Cinderella – Princess

Chapter 3 – My Father’s Remarriage
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Wow, I can’t believe how quickly life can change. Looking back over previous entries, I think of my younger self, my questions, my reasonings – and I feel like I was such a superficial airhead. How happy I was in those days! To think that the one pain in my life was caused by the premature loss of my mother, so many years ago. I now realise that this was because there were no fresh sorrows to overshadow the pain of losing her before I had ever really known her.

So my father has now remarried, to someone who must surely be the worst choice imaginable. I honestly don’t know what he sees in her. To my astonishment, some people have kindly called her “beautiful”, but only when she has smeared that her white paste thickly all over her gaunt face, and pulled that her thin hair into a miserable plait over her bony, scaly head, and traced that tired line over her hairy mouth. I know it is petty, but I can’t help laughing within myself, that it is goats’ blood that she is trickling over her lips (although of course I know that it is not – she could never bring herself to do anything so low that it resembled actual work, like slaughtering a goat). No, I try to be civil, but I cannot pretend to myself or to anyone else that I actually like her. Obviously I understand that I might be uncomfortable with the thought of someone taking the place of my mother, after so many years, but it is sincerely not that. After all, I quite liked Miss Bakewell who used to deliver our bread; she would smile so invitingly at my father, but he didn’t notice and she went off to marry Mr Schumaker the cobbler and give him five fat babies.

Before his remarriage, I tried my hardest to point out to my father the issues with his new wife, as diplomatically as I could, which sadly was not very diplomatically at all. She is unkind, and she is mean, and she clearly despises our slow-paced but hardworking lifestyle, thinking herself worthy of higher things. She does not love my father, her endearments must surely sound hollow and false to anyone who can bear to come within a few metres of her shrill screeches, and she has never made the slightest effort to attempt to love me, although I’ll admit that the look of disgust painted across my face when I first met her cannot have helped… To all these arguments, raised constantly before the marriage, all of which I sincerely believe to be fair and rational, my father paid not the slightest attention whatsoever.

Childhood has its secrets

“I understand your hesitation, princess”, he would say “but I have once married for love…”
(I quickly looked down…I thought that that would not be a good time to correct him…)
“…Now I need a strong woman to help me manage this home…”

Why is he doing this? From my own evaluation, from her aspiration to nobility, her disdain of our life, she seems to be a poor copy of all my mother was. Now that I’ve grown up and actually resemble my mother as a young woman, the memory of how my mother looked when they first met confronts my father every time he looks at me. I can’t help feeling that he is trying to punish himself for the way he treated my mother by taking on someone who this time does not love him, as a way of winning redemption for his own earlier behaviour, (and clearly not someone with any attractive qualities whatsoever, as clearly this would not feel sufficiently like a punishment!) Compassion flooded my heart when this first occurred to me, seeing some tears in his eyes when he looked at me, hearing a soft warmth in his voice as he called me “Princess”. However, why must he also punish me?

As awful as this woman is by herself, the horrific picture is completed by her two dreadful daughters. In every way they are young, preening versions of their mother, as rancid and unattractive as she is, and quite as lazy. And now the evil deed is done, and she is officially my stepmother. No longer do I have to wonder what it would be like to grow up in society. I am assailed with their pretensions night and day, their affectations, their tittering giggles. Oh no, they could never possibly lower themselves to close this jar, or to open that door for themselves. No, of course they must ask the servants to do it. The poor servants are totally pulled in twenty directions at any one time. And when the servants are not available, where do they point their gazes? Why, at me of course. I have even won for myself a beautiful new name. I must confess that no-one at home has ever actually called me by my proper name, Ella, but that is how I still dutifully introduce myself. So one day, Stepsister One, Catty Queen (real name Catherine) overheard my father calling me “Princess”. (Wasn’t that a big mistake?!) She laughed scornfully, and turned towards Stepsister Two, Hell’s Best Kept Secret (real name: Helen Elizabeth) and said, “Oh look what we have here, a princess, are you Ella?! Just like your mother – she was a real princess, wasn’t she, Ella?!!”
I was overcome by fury and hatred, and unthinkingly made to strike at her, but unfortunately I was so blinded by my anger that I lost my balance – and fell straight into the fireplace. And that is how my new name was born.
“I think you look more like a ‘Cinder-Ella’!” “Cinder-Ella!” “Cinder-Ella!” “Cinder-Ella!”
On and on they chanted for a full five minutes.

Easier to build strong children


And now the name has fully stuck. How they love to taunt me! My stepmother will sometimes think up false kindnesses, just so that she can fling this label at me.
“I was thinking, that perhaps we could send dear sweet Cinderella to learn mending and darning – she must soon learn a trade to support herself! It’s the best thing we could do for her, our own sweet Cinderella – after all, we cannot really expect her to marry well, as Catharina and Hélène-Elizabetta will – as much as I love her so …”
(this said with particularly saccharine emphasis on the word “love”)
“…she must be prepared for the realities of life, our darling sweet Cinderella.”
Even my own dear father has now joined them in calling me this name – he hears it so often that I think he has forgotten that that is not actually my name. Any time he mistakenly reverts to calling me “Princess”, my stepmother will pause in silence for about ten seconds (yes, I have counted, and no, it is never less than this) – and she will say, archly:
“Did you mean Cinderella dear?”
At which point my father will usually look at me with sad helplessness in his eyes, and say slowly:
“Yes, Pumpkin, yes, I did mean Cinderella”.

At which point, they will all three of them burst into their raucous tittering, and I will usually flee the scene, worried that I might lose my temper and bop Catty Queen or even worse, “Evelyn Stepmother”, right on the nose. My father did once try to stand his ground and insist on calling me “Princess” but such a frosty atmosphere ensued in the house for a full week that I myself decided to end it by referring to myself as Cinderella.
So that is who I now am, Cinderella. No longer the princess of my father’s affection, but now the undisputed queen of the fireplace. No I don’t play in the ashes – actually, nowadays I don’t play at all, and I look back on those carefree days of happy childhood with sad longing. However, I have not actually been reduced to the status of a servant, although you would not know this from the way Catty Queen and Hell’s Best Kept Secret order me around. So yes, life is immeasurably more difficult these days. I think my father can be happy that he has chosen a punishment for himself that is more than fully adequate. However, I don’t want to deceive myself – I know that my life is still so good compared to that of many, many people around me. I have plenty of warm, delicious food to eat, I still have a father who looks at me with loving tenderness in his eyes, I have lots of beautiful clothes to wear, I have a dry roof over my head, a warm bed to call my own – and yes, warm fires in all the fireplaces. So no, life is not dreadful, there is plenty of hope. I find myself going to the market much more often than I used to do, and more than once I have found myself smiling into the kind eyes of Mr CrinklyGrin, or giggling at the merry laughter of Mr RoundLegs.

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This is Book 1/4 in the Cinderella Series. All titles in the series are as follows:
1. Cinderella Princess (This ebook)
2. The Prince Speaks
3. The Queen’s Account available on Smashwords here
4. StepMother available on Smashwords here

The complete series is available from Smashwords at a price of £6 GBP here

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