by Unknown
BODIE. It is.
CINDERELLA. I warrant she led them a pretty dance in her day.
BODIE. Men?
CINDERELLA. Umpha! (Wistfully.) It must be fine to have men so mad about you that they go off their feed and roar. (She turns with a sigh to the dusting of the penguin.) What did you say this is?
BODIE (ignorant of what he is letting himself in for). A bishop.
CINDERELLA (nearly choking). The sort that marries swell couples?
BODIE. Yes.
CINDERELLA (huskily, as if it made all the difference to her). I never thought of that.
BODIE (kindly). Why should you, you queer little waif. Do you know why I call you Cinderella?
CINDERELLA. Fine, I know.
BODIE. Why is it?
CINDERELLA (with shy happiness). It’s because I have such pretty feet.
BODIE. YOU dear little innocent. (He thinks shame of his suspicions. He is planning how to get rid of the man in the pantry when she brings him back to hard facts with a bump.)
CINDERELLA (in a whisper). Mr. Bodie, if you wanted to get into Buckingham Palace on the dodge, how would you slip by the policeman?
(She wrings her hands.) The police is everywhere in wartime.
BODIE (conscious how near one of them is). They are — be careful, Cinderella.
CINDERELLA. I am — oh, I am! If you knew the precautions I’m taking —
BODIE (miserable). Sh!
CINDERELLA (now in a quiver). Mr. Bodie, you haven’t by any chance got an invite for tonight, have you?
BODIE. What for?
CINDERELLA (as still as the Venus). For — for a ball.
BODIE. There are no balls in wartime.
CINDERELLA (dogged). Just the one. Mr. Bodie, did you ever see the King?
BODIE. The King? Several times.
CINDERELLA (as white as the Venus). Was the Prince of Wales with him?
BODIE. Once.
CINDERELLA. What’s he like?
BODIE. Splendid! Quite young, you know. He’s not married.
CINDERELLA (with awful intensity). No, not yet.
BODIE. I suppose he is very difficult to satisfy.
CINDERELLA (knitting her lips). He has never seen the feet that pleased him.
BODIE. Cinderella, your pulse is galloping. You frighten me. What possesses you?
CINDERELLA (after hesitating). There is something I want to tell you. Maybe I’ll not be coming back after tonight. She has paid me up to tonight.
BODIE. Is she sending you away?
CINDERELLA. No. I’ve sort of given notice.
BODIE (disappointed). You’ve got another place?
(She shuts her mouth like a box.) Has it anything to do with the Godmother business?
(Her mouth remains closed. He barks at her.) Don’t then. (He reconsiders her.) I like you, you know.
CINDERELLA (gleaming). It’s fine to be liked.
BODIE. Have you a lonely life?
CINDERELLA. It’s kind of lonely.
BODIE. You won’t tell me about your home?
(She shakes her head.)
Is there any nice person to look after you in the sort of way in which you look after me?
CINDERELLA. I’m all alone. There’s just me and my feet.
BODIE. If you go I’ll miss you. We’ve had some good times here, Cinderella, haven’t we?
CINDERELLA (rapturously). We have! You mind that chop you gave me? Hey, hey, hey!
(Considering it judicially.) That was the most charming chop I ever saw. And many is the lick of soup you’ve given me when you thought I looked down-like. Do you mind the chicken that was too high for you? You give me the whole chicken. That was a day.
BODIE. I never meant you to eat it.
CINDERELLA. I didn’t eat it all myself. I shared it with them.
BODIE (inquisitively). With them? With whom?
(Her mouth shuts promptly, and he sulks. She picks up the visiting-cards that litter the floor.)
CINDERELLA. What a spill! If you ‘re not messing you ‘re spilling. Where’s the bowl?
(She lifts the bowl and discovers the helmet. She is appalled.)
BODIE (in an agony of remorse pointing to the door). Cinderella, quick!
(But our POLICEMAN has emerged and barred the way).
POLICEMAN (indicating that it is MR. BODIE who must go). If you please, sir.
BODIE. I won’t! Don’t you dare to frighten her.
POLICEMAN (settling the matter with the palm of his hand). That will do. If I need you I’ll call you.
BODIE (flinching). Cinderella, it’s — it’s just a form. I won’t be far away.
(He departs reluctantly.)
POLICEMAN (sternly). Stand up.
CINDERELLA (a quaking figure, who has never sat dozen). I’m standing up.
POLICEMAN. NOW, no sauce.
(He produces his notebook. He is about to make a powerful beginning when he finds her eyes regarding the middle of his person.) Now then, what are you staring at?
CINDERELLA (hotly). That’s a poor way to polish a belt. If I was an officer I would think shame of having my belt in that condition.
POLICEMAN (undoubtedly affected by her homeliness though unconscious of it). It’s easy to speak; it’s a miserable polish I admit, but mind you, I’m pretty done when my job’s over; and I have the polishing to do myself.
CINDERELLA. You have no woman person?
POLICEMAN. Not me.
CINDERELLA (with passionate arms). If I had that belt for half an hour!
POLICEMAN. What would you use?
CINDERELLA. Spit.
POLICEMAN. Spit? That’s like what my mother would have said. That was in Badgery, where I was born. When I was a boy at Badgery —
(He stops short. She has reminded him of Badgery!)
CINDERELLA. What’s wrong?
POLICEMAN (heavily). How did you manage that about Badgery?
CINDERELLA. What?
POLICEMAN. Take care, prisoner.
(The word makes her shudder. He sits, prepared to take notes.) Name?
CINDERELLA. Cinderella.
POLICEMAN. Take care, Thing. Occupation, if any?
CINDERELLA (with some pride). Tempary help.
POLICEMAN. Last place?
CINDERELLA. 3 Robert Street.
POLICEMAN. Scotch?
(Her mouth shuts.) Ah, they’ll never admit that. Reason for leaving?
CINDERELLA. I had to go when the war broke out.
POLICEMAN. Why dismissed?
CINDERELLA (forlorn). They said I was a luxury.
POLICEMAN (getting ready to pounce). Now be cautious. How do you spend your evenings after you leave this building?
(Her mouth shuts.) Have you another and secret occupation?
(She blanches.) Has it to do with boxes? What do you keep in those boxes? Where is it that these goings-on is going on? If you won’t tell me, I’m willing to tell you. It’s at A. C. Celest’s...
In Bond Street, W.
(He has levelled his finger at her, but it is a pistol that does not go off. To his chagrin she looks relieved. He tries hammer blows.) Are you living in guilty splendour? How do you come to know German words? How many German words do you think I know? Just one, espionage. What’s the German for ‘six months hard’?
(She is now crumpled, and here he would do well to pause and stride up and down the room. But he cannot leave well alone.) What’s this nonsense about your feet?
CINDERELLA (plucking up courage). It’s not nonsense.
POLICEMAN. I see nothing particular about your feet.
CINDERELLA. Then I’m sorry for you.
POLICEMAN. What is it?
CINDERELLA (softly as if it were a line from the Bible). Their exquisite smallness and perfect shape.
POLICEMAN (with a friendly glance at the Venus). For my part I’m partial to big women with their noses in the air.
CINDERELLA (stung). So is everybody. (Pathetically.) I’ve tried. B
ut it’s none so easy, with never no butcher’s meat in the house. You’ll see where the superb shoulders and the haughty manners come from if you look in shop windows and see the whole of a cow turned inside out and ‘Delicious’ printed on it.
POLICEMAN (always just). There’s something in that.
CINDERELLA (swelling). But it doesn’t matter how fine the rest of you is if you doesn’t have small feet.
POLICEMAN. I never give feet a thought.
CINDERELLA. The swells think of nothing else. (Exploding.) Wait till you are at the Ball. Many a haughty beauty with superb uppers will come sailing in — as sure of the prize as if ‘Delicious’ was pinned on her — and then forward steps the Lord Mayor, and, utterly disregarding her uppers, he points to the bottom of her skirt, and he says ‘Lift!’ and she has to lift, and there’s a dead silence, and nothing to be heard except the Prince crying ‘Throw her out!’
POLICEMAN (somewhat staggered by her knowledge of the high life). What’s all this about a ball?
(CINDERELLA sees she has said too much and her mouth shuts.) Was you ever at a ball?
CINDERELLA (with dignity). At any rate I’ve been at the Horse Show. POLICEMAN. A ball’s not like a Horse Show.
CINDERELLA. You’ll see.
POLICEMAN (reverting to business). It all comes to this, are you genteel, or common clay?
CINDERELLA (pertly). I leaves that to you.
POLICEMAN. You couldn’t leave it in safer hands. I want a witness to this. Cinderella (startled). A witness! What are you to do?
(With terrible self-confidence he has already opened the door and beckoned MR BODIE comes in anxiously.)
POLICEMAN. Take note, sir. ( With the affable manner of a conjurer.) We are now about to try a little experiment, the object being to discover whether this party is genteel or common clay.
CINDERELLA. Oh, Mr. Bodie, what is it?
BODIE (remembering what he has been told of the Scotland Yard test). I don’t like... I won’t have it.
POLICEMAN. It gives her the chance of proving once and for all whether she’s of gentle blood. Cinderella (eagerly). Does it?
BODIE. I must forbid...
CINDERELLA (with dreadful resolution). I’m ready. I wants to know myself.
POLICEMAN. Very well. Now then, I heard you say that the old party downstairs had paid you your wages to-day.
CINDERELLA. I see nothing you can prove by that. It was a half-week’s wages — 1s. 7d. Of course I could see my way clearer if it had been 1s. 9d.
POLICEMAN. That’s neither here nor there. We’ll proceed. Now, very likely you wrapped the money up in a screw of paper. Did you?
(She is afraid of giving herself away.) Thinking won’t help you.
CINDERELLA. It’s my money.
BODIE. Nobody wants your money, Cinderella.
POLICEMAN. Answer me. Did you?
CINDERELLA. Yes.
POLICEMAN. Say ‘I did.’
CINDERELLA. I did.
POLICEMAN. And possibly for the sake of greater security you tied a string round it — did you?
CINDERELLA. I did.
POLICEMAN (after a glance at MR. BODIE to indicate that the supreme moment has come). You then deposited the little parcel — where?
BODIE (in an agony). Cinderella, be careful!
(She is so dreading to do the wrong thing that she can only stare. Finally, alas, she produces the fatal packet from her pocket. Quiet triumph of our POLICEMAN.)
BODIE. My poor child!
CINDERELLA (not realising yet that she has given herself away). What is it? Go on.
POLICEMAN. That’ll do. You can stand down.
CINDERELLA. You’ve found out?
POLICEMAN. I have.
CINDERELLA (breathless). And what am I?
POLICEMAN (kindly). I’m sorry.
CINDERELLA. Am I — common clay?
(They look considerately at the floor; she bursts into tears and runs into the pantry, shutting the door.)
POLICEMAN (with melancholy satisfaction). It’s infallayble.
BODIE. At any rate it shows that there ‘s nothing against her.
POLICEMAN (taking him further from the pantry door in a low voice). I dunno. There’s some queer things. Where does she go when she leaves this house? What about that ball? — and her German connection? — and them boards she makes into boxes — and A. C. Celest? Well, I’ll find out.
BODIE (miserably). What are you going to do?
POLICEMAN. To track her when she leaves here. I may have to adopt a disguise. I’m a masterpiece at that.
BODIE. Yes, but —
POLICEMAN (stamping about the floor with the exaggerated tread of the Law). I’ll tell you the rest outside. I must make her think that my suspicions are — allayed. (He goes cunningly to the pantry door and speaks in a loud voice.) Well, sir, that satisfies me that she’s not the party I was in search of, and so, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening. What, you ‘re going out yourself? Then I’ll be very happy to walk part of the way with you.
(Nodding and winking, he goes off with heavy steps, taking with him the reluctant
MR. BODIE, who like one mesmerised also departs stamping.
MISS THING peeps out to make sure that they are gone. She is wearing her hat and jacket, which have restored her self-respect. The tears have been disposed of with a lick of the palm. She is again a valiant soul who has had too many brushes with the police not to be able to face another with a tight lip. She is going, but she is not going without her wooden board; law or no law she cannot do without wooden boards. She gets it from a corner where it has been artfully concealed. An imprudent glance at the Venus again dispirits her. With a tape she takes the Beauty’s measurements and then her own, with depressing results. The Gods at last pity her, and advise an examination of her rival’s foot. Excursions, alarms, transport. She compares feet and is glorified. She slips off her shoe and challenges Venus to put it on. Then, with a derisive waggle of her foot at the shamed goddess, the little enigma departs on her suspicious business, little witting that a masterpiece of a constable is on her track.)
II
It is later in the evening of the same day, and this is such a street as harbours London’s poor. The windows are so close to us that we could tap on the only one which shows a light. It is on the ground floor, and makes a gallant attempt to shroud this light with articles of apparel suspended within. Seen as shadows through the blind, these are somehow very like Miss Thing, and almost suggest that she has been hanging herself in several places in one of her bouts of energy. The street is in darkness, save for the meagre glow from a street lamp, whose glass is painted red in obedience to war regulations. It is winter time, and there is a sprinkling of snow on the ground. Our POLICEMAN appears in the street, not perhaps for the first time this evening, and flashes his lantern on the suspect’s window, whose signboard (boards again!) we now see bears this odd device, Celeste et Cie.
The Penny Friend. Not perhaps for the first time this evening he scratches his head at it. Then he pounds off in pursuit of some client who has just emerged with a pennyworth. We may imagine the two of them in conversation in the next street, the law putting leading questions. Meanwhile the ‘fourth’ wall of the establishment of Celeste dissolves, but otherwise the street is as it was, and we are now in the position of privileged persons looking in at her window. It is a tiny room in which you could just swing a cat, and here Cinderella swings cats all and every evening. The chief pieces of furniture are a table and a bench, both of which have a suspicious appearance of having been made out of boards by some handy character. There is a penny in the slot fireplace which has evidently been lately fed, there is a piece of carpet that has been beaten into nothingness, but is still a carpet, there is a hearthrug of brilliant rags that is probably gratified when your toes catch in it and you are hurled against the wall. Two pictures — one of them partly framed — strike a patriotic note, but they may be there purposely to deceive. The roo
m is lit by a lamp, and at first sight presents no sinister aspect unless it comes from four boxes nailed against the walls some five or six feet from the floor. In appearance they are not dissimilar to large grocery boxes, but it is disquieting to note that one of them has been mended with the board we saw lately in Mr. Bodie’s studio.
