Jacky Daydream Read Online Free PDF Page A

heart thumped under her muslin bodice.
    Maybe Mr Bryan had seen her peering wistfully in his window and murmured a word in the Mayor’s ear. Maybe the Mayor truly
was
Father Christmas. Whatever . . . Hilda Ellen was called out, a young lad was sent scampering up a ladder to the top of the tree, and the beautiful doll was put in Hilda Ellen’s arms. She clasped her tight, burying her face in that soft golden hair, quivering with happiness.
    She called the doll Mabel and loved her passionately. She made her an entire trousseau of elaborate clothes: a sailor suit with a pleated skirt, a velvet dress with tiny pearl buttons and a crochet collar, a winter coat edged in fur, with a fur-trimmed bonnet and a little fur muff to match.
    Hilda Ellen was blissfully happy. She wanted to live in Portsmouth for ever but Papa’s lady was now his new wife, with a child on the way. When the baby was born, Papa decided they’d save on a nursemaid and bring Hilda Ellen back to make herself useful. She was old enough, wasn’t she – ten or eleven at least?
    It was a great pity they’d all forgotten exactly how old she was, even Hilda Ellen herself. She’d had a lot of changes of school but she was bright and loved working hard. She shone especially in needlework classes and art, but she was good at all the academic subjects too. Her teachers thought she was definite scholarship material. She sat the exam without a hint of nerves and passed with flying colours, all set to go to a posh girls’ high school, her sights fixed on getting into art school later.
    There was just the formality of sending in her birth certificate. When Papa eventually found it at the back of a desk drawer, they had a shock. Hilda Ellen had somehow mislaid a year of her life. She was eleven going on twelve. So that was it. She was too old for the scholarship.
    It sounds crazy now. I’m sure someone would ensure that this bright, hard-working girl still got a scholarship somehow. Maybe if her father had pushed harder, they’d have made an exception. But people just shrugged their shoulders and said sorry. Hilda Ellen went and lay on her bed, head in her pillow. I don’t know whether she wept. I never saw her cry, not even when she was an old lady in terrible pain. She wasn’t one to make a fuss, she just got on with things.
    She stayed with Papa and her stepmother. She didn’t think much of her. She didn’t think much of baby Jack either, or his little sister Barbara, who arrived a year or so later. She bathed them and fed them and sang them to sleep every evening while her stepmother cosied up to Papa. Hilda Ellen had to share the nursery with her half-siblings, but she kept Mabel sitting on a high shelf out of harm’s way.
    She attended the local elementary school until she was thirteen, but then she had to leave to earn her living. She certainly wasn’t going to be a full-time nursery maid. She thought she’d found the ideal job. On a material hunt to the Bon Marché department store in south London she saw they were advertising for attractive young girls to work the newly installed elevators. They were very proud of these beautiful brass lifts, considered very glamorous and state-of-the-art for Edwardian times. They’d already employed a little dark girl and kitted her out in a crimson uniform, to be a special lift girl. Hilda Ellen was little and very fair. The Bon Marché management thought they’d found an excellent contrasting pair.
    Hilda Ellen went home full of excitement but Papa was shocked at the idea. He’d not cared what she got up to during her childhood but now she was under his roof she had to behave like a lady. Ladies definitely weren’t employed as lift girls. Papa thought they were on a par with chorus girls – or worse.
    There was no arguing. Hilda Ellen pressed her lips together so hard her mouth disappeared. Perhaps it made Papa think harder about his daughter and what she should do with the rest of her life. She was good at