[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

  And I waver for a second. The wish is crystal clear in my addled mind. I think it for only the tiniest of moments. But the duck glimpses what it is and SHAZAM.

  The next moment, I am elsewhere.

  It’s a pleasant little town somewhere on the continent. I can tell at once that it’s abroad because all the people are talking what sounds like German, or maybe French. It’s a quaint little snowy place, where all the buildings have gingerbread rooftops and all the streets are cobbled. Carriages go running past, pulled by horses, and I get shouted at a couple of times – good-naturedly, mind you – because I have suddenly materialised in the middle of the road.

  As I stagger backwards into the doorway of a chocolatier’s bijou shop it hits me that I have been precipitated into the past.

  Now, as you may know, I’m no stranger to time travel – either physical, mental or on the astral plane – and I pride myself on taking such things in my stride. But I can’t help marvelling at the wonderful crispness of the alpine air (Yes, alpine – that’s exactly what it is!) and the clarity of the colours and the detail around me. The puffing breath issuing from my lungs and the beaming, rubicund faces of the foreigners all about me. It’s all so clear. I’m right here in the moment, many years ago. Now I start to wonder why it is my subconscious chose this place and time to expend a magical wish. Am I secretly very fond of skiing, I wonder?

  Maybe that intrusive duck is here somewhere, and he can let me know? But there’s no sign of him. And remembering him makes me think of Effie, still clambering about on the cliffs of Sandsend somewhere far in the future. I feel like I’ve abandoned her in the pursuit of my deepest, most heartfelt desire.

  The man in charge of the confectioners comes bustling out. ‘Entschuldigen sie.’ Brusquely he wafts me away from his display window, which I’m blocking from view of potential customers. As I move away I get a glimpse of the wonderfully intricate castle made all of chocolate inside the bay windows. I bend closer, drawing in my breath, and see that he has built an entire model of a snowy town, with perfect little buildings just like those around me, huddling round the base of the castle. The towers stretch tall as I am. That’s a hell of a lot of chocolate.

  It takes only a couple of seconds for me to realise exactly which castle has been lovingly rendered in the very darkest chocolate.

  It’s not a castle I have ever been to, but still it is somehow scorched into my memory.

  In a curious way, my deepest wish and desire has brought me home. Or rather, to my ancestral home.

  But this little epiphany means bugger all to the Chocolatier: he shoos me away busily. He treats me as if I’m a vagrant or a potential thief or trouble maker. I look down at myself and realise that I am attired in an utterly inappropriate fashion for the era or the weather. I’m in one of those polyester nighties from the cheapy shop. It seems that journeys into one’s deepest wishes can be made only when you’re swathed in man-made fibres and ruffles. I’m in the pink one from my set of three and as I wander through town I’m attracting funny looks from the burghers and good people of this little town high in the mountains.

  I keep my head down and bustle along, suddenly feeling the cold. I pick up speed as I hear murmurs starting up all around me. I stand out. I am grotesque. I am virtually nude as my pink nightie stretches and the machined stitches of its seams threaten to burst, as if embarrassment was making me swell up and flush with shame.

  I know where I am going. All these winding, snowy-packed streets slope upwards to the same destination: to that patriarchal edifice at the very top of the hill. I look up between the chintzy rooftops and there it is: the castle that sometimes haunts my dreams with its unfathomably tall and embarrassingly phallic towers.

  The whisperings at my back as I pass through the streets get louder. The locals sound less friendly. I get catcalls. Someone throws a snowball. I hear someone shout something in guttural German and it doesn’t sound very nice at all.

  I have to get to the castle. I have to go banging on those huge, protected doors and gain admittance to the courtyard and meet the master of the place. He has to let me in. This is what I am here for. My heart has led me to this place, whether I willed it to or not.

  I am here to get some answers.

  Queer thing is, there’s no fuss when I go hammering on the fortress doors. A curious eye surveys me from an aperture above, blinks once and, shortly afterwards, the grand door creeps open wide enough to let me in.

  The courtyard is vast and chockablock with snow. No one has cleared it. No one has walked through it. It’s like a vast empty page walled around with black stone. Only a few windows are lit. They pulse with torchlight. The castle encircles me and it’s an uncanny embrace: it fills up my whole horizon. It’s like being thrust into the coliseum, onto the floor of some grisly gladiatorial arena. I’ve banged hard on the entrance to be allowed inside and I can see that I won’t be getting out quickly.

  At the main door I am met by a meek serving boy. A footman, then an obsequious butler. When I’m shown inside there’s a kind of baronial hall with maids flitting to and fro. Tapestries. The heads of wild beasts mounted on plaques. A terrible whiff of must tickles my nose and makes me sneeze. There’s a worse smell underlying it: a stench of fetid corruption and – bizarrely – the vinegary aroma of pickled eggs.

  I am brought towels and warmer clothes by the quick, compliant servants. They’re very helpful, but unsmiling. I am brought before a huge fire and urged to sit and bask in its warmth. I am given a silver tankard of some kind of dreamy, frothing, honeyed wine. It’s delightful and I’m slurping it like nobody’s business before I hear Effie’s voice inside my head urging caution on me. ‘Never drink or eat a single thing when you’re inside the enemy’s home.’

  But this isn’t the home of my enemy, is it?

  The fire roars and its heat seeps into me quite wonderfully. I hadn’t realised how chilled I was. Not only since I arrived in this snowy land, but previously, too. Sitting in that funicular carriage for hours on end, going up and down. And before that as well. A cold that was in me for quite some time, that I never could quite thaw. The warmth of this hearth is such that it could even melt the sliver of ice in my heart.

  I doze off.

  And when I wake, there is a worried-looking young man standing in front of me, splendid in green velvet and a grey cravat.

  ‘Good evening,’ he says, and his voice is mellifluous, cultivated. He sounds a bit soft.

  ‘Is it evening? How long have I slept?’ I’m so parched. I hunt around for the rest of that delicious wine. But it’s gone, and someone has wheeled a gleaming hostess trolley into the hall. It stands before the fire, freighted with delicious cakes and fancies.

  The elegant man with the sideburns and fair hair swept so elegantly away from his forehead bends over the tea things, being mother.

  ‘Welcome to my home,’ he smiles, proffering a china cup and saucer. They look tiny in my hands as I take them from him. ‘And who are you, my dear? Why were you so keen to be admitted, hm?’ His look is questioning, but not hostile in anyway. He is studying me with a keen eye. His face is alive with interest.

  And I am studying him back. I drink him up with my avid eyes.

  He is..! He is who I think he is. Yes, I am sure of that.

  ‘My name is Brenda,’ I tell him. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Enchanted,’ he nods. ‘I am Baron…’

  But I hold up a hand to stop him before he can say the name. The hated name. The name that makes me shiver and feel nauseous whenever it is spoken aloud. ‘I know… sir. I know who you are. Please, don’t…’

  He frowns at me, bemused. Even, perhaps, amused by me. He sits on the tall-backed armchair across from the one where I’m sitting slumped in borrowed clothes under a hairy blanket trimmed with… is it wolf pelt?

  ‘A mysterious stranger, blown in with the snows,’ smiles the Baron, sipping his tea. ‘How very intriguing.’ Then his pale eyebrows do a little quirking thing. ‘And yet,
there is something about you. Something rather familiar, perhaps…’ His voice drains away, and for a moment a shadowy thought flits across his face, but he bats it away and resumes his smiling good manners. ‘You must recover here. I cannot send you out into that terrible night again. Consider yourself a guest here and Castle F…’

  ‘Please!’ I burst out, sounding crazy, I know. ‘Please, don’t say the name. I beg you.’

  ‘My dear,’ he chuckles, and looks concerned now. Perhaps he thinks he has allowed a lunatic to step foot over his threshold.

  Oh, but if only he knew who I was. What would his reaction be then, I wonder? But how could he ever suspect such a thing? It would be impossible for him to guess, wouldn’t it?

  ‘I am sorry,’ I tell him, slurping the rest of my tea. ‘You must think me strange. But I have travelled a long way… my wits are scattered…’

  He nods, smiling, and calls out to his servants. I must be given the Purple Room. His very best guest apartment, in the northern tower. They must make me comfortable. He studies me even as I am led away by his housekeeper. What does he see? An ungainly old woman, spouting nonsense. One who arrived babbling, sodden and frozen in her night things. Why on Earth would a Baron – however kind – waste his time and kindness on such a person?

  I don’t know. But I’m grateful.

  I sleep in the Purple Room for what seems like several days on end.

  My dreams are deep and profound, and sometimes very silly. Sometimes I dream about my real life, my every day life in Whitby and my B&B and the friends I have known there in that adopted town of mine. Sometimes memories of my previous adventures and escapades flit before me and these seem highly improbable. A part of my dreaming self starts wondering: are these the dream itself, and I’m only fancying myself as a woman who does battle with monsters and demons on a weekly basis?

  I wake up muddled and all topsy-turvy and dash to the turret’s windows and survey the wintry landscape outside. Mountains and more mountains and basically not very much for hundreds of miles around. That piddly little town filled with cross German people down there. And endless snowy woods.

  I am told by the housekeeper that I may go almost anywhere in the castle. Certain areas are out of bounds, of course. The Baron’s private wing is a place only his most trusted servants may visit. But apart from that, I must consider myself at home.

  Days pass, it seems, and I am fed good, stodgy, reviving foods. Lots of steamed puddings and custard. Great hanks of dripping meat. Venison, on several occasions. I am informed that the venison and the boar I’m eating hail from the woods hereabouts. The Baron is a keen hunter, I am told.

  I don’t see anything of the kindly Baron for several days. He leaves me to my recovery and my own devices. I hadn’t known I was quite so tired or in need of a delicious rest like this, but it seems I was. Perhaps this is all part of my wish from the genie of the Toilet Duck? Perhaps this is what I was really hankering after? A luxurious sojourn outside of real time?

  Sometimes I get a stab of guilt, remembering how I left things in my own world, with Effie clinging to the wires on the Sandsend cliff-face, and so on. And yet that world is seeming muzzier and fuzzier to me, day by day. It’s as if I am looking at my real world through a frozen window pane as a blizzard rages outside, slowly blotting out the view that I was so sure was there…

  I wander the castle courtyard and snowy gardens. I discover the library and find that most of the books are in languages I don’t even recognize. I find fascinating and alarming diagrams in some of the harder-to-reach volumes at the top of the library ladders. There are etchings of fabulous creatures, exotic flora and fauna. Cross-sections of bodies and organs and brains. Some of these delicate drawings are so beautiful I could stare at them for hours. I still wouldn’t be sure if I was looking at something animal, vegetable or mineral, and perhaps that’s just as well.

  Then, several days in, I meet the Baron again. He joins me, quite unexpectedly, for dinner down in that splendid hall again, at the long table before the fire. He beams at me, all charming, once more. But as he smiles and makes idle chitchat, keen to know if I’ve been enjoying my stay at Castle F… there is a tenseness about him. A strained look about his eyes and in the sharp line of his mouth as he tries to smile and converse with me. I gradually realise that he is putting on a tremendous act and trying to seem like he hasn’t got a care in the world.

  I am much too polite a guest to ask if something’s bothering him.

  Instead I ask questions of a more innocuous kind. I ask about his childhood and his family, and I learn all kinds of interesting things about his early days in a small, remote town, hidden away in the alps. An idyllic childhood, a loving family who doted on him. They were all very proud of him. He was a child genius. A prodigy. He stood out so conspicuously amongst the others of his age. Neighbours and aunties and cousins all muttered: where did he come from? He was almost like a changeling. His articulacy from an early age. His brilliant scores at every test the schoolmaster could muster. The other children were wary of him, and some were jealous. And yet it was never in his nature to be boastful or sneering about his intellectual inferiors. It would never have occurred to him to look down upon his school fellows or the members of his family… He read and read and read and immersed himself in all the knowledge that the library of his small home town could supply. He outgrew the place, and the environs. It became obvious that he was going to have to go away from everyone. His destiny clearly lay elsewhere. He was itching and pining for the wider world and, when he came of age, he set off for the nearest city he could find that boasted a university and a library and a host of professors who might between them furnish him with some of the answers his restless intellect desired…

  Well!

  I listened to all of this with great interest. We drank quite a lot of blood red wine that night – the butler hovered at our elbows with a carafe, then a second. I listened as the Baron dug into his past and smiled at the long ago memories and wept as he recalled how he had to move away from his people. When he talked about his mother and how proud she had been of him he looked into my face and beamed at me. His expression was soft and his cheeks were wet with tears.

  ‘You remind me of her, Brenda,’ he told me then, towards the end of that long evening of storytelling. ‘Quite a lot, in fact. Why, it’s almost uncanny. I saw it at once. That first night you stumbled into my home and I met you here in the hall. The resemblance is remarkable… I think it is, anyhow. It is such a long time since I saw her.’

  How long could it have been, really? ‘You’re still quite a young man. It can’t have been so long ago… And it isn’t too late to travel home, surely? And then you could tell her… you could tell her how much you miss her?’

  I meant it kindly. I really did. But I saw at once that I had made a mistake. The Baron sat bolt upright and his face went puce. His eyes boggled at me. ‘Of course it’s too late. She is long dead.’

  ‘Oh…’ I said.

  ‘Long ago. They are all dead. All of them.’

  We’d both had too much too drink that night. He started sobbing, unashamedly, sitting there before me. His shoulders shook. Great fat tears dripped down onto dark polished wood.

  I got up and made my way steadily down the length of the table and, awkwardly, took him in my arms for a hug.

  I found myself murmuring to him. ‘There, there, ducky. There, there.’

  And I called the housekeeper and the butler over so they could manhandle the Baron and take him off to his private quarters and see that he was safely put to bed.

  Then I stumbled off to the Purple Room, where I lay drunk, awake, with the ceiling spinning slowly above me and the snow blatting hard at the window.

  What are you doing, Brenda? I asked myself roughly. Why on earth are you giving succour to that man? When you know what he did? What he will do in future years? When you know what he is actually responsible for? How could you take him in your silly old arms and rock him like that,
doing your best to reassure him that everything would be all right?

  Because it won’t, will it? Because you come from the future – so far in the future – and you know how the bloody awful story ends…

  Eventually, berating myself like this, I fell into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.

  I was astonished, the next morning, to find him bright and awake and eating breakfast. I must have looked like hell. I felt as though we had drunk the entire contents of his wine cellar dry the night before.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he chuckled, forking up his scrambled eggs. ‘Just a couple of bottles of very nice wine. And what a very convivial evening we had. I am very sorry that I became so emotional towards the end, though, Brenda. Red wine always gets me like that. I get so terribly mawkish.’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive…’ I assure him, and pick up my coffee and sip it while it’s too hot. And I think: actually, there’s an awful lot to forgive. But you don’t know it yet. And I can’t tell you. You will do terrible things in your life to come and I will live with the consequences of those acts for decades and centuries yet…

  I stare at his fresh complexion and his bright, clever eyes and his brisk, eager movements. You’re to blame for everything, Buster. And I find I can’t tell you. I can’t accuse you. I can’t stop you, either.

  And I have wasted this magic wish, haven’t I?

  I’ve travelled all this way and I find that I actually quite like him. More than that. I love him. I can feel a warmth spreading in my chest when he smiles back at me.

  ‘Will you forgive me, Brenda?’ he says, getting up from the table. His words chime so closely with my reverie that I’m startled at first.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I must go away from here. I must go on a journey. It is our conversation of last night that has provoked this resolve in me.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Though it is true, as I told you last night, that most of my family is now deceased, I find that I have a hankering to return to my old home. It is many leagues north of here…’