Ropers Gardens

Once upon a time there was a young woman, all of eighteen years, who was trapped in a multi-million town house in Chelsea.

Isn’t this how all fairy tales begin? The home may be grand or humble, and the girl may be a princess or a pauper, but it is imperative that the girl is good and the girl is beautiful - and that is the beginning and end of all things.

She was not, of course, a princess. Her father was a theatre director and her mother a high court judge. They moved in air-kissing circles of egregious insincerity. She was their only child. Her mother considered her pelvic floor, and her father, immediately stymied by a daughter, was not looking to repeat the mistake with another.

She is called Jennifer Salt. When she was fifteen she went out with friends, some mean girls in truth, to hang out in the gardens of the Chelsea Embankment, adjacent to Ropers Gardens. There were fairy lights festooned at the bottom, towards the silvery Thames, and there were boys from the wrong side of the tracks leaning against park benches and stroking their crotches, in the manner of hapless parvenus since time began.

And she, Jennifer, by far the fairest of them all, was administered a potion. The timing was unfortunate. Just at the optimal moment when the adolescent brain links one crucial synapse to another, the ketamine disrupted such bankable plans and left her a life-long epileptic. A disreputable curse fell upon her, far beneath the machinations of a displeased and malignant fairy.

Her parents, so fearful of Jennifer disgracing herself with a tonic clonic in useful company, was encouraged to stay at home and take her medicine. And so it came to be that whatever tribe she might once have joined had left for the hills - and the road to find them, as any outcast will tell you, is arduous.

Jennifer had a view of Ropers Gardens from her window on the third floor. For days now she had watched a man fetch up, at nine or ten of the dark clock, and sequester a park bench. He favoured a rather famous one, in which a wife had fulfilled her husband’s stated wishes by commissioning it after his death. It was, the husband maintained, his favourite spot in London Town.

The plaque read:

In memory of Pat O’Leary, 1958-2023, a Philanderer, a Drunk and a Total Eejit. Rest in Peace, or Not, For all I Ever Cared.

The man, clearly homeless, was strikingly small, less than 5ft by her reckoning. He was elderly and without good features. His nose was lumpen and large, and his thin white hair barely covered a speckled pate. He wheeled a shopping trolley behind him, and the combination of his physical aspect and the squeaky, trundling wheels leant him an air of invincibility. That if one were to abuse his person, bad things might accrue.

But she, Jennifer, found him curiously heart-warming. His long coat, a jacket on any other man, was of previous good quality, as were his shoes. By no means was he a typical vagrant, if there ever was such a thing. He appeared to have nothing, and seemed too proud to beg for something. She had never seen him eat or drink. He would spend an hour gazing into the distance and then lay himself down with a thin blanket, no more than an undersheet, having fished out a royal blue cushion from his trolley.

The days of her observance were marked by unproductive weather and dreary, mild dunkelflaute days when there was not a whisper of wind or colour, neither warm nor cold. It was the week between Christmas and the New Year. Her parents were holidaying, but Jennifer, for three years and more, was no longer welcome to join them. They had no more wish to be embarrassed in Mauritius than they did in the city. Her housemates were a Ukrainian housekeeper and a dog. In her heart, which beat true, she preferred their company to that of her sires.

As she was looking at the small man arranging his bedding, the weather changed. She could feel a bitter draft seep through the Georgian windows and saw a speck of snow drop from the black sky. Responding to a latent instinct, so much denied her, she made her way to the kitchen and filled a flask with chicken soup. The croutons disappointingly bobbed on the top, refusing to sink and disperse, thus prompting the drinker to skirt around them so there were still some to enjoy at the end. It was not homemade comfort, but the type you buy in dehydrated packets in the supermarket. Her father swore by it when the demands of his job left him anxious and unwilling to eat solids. He would drink mug after mug, dipping buttery bread fingers into the slurry mix.

She leashed the dog and crossed the road, quiet at this time of year. The park gate creaked in the silence. Such atmospheric things are always lost to the hustle and bustle. She also carried a feather down single quilt and a plump feather down pillow.

The man intuited her presence, perhaps by the snuffling of the dog in the thin snow which would surely settle. He immediately sat up, his head not much higher than the bench and his feet not touching the ground. The beautiful girl and the goblin-esque old man exchanged a glance, and there was magic in it. A perfect understanding between two disparate souls.

And so, like all good fairy tales, we shall dispense with the introductory fluff and nonsense. We must suspend disbelief and agree on the lack of format.

‘A St Bernard,’ he said, stroking the dog’s broad head.

‘Yes, she’s called …’

‘Nana.’

She looked at him with admiration. ‘How on earth did you know that?’ she asked.

He waved a tiny hand. ‘We are firmly in Peter Pan territory,’ he remarked.

She gave him the flask of soup and his old, troubled face was lit up by the manufactured scent of it.

‘It is nice,’ she said, with a whisper of apology.

‘Oh! I used to drink this all the time. Home-made chicken soup is all well and good, but one must always praise the chef, even when it’s dreadful. This is consistent, at least.’

His voice was well-modulated. It was educated. However this strange man came to be where he was, it had little to do with a lack of intelligence.

‘I am Jennifer,’ she said, extending a slender hand.

‘And I am Thomas Rumpole,’ he said. His tiny hand was so cold in her clasp.

‘My parents are away, and we have plenty of spare rooms ..’ she began.

Rumpole raised a finger. ‘A strange little homeless person like me, Jennifer? However much your kind heart desires it, I would not put myself in such a position, and neither should you.'

She considered his words and drew the truth from it. It would not look well.

Nana had settled her great head on the old man’s lap. He stroked his fingers behind her ears. ‘This dog is a healer,’ he said. ‘A comforter.’

‘My parents bought her for me when I had my first seizure. She looks after me when I fit. Nudges me to my side so I don’t choke.’

‘And how often do you do that, dear?’

‘Not often. Twice a year if I take my medication. I don’t remember them, of course. Just a banging headache, a bloody tongue, and the feeling I’ve just run a marathon.’

The old man looked at her. There was a rime of chicken soup on his top lip and a look of compassion in his eyes. ‘When Nana passes, you must immediately get another. Never needlessly suffer your losses. It really makes no difference in the end.’

The snow became heavier. Behind them, in the street, there was a sound of drunken hollering. The old man and the Chelsea princess shared a glance. It was not their lot in life to be so carefree, if only for a moment.

‘How did you come to be homeless?’ she asked.

‘I was a professor of folklore and fairytale,’ he began. ‘I had a grace and favour flat. In that environment, a rather odd little hobgoblin like me can find success.’

‘What happened?’

‘Fairy tales are simply stories, Jennifer. Beyond the usual morality tale, there is no purpose to them at all. In my career I focussed on the societal reasons for their creation and never pretended they were anything other than what they were. Religion for non-conformists. A mere passing of the time.’

‘I love fairy tales,’ she enthused.

He leaned forward. ‘Of course you do! You are a beautiful and troubled princess and I would most certainly be viewed as your nemesis.’

‘What happened?’ she repeated.

The little man sighed. ‘Modern times,’ he said. ‘It became imperative that all old tales must be viewed through a modish and rather predictable lens. So all the forces conspired. They said my views were outdated and there was no longer a place for me. Do you see?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

Someone was letting off fireworks on the south bank. The impress of their flare remained behind Jennifer’s closed eyes.

‘What is your favourite?’ she asked.

Professor Rumpole waved that away. ‘I have a least favourite,’ he offered instead. ‘People often prefer that approach. Hate is so much more interesting.'

‘Then what is it?’

‘Rumpelstiltskin,’ he said. ‘Or Crumpledforeskin, as I often refer to it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is meaningless. It begins with promise and ends in nothing.’

‘Remind me of it.’

‘A miller tells the king that his daughter can weave straw into gold, for no reason other than drunken boastfulness. There is the first error. If she could do such a thing, he would not be a miller - but poor people in folklore are generally stupid and rich people take advantage.'

He raised a tiny finger, the physical embodiment of an erudite point.

'That much is still true. So the king orders the girl to weave straw for him by locking her in a tower with just a spindle for company. He commands that if she does not make gold by the end of that night, she will be killed. Of course she cannot, but in the hour before dawn a strange imp appears and tells her that he can undertake the task in exchange for the glass beads around her neck. When the king’s men arrive in the early morning, the floor is strewn with spun gold.’

‘I remember it now!’ Jennifer exclaimed. ‘The king sends her to a bigger room with more straw and commands her to do the same, and this time she gives the imp a glass ring. But on the third night the girl has nothing left to give, and so he asks for her firstborn child in exchange. In desperation, she agrees to the pact.’

‘And what do you make of that?’ the old man asked. ‘Why did he ask for the child, as yet unborn?’

‘He was a paedophile?’

‘That is certainly one interpretation. Such creatures are hardly new to the world. But putting that aside, and somewhat ridiculously, the king decides to marry the miller’s daughter, although he does not appear to ask her, ever again, to spin gold. Why not? He had threatened to kill her when she was making it, and now he marries her when she isn’t? On the day the miller’s girl, now a queen, delivered a child, the imp returned and demanded his payment. The child must be handed over. She naturally protests, and he gives her another option. Guess my name in three days or I will take the child come what may.’

Jennifer stretched her legs before her. Her feet were growing chill in the settling snow. ‘So far so good,’ she said. ‘It is an intriguing premise.’

‘But then it unravels,’ the professor counselled. ‘On the third day the queen ventures into the forest, for reasons unknown, and stumbles upon Rumplestiltskin’s home. Here she spies him dancing before a fire, and chanting that he will take the child by dawn. During this little skip and a prance, he announces his name. When he returns that night, the queen offers his name and he is undone.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, just nothing, Jennifer! He simply disappears. In the entire canon of folklore, this one is the grand master of the anti-climax!’

‘It begins with promise and ends in nothing,’ she murmured, repeating Rumpole's earlier phrase.

The old man looked at her with a gentle and knowing smile. ‘And that, my dear, is why I loathe it.’

He was growing tired. Jennifer wrapped him in the quilt and placed a pillow beneath his head. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she whispered.

He fixed a blue eye on her. ‘My own bench here, one day soon. A cigarette, if you have one, a box of matches … not a lighter. The smell of a burned match …!

Her father smoked on the roof. The housekeeper kept matches to light the hob. She hurried away. Nana stayed with the old man, jumping on the bench and wrapping his body in her warm fur. When she returned he was asleep, but Nana would not leave him. Jennifer tucked his requests beneath the quilt and quietly walked away.

*****

In the dog days of summer, Jennifer took herself to the old man’s bench. It was closer to the water than the one he had passed away on. She had no idea whether he would have liked that or not. He seemed a creature of the soil, not the river or the sea.

She stroked the bronze plaque.

In memory of Professor Thomas Rumpole, Purveyor of Fairy Tales.

She sat for some while, watching animated life go by her. She could join it, and perhaps she would someday. She could embrace it in the knowledge that not every story must end well. However poorly told, it is a story nonetheless.

But the professor was wrong about one thing. Rumpelstiltskin did have a purpose in the telling, one which offered her relief in times of trouble.

It was about promises made and promises kept. And in her own dying moments, if the honouring of his wishes was to be the sum of her life, her proudest achievement, her finest hour and her most defining significance, then she considered it to be quite enough.