[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  We were on our way back to Whitby anyway.

  Mind, Frank’s not so keen. He’d be happy wandering for ages yet, but I’ve told him – Frank, I’ve got a business. I’ve got to be back in Whitby toot-suite. It’s Goth weekend coming up and I’ve got bookings right through from then, from Hallowe’en all the way up to Christmas. Now, I said, if you’re with me, then you’re a part of this business. My B&B is all I’ve got in this world.

  Anyway, the upshot is that he’s happy to come back.

  We’ve fetched up in his old stomping grounds in Manchester. Maybe that’s why he seems so ambivalent, these past couple of days. (Actually, where is he? Time’s getting on. This cafe’s by the bus station and I can see the coaches coming and going. Soon we’ll have to clamber aboard ours. We’ve got to change about twenty times before we get home. It’s not my favourite way to travel, but we’re saving our pennies.)

  This past week I’ve been meeting some of Frank’s . . . well, I hesitate to call them friends. Do you know, Effie, I think he was knocking around with a right rum bunch when he was here. They looked like proper rough diamonds to me. I dread to think what they’re mixed up in. This week they’ve had us out to glitzy casinos and opulent eateries. We had a lovely banquet for twelve in Chinatown the other evening. Frank was splashing his money about, the show-off fool. (Hence our return by coach rather than by rail.)

  All these blokes in dark suits and grim faces, with their dolly-bird girlfriends. Well, how out of place did I feel? I was in my best frock – the aquamarine – but I did feel old and dowdy, I have to say, next to these gangsters and their molls. But Frank said he was proud to be seen with me. My old heart glowed with that. Between courses, as we sat there sticky-fingered from our duck and plum sauce pancakes, he leaned right over and told me, all sotto voce, ‘You know I fancy you rotten, Mrs Brenda.’ Not the most elegant of compliments, but never mind . . .

  That was last night. The culmination of our month (a full month!) on the road, in hotels, and away from home.

  And Whitby – the idea of Whitby – really feels like home to me now. This is the first time I have been away since moving there and opening up my establishment, and I’ve got to tell you, Effie – I’ve been hankering to get back. When I’ve woken up in unfamiliar, lumpy, too hard, too soft beds in rooms that don’t belong to me, that I’m not responsible for – I’ve been yearning with every fibre of my being. To be home. Working again. Looking after folk.

  I don’t think Frank minds really.

  But he’s got a bad case of wanderlust. It’s written through him like ‘Whitby’ through a stick of pink rock.

  Ooh, listen – I’ve gone on too long. It’s so easy just to rattle away on these keys, tapping away on an ergonomic keyboard and saying just anything that comes into my head . . . (I’m sitting here on a high stool, swinging one leg. With a frothy mocha and a muffin of some description.)

  So – Frank should be back soon – I had better draw to a close. It’s Tuesday – and I’ll see you Weds. We arrive back (I believe) in the early hours of tomorrow morning. It’s like a right odyssey. But I’ll be so glad to be back beside the seaside.

  And Effie – this is what I meant to say, right at the start of this email – you were on about a film, a horror-type thing, that they’re going to make in our town, weren’t you? And I have to say, when I read your mention of this exciting prospect, a shiver went right through me. I really had the oddest feeling. Like something horrible had landed on my grave. With an awful thump.

  Here’s Frank now. I’m off! I’m setting off now. We’re coming home!

  I’ll be with you v. soon!!!

  XXX

  B

  PS The star of this horror film. I need to know. It isn’t Karla Sorenson by any chance, is it? Oh, God help us all if it is.

  Electronic Messages

  Robert managed to grab an hour’s sleep before he had to be back at work. It was all his own fault, he knew. If he hadn’t gone flying around the town with his new fella and so on, he’d never be in this state.

  Seven a.m. saw him brewing coffee in his office. The strongest coffee he had ever tasted. Above him, the Hotel Miramar was waking up and coming to life. I’ll give myself till ten, Robert thought, when the worst of the morning is done, and then I’m going straight to bed for a couple of hours.

  When he’d taken over the hotel, in Sheila’s stead, he had pledged to be well behaved. No more running about and no more nights on the tiles. But that pledge had been before the advent of his fella. Now Robert knew he had no choice. When that strapping, quixotic presence announced itself to him – and it was always in the middle of the night – he had no choice whatsoever but to go to him.

  If he thought about it, it was quite annoying. He was sapped of all volition. That was exactly how he felt right now. Sapped. But it was worth it, he thought, as the bitter coffee scalded his raw throat.

  Up in reception, he was pleased to see his staff happily going about their business. Breakfast was in full swing and the air was pungent with fried bacon and kippers. He was puzzled. Why was Tony on the reception desk? Had he misremembered the rota?

  Tony shook his head. ‘No, you’re right. It’s Penny who’s meant to be on again.’

  Robert pursed his lips. ‘I thought it was.’

  ‘We’ve all tried knocking at her door,’ Tony told him. ‘But no one can shift her. I hear she had a very late night. No one wants her to get into any trouble. So I just stood in for her.’

  Hmm, Robert thought. Touch of insincerity there. Tony was only too keen to dob Penny into trouble. He was smarmy, shrugging helplessly like that. So what was Penny playing at? Had she really sat up all night watching daft films? Surely she wouldn’t let him down like this if she could help it. He knew she liked working here, living here. From what he had gathered, she was happier here than she had been for years. So why the no-show?

  Then the automatic doors swished open and Effie came in. She was puffing and panting, with a wild look of triumph in her eyes. He noted that she hadn’t done her hair up in its usual immaculate bun, and that was very unlike her. She never let herself be seen outdoors like this, with silver locks flying witchlike about her.

  ‘Robert!’ she gasped. Stooping over the reception desk, she fought to get her breath back. ‘That hill! It’s getting steeper!’

  Robert smiled. No, it was Effie getting older. All of a sudden he was aware that she had indeed aged a fair bit in the past couple of years. Were these adventures taking it out of her that much? The Effie of old would have thought nothing of sprinting up the hill to the Miramar.

  ‘I’ve heard from her, Robert,’ she hissed, suddenly thrusting her face into his.

  ‘Not . . .’

  ‘Brenda. Of course! She emailed me!’

  Robert felt himself relax into a delighted grin. It was absurd, that the mention of one email could have this effect. But the past month, bereft of Brenda, had been harder than he would have imagined. It was starting to feel as if the time she had spent here, among them, was nothing but a dream. It was becoming easy, even, to imagine that she had never existed at all. It was almost like that time last year when she had vanished over the cliff edge and was, for a nasty wee while, missing and assumed dead.

  ‘I’m on broadband now, you know,’ Effie was saying, showing off. ‘Oh, I may be an antiques expert, but I’m very up to the minute. And I’ve become rather attached to email as a form of communication, it’s—’

  ‘What does she say?’ Robert burst in. ‘Brenda! What does she say?’

  ‘She’s coming back!’ Effie let out a slight squeal, which she tried to suppress. ‘Right this morning, crack of dawn, she emailed me from Manchester. She’s on the coach now. With that husband of hers. They’ll be here by the early hours of tomorrow morning.’

  Robert wondered vaguely why they weren’t taking the much faster train, but his feelings of relief and excitement soon swept every niggle aside. ‘She’s coming home!’ he said.


  ‘And not before time.’ Effie lowered her voice. She narrowed her eyes and leaned even closer. ‘Dark things are afoot.’

  ‘Afoot?’

  ‘Haven’t you felt it?’ She frowned. ‘Surely you have. The very air is stiff with menace.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right . . .’

  ‘I’ve been feeling it for days. I think that bad things are about to start happening here.’

  ‘In the Miramar?’ Robert gasped.

  ‘In Whitby generally,’ Effie said. Then she took out a print-off of Brenda’s email and pointed to the hasty postscript.

  ‘What does she mean?’ said Robert. ‘She seems to know something about Karla Sorenson that we don’t.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Effie. ‘I think we’ve got to be prepared. Now, I’m intending to be at the coach station tonight when she arrives. What about you, young man?’

  A welcoming reception! He thought it was a brilliant idea, no matter how late. ‘I’m in.’ Instantly he was thinking to himself, but what if your fella comes calling tonight? Would you blow him out for your reunion with Brenda? Or would you let Brenda down for his sake? Robert was surprised at himself for even wondering. He was behaving like some kind of addict.

  Just then they were interrupted by smarmy Tony, who had slipped away from the reception desk to knock on Penny’s door again. ‘I think you’d better come with me,’ he told Robert.

  ‘What?’ Straight away Robert knew something was dreadfully wrong. Effie saw his face fall. She saw him turn white. She followed along after him as he dashed to Penny’s ground-floor bedroom.

  ‘You opened her door?’ Robert said to Tony.

  ‘I was worried,’ Tony admitted. ‘I got the spare key. She was completely silent in there. Everyone’s been knocking here for hours this morning. She must have heard us . . .’

  ‘And?’ Robert said impatiently. ‘Is she okay?’

  Tony shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well then see to her, man!’ Effie cried out, surprising them both. ‘Get an ambulance, if there’s something wrong with the girl!’

  Tony opened the door. ‘It’s not like that. I don’t think there’s anything physically wrong with her.’

  In the small, spartan bedroom they found Penny sitting very still and quietly upright in her bed, under her black duvet. Her eyes were big as saucers and her mouth was hanging open, slack-jawed.

  ‘Penny!’ Robert gasped, and hurried to her side.

  ‘No, don’t touch her,’ Effie shouted. ‘She’s under some kind of influence, by the looks of it. A spell, perhaps. If you touch her now you could shatter her mind into smithereens.’

  ‘But what’s happened to her?’ Robert said.

  Then they both looked at the laptop, which had slipped out of Penny’s grasp, and lay still open upon the bed. Its dark screen hissed and fizzed with static.

  ‘She was going to watch that film,’ Robert whispered.

  ‘What film?’ demanded Effie.

  He just pointed to the small silver disc that had ejected itself from the machine. It stuck half out of the aperture and glinted at them. It looked so innocuous there on the duvet. A second-hand DVD from Save the Kiddies.

  But right now, it looked to Robert and Effie that whatever was on it had given Penny the fright of her life.

  Taking the Back Seat

  Being slightly larger than the average passenger, Frank always wanted to sit right at the back of the coach. He liked to be able to spread out a little and watch the road spooling out behind them in widescreen.

  ‘I like to see where we’ve been,’ he said to Brenda, some time that day as they trundled over the Pennines and into the muggy, misty receding miasma of the Yorkshire Dales.

  Brenda nodded. That was her Frank all over – looking backwards, dwelling on the past. And her? She hoped she was always looking to the future. And hoping for the best.

  She cast a surreptitious sideways glance at her husband. They had been married almost a year, but still she wasn’t used to the idea. Look at him, with his great rugged profile. His head was tilted back on the worn velveteen of the seat. He was dozing contentedly.

  He had hardly aged a day. How was that? More black magic in his genesis, perhaps. A bit more necromancy had gone into his beginnings. Maybe the lightning was flashier that night. Whatever it was, he wasn’t looking or feeling the centuries like Brenda was. Nowadays he looked rather like her toyboy, which was galling, as Brenda was a good bit younger than him, as it happened.

  The rollneck of his fisherman’s jersey had slipped down a bit, snagging on one of the very obtrusions it was meant to conceal. Instinctively Brenda reached out and gently tugged it higher, hiding the offending bolt. What would anyone think if they saw those weird protrusions?

  Maybe nothing. They would just think it was some odd kind of up-to-the-minute jewellery. Some body piercing kind of thing. Trendy. Almost anything went, it seemed, these days.

  This was mildly disturbing to Brenda, who had spent her whole long life feeling an oddity. A freak. All her life she had taken such great care to avoid drawing attention to herself. She had been so wary of ever revealing those features of her physical being that were outlandishly out of the ordinary.

  Her scars, for example, were extensive. They were all over her body – little runnels and puckers – including in the bits of herself she couldn’t cover with clothes. Her face and hands showed pale evidence of heavy scarring. Crude butchery. She looked like someone who had been involved in some sort of unspeakable accident. A good long while ago, perhaps, but the evidence was still there.

  For years she had donned layers and layers of caked make-up. It was second nature to her, this business of slapping on her liquid disguise. Puffing on the mercifully concealing powder. She smarmed on her mask before she even left her bedroom each morning.

  Except these days there seemed to be less time for putting on that protective shield. These days she was running around with this great gormless galoot of a man. He was impulsive, energetic. Especially on holiday, he wanted to be up and about, all at once. There was no time to go preening yourself. No time to mess about with all that filthy expensive muck. Forget about it for once, Brenda!

  She had been scandalised at the very thought. Face the world? The open air? The populace at large? Look them all in the eye – naked – in all her deformed glory?

  Frank had taken her face in both his massive hands. He shocked her by saying, ‘You’re not deformed. You’re exquisitely made.’

  Her heart banged in her chest. It clattered with amazement. She coloured and batted him away. ‘Oh, rubbish. Stop it.’

  But that day she had listened to him. She had gone out, as instructed, unadorned. Her face uncovered. Pale, flinching, exposed to sunlight for the first time in . . . she couldn’t remember how long. All day walking in the Lake District. Yomping up and down through long grass and sucking in all the clean air. She had even picked up a tinge of sun. A blush that lasted as darkness dropped over Ullswater and they came down from the heights of Kirkstone Pass on trembling, exhausted legs. Brenda’s pins were paining her somewhat, as she tried to keep up with Frank’s colossal, confident strides. But when they sat on the shingle shore and watched the smooth, bronze-coloured waters and the shadows of the hills lengthening and stretching across, she was feeling serenely courageous.

  True, they had hardly seen anyone all day. Just chattering sheep, skittish and resentful-looking. They had encountered a few fellow walkers, togged up in cagoules, flapping maps. They had stared at Brenda’s Arran cardy and unsuitable shoes more than they had her un-made-up face.

  ‘You’ve made me feel normal, Frank,’ she told him, and he stopped skimming stones across the lake and looked at her.

  ‘Frank thinks you’ll never be that,’ he said.

  She found his expression unreadable. He was a dark silhouette on the lake’s edge and she had to shield her eyes, looking up at him. Her great big fella. She hoped he meant something nice by what he�
�d said. She was always hoping that. Wanting him to be good. Wanting him to love her like he always said he did.

  How had he made her need him like this?

  As they thrummed and bounced over the moors in the bus she was still looking at him. His face was like an Easter Island statue.

  I was all self-sufficient, she thought. I could take care of myself. I had done so for so long. So, so long. I never needed him. I never did.

  But now she had got used to having a bloke about. This bloke. The bloke she had least wanted to bump into again in all the world. Face it, Brenda, she thought ruefully. He comes in handy at times.

  Frank even helped out at the B&B. He lacked polish and finesse, and his manners with the guests could be a little gruff. She got him serving breakfasts and was charmed to find him nervous in dealing with the public. She encouraged him and he was keen to help. He didn’t want to be seen as some kind of hanger-on. A fancy fella or a kept bloke. Brenda had laughed at that.

  Soon they would be back home with new guests in situ. She loved the thought of getting back to work. Scouring and polishing and hoovering round. And making up beds and getting that washing machine swirling and thundering.

  Maybe she’d let Frank dress up in honour of the looming Goth weekend. Give those guests of hers a pleasurable thrill as he brought them their eggs and bacon. He could even let his bolts show, and pretend, laughingly, that they were fake. Or he could come clanking in with tea and toast, dragging chains behind him.

  Waking Penny

  For a while, Robert was really scared.

  He had seen some strange things here in Whitby, and some terrible things.

  When he first saw Penny perched up in bed, catatonic, he had thought the worst. A dozen things flashed through his mind at once. Uppermost was the idea that they should fetch the local vicar. Did the Reverend Mr Small actually do exorcisms? Probably not. He never seemed to do anything much at all. Apart from play bingo.

  Penny seemed to be lost to them. She was rock solid and staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes. Effie told him he’d better pick up the offending DVD and hide it in the safe in his office downstairs. If it really was the root cause of this situation, then it had better be put somewhere secure. He nodded and took the disc, trying to touch it as little as possible as he popped it into its case.