(Loosely based on Le Prince Desir et la Princesse Mignonne by Madame Leprince de Beaumont)
Just before the second of the great wars, towards the middle of the last century, there was a famous movie star, whose face appeared in all of the celebrity magazines of the day. Even now, you can sometimes see him swashling his buck or romancing his true loves under a moonlit sky on a late night re-run on one of the many satellite film channels. His hair was always immaculately black, his moustache was always pencil thin, and his eyes, even in black and white, held a sparkle and an intensity that has set female hearts racing from that day to this.
The famous movie star was no stranger to the palpitations of the heart either. Towards the twilight of his career he spent one glorious summer on location with a stunningly beautiful young lady, who was co-staring with him in a suitably melodramatic matinee feature. He fell deeply in love with her and longed for the day when he might marry her, but there was a problem. The young lady was not free to marry because she was already married to one of London’s larger than life theatrical impresarios, a man famous for his quick temper. In desperation the famous movie star sought the advice of a wickedly wrinkled old socialite who’d had more than her fair share of husbands, lovers and divorces.
This aging ‘It’ girl lived on a diet of rouge and impossibly scarlet lipstick and when she spoke she was reputed to be able to breathe pure sulphur and brimstone. It was with some trepidation that the famous movie star called on her one afternoon to hear what she had to say about his case of unrequited love. Over tea and cucumber sandwiches the old dear fixed our movie star with a steely-grey eye and spoke imperiously.
“You know that the young lady in question is married to that hateful mogul of dodgy musical reviews. What you don’t know, however, is that he was only able to persuade her to marry him because he knew about her illegitimate child. Oh yes, it’s true, she had a baby when she was just seventeen. It would be an awful scandal if it ever got out. So, in return for his silence and his support in her stellar career, she has to pretend to be happily married. My advice to you is to bop him on the nose and to call him a cad and a bounder. Then you and the young lady must sell to the most lurid of our newspapers a story of tragedy and heartbreak made good by your true love”.
For all of his on-screen thud and blunder, our movie star was not a brave man when it came to the realities of physical violence, but nevertheless, his love for the young lady with perfect skin was just too strong to ignore. He secretly contacted his true love and put the plan to her and without question she readily agreed that it should be done. Together they worked on their stories, on their facial expressions and on their star-crossed gaze, and influenced by the heady aphrodisiac of risks taken in extremis their mutual respect and love for each other blossomed. It wasn’t long before the young lady sensed the impending patter of another pair of tiny feet.
Spurred on by the prospect of becoming a father, the famous movie actor collared the evil theatrical entrepreneur one evening as he left the first night premiere of his latest hit musical. With flash bulbs screaming in the dark night sky, he bopped the vile Svengali on the nose, cuffed him around the ears and told him what an absolute scoundrel he was. With the perfect timing borne of many years working in the mire of celebrity shame, the editor of the country’s favourite celebrity magazine published a full front page spread the very next morning. Over the ensuing days the general public learned all about the young lady’s heartbreak and about the sheer nastiness of the man who was soon to be consigned to marital history’s list of theatrical first husbands.
It transpired that everyone who loved cinema and the fragile flowers that blossomed on the silver screen forgave the young lady and wished the happy couple a long and merry life together. All that remained was to complete the divorce proceedings, book the registry office and throw the mother and father of all show business parties.
The final petitions in the divorce case took place on a cold and foggy January afternoon. With everything done and dusted down, the famous movie star and his wife to be left the weakly glowing comfort of the lights in the court building’s entrance hall and started to blend into the pale corona of mist and smog smothering London’s busy streets. That dastardly old trooper of a first husband had not bothered to contest the proceedings, so neither the famous and happy movie star nor his betrothed little starlet were prepared for his sudden emergence from the gloom.
“So, you’re going to marry the brazen little hussy now, I suppose”, he hissed. “Well, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, but I’ll have my revenge. Your son, for it is a boy, will never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long. And if you ever tell him what I’ve just said, he’ll disappear in a puff of smoke and never be seen again”.
There was an awkward moment as the theatrical impresario got his arm twisted in the folds of his cloak, but after a few seconds of muttering and cursing he managed to sweep the black cloth across his face and let out a rough edged, grating cackle.
The famous movie actor was terribly afraid, but somewhere down by his bootstraps he found the strength and the courage to turn and face the spectral figure hamming things up in front him.
“It’s all rot and hot air,” he stammered. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter if he has a long nose. Unless he’s blind or an idiot he’ll know its size as plain as the…”
The actor’s words shattered like glass on the empty cobblestones. The caped phantom had already disappeared into the misty night.
The actor and his bride were soon married and, despite her bump, they made a fine looking couple in the all of the magazine features and on the cinema newsreels that tracked the early stages of their new life together. Their happiness was complete some five months later when a fine and healthy son was born. In true movie star style they held a huge christening bash in a big hotel, where they announced to the world their pride and joy in the fact that little Archibald had joined the family.
No more than a year after the child’s birth the famous actor met a sticky end when he fell from a fly tower while filming a story about love in a lunatic asylum and his beautiful young wife was left all alone to bring the toddler up. Remaining true to her late husband’s dear memory, she eschewed any further relationships and concentrated all of her time and all of her husband’s vast fortune on the boy. The child grew lustily and quite dazzled everyone with his sparkling blue eyes. He gurgled delightfully through his perfectly aligned mouth and both family and friends could see that one day he would have the perfect jaw line for robust action roles. They were all, therefore, extremely upset and surprised when his nose started to grow and grow and grow.
The little boy’s mother was inconsolable when she saw how long her child’s nose was becoming. She remembered the parting curse uttered by her first husband and she feared greatly that she would be the cause of her son's disappearance at any moment. As luck would have it, however, all of her advisors, secretaries, nannies, friends and hangers-on said that the boy’s nose was actually very fine; that it was a Roman nose and you only had to open the history books to see how important such noses were. Buoyed by these comments, she felt much better and when she looked again at her child’s face his nose certainly didn’t seem too long at all.
Archibald was brought up with the greatest of care. As soon as he was old enough to understand things, everyone who came into contact with him was instructed to make the best of his facial feature. Consequently, the child’s favourite bedtime stories were nearly all about the terrible things that happened to people with really short noses. No one was allowed to come near him unless they too had a very long nose, or was prepared to undergo an hour’s worth of work with a prosthetic artist. Friends of the doting mother became so engrossed in the whole nose business that they took to pulling their own babies’ noses several times a day to make them grow longer, but no matter how many times they tweaked their kiddies’ snouts, not one of them ever came close to matching little Archibald’s fine muzzle.
As the boy progressed through childhood and into manhood, he was provided with the finest tutors, all of whom made sure that the men of history, politics and the arts were always described as having extremely long noses. Nothing was left to chance in the boy’s education. Every one of his history and picture books was doctored with sticky paper, biro and crayon to make sure that every person featured was shown with the largest of probosci. In short, Archibald grew up so convinced that a long nose was the most beautiful of facial characteristics that he would not on any account consider having his own nose an inch shorter than it was.
And so the years passed until the boy became a man of twenty summers, and his mother decided that he should have a girlfriend. Times had changed and with them had come a more relaxed attitude to courting, but Archibald’s mother was determined to continue protecting her long-nosed child. She secretly advertised for a lady companion for her son, using the services of a very discreet dating agency so that she could vet each young lady for her character, for her status and for her facial features. Once she had assembled a list of potentially suitable fillies for her darling boy, she made a gift of their photographs to him and asked him to select those young ladies who might be of interest. Unfortunately, Archibald’s mother did not check the photographs properly and stuck to the bottom of the pile was a picture of a most unsuitably button nosed young woman.
Archibald was completely bowled over by this femme fatale’s saucy little nose. He refused to look at any of the other pictures, despite his mother’s protests, and was absolutely adamant that this was the girl for him. The young lady in question was the only daughter of an oil magnate and would one day inherit a vast fortune and huge estates in several countries around the world, but Archibald couldn’t care less about her wealth or her position in the social pecking order. He fell in love in an instant, which caused much consternation in the family home. Some of his mother’s friends and some of his tutors had become so accustomed to laughing at small noses that they just couldn’t stop themselves criticising Archibald’s new found love. Two of the tutors and a family friend of some twenty years standing were dismissed immediately and told never to darken the doorstep again.
The remainder of the staff, family and friends took the hint and learned how to deal with the situation, always thinking twice before making any further comments to the young man about the way people looked. One particularly clever acquaintance even had the foresight to tell Archibald that, although a long nose was only to be expected in any man of worth, a woman’s beauty was quite another thing.
“In fact”, he said to the young man, “I know a learned professor who understands Greek and Su Doku and stuff, and he said that he read this old manuscript once and even the beautiful Queen Cleopatra had a button nose”.
Archibald was very impressed with this advice and he sent a message to the young lady asking her if she wanted to meet for a drink one evening. The young lady, being a dutiful daughter, asked her father if it was permitted for her to meet this young man. When her father heard that he was the son of a famous actor, he too was impressed. He felt it would be most appropriate to marry new money to such an established and well-known scion of the arts, and so he willingly gave his consent to the meeting.
Archibald was so excited at the prospect of meeting this darling young lady that he couldn’t stand waiting for her to call at the house, where his family would doubtless get in the way and be embarrassing. On the day that they were due to see each other for the first time, he called her and arranged to meet her in private at a little bar that he sometimes visited. He drove himself all the way there, never once noticing that a dilapidated and rusty old saloon car was following him at a discreet distance.
When Archibald met his paramour in the bar's secluded car park he was instantly smitten by her simple and well-proportioned beauty. He knelt down on one knee so that he could kiss her hand, just like a fairy tale prince, but as she approached him the battered old car that had been following him swept in between them. To his horror one of the rear doors swung open violently and the young lady was pulled into the car, which then roared away in a shower of stone chippings and thick black smoke from the exhaust.
The next thing that the terrified and bewildered young man heard was the ringing of the public telephone on the corner of the street. Without quite understanding why he did so, Archibald went over to the phone and lifted the receiver from its cradle.
“Listen carefully, Big Nose”, said a thin, rasping voice. “You’ll never see her again. She’s mine now! It’s payback time for your bitch mother’s treachery all those years ago. And if you don’t believe me ask her about her first marriage”.
The line went dead and so did Archibald’s heart. He was quite inconsolable and wandered London’s mean streets for hours trying to work out what he could do to win his darling beloved’s freedom from this evil interloper. He had no idea where he was when he finally came out of his sad reverie. All that he knew was that there was a lot of garbage in the streets, that there were was steam rising from broken pipes in the alleyways and that mean looking men kept pushing past him on their way to dark deals in dimly lit bars. This was as far from home as Archibald had ever been in his life and he was very scared. He also realised that he was extremely hungry and very cold, all of which contributed to make him feel wretched and desperately alone in this harsh and threatening world.
All of a sudden a high-pitched voice broke through the black night air and made him stop dead in his tracks. “Archie? Is that you Archie? Coo-eee…over here… in the shop doorway”.
Archibald looked across the street and directly into the heavy mascara eyes of a very down at heel looking lady, who was dressed in clothes that would have embarrassed a sixteen year old. Her skirt was too short and it had a slit in the side that revealed rather more cellulite than thigh. Her boots had long since lost their patent shine and her crop top revealed far too much of her very large breasts to be at all decent. Her exposed midriff appeared to be melting like an ice-cream cone on a sizzling summer afternoon at the seaside.
Shuddering internally, Archibald crossed the road and came face to face with the oldest working girl this side of the Black Death, who put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles so that she could see him better. The young man steeled himself and asked the old girl for help.
“Madam, I need some help finding my true love and you look like someone who knows a thing or two about the world. Can you help me?”
“Probably”, the old tart replied, “But first you need some grub and a good stiff drink. You look famished and with such a silly big nose you’ll appreciate a quiet spot out of eyeshot. I recognised you from the magazines and stuff, darling. Always remember big ones, me, and I certainly remember your father. Oh, yes, he had a very handsome nose, if you know what I mean.”
“And what exactly is lacking in my nose”, replied Archibald with just a hint of a serrated edge to his voice.
"Oh, nothing's lacking", replied the senior citizen of the night. "On the contrary, in fact. There's so much of it, but never mind, deary, you can be a worthy man whatever size your nose is. Anyway, I was telling you about your father and what good friends we was. He often used to come and see me in the olden days. Course, I was a lot younger and prettier then; least he always used to tell me so over a woodbine and a nice cup of tea afterwards. We used to have such lovely chats in them days. The last time I saw him he told me all about..."
"Indeed", said Archibald, cutting across her reminiscences about his late father. "I’m really very hungry. Could we continue the conversation somewhere a little more salubrious than this doorway?"
"Posh…" said the tart. "Why don't we go over to Rick’s bar? You can buy me a brandy-shandy and a bun".
She set off at a brisk pace towards a brightly lit bar at the end of the street. Archibald watched her as she walked. He could imagine that her wiggle had once been very seductive, but he couldn't quite overcome the sense of revulsion rising from the pit of his stomach as he realised he was being given the come on by someone's aged grandmother. Things just didn't seem to be sitting in the right places anymore. He followed her down the street, taking care to remain at least two steps behind her, partly out of a vague sense of social decorum and partly because of a growing and morbid fascination with the simple harmonic motion of her buttocks.
"Come in, then, deary", she said, holding the door open for him and they went and sat in a quiet booth at the back of the bar. When the waitress came over the old tart ordered two large brandy-shandies and a plate full of iced buns. A popular beat hit thumped out of the juke box speakers, repeating again and again because the bar owner only had the one unscratched record left following a minor altercation the previous week between two groups of caffeine-crazed Mods and Rockers.
"Tuck in, love, while I tell all about your dad. I'll keep it short, mind, 'cos time's money in my game and, anyway, I hate long-winded stories that go on and on forever. I mean, who needs a life story? People with long tongues is worse than people with long noses, and when I was young I never got paid for chattering with the customers. I was well known for me brevity in the gob department, I was. When I was little they used to say to me mum I weren't much of a talker. My dad..."
"Your father, I dare say, got the chance to eat when he was hungry”, Archibald interrupted, somewhat rudely.
"What, oh yes, love, do tuck in, didn't I say so", said the old tart holding out the plate of iced buns towards him. Archibald was just about to take a large bite out of his bun when she put her hand on top of his and said, "I was only gonna say..."
"Look, I can't listen to anything else until I've had something to eat", cried the young man, getting quite angry now. He paused and counted to ten, remembering that he needed the old girl's help to find his beloved. "I'm sorry, do go on, while I eat. I'm ravenous to hear your story".
The old tart was very flattered by his kind words, completely missing the sarcasm that Archibald had tried to inject into that last phrase. She smiled a gap toothed smile at him as she lit an unfiltered cigarette and blew smoke all over his iced bun.
"You're very nice for a big nose, you are".
Poxy bloody woman, why does she keep going on about my nose? thought Archibald. If it weren’t for the smoked buns I'd tell the old biddy to bugger off. Why can't people recognise their shortcomings? I bet she really thinks she doesn't prattle on at all. I blame all those people who told her mother she was quiet. She really believes all that flattery and flummery. Just goes to show how sensible my mother was. She never let me be flattered or be over protected. People like that tell us what they think we want to hear and they hide our faults away. I'll never let it happen to me. I'll always pay particular attention to my faults and do something about them.
The poor boy really did believe that all of his mother's friends and servants had praised his nose because they really meant it. He had no idea that they laughed at him behind his back.
"Look, 'mmm sorry", he said distractedly with his mouth full of slightly stale bun. He swallowed. "I'm looking for a young lady who was kidnapped this afternoon by an evil looking old man in a tatty brown car. I wondered whether you might know anything given your experience on the streets?"
"Yeah, whatever", the old tart replied. "Would you mind moving that way a little, 'cos your nose is casting such a big shadow on the table I can't see the buns...”
Archibald turned to offer her his profile while she fingered the buns to find the one with the thickest icing.
“Thanks. So, a brown car, you say. Did you get chance to speak to the old git, only if you did it might be a help, 'cos there's quite a few brown cars in London".
Archibald was about to tell the old girl about the telephone call when she interrupted, winking at him as she said, "You know, you really have got the biggest nose I've ever seen. Is everything else in proportion?"
"Really!” cried Archibald. "I wish you'd stop going on about my bloody nose. As far as I'm concerned it seems perfectly normal and I'm very happy with it. In fact, I love it just the way it is and don't want it be any shorter, longer or fatter. It's perfect".
The old girl sat back in her seat, looking quite astonished.
"I'm sorry, Archie", she said quietly. "I really didn't mean to upset you. I want to help you find out where your little girl is. It's just that your nose is shockingly large. I’ll try not to mention it again. I'll definitely try not to think about it at all, although, in truth, you could probably poke a very large rhinoceros with it".
That was the straw that broke poor Archibald's back. He was now so angry with the old woman because of her continual sniping about his nose that he stormed out of the bar and strode through the city streets in a foul temper for the rest of the night, but no matter how hard he looked or how many people he questioned, no one seemed to know anything about his stolen lover or about the evil kidnapper and his clapped out motor. For the most part Archibald couldn't even get straight answers from the people that he stopped and questioned. All anyone in the city seemed able to do was to mock his nose and call him rude names. He thought that everyone must be quite mad and he was in no mood to admit to himself that he was in possession of an oversized hooter. The years of conditioning and polite remarks made to him by family friends and retainers were so ingrained that he was convinced that he was the only sane person walking the city streets that night.
Meanwhile, back in Rick’s bar the old tart with a heart was making a few telephone calls. The truth was that she was more than just an old professional; she was, in the vaguest sense, Archibald's Fairy Godmother, having promised his father that she would look after the boy when he most needed it. She was convinced that time had now come.
With the last call made, the old girl now knew exactly who had taken Archibald’s true love and she knew where he was keeping her. She also knew that Archie would eventually end up back at the coffee bar. It was an unwritten law of street life that condemned the miserable to wander aimlessly around Soho’s darker haunts for hours before inevitably ending up back where they had started out from. The old girl ordered another brandy-shandy and waited. Trade hadn't been up to much lately and she was skint, so there was no point in trying to leave until the boy returned and paid the bill.
Sure enough, at about four in the morning a weary young man stumbled back into the bar. He collapsed into the booth, ordered a double strength Americano, put his head in his hands and wept like a baby. The old girl put a comforting hand on his shoulder, slipped a grubby piece of paper under his nose and quietly made her way back out into the insomniac streets of the city.
Eventually Archibald managed to summon up the strength to drink his coffee. He looked at the piece of paper that the old lady had passed to him and saw a bill for eleven large brandy cocktails, fourteen buns and a Viennese Whirl. He was about to crumple the bill up and throw it at the waitress when he noticed that there was some writing on the other side. He turned the piece of paper over and there he saw an address and a name. He had no idea who the person named might be but the address was that of an old and disused theatre a couple of streets away. He threw some notes and some coins onto the table and ran all the way to the theatre, convinced that he would at last find a clue to the whereabouts of his one true love amongst the rotting stalls.
Breaking and entering was not something that Archibald had studied with his tutors, and so it was with some difficulty and quite a lot of noise that he eventually managed to force a window at the back of the ramshackle and degenerate building. As he made his way through the darkness he kicked various buckets, pots and pans that had been left strategically placed to deal with the many leaks that the roof had sprung during so many years of neglect. With every screech of metal on the wooden floor and with every yelp that came out of his mouth as he smashed his shins into rotting theatre seats, Archibald expected to be attacked by the hounds of hell, but nothing stirred within.
Once in the main auditorium, he saw that there was a cage on the stage lit by a single spotlight and in the cage he saw the crumpled form of a young woman, who was, he was sure, wearing the very same dress that his beloved had been wearing when she was so cruelly snatched away from him the previous evening. He ran down the aisles and up on to the stage where he tried with all of his might to break open the cage door.
Archibald's joy at finding his darling was quickly tempered by his frustration at not being able break her out of her prison. She cried and wept and begged him to set her free, but in spite of all his efforts he failed utterly. In despair Archibald thought that at least he might be able to comfort her with a kiss. She understood immediately and came towards the bars with her lips puckered. Archibald twisted and turned every which way he could, but he found it impossible to position his own lips close enough to those of his darling girl because his nose always got in the way. After twenty minutes of sheer and utter frustration, and with a nose that was black and blue from battering the cage bars, he finally sat back on the floor and, for the first time in his life, admitted to himself just how long his nose really was.
Behind the desperate couple, the house lights went up, but they were so engrossed in their respective miseries that neither of them noticed a shabby little old man shuffling down one of the aisles and taking a front row seat. Had they looked over their shoulders they would have seen a mad gleam in his eye and a bucket of popcorn on his lap, and Archibald would have heard him chuckling quietly to himself as he came face to face with the results of his curse from all those years ago.
The desperate young couple slowly became aware that they had an audience. The air around them thickened as the old man in the stalls uncoiled himself and started to slither down the aisle towards the foot of the stage. As they both turned to look at the man he doffed his shabby top hat and grinned a toothless grin.
“Got you,” he snarled as his head bobbed up and down just beyond the footlights. “Been a long time in the waiting, and the curses turn you bitter inside, but it’s worth it, boy, to see you here like this. Blame your bastard father.”
Archibald edged closer to the cage bars, shrinking back from the papery skin and pallid, baleful glare. “What…what is this? What do you want with me…with us?” he asked timidly.
The old man chuckled. “Your mother never told you about me, did she? No, don’t suppose she did. I’m the cuckold. I’m the wronged party. I’m the man with revenge in his soul.”
He raised his crooked arms out wide to encompass the world. “This is it. This is my world. And you, you snivelling little shit, you are my prize. Break in you did, but you’ll never break out. You’re going to spend eternity here trying to kiss your little vixen, and I’m going to watch you every afternoon, watch you scab and scrape and graze that monstrous nose of yours against those bars. It’s a comedy of sorts. My comedy, my last, my best, my eternal showtime.”
He cackled out loud, and waving them away he turned to resume his seat in the stalls. “Carry on, carry on”, he said with another low chuckle. “Do your worst…”
Archibald turned to his would-be lover in the cage and taking her hand in his own he sighed. "I can't believe it", he said to the girl. "After all these years and all those lies. I really have got the biggest, stupidest nose in the whole wide world!"
As soon as he said this there was a sound like thunder at the back of the stage, followed immediately by the appearance of a towering wall of smoke and dry ice. Gliding through the mist there came the figure of a tall, slinky blonde, who wiggled outrageously as she walked on air. Archibald was sure that he recognised the wiggle, but he couldn't quite put his finger on where he'd seen it before. When she reached the front of the stage the gorgeous blonde phantom took a long bow.
There was a ghostly drum roll playing from the back of the auditorium as she raised her hand and pointed it at the wretched old man, who was, by now, trying make for one of the exits. The mad gleam in his eye turned to one of sheer, utter panic, but no matter how fast he shuffled forward, the exit sign seemed to recede into the distance twice as quickly. Although he looked as if he was running forwards, in reality he was being dragged back towards the stage by an invisible will.
Archibald and his true love held hands tightly as they watched the little old man rise up into the air and pass by the cage. Underneath him a trap door opened and he started to scream. “No, not now, you old hag, not now, damn you. Why me, why does this always happen to me? I’ll get you back, you old witch. I’ll get…”
The platinum blonde at centre stage winked at them both and snapped her fingers. The old man disappeared into the hole in the stage amid a shower of sparks and curses. The blonde snapped her fingers again and the cage disappeared in a puff of magician's smoke, allowing the two lovers to embrace for the very first time.
The lights snapped off and there was another crack of thunder. As the lights came up again slowly, the tart with a heart was standing where the blonde spirit had appeared, and she was smiling her soft and gentle, gap toothed smile once again.
"So, deary, won't y