Cinderella Timkins

By Sylvia Hawk’sbee

The staircase in Dormec House, a Ministry building, is certainly elegant, but to Arthur Timkins, messenger, one of the quota of variously disabled employees, it is the scene of an encounter that changes his life miraculously.

Selected as one of Professor Knowle's guinea-pigs in a pilot trial to enhance intelligence, he is whisked away to a world beyond his wildest dreams. Workers at Matcham Grange, from kitchen staff to the Professor himself, treat Arthur kindly.

Everything that puzzled him slowly clears, he is like a man emerging out of thick fog into sunlight. This new life comes to an abrupt end.

By the merest chance, Arthur left the Grange before the explosion that kills all his companions: his brief experience of luxury is over.

Hunted down by the spies responsible for destroying Matcham Grange, he changes identity with the tramp killed by a bullet intended for him. Grief-stricken and suffering physical hardship, he owes it to the Professor to reach the Ministry, proving there is one guinea-pig left. An outcast from society, after a hard journey, Arthur has to convince headquarters that he is the real Timkins, not a spy impersonating him.

The transformed Arthur is taken to Dormec House. The psychiatrist (who had selected him) swears that no one will recognise the down-trodden slow-witted messenger in this handsome, well-heeled executive, but someone does, on that very staircase...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398434240

Sylvia Hawk’sbee

At school Sylvia Hawk'sbee chose a mixture of Arts and Science subjects. But when told to make a choice, the author chose Science and specialized in Microbiology, but regretted the ignorance of her own language so returned to read English at Bedford College. After graduating, she taught at secondary level, had some success in writing short stories and articles, finally self-publishing a book for children. In this year she has a book for young adults, The Messengers, published by Cranthorpe Millner, now on sale.

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About the Author

At school Sylvia Hawk’sbee chose a mixture of Arts and Science subjects. But when told to make a choice, the author chose Science and specialized in Microbiology, but regretted the ignorance of her own language so returned to read English at Bedford College. After graduating, she taught at secondary level, had some success in writing short stories and articles, finally self-publishing a book for children. In this year she has a book for young adults, The Messengers, published by Cranthorpe Millner, now on sale.

Dedication

My husband, Don.

Copyright Information ©

Sylvia Hawk’sbee 2023

The right of Sylvia Hawk’sbee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398434233 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398434240 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

My teacher who made sure I could go to grammar school.

Chapter I

Who would have thought that a staircase would witness the beginning of a change in someone’s life so extraordinary that it could well have been called miraculous?

Not that the staircase had anything to be ashamed of, architecturally speaking it could hold up its head, and foot, in pride. Admittedly in the upper parts, it was narrower and meaner, but this flight from the first to the ground floor made a grand statement.

The smooth wooden banister on either side of the wide, shallow steps slid silkily under the fingers. It was supported by ornate lacy ironwork which widened with the last steps downwards like a growing river, so that the handrail each side swept outwards, too, and finished in a swirl of gleaming polished surface fully a forearm’s length across.

At a later date, within a few steps on that same flight, there was an event, equally miraculous (it could hardly have been more so): no less than the ruin of a professional reputation, confidently staked on an outcome that was completely wrong. It could be conceded in the professional’s defence that his error sprang from an unprecedented event that would have taken clairvoyance to foretell.

But that was all to come. At the moment, a young woman was descending to the ground floor, her hand trailing down the smooth rail. She felt that her movement down the stairs should be completed with a pirouette that followed this graceful line. And the staircase demanded flowing draperies of very light material which clung to the figure and were borne backwards by the downward motion.

All of the house had standards of its own, she thought, and was constantly shocked by what it found there. She had no idea when it was built but the lavishness of its lines spoke of a time when servants were abundant. Once it had certainly been a private mansion because the sharp division could still be detected between the owners’ quarters and the low, cramped rooms of the servants in the attics.

Dreaming didn’t cost anything, so the girl installed herself in the aristocratic part of the ghost life of the house. There still was an elite and lower order in residence, but of a far different sort. The whole square where Dormec House stood had been taken over as government offices. Two storeys up was the suite of the Minister of Technological Research and Development: he was at the top of the pyramid of parliamentary secretaries, consultants, personal assistants, executives, secretaries, typing pool staff, chauffeurs, messengers, window cleaners swinging in cradles, and ladies who presided over tea trolleys or wielded mops in the small hours.

The girl pushed open the heavy mahogany door labelled ‘Ladies’ Cloakroom’ and walked past the washbasins. Here, too, there were signs of nobler origins.

The marble surrounds and walls winced, she felt, from contact with the prosaic, gritty world of office routine.

A dark girl shot in front of her and bolted into one of the lavatories. ’Lo Sheila, she called over her shoulder, all right for some. Hardly time for a pee today.

Sheila grinned into the mirror. Busy, Linda? Ours is quiet at the moment.

It’ll get to you. Something’s brewing all right, frantically urgent. Wow! Ten miles of corridor and a deadline to meet. She rushed out waving semi-dried hands.

Someone ought to bundle you up and take you back to Italy, Sheila said to the marble. You’d be happier back where you came from in the sun. Her face in the mirror had an almost greenish tinge. It had been a long, hard winter. "Come to think of it someone ought to take you on holiday, she said to that pale oval. The sun might do something for your hair, too." The best that could be said of it was that it was a dark blonde; with some sun it turned into quite a pleasant honey-gold.

That idea of being taken on holiday brought the old familiar jab of pain. There never had been anyone to organise holidays. She was an abandoned child with a past that was a sheer blank. A name had just been handed out to her with the clothes the institute provided. Given some sort of backing from a family who knows where she might have ended up? Mr Barton and one or two other teachers had put up a hard fight to get her permission to sit for certain scholarship places for funding for further education, but the board said there were others to consider. She had had an adequate education; she had been given the opportunity to work her way up through the trainee system of the civil service. It was not fair to favour one at the expense of others.

Not even one, Mr Barton had bellowed, who shows extraordinary intelligence and promise?

Shortly after that, he left and went abroad somewhere. Sheila knew about it because he wrote her a funny and bitter letter. It was probably her dearest possession.

Strange, I wonder what gave him the idea I was bright, she said to her face, widening her eyes, parting her lips, and putting on an expression of dewy-eyed denseness. Bugger! I’ve been dreaming, I’ll get shot.

On her way upstairs, she came face to face with Janice from the same large office. Sheila, she hissed, I’ve been looking all over for you! Miss P wants you, pronto.

Oh, sod!

Miss Pethick, the head of her IT section, had an uncanny knack of wanting people the moment they left the room. She’d earned the nickname Peequick from the constant amazement she expressed at the time girls spent in the toilets; it was her main topic of conversation.

What’s up, Janice?

Don’t know, but you’ve got to get up there. Some big wheel is actually asking for your humble. Been selling secrets to the Russkies?

Zo, you had noticed my diamonds and sables?

Sheila looked calm and collected, but she racked her brains as she went along the corridor. Had she lost some important paper? Forgotten something she’d been told to do urgently? There wasn’t long to speculate – Miss Pethick was actually hanging out of the door.

Miss Kent, you must go at once to room 136B, Dr Knighton is waiting to see you. She glanced at her watch then looked pointedly at Sheila’s handbag. Why on earth it takes you girls so long to— the rest was swallowed in a sigh of exasperation.

Miss Peequick had been faced, but things were getting worse and worse. What did this quack want? The old dear hadn’t been in a very communicative mood.

Was it a surprise medical? The room number was familiar. She had been there for – of course – a screening interview. After all, there were doctors and doctors, perhaps this was something to do with a security check. She rapped on the door sharply, not out of confidence, but because a timid knock was never heard through that solid wood.

Dr Knighton had a smooth round face and round blue eyes. He was somewhere in his thirties, she thought, and probably a smooth character too.

Ah, Miss Kent, he gestured at a chair and looked her over. Those guileless looking blue marbles were pretty shrewd, she decided. We’d like you to do a few tests for us, if you wouldn’t mind. Just a few routine statistics. We want a sample of the personnel, nothing personal, you understand. The blue marbles showed recognition of the pun, sharing the joke in a matey way.

So that was it, she thought, the doctor part applied to the nut department; but why was a psychiatrist being let loose on her in particular? The word ‘routine’ had been trotted out so often to allay suspicions that she suspected it.

You’ve got a pen? (She was already disentangling it from her handbag). Good. The answers go on the question paper, so you won’t need anything else. He was conspiratorial again. It’s nice and quiet in here, so I’ll leave you in peace and pop back to collect in a little while. He placed the papers in front of her. The top sheet was blank except for a coded heading. Oh, by the way, you have been through all the security checks?

Sheila nodded. Fine, fine, he bustled to the door. Off you go then.

The air of breezy casualness didn’t take her in at all: she was sure he knew to the second when she started the paper and would return at some precisely calculated interval. She had the impression of being some small organism on the brightly lit stage of a microscope, being studied under very high-power lenses. If so, she intended to surprise the microbiologist with the amazing intelligence of the little creature.

The questions were a mixture of general knowledge, logic tests and vocabulary exercises, with some fairly simple maths thrown in. She worked steadily, forgetting the room and the odd situation. She had finished, re-read everything, stacked the papers neatly and was studying her nails when Dr Knighton reappeared.

Give up, did you? he asked sympathetically.

Sheila simply handed back the completed paper, feeling she had scored a tiny point over the smooth doctor. He dumped a large box he was carrying on the table and started to make conversation, still working on the avuncular it’s-just-little-old-me image. Nonetheless, in the course of the chitchat he flicked open the last page of the question paper, noting that she had actually finished the last sheet, and also let his glance sweep over some of the answers.

I think, he tapped the box which she could see contained variously shaped pieces of wood or plastic, we won’t bother about these. What you’ve done will be sufficient. He glanced at his watch. Fine, I’ve plenty of time to see someone else before lunch.

The doctor put his fingertips together and gave her a confiding, we’ve-gone-off-duty smile. Happy here? London’s a bit hectic, isn’t it? Manage to get away at the weekends sometimes, to the parents’ place perhaps?

Usually she could see when that subject was coming up and prepare herself for the jab, like someone in the dentist’s anticipating the touch on the nerve, but this time the probe struck right home. Surely, he had read her file, need not have made that mistake.

I know nothing of my parents. I was a foundling.

My dear, I’m so sorry. I didn’t read through your history. The blue marbles looked boyish, contrite and, for once, unprofessional. Are you happy here?

For a split second, she almost launched into all her hopes and fears, but remembered he was a psychiatrist, paid to work up a few statistics on employees whose names, for all she knew, might have been picked out of a hat. The question was probably just a formula, like How d’you do?

She half-shrugged, I survive.

The moment had passed. There were a few civilities and she found herself in the corridor outside, feeling suddenly limp and drained. The shock of being summoned, then the effort of concentration on the test had tired her. As she went downstairs, two of the messengers in their anonymous shiny blue serge were on their way up.

One was elderly and on the fat side, the other, a young man, was tall, but stooping slightly as though he had poor sight, and he walked looking downwards. The stairs were narrower here and she and the younger man approached, blocking each other’s path. The fat messenger jabbed out roughly and snapped, Mind where you’re going, Arthur. You’re right in the lady’s way – sorry, Miss, then a complete change of tone to the younger man again, "You are a dream and no mistake!"

His ingratiating smile was lost on Sheila who was looking down at the younger man. His head rose and under the peaked cap she saw a beautiful pair of large and lustrous grey eyes, full of a look of bewilderment that made her heart turn over. No doubt, the events of the morning had keyed her up, but those eyes made her want to weep, to kick the older man downstairs for his unkindness, and to enfold this one in protective wrapping. She smiled encouragingly, making herself small against the banister. Painfully slowly, he understood and moved to the inner side.

Why did those eyes have such an effect? She tried to analyse it. There was potential but some vital spark was completely missing. It was as if a sculptor had carved a wonderful head and almost made the eyes completely alive. The nearness of the miss emphasized the lack so that the eyes themselves seemed to mourn for the loss.

Sheila would have been amazed to know that the young messenger was Dr Knighton’s next victim: he, too, was part of the random sample, but the tests he would be required to take were far removed from those Sheila was set. At the bottom of the box she had seen were some very simple exercises in matching and fitting together shapes, all quite suitable for assessing the capabilities of the mentally handicapped.

A shiver went through her as Sheila let her hand slip down the wide rail of the lower staircase. She had done her little questions so cockily, then dared to feel sorry for herself because she hadn’t been given the required quota of parents, and because she hadn’t had the education she wanted. What about that poor devil who’d been turned out half-made? She remembered a line from a poem about a subnormal infant, cut off from the world.

‘And out of his eyes two great tears rolled like stones…’ The poem had moved her, suddenly and violently, in just the same way as those large grey eyes.

You’re getting morbid, my girl, she told herself. She had ten fingers, ten toes, not a complete blank between the ears. You’ll have to manage with what you’ve got and be thankful, she scolded herself, you’ll survive.

Lunch was over and the day had settled down into ordinary routine again; Sheila was fingering her keyboard with spirit, copying a dull, technical report.

Out of the tail of her eye, she became aware that Peequick was standing behind her. She was on the microscope stage again, but keyed on as if she hadn’t noticed.

Miss Kent! Miss Kent! The clatter stopped and Sheila turned. Will you stop a moment, please? You’re wanted in room 136B again.

That was strange. Usually, in the Ministry something happened then there was a long, long pause before any follow on or explanation: quite often there simply wasn’t one. For all you knew, things just tailed off in mid-air. This was surprisingly, even alarmingly, quick for a comeback. Old Peequick might have thought so because she bared her fangs slightly encouragingly.

Upstairs, Dr Knighton was leafing through and sorting his results. He paused over Sheila’s assessment then glanced at her file. Height 1.173 m, weight 55.13 kg, build slim, colour of hair light brown, eyes hazel. Age at screening, twenty so now she was just turned twenty-one. The cold terms of the description didn’t do her justice. Light brown for that tawny gold swathe! And hazel for that pale jade, that sunlight on clear seas! He saw again those fine green irises full of pain when he’d asked about parents. He turned hot, a bad mistake that. Those figures in the file didn’t do her figure justice either. Perhaps in