MY VERSION OF THE CINDERELLA STORY

MY VERSION OF CINDERELLA.

Once upon a time...

No. Wait! There's something that needs saying before we go into all
that.

Where are the Wordsmiths, for goodness sake? What are they playing at?
Never mind constantly inventing new terms for science and its latest
games - it's in the field of human relationships that we're running
short of words. The family, once the cornerstone of our culture,
writhes in its death throes. Family life has splintered. But there are,
as yet, no adequate terms for the multiplicity of relationships
possible between adults who marry, re-marry, not once but several times
(and may have countless more transitory sexual relationships as well)
and, apart from ste-siblings, their children and extended
families.

Anyway.

SIMPLE ELLA.

One upon a time there was a man who, being a slow learner, had been
divorced more times than was reasonable. The alimony payments were
crippling; he swore never to marry again. But in his vulnerable
mid-fifties he had to travel to Luzon on business. There he fell truly,
madly, deeply in love with a young and penniless single mother who,
with her studied feminine wiles, made him feel twenty again. As he'd
never played the role of father before - his ex-wives had all remained
resolutely childless - he enjoyed showering attention on the woman's
little daughter. He adored them both. The knot was tied before he could
whisper 'pre-nuptial agreement'.

For some years the three of them lived in perfect harmony. In other
words, the young wife waited on him hand, foot and phallus. She
deferred to him in everything. He was right, even when he was wrong. If
he said the sun was shining, shining it was, even in the blackest of
winter nights. Little Ella saw all this. And more. She became her
mother's shadow.

When she died, he was heartbroken. By then Ella was approaching puberty
and he was approaching retirement. Housekeepers were expensive. Having
noted that the Lonely Hearts columns were full of adverts from
discarded women needing a roof over their heads, for his final
partnership he opted for a practical solution and settled for a
matronly woman with two daughters of her own.

The new wife was satisfactory. For the time being, all she wanted was a
quiet life with the bills paid on time, fresh flowers in the hall, and
her hair washed and blow-dried once a week.

Her daughters were another kettle of lively fish entirely. From day one
the house throbbed with heavy metal music. It trembled at the martial
clatter of Doc Marten's on the stairs. It echoed with squeals of
delight as their improved financial situation brought new clothes,
mobile phones and no-holds-barred variations on body piercing. Having
no problems in the self-esteem department they didn't object to Ella in
the least. In fact, they were entranced by her doll-like beauty: her
coffeee-coloured skin, her slender build, and the waist-length hair so
black that in certain lights it gleamed purple. After some debate as to
their actual relationship - and finding no appropriate term - they
adopted her as their little sister. It soon became clear to them that
Ella had been totally brain-washed into believing herself a
second-class citizen, a member of the serving class, and they made it
their business to disabuse her of such notions, whilst at the same time
revelling in the way that she automatically waited on them. With the
peverse logic of born-again feminists they also decided that, whereas
their futures were academic, hers, being simply a pretty face, lay in
modelling.

First one, then the other, left to go to university. Ella gave up on
school at sixteen, stayed home and obediently starteda modelling
course.

Her step-father's wife - for whom she had no appriopriate term - was
glad of the young girl's company. Already her husband was exhibiting
signs of incipient Alzheimer's.

One day she found Ella lying on her bed, weeping bitterly.

"What is it? Whatever's the matter? What d'you want?" she asked,
expecting a demand for new clothes, CDs, hair extensions, the latest
semi-permanent tattoos. It wasn't her money. She was quite prepared to
play fairy godmother.

She couldn't have been further off the mark. Whilst Ella snuffled and
blew, her step-father's wife took a good look round the room, noting
for the first time the stack of books on quantum physics, cosmology and
genetic engineering.

"Aha. You want to go and have a ball at university, too, is that
it?"

"Yes," sighed Ella, "But..."

"So? This is the twenty-first century - what's stopping you?"

"My step-father hardly lets me out of his sight. And my sisters made me
promise to finish the modelling course. They're the clever ones. I'm
supposed to be the perfect foil and make do with being the pretty one.
A nice-natured, domesticated and decorative brainless bimbo, that's all
they want me to be. Besides, I've got no A-levels."

"That's easily solved," said her step-father's wife, "Go to night
school. Do a fast-track course. As for your step-father, that's not a
problem. He toddles off to bed with his cocoa at seven-thirty every
evening. From mid-night onwards he's up every hour on the hour with his
prostate. But as long as you're back before then, he'll never miss you.
As for transport - take my car. It's a bit of a rat-trap, but it'll get
you from B to A."

Ella enrolled at once. Her extensive reading round the subject had been
worthwhile. She found it quite easy to follow the thread of the
lectures. Socialising with the other students was difficult because she
took great care to follow her step-father's wife's advice and always
made for home immediately after the class finished. One or other
lovelorn student often tried to follow her, but even a rat-trap is
faster than Shank's pony. Ella ignored them all. What was a man
compared to a career?

She dropped the modelling course and spent the mornings in the library
instead. It paid off. She emerged with four distinctions.

"I don't know how to thank you for your support," Ella told her
step-father's wife.

"By making a late application for university entrance," she said,
briskly. "Go on. That's what you wanted. Do it." With her husband
increasingly doo lally she'd had a lot of time to think about feminism,
the categorising of women according to age and looks, and the divide
and rule games of patriarchy. Forty-five wasn't that old. She'd a good
mind to apply herself.

It was raining hard the day the official letter arrived.

Ella's step-father's other step-daughters - for whom there is no less
clumsy term - were at home between trips abroad. They seized the rain
splattered envelope, noted the university stamp and tried to decipher
the blurred name of the addressee.

"Must be for me," said the first, "Funny. I know it's three years ago
now, but I don't remember applying to Cambridge."

"I did," claimed the second, tearing it from her hands, "But they
turned me down. Fancy making me an offer now that I've finished my
first year."

"It's for me," decided the first, snatching it back, "I expcet they
heard about my brilliant thesis and are writing to ask me if I'd like
to do post-graduate studies there."

"It's probably for Ella," said their mother.

"Don't talk rubbish, Mum. Ella and Uni! Might as well put a cap and
gown on a peacock."

"Thanks very much." Ella opened the envelope. "Yes, it's mine.
Brilliant. Joint honours: Physics, Theoretical Physics, and Genetics.
Just the course I wanted. Fits in perfectly with my plans. You're both
doing Arts, aren't you?"

"Science? That's for blokes."

"Stereotyping again," said Ella, "It's a real problem, isn't it?
Perhaps, given time, I'll be able to find that stereotypical gene and
isolate it in the chimney corner."