by Unknown
POLICEMAN (in his most brow-beating voice, so well known under the arches). Look here, sir, it’s that.
MR. BODIE. I don’t follow.
POLICEMAN. Look at that passage window.
(With natural pride in language.) You are showing too much illumination.
BODIE. Oh! well, surely —
POLICEMAN (with professional firmness). It’s agin the regulations. A party in the neighbouring skylight complains.
BODIE (putting out the light). If that will do for tonight, I’ll have the window boarded up.
POLICEMAN. Anything so long as it obscures the illumination.
BODIE (irritated). Shuts out the light.
POLICEMAN (determinedly). Obscures the illumination.
BODIE (on reflection). I remember now, I did have that window boarded up.
POLICEMAN (who has himself a pretty vein of sarcasm). I don’t see the boards.
BODIE. Nor do I see the boards. (Pondering.) Can she have boned them?
POLICEMAN. She? (He is at once aware that it has become a more difficult case.)
BODIE. You are right. She is scrupulously honest, and if she took the boards we may be sure that I said she could have them. But that only adds to the mystery.
POLICEMAN (obligingly). Mystery?
BODIE. Why this passion for collecting boards? Try her with a large board, officer. Extraordinary!
POLICEMAN (heavily). I don’t know what you are talking about, sir. Are you complaining of some woman?
BODIE. Now that is the question. Am I? As you are here, officer, there is something I want to say to you. But I should dislike getting her into trouble.
POLICEMAN (stoutly). No man what is a man wants to get a woman into trouble unnecessary.
BODIE (much struck). That’s true! That’s absolutely true, officer.
POLICEMAN (badgered). It’s true, but there ‘s nothing remarkable about it.
BODIE. Excuse me.
POLICEMAN. See here, sir, I’m just an ordinary POLICEMAN.
BODIE. I can’t let that pass. If I may say so, you have impressed me most deeply. I wonder if I might ask a favour of you. Would you mind taking off your helmet? As it happens, I have never seen a POLICEMAN without his helmet.
(The perplexed officer puts his helmet on the table.) Thank you. (Studying the effect.) Of course I knew they took off. You sit also?
(The POLICEMAN sits.) Very interesting.
POLICEMAN. About this woman, sir —
BODIE. We are coming to her. Perhaps I ought to tell you my name — Mr. Bodie. (Indicating the Venus.) This is Mrs. Bodie. No, I am not married. It is merely a name given her because she is my ideal.
POLICEMAN. YOU gave me a turn.
BODIE. Now that I think of it, I believe the name was given to her by the very woman we are talking about.
POLICEMAN (producing his notebook). To begin with, who is the woman we are talking about?
BODIE (becoming more serious). On the surface, she is just a little drudge. These studios are looked after by a housekeeper, who employs this girl to do the work.
POLICEMAN. H’m! Sleeps on the premises?
BODIE. No; she is here from eight to six.
POLICEMAN. Place of abode?
BODIE. She won’t tell any one that.
POLICEMAN. Aha! What’s the party’s name?
BODIE. Cinderella.
(The POLICEMAN writes it down unmoved. MR. BODIE twinkles.) Haven’t you heard that name before?
POLICEMAN. Can’t say I have, sir. But I’ll make inquiries at the Yard.
BODIE. It was really I who gave her that name, because she seemed such a poor little neglected waif. After the girl in the story-book, you know.
POLICEMAN. No, sir, I don’t know. In the Force we find it impossible to keep up with current fiction.
BODIE. She was a girl with a broom. There must have been more in the story than that, but I forget the rest.
POLICEMAN. The point is, that’s not the name she calls herself by.
BODIE. Yes, indeed it is. I think she was called something else when she came — Miss Thing, or some such name; but she took to the name of Cinderella with avidity, and now she absolutely denies that she ever had any other.
POLICEMAN. Parentage?
BODIE (now interested in his tale). That’s another odd thing. I seem to remember vaguely her telling me that her parents when alive were very humble persons indeed. Touch of Scotch about her, I should say — perhaps from some distant ancestor; but Scotch words and phrases still stick to the Cockney child like bits of egg-shell to a chicken.
POLICEMAN (writing). Egg-shell to chicken.
BODIE. I find, however, that she has lately been telling the housekeeper quite a different story.
POLICEMAN (like a counsel). Proceed.
BODIE. According to this, her people were of considerable position — a Baron and Baroness, in fact.
POLICEMAN. Proceed.
BODIE. The only other relatives she seems to have mentioned are two sisters of unprepossessing appearance.
POLICEMAN (cleverly). If this story is correct, what is she doing here?
BODIE. I understand there is something about her father having married again, and her being badly treated. She doesn’t expect this to last. It seems that she has reason to believe that some very remarkable change may take place in her circumstances at an early date, at a ball for which her godmother is to get her what she calls an invite. This is evidently to be a very swagger function at which something momentous is to occur, the culminating moment being at midnight.
POLICEMAN (writing). Godmother. Invite. Twelve P.M. Fishy! Tell me about them boards now.
BODIE (who is evidently fond of the child). You can’t think how wistful she is to get hold of boards. She has them on the brain. Carries them off herself into the unknown.
POLICEMAN. I dare say she breaks them up for firewood.
BODIE. No; she makes them into large boxes.
POLICEMAN (sagaciously). Very likely to keep things in.
BODIE. She has admitted that she keeps things in them. But what things? Ask her that, and her mouth shuts like a trap.
POLICEMAN. Any suspicions?
(MR. BODIE hesitates. It seems absurd to suspect this waif — and yet! )
BODIE. I’m sorry to say I have. I don’t know what the things are, but I do know they are connected in some way with Germany.
POLICEMAN (darkly). Proceed.
BODIE (really troubled). Officer, she is too curious about Germany.
POLICEMAN. That’s bad.
BODIE. She plies me with questions about it — not openly — very cunningly.
POLICEMAN. Such as — ?
BODIE. For instance, what would be the punishment for an English person caught hiding aliens in this country?
POLICEMAN. If she’s up to games of that kind —
BODIE. Does that shed any light on the boxes, do you think?
POLICEMAN. She can’t keep them shut up in boxes.
BODIE. I don’t know. She is extraordinarily dogged. She knows a number of German words.
POLICEMAN. That’s ugly.
BODIE. She asked me lately how one could send a letter to Germany without Lord Haig knowing. By the way, do you, by any chance, know anything against a firm of dressmakers called Celeste et Cie?
POLICEMAN. Celest A. C.? No, but it has a German sound.
BODIE. It’s French.
POLICEMAN. Might be a blind.
BODIE. I think she lives at Celeste’s. Now I looked up Celeste et Cie in the telephone book, and I find they are in Bond Street. Immensely fashionable.
POLICEMAN. She lives in Bond Street? London’s full of romance, sir, to them as knows where to look for it — namely, the police. Is she on the premises?
BODIE (reluctantly). Sure to be; it isn’t six yet.
POLICEMAN (in his most terrible voice). Well, leave her to me.
BODIE. You mustn’t frighten her. I can’t help liking her. She’s s
o extraordinarily homely that you can’t be with her many minutes before you begin thinking of your early days. Where were you born, officer?
POLICEMAN. I’m from Badgery.
BODIE. She’ll make you think of Badgery.
POLICEMAN (frowning). She had best try no games on me.
BODIE. She will have difficulty in answering questions; she is so used to asking them. I never knew a child with such an appetite for information. She doesn’t search for it in books; indeed the only book of mine I can remember ever seeing her read, was a volume of fairy tales.
POLICEMAN (stupidly). Well, that don’t help us much. What kind of questions?
BODIE. Every kind. What is the Censor? Who is Lord Times? — she has heard people here talking of that paper and its proprietor, and has mixed them up in the quaintest way; then again — when a tailor measures a gentleman’s legs what does he mean when he says — 26, 4 — 32,11? What are doctors up to when they tell you to say 99? In finance she has an almost morbid interest in the penny.
POLICEMAN. The penny? It’s plain the first thing to find out is whether she’s the slavey she seems to be, or a swell in disguise.
BODIE. You won’t find it so easy.
POLICEMAN. Excuse me, sir; we have an infallible way at Scotland Yard of finding out whether a woman is common or a lady.
BODIE (irritated). An infallible way.
POLICEMAN [firmly). Infallayble.
BODIE. I should like to know what it is.
POLICEMAN. There is nothing against my telling you. (He settles down to a masterly crossexamination.) Where, sir, does a common female keep her valuables when she carries them about on her person?
BODIE. In her pocket, I suppose.
POLICEMAN. And you suppose correctly. But where does a lady keep them?
BODIE. In the same place, I suppose.
POLICEMAN. There you suppose wrongly. No, sir, here. (He taps his own chest, and indicates discreetly how a lady may pop something down out of sight.)
BODIE (impressed). I believe you are right, officer.
POLICEMAN. I am right — it’s infallayble. A lady, what with drink and suchlike misfortunes, may forget all her other refinements, but she never forgets that. At the Yard it’s considered as sure as finger-marks.
BODIE. Strange! I wonder who was the first woman to do it. It couldn’t have been Eve this time, officer.
POLICEMAN (after reflecting). I see your point. And now I want just to have a look at the party unbeknownst to her. Where could I conceal myself?
BODIE. Hide?
POLICEMAN. Conceal myself.
BODIE. That small door opens on to my pantry, where she washes up.
POLICEMAN (peeping in). It will do. Now bring her up.
BODIE. It doesn’t seem fair — I really can’t —
POLICEMAN. Wartime, sir.
(MR. BODIE decides that it is patriotic to ring. The POLICEMAN emerges from the pantry with a slavey’s hat and jacket.) These belong to the party, sir?
BODIE. I forgot. She keeps them in there.
(He surveys the articles with some emotion.) Gaudy feathers. And yet that hat may have done some gallant things. The brave apparel of the very poor! Who knows, officer, that you and I are not at this moment on rather holy ground.
POLICEMAN (stoutly). I see nothing wrong with the feathers. I must say, sir, I like the feathers.
(He slips into the pantry with the hat and jacket, but forgets his helmet, over which the artist hastily jams a flower bowl. There were visiting-cards in the bowl and they are scattered on the floor. MR. BODIE sees them not: it is his first attempt at the conspirator, and he sits guiltily with a cigarette just in time to deceive CINDERELLA, who charges into the room as from a catapult. This is her usual mode of entrance, and is owing to her desire to give satisfaction. Our POLICEMAN, as he has told us under the arches, was watching her through the keyhole, but his first impressions have been so coloured by subsequent events that it is questionable whether they would be accepted in any court of law. Is prepared to depose that, to the best of his recollection, they were unfavourable. Does not imply by unfavourable any aspersion on her personal appearance. Would accept the phrase ‘far from striking’ as summing up her first appearance. Would no longer accept the phrase. Had put her down as being a grown woman, but not sufficiently grown. Thought her hair looked to be run up her finger. Did not like this way of doing the hair. Could not honestly say that she seemed even then to be an ordinary slavey of the areas. She was dressed as one, but was suspiciously clean. On the other hand, she had the genuine hungry look. Among more disquieting features noticed a sort of refinement in her voice and manner, which was characteristic of the criminal classes. Knew now that this was caused by the reading of fairy tales and the thinking of noble thoughts. Noted speedily that she was a domineering character who talked sixteen to the dozen, and at such times reminded him of funny old ladies. Was much struck by her eyes, which seemed to suggest that she was all burning inside. This impression was strengthened later when he touched her hands. Felt at once the curious ‘homeliness’ of her, as commented on by MR. BODIE, but could swear on oath that this had not at once made him think of Badgery. Could recall not the slightest symptoms of love at first sight.
On the contrary, listened carefully to the conversation between her and MR. BODIE and formed a stern conclusion about her. Believed that this was all he could say about his first impression.)
CINDERELLA (breathlessly). Did you rang, sir?
BODIE (ashamed). Did I? I did — but — I — I don’t know why. If you ‘re a good servant, you ought to know why.
(The cigarette, disgusted with him, falls from his mouth; and his little servant flings up her hands to heaven.)
CINDERELLA (taking possession of him). There you go again! Fifty years have you been at it, and you can’t hold a seegarette in your mouth yet! (She sternly produces the turpentine.)
BODIE (in sudden alarm). I won’t be brushed. I will not be scraped.
CINDERELLA (twisting him round). Just look at that tobaccy ash! And I cleaned you up so pretty before luncheon.
BODIE. I will not be cleaned again.
CINDERELLA (in her element). Keep still.
(She brushes, scrapes, and turpentines him. In the glory of this she tosses her head at the Venus.) I gave Mrs. Bodie a good wipe down this morning with soap and water.
BODIE (indignant). That is a little too much. You know quite well I allow no one to touch her.
(CINDERELLA leaves him and gazes in irritation at the statue.)
CINDERELLA. What is it about the woman?
BODIE (in his heat forgetting the POLICEMAN ). She is the glory of glories.
CINDERELLA (who would be willowy if she were long enough). She’s thick.
BODIE. Her measurements are perfection. All women long to be like her, but none ever can be.
CINDERELLA (insisting). I suppose that’s the reason she has that snigger on her face.
BODIE. That is perhaps the smile of motherhood. Some people think there was once a baby in her arms.
CINDERELLA (with a new interest in Venus). Her own?
BODIE. I suppose so.
CINDERELLA. A married woman then?
BODIE (nonplussed). Don’t ask trivial questions.
CINDERELLA (generously). It was clever of you to make her.
BODIE. I didn’t make her. I was — forestalled. Some other artist chappie did it. (He likes his little maid again.) She was dug up, Cinderella, after lying hidden in the ground for more than a thousand years.
CINDERELLA. And the baby gone?
BODIE (snapping). Yes.
CINDERELLA. If I had lost my baby I wouldn’t have been found with that pleased look on my face, not in a thousand years.
BODIE. Her arms were broken, you see, so she had to drop the baby —
CINDERELLA. She could have up with her knee and catched it —
BODIE (excitedly). By heavens, that may just be what she is doing. (He contemplates
a letter to the ‘Times’)
CINDERELLA (little aware that she may have solved the question of the ages.) Beauty’s a grand thing.