[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  WHOOMPPHH.

  Helen swung Karla’s heavy memoirs in a graceful arc. Robert didn’t even see it coming. The hardback connected with the back of his skull and sent him crashing to the dusty carpet, out cold.

  ‘Right,’ said Teresa, admiring Helen’s handiwork. ‘We’d best get on to the Brethren. See what they want doing with this one.’

  From Fangs for the Memory: The Memoirs of Karla Sorenson

  Volume Three: The Sinister Sixties

  Chapter Nine

  What do I remember about being in that valley in Wales? Such a long time ago now.

  One thing you have to realise about this movie-making business. It isn’t very glamorous when you’re actually there. Doing it. Mucking in. And what I remember most about the shooting of the infamous Get Thee Inside Me, Satan is that it chucked it down most of the time.

  If I was the same as some of the lily-livered others, I wouldn’t really like to say the film’s title, or even write it down. It is a film famous for all kinds of reasons now. Mostly as the source of a curse that is meant to have killed various cast and crew members down the years since 1967.

  Let us see. Well, Magda Soames plunged off one of the slate quarry cliffs during the night, just before filming wrapped. Nobody knows what she was doing up there, wandering about.

  And the director, Kenny Wearmouth came to a nasty end in a motorboat disaster in the Caribbean the following year. Then the casting director hanged himself, haunted by the devil himself. His wife drank herself to death, giving interviews to anyone who would listen, ranting about the curse on this particular picture, and blaming me – me! – personally for the plague of bad luck that had followed certain people connected with me.

  I say it’s all horseshit. Really, I do.

  I’m still here, aren’t I?

  Some people would say that’s because I’m protected. By occult forces. Just like my character – the divine Jenny Sommers – in the film. Satan wants us to live. As his pawn. As his emissary on earth. But really! These stories are just fairy tales. Why are supposedly sensible adult human beings so intent on believing them?

  Film crews number their members in the dozens. Of course, if you examine what happens to each and every individual over the ensuing decades, it’s going to look like a litany of disasters. Such is life. None of us are in it to win it, are we? It all goes to the bad in the end. At least, that’s what I’ve found.

  Then, of course, there have been the late-night screenings of this, my most famous movie, at which people have apparently gone mad or screamed the house down, or fled on to the streets to do themselves in or murder someone, etc., etc. And I say that’s all bullshit as well, frankly. Where was this? America. That’s just some flashy executive type, drumming up publicity for these low-rent double bills. Curse of the B movie strikes again. It’s all just made up!

  And that’s showbiz, folks.

  Still, I’ve enjoyed the notoriety. I always do. Pretty early on in this ramshackle career of mine, I realised that it wouldn’t be for my acting talent that I would become famous. I’d be famous for flashing my boobies in tacky horror flicks. For being the queen of cult.

  But I can live with that.

  What I do remember about being in North Wales during that dismal Summer of Love, besides all the rain and damp and hard work, and then the shock at the deaths on set and the accidents and so on - I do remember Fox Soames talking to me.

  I thought he was a genius. He was nothing to look at. A hunched-up bald old creature. Yet he had this way with him. Olde-worlde charm, I called it. Swishing about the place in his velvet smoking jacket. He’d had crates of champagne brought to his caravan. Flown in from God knows where. France, probably. And these huge fricking cigars too. He tried to play it so elegantly cool. So debonair and sophisticated. Well, he’d seen something of life, hadn’t he? He’d written a West End hit when he was just twenty-two. At the Berlin Olympics he’d come third in the long jump. He claimed to have explored every continent on earth and even been taken up the Limpopo by the natives. He’d been in Churchill’s secret war cabinet. He’d flown missions as a spy all over Europe. He was a best-seller and a bon vivant and I thought he was just the most dandy little thing I’d ever seen.

  Of course we were having an affair. I felt almost obliged to. I had become Jenny Sommers, hadn’t I? I was his creation. So I hereby declare the truth: Fox and I were lovers. And no – to scotch the awful rumours – we didn’t drive his wife Magda crazy with jealousy, so that she topped herself by jumping off the cliff. She had everything to live for. She had a beautiful son, Alex. Millions in the bank. A huge house in the Cotswolds and an apartment in Manhattan. She was so, so used to Fox’s indiscretions. He’d never have left her for me, or anyone else. He just liked his little adventures, did Fox. And my goodness, so did I! We set his dinky little luxury trailer to rocking, we did, whenever we could!

  But sex wasn’t the main thing. Oh, it was nice, and he was surprisingly agile for a man of his years and stocky build. No, what I adored more than anything was his conversation. He was such a learned man. A genius. Now, you may laugh. You might tell me his books were potboilers. Silly spy stories and Satan-routing penny dreadfuls. But Fox knew that as well. His real genius wasn’t in his books. It was in his conversation. It was in his eyes. I find it hard to explain.

  He was clever enough to know that he needed to wrap up his ideas and his message in a popular form. Not for him some difficult, artsy book that no one would read. He wanted to communicate with the world at large.

  And what did he want to tell them?

  The old, old message: beware of the devil. He is out there. He’s closer than you think. And he’s listening to your every word.

  You’d better watch out.

  Fox was scandalised by the permissive society. By everything that I, in a sense, embodied. And he saw in it the devil’s work. Beelzebub’s era had come again. And Fox’s way of combating that was with his novels, and with movies like Get Thee Inside Me, Satan.

  I remember sitting late in his caravan one night. Before Magda died. We were drinking champagne and he was fixing me with those terrible eyes. Forget-me-not blue.

  ‘You must be more careful than most,’ he told me.

  ‘Me? I’m all right. I can look after myself. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because you know that the dark forces I describe are real, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have felt them. You know their power.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Don’t pretend, Karla. You put on this amusing spectacle, this persona. You pretend to be just another whore actress. A callow, vulgar flibbertigibbet.’

  ‘I am! That’s me!’

  ‘But you are so much more, aren’t you? And you must beware, Karla. The people you are connected to always exact a high price in the end.’

  ‘But—’

  He cut me dead with a swipe of his hand. ‘No. No more. What have they offered you? Eternal youth? Stardom? Riches?’

  I gawped at him.

  Well, as you my fans know, it has long been rumoured that I made a pact with the devil when I was fifteen years old. Another tale cranked out by the sordid publicity machine. I made a deal to keep my youth eternally, and to be famous and rich beyond my dreams.

  Well, I ain’t rich, am I, darlings? And I’m only famous amongst the culty film fraternity. A dwindling band of benign anorak-wearing young men. And as for my youth . . . oh dear. I’m getting slack and saggy and baggy. Sorry to disappoint you! Though I’m still fabulous, obviously. But I’m not some supernaturally nubile and unblemished creature of Satan.

  So, I am very sorry, Mr Soames. But I am afraid you were quite, quite wrong. You were believing in your own kind of story. And I can’t blame you for that. That’s what we all do, isn’t it? In the end?

  We make the world around us into the story we want it to be. We make ourselves the star of it. And we tell ourselves we know how the world works, and that the stories
we tell about it are true.

  Location, Location

  As they tracked through the desolate valley, Brenda paused thoughtfully. ‘The thing I don’t want to do is meet myself.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Effie. She was feeling wretchedly uncomfortable in yesterday’s clothes.

  ‘I think it’s probably a bad idea.’

  ‘But why?’ Effie asked. ‘You could warn yourself about all sorts of things. Change the things that happened to you.’

  Brenda frowned. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  Now they were very close to the film set and its shanty town of caravans and trailers. It was rather like happening upon Marco Polo’s entourage as it rested up for the night on its long voyage.

  Brenda nodded at one particular vehicle. ‘Look, that caravan with the opening at the side.’

  Effie squinted. ‘The burger van?’ There was a smoky, greasy smell that was making her stomach roil with hunger.

  ‘That’s my home from home. I’ll be in there.’

  ‘I can’t see anything for the queue . . .’

  It was true. A ramshackle queue of film people were waiting none too patiently for their breakfast. A ragged chorus of ‘Why Are We Waiting?’ broke out. Effie could see the ones who had been served taking their loaded trays off to a double-decker bus, which had been customised, and turned into a two-tier dining room.

  ‘Are you sure, Brenda? I mean, this business of going into the past and everything. Are you sure that if we got closer we’d see you over there, slopping out the breakfast beans and scrambled eggs?’

  Brenda nodded grimly. ‘Look.’

  Now they had moved close enough to see the woman working in the hatch of the van. Brenda and Effie hung back where they thought they might not be seen, squinting in appalled fascination at the large woman in the hairnet. She was laughing and joking, clearly on first-name terms with the cast and crew.

  ‘But,’ Effie boggled, ‘you look exactly the same!’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s forty or more years ago! It’s the nineteen sixties!’

  ‘You know me, Effie. I never change.’

  ‘I know. It’s just a shock seeing it demonstrated like this, I must say. I mean, at this point in time I’m a young woman still. I’m about thirty-odd, I think . . .’

  Brenda sat heavily on a handy rock. ‘I’ve always been old. And a drudge, too. It depresses me a bit, to think that I’m still doing the same job. Slopping up cooked breakfasts.’

  ‘At least these days you’re not in a quarry any more.’

  ‘I can’t remember how I ended up working in the film industry. Curse this brain of mine. This rotten memory.’

  ‘You could ask her,’ Effie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You could wait for a quiet mo. When she goes on her break, say. And you could quiz her. About all the things you don’t know. She’ll know things that you have forgotten about. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  Brenda looked troubled by this whole time-bending business and Effie couldn’t blame her. ‘Maybe you’re right. I don’t want to tempt fate, though.’

  Effie asked, ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It feels like interfering in the past too much. I’m sure that whoever has brought us here, through the mists of time, doesn’t want us to do that.’

  Effie couldn’t help herself. ‘Hahahaha! Listen to you, Brenda! The mists of time indeed!’

  ‘Sssh. You’ll draw attention to us.’

  A man’s voice spoke up, quite near to them. Fruity and rich and amused. ‘She already has.’

  Effie let out a shriek of surprise at his approach, which she quickly stifled.

  Brenda recognised him at once. He was a dapper, rotund figure, puffing on an expensive cigar and wearing a floor-length purple silk dressing gown. He had obviously been behind them for some time, earwigging with fascination on their hushed conflab.

  Fox Soames said, ‘I wonder if you two ladies would care to explain your presence here on my film set? What are you? Fanatics? Groupies?’ He looked them up and down very carefully.

  ‘What?’ gasped Effie. ‘How dare you? My friend and I are here to do some investigating.’

  ‘Investigating, is it? I see. And what would you be investigating, hmm? As you see, this is a very ordinary, run-of-the-mill location shoot.’

  Brenda shook her head slowly. ‘It’s hardly that, Mr Soames.’

  He quirked his sandy, overgrown eyebrows. ‘You know me, do you? How fascinating. You have done your research.’

  He gave Brenda a long appraising look. She stared back at those brilliant eyes of his.

  Effie didn’t like this strutting, pompous ass one little bit. Carrying on as if he owned the whole set-up. And he wasn’t even a star, or the director. He was just the writer, according to Brenda. She stared at his liver-spotted pate and was horrified to see it pulsing. It was like watching the soft skull of a young infant, beating slightly in time with his thoughts. But Fox was an old man and it was very strange to see. The pulse quickened and his face flushed as he gathered his thoughts and hissed at them both: ‘Do you know what I think, ladies? I think you are here to sabotage this picture. Perhaps to prevent it from being made.’

  ‘No, no. That isn’t it at all,’ said Brenda.

  Fox went on excitedly, ‘I believe you are cultists. Sent to put a spanner in the works. Your superiors – your brethren, shall we call them – they don’t want the world to see this movie. Because it will give away too many of their secrets.’

  Effie tutted. ‘Balls.’

  Brenda stared at her. ‘Effie!’

  ‘Silly old fool doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How can he think we’re cultists?’

  ‘Look at you. The pair of you. There is something very strange about you both.’

  Brenda smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. ‘You’ve got that much right. But we aren’t working for some terrible cult, you must believe us.’

  ‘Oh no? Then what is it that I sense about the two of you? I am very sensitive, you know. I am alert to the effects of sorcery and necromancy. I quiver when I am in the presence of those steeped in magical lore.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Effie smirked. She was hunting through her bag for a clean hanky. Her nose had turned cold and drippy, standing about in a quarry bottom like this. She glared at Fox. ‘And are you quivering now?’

  ‘My dear, I am rigid. I am tremulous and agog. Now, why would that be? Are you magical, you and your friend here, hmm?’

  Brenda said, ‘Yes, all right. If you like. We’re very magical indeed. But we really don’t mean anybody any harm. You must believe that, Mr Soames. We are here to help.’

  Fox frowned at her earnest expression. ‘You, my dear. I already know you, don’t I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you the dinner lady here? You look very like her. I can’t be sure. I don’t queue up with the rest of the hoi polloi.’

  ‘How very nice for you,’ snapped Effie.

  Fox ignored her scathing tone. ‘You two intrigue me. Will you come to my caravan? Perhaps you would join me for coffee? It is mid morning to me. I began my work at five. Writing, writing, you know how it is. No rest for the wicked . . .’

  Following the stocky man across the valley floor to his mobile home, Effie suddenly recalled where she knew his name from. Fox Soames. Her aunties used to read his novels. He had been going since the 1930s, back before Effie had been born. He wrote the most horrid, lurid, ghastly ghoulish stuff about black magic. Effie’s aunts – especially the usually sensible Aunt Maud – lapped up these bodice-ripping, swashbuckling tales of satanists and adventurers. Aunt Maud would read them aloud to her sisters, Eliza, Beryl and Natasha – and her niece Effie, who would be hiding round the living-room door. Maud would be doing all the voices, holding her family in her spell.

  And so this was he. And he was the author of Get Thee Inside Me, Satan. Effie wondered if that had been one of the books sh
e had heard as a young child, crooking her ear to the gap in the door.

  Funny how things always seemed to link up.

  As they reached Fox Soames’s home from home, Brenda was studying their new surroundings with extreme interest.

  Fox’s mobile home was a very up-to-the-minute American job – at least it was back here in 1967. Even in the present day, it would be quite a marvel. Inside it was decorated like a stately home’s drawing room, all velvet and ornate gilt. At the far end stood a wide desk, scattered with papers and ashtrays and a fierce-looking black typewriter. It looked as if Fox had been working studiously through the night.

  ‘Magda, my dear!’ he called. ‘We have visitors.’

  A door opened and a woman somewhat younger than Fox stepped out, rather hesitantly. She was in a filmy muumuu of swirling psychedelic patterns. She had straight black hair and a somewhat unfocused expression. Was the woman on drugs? It was no good if she was, for she was carrying in her arms a fair-haired toddler.

  The child fixed the two new arrivals with an ice-blue stare that exactly matched his father’s.

  ‘And this is Alex,’ Fox purred, snatching up a brandy goblet and swishing the contents around. ‘My son, meet . . . oh dear. We haven’t been introduced properly, have we, my dears?’

  ‘I’m Brenda and this is Effie,’ Brenda blurted out. ‘And we have come all the way from the future to warn you. This film you’ve written and that they’re shooting out there in that valley right now – it is the pure quintessence of evil!’

  Penny Writes Another Letter Home

  Dear Mam,

  Now Robert’s disappeared. Seriously. He’s not been back to the hotel all day. He went out this morning on some secret kind of mission and we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him since.

  So it’s yours truly left in charge of the hotel tonight.

  Which is no biggie, really. Everyone knows their jobs. It’s all working like clockwork actually, but we can’t go on like that for too long. We need Robert back at the helm!