Only My Dreams

Hilda Ann Salusbury's mother deserted her husband and four children during the first World War. The author was forced to leave school to adopt the role of &quote;skivvy&quote; and &quote;little mother&quote; to her brothers and sisters. But she was too restless to remain at home: immature, uneducated and emotionally illequipped to cope with life in classconscious Britain, she set out to &quote;better&quote; herself, to try to build a career of some kind. But there was little life could offer an ambitious girl in the 1920s-especially one with no social connections. Domestic service was the only answer, and this the author was determined to avoid. She embarked on a series of adventures: in a &quote;gentleman's&quote; home, in a household of invalids in a remote Norfolk village, and finally in London's East End, to seek romance amidst the poverty and squalor.