Sapphire Battersea Read Online Free PDF

the landing, and then down the long wooden staircase, the grand portraits staring at me sternly.
    ‘Frown all you like. I’m not afraid of you. I shall never have to stare up at you ever again,’ I declared.
    I crept right downstairs, across the girls’ dining room, the table already set for our meagre breakfast. There was no clattering from the kitchen. The cook must still be sleeping. I moved as silently as a shadow through the great room, which still reeked of yesterday’s mutton, and proceeded along the servants’ corridor.
    I halted outside Mama’s room. I could not go in. There was another maid living there now, a large, clumsy girl called Maud. She was harmless enough, but I hated her simply because she had taken Mama’s place. I could not stand the thought of her gimcrack possessions littering Mama’s chest, her dirty brush and comb on Mama’s washstand, her fat, ungainly body sprawled all over Mama’s bed.
    I stood outside the door, leaning my head against the varnished wood, remembering all the precious times I had spent with Mama within those four walls.
    I wrote on the door with my finger:
I love you, Mama
, and then crept away. I returned to my bed undetected. If only I had been so lucky before! We would have had some chance of regular meetings if Mama were still employed at the hospital in London and I were not too far away in the suburbs. A simple bus ride, perhaps.
    My heart started beating faster at the thought of my journey today. I had Mr Charles Buchanan’s address written inside my journal:
8 Lady’s Ride, Kingtown
. I had no idea how I would reach this destination. I had only been outside the hospital grounds once, when I was ten – the day of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. We had been escorted all the way to the great children’s celebration in Hyde Park. I had seen the circus there, and had run away to try to find my childhood idol, Madame Adeline, the magical spangled woman who had let me sit on one of her rosin-backed horses and had won my heart for ever. I had taken an omnibus ride that day, as bold as brass. I tried hard to remember how I had hailed it and how much money I had paid. What happened when you wanted to get off? Did you ring some kind of bell? How would I know where 8 Lady’s Ride was? How would I know anything at all in the outside world?
    I remembered how the children in Hyde Park had pointed and jeered at me. Would people still point me out and ridicule me? I clenched my fists. I would make them sorry if they did. I was Sapphire Battersea, and I would show everyone. I was not content to be a common servant. One day my name would be famous, recognized all over London.
    I shut my eyes and saw
Sapphire Battersea
in big fancy lettering on advertising posters,
Sapphire Battersea
in bold print in newspapers. I heard the name
Sapphire Battersea
shouted through loudhailers,
Sapphire Battersea
acclaimed by thousands of mouths.
    Then a handbell clanged along the corridor – and I was Hetty Feather again, back in my dismal dormitory. All the girls groaned and yawned and struggled out of their beds, hopping from one bare foot to another on the cold linoleum. They tugged on their brown frocks and fumbled with their aprons and cuffs.
    I stood too, pulling on my new grey dress. It smelled so different, fresh and clean. Although the material was brand new, it felt remarkably soft after my thick, itchy uniform. The other girls circled me enviously, stroking the folds, holding out my skirts admiringly, while I brushed and plaited my hair.
    ‘Will you put your hair up now, Hetty?’ Emma Baxter asked. She was a kindly, helpful girl who slept in the bed next to mine.
    ‘Of course,’ I said, but I had no hairpins, and my flimsy new cap could not easily accommodate all my hair. I tried for two minutes, and then had to give up and keep my schoolgirl plaits hanging down my back.
    ‘Oh dear, you don’t look very grown up,’ said Emma.
    I knew she was speaking the truth. I was no