Unhappily Ever After

UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER


The coach pulled up in front of a house just like all the other houses on the street. Impeccably decorated, with the box hedges and the intricate gates. All very nice, all very predictable, all very boring. The prince sighed. He must have been deluded to think he was going to find the girl like this. After all, what respectable girl living in a house like this would run out of the palace, away from the prince and without a shoe? For that matter, would a girl who was rich enough to live in one of these houses even own shoes that didn’t fit?

He sighed again. He had been going over these questions in his mind over and over again. Ever since he decided to go on this wild goose chase all he’d found out was that the women of England have extremely large feet. The enthusiasm he’d had when he first started on this mission had dwindled, spiralling lower and lower. The Prince looked back at the house with its beautifully manicured lawns and decided with a nod of his head that this would be the last.
After all, it wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t find this girl. Vanessa De Lyon had been very charming when she attended his father’s banquet last week….

As the Prince and his manservant approached the entrance, the door opened revealing a lady, seeming in her late forties, impeccably dressed and smiling graciously, flanked on either side by two rather unattractive young women. Pasting a broad smile on his face, the Prince endured the pleasantries as the women flocked and fawned over him. Once seated in the sitting room, he accepted a cup of tea and prepared to make small talk. During a vivid description the lady of the house was giving about her neighbours garish new carriage, the prince was distracted by a loud thump coming from upstairs. Jumping up and jostling his tea, the Prince exclaimed “what the devil…?”
The Ladies all smiled nervously while the mother explained that their cat had been rather ill and had currently taken over one the bedrooms and sometimes got a little feisty. “Very well” said the prince doubtfully. His manservant intervened then by suggesting they get on with the fitting of the slipper.

The first of the two young ladies to try the slipper was named Drusilla. She was a tall, lanky woman whose head seemed to big for her body. The prince gave an inaudible sigh of relief when it turned out her foot was too big for the slipper. She then stood aside, muttering curses under her breath and glaring daggers at her sister. Had the prince not been feeling an increasing sense of disquiet by the persistent thumps and bumps from above, he might have found the display rather amusing.

The second sister, Priscilla was a short, slightly plump woman who had a rather annoying habit of chewing not only her fingernails, but the skin around them as well. The prince tried to disguise a grimace as she gave him her hand to seat her in her seat. The prince was about to slip the shoe on her brightly painted foot when another young woman came screeching in through the door, followed closely by two servants. “My prince!” she yelled. “My prince, it’s me!” The prince continued to kneel at Priscilla’s foot and watched dumbfounded as the two servants dragged the squealing, screeching wretch from the room. The lady of the house turned to the prince with a painted smile. “Do not be alarmed, your majesty, that is just one of our maids. She is a bit unbalanced you see. Not to worry, she will not be working here much longer.” Taking a deep breath the prince continued to fit the slipper onto the foot of his potential bride.

“IT FITS!”
The screech nearly sent everyone in the room deaf. It certainly set all the neighbourhood hounds barking. Priscilla was hugging her mother, Drusilla was looking fit to murder her sister, the prince and anyone else she could see and the prince’s manservant was looking almost as astounded as the prince himself. By the time the prince had returned to the palace, he had gone from looking astounded to looking downright ill. He reported to his father. “I have found her, father” he told the king. “Well done” the king replied. “I’m sure you will be very happy with your new wife” the prince could only smile weakly.

However, the prince was to be pleasantly surprised. Priscilla turned out to be quite knowledgeable about many things, from gardening which she thoroughly enjoyed and soon had her very own vegetable garden flourishing, to arms and strategies. The prince found that many of his most creative defences against neighbouring lords were thanks to talks over brandy with his enterprising wife. The prince began not to notice her bitten fingernails, or her oily hair and pasty complexion. In time he even began to think of her as beautiful. Six months after they had been married, the prince was blessed with the news that he was to have an heir. The whole palace was overjoyed at the news of a baby and the whole kingdom was eagerly awaiting the new prince.

All but one. Cinderella overheard the news while she was trimming the roses under the sitting room window. After hearing her stepmother and sister gushing over Priscilla’s good fortune, Cinderella hacked away at the defenceless rose bushes until only the thorny stems remained. She then went back to her room in the tower, stopping by the kitchen to pilfer a bottle of brandy on the way. Two hours and half the bottle of brandy later, Cinderella came to the conclusion that life was tremendously unfair. She was certain that she was never going to leave this house and that her life was doomed to be spent washing floors and dishes and labouring after her stepmother and sister until she died early, having been worked to death before her time. Crying softly, Cinderella rose unsteadily to her feet and stumbled over to the window where she gazed at the magnificent palace that was always so close yet so eternally out of her grasp. Her last thought before she fell from the window to her mercifully quick death went to her fairy godmother. The curse uttered at her fairy godmother is not fit to be repeated, not even in this unhappily ever after.