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Silk Purse by
Jerrard Tickell
Jacky Collins was not born to greatness…
Born instead to a mother whose interests lie elsewhere and saddled with a stepfather who doesn’t want him, his life stretches out before him, bleak and miserable.
By the age of twelve, he becomes the ringleader of a boys’ gang and starts a life of crime, one that seems likely to inevitably land him in the nick.
The course of Jacky’s life changes dramatically when he goes to London on a whim.
Eager to bilk as many rich Londoners of their money as possible, he doesn’t think about the future until it comes time to bed down for the night, desperately alone, cold, and frightened.
The last thing P.C. Patrick Doyle expects to find on his rounds is an unhappy little boy, so thin that his ribs stick out.
Upon hearing Jacky’s sad story, P.C. Doyle takes the boy home to his wife.
And so begins a new future for young Jacky Collins, leaving behind the ugliness and squalor of Hartlepool for the comfort and love of Uncle Pat and Aunt Bridget’s home in Theobald’s Road.
This new life is full of surprises for Jacky, from Aunt Bridget’s insistence that he regularly wash his face to having his tonsils out to attending a posh school.
But what changes his life most of all is meeting Miss Cathleen Joyce, the granddaughter of Lord Slieve Aran, with whom he falls instantly in love — at the grand age of twelve — before being promptly sent back home.
Yet as clever Jacky works his way through school, to Oxford, and into the world of advertising, gradually becoming the bright and distinguished John Sinclair Collins and beginning to make his mark on the world, he never forgets Cathleen Joyce…
First published in 1937 by William Heinemann.
Jerrard Tickell's books, a number of which have been made into successful movies, include Moon Squadron, Island Rescue/Appointment with Venus and Hussar Honeymoon
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