[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

  ‘I am,’ I shake her hand. She flinches at my grip.

  ‘You’ll be wanting someone to show you around the place,’ she says.

  ‘Not especially,’ say I, preparing to go.

  ‘Oh, you will,’ she says. ‘It can be a funny old place, can Whitby. Hard to get the hang of.’

  I tell her – a tad brusquely – that I’m sure I will manage. Then I leave her gawping after me and I hurry in the direction of the shops.

  So I’m setting about my cleaning regime; making my Guest House spick and span. Now that I’m going into business I feel very determined about it all. I am intent on having the finest establishment in Whitby.

  As I go about my business in these early days, however, I keep seeing Effie from next door wherever I go. I’ll be carrying my shopping bags home and she’ll come dashing up. I’ll be supping a restorative cuppa in a little café and she’ll come hurtling in, trying to engage me in idle conversation. And then one day we arrive at our front doors simultaneously. I am returning from the green grocer’s and Effie is manhandling what is obviously a large picture in a frame through the doorway of her antiques emporium.

  She notices me pausing to watch and she calls out: ‘You couldn’t lend a hand, could you, Brenda? I’ve carried this thing across town and I’m out of puff. You’ve got the muscles for it more than I have.’

  I don’t say anything. I simply put my bags down beside my front door and go to help the gawky old mare. I do most of the work getting the thing through the door and into the cavernous, cluttered shop. The frame is surprisingly heavy and I wonder how she even got it this far.

  ‘It’s from the auction rooms across the other side of the harbour,’ she explains. ‘Soon as I saw this, I knew I had to have it. Here, pop it on the floor. Marvellous, Brenda. You’re as strong as an ox, aren’t you, ducky? Come on through to the kitchen and I’ll make you a frothy coffee.’

  Next thing I know I’m on a stool beside a breakfast bar stacked with dirty crockery and littered with burned bits of toast. Effie is telling me all about her latest acquisition. ‘You know, sometimes, when a piece just cries out to you, and you simply have to have it? Oh, not only pictures. Ornaments, gee-gaws and objets d’art of all kinds. I often hear them crying out to me and wanting me to take them home. I’m quite loathe to part company and that’s why this place is overstocked.’

  It certainly is. I’ve never been in such a cramped and uncomfortable shop. I count myself lucky at my relatively unencumbered life. I have very few wants and hardly any clutter to hold me down. Just a few treasured mementos that I’ve kept down the years. Nothing like this almighty treasure trove of Effie’s. I’m assuming it is treasure, mind. It might simply be a load of old tat.

  Next thing, Effie is passing me a mug of instant coffee with powdered milk and beckoning me to watch as she ceremonially rips the brown paper off her painting. I stand back to admire the masterpiece as she reveals it.

  It takes a few moments to make sense to me and, when it does, I’m not sure whether I like it at all. It’s a gloomy midnight scene, all swirling purples and greens. Silhouetted in the creamy moonlight is a man atop a giant stallion. There’s a scantily clad lady looking distraught and clutching his shoulders. The foreground is worse. There’s a creepy-faced child in a nightgown. A single tear rolls down its cheek. A malicious-looking cat stares out from behind the child’s rickety legs. All in all, the painting is – I think – a monstrosity. I wouldn’t give it house room lest it give me nightmares. However, there’s no accounting for taste.

  Effie is beaming at this sepulchral travesty and saying to me, ‘Isn’t it a marvel, Brenda? Now, would you mind helping me to lug it upstairs to my sitting room?’

  By the time Effie’s painting is up I’m worn ragged and regretting stopping in the street to talk to her. Every limb is shaking with over-exertion and my poor old heart is banging like billy-o. I make my excuses and go back to my home, where my groceries are still waiting in the side passage for me.

  I pass the evening quietly alone, listening to the wireless and having a glass or two of sherry. Well, here I am – and my B&B is almost ready for business. I’ve a phone line and I’m having some little cards printed up. I’ve taken out a modest advert in the local paper, The Willing Spirit and now I am ready for the hordes to descend.

  I have just four rooms, all en suite, and each of them furnished plainly but immaculately. There are three further bedrooms still unfinished and ready to convert at a later date. Already I feel like the queen of an almighty empire. I fall asleep in my sumptuous attic room feeling very pleased with myself. Though I have rather troubled dreams concerning handsome men astride stallions. Plus, I find myself haunted by that whey-faced child and its raggedly-looking cat. Actually, I can even hear something like a cat’s plaintive mewing. A horrible racket, like fraying strings on an ancient violin.

  I awake cursing my next door neighbour and her painting as the source of my horrid dreams and I lie awake muzzily, realising that I can still hear that screechy music in the night. It is coming from above me, I am sure. My bedroom is at the very top of my building. There isn’t even storage space between me and the dark sky. Just a skylight and hundreds of slate tiles. But still I can hear that shrill song. Now it even sounds as if it’s taunting me:

  La, la, la, la, lah…!

  It is accompanied by little footfalls. I imagine velvety footpads dancing on cold slate and lead. The occasional scratching of sharp claws. Am I going out of my mind? Next thing I know I am standing on the blanket box, shoving open the skylight and poking my head and shoulders out into the night. It is the very early hours and, for a moment as I perch there, looking at all the rooftops, I can hear nothing at all. I am relieved and ready to dismiss the noise as just the dregs of my dream. But then it comes again:

  La, la, la…

  That high, haunting noise. In that same moment I see who is singing and tip-tapping on my rooftop.

  It is a cat. More or less like the one in my dream. It is padding expertly over the apex of my roof on its hind legs and gazing at me speculatively. The queerest thing of all about this cat is that it is glowing. This isn’t some trick of the moonlight. The cat is glowing like it has gone radioactive. It’s like a willow-the-wisp, blinking its green eyes at me and they are like fog lamps, beaming at me as it brings its song to a ghastly climax. Then it gives a nimble hop, skip and a jump and it is gone. Scampering off down the drainpipes and fire escapes to who knows where.

  I clamber awkwardly back into my bedroom and shut the skylight firmly behind me. I don’t want that tone-deaf beastie landing on me claws-first during what remains of the night.

  I lie awake mulling it over. Of course, in my long life, I have had far worse supernatural visitations. This one has unnerved me, not because I’m not used to such things, but because I thought I’d seen the last of such mysterious, netherworld creatures. Well, hard cheese, Brenda. Now you’re being haunted by a singing cat.

  The next day – and I really want to wriggle out of this – Effie announces her intention to thank me for my help with her ugly painting by taking me out to lunch. I try to tell her it’s quite unnecessary but the spiky old lady won’t listen. I don’t want to hurt her feelings so I go with her to Cod Almighty, a fish and chip restaurant on the other side of the harbour, in the older part of town.

  Actually, I’m rather partial to battered cod. Effie is scandalised to hear I haven’t yet indulged myself in one of the town’s most famous specialities. She announces to all the waitresses that I am a fish supper virgin.

  It is all – I must admit – sizzingly delectable. The fish itself is melt-in-your-mouth good. We follow it down with Effie’s suggestion of a crème-de-menthe knickerbocker glory each. It’s while I’m spooning up acid green ice cream that I tell her about last night’s spooky visitation. Somehow I can’t help letting the luminous cat out of the bag.

  I didn’t reckon on such a dramatic reaction. Her spoon clinks down on the melamine table and
she stares at me.

  ‘The Crispy Cat!’ gasps Effie. She’s turned white as the flaky cod.

  ‘You what?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s a legend in these parts,’ she says. ‘A ghostly moggy that patrols the rooftops and alleyways of Whitby by night.’ Suddenly she looks horribly alarmed. ‘Did you read about the mauling that happened last night?’

  ‘A mauling?’

  ‘An old dear who works in the woolshop. Audrey Beardsley. She was going home very late from Bingo Night at the Christmas Hotel. She was attacked in a gloomy ginnel and was found with a mauled leg. Some beast had chewed right through her support stocking before she managed to beat him off. I assumed it was just some maniac… But now…!’

  I hold up a hand to stop her flow of chatter. ‘What do you mean – mauled?’

  ‘She was chewed almost to bits. Last night. Don’t you listen to the local news?’ Effie sniffily picks up her long-handled spoon. The grisliness of her tale hasn’t put her off dessert.

  ‘This cat I saw last night… It was singing and glowing…’

  ‘The Crispy Cat,’ she says. ‘First time in years it’s been seen. Nasty, spectral, vicious thing. But it all makes sense, you see. It’s come back to plague the town – and it wasn’t just a random pervert biting Audrey from the wool shop after all.’

  Effie pays up and asks if I’d like to take a stroll through the old town. We can go as far as the 199 steps that lead up to the church and the abbey at the top of the town if we like, in order to walk off our calorific excesses. If I feel up to it we could have a look at the view from St Mary’s churchyard. Well, that’s a vista I haven’t experienced yet and so I agree readily, quite determined to make it up the winding stone steps less out of puff than my shrewish companion.

  Soon we’re at the top and both short of breath. The view of the harbour is well worth it, however. We sit on a bench between the slanting gravestones and Effie points out various landmarks, such as the hotels on the Western Cliff and the location of our very own street, near the harbour front. I can even see my own roof and attic skylight, from which I watched that singing cat.

  Then Effie is saying, ‘I couldn’t tell you the full legend while we were still ensconced on our banquette. I had to get us away from Cod Almighty before I could tell you the tale of the Crispy Cat.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I say, wondering how much I could ever believe of this gossiping besom’s stories.

  ‘It’s over eighty years ago, but back then there were only two fish shops in Whitby and they were deadly rivals, vying for supremacy. Cod Almighty and its opposite number across the bay, Assault and Battery. Now, things escalated nastily one long, hot summer. There were dirty tricks played by both sides in the war of the fish suppers. They were both owned at the time by unscrupulous ne’er-do-wells – both, thank goodness, long gone. And what they used to do, you see, Brenda, is try to sabotage each other’s business. They’d put about evil rumours concerning the freshness of the other’s supplies – and their provenance. It all became rather nefarious.

  ‘And now I come to the worst part of the story,’ says Effie. ‘Legend has it that the owner of Cod Almighty paid some heavies to march into Assault and Battery one evening during its busiest time. They barged to the front of the takeaway queue and took a dead cat out of a bin bag. Then they dropped it into the deep fat fryer. Contaminating the oil, you see. Contaminating everything. It certainly put everyone off visiting Assault and Battery ever again – even after it closed for a week’s fumigating. The place never quite recovered from this awful sabotage and since then Cod Almighty has reigned supreme over the bay. Well, what do you think of that then?’

  ‘It’s a horrible story,’ I tell her. ‘Is it just a local legend or is it true?’

  ‘Every word is true,’ she says proudly. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. My Aunt Maud was there in that queue, and she was put right off her supper by what she saw that night. She couldn’t face anything battered for months after that. Not a sausage.’

  I try to steer her back to the point. ‘And what about the singing cat on my roof?’

  She lowers her voice, though there’s no one in the graveyard to hear her. ‘Word has it that the batter-covered, glowing ghost of that poor luckless feline is doomed to wander Whitby forever. Attacking folk and mauling them to death when it gets the chance. No one has heard it or caught sight of it or been savaged by it for years. You’ve been fortunate to clap eyes on the monster and get away unscathed…’

  That night the glowing cat appears to me again. I wake with a start just after two a.m. and I can hear that ululating pussy once more.

  La, la, la, la…!

  I shake myself awake and reach for my wig. I don’t even have to switch on my reading light. I look at the window and there’s the cat. Its phosphorescent paws are pressed up against the glass.

  It doesn’t look like it’s covered in fish batter. But it does look very much like a cat who’s come back from the dead.

  Curiously, I’m not at all scared. Even though Effie swears blind the beast is deadly. There is a sadness about its green eyes. I’m mesmerised. Next thing I know, I’m across the room and throwing open the sash window. He hops lightly off the sill into my bedroom. He perches heavily at the end of my continental quilt.

  ‘You’d better get back into bed. It’s a chilly night and I’ve a tale to tell…’

  Funny that I don’t baulk for a moment at the way it addresses me. He has a high, quavering tone, much like his singing voice. I clamber back beneath my duvet, feeling his considerable weight on top of my shins. Some phantom!

  ‘It’s a tale about how I lost my ninth life, here in this very street. Harbour Street. So many years ago. We’re talking about the 1930s now. And back in those days I was called Harold. I was the only male personage allowed to spend any time at all in that tall house where Effie’s aunties used to live.’

  ‘Oh! You belonged to Effie’s family?’

  ‘Her witchy brood. Her wicked gaggle of female cousins. The eldest, Maud, with her rock hard bosom and her twitchy fingers. And the beautiful Natasha, clever Eliza, brave Beryl and the youngest and most beguiling, Angela.’

  ‘Were they really witches?’

  ‘I was their familiar! Oh yes. I saw everything that went on behind the respectable façade of their herbalist and green grocer’s shop. I saw their rituals and potion-brewing and the setting of their hexes. I saw them dance naked at midnight around the ruins of the Abbey. They said they were warding off nasty spirits and the Nazis, but I reckon they were doing it for kicks. They were naughty girls.’

  ‘I see. Erm, why are you telling me all of this, Harold?’

  ‘I have come back to this decrepit town because I have been sent on a mission. It’s all to do with Effie. Your new best friend.’

  ‘Oh, now. She’s not my best friend. I barely know the woman and, I must confess, I find her abrasive and peculiar.’ Maybe dangerous, too, I think to myself, if she really does come from a line of Whitby witches. It’s all this supernatural gubbins that I’m trying to avoid these days. Just remember that, Brenda!

  ‘Nevertheless. I am a long-lived and clever old cat and I can see a little way into the future. I can see into the reasons for things and I happen to know that you and Effie are going to be very important figures in each other’s lives. Why, I would say that it is destined to be.’

  I pull a face and let this pass. Since I don’t want to sit up all night with a flaming cat I tell him to go on with his story.

  ‘As I said, Angela was the youngest and most beguiling witch in that house. She had all this scarlet hair and emerald eyes. No wonder she attracted the attention of the dark demon lord when he came riding by one day, across the cliff tops on his stallion…’

  ‘Hold it. Demon lord?’

  ‘That is how he styled himself. What can I say? He claimed – very earnestly – to come from the Land of Faerie, in the far north. He was the Erl King.’

  ‘Goodness!’

&
nbsp; ‘He came riding up to the sisters and he cut a very impressive figure indeed. His eyes and those of his mount blazed a hungry scarlet. And the witchy sisters were dressed in their raggiest garments, carrying panniers of herbs and wildflowers they’d spent the day gathering in the meadows above Robin Hood’s Bay. They were stopped in their tracks by this demon rider and he peered into each of their faces. He decided Angela was the one he wanted.’

  ‘Just like that? Like he was shopping? Or picking flowers and herbs for himself?’

  ‘So it goes for Demon Kings. He was known far and wide for simply making off with those young’uns who caught his eye.’

  The Erl King, eh? I wonder. I have heard of this mythical figure, of course. But why on Earth would he come looking for possible romantic interest in an obscure seaside town such as this? Does Harold the luminous cat truly expect me to believe his tale? He pauses to brush his moustache and round one ear with a languid paw.

  ‘She refused him, naturally. She was terrified. Her sisters took her home and shielded her inside the tall, dark house. The eldest, Maud, took charge. They barricaded their doors against the Demon Lord. Time went by and it was Christmas and snowy and each morning brought new gifts which he laid on their doorstep.’

  ‘Peppermints, lilies, a music box – and fish pulled from the deepest reaches of the seas. (Nasty-looking fish that were soon tossed my way. I wasn’t complaining.) He even brought her a walking, talking, mechanical doll dressed in ermine and called Mrs Claus. She sang Angela songs about how much the Erl King loved her. And, of course, before that festive season was over, Angela found herself enchanted. Ah, isn’t it always so? She succumbed to his blandishments and his fancy goods.’

  ‘She didn’t?’

  ‘She did. And her sisters were absolutely wild with fury.’

  ‘I bet they were.’

  ‘This is where my story turns tragic. For me, at least.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The witchy sisters defied the Demon King. They stayed locked indoors with his beloved. On Boxing Day, when a snow storm was looming over the horizon he came thundering up to their front doorstep. He proclaimed he was going to steal their youngest sister away. He knew that she loved him as much as he did her and their destiny lay in his faraway Faerie Realm, the portal to which lay somewhere north of Newcastle on a windswept Roman road. Maud and the others all stood firm. He will not take her! Over their dead bodies!