I could see it all now. The Mother Superior, her hair wild like winter brambles, red eyes boggling as she spun around to confront Frau and Frau. The fracas that followed! And then when it was all done, Frau Snr bringing out the Mother Superiors head. Frau Jnr chopped off the hunchbacked old nun’s webbed foot as she lay there concussed on the courtyard cobbles. We stuck both appendages into big jars of formaldehyde and Jumbo carried them back to camp. That’s how Frau and Frau supplemented their travelling show with a discrete little exhibit of pickled horrors hidden out the back.
We sat down.
“Oh, Glenda,” I said. “I still don’t recall half of it. I don’t know why I left the troupe. So much has happened since.”
“You disappeared in the dead of night not long after,” said Glenda. “We were best friends, together against the world. You said you would look after me. But then you were gone, I never did know what happened.”
Neither did I, that memory was lost for now.
“That hoover of yours never stopped throbbing after that,” said Glenda. “It was icy cold to the touch and at certain times you could hear Ava Maria being sung backwards from inside it. But the thing is that something like that doesn’t bring in the punters like a head in a jar or a clawed hand on a stick. So Frau and Frau carried on…”
“We always seemed to rescue you just in the nick of time,” I said. “It did make me begin to wonder…”
“That they were using me! Of course they were,” said Glenda. “Me, young and pert and lithe and firm. Remember how naïve and trusting I was Brenda? I wanted fame and fortune and the two Frau’s promised me that in their travelling show. They would make me a star they said, but in reality they were profiteering and using me as shark bait to fish out every hideous monstrosity on the Continent. All to catch and put in their secret freak show.”
“Oh Glenda,” I said.
“If it hadn’t been for my Henry rescuing me from my so called rescuers.”
“Henry?” I stiffened in my chair and instantly bristled for a second all over and came out in a hot flush, no longer feeling quite so sorry for Glenda.
“Henry Cleavis, my beau. He rescued me from the tribe of the White Rhino on one of the show’s more exotic sojourns. There I was starkers again apart from a jangling beaded necklace astride this white rhino in a jungle clearing. Frau and Frau and the rest of the troupe were watching out in bushes and up trees. This thing came out of the undergrowth, all black and shaggy reaching out for me. I let out a piercing scream; I knew the routine by now. The he came swinging out of the canopy on a creeper, my Henry in his khaki safari suit. He snatched me up as Frau and Frau came crashing in. I clung to him, wrapping my arms and legs around his neck and waist as he swung back into the canopy. I’ve loved him ever since.”
I pursed my lips. “What happened next,” I asked innocently.
“We belted it through the jungle, he knew the way like the back of his hand. He’d been scouting the terrain for weeks. The troupe was caught up in an almighty battle with the White Rhino tribe by this point. We ran back to camp. I grabbed a few bits, flung on my diaphanous negligee – it was all I could find in the dash and we took off. I never saw the troupe again. We made it back to England booking passage on a luxury liner and made mad passionate love all the way home. I was ever so grateful.”
I was positively fuming by now. Luxury liners! He’d promised me a Christmas cruise years ago and that was yet to materialise.
“It was such a cute little cabin,” said Glenda. “A bonkette, I think you call it.”
She wasn’t half shy when she got going was Glenda!
“Carry on,” I said calmly.
“Henry took me back to Oxford but he was always off on some adventure and I couldn’t settle there – it was too fusty and academic for me. So he set me up in a glamorous little B&B in Brighton.”
“Did he now?” I said. Hmmm, I thought, Henry Cleavis and his seaside landladies. How many more of us did he have tucked away?
“He did,” said Glenda. “And I loved it. My own little business, tucked away and hidden in case the troupe came looking. Henry would pop off now and again on some wild adventure. I didn’t mind much running my B&B. After all the madness of life on the road with Frau and Frau, I was glad of the break.”
“Of course,” I said. “It must have been lovely for you, Glenda.”
We paused.
Then, I said “I’m sorry I abandoned you, I am, I don’t know what happened.”
“That’s alright Brenda,” she said. “I’m guessing you haven’t had an easy ride either.”
We seemed to friends again now. Glenda’s slap seemed to have released a lot of the tension that had built up over the years. But I had to get back to business, we could catch-up later.
I said, “The thing is, Glenda, and this is quite important, it’s why I’m here really. Not that I’m not glad to find you again. But it’s your crystal ball. There’s something wrong with it, it’s dangerous. I can feel it, can’t you? I need to know what it is and where you got it from.”
Glenda took another drag. “When you disappeared, you left behind a few bits including the ball. I popped it in my travelling bag when Henry and I made it back to camp. It’s been on my sideboard in Brighton ever since.”
This was too much. The weekend was turning out to be the most boggling weekend I’d had in years. What with Glenda and her ball and now the revelation that it was my ball in the first place? And Henry! I’d deal with him later. I called in Effie and I introduced her to Glenda and over a few cocktails and canapes left over from the bar, I filled her in.
“You don’t remember me do you?” said Effie to Glenda. “You read my fortune once on the West Pier.”
“’Fraid not darling, a lot of my customers were old dears and they all looked the same to me,” said Glenda eyeing Effie up and down.
“Great”, I thought.
“You got my age wrong,” said Effie. “You said I was fifty-seven, when actually, I was forty-three.”
Glenda looked Effie up and down again, took another drag and said nothing. To be honest there couldn’t have been much age gap between them. Glenda did look good, but I couldn’t help but notice her top lip looked a bit plastic and immovable. I thought it best to change the subject.
“What happened Glenda, with me and that ball I mean?”
Turns out the troupe saw what looked like a meteorite one night hurtling through the sky. Next thing there was an almighty fireball explosion in the vineyard next door. There they found me in a smouldering crater inside some kind of craft – steaming.
“We dragged you out,” said Glenda. “The thing you were in exploded ten minutes later.”
“Thanks Glenda,” I said.
“Don’t mention it darling, you saved me many times over. We were best friends, remember.”
I smiled and leaned across and took her hand. I couldn’t help but notice that Effie pursed her lips slightly at this, as Glenda looked across at her out of the corner of her eye. That was all I needed now – two battling best friends. But then after years of having no friends at all, I felt quite chuffed inside to have found two.
“Can’t you feel it though?” I said. “The hateful energy coming off that ball? I only had to look at it and it filled me with terror.”
“Well, I always felt it gave off a warm tingle when I ran over it with my duster,” said Glenda, “but other than that – no.”
“What we all want to know, if how does this flipping thing work?” said Effie polishing off a canape.
“I discovered it by chance,” said Glenda, “me and my friend Dolly were having an evening in and were messing around playing at being fortune tellers. To tell you the truth, I was thinking of doing a turn on the pier to make a few bob. Dolly put her palm on the ball and I did so also, pretending as we were. And then, it was incredible, we were talking about fellas like we always did and Dolly was gossiping about the builder who was putting her new kitchen in. Then all of a sudden
, there he was projected up on my feature wallpaper wall in the lounge, leaning up and fixing a cupboard. Dolly and I were gobsmacked.”
Effie and I leaned in closer.
“And I could see him in my mind too, laughing and chatting and I could focus in and around him too – but it was always from Dolly’s perspective. I zoomed in and snuck a peek at his phone and saw he was on this Guydar website, so that put a spanner in the works for Dolly, though she did do her best to turn him around. It was like I was going to the pictures. It was miraculous! I could see Dolly’s entire lifeline going backwards and forwards. Though I didn’t dare go forwards too far, that scared me. It was like reading a map. You know me Brenda, I never was much good with grammar but I could read a train timetable like the back of my hand.”
I did have a vague glimmer then of Glenda not being able to put commas in the right place for toffee. But yes, there we are at some Continental railway station on a day out shopping with Glenda giving directions.
“So that’s how you did it,” said Effie. “I knew it wasn’t psychic hocus pocus.”
“Course not!” said Glenda. “But I don’t know how it works. I’ve guessed it’s some kind of technology – I can feel parts buzzing and clicking under my fingers – like its alive. Oh! You don’t think it is alive do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I just can’t recall how I got hold of it in the first place.”
“Well there’s an easy way to find out, Brenda darling,” said Glenda. “I’ll give you a reading.”
I looked across at Effie and she smiled and nodded. I put my palm on the softly glowing globe. Glenda put her palm on the other side.
“Now Brenda darling, where exactly did you get this mysterious ball?”
There was a throb, a heat, a tingle under my palm. Instinctively I want to yank my hand away, like that time I put my hand on the cooker hob by mistake. Then, tingles in my scatty brain like little firefly lights darting around my cortex, illuminating dark passageways and closed doors. I can see this locked door in my mind as the fireflies cluster around it and I willingly let the door slide open. BAM! An image explodes onto the dressing room wall. There I am strapped down in that horrendous device. I feel queasy like I’m on a ship at sea. All around there is a constant green glow like I am in a sea cave in dappled seaweed strewn light. And then ahead of me comes a figure. I scream out. It is hideous. A man or a woman – I can’t tell but it has no hair and the head looks like a one week old jacket potato, all pitted and potted and squishy and wrinkly. Its eyes are like little black puddles at the bottom of two sinkholes. It is smartly dressed in a green tunic and trousers and comes mincing in on little high heel boots with a bag in the crook of its arm. And what is that smell? Like a sewage farm waft on a hot humid day. I realise it is the creatures honking breath as it approaches and grins at me with teeth the colour of packet custard.
“Stay away from me,” I scream out. But it comes forward and sits down on a toadstool-type seat in front of me and adjusts the height so we are eye to eye. It opens the bag and takes out a crystal ball and puts it on an egg cup plinth that is positioned between us. Next thing I am automatically manoeuvred into position like being in a dentist’s chair with my left arm sticking out and my hand hovering over the ball. I am unwittingly placing my palm on the ball. The creature opposite does the same. I feel it immediately, the aggressive probing, not like Glenda’s gentle fingering. This is full on. It’s inside my head and it’s searching for a secret. The creature speaks and I can understand it, although it’s not speaking the Queen’s English by any means.
“Where is the Palace?”
“What?” I scream. “I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Where is the Palace?”
“I have no idea. What are you on about?”
The firefly probes are digging deeper into my synapses, looking around, ferreting out information.
“No,” I cry out again and I can feel a metal door slam shut in my brain. I have to keep that door shut at all costs.
“Ah, there we are,” the creature lisps and flicks out its slimy tongue.
The fireflies amass outside the door and start firing projectile darts at the metal. I can’t keep it closed forever. I close my eyes and try to focus.
I can’t stop it, as I feel the metal door in my head start to slide upwards.
Then…My other hand which is strapped down at the wrist starts to twitch. It begins to rotate slightly and then a bit more. Slowly, slowly, slowly, my other hand is unscrewing itself. I clock it out of the corner of my eye. The potato headed beast is too engrossed extracting my secret to notice. I have to give my hand more time so I focus and fight back. I’m not human after all and this creature does not know that. It’s inside my mind – it has opened a door into my head but a door can be stepped through both ways. I concentrate and let myself drift through and I see the potato head’s eyes boggle as I feel myself step into its mind.
So that’s it. The same old story. You destroyed your world and now you want mine. But there aren’t many of you left – that’s why you recruited those blobby residents of Mars to work those walking machines.
The creature’s expression is frozen as it locks into battle with my mind, but I’ve got the upper hand. I can see everything. It’s the planet you want, not the people. A bit like when Penny had a new kitchen and bathroom fitted and carpets put down before she moved into her new flat. You’re preparing the planet for your arrival. You don’t want any fuss with humanity fighting back. After all, we could defeat you easily – if only we could get past those blasted walking machines with their protective shielding. Where are you from? Oh, that’s where you’re from. A tear in time and space and you came waltzing through thinking you could take what you wanted – that old cliché.
My other hand is almost off now, then with one quick twist it drops to the floor. Potato head sees it now and turns around quickly. But my spare hand rises up like a crab under attack, clenches itself into a fist and then flies upwards landing itself, WHACK, punching potato head full on in the chops. Potato head is knocked off its toadstool chair and lands on its back with a thump on the floor, knocked out – blotto.
Back in the dressing room, Effie and Glenda cheered. I sat there gobsmacked watching myself onscreen. I thought I’d seen it all in my long, long life but this was something out of this world.
Next, my spare hand is at work, quickly unfastening my shackles and soon I am free. I’m wearing my long trench coat with the deep pockets and I grab the ball and put it inside one pocket. Whatever secrets it might have got from me were coming with me and not staying here with this thing. I’m off and out with my spare hand scampering along beside me. Then I hear a voice in my ear. Instinctively I reach up and touch my earlobe.
“Brenda, can you hear me? It’s Tilly.”
“Yes, I’m here,” I answer.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I reply. “They’ll regret strapping me down and trying to read my mind though.” I barge my way out into a green glowing corridor and am faced with the most wonderful sight. I am at a large oblong window looking straight out at Planet Earth in all her majestic glory. She’s beautiful. But then all around the planet’s surface I see blackened spots like cigarette burns and oblong like crafts hovering above.
“Brenda – we have your position.”
“How far to the next terminal?” I reply.
“It should be ahead around the next junction.”
I move on. There it is. A small screen embedded into the glowy green wall buzzing and ticking with alien hieroglyphs.
“Can you see this?” I say.
“We can,” said the voice who was Tilly. “We need a few minutes to decipher. Stay with us Brenda.”
I stand there looking at the screen and realise my left eye is swivelling madly in its socket – whirling clockwise and anti-clockwise like a demented spinning top.
Sitting there in Glenda’s dressing room I reach up tentativ
ely to touch my same eye. Is it the same eye? I feel it twitch a fraction as though it is reacting to watching the eye on screen. Like it is saying hello and waving in recognition.
“Well done Brenda – we’re almost there.”
Then I hear a distant commotion. I can’t see what it is or from where it is coming.
“Quickly,” I say. “Something’s up.”
“Another thirty seconds Brenda. There’s a security code which we can’t get past. We need more time.”
Clack, clack, clackety, clack. Clack, clack, clackety, clack.
The commotion is getting closer. It’s coming from the corridor to my right – a stampede of boots running in my direction.
“Almost there.”
“They’re coming for me,” I say. “Quickly.”
“Got it! We’re in.”
My eye stops rotating, spinning to a halt as I turn and see a platoon of potato heads charging towards me led by one sporting some kind of fancy helmet.
I look down at my spare hand and shrug. “Here we go,” I say.
“Come on Brenda!” I hear Effie hollering as I am pulled back into the dressing room with her and Glenda.
Then they are on me – the entire platoon. But I am taller and stronger and I have my spare hand as well. It leaps for the leader with the elaborate headdress grabbing it by the throat in a vice like throttle. I knock the first potato head out with a clean uppercut and boot the second one in the goolies. Then there are two more on me, scrabbling onto my back and one at the front grabbing me by the neck. I’m not having that. I slam myself against the green wall behind me winding the two behind so they drop off. Then I charge forward hitting the opposite wall, sandwiching the critter in front between myself and the glowing metal. It yelps out, eyes bulging and slumps off, collapsing down onto the floor. Then more of them are coming for me. A fifth one is given a quick backwards boot sending it flying. The sixth and seventh I pick up and hurl down the corridor following the one I’d just booted. My spare hand has finished throttling the leader and jumps up onto my shoulder.
[Brenda & Effie 00] - A Treasury of Brenda and Effie Page 17
