[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

‘I knew you were real!’ I cry. ‘So it wasn’t just a dream?’ The duck shakes his head and clacks his beak impatiently. ‘Of course I’m real. You’re Brenda, right?’

  I nod, marvelling at his beauty. His fire-hued feathers are shining and beautiful. His eyes, now I look, are a deep and fabulous gold. He’s a creature out of legend and he’s decided to manifest himself here in my tiny kitchen. ‘But why are you here?’ I ask. I hug myself. I’m shivering with pleasure but also because my new polyester nightie is somewhat – I realise it now – too thin.

  Are we going to take to the skies again? Should I get the new bathmats out?

  But the magic duck makes no mention of flying carpets. He just looks me up and down and coughs grandly, announcing: ‘You have been granted three wishes, Brenda, dear. You must use them wisely. And you mustn’t muck it up.’

  I simply boggle at him, for I can hardly believe my luck.

  Of course, I don’t rush in and start using them right away. I know enough about the old stories and myths not to be too rash. This needs thinking about carefully and with great consideration. I tell the magic Toilet Duck that I am extremely grateful, and I hope that he will allow me to sleep on the matter and make my wishes in due course.

  ‘Naturally,’ he agrees, and starts waddling back towards the green plastic bottle that is apparently his home. He ruffles his feathers and yawns, declaring himself too worn out just now anyway to be granting anyone’s wishes at this time of night. ‘Till we meet again, Brenda, dear,’ he squawks, and vanishes in a sudden rush of jade green smoke.

  I’m sat there looking at a Toilet Duck and an incense burner and other, sundry, less magical items from the Pound Shop, hardly daring to breathe.

  With all the world to wish for, what should I choose?

  Just what is it I want more than anything?

  The next day, I don’t know if it’s my imagination or what, but Effie seems subdued to me. Almost shifty perhaps. When she looks directly at me it’s as if there’s something on the tip of her tongue she wants to tell me, but then she changes her mind.

  We catch the bus that rolls along the coastal road, right beside the cliff edge and we head out of town. We’re such old friends now that we hardly need to exchange a word, but all the same, I know there’s something troubling her.

  It’s a lovely journey, I must say. The roads are narrow and the bends are tight and there are some stomach jolting rises and plummets up and down the verdantly wooded hills. We roll through the fishing town of Staithes and then advance northwards a little further until we arrive at the Victorian spa town of Sandsend. Here there are hotels similar to the ones we have in Whitby, but they are fewer in number and even closer to the cliff edge and it feels somehow as if the whole town might suddenly be pitched into the sea. Everything is very steep and, on a stormy day like today is turning out to be, the place can make you feel a bit queasy.

  I’ll tell you what else can make me feel queasy – and that’s the terribly vertiginous railway track belonging to the Sandsend Funicular. It’s not very long, just a couple of hundred yards, but it rises straight from the beach far below up to the level of the hotels on the cliff edge. It’s a feat of Victorian engineering that is extremely impressive when you think about it, but usually I’m too busy feeling vomitous to marvel much. Strange, I know, for a woman who dreams of flying through the night air on magic rag rugs, to be scared of travelling on a Funicular that has been bolted safely in place for over a hundred years, but there you go. I never said my fears were rational, did I?

  Effie is businesslike, professional. She straightens her jacket and cape and sets her trim little hat to a determined angle. We are here to make an investigation.

  ‘Could you explain the nature of these occurrences to us?’

  A matter of minutes later we are sitting in the tiny office of the conductor of the Funicular. He’s a swarthy-looking fellow from South Shields, wearing sunglasses and seeming ill at ease as he makes us a brew. His office is cluttered and bordering on the claustrophobic, what with his gas fire switched to full. All the walls are covered with signed photos of all the celebrities of the past 150 years who have mounted the cliff face aboard the miniature railway.

  ‘We-eee-ell,’ he says, and hands us both tiny golden cups of coffee. He’s left the grounds in, and so we chew our way through our espressos, feeling quite dizzy as he tells us his tale. ‘Let me see where it began. First of all it was just noises, you see. We had passengers telling us that there were untoward noises inside the carriage. Mechanical noises, we thought at first, and so we took turns to sit aboard and listen to the clanking and whirring of the machinery. But everything is tuned up and cleaned and repaired during the winter season. The funicular runs as smoothly as it did when it first opened!’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ Effie says smoothly. She grimaces because she’s getting coffee grounds under her false teeth, I can tell. ‘Do go on.’

  ‘I spent hours going up the cliff and down the cliff, listening hard. I even took a tape recorder at one point. And it was true. There was a noise. But it wasn’t to do with the workings…’

  All at once the gloomy afternoon draws in around us. Rain starts to patter on the roof of his office. We hunch forward to listen to him.

  ‘It was when we played back the recordings I had made that we heard the voice…’ he said.

  ‘The voice?’

  ‘Clear as anything, once you knew it was there.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. It was a child’s voice, gabbling on about the seaside. Excited. Pleased. A happy child’s voice.’

  ‘So?’ snaps Effie. ‘Wasn’t it just one of your passengers?’

  The funicular railway man shakes his head. ‘There was no child aboard that day. Not the whole time I was there with my equipment. I am quite meticulous. Sometimes I was recording and the voice came out on the tape, even on the journeys up the cliff when there was no one else aboard…’

  ‘Hmmm,’ says Effie, looking frankly sceptical. ‘Could we hear these recordings, please?’

  He’s only too keen to fetch out his ancient, clunky, twin-spooled device from his cupboard. We spent a fruitless hour hunched over the primitive speaker, trying to make out a ghostly voice.

  He seems very disappointed that we can’t hear a thing.

  The afternoon’s gloom seems to be generated directly by his despondent mood as he lets us out into the fresh air again.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear any evidence of any kind of paranormal activity,’ Effie tells him crisply. ‘And neither did my colleague, did you, Brenda?’

  I concur and the railway man lets out a groan. ‘Oh, please… just spend a bit longer. You’ve been kind enough to come all this way on the bus… Why don’t you ride on the train itself, hm? Just up and down a few times? And then… then, I think you’ll see?’

  Dark clouds are rolling into town, along with a cloying sea mist. All at once I want to back away and tell him to take a run and jump. I want to dash back to our bus stop and hurry us home. There’s nothing I want to do less than ride up and down on his peculiar vertical train set.

  But Effie nods brusquely. ‘Very well. It can’t hurt, I’m sure.’

  Delightedly he leads us down the wooden steps from his office to the start of the track, down on the beach. ‘You’ll see! You’ll hear it! And it’s not even the voice, so much… it’s the feeling… the terrible sensations that you get…’

  I can’t say that I’m crazy about the idea of having terrible sensations. But, as Effie reminds me, we are investigators and we must put aside our own fears and scepticism at times.

  ‘Mind,’ she tells me, sotto voce. ‘Part of me thinks this fella is just chiming in. That’s what it’s like in the little towns around Whitby. They’re all jealous of our paranormal activity and are craving some of their own!’

  ‘Really..?!’ I can’t imagine anyone being so silly.

  ‘Ladies, please,’ our conductor calls
us, holding open the door to the single carriage of the haunted train. ‘In you go,’ he commands, his tones all dulcet from that dark, dark coffee.

  And then we’re shut aboard the carriage and choosing a seat and he’s dashing off back to his control room thingy. I’m reminded briefly of that old story by Dickens about the signalman and I’m trying to remember just what it was that was so spooky about that. At least that train stayed on the level, I’m thinking, as the machinery jolts into life.

  Thirteen times we go up and down that blummin’ cliff face. It takes up much of the afternoon and by the time we’re just about finished it’s completely dark outside and we can hardly see two inches through the dense and dripping fog.

  I’m peering out the windows and wondering why no one else has got aboard the funicular with us. Wasn’t it open to the public today?

  ‘Who’d want to go up and down the cliffs on a day like this?’ Effie shrugs, as the rain starts to lash at the sides of the carriage.

  I’ve lost my bearings. Are we halfway up or halfway down?

  ‘What’s that fella playing at?’ I grumble. ‘He’s had us going up and down for hours… Can’t we tell him to let us out?’

  ‘We’ve miscalculated,’ says Effie. ‘We don’t have any way of communicating with him, I’m afraid.’

  Whenever we’ve reached the top or bottom the doors have stayed shut. Engrossed until now by trying to listen for poltergeists, we hadn’t really considered ourselves trapped aboard…

  And now we seem to have stopped, but we’re not at the top or the bottom. I get up and advance gingerly to the door, Effie following, and we realise that there’s nothing but empty air outside.

  I already feel nauseous and I’ve been hiding it well. But the thought of being stuck halfway up the cliff in stormy climes is something I’m fully expecting to have a funny turn about.

  ‘Is this it, do you think?’ Effie asks in a low voice. ‘Is this part of the haunting, do you think, Brenda?’ She sounds spooked and thrilled in equal measure.

  A mutual friend once described Effie as a ‘fun vampire.’ I found this a bit cruel at the time, but I did partly know what they meant. She finds it hard to join in sometimes, and she can look disapproving when others start letting their hair down. But I would never say – as Robert, our mutual spook-hunting friend did on that occasion – that her very presence could suck all of the fun out of the room with one sharp in-breath. I always knew that Effie was quite good company in her own way, with a dry and laconic sense of humour. Plus, she was warm-hearted, deep-down, under her frosty layers of resentment and snootiness, and she was always endlessly brave.

  Like today – or rather, this evening – when she decides to take matters into her own hands re our being trapped in the fog halfway up the cliff in this poltergeist-haunted funicular .

  The man in charge of the diagonal railway has seemingly vanished. We haven’t heard a peep out of him for ages. We have been abandoned here, with night moving in across the vast bay.

  ‘The only thing is to break open those doors and climb our way to safety,’ Effie decides. She takes off her cape and jacket and rolls up her sleeves. ‘I’m not hanging around here all night. It’s liable to get freezing up here.’

  ‘Do you think we should?’ I ask her. ‘I mean, it’s pretty steep and perilous out there…’

  She gives me an appraising look. ‘What’s the matter with you today? You’re all dithery. You sound like a right wet nelly. What’s got into you, Brenda? You’re usually tougher than this!’

  She is right, of course.

  But I can’t explain. All the while we’re having this irksome adventure, my mind is partly elsewhere. I’m wondering about my three wishes, granted to me by the Toilet Duck.

  ‘Never mind,’ she mutters. ‘We all have off days, don’t we?’ She smiles tightly and turns her attention to the roof of the carriage. ‘Now, if I’m not mistaken, there really ought to be a hatchway or an access point, somewhere up there…’

  It dawns on me, just as she’s clambering on top of one of the seats, what she’s planning to do.

  ‘You can’t, Effie! You can’t go climbing out onto the roof!’

  ‘I think I have to. Unless you want to sit in here all night long!’

  ‘But we’re halfway up the cliff! And it’s even higher and steeper than all the cliffs in Whitby! You’ll come off and break your scraggy old neck!’

  ‘Scraggy!’ she bursts out. ‘I like that!’

  From somewhere deep inside her handbag she’s produced a couple of heavy-duty tools. Some kind of wrench and a crowbar. Immediately she starts to clatter and bang at the ceiling of the carriage. It sounds tinny and insubstantial as it takes the brunt of her frustration. Effie hates to be locked up anywhere.

  Outside there’s a gale howling by now, and the water that lashes against the wide window panes could be rain or it could be waves as far as I can tell. All of a sudden I realise just how dangerous it’s going to be out there for my spindly and elderly friend.

  ‘No, Effie! You must let me go! I’m stronger than you! I’m bigger than you!’

  She glances down, just as she’s making progress with opening the emergency hatchway. Her expression is ironic as ever. ‘You’re certainly less svelte and stylish than me, ducky. But you’re also a bit bloody clumsy. Do you think I’d let you stagger about out there, clinging to the roof of this thing? No, really, I’ll be back in a jiffy. It isn’t far too climb, I’m sure. I’ll find out why we’re stuck and be back in no time. Honestly!’

  And, quick as a whistle, she crawls up through the gap in the ceiling and I gasp. She can be ever so nimble and acrobatic at times, can Effie. She’s right: I’m a huge, galumphing ninny compared to her.

  Once she’s vanished into the stormy night I call after her: ‘Are you all right out there..? Effie?!’ And straight away I imagine that the wind has dragged her away into the night and dashed her against the jagged cliffs. ‘Effie…!’

  After a few seconds her voice comes shrieking back to me out of the darkness. ‘I’m all right, ducky! It’s… just a bit… further than… I thought… to climb!’

  I’m relieved to hear she’s still hanging on. But now I start picturing terrible things. What if that silly man in the control room suddenly remembers us and sets the funicular in motion? What if the horrible thing starts moving while Effie’s still hanging on the wires? Will she be electrocuted? Will she be sliced and diced like vegetables in that crudité slicer I bought for a pound in SAVE SAVE SAVE..?

  ‘Effie! Effie, I’ve just had a terrible thought…! Perhaps you’d better come back down…?’

  But the only reply is the tremendous noise of the sea crashing on the rocks below and the whipped-up frenzy of the storm.

  Really, I think: BUGGER Sandsend. And BUGGER that man with his horrible coffee and his suspected poltergeist. Effie was right: it was all a load of hooey. The creepy old windbag just wanted us at his mercy and trapped on his model railway set. Really. Just BUGGER him.

  I’m quite livid.

  ‘Tut tut tut,’ comes a disapproving noise from the seat behind me. ‘Such language, Brenda!’

  My first thought is: it’s the Poltergeist! But since when did Poltergeists ever complain about swearing? In my experience they’re all potty-mouths themselves. All that showing off they do. So juvenile.

  But it isn’t anything ghostly in the seat behind. When I turn around it turns out to be my Toilet Duck, preening his feathers and looking very pleased with himself. ‘Could you close that hatchway, do you think, dear?’ he quacks. ‘Contrary to popular belief, we don’t actually relish wet weather.’

  ‘I can’t close it,’ I tell him. ‘What if Effie wants to get back in?’

  He tuts again. ‘Silly old moo. Whatever does she want to go shinning up power lines for? If they come back on she’ll be fried alive.’

  ‘Fried alive!’ I gasp. ‘She’s on a power line?! Effie..!’ I started to panic all over again.

  ‘Don’t f
ret,’ he tells me. ‘They won’t come back on. She won’t be fried.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask the duck. ‘Why’s that man done this to us? He lured us here, didn’t he?’

  ‘How should I know? Why would I have all the answers?’

  ‘Because… because you’re like a sort of genie, aren’t you? You’re the genie of the Toilet Duck. You can grant wishes and… you know everything…’

  ‘Not quite everything,’ he concedes modestly. He ruffles up his wings as if he’s quietly very satisfied by my flattery. ‘But I do know quite a lot. And yes, I do believe that man has called you here today in order to capture you both. Why that is, I don’t quite know. But the pair of you must be quite used to such affairs by now.’

  ‘I suppose we are…’ I agree. ‘Look here, can I use one of my wishes to rescue her?’

  The duck boggles at my request. ‘What?’ he gasps. ‘You’d waste one whole once-in-a-lifetime magic wish in order to save that waspish old witch you knock about with? When you could have anything? Absolutely anything at all…?’

  Something about his gleaming little eyes stops my panicky flow of thought. ‘W-what? What do you think I s-should ask for…?’

  The duck chuckles at me. ‘Effie will be all right. She’ll be quite safe. What’s climbing up a seventy degree incline on electrical wires on a stormy night compared with some of the terrible things you two have faced over the years? It’s nothing! She’ll make it. You don’t have to worry about her.’

  The duck’s eyes are mesmerising. They’re spiralling. Orange and purple swirls and golden stars. They’re drawing me in…

  ‘Why don’t you think about yourself for once, Brenda? Why don’t you think about what you really and truly want…more than anything in the world…?’

  ‘No… no…’ I protest – but rather weakly. ‘Must… save… Effie… mustn’t fall… under your… spell… mustn’t think… of selfish things…’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Think selfish thoughts! Have selfish dreams! Have selfish fantasies, Brenda! This is your time – if any time ever was – to think only of yourself and your secret desires! Tell me, Brenda… what is your first magic wish?’