside the door before knocking on it and then turning the handle as she announced, ‘It’s only me, Mary. I’ve got us some ice-cream, but you’ll need your own spoon. Oh Mary, whatever’s to do?’ she asked anxiously as she walked into the room and found Mary lying on her bed, crying her eyes out.
‘Go away, will yer?’ Mary told her, but Hettie ignored her and instead sat down on the side of the bed.
‘Mary, whatever’s to do?’ she repeated gently. And don’t tell me nothing,’ she added firmly. ‘Because it’s as plain as plain that there is something and I’m not leaving here until you tell me what it is.’
Mary sat up, still crying. ‘It’s ’im, His bleedin’ Lordship,’ she revealed bitterly. ‘He’s only gorn and got himself engaged to some toff’s daughter, that’s all. I’ve seen it in the papers.’
‘What? But…What do you mean, Mary? He’s engaged to you,’ Hettie protested. ‘There must be a mistake.’
‘Oh, there’s no mistake. Went round to his rooms meself, I did. ’E weren’t for letting me in at first, but I told him I’d scream the place down unless ’e did. Seems that the others were right all along, ’Ettie,’ Mary told her in between her tears. ‘And all ’e wanted from me were a bit of fun. Told me I were a fool if I’d ever thought someone like ’im, would marry someone like me. Said that it had been arranged when they was kids that he and this Lady Arabella would be getting married. Oh, ’Ettie. Wot am I going to do? The others will laugh themselves sick when they ’ere about it, especially Aggie.’
‘No they won’t, Mary.’ Hettie tried to comfort her, but she could see that Mary didn’t believe her.
‘Broken me ’eart, he has,’ she told Hettie forlornly. ‘Not that ’e bleedin’ well cares.’ She had flung herself full length on the bed and started crying again.
‘Well, if you asks me it were obvious from the start what were going to ’appen, and Mary were daft for thinking he would marry her,’ Aggie pronounced.
They were all at the theatre – apart from Mary herself, who had said she had a bad headache and felt too sick to go to rehearsal.
‘Well, she might have brung it on herself, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling sorry for her,’ Jess put in.
‘Me neither,’ her twin agreed.
‘Well, ’appen you’re right,’ Aggie agreed, softening. ‘But let this be a warning to you, ’Ettie,’ Aggie urged. ‘They’re all the same, these toffs, and just because Jay Dalhousie is an American that don’t mean that he’s any different. And what’s more, he’s married already.’
‘Oh, there’s no point in talking to ’Ettie, Aggie,’ Babs chipped in, tossing her head. ‘She thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us now.’
‘Babs, that isn’t true,’ Hettie protested unhappily.
‘Yes it is,’ Babs snapped back immediately. ‘’As she told the rest of you yet that she’s movin’ in to her own place?’ she asked whilst Hettie’s skin coloured up, betraying her instantly.
‘Singing lessons. Dinner at the Ritz nearly every bloody night. Now your own lodgings. We wasn’t born yesterday, you know, ’Ettie,’ Babs told her sharply.
‘Your own house? And you never said so much as a word about it to us, ’Ettie,’ Jessie reproached her.
‘It isn’t definite…about the house,’ Hettie protested guiltily. ‘Jay only mentioned it the other day…’
‘Oh, it’s “Jay” now, is it?’ Babs mocked her unkindly.
Why was Babs treating her like this? Hettie wondered miserably.
‘Not that I cares wot you do because I’m going back to Liverpool,’ Babs announced with a toss of her head. ‘Given in me notice, I have, and I’m leavin’ at the end of the week.’ She looked down at her left hand and twisted her small engagement ring.
‘You’re missing your Stan, that’s what it is, isn’t it?’ Aggie guessed immediately.
‘So what if I am? We don’t all want to be bloody famous singers, you know…’
‘’Ere, Babs. There’s no call to go flying orf the handle wi’ me,’ Aggie objected.
‘Mebbe not,’ Babs agreed grudgingly, giving Hettie a cold and pointed look.
Hettie had to wait until bedtime to speak privately with Babs. Her friend’s sharp words to her had hurt, but where previously she had been reluctant to raise the subject Hettie now felt that she didn’t want them to part without at least making an attempt to find out what had gone wrong between them.
Babs had undressed in silence, blocking all Hettie’s attempts to talk to her, and now that they were both in bed Hettie took a deep breath and begged her anxiously, ‘Babs, I thought you and me were friends, but…’
‘So did I, ’Ettie. But you’ve changed,’ Babs told her sharply. ‘You aren’t the girl you was in Liverpool, and if you ask me it’s all on account of you gettin’ a bit above yourself, and thinking you’re too good for the rest of us now.’
‘Babs, I don’t think that,’ Hettie insisted humbly. ‘Honest…’
‘Yes you do. You don’t want to be bothered with us any more. You wouldn’t even come to ’Yde Park with us yesterday.’
‘But that was because…’ Hettie began eagerly and then stopped. Things had changed, she admitted sadly, because now she felt reluctant to expose herself by telling Babs what Jay had said to her, whereas once Babs would have been the first person she would have taken her fears to. But how could she now when Babs had made it so obvious that she disapproved of Hettie’s relationship with Jay?
‘I know what it was “because” of, ’Ettie,’ Babs told her. ‘I’ve seen it ’appen before. Me own cousin were just like you. Started orf in the chorus together, we did, and then the next thing was she didn’t want anythin’ more to do wi’ me because she’d been given a solo spot. That full of herself, she was, she couldn’t get ’er head through the door it had got that swelled.’
‘I didn’t know your cousin was on the stage. Where is she now, Babs?’ Hettie asked her.
Babs gave a bitter laugh. ‘I don’t know. Last I ’eard of her, she’d run off wi’ some chap from Manchester. Good riddance an’ all, if you ask me. I saw the way you was lookin’ down your nose at my Stan, ’Ettie.’
‘Babs, no. I didn’t…’
‘Yes you did. At Christmas when he asked if you wanted ter sit on his knee. Turned yer back on ’im, you did, and walked orf with yer nose in the air.’
Hettie stared at her. ‘But that was because…’ She broke off, recognising that she could not tell this new Babs who had taken the place of her friend that she had refused Stan’s offer of his knee as a seat because she hadn’t wanted her friend to think she was flirting with her man.
An aching sense of loss filled Hettie. Was this the price she was going to have to pay for success? The loss of her friends? Her family? Her identity? She gave a small shiver of apprehension.
Reluctantly John acknowledged that with the light already fading it was time for him to return to the flying club. The sky was a miraculous colour of deep dense blue fading away to palest lemon against the horizon where the sun was setting. It had been a perfect afternoon for flying, and he had ached to have his camera and a co-pilot so that he could have captured the beauty of it all.
He missed the life he had lived in Preston, he acknowledged as he brought the small plane down safely and taxied her to a standstill. The more gentle pace of his old life there may have brought him less money but it had also allowed him time for his photography; time to be with his family and his friends.
The harsh, agonising pain and guilt of Jim’s death had eased to a more bearable sense of sadness and loss, which was ironic, he admitted, because the feelings of sadness and loss he felt with regard to Hettie had actually intensified.
The ground staff had all gone home for the day, and the airfield was deserted. John did not normally mind the solitude of his own company, but tonight the warmth of the balmy air, the sense of summer coming, and life flowering all around him made him sharply aware of his loneliness.
There was a small pub on the other side of the village, which somehow reminded him of The Lamb and Shepherd, an ancient drovers pub on the outskirts of Preston and a favourite haunt of his late father and uncle.
The Pride children’s Uncle Will had been a real character – a sheep drover who had kept two families, one in Preston and another close to Lancaster.
John grinned to himself as he got into his motor and started the engine. Their mother had thoroughly disapproved of her disreputable brother-in-law, but John had loved him. It had been through Uncle Will that Gideon had brought John his first and much longed for collie pup.
Boys and pups, they were meant to be together, John reflected ruefully as he drove down the now darkening country lanes. He still missed Rex, the collie pup Gideon had given him when he was ten, even though the dog had gone to his rest over four years ago now.
Overhead the full moon was illuminating the landscape with soft silver blue light, the sky a vast bowl of darker blue broken up by the various stars and their constellations.
John had been keenly interested in astronomy as a boy. Will Pride had had every countryman’s knowledge of the stars and their movements, which he had passed on to his nephew, and later John had spent many happy hours studying them through the telescope owned by the photographer for whom he had worked. As a little girl Hettie had loved looking up at the sky and listening to him whilst he taught her the names of the great constellations. Hettie…Would she never leave his thoughts?
The public house was only a couple of miles outside the village, and as John stopped his car he saw Polly and Sir Percival Montford standing several yards away from him beside their own motors, so engrossed in the argument they were obviously having that neither of them had seen him.
Polly with Sir Percival? What were they arguing about and why were they meeting here at this remote country public house?
Sir Percival had started to walk away and John watched as Polly ran after him, obviously still arguing with him. But Sir Percival pushed past her. She then turned round and started to walk towards her roadster, getting into it and immediately starting the engine and driving off in her normal dashing way, leaving Sir Percival to stare after her before getting into his Daimler and driving off in the opposite direction.
What was going on? Why should Polly, who John had seen making her dislike of Sir Percival all too plain, be meeting him here?
It was none of his business, John said to himself. Polly had a fiancé now to protect her and look after her. But somehow worrying about her and feeling protective towards her had become a habit he couldn’t break, John acknowledged ruefully half an hour later as he tucked into the steak and ale pie the landlady had brought him.