[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

  Her voice is very raspy, when she speaks.

  ‘You took your time, didn’t you?’

  ‘Forgive me, aunt. It took so long to find her, and to set up the optimum conditions for your revivification…’

  The Egyptian Queen waves aside his protestations. ‘Never mind all that. I arise once more..! That’s the important thing! I feel the life force surging within me!’

  ‘You are eternal now! You will live by my side forever..!’

  ‘Yes, Marius, dear. Your aunt is with you again. You have done very well. What is this place?’

  ‘It’s the secret base beneath my new tea rooms in Whitby.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ says the ghastly revenant. ‘I came here once for a weekend with your uncle. Many years ago…’

  ‘I have done everything that I promised. I brought you Brenda… This half-alive monstrosity on the slab here before you…’

  Hang on a moment, I think…! But I am too weak to budge an inch or say anything in protest.

  ‘Ahh,’ says the snooty cadaver, and all at once she sits up. ‘Brenda! You thwarted my plans all that time ago. All those decades ago when I tried for the first time to make myself into an Egyptian goddess and take over the world.’

  ‘Not this time, aunt Poppy! She won’t get in our way this time!’

  Suddenly Effie is on her feet.

  ‘Well, now, look here,’ she shouts, in her bravest voice. ‘I don’t know everything that went on in the past, but what I do know is that this time is different! This time I’m here!’

  ‘Get out of the way, you silly old fool. Guards! Mummies! Take hold of her!’

  But Effie is adept at giving the lumbering masseurs the slip.

  ‘Who is this woman?’ cries Aunt Polly at the top of her voice.

  Effie is at work on the many tubes through which my life force is being drained. She’s yanking on them and I’m not so sure that’s a good idea… as they come loose and start spraying horrid ichor about the place… and my poor tortured form starts thrashing about on the slab…

  ‘Stop her!’

  ‘Kill her at once!’ shrieks the would-be Egyptian goddess.

  ‘Come here, you..!’

  Marius himself grasps hold of Effie, who wriggles, pinioned in his powerful arms. He commands his mummies to fix the damage she has done.

  ‘You stupid old woman. You have endangered the life of your friend as well as my aunt…’

  In my weird delirium, this scene is distorted and macabre… Everyone seems to be covered in my blood… my consciousness is fading… and then the horrible laughter of the woman once known as Poppy rings out in the underground massage parlour…

  ‘I am reaching my apotheosis!’ she cries. ‘And here, in Whitby, the historical location of the infernal Bitch’s Maw… I will have access to unlimited power! I stand at the manifold gateways to countless dimensions…!’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Just as you foretold! Drink! Drink, Aunt Poppy! Drain this monstrous female of all her diabolical juices!’

  Naturally, since things aren’t going too well at this point, I’m starting to wonder if my end isn’t in fact nigh.

  ‘Hahahahaha!’ howls the Egyptian princess, swaying atop her casket. ‘Behold my apotheosis!’

  ‘You will rule forever via the Gateway to Hell!’

  But there is one person we have all forgotten about.

  Marius’s forgotten lady-friend who has been cowering on the floor of the subterranean den for some time, is astonished out of her wits.

  But now Sheila Manchu is coming to her senses. She is shivering in horror, clutching her peach-coloured negligee and her flimsy dressing gown about herself. She’s coming to the rapid conclusion that her fancy man Marius isn’t quite the reliable fellow he has presented himself as.

  Sheila Manchu sees what he has done, and realizes that her true loyalties must lie with her two fellow Whitby residents. Myself and Effie, who are so close to pegging out at that precise moment.

  Sheila gathers herself up and casts about wildly for inspiration. She has to do something. She has to stop these awful people.

  ‘Don’t worry, Brenda and Effie…’ she gasps. ‘I’ll save you…’

  ‘Come to me, Aunt. Step out of your casket! Leave your tomb behind once and for all!’

  Sheila is a quick-thinker. She knows that desiccated and revived corpses fear one thing above all else. And, to that end, she rips into a boxload of tea room supplies that she finds in the corner of the room.

  Doillies! Hundreds and thousands of paper lace doilies! Quickly, with trembling hands, she opens the supplies and whips out her cigarette lighter…

  Marius Keyes is the first to sniff the smoke…

  ‘No! What are you doing? You foolish woman…!’

  The doilies catch light astonishingly quickly…

  ‘Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Marius!’ shouts Sheila Manchu. ‘You were just using me, weren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I was, you blousy old cow! But that doesn’t mean you have to set my massage parlour and tea rooms ablaze!’

  ‘Nooooooooo!’ howls the would-be Princess Ayotep. ‘The flames! The flames! Keep them away from me!’

  The brainless mummies stop what they’re doing at once – ie, guarding Effie and I – and hurry to swat out the fire. The flames leap at them – catching at the musty cloth and their flammable preservatives.

  ‘My god…! No…!’

  But it’s much too late. The place is filled with choking fumes and burning mummies…

  ‘Keep away from me…!’ wails the woman who was once Marius’s aunt as she thrashes atop her casket. But now the flames reach out to her and a tremendous sizzling fills the choking air…

  Effie shrieks in my ear, ‘Brenda…! We have to go! We have to get out of here. Right now!’

  Then I am being hoisted from the slab and the lurid, deadly scene tilts and swirls all about me. I am aware of Effie taking one of my arms and Sheila the other and we lurch towards the stairs in the corner of the cellar.

  The cellar is filled with the screams of the long dead…

  ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! You cannot die!’

  ‘Marius – you have to come with us. You’ll die if you stay here!’

  ‘Get away from me. You devil woman! All three of you! You’re monsters!’

  ‘Leave him,’ snarls Sheila. ‘We’ve got to save ourselves.’

  The last I see of Marius Keyes before the smoke blots everything out is him standing before the blazing wreckage of his aunt’s casket. He flings himself into it, soundlessly, determined to share her fate.

  And then Effie, Sheila and I are struggling for our lives and hurrying as fast as we can go to the exit.

  Until we’re outside.

  The night air is cool and fresh and impossible as we burst out of the cellar’s concealed entrance outside the conservatory of Tipple.

  We topple across the gravel and get as far away as we can…

  WHUMMMPP goes the explosion behind us.

  The aftershock knocks all three of us off our feet.

  We lie there, deafened, in each other’s arms.

  Then we turn back to see the fire raging throughout the fancy new tea rooms.

  The place is one big cleansing inferno.

  ‘Sheila,’ gasps Effie. ‘What have you done?’

  But Sheila’s face is set in a grim expression. ‘They needed to be stopped. She was reaching her apotheosis, she said. That didn’t sound good. And I didn’t like all that talk of a gateway into hell…’

  ‘Me neither,’ I agree, and realise that I’m bleeding still, from where those wires and things were sticking into me.

  Effie says something about getting me to A&E but I bark out in protest. No way. I’m not letting anyone else poke about, looking at my workings. I just need to get home. To my attic. I can tend to my wounds myself.

  ‘All right,’ agrees Effie.

  The first sirens can be heard. No wonder. The conflagration must be
visible from miles away.

  ‘Who’d have thought doilies could be quite so deadly and effective?’ Sheila gasps. Then she says, ‘Let’s scoot before anyone official arrives. Then we won’t have to answer any awkward questions…’

  She’s already going, galumphing away across the dancing shadows of the lawn. She’s got a great instinct for self-preservation.

  So have Effie and I.

  ‘Marius Keyes’ secrets will die with him,’ Effie says. ‘And his infernal Aunty will trouble the world no more.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ I say, as we lumber heavily through the park, away from the flames and towards Harbour Street. ‘Come on, Effie. Shall we revive ourselves with a pot of Spicy chai?’

  She pulls a face. ‘I think I’m off tea for a little while, ducky.’

  Brenda has Risen from the Grave

  I’ve tried telling her.

  Honestly, Effie. Listen, will you? No, the Elephant Man didn’t have a trunk and huge big ears. He just didn’t.

  But will she listen?

  NO. She’ll never listen when you try to talk sense. I’ve known Effie Jacobs for nearly two months now and sometimes there’s no reasoning with the woman.

  And this is one of those times.

  You see, Effie has had her head turned. She even tells me – when we’re having coffee and cake this afternoon – that she suspects she might even be in love.

  ‘You’ve only known him a week!’ I gasp, catching my breath on a fragment of hot, buttered tea cake.

  ‘That’s how it goes sometimes, ducky. I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of amour.’

  Usually you’d be hard-pressed finding a more cynical old woman. She can’t stand anything sentimental. She reads Romantic novels only so that she can laugh at them and pour scorn on the hopes and dreams of the rest of humanity. Or so she says.

  And now look! After only one week of knowing Keith she’s gone head over heels.

  I’ve only met him once. It was yesterday evening. Effie’s been keen to get my opinion. She’s been raving about him ever since Monday. That night she was at a special fitness class at the Christmas Hotel – Gumba or something. It’s for ladies and gentlemen of a certain age. Well, I’d told her no, thanks, I’m not about to don a leotard in public and go throwing myself about in a chockablock ballroom, which is where, apparently, it all goes on. I know my limits.

  Anyhow, that’s where she met Keith the latterday Elephant Man. He took her for fancy cocktails afterwards at a swanky new place on the sea front. They had a number of Mojitos as they sat there in their tracksuits, sweaty as anything. They quenched their thirsts and ate each other up with their eyes, she says. When I heard about this I was astonished.

  ‘Erm, why do they call him the Elephant Man?’ I ask her, dreading some saucy kind of answer. I brace myself for smut. I’m asking this as the two of us ascend the 199 steps below St Mary’s church. We’re on our way to meet him.

  ‘You’ll see why. But you mustn’t flinch or react at all, Brenda. You see, he has a slight – what d’you call it? – facial disfigurement. He’s quite self-conscious, so you mustn’t make it worse for him.’

  How could I make it worse? How can she think I’d be so tactless? Here’s me with all my scars and my own bodily oddity that I feel so self-conscious about and try to conceal from the world. How could I ever react in an untoward fashion to some else’s peculiar looks?

  Mind, it is a bit of a shock, when he opens the door of his caravan and reveals himself in all his glory.

  The fact that he has an actual elephant’s trunk and huge flapping ears does give me pause for thought. On the bright side, at least I have an answer to my question about where his nickname comes from.

  He wears a scarlet dressing gown and over its silken folds hangs his pendulous trunk – which is prehensile, too! As he mixes the three of us vodka and tonics his trunk is gently prising ice cubes out of the plastic tray and dunking them into our tumblers. I can’t help staring and Effie nudges me.

  ‘It’s such an honour to meet you, Brenda. I’ve heard about all the adventures you and my new girlfriend have been having.’

  ‘Really? I hope she hasn’t told you too much…!’

  ‘Oh, we don’t have any secrets from each other,’ Effie sighs. ‘I already feel like I’ve known Keith all my life.’

  Now, this is serious, I realise. Both Effie and I have secrets neither of us want broadcasting. It won’t do if Effie gets slapdash while she’s in the throes of love.

  The caravan is very modern, just as Effie bragged it was. But it’s not very spacious. Squeezed into the corner of Keith’s breakfast banquette I can feel the beginnings of claustrophobia coming on.

  Effie’s practically sitting on his knee, which I find embarrassing. As his great big ears flap the two of them look happy as anything. Perhaps I should stop being so mean-spirited. Why do I have to doubt the truth of their love?

  Then Keith is telling us all about his fascinating life and times. How he’s spent most of his life on the road, travelling round the world in a series of mobile homes.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen some really amazing places. The world has such variety, you know. So many wonderful things to see. You get so blinkered and small, living in just one place.’

  ‘It must be wonderful,’ says a doleful Effie, cradling her glass. ‘I’ve been nowhere. In all my life I’ve only lived here in this tiny town that hardly ever changes. In the house where my aunties brought me up. I’ve never known any excitement whatsoever.’

  I raise both eyebrows at this. No excitement at all? Isn’t she forgetting the hair-raising excitements of recent weeks? I suppose nothing is any cop compared with the excitements that the globe-trotting Keith and his prehensile trunk can offer.

  Now Keith is talking about his illustrious lineage and the terrible things his forebears suffered as a result of their genetic legacy. ‘They all had the same, erm, features,’ Effie explains.

  ‘One time I’ll show you my family album. The earliest recorded member of my family was the famous John Merrick, who had such a terrible life as part of a travelling freak show. His travelling wasn’t a matter of fancy and whim like mine is. He was a prisoner of his own deformities and he was treated abysmally in that ignorant age.’

  Effie cries out, ‘Just think, Brenda! A relative of John Merrick, the Elephant Man, himself! I’m going out with one of his actual descendants!’

  ‘He was my great, great uncle.’

  Keith gives a mournfully jubilant toot on his trunk. And the evening continues in this vein, with us crammed into that caravan, listening to Effie’s new beau blowing his own trumpet. Honestly, he doesn’t really seem to have any real interest in either Effie or me. I needn’t be bothered about Effie airing our secrets. Keith is only interested in his own self.

  At midnight I decide that it’s time I went. We’ve had a few vodkas by then and a whole box of French Fancies. Effie holds them out one at a time for Keith to tenderly take in his trunk. I’m woozy and looking forward to a brisk walk home across the harbour. ‘Coming with me, Effie?’

  She jumps up and starts fastening up her mac. She has already told me that she and Keith have stopped short of becoming ‘physically intimate’, as she puts it. She has revealed to me however that she is powerfully attracted to him despite his deformities. And you can tell.

  We bid him farewell and he waves from the doorway of his caravan. It’s parked in the long grass, rather close to the ruined abbey. Our way home takes us through the rather frightening graveyard, where we are soon knee-deep in sea mist. I dearly hope there’s no dog muck about because we can’t see the ground at all.

  Effie is keen to know what I think of him. I manage to answer in general terms and don’t mention his awful boastfulness. As we descend the 199 steps I foolishly mention something that’s been bothering me. As soon as it’s out I’m regretting it. ‘You do know, don’t you, Effie, that the Elephant Man was a poor fella with a horrible condition? He didn’t just look
like an elephant, like your Keith does.’

  We are passing under a Victorian gas lamp just as I say this, and Effie’s furious expression is illuminated for me.

  ‘How dare you, Brenda? How could you be so awful? How could you deny Keith his birthright? How could you doubt his word for one second?’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘The thing is, the original Joseph Merrick looked nothing like your Keith. You see, I happened to know him personally.’

  My words are out before I know it and Effie looks at me like I’m completely crazy. In that instant, I feel it, too. Did I know Joseph Merrick? Where did that memory come from? It has risen from the darkest, murkiest depths of my memory.

  ‘Brenda, what are you on about? How can that be true?’

  ‘I-I don’t know,’ I stammer, and then the two of us concentrate on trotting down the rest of the steps, careful not to trip after all the vodka and excitement.

  At the bottom on Church Street, under the smoky light of another lamp, Effie surprises me with a bold question:

  ‘Just how old are you, Brenda? And how many different lives have you lived?’

  Later that night I’m having one of my strange flashbacks. I’m heating some milk and while I project myself on the astral plane the pan boils over and the attic is suffused by an acrid stench. But the whole house could be in flames and I’d be none the wiser. For I am standing there like a lemon and my mind is elsewhere.

  I am in old London town, where it’s foggy and stinky and slimy underfoot. This is where I used to eke out my days living in a dreadful warren of back allies. I was a seamstress, wasn’t I? The hands I had then were so nimble and skilled. I lived in Limehouse, where I had a miserable existence for a few years. No wonder I’ve blocked it all out of my memory.

  But what’s this I see before me? A boy on the corner with a pile of newspapers shouting out the headlines:

  ‘London Monster Throttles Victim Number Nine!’

  A horrid chill runs through me. I remember now how we all lived in fear of that killer. I forget when he first became known as The London Monster. Maybe after the third body was found. She turned up on the filthy embankment, tossed there like an old rag. She was a respectable girl. An employee of the pie shop, only four doors down from the rooming house where I slept and spent my days running stitches through fraying garments. I had bought a hot pie or two from her myself and I did feel queasy at the thought of her demise.