[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  ‘Ambulance,’ said Brenda hollowly. Then she jolted and burst out, ‘Ambulance? Are you mad? Effie, we can’t put him into the hands of ordinary medics.’

  ‘They’ll look after him properly,’ Effie said gently. ‘That’s what they’re trained to do.’

  ‘But you don’t understand!’

  ‘I do! I do!’

  ‘He’s not the same as other men.’

  ‘I know!’ Effie gazed down at the prostrate man-mountain.

  ‘We can’t let the medical establishment get a hold of him,’ Brenda said, her words dissolving into jagged sobs.

  Effie was distracted then, catching the eye of the women from the charity shop on LeFanu Close. They were finishing up their bloody drinks at their table, as if – come hell or high water – they would get the full value of this abandoned cabaret and the rather miserable drama being enacted before them. Effie scowled back at them, and kept on scowling as the women got up and went.

  Penny whispered to Robert: ‘What does Brenda mean about her Frank not being the same as other men?’

  ‘Just look at him!’ Robert said simply.

  Penny still looked puzzled.

  ‘I’ll explain it all later,’ he said. ‘But suffice to say, Brenda doesn’t want doctors poking around, finding out all of Frank’s secrets.’

  Penny’s eyes widened. ‘You mean – what you were saying before – you think it’s all true, don’t you? You weren’t just kidding me along, were you?’

  ‘What?’ he frowned. ‘What do you mean, kidding you?’

  ‘About Frank. About what he really is.’

  ‘Of course not!’ Robert snapped. ‘Why would I joke about a thing like that?’

  ‘You said he was a monster . . .’ Penny gasped.

  ‘And?’ Robert said.

  ‘But don’t you see? That’s impossible! It’s just a delusion. A game that you and your friends have been playing along with. Like a kind of in joke . . .’

  Robert gritted his teeth. He felt a cold rush of anger go through him. Who was Penny to talk to him like he was daft? ‘Like I say. We’ll discuss this later.’

  ‘Eeeh, my dears,’ came the stentorian tones of Mrs Claus, advancing on them in her Bath chair. ‘Oh my poor darlings. Whatever has happened to your Frank, Brenda? Was it a heart episode?’

  Effie’s head whipped round to glare at her wheelbound nemesis. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to be behind all of this.’

  ‘What?’ cried Mrs Claus. ‘But how could I be? I was way over on the other side of the room. And how could I do anything, such as cause a heart attack, or give a big man like him a stroke? I’m just a poor old woman in a wheelchair. I couldn’t do any harm to a great strapping brute like Frank.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ growled Effie. ‘But I just know there was foul play involved in this.’

  Penny was watching and listening to this exchange very closely. So, she realised – no one else had seen that tiny crystal shard dropping away from the swaying, glittering hull of the chandelier. No one else had noticed it tumbling down through the air to find its place, lodged in a corner of the big man’s eye. Was it only Penny who had witnessed that strange event? Such a tiny thing, to fell such a huge bloke. She felt like she should say something. Tell them what she had seen. Where was Michael? He would listen to her. But he was gone. He wasn’t with Mrs Claus any more. Penny shook her head. Now she was even starting to doubt herself. Had she really seen that little crystal tear falling?

  They could hear the ambulance now, mee-mawing busily outside on the prom.

  Midnight at the Christmas Hotel, Robert sighed to himself. And yet another disaster for us.

  Brenda started crying: ‘It was her! It’s all because of Karla!’

  ‘She’s going hysterical,’ Effie said. ‘There, ducky, there. You must calm down if you’re getting in the ambulance. They don’t want you having hysterics in the back.’

  Brenda was on her feet, shrugging off the earnest solicitations of her best friend. An idea had occurred to her at just that moment, and she couldn’t calm herself until she had told everyone and convinced them of its truth. Her eyes were wild with fright as she wailed: ‘It’s all down to that cursed woman. That so-called star. It’s her who’s done this to Frank. It’s Karla Sorenson behind this!’

  Silence followed her words, and they all stared at her. Before anyone could respond, the paramedics came dashing into the ballroom, lugging their paraphernalia.

  The odd thing was, reflected Robert – there was no sign of Karla. She had quitted the stage at the very instant Frank had had his funny turn and crashed to the polished floor. As if she knew that something calamitous had happened, she had flung down her mike and vanished into the swirls of fake fog. Could she really have been responsible, as Brenda claimed? But how could she accomplish a thing like that, at the same time as she was giving her all onstage to an ear-splitting backing track?

  But that was the legend, wasn’t it? Men always fell hard for Karla Sorenson. That was what they always said about her. She was a femme fatale. Even a glimpse of her could turn men’s heads and make them her slave for ever.

  The paramedics fussed expertly over Frank, and the rest of them could do nothing but stand there impotently as they lashed his massive form on to a stretcher.

  ‘I’m his next of kin,’ Brenda announced, calming herself down and getting up to follow them out of the gilded ballroom. ‘I’m his only kin. In the whole world.’

  Settee

  ‘It’s been quite a night. I haven’t had a mad night like this since . . . Well, since the last time Brenda and Effie and I were out on the town. And up to our eyes in adventure and mystery and so on. Poor Brenda. She gets home from her lovely relaxing holiday and within twenty-four hours she’s stuck in the middle of some awful disaster. She was pretty distressed about them carting Frank off to hospital. Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?’

  Robert stared out at the satin darkness of the sea, and the creamy frills of the waves dashing in. He sighed and sat back on the velvet plush.

  ‘Maybe I should have gone with them up to the hospital. Not that they’d let me in the ambulance, of course, it being a crush already with Brenda and Effie and the paramedics and everyone stowed away in there with Frank. But I could have taken a cab, I suppose. Lent them my moral support. But Brenda wouldn’t hear of it. She’s so good-hearted. “You’ve got a hotel to run. You can’t be up all night at the hospital. We’ll keep you up to date with Frank.” Secretly I was relieved, I have to say. Is that awful? I do feel a bit guilty. It can’t be any fun for them, sitting waiting and dreading what the doctors and nurses have to say about Frank. I mean, how will they explain him? He isn’t even really human, is he? Not really.’

  They were sitting on a two-seater settee on the beach. Robert hadn’t really thought about the oddness of their sitting here, so late at night. For the moment his sense of logic and propriety had fled and he was happy sitting here on the sand and watching the lemon-bright moon illuminate the harbour. And his new fella sitting here beside him, listening to all of his bizarre news.

  ‘I’m glad Penny went off home,’ Robert said. ‘I wasn’t really in the mood to answer any more questions from her tonight. And then she was saying that funny stuff about the chandelier. I don’t know. Can it be right? Could she really have seen a piece of it fall into Frank’s eye? Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. It looked to me like he had a sudden brain-storm or a heart attack or something, the way he went down like that. Felled like an ancient rotting tree. I don’t know what Penny was on about. I mean, she’s not been right, I don’t think, since she fell asleep watching that film . . . I think it’s had a funny effect on her.’

  Robert was suddenly aware that his fella hadn’t said a single word for quite some time. He turned to look at him. He was a lanky figure, elegant and poised. He raised an eyebrow at Robert – mildly ironic, amused – and quirked his mouth into a delicious smile. He was slightly older than Robert. It was hard to tell how o
ld he was, exactly. Robert, in fact, didn’t know very much about him at all. Only that he turned up on certain nights, and he was always on his settee. Waiting for Robert. He was Robert’s knight in a black linen lounge suit and for a galloping steed he had a velvet settee.

  ‘What?’ Robert asked him, wanting to hear what he had to say. His fella rarely said very much at all. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Stop talking about those old women.’ His fella smiled at him. ‘And kiss me.’

  After the Show

  She was feeling all wrung out.

  Luckily she had Kevin to help her back to her suite. They took the private lift and Karla leaned back against the burnished mirrors, smiling to herself.

  Kevin beamed at her. ‘You were magnificent.’

  ‘Like I was in my heyday,’ she said. ‘That’s how I felt. All that power coursing through my veins. All of that attention on me. I just drank it up, all their energy and excitement. It was like putting old roses in a fresh vase of water . . .’

  She looked at Kevin and suddenly she wanted him. She suppressed a momentary doubting sensation – I’m old enough to be his granny – and focused instead on the compact, wiry strength of the man. His button-like nose and those tender green eyes. Yes, maybe that was just what she needed now. To work off some of her anxiety and pent-up tension with a little action in the sack with this elf.

  She must have been staring at him rather hard, for he jumped, startled, when the lift pinged and the doors slid open, revealing the rumpled chaos of Karla’s luxury suite.

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she told him, switching her tone so it was less like that of an employer, and watching him as he crossed to the cocktail cabinet and did precisely as he was bid. His hands shook slightly.

  ‘What was all that fuss about, anyway?’ she asked. ‘All that kerfuffle in the middle of the floor? It was right at the end of my final song. It almost ruined my climax. Cheers, darling.’ She took the gin and tonic he’d quickly knocked together and clinked it with his own. ‘Come and sit here, next to me, dearest.’

  ‘I-I don’t know what was going on,’ Kevin said, looking terrified to be sitting this close to Karla. ‘But this is a hotel for pensioners. They’re always having the paramedics in. There’s always someone who goes too far during the ladies’ excuse me. Or the hokey cokey. We’ve had some nasty demises on that dance floor.’

  ‘I bet,’ Karla purred. ‘What time is it, by the way, sweetheart?’

  ‘Twenty-five to midnight,’ he told her. ‘Well, you won’t be having your drinks do now, will you? Your reception?’

  Karla blinked. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you realise? Mind, I don’t wonder why not. Not with all that dry ice and stuff swirling about and the funny lights shooting everywhere.’

  Her voice hardened with impatience. ‘What are you talking about, Kevin?’

  ‘Him who had a funny turn. It was Frank. Husband of that Brenda. Them who you’re meant to have a drink with at this midnight reception. Well, that’ll be off tonight’s social agenda now, won’t it? What with disaster having struck.’

  Karla reeled for a second. ‘Really? That was Frank? Well I never. I see. I . . .’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can see much from up on that stage, when all the strobes are flashing and that.’

  ‘What a pity,’ Karla said sadly. ‘And I was so looking forward to meeting them tonight.’

  ‘How come?’ Kevin frowned. He knew Brenda and Frank from other nights at the Christmas Hotel, and he didn’t think very much of either of them. Or that skinny-minnie friend of theirs, Effie. Or Robert, who had once been an elf here. ‘Why are you so bothered about seeing that lot?’

  ‘You do ask a lot of questions, Kevin.’ She eyed him indulgently. ‘Why don’t we forget about words and gossip and everyone else? Let’s concentrate on each other, hmm? Why don’t we relax, eh, Kevin?’

  ‘All right,’ he nodded, slurping his drink.

  ‘We could fill up that nice deep bath with bubbles, couldn’t we? And slip into its gorgeous, clinging heat.’

  ‘T-together?’ he whispered.

  ‘Why not?’ Karla grinned. ‘Come on, Kevin. Let’s get you out of that elf outfit . . .’

  At that precise instant they were interrupted by Karla’s phone. BEEP-BEEP BEDEEEP-BEEP! She groaned and reached for it. The gothic text leapt out at her and she sighed. It was like the Brethren knew her every move.

  Well done, daughter! We the Brethren are so proud that u have performed again this evening for yr adoring public! A very special parcel will arrive for u 2moro at the Xmas Hotel from Parcelforce. Before lunchtime they said. With all our luv.

  Karla shook her head. Oh, why do I have to be involved with them? Will I never be able to escape their malign influence? Am I doomed forever to do the bidding of the Brethren?

  And she knew, even as she asked these terrible questions in the echoing, friendless caverns of her own mind, what the answer was. She would never be free. Because of choices she had made a long, long time ago.

  She deleted the text and put all the further questions it raised on hold. Right now she had better things to fret about.

  She lay back on the continental quilt and watched Kevin return from preparing the sumptuous bathroom. Nervously he began to strip off his elfin disguise.

  B&E in A&E

  ‘They’ve been in there for ages. What time is it, Effie?’

  ‘Hush now, Brenda.’

  ‘I want to go in and see him. I want to know what’s going on.’

  Effie was almost overwhelmed by tiredness. She felt sorry for Brenda, but she wished she would stop mithering. ‘You can’t make it any easier for him. You can’t help.’

  Brenda had been pacing up and down the bleak waiting room for what seemed like hours. Weirdly, they were the only people waiting in A&E that night. This only added to their feeling of being abandoned and forgotten about.

  Effie stopped herself reading all the posters about smoking and exercise yet again, and picked up a silly gossip magazine in order to distract herself. Her eyes were stinging with fatigue by now.

  ‘I doubt that the doctors can do anything to help him.’ Brenda sat down heavily beside her on one of the nasty plastic chairs. ‘Oh, what do you think happened, Effie?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s old, isn’t he? He’s getting on.’

  ‘We all are. He’s only a little older than I am.’

  Effie felt absurd suddenly. The two of them were sitting there in the strip-lit room in their finest evening wear. She spoke more gently to her friend. ‘Men always go first. They wear themselves out. They’re not built like us women. Maybe he’s just exerted himself too much in recent weeks.’

  Brenda was in a strange mood, though. Shaking her head. Looking grim and resolved. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘There’s more to this.’

  Effie turned back to her magazine. A thought struck her. ‘You were shouting out Karla’s name, back at the hotel.’

  ‘I was upset.’

  ‘But you said you thought she was behind this.’

  Brenda nodded slowly, trying to recall exactly what she was thinking during that moment of crisis. ‘It seems absurd now . . . but, yes, I did. I do.’

  Effie pursed her lips. ‘What was Karla doing? She was just up on the stage, singing that terrible song.’

  ‘But we’ve seen things, haven’t we, Effie? We’ve seen some terrible things done in the most underhand of ways.’

  ‘That’s true. But why would Karla want to hurt Frank?’

  Brenda was back up on her feet, pacing. ‘She’s staying at the Christmas Hotel. She must be in league with Mrs Claus.’

  ‘Well, that does seem logical, I must say . . .’

  ‘Oh, Effie, what are we going to do? What if the doctors open him up? And see what he looks like inside? What will they think?’ Brenda looked stricken. Her friend’s flinty heart went out to her. But Effie tried to stay sensible and pragmatic.

  ‘
He’ll look like just anyone else inside, won’t he?’

  ‘More or less. But what about all the stitching and scars and—’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do about that. Sit still.’

  There was a touch of panic about Brenda now. ‘And what if they can’t do anything for him at all? What if they can’t revive him?’

  ‘Now don’t talk like that.’

  ‘What if he’s dead? After all this time? What if he’s gone and left me?’

  Effie put down her silly magazine and folded her hands neatly, thoughtfully on her lap. She said, ‘I suppose this is how it happens. On what seems a day like any other. You begin the day together, very normally. You even squabble. You carry on as normal. But by the end of the day one of you is alone. And there’s no going back. One of you has opted out of the game for ever and now they can never answer back. They’ve abandoned you . . .’

  She stopped speaking. Brenda was sitting on her other side now, sobbing into her great big hands.

  ‘He can’t be dead. We were . . . we were just getting to know each other.’

  Effie patted her ineffectually. ‘Ah, Brenda. There, there, lovey.’

  ‘It’s true, you know,’ Brenda said. ‘All those years of moving from town to town. Decades of it. I wasn’t just doing it on a whim. I wasn’t just keeping a low profile from everyone else, from the human world. I was hiding from him, too. I was hiding from Frank. I knew he was after me. I knew he wanted to have me, for his bride.’

  Effie tried to laugh. ‘The human world! Really, Brenda. I don’t know anyone who’s more human than you are.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you to say so. But you know what I mean. For years, for decades, before I ever came to Whitby . . . I was so separate from the world. I had to hide my nature away. I didn’t know what people would do if they knew my true story. My horrible origin.’