[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  But Robert didn’t want to move to Leeds or somewhere. He was happy here. And he was sure that Effie just wanted him out of the way. She was envious of his friendship with Brenda. Effie was scared of having her pointy old nose pushed out.

  So Robert – successful hotelier and part-time spook-hunter – was keeping mum about his exciting new fella just for now. He loved the juiciness of the secret. He was bursting with it. Dying to tell the world all about it.

  But he managed to keep it all in. Just for now.

  He finished off his macaroon and was happily brushing away crumbs and flicking through the morning’s post when there was a light tap at his door. He called, ‘Come in,’ and peered at Penny the receptionist over his new glasses. ‘Ye-es?’

  Penny had been overenthusiastic with her black eyeliner this morning, he noticed. She looked like a vaguely Gothy panda, quivering with excitement in his doorway. ‘The film people are arriving!’ she cried.

  For a second Robert didn’t know what she was on about. And then it clicked. It was Monday, of course. They had their massive block booking, didn’t they? The crew members were checking in this morning. Thirty-four of them. And even some lowlier members of the cast were staying here at the Miramar for the duration of the filming of . . .

  ‘What was it called, Penny?’ Robert said, flicking through papers. ‘This film they’re making?’

  Penny blushed. ‘Get Thee Inside Me, Satan.’

  That was right, Robert remembered. It was a remake of a schlocky sixties classic. They were due to shoot the film’s climactic sequences on location all over Whitby. They would be taking over its winding Victorian streets and the ruined abbey, all this Hallowe’en and for the duration of the town’s infamous Goth Weekend Festival.

  It should prove very interesting, Robert mused. He had never really had a keen interest in the horror film genre. Nowadays he had even less of one, due to his involvement in a series of queer events that had overshadowed anything ever thrown up on the silver screen. But he could feel a buzz in the air over this impending remake. There was something about the very idea of it that raised the hairs on the back of his neatly barbered neck.

  Not least was the fact that a block booking out of season was extremely good news for the hotel in which he had been placed in charge.

  Also he was intrigued by the legendary reputation of the film’s star. She was the female lead in the original version of Get Thee Inside Me, Satan, back in the sixties. She was Britain’s favourite horror film starlet. The vampiest vamp the world of cinema had ever known.

  Karla Sorenson. And – miraculously – she had hardly aged a day.

  Or so they said.

  ‘Come on, Penny.’ Robert hustled the excited receptionist out of his office, ‘We’ve got film people to look after. There’s work to be done!’

  As they hurried upstairs into the main hotel, he was reflecting that it was a shame that Ms Sorenson had elected not to stay in the same place as her crew and minor cast members. What a coup it would be, to have the care of the most famous horror film actress in the world!

  Maybe she’d want somewhere swankier. Somewhere more secluded.

  But where?

  Goth with a Heart of Gold

  It was her afternoon off, but really, she would have preferred to stick around in the Hotel Miramar. Penny had never seen film people before. Not in the actual flesh.

  As she struggled down the hill into town with her clumpy heels and her heavy bags, she reflected that film people actually looked pretty much the same as anyone else. Some of them even looked scruffy. But they were film people. They made films! They made horror films! It was like they were coated in stardust and shimmering with glamour.

  It felt like a late summer’s day in Whitby. The skies over the hulking headland and the abbey were a brilliant blue. Town was chock-a-block with tourists and locals, bustling about their business. Penny was pleased to be among them. Now, after a month in this town, she was starting to feel like a local herself. She knew her way through the warren of complicated streets, and she knew where everything she needed was. She liked the atmosphere of the place, where people let you be and didn’t ask too many questions, but nodded her a brisk welcome if they happened to see her out and about.

  This was her new home.

  She’d left behind her old life in the little town near Darlington. She’d turned her back on that whole debacle. Now she’d stopped trying to fit in as the person they’d all expected her to be. Here she was allowed to be herself. And here, no one looked twice if Penny dyed her hair liquorice black or painted her eyes with kohl like Dusty Springfield or Nefertiti. No one bothered if she Gothed up in the daytime and wore her favourite black wedding dress even when popping down the supermarket.

  People here seemed to accept such things with hardly a second glance. Penny felt that she had found her spiritual home.

  She was lugging with her a bin bag of old clothes. Her last bin bag of clothes belonging to the old Penny, from her old life. The salty sea breeze whipped up her hair and made the going hard, even on the sharp downward slope to LeFanu Close, where all the charity shops sat together in a line. She picked her favourite, where the two old ladies seemed very grateful for her donation.

  The two of them talked to Penny as if her new persona was hardly anything out of the usual, and this pleased her greatly. She checked out the shop’s racks of paperbacks, happily biding her time as the ladies unpacked and refolded her old clothes, cooing over the odd item. Penny lingered lovingly over a stash of horror novels. She was an avid reader. That contributed fatally, her husband had claimed, to her tendency to foolishly indulge her imagination. Pretending she was someone else all the time. When what she really ought to be doing was knuckling down in the real world. And living with him; looking after him.

  ‘These woollens look too good to give away,’ said one of the gentle old women at the counter. ‘Are you sure, dear?’

  ‘Yep,’ smiled Penny, straightening up. ‘I want rid of all that old stuff. I don’t know why I brought any of it with me to Whitby. That all belongs to my old life.’ She caught a glimpse of summery pastels, of flowery fabrics. They were the remnants of a person she now regarded as dead. Here, she was reborn, with a face of China white and boots of black rubber.

  ‘Well, it’s very generous of you.’ The lady turned to her quieter companion. ‘Say what you like about Goths. Some of them have got hearts of gold.’

  Penny didn’t see the other old lady’s expression, or hear what she muttered at this point, because she was digging through the videotapes and DVDs. She often checked this hidden-away section but there was rarely anything that took her fancy. But today she found that she had laid her ebony-painted nails on something rather interesting.

  What a weird coincidence, she thought. She realised her heart was thudding madly. Absurdly. The DVD case actually shook in her fingers. Why was she reacting like this? She tried to snap out of it. She took a deep breath. The strong whiff of detergent and must in the very air of the place revived her for a moment. The DVD case felt slick under her sweaty palms. She glared at the cover disbelievingly.

  Two pounds ninety-nine! That was all the old dears at the counter had deemed it worth.

  If only they knew!

  This was a rarity, surely. It was a film that shouldn’t be here, in this shop. Why, it shouldn’t be anywhere. It hadn’t even been released. Its makers had sworn it would never come out. Never again. Not after the kind of things that had happened on its previous releases into the world at large.

  How weird. Penny turned the case this way and that, reading the back, reading the front again, examining the lurid illustrations and photographs.

  ‘Everything all right, dear?’ the more voluble old lady called from her counter. They had noticed that Penny was behaving oddly. She looked avid. She had made some kind of amazing find. Penny straightened up, tried to look nonchalant. What was happening to her? She was no kind of film geek. She liked horror and all that,
but she wasn’t some sort of fan girl, going weak at the knees at a discovery like . . . like . . .

  ‘Have you found something interesting? I just put that lot out this morning, didn’t I, Helen? I didn’t really look at them. Are you sure you’re all right? You look very peaky . . .’

  ‘Yes, I’m . . . I’m okay . . .’ Penny muttered distractedly.

  Get Thee Inside Me, Satan. What a weird, weird coincidence.

  It was a copy of the film they were just about to remake, here in Whitby. The original film that had never been released on DVD. The film that had appeared in cinemas in only very limited runs in the late sixties, then in specialist late-night double bills in the mid seventies. Then it had had a limited life on home video, back in the eighties. As a cult film it was renowned. It was infamous. It was the film that was too dangerous for anyone to watch alone, or so they said.

  The film that had driven people potty.

  The film that was cursed by the devil himself.

  Which was one of the reasons why they were about to remake it. Supposedly they wanted to cash in on its spooky cache.

  But what was it doing here? In this dusty, dowdy shop? This impossible disc.

  It was as if it was waiting for her.

  For her, Penny Danby.

  She had to have it. The old ladies raised curious eyebrows as they examined her purchase and popped it neatly into a paper bag and she handed them the cash. What on earth was she buying? they seemed to wonder, glancing at the cover. To them, it looked like a horrible thing.

  The two of them would never understand, Penny reflected. Quaint old souls like them. What would they know about Cult Horror? She said goodbye and hurried to the door. In her keenness to be away, she almost knocked over the thin, frail-looking woman who was just coming in.

  ‘Oh! Sorry! Sorry!’ Penny cried, feeling clumsier than ever.

  ‘Hmmm.’ The customer glared at the galumphing Goth girl and pursed her lips. ‘Less haste, more speed, as my Aunt Maud used to say.’

  Penny looked down at the bony, disapproving face and was startled by the fierce stare she received in return. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Stop apologising girl!’ the woman snapped. ‘You’re Robert’s new helper, aren’t you? Up at the Miramar?’

  ‘I’m the receptionist,’ Penny said, and almost added ‘miss’, as if she was talking to her teacher. This woman made her feel about nine years old.

  ‘He speaks very well of you,’ said the old woman.

  ‘Oh!’ Penny smiled. ‘You must be . . .’

  ‘Effie Jacobs,’ she was told. ‘I’m a friend of a friend of a friend. Whitby, you see, is a very small town. You’re quite new here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Penny nodded, eager to be away.

  ‘Early for Goth weekend, isn’t it?’ Effie smiled.

  ‘I’m like this all the time,’ Penny gabbled. She grinned in a very un-Goth-like manner. ‘And I’m here for good now!’

  Effie Lonely

  To be quite truthful, the past few months had been pretty dull for Effie Jacobs.

  She would never admit it, though. If asked, she’d tell anyone that she was quite happy with her life. She sat quietly in her antiques emporium every afternoon, keeping her hawk-like gaze trained on her few customers. She’d maybe sell an item or two. She was doing a very nice line in theatrical jewellery these days that seemed to go down well with tourists.

  But there was no excitement. There was nothing to send her pulse racing.

  And, if asked, Effie would say that was a good thing too. She couldn’t put up with too much excitement at her age. No, she wanted things to be as dull and repetitive as this. She was very happy at home, thank you very much, where she hardly ever saw another soul and had very few people to talk to. This was the way she wanted it.

  And this was how it had been since her best friend had gone and got herself married. To her own ex-fiancé, of all people!

  Well, Brenda had made her bed and so she could just lie in it.

  Ever since that so-called wedding, Effie had hardly seen Brenda. It was as if the two friends had gone their separate ways.

  ‘What a shame,’ murmured the old dear in the charity shop. She was busily folding up Penny’s cast-offs, and Effie could see that she was already bored with her conversation. Perhaps she’d heard it all before.

  ‘Well, it’s always the same.’ Effie scowled. ‘When silly old women get themselves hooked up with these men. They get their heads turned. They run around like teenagers, and they forget about their real friends . . .’

  The woman in the charity shop – what was her name? Teresa? – stopped her sorting and looked up at Effie. Her eyes were milky and swimmy, which startled the older woman. ‘Ach, I’ve had friends like that, who’ve gone off and found themselves a new husband. You’re left in the lurch, aren’t you? Eh? You don’t know what to do with yourself.’

  Effie recoiled. What was she doing? Opening out her feelings to this awful, insinuating woman? She felt as if she were betraying Brenda in talking like this. I must be terribly lonely, she thought. To be reduced to this. ‘That’s very true,’ she told the charity shop woman, lowering her voice.

  ‘You should get out and about more,’ Teresa said, goggling her bleary eyes at her. ‘You don’t want to sit at home, festering. Get out of a night. Get yourself a fella of your own!’

  Effie pursed her lips. ‘No thank you very much. I’ve had quite enough of that sort of nonsense.’ She shuddered. Her last dalliance hadn’t ended at all well. Her beau had fluttered off into the dark night after Brenda’s wedding, as was his wont, with scant regard for her feelings. Well, she was best off without him. She was better off without them all. What had Aunt Maud told her, all those years ago? Never let yourself depend on anyone, Effryggia. Be completely self-reliant. Be your own woman.

  This was how she had lived most her life. Alone, and quite separate from the common rut.

  It was only when Brenda had moved here – three years ago, was it? – taking up the guest house next door to Effie, that she had started to learn what it meant to have friends. To have people she could trust, and laugh with, and spend her evenings with.

  Foolishness. Silliness. That was the path to disappointment. And so now she was lonely again. She gritted her teeth and turned to go. She was ashamed of herself. Visiting smelly old shops like this, looking for people to talk to.

  ‘Ooh, wait!’ Teresa suddenly burst out. ‘If you’re at a loose end on Wednesday night, what about this? A gang of us oldies have started going to this . . .’

  Effie peered suspiciously at the lurid flyer Teresa slid across the glass-topped counter. ‘Hmmm . . .’

  ‘You’re guaranteed a lovely night.’ Teresa smiled. ‘Wonderful music. Novelty acts. Even a little dance as the evening goes on and inhibitions loosen. And if there aren’t enough old men to go around, we women pal up for the dancing. Much nicer that way, anyway.’

  Effie frowned. She wasn’t sure that she was desperate enough for company to hurry along to the Cosmic Cabaret at the Christmas Hotel on a Wednesday evening. She didn’t like the look of the stars of the show – Denise and Wheatley – going by their photograph on the leaflet. It all looked rather tacky to her. Not Effie’s kind of scene at all.

  ‘Wednesday at eight, hm?’ she found herself saying.

  Teresa nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s Whitby’s hottest night out,’ she grinned. ‘For oldies like ourselves.’

  Effie narrowed her eyes at her. ‘I’ll see. I’m rather busy just now . . .’

  The charity shop woman nodded happily, and watched her leave. Her own eyes narrowed as she stared after Effie, tottering down the sloping path of LeFanu Close. Oh, you’ll come along to the Cosmic Cabaret, lady, she thought. Just you see if you don’t.

  Then her companion came mincing through from the back with a tray of tea and biscuits. ‘Was that that Effie Jacobs again?’ she asked, rolling her eyes. ‘You want to watch her.’

  ‘How come?
’

  ‘They say she’s a witch.’ Teresa’s workmate, Helen, heaved herself up on the stool behind the counter and flipped to the correct page in her Barbara Taylor Bradford, leaving chocolate biscuit smears on every page she touched. ‘I swear down. That’s what they reckon. She’s got all sorts of magical paraphernalia in that house of hers, above that dirty old shop.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Teresa said lightly.

  ‘She’s got powers, or so they say.’

  ‘Fancy that . . .’

  Effie Writes

  FROM: Effie@antiqueeffie.com

  SUBJECT: Catching Up

  Dear Brenda,

  It seems like you’ve been away so long, I hardly know where to begin.

  How’s your holiday, anyway? I hope everything’s been as lovely as your postcard and its spartan message seemed to suggest. I’m not sure I’d have been keen on the Lake District in October, but there you go. You were never one for convention, were you?

  I do hope everything’s working out with you and Frank and that the two of you have managed to relax a little and – what is it the young people say nowadays? – chill out a little bit. You were at such a fever pitch of antagonism and irritability when I last saw you, I thought you were about to rip each other to pieces.

  Well – you know that I’ve got my reservations about Frank, Brenda. I always did have – right from the moment I first clapped eyes on the big brute in the ballroom of the Christmas Hotel. I don’t have to remind you of the shocking events of last winter – all caused, I hardly need add, by the reappearance in your life of your one-time fiancé. Well, anyway, I made my feelings quite plain back then, at the end of that particular hair-raising palaver, and I think you should have sent Frank off with a flea in his ear, but what did you do? You took him back. You know best, of course, and all I can say is good luck to the pair of you.

  I knew there would be ructions, though. I knew there’d be fights. Both of you sharing that tiny attic space of yours above the B&B. It was your own little oasis, Brenda. Your own cosy sanctuary, made just for you. No wonder things got a bit tense and cramped when that great brooding monster moved in with you. No wonder the two of you have had some awful set-to’s these past few months! Rows so loud and nasty I’ve heard them clear next door, across the alley, in my own humble abode.