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Short Fiction
Cinderella Smith Once there lived an unhappy person called
Cinderella Smith. Her widowed father had remarried and
she didn’t get on with her stepmother and two
stepsisters, or rather, they didn’t get on with her
and since they outnumbered her, it was a problem.
Her stepmother was disturbed by the likeness of
Cinderella to the lovely portrait of her mother that
still hung on the stairs, a constant rival. She was
unkind to Cinderella in a hundred subtle ways, her
daughters followed suit and the father, if he noticed,
didn’t intervene. Cinderella was resilient and had a keen
sense of humour, but as a dependent, and missing her
mother, found life quite hard to bear at times. Cinderella
took refuge in busyness. ‘Clean, clean, clean, is
that all you ever do?’ her step-mother. ‘Is
that what you went to finishing school for? ‘I like cleaning,’ Cinderella
said. ‘It’s useful.’ And, she might have added, it was
therapeutic. She would scrub the kitchen floor with a
hard brush and imagine it was her stepmother's hatchet
face she was scrubbing. She’d clean the toilets and
fantasize that it was her blobby stepsisters who were
being flushed away.
Cinderella didn’t need to cook, because the family
employed a cook. This lady was rather a curious old soul,
but when Cinderella asked for some cookery lessons they
became friends.
Cinderella had lots of non-human friends too. She liked
most animals, excepting earwigs and Mungo, her
step-mother’s. She couldn’t abide him and it
was fortunate that, being obese, Mungo was too slow to
catch the wood mice near the shed, or the newts near the
cucumber frame or the brown rat who sometimes went
streaking past the back door. One summer’s day three thrilling
invitations were delivered to the house. It was party
time at the palace’ a chance for Prince Charming to
meet with young ladies from the social elite.
Cinderella's father was a wealthy banker so it was not
surprising that Miss Jemima, Miss Susannah and Miss
Cinderella were all invited. . "Of course you may go,
Cinderella," graciously said her stepmother,
"and I have just the dress for you, as your own
wardrobe has fallen a little out of style. We must
rectify that when we can, but for now…’ And she produced a creation in sand and dull
gold taffeta with a big bustle at the back. It was
undeniably fashionable and expensive – her
step-mother could not be wrong-footed there. It was also
hideously unflattering. It did nothing for
Cinderella’s honey coloured hair and hazel eyes, and
slender though she was, it made her feel like a
dromedary. Cinderella was too proud to appeal to her
father. She tried to convince herself that she
needn’t go. It didn’t matter. A new dress and
dancing and a buffet and a firework display were quite
undesirable things really. So
she said she wasn’t going, and as she knelt
scrubbing the kitchen floor practically to destruction,
saw in her hopeful imagination, her stepmother choking to
death on her own bile, the evil old moo. It
doesn’t matter, she told herself over and over
again, but she was only nineteen, and when she saw her
stepsisters, in their finery, rolling away in their
carriage, chatting and laughing, while she was left
behind, her eyes filled with lonely tears and she headed
down to the kitchen for the cheerful company of Mrs
Muffin, the cook. She found a cup of
tea already waiting. Mrs Muffin said not a word, handing
the cup to Cinderella. "I shouldn't complain Mrs Muffin,"
Cinderella wept, salting her tea and her buttered
digestive, "but you know, if I had a guardian
angel, I'd ask for a new family. Why am I not welcome in
my own home? I did try hard to please my stepmother
when she first came, you know. I'm fairly certain it
isn't my fault she doesn't like me. And it isn't
that I'm interested in marrying the Prince. It’s a
bit of a cattle-market, really, isn’t it, and
he’s not exactly God’s gift, is he? But I could
have met someone nice. Mrs Muffin, why, Mrs
Muffin…’ she suddenly cried out. ‘Whatever
are you doing? Are you feeling all right, Mrs
Muffin?" Because
Mrs Muffin had turned an incandescent violet-blue
colour. She now began levitating, shimmered in a dust of
tiny stars, while eight digestives biscuits whirled
sedately round her head in an edible halo. "I hear your request, my dearest
Cinderella," she said, as she floated to the top
shelf of the Welsh dresser. She
plucked a digestive from her halo and began to eat it. "You are a good girl and you
deserve a break,’ she said majestically. ‘And I
say, so mote it be. You shall go to the ball." We know what happened next. A pumpkin, some
mice, two newts and last but not least, the streaking
brown rat were magically conscripted into being a
carriage, horses and attendant staff. One final flourish
of the half-eaten digestive and Cinderella looked
supremely elegant in lilac silk embroidered with silver
daisies. Upon her feet were a pair of perspex slippers
lined with lilac satin.
‘But you must be back by midnight,’ Mrs Muffin
warned her. ‘You must, Cinderella. If you’re
not back before your step-sisters, the game’s up.
That’s the rule, I’m afraid.’
The existence of a rule did not trouble Cinderella
unduly. Off she went and she had a very good time. She
ate, drank and danced. She looked at paintings on the
walls and even danced with the prince, who asked her
three times. People whispered behind their
fans; some took sneaky photos of her on their mobile
phones. Sadly, because it would have solved some of her
problem, she didn’t fancy Prince Charming. He had
dull eyes. There was no spring in his step. She felt
honoured by his attention but that was all and she
didn’t want to seem ungrateful to Mrs Muffin, but it
was a little disappointing that she had no-one to
introduce her properly to other, more appealing
gentlemen.
Shortly before midnight, her footman came to escort her
to the waiting carriage. With a bow and a smile he handed
her in and then it happened. The thunderbolt
struck. Looking into the bright and beady eyes of the
rat-coachman, she was struck by the realisation that this
was an old friend. He had always looked a healthy
specimen of rat-kind; long, strong, brown and glossy. In
human form, thanks to Mrs Muffin he was very splendid
indeed and knocked spots off His Royal Pastiness the
prince, any day. "Please sit inside and talk to
me," she said, "You know I’m not really a
princess, and the informality won’t matter if no one
sees. Besides, we know each other, don’t we?". ‘You are most certainly a
princess,’ he contradicted her with a low bow.
‘But you’re right about us knowing each other.
I have enjoyed many slices of gruyere and some rather
good pickled onions at your house, though I have not yet
managed to reach the pate. Indeed, I had rather a narrow
squeak last time and it was lucky for me that your cat is
not of the swiftest’. Here Cinderella scowled, picturing Mungo in
pursuit of her friend. ‘I have to say..’ the rat-coachman
went on, ‘I’m glad to be of service - it’s
the least I can do after the pickled onions, but I am
somewhat disconcerted to find myself in human guise. It
feels so heavy.’ He cocked his head and studied her. His eyes
shone in the darkness of the carriage. He smiled at her
with small white teeth, quite sharp, and she began to
feel quite strange; light and floating. ‘But I see you now with different
eyes,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you pretty? You
would make the most delightful rat. Permit me to
introduce myself: Wayne-Scott Ratmaninov." "Very imposing nomenclature," said
Cinderella, impressed. "Well, you know,’ he said
complacently, ‘we rats don't go in for titles as you
do. We rats stick together through thick and thin. I
suppose you could describe us as a liberal republic. I am
proud however, to be a member of the Ratmaninov clan. We
have a distinguished history of service to our fellow
rats. It was a Ratmaninov who saved many families in the
Great Drain floods. In fact, our current Leading Citizen
is a Ratmaninov", he added, diffidently.
"That’s my uncle Ratfink. I have lots of
relations. We're very close".
They arrived
home to find Mrs Muffin waiting at the kitchen door.
"Now, dear, I want to hear all about it," she
said. "But first I must tidy up". She made airy gesticulations with a tin of
cocoa powder and Wayne-Scott Ratmaninov, the mice, newts
and pumpkin resumed their natural identities. ‘Goodbye, Mr Ratmaninov,’
Cinderella said as the rat fled out through the cat-flap
and heard what might have been a farewell squeak as he
vanished into the night. Two sweaty balls later, the Prince was
seriously interested in Cinderella and his mild eyes
showed a spark at last. But it was nothing to the gleam
in the dark and beady eye of her attentive servant Mr
Ratmaninov, or the vigorous swish of his tail (when in
rat-form).
"If only you were a rat, my beautiful
Cinderella," he said as they rolled homewards on the
final evening, "How my mother would admire your
energy and industry, my father appreciate your charm and
all your pleasant ways, my sisters relish another amusing
companion in our busy nest. We would gather fragrant
feasts by moonlight. We would raise squeaking nestfuls of
happy rat babies, and wreak havoc on our enemies." "It sounds oddly good to me,"
replied Cinderella, "But I’ll have to see what
Mrs Muffin says. It can’t happen without her
help."
Mrs Muffin raised no objection for this proposal was an
answer, if an unlikely one, to Cinderella's prayers.
There followed a levitation in a cloud of golden
cornflakes, a Babylonian incantation and a sprinkling of
what Mrs Muffin claimed was dust from Venus – and
the thing was done and Cinderella was a rat.
She a long and happy life as rat citizeness. Her human
family wondered at her disappearance; the toilets got so
grubby without her, but she was after all, of an age for
leaving home, and they soon had greater worries. First Mrs
Muffin resigned – vanished too, actually, the
wretched woman didn’t give the slightest bit of
notice - and no matter how they tried, they couldn’t
get a replacement cook to stay more than a day. Screams would come ringing out from the
kitchen or the pantry. ‘Rats! Oh Oh ! I can’t stay here !
Everywhere, rats!’ The rats became bolder. Soon it wasn’t
just the kitchen. It wasn’t just the pantry. The
family began noticing holes in their best cushions in the
drawing room, claw marks in the damask curtains in the
bedroom, footprints on pillow cases as well as in the
butter or the pate. The rats adored pate, even when it
was poisoned, they gobbled it up and came back for more. In desperation they hired a famous
rat-catcher but he departed in short order with a great
hole in the seat of his trousers. They put Mungo on a starvation diet in the
hope of speeding him up. But he was useless. From Tales of Our Times, Pentland Press |