A Modern day fairy story.

...without warning and he'd lost a set of unsaved spreadsheets that had taken him days to compile. With so little spare time after he had finished all the stupid chores his mother dreamed up for him around the farm, that hurt. It hurt doubly because with modern machinery the chores could have been handled in seconds rather than hours, but would she let him borrow the money to buy the machinery? No way. She had some crazy down on debt, being too fossilised ...
...of the drips accelerated to a splashing flow. Nervously, he twitched the save button while he studied the numbers afresh. Even factoring in an unlikely rise in EU subsidies, it was a no-brainer. The dairy game was played out, finito, kaput. He knew his mother would be loath to part with the last of the herd, but it was the only way forward. The future lay in arable, and since their holding was now too small for cereals, in vegetables. Specifically, ... more

In his room under the eaves of the old farmhouse, Jack sat listening to the drips as the rain trickled through the leaking thatch. The roof was overdue for repair. Everything in the old farmhouse was overdue for repair.

He shrugged. The leaks wouldn't really matter so long as the damp didn't seep into the worn, archaic wiring. He shuddered at the memory of the time when the rats had gnawed through the cable in the barn. Then his computer had crashed without warning and he'd lost a set of unsaved spreadsheets that had taken him days to compile. With so little spare time after he had finished all the stupid chores his mother dreamed up for him around the farm, that hurt. It hurt doubly because with modern machinery the chores could have been handled in seconds rather than hours, but would she let him borrow the money to buy the machinery? No way. She had some crazy down on debt, being too fossilised to know that everyone borrowed for everything these days.

The wind howled and the patter of the drips accelerated to a splashing flow. Nervously, he twitched the save button while he studied the numbers afresh. Even factoring in an unlikely rise in EU subsidies, it was a no-brainer. The dairy game was played out, finito, kaput. He knew his mother would be loath to part with the last of the herd, but it was the only way forward. The future lay in arable, and since their holding was now too small for cereals, in vegetables. Specifically, in GM beans. He'd spotted a new variety on the net, and the yield projections were out of this world.

Time for the big switcheroo. This was something Jack could handle personally. No need to talk it over with his mum; her fuddy-duddy notions would only confuse the issue. Ever since she had been widowed, she had been living in the past. No point either in reflecting on the similar moves he had made before, moves that had inexplicably come apart, losing money and reducing the farm to its present plight, literally down to its last cow. That was part bad luck, part learning curve, Jack reassured himself. This time, he'd figured all the angles.

He whistled under his breath as his fingers flicked over the keys. It took just a few clicks and the deals were done, for completion in the morning. By tomorrow night, this would no longer be Buttercup Farm, as it had been known for centuries. It would be Beanstalk Agro-enterprises, with sky-high prospects.

Jack sat back in an anticipatory glow. Soon he'd be tearing up his 'My Other Car's a Tractor' sticker, and buying that Porsche he'd always dreamed of. 'Young Farmers do it in Style' the sticker could say in future.

Talking of which, business over for the evening, perhaps it was time to spend an hour or two seeing if he could hustle up some talent in his favourite chatroom. Once more his fingers flickered over the keys as he found the site, and typed in Jack_the_Lad, his password.

*

In her attic cubicle in the converted tenement, Snow sat watching the drips fall from the damp patch in the ceiling. The roof was overdue for repair. Everything in the run-down hostel was overdue for repair.

She shrugged, and leaned forward over her keyboard to make sure no water dripped down between the keys to short-circuit her laptop. A few drops of water wouldn't hurt her. All that mattered was that she was safe. And not only safe, but for the first time in her life devoting herself to something worthwhile. In a strange, roundabout way, her stepmother had done her a favour.

Snow felt her cheeks go red as she remembered the indolent life she had been accustomed to lead, jetting off to her father's assorted hideaways in luxurious places, lounging around pools by day, playing the tables by night. It was all she had known, all that her family had taught her. She remembered the time she had asked her father why she was called Nevada, Snow being just his pet name for her. "That, princess," he had told her, "is down to the time I made a killing in Las Vegas. And it's Spanish, innit, so it reminds me of our gaff in Marbella." She often wondered what kind of killing he meant, but that wasn't the sort of question anyone dare ask her father, not even her.

She shrugged again. He was out of the picture, anyway. For the foreseeable future, his address wasn't going to be Las Vegas or Marbella or even Essex, but Parkhurst, Isle of Wight, which suited him only in as far as it rhymed with his surname. Meanwhile, it was Belladonna - Belle as she was known - Snow's stepmother, who was running the business, and Belle that Snow had to worry about. For whatever reason, her stepmother had put out a contract on Snow. Luckily for her, the first hitman assigned to the job was an old sidekick of her father's, who had gone soft and hadn't followed through. Otherwise, she wouldn't be here now.

Here now. This tumbledown hostel inhabited by out of work miners. "Involuntarily leisured", she corrected herself mentally. She had to free herself from her old pejorative modes of thinking; "out of work" made it sound so demeaning, and it was hardly their fault that the mines had all been thatchered. The fact that they were vertically-challenged into the bargain, doubtless from malnourishment or from being bent double as they hacked away at the coal-face, made them all the more deserving of her concern. What's more, several faced mental or other health issues. The narcoleptic Sleepy, the depressive Grumpy, the repressed Bashful, even the manic Happy all had self-evident special needs. Dopey and Sneezy she suspected of substance abuse, perhaps an understandable reaction to the way in which society had treated them, but nevertheless likely to create problems in their interaction with official agencies. As for Doc, what was a qualified physician doing in such a place, anyway? Not that there was anything shameful about it, of course.

Well, she was here, and being here had opened her eyes to the needs of others, to social injustice and to how she could play her part in combating it, if only for now by acting as carer for these seven unfortunates. Luckily, in her escape, she had been able to bring away her laptop, and had signed up under an assumed name for online courses in sociology, psychology, caring and nursing. It was on these she had been working when the drips from the ceiling distracted her.

Her mind was wandering, she realised. She wasn't taking in the meaning of the words on the screen. Perhaps it was a bit late for any more work tonight. Perhaps it would be better to wind down by seeing if she could find someone worth chatting to online, someone like her with a social conscience.

Her fingers glided over the keys as he found the site she was looking for, and typed in Mist_Grey, her recently-changed, neutrally-shaded password. Apart from being a risk to her safety, to use her real surname somehow sounded colourist.

*

Unbeknownst to either Jack or Snow, they were not the only characters in this story to be online that night. In a mock-Tudor mansion located in the twilight zone between Essex and East London, where pet dobermans, human and canine alike, patrolled the grounds and were drenched by the downpour, Belle was logging into www.mirroronthewall.com. It was a site she had used to excellent effect before, and she had heard that they had yet again upgraded their leading-edge Fairest-Of-Them-All detector.

She was going to find out for sure whether that creep she had sent to dispose of Snow had done the business, or whether he'd been bullshitting her. Unfortunately, she'd hastily eaten the bleeding heart he'd brought back as proof of despatch. Belle regretted that now. She should have had it DNA-tested first. But this time she was going to learn the truth in any case. It had to be this time, because big moves were planned for the next two days, and she didn't want Snow around to get in the way.

Her sharp fingernails stabbing at the keys, she logged into the website.

*

Late the following evening, Jack was once more alone in his room, fuming at the hand that fate had dealt him. It had been a bad twenty-four hours. Why did these things always happen to him? Perhaps he ought to move into fruit-farming, the way his plans went pear-shaped.

First, there had been that stupid bleeding-heart bitch he'd wasted half the night arguing with in the chatroom; he wouldn't have bothered if she hadn't been such a stunner to look at. She was so sensational he wondered if her online photo was a fake, but she seemed far too straight for that, with her pathetic PC bleating. He'd tried all his usual lines, but made no headway. It was almost dawn when, deeply frustrated, he'd signed off, giving her a piece of his mind as he did so.

And that was the least of his worries. That morning he'd relinquished the cow and taken delivery of the seed-beans as per contract, only to find that instead of the sackfuls he'd been anticipating, they amounted to no more than a handful. He scanned the printout in vain for minimum quantity guarantees, but somehow they didn't seem to be there. How could he have missed that when he did the deal?

To cap it all, his mother had come into the farmyard at just the wrong moment, seen the animal transporter carrying the last of their livestock away, and had cross-questioned him. Somehow, she hadn't seem convinced by his explanation and, grabbing the beans from him, had flung them over the fence into their one remaining meadow. Then she'd seized a scythe from behind the barn door and chased Jack up the stairs into his bedroom, from which he hadn't dared to emerge all day.

Well, no point just sitting feeling sorry for himself. Might as well spend some time on the net. But, for now, he'd stay away from the agro-dealing sites that had got him into this bind. Even chatting with the dippy do-gooder seemed suddenly preferable to courting further disaster on the farm.

*

At about the same time, Snow was also feeling down-hearted, having had a bad twenty-four hours.

First, there had been that stupid yokel (whoops, "rurally-residing primary producer") who fancied himself as a yuppie. She'd wasted half the night arguing with him in the chatroom; she wouldn't have bothered if he hadn't been more than a bit fit (whoops, "pulchritudinally unchallenged") to look at. He was so sensational she wondered if his online photo was a fake, but he seemed far too vain for that. He was full of himself he'd use his own picture, whatever he looked like. It was almost dawn when, deeply frustrated, she'd signed off, giving him a piece of her mind as she did so.

She had been awoken by Grumpy, complaining she was late with breakfast. Naturally, she was only too pleased to cook for the seven of them, but there was something about the way they took it for granted, neither thanking her nor offering to help, that grated. When they had finished, they just stood up, belched and departed, soiled crockery and overspill strewn across the table. Not that she needed any show of formulaic gratitude, of course, but some acknowledgement would nevertheless have made her feel better about it. Perhaps she still needed to work on her conditioned responses.

Putting it from her mind, she had spent the day cleaning and tidying the hostel. She was conscious that, given their disadvantaged background, her charges couldn't be expected to conform to bourgeois concepts of hygiene, and maybe it was up to her to overcome her prejudices. Still, she did find some of their accumulated debris rather nauseating. The bedding had evidently not been changed for years, and what was under the beds didn't bear thinking about.

She was just taking a break to recover, when the door-bell had rung and she had answered it to find a woman on the doorstep, apparently an itinerant vendor of miscellaneous merchandise. There was something about the visitor that reminded Snow of her stepmother, but this person was dressed in garb indicative of Romany ethnicity, and Belle's prejudice against 'pikeys' had always been outspoken, so clearly there could be no connection.

Clearly too, an itinerant vendor of miscellaneous merchandise, especially one of Romany ethnicity, was bound to have been economically marginalised in a market dominated by monopolistic multinationals. Snow felt duty-bound to help her by buying at least a few oddments, ending up with a pair of shoe-laces, a comb, and an apple that the woman assured her was wholly organic and free of pesticide residues.

Then came the episode that really stuck in her craw. No sooner was Snow inside than the otherly-elevated individuals in her care had surrounded her, clamouring to see what she had bought. She displayed her purchases.

She barely had time to lay them down on the kitchen table, before Grumpy snatched up the laces. "Just what I need to tie my boots," he said.

Happy snatched up the comb. "Just what I need to get the lice out of my beard," he said.

Doc snatched up the apple. "Just what I fancy for my supper," he said.

Without a further word the three had left the room with their loot, while Snow just stood there, too startled to say anything. She looked round at the remaining persons of inexcessive height to see if any would support her, but Sleepy was snoring, Bashful was coyly pretending nothing had happened, Dopey seemed in a trance and Sneezy was preoccupied with sneezing out whatever he had been sniffing in.

There was nothing for it but to retreat to her refuge beneath the leaky roof. Even allowing for the natural resentments provoked by their growth-restrained and socially-undervalued state, their behaviour took some swallowing. Barely admissible through the suspicion was, she was starting to think they might have attitude as well as altitude problems.

Snow switched on her laptop. Even chatting with the bumptious bumpkin seemed suddenly preferable to further dealings with the (yeah, she decided tiredly, as she gave up grappling to find a less offensive word) dwarfs in the hostel.

*

Out in the Essex hinterland, Belle considered a further cross-check with mirroronthewall.com to ensure that the poisoned offerings had had the desired effect. But there wasn't time. Important action was in the offing, and she couldn't risk being diverted. Surely, one way or another, the girl had to be dead by now. Good riddance.

Already, she could hear an engine warming up outside. Time to go.

*

Jack awoke in a much better mood. That Grey girl was quite a cutie, and not nearly as soft-headed as he'd first imagined. It hadn't taken them long before they'd really begun to hit it off, and soon they'd exchanged all kinds of confidences.

He'd admitted that things on the farm had not gone to plan, and that the Porsche seemed further away than ever, and she hadn't seemed to mind a bit. Perhaps there was after all something to be said for all this non-judgemental flannel. And she'd explained to him something of her predicament.

"You want to get out of there," he'd urged her.

"But I've nowhere else to go."

"You could come here," he'd offered on a sudden impulse. They had already discovered that very little distance separated the farm from the hostel.

"I'll think about it," she agreed, hesitantly.

"Yes, think about it," he repeated, not wanting to press her. Somehow, the events of the past two days had robbed him of his usual pushiness.

Soon after that they'd said goodnight, and he had drifted asleep with her image imprinted on his consciousness.

And now it was morning. Jack looked out of his window, across the meadow. Except that he couldn't see across the meadow. The view was blocked by an enormous green growth, wider than any treetrunk, soaring sinuously skywards to be lost amid the clouds.

His mind reeled; it had to be the beans! One had germinated. He pulled on his clothes and ran down the rickety stairs and out through the farmyard. The beanstalk seemed even bigger from below than it had from the window, and its surface rougher than any bark.

At that moment Jack heard a shout behind him. His mother, her face a mask of fury, was emerging from the barn still brandishing the scythe. Without thought or hesitation, he turned to the trunk, found a handhold in the rough surface, and began to climb.

*

Snow awoke in a much better mood. That Jack was kind of cute, really, and not nearly as much up himself as she'd first imagined. After they'd said goodnight, she had drifted asleep with his image imprinted on her consciousness.

Now it was morning. Better be up before the dwarfs (yes, she would call them that, why not?) started whinging. Pulling on her clothes, she made her way downstairs. She opened the kitchen door, and at once found her mind reeling, unable to take in everything she saw.

Arched across the table was the body of Doc, his mouth agape and the core of the apple lying beside his stiff fingers. Slumped back in the chair beside him was Happy, his face for once contorted into a grimace rather than a grin, the comb still stuck in his lifeless beard. And on the floor writhed Grumpy as he tried to free his feet from his boots. "Too tight," he groaned, "too tight. I think they've given me gangrene."

Snow stooped to help him, but he recoiled from her. "Stay away from me, you bitch," he hissed. "It's all your fault."

She glanced around, as if to appeal from help from the remaining dwarfs, but as ever Sleepy was snoring, Bashful was coyly pretending nothing had happened, Dopey seemed in a trance and Sneezy was preoccupied with sneezing out whatever he had been sniffing in.

At that moment realisation dawned on her. The old peddler-women had been her stepmother in disguise, and the trinkets she had sold had all been poisoned, with Snow herself the intended poisonee. Somehow, the old witch had tracked her down, and knowing Belle, she was unlikely to allow the business to go unfinished twice. Every second Snow stayed in the hostel, she would be in danger.

Pausing only to scoop up her few belongings, Snow fled. She borrowed Happy's bicycle, which she found propped outside the door. He wouldn't need it again, that was for sure. At least she now had a bolt-hole to go to, courtesy of Jack's invitation of the night before. She didn't know how seriously he had meant it, but she would soon find out.

*

Handhold over handhold, spurred on by panic, Jack climbed on. He dared not look down. He knew that by now the little farm would be dwindling in the distance, a mere speck below him, but he feared that even a glance at it would give him vertigo and make him fall.

Soon wispy cloud surrounded him, and he could not have seen below even if he'd wanted to. At about the same time the single massive stem up which he had clambered began to divide, stalk after stalk branching sideways, and leaves sprouted, overlapping each other until they formed an almost flat carpet beneath the interwoven canopy of upward growth.

Jack paused and caught his breath. He would never have believed he could have managed such a climb. It all went to show what a little motivation would do for you. He was still standing motionless when he heard the voice through the cloud.

The voice was strident, female, almost a screech. "For f*ck's sake, wake up," it was shouting. "I don't know where the hell you've crashed us, but we are in deep sh*t and we've got to do something. I didn't go to all that trouble just to have you collapse on me now."

His curiosity aroused, Jack pulled himself upright on the foliage, and turned in the direction of the voice. Soon, the cloud cleared to reveal the wreckage of a helicopter, its rotor blades tangled like spaghetti in the overhanging fronds. Jagged cracks radiated from a starburst in the centre of the windscreen, behind which Jack could just discern the outsize outline of a massive, but motionless, pilot.

Beside the cockpit stood a showily-dressed woman in early middle-age, beating on the glass with her fists in frustration and stamping her feet. Long stiletto heels punched holes in the green surface. She turned in surprise as Jack approached. He saw in an instant that she must once have been beautiful, but time had tightened her mouth into a thin, cruel line.

"What the hell…" she started, and then her voice softened as her gaze assessed him, up and down. "Well, what have we here? Come on over, big boy, where I can take a look at you."

Uneasily, Jack edged forward. Her eyes, cold but lustful, seemed to draw him towards her, a fish reeled in on a line. She touched his cheek, then ran her hand down his arm to feel his biceps, then lower still.

"Oh yes, a big boy," she drawled huskily. "You and I could make music together, but it'll have to be another time." She gestured at the prostrate pilot, still sprawled senseless over the controls. "Any minute now he'll wake up, and wonder what you're doing here. Then you'll find out that he's not known as Ogre for nothing. Of course, we could give him another tap on the head so as to keep him quiet while you and I got to know each other a little better, but that might just finish him, and I don't think it's time for that yet." She fluttered her false eyelashes. "Unless you happen to know the access codes for a whole sheaf of Swiss bank accounts in names like Hen and Harp?"

Dumbly, Jack shook his head.

"No, I didn't think so. What's worse, neither do I. All I've got on board is a few hundred grand for expenses, and for my tastes that's nothing like enough. All the same, let's get it clear of the wreck in case the whole thing blows." She slipped a thin briefcase from behind the seat and passed it to Jack, while he became aware of the odour of spilt gasoline mingling with the woman's sultry scent. "But we still need Ogre, at least for now, so I'm going to have to wake him up and get him out of there… "

As she spoke, the giant form in the cockpit stirred, and a huge hand came up to rub the golden-egg-sized lump on its head. "F*!" growled a rough, rumbling voice, as if from the bottom of a pit. "F*! F**! F**! What's the bleeding smell round here?"

The woman gestured Jack out of sight, and he slipped behind the tailfin. "It's fuel," he heard her say. "We've crashed and we've got to get clear."

"Don't you give me fuel, girl. You've got some geezer here, ain't you? I can smell the bastard, and his bones are in for a grinding."

Jack didn't wait to hear another word. His footsteps flew across the flat foliage to where the main stalk descended. Unable to climb and grasp the briefcase simultaneously, he simply threw it down towards where the farmhouse must lie. Then hand under hand, his feet barely touching the toeholds, he descended as quickly as he dared.

*

Snow was surprised how easily she found the farm. Jack had made it sound complicated, down lots of narrow lanes and obscure turnings, but she soon worked out that it was in the direction of a tall growth that reached up skywards, and she simply kept the bike pointed towards that.

In next to no time, the wheels were bumping down the dried ruts in the mud of the farm-track. The thatched farm-house was just as she had imagined, as was the wooden barn. The only puzzling feature was the tall growth, and it became more puzzling still as she approached and saw the muscular figure of Jack frantically working to fell it with a chain-saw, while a middle-aged woman stood beside him shouting encouragement - or was she cursing him? Impossible to tell above the drone of the saw.

Soon the trunk began to wobble, then topple, and suddenly it fell, shrivelling as it did so as if air had been let out of it. "That's the trouble with these new-fangled varieties," grumbled the woman as the three of them hastily retreated out of range of the falling plant. "They grow fast enough but there's no strength to them." Despite her disapproving scowl, she was a handsome woman, evidently having preherited something of her son's good looks, and much younger than Snow had expected from his description.

"You must be Jack's mum," Snow said.

The woman looked at her. "And who might you be?" she asked, but there was no time to reply. At that moment deflating trunk was followed by discolouring foliage, and then by a reverberating crash as the wreckage of a helicopter embedded itself in the grass beside them. The door swung open and a massive figure rolled out onto the ground.

"Dad!" exclaimed Snow in astonishment.

One eye opened in the battered face. "Hello, princess," came a growl. "What are you doing here?" Then the eye closed again as he fell back unconscious.

*

Later, back at the farmhouse, to which they carried him with the aid of the tractor, it was time for explanations. Jack explained to his mother who Snow was. Snow explained who her father was and that, despite his gruesome reputation, he would be no threat to them once she had vouched for them.

Surprisingly, not even Jack's mother showed any inclination to call the police. She seemed to have taken something of a shine to the craggy visitor, mopping his brow, expertly checking for broken bones and preparing a restorative brew for when he recovered consciousness. Which he soon did and, as he sipped it, he exchanged explanations with his daughter.

"Too bad Belle gave you so much grief," he opined at length. "I knew she'd be up to no good while I was inside, but I needed her to spring me. And a good job she made of it, what with the chopper and all. Until that bleeding beanstalk got in the way. Where is she, anyway?"

They looked at each other. Where was Belle, anyway? Jack and Snow ran outside. The once-giant beanstalk was now as vertically-challenged as her former charges, no more than a shrunken coil of decay. Beside it, the helicopter was still embedded in the soil, still reeking of spilt fuel, but now for the first time they noticed that out from under it jutted two shapely legs with feet in stiletto heels. Then some spark ignited the fuel and the whole heap, beanstalk and helicopter, was engulfed in flame.

They watched in silence, and then spoke softly and urgently to each other for a while. At length they returned to the farmhouse to find their respective parents deep in an equally animated conversation. Ogre barely shrugged when he heard of his wife's incineration. "She had it coming," he said. "And I'd better be going. I've made a call while you two were outside, and a car will be here any minute. You coming with me, princess?"

"No, dad," she said. "I'm going to stay here with Jack. I don't want your sort of life any longer, and I don't want the sort of life I thought I'd found with the dwarfs…"

"And I don't want to be a agro-entrepreneur any longer," added Jack. "We're just going to enjoy a simple life growing our own food and raising kids, chickens and cats and living hippily ever after…"

"Fair enough," said Ogre resignedly, and turned to Jack's mother. "What about you? You want to come?"

"You bet," she said. "I was beginning to think you'd never ask."

*

"You think it's going to work out all right?" Jack asked Snow, as they watched the car drive away.

"What, with them? How would I know? But I believe one's got to let the older generation find their own way, live their own lives and make their own mistakes."

"No, with us. You can't really grow much here, you know. Do you think we'll manage if we're poor?"

"Oh, I would think so," said Snow, wondering when, if ever, to tell him about the slim briefcase that had dropped into her path as she had cycled down the track.

© torr 2005

 

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