by Paul Magrs
We crossed the river and made for the Walrus and the Carpenter, drawing in deep, calming lungfuls of clean sea air.
‘Something disagreed with us,’ she said, whey-faced and grim. An idea seized her. ‘Those pies! We said we thought they were different. A new supplier!’
‘Or the dessert wine,’ I said. ‘We put away a couple of bottles, you know.’
‘Did we?’ Effie frowned. ‘I’m drinking more on these evenings with you, Brenda.’
I glanced at her sideways. I’m not a big drinker and I think she was using me as an excuse. Often I’ve smelt sherry on her breath in the afternoon. She could be getting through untold amounts in that house of hers.
Cling, cling, went the little bells on the door of our café, which we found almost empty. The tourist season was well and truly finished and you only ever saw regulars and locals about the place now. We settled into our corner seats and asked for mint tea.
‘That’s the last time we go to one of their bingo nights,’ Effie said. ‘Something poisoned our systems and we’re not going back for more.’
‘Robert was saying—’
‘Oh, not him again.’
‘He was saying how he’d suddenly realised it was dirty. Under all the decorations, it’s all dust and decay. It struck him when he’d missed his drugged cocoa.’
Effie rolled her eyes, flipping through the morning paper.
I seized her wrist. ‘Effie! Perhaps we were drugged, too, and it made us sick!’
‘I think it was probably the filth.’ She shuddered. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that. Or that nasty gossip about elves rolling around in the sand dunes. And they have a monkey waitress.’
‘Poor Jessie,’ I said. ‘Don’t be nasty about her.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Effie, turning pages carefully. ‘I was just pointing out. Her hygiene must have suffered as a result of her misfortunes.’
The door went cling, cling again, and a tall man in a dark suit came in. He was middle-aged and very handsome, I thought. There was something very proper and dignified about him. We only saw him from the back, but it was enough to form a pleasing impression, as he went up to the waitress and asked - in a deep, cultured voice - whether he was allowed to smoke in this establishment. The young waitress gazed up into his eyes and seemed to go weak, judging by her stammer as she told him he’d have to sit in the smoking parlour downstairs. ‘Thank you,’ purred the tall, dark man, and popped down the rickety wooden staircase.
I glanced at Effie and saw that she was drinking him in, too. ‘I might have to visit the Ladies,’ she said, ‘and take another look at him.’
I was surprised. It wasn’t like Effie to be so forward.
But he was a fascinating man. Compelling.
Effie slurped the green mint tea. Her digestive complaint was forgotten. There was something avid about her expression.
The male of the species was a topic that Effie and I hadn’t discussed a great deal. Effie once claimed that she had ‘never quite got the hang of them’. She found them mostly brutal and dull-witted. She didn’t like their company, she said. She found women more insightful and simpatico.
But Effie never really talks about love. She wasn’t describing, in our scant conversations about men, passion, desire or being drawn into someone’s romantic orbit. She was talking about minds, thoughts and words. She was talking about who she would rather talk to and spend her waking hours with. And, in that sense, her sympathies were with women. She liked women’s intuition, their sometimes callous grasp of the real conditions of living. She liked the way that women can and will dissect everything. They claw at language till they make themselves and each other understand. They toy with nuances and shadings of meaning. No man had ever done that around Effie. Men, in Effie’s book, were taciturn, plain-speaking.
But I wasn’t really talking about the intellect. Or meaning. And I wasn’t talking about who you spend your waking hours with.
I meant, rather, the darkest bits of the nights and who you spend that time with. And I still didn’t feel close enough to Effie to broach that topic. Not at all, in fact. It seemed impertinent to ask whether she had any time for men then.
I have uses for them still. Though I doubt - I truly doubt - that anyone would look my way now.
In the past they had. Some of them good men, others wicked. A few were wicked in quite a good way . . .
I have my hankerings now and then, but I’ve had to give it all up. All that sexy, terrible business. I’ve taken myself out of the game. Declared myself null and void. I’ve torn up my dance card, shredded it into sugar-paper fragments, as Effie had our bingo books. I was missing that final number, too. I was never lucky in the end.
Given my unnatural longevity, it seems as though an army of lovers has paraded through my life. Usually I keep mum. I don’t want to seem vulgar. And only a few of my paramours stand out. Only a few could make my tree-trunk leg quiver, or my second-hand heart skip a beat.
Enough. It doesn’t do to dwell on my romantic past.
Sometimes, though . . . Sometimes I think about my moments of conquest, those nights when all that mattered was my lover and me and what we’d get up to together. I remember how I would crush those men beneath me. They loved that! As I rolled on to and squashed them with my pillowy vastness, I conquered them all. I took them into the huge fortress of myself and some of them came willingly to be imprisoned where they could learn my secrets for themselves.
Most were horrified when they knew the truth of me. It wasn’t many who learned it all, and few of even that select group could cope with the facts. That disappointed me. I was a gargantuan slave mistress, and they felt I had locked them away in a castle of hideous secrets. They clawed the walls and tried to escape. They were caught in a nightmare with me: the nightmare of my life. I cooled their fevered brows as they tossed and turned, but they wanted to be free, I knew.
No mortal man was ever brave or strong enough for me.
All of them let me down.
And I am doomed to be alone. After all this time, I know that. It’s taken me long enough to learn my lesson. But we go on hoping, don’t we?
The trembling ghosts of my lovers are walled up inside me, plastered securely behind walls in hidden recesses in the deep, deep cellars of my mind. Cellars I try not to visit. There, though, I remember them. Each and every one. The tall ones, the noble ones, the midgets and freaks, the fat men and robbers, the heroes and saints, the dullards, the perverts, the mercenaries and kings. I’ve had my share, I really have.
But I try not to dwell on things like that. Getting myself all stirred up. I’m an old woman now, and my glory days are in the past.
What started me on all of this?
Ah, yes: Effie catching a glimpse of that gorgeous man.
She nipped downstairs to the damp smoking parlour in the Walrus and the Carpenter and went into the loo, even though the cubicle made her claustrophobic.
She came back all of a swoon. ‘I got a good look at him, Brenda,’ she said. ‘He smiled at me. Can you believe it? He looked up, nodded and gave me this smile, as if . . .’ she shivered ‘. . . as if he already knew me. Inside and out.’
I’d thought that evening was going to be quiet. Still feeling delicate, I ate a light supper and sat quietly, listening to the radio, mulling over the recent days. Effie had invited me round to help her go through some of her books of magic, but I hadn’t fancied it. She was systematically examining and cataloguing them, which I thought was a good idea, but I couldn’t face it that night. I think, for the first time in her life, she was feeling a bit nervous alone in her house.
I dozed in my armchair. The fruity voice that came on the radio between long, stately pieces of music laced through my dreams. At times it merged with the echo of that disembodied voice on the disk Lisa Turmoil had sent me and I thought spirits were speaking to me through Radio 3. I woke up suddenly, disturbed, and heard my phone ringing.
‘Sorry about this at nearly midnight,�
�� Robert said. ‘I thought you needed to know. It’s my aunt.’
‘Jessie?’ I was fuddled and woozy, but I knew immediately that something terrible had happened.
‘She’s gone,’ he said. He sounded shattered.
‘Dead?’
‘No, no,’ he said. I could hear the noise of the fairground behind him. Evidently he had slipped out of the hotel to make the call. ‘Vanished. With all her belongings.’
We both knew that Jessie was in no fit state - mentally or physically - to dash off anywhere. And she certainly wouldn’t have gone without telling Robert first. He was her minder.
‘She was saying some very strange things,’ Robert continued, ‘before she . . . went. Making accusations.’
‘Against whom?’
‘I’d rather not say on the phone.’ He was distraught now. ‘Could you meet me, Brenda?’
‘Now?’ I glanced at the clock on the sideboard. It was almost dead on midnight.
‘I’m sorry about this. I would never ask if—’
‘It’s quite all right.’ We made a quick arrangement to meet on the prom and, next thing I knew, I was pulling on a thick sweater, heavy boots and a suitable hat. Then I rang Effie to let her know what was going on.
She surprised me. ‘You’re not traipsing around on your own with that boy,’ she said. ‘Give me a moment. I’m coming with you. I was never going to sleep tonight - not after the disturbing things I’ve glimpsed in those horrible books . . .’
I met her outside her darkened shop. She was wrapped up in her camel coat, a huge scarf looped about her neck. We walked together down to the sea. ‘I wish I’d never even started looking into them,’ she said. ‘I’d have been quite happy in my ignorance, not knowing what nasty stuff I had tucked away on my shelves.’
I shivered in the sea mist. The cobbles underfoot were freezing over and we had to tread carefully. ‘What kind of thing did you find?’
‘I thought it would just be old spells. Herbology and all that. But there’s all this disturbing stuff about ancient gods and monsters . . . and nasty drawings of them, lizardy things, creatures that look as if they come from the depths of the sea. And apparently they’re behind the scenes of everything we do. They send misfortune and demons to us. They hate us and want to destroy us.’
‘No wonder you’re having sleepless nights.’ I looked at her anxious face. ‘Maybe you should leave it alone for a bit.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s information that I think we’re going to need some day soon. We have to be prepared as best we can. Those books aren’t just nonsense. I believe - I’m starting to believe that everything in them is based on the truth.’
Now we were on the prom where packs of boozers and late-night revellers were still drifting about, turning home for their beds. We spotted Robert standing alone by the railings, opposite Woolworths.
‘I can’t believe we’re joining him on one of his nocturnal jaunts,’ said Effie.
‘Now then,’ I said. ‘Remember, he’s lost his aunt. She’s his only living relation.’
When we walked up to him he surprised me by clasping me in a bear-hug, then kissing my cheek. No one has done that for years. I was touched, feeling myself blush as he turned awkwardly to Effie, nodded and said good evening.
We walked along together slowly.
‘What were the accusations she was making?’ I asked.
‘They were against Mrs Claus,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s supposed to criticise her. She’s perfect and beyond reproach. That’s what all of her docile staff understand. But Jessie has been wayward recently. As you know, she’s not been herself since all that business at the Deadly Boutique. The process she underwent there seemed to regress her to a more instinctual, impulsive personality . . .’
‘Indeed,’ said Effie. ‘She—’
I nudged her, knowing that she was about to say something insulting.
Robert went on: ‘Jessie no longer fitted in at the Christmas Hotel. She wasn’t submissive and obedient. She didn’t kowtow like the rest of them to our monstrous proprietress. She didn’t toady round the guests either. She became temperamental, and flew into rages when she felt herself overworked and anyone asked her to do something extra. In the kitchens she threw tantrums - even Mr McFee, the chef, was alarmed. Then, when she was doing chambermaid duties, she trashed the room of some woman who’d spoken sharply to her at dinner the night before.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘I thought Jessie enjoyed her work.’
‘She used to,’ he said. ‘But whatever Mr Danby did to her in his Deadly Machine changed her irrevocably.’
Lovely vocabulary he had, that boy. I couldn’t help admiring it as we strode along in the dark.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘all of this soon came to the attention of Mrs Claus. I was aware that my auntie had been summoned for private meetings in Mrs Claus’s chambers several times in the past fortnight. This was serious. Everyone dreads the thought of being called to her boudoir. But Jessie didn’t care. She had become fearless! She had been a bit nervy before, though you’d never see it if you didn’t know her well. She put on a good front. But her recent transformation - disastrous for her looks - had improved her confidence no end. Funny, that.’
‘Indeed,’ said Effie. ‘What about the accusations?’
Robert stopped. We were at the bottom of the steep hill that led up to the row of hotels that terminated in the Christmas Hotel, the grandest and oldest of them all. We stared up at its pale front, then across the bay to the rocks and the abbey. ‘I’ve had just about enough of this town,’ he said. ‘First, my auntie gets made over at some dodgy boutique until she’s almost dead! And now this! Vanished!’ My heart went out to him. He seemed about to cry. I could sense that Effie was embarrassed and impatient. ‘This is an evil town,’ Robert said quietly. ‘There’s something wicked here. A brooding presence behind the scenes, watching over us and laughing at us all . . .’
I caught Effie’s eye as Robert fell silent and, in that moment, we acknowledged that this boy - a humble elf from the Christmas Hotel - was right.
‘And the accusations?’ Effie prompted gently.
‘Hm?’ He turned back from staring at the stark abbey and the roiling clouds over the sea. ‘She said she knew where the disappearing elves had gone, Martin and the others. She had proof, she said. She went round telling everyone. She came to me first with her suspicions. I was shocked and laughed. I thought it was too ridiculous. I told her to watch out, she’d get herself into hot bother, casting aspersions like that. I’m sure it was legally actionable, the stuff she went round saying about Mrs Claus. You know the way she talked, since her regression? She said: “They’re dead. They’re dead and disposed of. They’re dead and hanging up in the cold meat lockers. Gloooop. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them down there. I’ve seen Mrs Claus and that wicked Chef McFee. Glooop! Making them. Making them into. Making and baking them into pies!”’
Effie gave a little shriek of horror.
But I had already guessed what was coming. It had to be that. I struggled hard to keep my composure, to marshal my thoughts, to string a sentence together that would refute the possibility of cannibalism at the Christmas Hotel. But my mind had gone as blank as the cloud-obscured sky.
I heard Effie make some peculiar noises as she tried to bring herself under control. ‘It’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘It has to be.’
Robert shrugged solemnly. ‘How can you be so sure? We don’t want it to be true. Of course we’d rather it was impossible. But we don’t know that, do we? It seems that anything is possible here. Any horrible, nasty thing . . .’
I plunged my hands into my pockets and took a deep breath to stop my insides quivering. Action: that’s what was required. ‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ I said.
Both of them stared at me. Suddenly I felt like the leader of our little gang. All my innards were doing somersaults. At one level I was being sensible and decisive, at another I was thinking about golden pastry
, thick gravy and glistening meat . . .
‘We have to break into the kitchens. We need to see those meat lockers for ourselves.’
Effie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Can’t we just call the police?’
‘They won’t do anything,’ Robert said. ‘I reported my aunt’s disappearance, but they weren’t interested. I explained her curious condition and state of health, but they said she might have gone off on a little holiday. I think they’re scared of Mrs Claus. Like everyone else in this town. That’s how the old monster gets her own way. When I told the police where Jessie and I worked, the desk sergeant shivered. One thing was certain: he wasn’t keen to go investigating things up at the Christmas Hotel.’
‘I must say,’ said Effie, ‘I’m not terribly keen myself.’ The poor thing was looking green. ‘But we have to, don’t we? No one else will. Poor old Jessie won’t just have wandered off. Something must have happened. Something bad.’
I was glad she had decided to be practical and determined. I knew that both of us were teetering on the brink of the screaming ab-dabs.
Before we could change our minds, we set off up the hill to the hotel.
We walked into the close at the back of the row and the moon came out, glowing on the white buildings. They looked like they were made of bone. Every window was dark, sightless. It was strange to think of the hundreds sleeping there, in those hotels, that night, yet it was so incredibly quiet. Dutifully, all the guests had had an early night. The omnipresent will of Mrs Claus could be felt in that weighty silence. I wondered that I had never felt it before, under the false jollity and glee at the Christmas Hotel.
Robert had his own keys. I’m sure he shouldn’t have had such a comprehensive bundle in his capacity as a lowly elf. But he was used to sneaking about at night without leave. Effie and I snuck down the stone stairs behind him into the small kitchen yard, which was stacked with crates, bins and empty bottles. Nothing out of the ordinary or very sinister. Not yet, anyway.