From the Forest (19 page)

In the original tale the slipper is not glass but simply ‘small and dainty and all golden’. The slipper became glass at a double remove: Perrault, in his version, made it a ‘fur slipper’; the French words for ‘fur’ is ‘ver’, and the French word for ‘glass’ is ‘verre’. In a moment of erroneous inspiration, the English translator got it wrong – or rather, deeply, though accidentally, right.

Interestingly, the original involves a much less passive and more energetic Cinderella forging her own destiny, but it also does not make much sense. Since the tree will give her what she wants just for the asking, why is she still slaving for her stepmother? More crucially though, why does she choose to leave the ball repeatedly, run away and hide, and above all conceal her identity – right up to the very end? The assumption that a story needs a secret has, in this instance, overwhelmed the requirements of plot, motivation and character. So, although we lose an unusually active heroine, the present popular version makes a much better story. (We also lose the hideous but clever symmetrical choreography of the wedding, where Cinderella goes into the church accompanied by her stepsisters and two birds fly down and sit on the outside shoulder of each stepsister to peck one of their eyes out each; when the three come out of the church, the birds repeat this procedure, but since they are now walking the other way, the stepsisters both lose both eyes, right and left.).

There is an argument that there is good psychological sense in the Grimms’ version of this story: Cinderella needs to test not herself but the Prince. She does not, following the betrayal of her father, who behaves rather worse in the original, dare to risk a ‘one-night stand’. It is the Prince who has to prove his worthiness by searching for and finding the ‘true bride’. But if that was the underlying message of the story, it is much obscured – partly by the Prince being bizarrely easy to deceive. He carries off each of the stepsisters in turn, and Cinderella’s birds have to point out to him that their feet are bleeding where they sliced off pieces of toe or heel to make the slipper fit. In any event, no comment is passed on Cinderella’s motives or intentions – this is a fairy story, a narrative form where things are surprising and secret but need no explanation of the modern causal kind.

Perhaps the new woods pushing their way onto land in South London that was claimed from them and then abandoned will similarly make ‘much better woods’ one day. We do not know. The point is that the woods are still trying, in little secret ways.

In these stories the women know their true identity and keep it secret – just as the dancing princesses conceal the secret palace where they go to dance their slippers into shreds. The forest is about concealment and appearances are not to be trusted. Things are not necessarily what they seem and can be dangerously deceptive. Snow White’s murderous stepmother is truly ‘the fairest of all’. The wolf can disguise himself as a sweet old granny. The forest hides things; it does not open them out but closes them off. Trees hide the sunshine; and life goes on under the trees, in the thickets and tanglewood. Forests are full of secrets and silences. It is not strange that the fairy stories that come out of the forest are stories about hidden identities, both good and bad.

And in many of the tales, someone’s true identity is not known to anyone, even the protagonist – it is eventually revealed by events. There is no way the proud little princess could have guessed that her frog was a prince – it is hard to blame her for not wanting to take it to bed or kiss it; her father makes her do so because she has promised to and must keep her word.
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There are a great number of stories in this vein. Inside each person, regardless of beauty or situation, there is a true self – someone is a ‘natural’ princess or prince or king. Their conduct in the forest, in the dangerous secret places, will test their integrity and reveal that self. Proud princesses will be taught that the despised suitor is the real prince, the proper bridegroom, the future king. Fathers and kings must be taught that the third son, the stupid one, or the beggar at the gate whom they have scorned and mocked, is really the hero of this story. Mothers need to learn that their favourite child is not necessarily the most deserving one. The neglected child will go out into the forest and come home with treasure, while the favoured child, spoiled and selfish, will be revealed as mean and ugly-spirited. Everyone should be cautious about the people they meet – they should be careful about trusting them, and careful about revealing too much of themselves too soon.

Perhaps this is why the most evocative things on our walk were the railway tunnels. Essentially, much of our route (more or less) followed the old railway line from Forest Hill to Norwood. Sometimes, as at the start, we were in or beside the railway cutting. Sometimes we diverted and lost the railway, but sometimes it deliberately hid itself, plunging underground and vanishing from sight. These tunnel entrances and exits have been boarded up of course, and it is impossible to follow them into the darkness. Around the mouths of the tunnels the re-awakening woods seem to be trying to create deeper veils – thick, spooky-feeling, tangled undergrowth; in one case a derelict tennis court – and then emerge somewhere else. For me, this vanishing path through places where ancient woodland and human habitation meet – a ruined past and a lively present – felt like a potent and moving image of fairy stories themselves.

Little Goosegirl

Once upon a time there was a wise old king who was troubled in his mind.

Something . . . something was awry, he felt, and he could not work out what it was. There was an uneasiness, something rotten at the core. He could not put his finger on it.

‘My dear,’ he said to his wife, the Queen, ‘I feel that a cold shadow has fallen on our castle and something is not as it should be. There are bad secrets in the air.’

His wife, the Queen, who was trimming his moustache at that moment with a small pair of scissors – a tender little task she always did herself because it amused her – told him to be quiet or she would nip his tongue. But later, while he was doing up the buttons down the back of her dress – a tender little task he always did himself because he loved the soft skin at the nape of her neck – she asked him what he thought of their son’s new wife. They had been married a long and happy time, so they understood each other’s thought processes.

‘The boy seems happy enough,’ the King said.

‘She must be good in bed,’ said the Queen dryly. ‘Sometimes I do wonder if we are sensible to put all that effort into keeping the princes chaste – it just means that they muddle up love and sex.’

‘But the succession . . . a proper royal heir,’ he protested.

‘Well, yes,’ said the Queen, ‘there is always that. And there’s no use crying over spilled milk. I believe,’ she added, ‘that some families nowadays let them choose their own brides – for love, you know.’

‘I didn’t choose you,’ said the King, kissing the very place where the soft skin was replaced by her soft hair, ‘and there is plenty of love. On my side anyway . . .’ He nibbled a small question below her ear and she giggled like a teenager. Then they got slightly diverted from their serious conversation and, indeed, were very nearly late for dinner.

But later, after he had undone her dress buttons and loosened her stay-cords and tied her nightdress ribbon – three tender little tasks he always did himself because he loved the soft skin at the nape of her neck – and she had climbed into bed, he found he was restless and could not sleep. He did not like the new princess. He sensed something mean and dark in her, something wrong. But he could hardly write to her mother, his old friend, childhood playmate and distant relative on the distaff side, and complain that he did not much like her daughter. She was old and widowed and suffered terribly from arthritis, so that she could not even travel to the wedding for pain. The children had been affianced since very soon after their births; it had been settled in the usual way. There was nothing he could do. He was getting old, he thought irritably. He re-tied his pyjama string and joined his sleeping wife in the royal bed.

One morning, about a week later, his Chancellor handed him his daily list and he saw that the goose herd had asked for a meeting. He tried to manage an orderly chain of command, but he also believed that anyone who worked for him should be allowed to meet him whenever they wanted. He knew a number of his colleagues thought this hopelessly old-fashioned and believed that a king should hold to his dignity and not meet face to face with every Tom, Dick and Sally who fancied it.

‘
Prim us inter pares
,’ he had said to the stuck-up young king from next door. And then, because he was actually quite kindly and did not want to rub the lad’s face in the fact that he knew no Latin, he added, ‘First among equals. That’s what a king is.’

‘Oh nonsense, Your Majesty,’ said the younger man. ‘That went out with the Conquest.’

The King wondered how the young king made ‘Your Majesty’ sound as contemptuous as ‘Grandad’. Nonetheless, he stuck to his old practice.

So now, at 10.15 a.m., the goose herd, whose name was Conrad, was shown in. The King liked the boy; he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but he was a good open-hearted lad and his family worked their fields well and he played fiddle in the village band. Perhaps young Conrad felt ready for promotion, in which case . . . the King thought quickly. But Conrad seemed oddly awkward, unable to get to the point. The King was puzzled but persisted gently. There was obviously something he wanted to say. And finally, blushing slightly, he blurted out:

‘It’s that new goosegirl, sir, I can’t work with her.’

‘New goosegirl?’ enquired the King, confused.

‘You know, sir, the one what came with the Princess and you said should help me with the geese.’

Then he remembered: a pretty little thing, standing in the courtyard beside the Princess’s great white horse, when the Princess came and everything had been busy; she had been pale, staring and very lovely. She had reminded him of someone, and he had asked the Princess who she was.

‘Just some serf I picked up on the way,’ said the Princess, though not entirely carelessly.

‘Is she your maid?’ he asked.

‘Good heavens, no. She’s not the sort I’d have for a lady’s maid. I’ll need a proper dresser, by the way. Maybe you could find her something useful to do – she’s a sulky little brat, but we should be kind I think.’

She had not sounded kind, but she was in a new place and there was a lot going on and perhaps it just the abruptness of shyness. He had suggested that the girl went to help Conrad with the geese, and the Princess had seemed pleased. He had looked again at the little blanched face below him in the courtyard, and then events had moved on and he had forgotten.

‘Yes, I remember,’ he said to Conrad now. ‘Why can’t you work with her?’

‘She’s weird,’ said the boy, ‘she’s too weird. She’s useless anyway – you’d think she’d never seen a goose before, but it’s not that; I could teach her, but she’s weird.’

‘What sort of “weird”, Conrad? She looked pretty enough to me.’

‘Oh yes, she’s pretty, all right. That’s not it.’

He blushed furiously and the King said as gently as he could, ‘Did you try to woo her, Conrad? She is allowed to turn you down, you know. And she’s only been here a se’night. You may need patience. Or she may not be for you.’

The boy blushed deeper, as rosy as sorrel flowers. ‘It’s not that, sir. Well, not really. I mean, I did think, sort of . . . but it’s not that. But . . . she has this hair, sir – it’s lovely, like a flag iris, golden yellow and all long. We take the geese out, and up into the wood meadows, and she sits down under a tree in the shade and she takes her cap off and undoes her plaits and starts to brush her hair out, and it is all sparkles and lovely. And she chats away all friendly and . . . Well, I thought, like, she’d only do that to show me, like, she wanted me to touch it. And, yes, sir, I did want to touch it. There’s just her and me in that sweet high meadow and the geese and the sunshine and the flowers and yes, I don’t mind saying it, I did want to touch it.’

‘Nothing weird about that, Conrad,’

‘No, sir,’ he grinned ruefully. ‘But then, as soon as I reach out a finger – no, as soon as I even look at her like I’m going to – well, it’s like an icy cold wind comes off her, fierce and hard and so cold, so very cold. I can’t explain. I haven’t done anything bad, honest, but she makes me feel . . . I run up the meadow a bit, pretend to chase my hat, and when I come back her hair is all tight and tidy and back in her cap. But, sir, she’s been crying, like. I don’t want to make her cry. I can’t work with her, sir, not if she makes me all wound up to touch her hair and I make her cry. That’s not right. My mum said to come and tell you.’

‘Your mother was quite right, Conrad, and thank you for coming.’ The King’s heart sank. He knew the signs.

‘Oh, sir, and I forgot to say: she talks to that horse’s head. Every morning. That is weird.’

‘What horse’s head? What do you mean?’