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Whispering Hearts
Author: V.C. Andrews


PROLOGUE


“You walk out that door now, you walk out of this house and this family forever,” my father shouted, standing in our entryway like the statue of Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square, punching his fist toward our front door. He wasn’t close enough to touch it, but in my mind I could hear the pounding.

My father always seemed predisposed to keep parental controls tighter on me than on my sister. One would think he had seen defiance in me the day I was born.

A forefinger poking the air was his way of showing anger or disappointment; a fist was absolute rage and was often accompanied by rose-tinted cheeks, flaming wide eyes, and a tight jaw. Sometimes, he would speak through his clenched teeth and have a way of hoisting his shoulders that made him look even more frightening. I knew all of it was meant to intimidate me. When I was much younger, his reactions always succeeded in sending me into retreat, but eventually I did what he himself often advised: I grew a little more backbone.

From what my sister told me months later, that morning, “as if he had been sitting on a large spring,” he had popped up and out of the living room when our short stairway creaked beneath my feet, revealing that I had begun to descend.

I continued down, carrying my small suitcase, my brown leather Coach drawstring bag hung off my shoulder, clutched under my arm as tightly as I would cling to a life preserver. It had been my maternal grandmum’s; I had often been told that I had inherited her cheekiness. Julia had been given her ivory brush, and we shared her sterling silver hand mirror. I would never tell her, but sometimes I saw my grandmum smiling at me over my shoulder when I gazed into her mirror. She would be whispering, Your perfect features should be captured in a cameo. If I did tell Julia about that, she would only accuse me of being conceited.

I had lowered my head after taking my first step on the stairway this morning and had held my breath from the moment I left my room, anticipating the confrontation with my father. I knew this would be the worst altercation ever between us, and there had been some fierce ones recently. I had put my hair in a braided bun earlier, looking at myself in the mirror and taking periodic deep breaths while I chanted, “You can do this. You must do this, Emma Corey. Do not retreat when he growls.”

I had dressed in my new light-blue pleated skirt suit that I had bought with an employee’s discount at Bradford’s Department Store and had saved to wear on this day. It was practically the only thing I had purchased for myself during the two years I had worked there, anticipating how much money I would need for the journey across the Pond to New York City.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I ignored him and instead looked into the living room and saw my mother and sister sitting beside each other on the sofa, their hands clutched in their laps, knuckles white. Absolutely terrified, neither dared glance toward the door. It was as if the whole house had frozen. Clocks were holding their breaths, hands trembling.

It was one thing to talk about my leaving for America and hear his objections, his protests and threats, but far another to actually do it. I was as determined as Mercedes Gleitze, the first British lady to swim across the English Channel, in 1927. My father wasn’t going to block me and stymie my ambitions, either.

For months I had been talking to my mother and my sister about my going to New York to work and to audition for opportunities to develop my career as a singer. I was trying to prepare them and boost my own courage simultaneously. My excitement sprouted and blossomed as the time for leaving grew closer, and my resolve strengthened.

My sister didn’t help. She was never supportive of my pursuing a career as an entertainer. In fact, for as long as I could recall, she did her best to discourage me.

My mother’s silence whenever I discussed it telegraphed her utter dread of anticipating my father’s reaction. Whatever she did say was almost always discouraging.

“You really don’t know anything about that world, especially in America,” she told me. “You’ll be a poor little lamb who’s lost her way.”

She was always on the verge of tears when we conversed about the subject. Her lips trembled, and she wove her fingers around each other so nervously and tightly that I thought she might break one. Everyone always said she had bones as thin as a bird’s. It would merely take a brisk wind to crack one.

“From what I’ve read, no one really knows that world, Mummy, here in England or there in America. Most everything depends on a lucky break, but you’ve got to be at it to get that to happen, and if you’re too frightened to try, you’ll always wonder if you could have succeeded. Regret is worse than failure, because failing at least means you had attempted to do something. Not seeking to develop your talent is a sin. I can’t imagine years and years from now staring into the memory of this time and wondering forever about what might have been.”

I explained how I hoped to get into a Broadway show, to be seen by a music producer, and to be contracted to do an album, just as Barbra Streisand had done. My voice was often compared to hers, so I envisioned myself on television shows performing as well.

I loved singing, loved to bask in the expressions on the faces of my audiences and thrill to the way I could touch them. I was able to get people to pause in their busy or troubled lives and travel comfortably with me along the paths of the melodies—some joyful, some wistful, but always taking them to another place, even if only for a few minutes. For as long as I could remember, I was told I had a special gift. Why didn’t my family believe as I did that it was as important to develop and share it? If you were given a gift, surely it was immoral to ignore it.

“Totally ridiculous,” Julia said when she heard my plans. “You’re still just a child full of imagination. You’ve never gone fifty miles from your home without me or our parents or some school chaperone. Be realistic. Grow up, for goodness’ sake.”

Julia was wrong. What I wanted wasn’t some pipe dream a teenage girl grows in a garden of fantasies. My plans were stable and mature. I was especially disappointed that she, who already was working as a teacher, didn’t see this. It was supposed to be in a teacher’s DNA to encourage young people, to push them to try, to experiment, and to be courageous so they could become all they were capable of becoming.

But then again, maybe she did envision all I could do; maybe she was simply jealous that I had the courage to step out of this house alone to try something so big, something she couldn’t do. She knew I was lead singer in the church chorus for years and lead singer in the school chorus as well. She was aware of all the praise I had received from the moment I had sung my first note as a child. She accompanied my parents to every school performance and was always in church whenever they attended and heard me sing. A cloudburst of compliments soaked us all before we walked down the steps to go home.

Most important, she was aware that it hadn’t stopped there. I had earned praise in other ways. On weekends since my sixteenth birthday, I sang in pubs in Guildford and at some social events, even a wedding, but I really felt professional when I sang in taverns and was paid for it. In the U.K., you are considered an adult by the age of sixteen. Not only can you drive, but you are allowed to have beer, wine, or cider with a meal in a pub if you are with an adult, and so singing in one wasn’t unusual for someone my age.

Many people told me that the pubs had better attendance when the word was out that I would be singing in them. I would do all the traditional favorites like “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Pack up Your Troubles,” and many songs written by Cole Porter, as well as songs sung by Streisand. In particular, the Three Bears tavern did so well that the owner advertised me in the local paper occasionally and on flyers left at store counters.

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