[Brenda & Effie 06] - Brenda and Effie Forever!

by Paul Magrs

  It’s Effie on the other end of the line at just after six. I can hardly believe it. She sounds hopelessly tired – and that’s just how I feel, too. But I’m up and about, making the effort, cooking dinner and bringing everyone together. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask her, a bit too sharply.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘But I could do with just having some peace and quiet for a bit. I don’t feel like getting back into the swing of things just yet. An early night might help.’

  And then she’s gone. I go back to my supper preparations a little grumpily. I’ve got a colossal cassoulet in the oven. I’m hoping it’ll turn out just like the one we had at that famously fancy Rive Gauche bistro, Brasserie Lipp. I’m following the instructions in an ancient St Michael’s French cookbook I found in Save the Kiddies actually – giving it a quick taste – it isn’t at all bad. Some crusty French bread, a couple of bottles of Cote du Rhone… it should be like a little taste of our holiday tonight, all for the benefit of our young friends.

  Of course, with Effie not putting in an appearance, I know what they’ll think.

  And, of course, it’s Penny who says it first.

  ‘Have you two had a fall-out on holiday?’

  She’s a cheeky thing, coming out with that, even before she’s taken off her coat – a shiny black polythene number that takes some shrugging off. Underneath, she’s gothed up as usual, in some fancy purple ensemble with lots of straps.

  ‘No, of course we haven’t,’ I tell them. ‘Effie’s just tired. It can take it out of you, foreign travel, at her age, you know.’

  Penny still doesn’t buy it. She still thinks we’ve had ructions, and next to her, Robert looks like he thinks the same. Robert’s handsome in a checkered, almost cowboy-style shirt with a thin cardigan sort of slung over the top. It strikes me then that he’s been letting his hair grow longer, and that it suits him. Beside him is his newish boyfriend, Gila – who looks green behind the gills before he even consumes the tiniest mouthful of my experimental cassoulet. And that’s because he’s a kind of reptile boy, with actual gills and a somewhat emerald cast to his skin. He harks from another dimension – a place called Qab, which is an exotic land-before-time kind of place where the whole lot of us had a recent, hair-raising adventure. Gila came back with us from that otherworldly place, what with him and Robert having fallen for each other during the shenanigans. Now Gila is trying to settle into this unknown world of ours, and I’m not sure he always finds it very easy.

  Tonight, though, he seems more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. He leans to kiss me on the cheek when he arrives in an easy, unselfconscious way. His lips are dry and cool on my skin. He smiles at me as if he’s just as pleased at our reunion as his two young friends. But those eyes of his are still alien and lizardy – too inscrutable to look at for very long.

  I leave them to settle in my living room – Penny changing the record to something more up-tempo – and I’m in my kitchen alcove, lifting the lid of the casserole dish and sniffing the gorgeous aroma of what is essentially a chicken and tomato stew.

  Robert’s standing next to me. ‘The Walkers that form Mrs Claus’s private army at the Christmas Hotel have apparently caught one of these tiny mermaids. There was a big fuss about it this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh?’ I say. ‘Well, you know you can’t believe everything Walkers say.’

  ‘They reckon Mrs Claus had her chef prepare a fancy fish soup using the mermaid’s tail and bones.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’

  He carries on, as I ladle the steaming broth into deep bowls and tear up hunks of rustic bread. ‘Oh, and Penny has been to the Spooky Finger bookshop today, and met its new owner.’

  ‘Someone’s reopened the bookshop?’ Now, this surprises me. That Mystery Bookstore was the site of some horrifying events earlier this year. The silly woman who owned it kept opening up an inter-dimensional portal and there were some nasty repercussions. ‘I wonder if the new owner knows what he or she is getting into. Someone ought to warn them what they’re taking on…’ I pass him two of the bowls on trays. ‘We’ll just sit on the comfy chairs to eat, shall we?’

  But Robert’s determined to tell me the rest of his tale. ‘I don’t think we need warn the new owner about anything,’ he says, deadly serious. ‘I think he knows precisely what he’s getting. It’s Mr Danby, Brenda. He’s taken over the Spooky Finger. Well, it’s got to be for some nefarious reason, hasn’t it? I imagine he knows only too well, the kinds of powers that are churning through that old bookshop…’

  I think Robert must be right. That Danby never does anything without there being some dreadful reason for it. As we all settle on my comfy chairs with our supper and everyone digs in, I have a brief flashback to the various tortures and devices that awful Mr Danby has put us all through. I remember the affair of the Deadly Boutique, which was one of the first investigations that Effie and I found ourselves involved in together. Then, Mr Danby had no compunction about exploiting the poor, vain women of Whitby, when they flocked to receive one of his miraculous – but fatal – make-overs. And then there was the time when he started up an evil talkshow on Whitby F.M. and stirred up all kinds of bad feeling. That time, he almost gassed us to death, when we trooped down to the studios, intent on putting a stop to his nasty works.

  ‘If Mr Danby is up to his old tricks, then we must keep a beady eye on him,’ I tell the youngsters.

  ‘Oh, I already have,’ says Penny breezily. ‘I went down to that shop of his this afternoon. And I must say, it’s all a bit shabbier than it was when Marjorie Staynes owned it. He’s got some very peculiar books in there. Dark, magical books – all quite interesting, really. And what a strange little man he is.’

  I’m staring at Penny as she talks. Of course, we never knew her and she hadn’t arrived yet, back when we had all our bother with Mr Danby. She has no idea how dangerous he can be. I shoot Robert a look. Did he know Penny was popping into places, investigating dangerous old enemies on her own?

  But now Penny is going on, and saying something even more startling. ‘It turns out that we’re relations, or something. I already had my suspicions, when Robert mentioned his name. But it turns out that this Danby is related to my ex-husband, Ken…’

  Robert tuts and shakes his head. ‘That’s what he was trying to convince you of, Pen. But you have to watch that one. He would say anything to try to manipulate you.’

  Penny doesn’t look convinced by our warnings, and I see that I’ll have to keep an eye on her. ‘He seems a very nice man,’ she says, rather primly. ‘A quiet sort. He has his old, ailing mother, living with him upstairs.’

  My eyes nearly shoot out of my head at this. His mother? Robert and I stare at each other. Well, we both know who his mother is. We’ve met her before. But wasn’t she supposed to have karked it?

  Ah, well. Lots of things to do. Being away, I almost forgot what it was like, and how hectic it can get at home.

  Everyone takes second helpings of my cassoulet and that’s very gratifying. They get me talking about my holiday and soon I find myself recounting our strange adventures right at the end of the trip, concerning the Monsieur Ananas and the Hunchback. The youngsters sit there, agog.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Gila says, when I’ve done. ‘So they knew all about you? All about where you live and what you get up to?’

  ‘They seemed to,’ I nodded, quite relishing – truth be told – the telling of this hair-raising tale.

  ‘You must be famous,’ Robert said. ‘In that underground world of monsters and monster hunters. It stands to reason. What with everything that goes on here… word must spread out around the world.’

  Except, I think, it turns out we’re not as unique and as important as we thought, are we? We learned that ours is not the only dangerous gateway into hell on the face of the Earth. There is one beneath the Pantheon in Paris. Where else are there Maw
s? How many others are there? The whole planet could be riddled like a Swiss cheese, forever on the point of letting evil forces issue freely through a network of daemonic apertures in the Earth’s crust.

  ‘And they warned you to stay away from here?’ Penny asks. ‘That’s what the vampires wanted? Not to kill you or drink your blood?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘They seemed very set on the fact that, should Effie and I go home again, terrible things would result.’

  My three young friends look at me, and I can sense that their minds are racing. This gives me pause for thought. What if I have indeed brought disaster with me, in coming home from my hols? I’d prefer to think the vamps and their lackeys were talking out of their hats… but you never know, do you?

  ‘You belong here,’ Robert says firmly, then. ‘There’s no one got the right to tell you that you can’t go home!’

  Bless Robert. So often he knows just the right thing to say to me.

  The evening dissolves into more wine, sticky toffee pudding retrieved from the back of the freezer, and a fair amount of laughter. It does me good to be back with my little gang. It’s just a shame that Effie couldn’t drag her skinny old body down the street for this. It might have done her some good. As soon as our plane was streaking over the fields and hills and complicated conurbations of England she went into a right mood.

  Sometime after midnight the kids are leaving and I lock and bolt myself into my B&B. Perhaps I’ll leave all the clearing up until tomorrow morning. I can’t face it now. Yes, tomorrow, and then I’ll swoop into action on the sorting and scrubbing front. And I’ll stock up my freezers and cupboards for the first arrival of guests early next week. I’ll need hundreds of links of sausages, vast amounts of bacon, and a hundred thousand eggs to poach and fry and boil…

  I yawn as I go round switching off lights and turning off the record player. Next thing I know I’m tottering into my room and slumping onto the candlewick bedspread fully clothed.

  §

  BANG BANG BANG BANG.

  I awake with a jolt. I sit up abruptly in the dark bedroom. I stare at my reflection in the dressing table mirror and scare myself. My beehive wig is still on, looking ridiculously awry. I’ve been sleeping in my clothes and my head is pounding with red wine fumes. Is that what I heard? Was my head banging so hard it woke me up?

  Looking at the alarm clock I see that it’s just after half past four.

  BANG BANG BANG.

  It’s definitely somebody knocking at the door. Down my stairs, at the bottom of the building. Someone is standing in the alleyway outside my guest house in the darkest portion of the night. And they are banging like crazy on my knocker.

  What do I do?

  It seems easier just to turn over and forget about it. I would love to block it all out.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG.

  But I can’t. What if it’s someone needing my help? You never know when it comes to things like this. I mean, people don’t go making a fuss like that at night without a good reason, do they?

  I haul myself off my bed and realise that I wasn’t even under the covers. I was so tired I just flopped down and was out like a light. My mouth is dry and cracked. What was I doing drinking red wine all night?

  The banging’s still going.

  I ease myself into the dark living room and then into the hallway.

  BANG BANG!

  The noise comes belling up the staircase. Then the person is clattering the letterbox and it sounds like chains being rattled by a ghost.

  Something has got hold of me. Not just curiosity, and certainly not simple bravery. There is a funny compulsion that drives me down the stairs to the ground floor. I can’t explain it. I just can’t ignore this pounding at my door.

  Soon I’m standing on the other side to the person who has woken me up.

  BANG BANG.

  So close, I just about jump out of my skin.

  I inch over to the spyhole and press my eye against it.

  There’s a light above the door and it illuminates the distorted image of my nocturnal visitor rather grotesquely.

  It takes me a moment or two to even recognize Effie. She’s on my doorstep, looking like death.

  I unlock and unbolt my door in a hurry and she staggers forward, into my arms. She’s light as a family variety bag of crisps.

  ‘Ooh, Brenda,’ she whispers. ‘Something intensely peculiar has happened to me tonight.’

  §

  I take her gently upstairs. She’s shivering and rambling and at first I think she won’t make it all the way up the stairs to my attic. She is exhausted and on the brink of passing out. Her house pants and oldest cardy are all rumpled and quite mucky. What on Earth has possessed her to be out in the night dressed like this?

  Soon she is installed on my sofa and I take a seat on my bobbly green armchair. I’ve poured us both fortifying brandies and only after she’s downed her first and asked for a second does she start to tell me her tale.

  ‘I’m sorry to wake you up and impose on you in the middle of the night, ducky. But you see, I’ve had one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.’

  I tell her that of course it’s no problem. She’s my best friend. Who else is she going to tell her most bizarre experiences to?

  She smiles and shakes her head. ‘You saying that sort of makes it worse, Brenda. I know you’re my best friend, but I was in a right mood today. You snapped at me something horrible about those phone messages…’

  ‘Oh, that…’ I begin, but she shushes me.

  And then she tells me her story.

  ‘I admit that I was in high dudgeon. I refused to come out for supper with you and everyone. I could see all your lights on. I watched from my attic window and I knew you’d all be having a lovely time over here. That made me even crosser! So what I did, dressed like this, like an old tramp in my indoors clothes, I went and flung myself out of the house. I went stomping off, absolutely fuming, into the street just as dusk was settling over the harbour.

  ‘I went for a long walk. It’s what I always do when I get into an awful cross mood. Ever since I was a little girl, living in that same house with a whole host of my clacking aunties. I used to escape from their well-meaning fussing by taking off on moody perambulations through the countryside. Across the harbour and up the hill. Out of town. The clifftops and winding roads that lead to Robin Hood’s Bay.

  ‘I walked and walked as the sun sank lower and the grassy fields turned muggy and dark. The ground went the colour of gingerbread, seaweed and Yorkshire puddings. The bracken looked burned and black against the lowering skies. All the clouds looked like boil-washed smalls – somewhat grey and over-used.

  ‘I walked along the rutted track beside the hilly country road.

  ‘Truth was, by now I was feeling a fool. Even more of a fool. And I knew I was in a huff simply because I’d been stupid not to check my messages. I was ashamed.

  ‘I walked and ignored the few cars that came swishing by on their way to Whitby. Only when their over-bright halogen lights started hurting my eyes did I realise how dark it had become, and how far I had walked. I sighed and thought about turning back.

  ‘Now the sea mist was creeping in, across the fields and cliffs, and I was shivering and wishing I was sitting here with you and all our friends. I would have to walk all the way back home. No chance of a taxi happening by…

  ‘Then I blinked in astonishment.

  ‘Just as I turned around a long, sleek, luxurious car whispered to a standstill behind me. I froze and gasped, studying its dark windows and its beautiful silver finish.

  ‘The limousine had crept up on me, it seemed. I hadn’t even known it was there, until it was right on my heels. At first I thought it was one of those extra-long, horribly vulgar vehicles used for hen parties and the like. The back of it would be filled with drunken
revellers, off to the bright lights of Whitby for a night of drunken capers. It would go zooming past, and I would be propelled into a ditch and everyone inside would roar with laughter.

  ‘But, no… it wasn’t one of those vulgar limousines.

  ‘It was… different.

  ‘It was the Limbosine. The word popped into my head. Suddenly I knew what this was. There was a mystery to this, wasn’t there? But none of us have had firsthand experience of the enigmatic vehicle. Yet here it was. As if it had been waiting until I was bloody well alone, stomping up a dark country lane, undefended and not quite in my right mind.

  ‘I stared at it in fascination. I felt a bit like a small, startled creature, transfixed by a cobra’s stare. I was prey, there was no doubt about it.

  ‘That was when the Limbosine pounced.

  ‘The rear door closest to me opened smoothly of its own accord.

  ‘Inside it was warm and dimly-lit. A whiff of expensive upholstery came to me, along with some kind of manly cologne. A whisper of soothing Chopin reached my ears. A male voice – real? Imagined? – spoke to me. ‘Your carriage, madam.’

  ‘And, do you know what? I didn’t hesitate. I like to think of myself as shrewder than this. Less susceptible to this kind of thing. But I never even turned a hair, nor stopped to consider the consequences. I jumped aboard that Limbosine and the door slammed shut on my weary heels. Sealing me in.

  ‘Off it swished, like a shark, into the darkening night, taking me away from Whitby – I thought – and all who know me.

  ‘That fella in there, he was wearing a proper gold-braided chauffeur’s cap and everything, I noted. I appreciate those kinds of details, and that degree of formality. I like uniforms and being called Madam and so on. Now I was relaxing in the dimly-lit recesses of the Limbosine and thinking that it was marvellous. I glanced out of the windows to see where we were heading, but I couldn’t even tell anymore. It looked murky and greyish outside, through the smokily tinted windows. In fact, I found that I didn’t even care where the magical car was bearing me away to.