[Brenda & Effie 05] - Bride That Time Forgot

by Paul Magrs

  Since their return she had been writing again, and making plans. She had been going over her ragged and stained manuscript and comparing its contents with her own experience.

  How did I do it? How did I know about that place?

  She didn’t know.

  I used to be rational. I used to believe in real things. The evidence of my senses. And now I’m not so sure.

  When she reached her study, she paused at the half-open door. Some sixth sense was warning her.

  Her hackles went up. There was someone in there.

  Someone was waiting for her.

  Beatrice took a deep breath.

  ‘Professor Quandary,’ she said. ‘You might have knocked at the front door. I would have let you in.’

  ‘Would you, my dear?’ He was at her desk. He had her papers out. He was rooting through them. Filling a briefcase. Now he was staring at her over his glasses. Not a very kindly look. An expression of regret, perhaps. And how old he looked, suddenly.

  ‘If you aren’t Professor Quandary . . . if that is, in fact, an assumed identity and a made-up name . . . then who are you?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ He shrugged and picked up her manuscript. Her Qab book. He was reclaiming the single copy. He dropped it into his case. ‘Does it really matter? I’ll be gone soon. Gone for ever out of your life.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Does Rupert know? Does he know you’re leaving London?’

  ‘I’m leaving London and this era, I’m afraid,’ sighed Quandary. ‘None of you will ever see me again.’

  ‘Mr Von Thal will be most upset to hear it.’

  ‘Rupert will get over it. He’ll find somebody else to have adventures with. Perhaps he will have them with you, Mrs Mapp.’

  She frowned at him, as if at some note of impropriety. ‘And so you are returning to the future? Where you belong?’

  He nodded and grinned at her canniness. ‘Clever girl.’ He took the pinking shears out of his coat pocket and waved them at her. ‘With these I can go anywhere. Anywhere my superiors need me to be.’ His round glasses seemed to twinkle at her. ‘MIAOW,’ he added, as if this explained everything.

  ‘And you’re taking my work with you. My book.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You see, you won’t be allowed to publish this. I’m afraid I’m here in your era in order to stop this. The decision has been taken. Time and history are being changed. The world of Qab is being contained. Sealed away.’

  Beatrice stiffened. ‘I see.’

  ‘Forty years I’ve lived here in the past,’ Quandary told her. ‘Forty long years on a mission that ends tonight.’

  ‘W-will you kill me?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ For a moment he looked shocked. ‘My dear, we aren’t complete brutes in MIAOW, you know. Though sometimes our . . . erm, methods must be cruel. Justifiably cruel. But, no. You will live. You will live until 1969, in fact, as I happen to know. But obscurely. Eking out a living. Writing novels the, erm, whole world will elect to ignore. I’m sorry. And you will never return to Qab. Your imagination will never bring to life anything quite so vivid again.’

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She watched him click his briefcase shut and march towards the door.

  Just as the ungainly professor was about to pass her, he turned, as if suddenly remembering something of vital importance. ‘Oh yes. Another thing. Something else I must take off your hands.’

  Her voice quavered, betraying her. She was scared of this man and he knew it. ‘Y-yes?’

  ‘Your housemaid. Your servant. She’s well enough to travel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Brenda.’

  ‘No! She’s still recuperating . . . and besides, she’s my friend. I’m looking after her. She is my responsibility, Professor Quandary, or whoever you are.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. I am taking her away with me. Tonight. We’re leaving right now.’

  ‘No! You can’t!’

  But the professor was already in the hall, marching across the parquet floor towards the staircase. ‘You don’t have any choice in this, Mrs Mapp,’ he told her. ‘I’m relieving you of your responsibilities. Brenda is coming with me.’

  ‘But . . . w-where? Where to?’

  He turned smartly on the staircase and gazed down at her. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you like to know? But I’m afraid you can’t. Your part in this tale ends this evening. But Brenda’s continues. Without you. Elsewhere.’

  Many, many years later and much further north . . .

  Brenda met Effie once more at their usual spot for coffee and walnut cake on a weekday morning.

  ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ Brenda smiled, breathing in the alluring scent of charred toast and frothy mocha. ‘I never thought I’d see this place again.’

  Effie blinked and stared around owlishly from her place at the corner table. It was their favourite banquette, where they could perch and see everyone coming and going. ‘Hmm.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, indeed.’

  Brenda cast a quick glance at her friend. She still seemed a bit peaky and unsure. Perhaps she wasn’t yet fully recovered from her bizarre ordeals. Perhaps it was too early to take her yomping around the town.

  ‘I’m all right, Brenda,’ Effie sighed. ‘Don’t you worry about me. I can see you watching over me like a great big mother hen. Why don’t you worry about your own problems instead?’

  ‘Like getting my boiler fixed,’ Brenda agreed. ‘The place was perishing this morning. February mornings are the worst, I think. It’s the coldest, deadest part of the year.’

  ‘This year I don’t mind February,’ said Effie, with a shadow of a smile. ‘I’m just glad to be back to normal. To be well again. And not . . . not . . .’

  They let the words go unspoken. But they both knew what she meant. And somehow it would seem a bit funny, Effie saying out loud in a little café like this that she was relieved not to be vampire queen of another savage land any more. Best keep a lid on that kind of thing.

  ‘How’s your memory doing?’ Effie asked Brenda sharply.

  ‘Fading again,’ said Brenda glumly. ‘Everything that was starting to come back. I think it was the shock. Maybe the blood loss. I don’t know. I’m having trouble piecing together the details of the things that happened in Qab, too.’

  Effie shuddered. ‘Don’t even say the name. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘All right. We won’t mention it any more.’

  They chewed on their walnut cake thoughtfully.

  ‘No word from your Henry Cleavis?’ Effie asked.

  ‘You know what he’s like. When a job’s over. Off he pops. No warning.’

  ‘Is it over, though?’ said Effie. ‘The whole town’s still swarming with vampires.’

  Brenda pursed her lips. ‘Well. He’s gone, at any rate. Again. Just like before. You know, I don’t think he really can have any feelings for me. I was duped once again by him. Taken in completely.’

  ‘Never mind, ducky. Eat up. Shall we go mad and order some more coffee? Another slice of cake?’

  Brenda nodded. ‘He went, and you know what else he took?’

  ‘The towels?’ Effie smirked. ‘The duvet?’

  But she could see that Brenda was serious. ‘No, he took the pinking shears. The ones your m—Mrs Claus gave us, in order to rescue you.’

  Effie set her cup down with a sharp click. ‘He took them? You let that man take the pinking shears?’

  Brenda was startled by her reaction. ‘He nabbed them while I was recuperating! I had no idea . . . until after he was gone. After he’d taken himself off . . .’

  ‘Then he could have gone anywhere,’ said Effie. ‘Those things . . . they can open a gap into anywhere at all.’

  ‘He could be gone for good,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Like Kristoff,’ Effie said, looking down at the crumbs on her plate. ‘Oh dear. We’re being rather mawkish, aren’t we?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Who needs them, eh? Those two men. The
y really messed us about, didn’t they?’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Brenda.

  ‘I reckon we’re better off without them.’ Effie started waving energetically at the waitress. ‘Come on! More coffee! In fact, let’s have a sweet sherry. Warm us through. We could both do with a tonic.’

  ‘A sherry! At eleven in the morning!’ Brenda laughed.

  ‘And we can toast my fantastic idea,’ said Effie.

  Brenda had to wait till they both had a drink before Effie would tell her what the idea was.

  ‘Remember Alucard’s plans for me? The travelling we were going to do? Well . . . I don’t know about you, ducky, but I still like the sound of seeing Paris and Venice. Even if it’s just for a holiday.’

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ said Brenda.

  ‘What do you say? There’s nothing stopping us! We could go right away if we wanted. We could be two merry widows abroad!’