(A
bedtime story for baby George)
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful young girl, Dafne, who had a wicked
step-grandmother, Nanna Babba.
Nanna Babba lived in a world of fantasy. To pass the weary hours she wrote, or
her magic pen wrote, grisly and non-grisly fairy stories about common girls
falling in love with princes, and living in turreted palaces beyond the wildest
hopes and dreams of most schoolgirls. The palaces all had wide carpeted
staircases with ornate banisters which led to ballrooms in which crystal
chandeliers sparkled brightly from the ceiling. These were ideal settings for a
young common girl to make her entrance into the world. Because Nanny Babba
believed in fantasy she could wield her magic pen it seemed and the dreams
would all come true. This worried Dafne.
Among the 700 grisly fairy stories there were tales of young common girls who
found themselves in woods pursued by wolves. Other girls were made to sweep the
dusty floors, wash clothes, hang them out to dry, look after other people's
children, and menial tasks which befall many families of less wealthy origins
while their sisters went to the ball. Dafne did not mind these menial tasks
because they kept her away from Nanna Babba. However she found one of her
step-grandmother's stories rather frightening because the plot was of a young
princess bedecked in jewels, dressed up to the nines and seated in a royal
coach which was suddenly driven right into a rabbit warren in a foreign land -
the land of frogs and toads. Deep, deep it went into the tunnel, and never came
out again. This caused recurring nightmares.
Dafne was made to read all these rags to riches fairy stories, which sometime
had a happy ending, and sometimes sad, but she made little effort to conceal
that she did not like Nanna Babba, nor her stories. You see when Dafne was only
eight years old, following the divorce of her parents, Nanna Babba had come
into her life as a result of the old dear's daughter marrying Dafne's father. In
the early years when the flame of perpetual love glowed so strongly in her
father's eyes it looked like it would last forever Dafne saw less and less of
him and his new wife and more and more of Nanna Babba. The nightmares
continued.
Dafne had an elder sister, Sissy, and brother, Brer, who seemed to settle
better into the new life than Dafne had done. She had difficulty understanding
why her mother and father had gone their separate ways. She moped and cried and
wept and sobbed until it got on people's nerves. Nanna Babba had a solution for
every problem. It was agreed Dafne was to be sent to a girls' boarding school
where the mistresses could comfort her in her sadness. The school was called
"The Bowels of Hell" by those who boarded there at Dante's. Dafne did
not perform well in Hell. It made her even more miserable. She moped and
cried and wept and sobbed until it got on the mistresses' nerves. They did not
comfort her.
She got through "The Bowels of Hell" with some of the worst grades
Dante's had ever seen. From time to time she would return to the rented home
where Nanna Babba would add to her misery by making her read the latest
fantasies from her magic pen, fantasies which appeared to be writing themselves
even when Nanna Babba was sitting with Sissy and feeding her face on Royal
Jelly. Royal Jelly is the preserve of Queen Bees, and young girls who sample
it, according to Nanna Babba, are destined to marry a prince, with the one
condition that they remain virtuous. Dafne had seen how other stories by Nanna
Babba had come true. So she believed this one too.
Dafne's family rented property in the grounds of a palace and one day the rich
prince came by inspecting his great expectations. He was heir to the palace in
which grounds Dafne, Sissy and Brer rented, together with many other palaces
which the growing children had only seen in books. The Prince was wearing a
Polo-necked sweater and jodhpurs tucked into his boots as he rode on his
favourite chestnut horse, Polo. His favourite sport happened to be polo which
gave rise to the horse's name.
Princes are not always all they are cracked up to be and some need licking into
shape, while others need kissing by a beautiful young lady on their amphibious
lips to make something more appealing about them. So Sissy, emboldened by royal
jelly, popped a polo mint into the royal gob, plucked up all her courage and
kissed the prince full on his lips. She stepped back and looked for a change in
his countenance, while Dafne did the washing up, and Brer looked on in total
bewilderment as to what was going on. Sissy perceived no change in the prince's
looks. Nanna Babba had been careful to mention that those who fed on royal
jelly would not necessarily marry a handsome prince, just one of royal stock.
Sissy had got her fantasies a little mixed up. But her prince was rich and
ladies learnt at finishing school that once they had ensnared their quarry they
must be content if the meat might be a little old and the skin as tough as
riding boots.
With the royal jelly easing Sissy's future prospects Dafne had been sent to a
finishing school in the Alps where she moped and cried and wept and sobbed
until it got on the mistresses' nerves. They did not comfort her. She could,
however dance, although a little tall to become a professional, she danced
herself into the full bloom of womanhood and emerged, if not a butterfly, a
very pretty thing in her own right.
Meanwhile Sissy had taken a flat not too far from one of the prince's palaces
in the main city, and Dafne kept house for her sister. She washed up, did the
laundry, swept the carpets, cleaned the toilets, emptied the waste bins, threw
away the empty cartons of royal jelly and generally kept the place spick and
span. The prince was a frequent visitor but hardly seemed to notice Dafne, who
left almost as soon as he arrived. He did occasionally comment on how tidy the
flat was to Sissy. What happened in that flat is not for the ears or eyes of
children. Dafne had noticed a thing or two. Those who have done laundry and
emptied waste bins will need no further explanation.
Months went by and all expectations from the Nanna Babba household were for
Sissy's royal engagement announcement: any time now. But it never came. It
could only mean one thing. The condition of feeding on royal jelly was that the
lady remained virtuous and Nanna Babba suspected there had been a premature
submission to pre-marital gallantry. Nobody knows for certain. Dafne however
was about to throw away some more empty cartons of royal jelly when she noticed
that one of the cartons was not empty. Honey she had tasted, but royal jelly
was the preserve of queen bees. Dafne, on a whim, decided to try this exotic
food and thought it was nothing special.
Princes, kings, princesses, queens, dukes and duchesses and in fact almost all
people, find themselves dissatisfied with what is already theirs, and once the
novelty has worn off, they look for new sources of stimulation. So it was with
the prince who explained this rather clumsily to Sissy. She immediately felt an
impulse to smack him across his amphibious mouth, but refrained. It soon dawned
on her that she had fallen too easily, and only when she weighed up the pros
and cons of life with an unattractive prince, did she realise
that perhaps she had got away lightly. Dafne however was saddened for
Sissy's loss and she moped and cried and wept and sobbed in her sister's arms,
until the unattractive but extremely rich prince, moved by the young maid's
passion, suddenly started to take notice of her for the first time. This, he
swore to himself, would be his latest conquest.
His courtship of Dafne was not quite what he had expected. Princes are used to
having whatever they want, whenever they want it. Arriving on Polo in a
polo-necked sweater and jodhpurs had worked a treat for Sissy. So he tried this
approach on Dafne and even brought a polo stick along with him to endorse the
image. He moved towards her with his mouth wide open. She popped a polo mint
into the toad-hole and stepped deftly out of harm's way. Her education might
not have been up to much but she was not stupid. She had seen what had happened
to Sissy. Was it not she who had cleaned Sissy's flat? The more the shy and
unsullied Dafne resisted his approaches the more the prince desired her. He was
getting no younger and there was pressure on him to marry before his ardour
died. He tried pin-stripes though he was not a typical English gentleman, a
kilt though he was not a typical Scottish laird, and lederhosen. Nothing seemed
to work and the magic he had come to expect was absent.
For her engagement he bought her the biggest cluster of diamonds and sapphires
imaginable and it is reputed that 20,000 black Namibians had died in the mining
of these lumps of carbon rock. She thought it was almost immoral to wear it,
because Dafne did have some morals, and there was a lot of superstition that
the ring could never bring her good luck. The royal jelly had done its work and
Dafne had kept her virtue. Her reward was a state wedding to which all the
country was invited. Let this be a lesson to all boys and girls that virtue, if
that's what children want, can bring its rewards, because Dafne did get to
marry her prince. Although it is fair to note she did not invite her wicked
step-grandmother to the wedding.
Traditionally fairy-stories and love stories like those written by Nanna Babba
have a happy ending and are neatly rounded off with a phrase like "and
they lived happily ever after". But there are stories in the genre where
the big bad wolf pretends to be a nice old granny and gobbles up a little girl
in red. And the one that Nanna Babba wrote about the princess who went in a
royal carriage into the rabbit warren of a foreign country. In real life to be
a princess might not be everybody's dream. Dafne's marriage was a sad affair.
Her prince did not love her but they had children: heirs to the throne. Soon
she was so unhappy and for the prince the novelty had worn off, so she moped
and cried and wept and sobbed sometimes for hours on end. But nobody listened.
She threw herself into charity work trying to help less fortunate children in
lands far away.
After a while Dafne met another man with whom she was truly in love, a rich man
who loved her too. At last she was happy. However there was a lot of
dissatisfaction in the royal household at this match, and even though the
prince himself had taken a new lover, there were plots to have Dafne and her
rich lover, who was of foreign extraction and a different religion, put to
death. A few hundred years earlier and it would just have needed a royal decree
to execute this act. But in the time of Princess Dafne all eyes were upon the
royal household which had impoverished its subjects to increase its own wealth.
Princess Dafne was aware of the plot. She had read the story by Nanna Babba. She
wrote a letter to show there was a plot and how it would happen to a young
princess bedecked in jewels, dressed up to the nines and seated in a royal
coach which was suddenly driven right into a rabbit warren in a foreign land -
the land of frogs and toads. Deep, deep it went into the tunnel, and never came
out again. Fairy stories can come true.
Disclaimer: any likeness to any person in this story is
coincidental as in all fiction, good or bad.
