[Brenda & Effie 02] - Something Borrowed

by Paul Magrs

  ‘No,’ I tell him fiercely. ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘No, Henry!’ I am vehement, startling even myself.

  Tap tap tap, all around the bed. Henry draws his feet up until he is sitting on my bed with me. The invisible intruders circle the four-poster as they always do. They swarm about me. They are even underneath me, with the dust balls and the old shoes. Henry Cleavis and I hold hands on top of the rumpled bed, clinging to my warmth and my calm as if we’re on a life raft in an ocean of ghosts.

  We sit like this for what seems like hours. The night starts to recede. The blackness of the open skylight comes a bit bluer. I can hear the birds starting up. The tap-tap-tapping grows less frequent, less pronounced, as if our torturers have grown bored with us. They are going away.

  When they have been quiet for a while, Henry turns to look at me and I can now see his face in the bluish dawn. ‘You really are haunted, aren’t you?’ he says.

  ‘More than you’ll ever know,’ I tell him.

  We wake up late, in the same room, all achy, stiff and guilty like teenagers. The phone is ringing. I don’t think either of us meant to fall asleep, but we did, and both of us are startled and confused by the noise.

  It’s Robert. He’s gabbling excitedly down the line at me. ‘She’s awake, Brenda! She’s woken up!’

  At first I don’t know what he means. I think he’s talking about his Aunty Jessie – and that the womanzee has been found and restored to miraculous life.

  ‘I’m talking about Effie, Brenda! She’s come out of the coma!’

  ‘What?’ I must sound so dopey.

  ‘I went in to visit her really early this morning. I was sitting there, telling her all about recent events, and then her eyelids were fluttering and she was coming awake! It was amazing, Brenda. Next thing, she’s surrounded by all these doctors and nurses. I came straight away to phone you . . .’

  ‘This was just a few minutes ago, then?’

  ‘Yes! She’s awake, Brenda! She’s going to be okay!’

  I’m laughing now, with happiness and relief. Cleavis is standing by the armchair where he slept, clutching a blanket. He is bleary-eyed and confused. When I come off the phone I explain quickly to him, and hurry about, making preparations to go straight up to the hospital. Cleavis is left muttering pleasantries in my wake. I have put everything out of my mind now: my memories and my trance; the noises and revelations in the night. In the clear light of day – it’s past ten o’clock! – none of that seems relevant now. I bustle Henry along, and make it plain that I want him to leave.

  ‘Can we meet this evening, perhaps?’ he asks me. ‘I think we need to talk further.’

  For a moment he sounds like a romantic suitor. Someone trying hard not to be shrugged off the morning after. Someone about to be sent away with a flea in his ear. I almost laugh. ‘Of course,’ I tell him, and we make plans for Cod Almighty this evening.

  Next thing, though, I’m washed and changed and letting us out of my side door. And, sure enough, Leena and Raf are outside their shop, arranging wares. They give a wave and a nod, both plainly delighted to watch me leaving my house with a strange man. Of course he’s my lover. And of course the news is going to be all round town by the time I get back. I give them a helpless little wave, and don’t stop to tell them about Effie.

  Henry wants to know whether he should come to the hospital with me. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. She doesn’t want one of the first people she sees to be the man who shot her.’

  We’re standing outside the Miramar hotel and Henry looks piqued. ‘That was an accident! And it was only a graze!’

  I frown at him. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you later.’

  ‘You just look after yourself,’ he tells me. ‘And try to forget about that poison pen letter. And all the rest of it. Memories . . . and hauntings and such.’

  I leave him and stump back to the main road out of town, towards the hospital. He would go and have to remind me about my letter. Henry can be stupidly tactless at times. I just know Effie is going to be furious that I let him hypnotise me. Perhaps I’ll not mention that to her. She doesn’t hold with people messing about with other people’s minds. ‘The human mind is a very delicate thing,’ I can hear her saying. ‘Best not to tamper with it. Leave it well alone!’ And, as I scurry along towards her, I hope that there’ll be no permanent damage from the coma. I hope that she has come back to us whole: herself, again.

  Robert meets me outside the main building, where he’s having a sly fag. We hug each other hard and it’s such a relief to be with him again. I couldn’t have stood him being frosty with me for ever.

  ‘She’s resting now,’ he tells me. ‘She’s fast asleep. But they reckon she’s okay, Brenda. It’s natural sleeping. She’s out of danger!’

  We go in to look at her. A nurse tries to explain everything to me, and I have to pretend to be Effie’s next of kin in order to hear all the details. Still they go over my head, as I stand there, and survey the tiny body of my friend. Looking as if she’s shrunk. It’s like a little girl lying there. Her head’s still huge, swollen under bandages. ‘I’ll bring her a nice turban in,’ I say aloud. ‘I’ll buy her something stylish to go with her leaving-hospital outfit.’ Of course, they still want to keep her in under observation for twenty-four hours. ‘Did she say anything?’ I ask the nurse.

  ‘Just a few, nonsensical things, like things from dreams.’ The nurse smiles ruefully. ‘Nothing of any relevance.’

  Then Robert and I are left sitting with the naturally-sleeping Effie for a few moments. I just about jump out of my skin when her eyes fly open and she fixes that cool, grey gaze on me. ‘Did you bring that awful man with you?’

  ‘Who?’ I ask.

  ‘Cleavis!’ she hisses.

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘He—’

  But her eyes close again and she snores at me.

  Robert walks with me back into town. ‘I’d love to come for a cup of coffee with you, Brenda,’ he says, ‘but I really have got to get back to work. We’ve another big night in the beer garden tonight.’

  ‘Another barbecue?’

  ‘They’re going to be every night now,’ he tells me, looking a bit tired, now that I get a real look at him. ‘Sheila is demanding that we do them every night. Now that the good weather is here, nobody wants to be shut up inside, it seems. The Yellow Peril was completely empty last night. They were all up in the beer garden, singing and drinking and dancing all night long.’

  I think back to the previous night’s inaugural barbecue. It was a curious do. I mean, it was enjoyable enough, but I didn’t feel as much in the swing of it as everyone else. There was a tinge of hysteria in the good-natured crowd, I thought. As if everyone else had been drinking a good deal more than us. Something about that evening in the wickerwork garden had unnerved me, but I couldn’t quite say what it was and, anyway, my mind had been on other things.

  I wave Robert off as he turns to the Hotel Miramar. I hope he doesn’t come across Henry. It’s best if their paths don’t cross just yet.

  I head back home and start making a mental list of all the things I need to pick up from Effie’s house to take in tomorrow. She’ll go mad at me if I bring the wrong things.

  And, perhaps, while I’m in there, I will check out her old typewriter in the office at the top of the house. I might as well. Just to check. See if it has a wonky s, like the one that tapped out my poison pen letter. I’ll have a little look.

  Just to prove it wasn’t her.

  Chapter Four

  Dirty Deeds Down South

  This is how it was. Now I know.

  When Henry put me into that trance he had a good rummage through my memories. I am like a long disused and abandoned attic. He unlocked me. I’m chockablock with stories. I’m too full, in a sense. All you can do is open the door and see what comes tumbling out.

  And now – the whole adventure in 1946 has come back to me very thorou
ghly. The whole lurid and ghastly saga.

  Let me fill you in.

  This night – the night before Effie returns from hospital – I’m supposed to be going out for a fish supper with Henry. I’ve smartened up and put on my lipstick. But I’m sitting at my kitchen table. And all these memories unwind.

  The train rattles and shunts and screeches through the night.

  I am sitting wedged into our little table in the buffet car and Cleavis is staring up at our enemy. I can feel Henry’s leg jogging away under the tablecloth, so I know how scared he is. He acts pretty cool, though, as he faces off with Count Alucard.

  The count stares down at us pityingly. Not a slicked-back hair is awry. His cloak hangs down in gorgeous satin folds of scarlet and black. He curls a feral lip at us just to show his jagged canines. And then the two of these fellers engage in the kind of banter always engaged in by mortal foes in todos like this.

  ‘So . . . you thought you would follow me!’

  ‘I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, accursed one! Give back what you have stolen!’

  And I’m sitting there thinking: hang on! It was me who became aware that Edith was nicking chunks of Tyler manuscript. It was me who discovered she was going to run off with Freer. And I was the one who saw her being savagely murdered by this creature and it was me who was chased the length of this train by the Prince of the Undead. So why are the fellers doing all the talking?

  ‘Why are you so keen to have Tyler’s book?’ I burst out. They both turn, startled, to look at me. ‘I mean, surely he’s going to publish it eventually, and then you can just buy one, or borrow it from a library . . .’

  Henry gives a hollow laugh. ‘Somehow I don’t think Alucard has a borrower’s ticket.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Why go to all this palaver?’

  ‘Why ask the sun why it shines? The moon why it waxes and wanes?’ says Henry. ‘He does things because they are wicked. That is his nature.’

  Alucard frowns at Henry as though he’s being particularly stupid. Then he turns the full force of his charm on to me: ‘My dear, I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced . . .?’

  ‘Brenda,’ I say, wondering whether I am wise to do so. His eyes smoulder like dying clinker and I ponder what it would be like to fall under his spell . . .

  ‘Brenda what?’ he says. He is staring right into me. He knows there is something strange about me.

  ‘Just that,’ I tell him firmly, and he sighs.

  He continues: ‘I would have thought it obvious that I am stealing Tyler’s manuscript in order to prevent its being disseminated in the world.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, nodding. ‘I see.’ Obvious, really.

  ‘I am taking it to a friend who has a particular interest in it. And that’s all there really is to this affair. Quite harmless, really.’

  ‘Harmless!’ I cry. ‘You murdered Edith Tyler! I saw you!’

  Alucard pulls his face, as if I am talking nonsense. ‘She disembarked somewhere along the line, I know that much. But . . . murdered? I think not. Your imagination is somewhat overheated, Brenda. Possibly by all the lurid romances your type of girl reads belowstairs.’

  ‘So . . .’ Henry says. ‘You are working for someone else. Alucard acting as another’s servant! I never thought I would see the day!’

  The vampire’s face darkens as he scowls. Henry has hit a nerve. ‘No slave, sir! Merely doing a favour!’ His voice is dangerously low. ‘And I come to warn you. To cease this pursuit immediately. The doings of Freer and myself are no concern of yours. If you dabble further, I shall have no hesitation in destroying both you and your charming companion here.’ He leans in further and purrs at us. ‘In fact, I will have every pleasure in bestowing upon you both full membership of the legion of the undead. Giving you a borrower’s card, so to speak. It would be a particular pleasure to recruit a God-botherer like you, Cleavis.’

  Henry splutters and heaves with fury at these words. I’m still inwardly quaking at Alucard’s reference to his and Freer’s ‘doings’, which seems an unfortunate way of referring to their plans. What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t he scare me? I feel like laughing in the vamp’s face. So I do. It bursts out of me, like some violent eructation.

  ‘You stupid man,’ I tell him. ‘Do you think we’ll give up as easily as that?’

  Alucard narrows his beautiful, burning eyes at me. ‘What?’

  ‘We are both members of the Smudgelings,’ I tell him, folding my arms. ‘And we won’t be scared off by the likes of you.’

  Alucard won’t attack me here. Not in the dining car, where others are eating and drinking sedately, as the train rushes busily through the night. He can’t risk giving himself away here. Instead he turns brusquely to Cleavis: ‘You should control your woman better. And since when did you allow female members of the servant class to join the Smudgelings?’

  I get up to punch him, but he’s gone – quick and slender as a shadow. Back to his carriage, and back to his craven lackey, Freer. Probably to gloat over their precious spoils.

  When Henry Cleavis turns to me his face and voice are incredulous: ‘Do you know who that was? Why were you provoking him like that? Do you know what he is capable of?’

  I shrug lightly. ‘He doesn’t scare me. That’s most of his power, you know. People dying of fright just at the sight of him. But he’s not that scary. I’m a bit disappointed, to tell you the truth.’ I slurp up the last of my tea, which is cold now. I’m putting on a proper show of bravado for Henry. Inside I’m shaking like mad. I must really want to impress the professor, mustn’t I? But I must admit, it was fun baiting Alucard. And what else should he expect, from the estranged daughter of Herr Doktor Frankenstein?

  He’s lucky I didn’t smack him one, the old fop.

  We start talking then, about how we’re going to follow Freer and Alucard to their den – wherever it is – in London. Alucard could turn himself into a bat. He probably will. It’s unusual for him, I suppose, to be taking public transport this far. But I suppose you can’t carry much luggage, as a bat. I hadn’t really thought of that before. So he needs his cringing myrmidons – the likes of Freer – to lug his stuff about for him, and it is the more earthbound Freer that we will follow.

  As Cleavis talks about pursuing these ruthless monsters into the heart of the capital, my insides are quivering with excitement. Life’s been quiet for too long in that old university town. I can’t tell you how glad I am to be on the move, and in the thick of trouble once again.

  This is what I’m like, back in those days. So keen! So brave!

  Henry tells me there’s less than half an hour till we hit the metropolis.

  And, as we hurtle through the night, I stare out of the window at the flitting fields and hedges, the fragile rows of suburban houses. I feel so alienated from all of that, from everyday life.

  It’s as I’m sitting there that the voice calls out to me for the first time.

  A soft voice, impossibly old. It’s crying and begging. Imprisoned and tortured. Hopeless, helpless, and calling out to me across some huge distance.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ I ask Henry sharply.

  He shakes his head. ‘What?’

  He hasn’t heard it. That voice is calling out to me alone. As the train nears London, the voice grows stronger, though no less plaintive and scared. We are approaching its source, I realise.

  ‘You must come to me, Brenda . . . Only you can free me . . . For it is foretold . . .’

  Well, I think, as we hit the city’s grimy outskirts. It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?

  In the press and confusion of Liverpool Street Henry and I become separated for a few moments. He is holding on to my hand. Laughable, really, in that his little hand is so much smaller than mine. But at first he is fiercely holding on to me, as if protecting me, as we face the metropolitan crowds. I think we both feel out of our depth here, in the great smoky hollow darkness of the station concour
se. We are bobbing about with our hearts in our mouths, while everyone around us is so heads-down, marching-onwards, set on their destinations. My sweaty hand slips out of Henry’s grasp and I think we both panic a little.

  Of course there is no sign of Alucard. He’s the sort who’s only seen when he wants to be. My hope is that we can latch on to Freer. But in all the mêlée we have lost him. He’s a sneaky devil, Freer. I stop right there, in the middle of the crowd, and I could scream with frustration. This is hopeless. We don’t stand a chance.

  And then Henry is at my shoulder, with a fierce whisper in my ear. ‘Look there!’ And the game is on.

  Foolish, arrogant Freer is coming out of a tobacconist’s and pocketing his change, his purchases. We can see him clear as day, as he peers into the swarming masses, looking so shiftily about him. Then he turns on one slender heel and hurries for the exit. But we have got him in our sights and I lumber after Henry, who darts through the crowds after Freer.

  The traffic is fierce. The pavements here are narrow and the buildings tall. The roads are teeming with overloaded buses spraying filthy slush everywhere. It’s been a long time since I was in the capital – longer than I care to remember – but the heady, heart-pounding pressure of keeping up, keeping afloat, keeping your head above water is still with me. It’s necessary to be determined and decisive, otherwise it’s easy to panic in all this booming, terrible noise.

  Henry’s hand is back in mine and I’m holding on grimly.

  We press on, for block after block, tumbling heedlessly across roads and through arcades and the canyons between huge buildings. As we go on, though, the streets become shabbier. The street lights are on, and they are a pale, dirty yellow. I can smell the Thames somewhere close. Freer is leading us somewhere filthy and grim, I just know it. He’s leading us back to his mucky bolthole.

  He’s swinging his carpet bag almost jauntily in his hand.

  When we get to a quieter street his pace slows somewhat. We pass the glowing windows of a rough-looking pub and we turn into a darker alleyway. Freer surprises me then by turning and catching us in the act of pursuit. He stops. We stop.