by Paul Magrs
Ploughing uphill through town in the snow, Penny is wearing a troubled look. ‘So, is he related to Henry Cleavis, the writer?’
‘Hmm?’ It’s almost seven o’clock and the shops are still open. Christmas music comes tinkling out of every doorway. Each window is trimmed and lit warmly. Not for the first time I suppress a shiver: it’s as if the influence of Mrs Claus has spread all over town.
‘Henry Cleavis, the children’s writer from the forties. Was that his dad?’
Ah, now I’ve got to present Penny with one of those impossible facts that she pretends to take in her stride. ‘Erm, it’s the same man, Penny love. Henry took a nip of some kind of potion in a lost city in Africa, some time in the fifties. I think that was the story. Or he bathed in the flame of eternal youth. I forget the details now, anyway. But the upshot was – well, he’s the same now as when I knew him back then.’
‘Oh!’
‘Shocked?’
She shakes her head quickly. ‘So it’s him! The man who wrote those books . . .’
‘He hasn’t written for years. He’s been too busy hunting for monsters.’
Penny gasps suddenly. ‘I wonder if he knew Beatrice Mapp, then? If he was around all that time ago?’
The thought hadn’t struck me. Sometimes Penny is rather good and useful at drawing out the connections between things. I’m afraid I tend to focus on things that are right in front of me.
Anyway, at this point there’s no more time for talk of Henry. (Poor Henry! No sooner has he arrived than I’m pushing him out of my thoughts!) For we have arrived on Silver Street, which is looking very olde worlde and quaint under its freight of snow. And next thing, we are outside The Spooky Finger, ringing the bell to be allowed access to the shop, which has shut early especially for book group. I take a deep breath. Something inside is sending shooting stars of alarm right through me.
‘Yoo hoo! Hang on! Brenda, wait!’
I turn, shocked, to see Effie trudging heavily towards us. She’s got her trainers on and she’s evidently been hurrying after us all the way here. When she catches up, she’s breathless with laughter, but not really tired. Her eyes are shining. ‘I thought I’d join you! I haven’t finished the book, though. Will that matter, Penny?’
‘Of course not.’ Penny smiles, seemingly glad to add another recruit to her list. Hmmm. Recruit. I mull over what I’ve read about the cult of Qab.
I ask Effie where on earth she found her own copy of the book.
‘I told you, my aunts were big fans of the occult and fantastic mysteries. They’ve quite a collection, tucked away inside their roomful of arcane texts.’ Now she’s looking with great interest at the interior of The Spooky Finger as we are ushered in by Marjorie Staynes’s single employee. It’s that creepy boy with the very pale, almost translucent skin. He looks a bit greenish, but that must be the lighting in this shop. I dread to think that he might be a Walker. I study him briefly. His eyes are rimmed with pink and his pale hair is flattened to his skull. But I can’t get a good look at his teeth. I remember the touch of his skin, and how chilly it was.
Inside, it is warm and fragrant with incense. There’s all that noise of chuckling water, and the distant hooting of birds. There is also a gentle susurration of female gossip, deep within the stacks and shelves.
In the centre of the shop there are twelve seats laid out in a ring. Marjorie is clearly holding court, sitting with a folder on her lap and a pile of books by her feet. Her pouchy old face creases in a welcoming smile as we are shown to the last remaining empty chairs by the boy, whom she calls Gila.
Effie is looking about with great interest. I have to admit, she looks wonderful, does Effie. I don’t know if she’s doing right or wrong, but she’s looking good on it.
As we sit, the other book group members are watching our every move. I feel like I’m auditioning to be a member. I wouldn’t care, but I was never that keen on coming here in the first place. It was Penny pushing me. I nod at Leena, who is keen to acknowledge me. I recognise a few other faces from seeing them out and about in town, down the shops, or at the Christmas Hotel. Only a couple are completely unknown to me. All of us are ladies of a certain age, bar Penny.
After introductions are made, we begin. Marjorie Staynes talks in this sugary, too-nice way. She’s all gushing sincerity and you can see she’s fake as anything. She bangs on about the importance of new blood in her group, and how she’s delighted that the club is going from strength to strength.
Penny and Effie are alert throughout the entire meeting. I find it all pretty dull, I have to admit. I drift off, making calculations and memos in my head as the floor is thrown open for anyone to pitch in with their thoughts on Qab. I’m too busy going over my menus and shopping lists and then – I’m not ashamed to admit it - dwelling on Henry Cleavis. I imagine him settling into my sumptuous Red Room. I wonder what he’s doing right now . . .
And that’s when – of course – I realise that everyone in the book group is looking at me.
‘Your thoughts, Brenda?’ Marjorie Staynes simpers. I glare at her and realise for the first time that she’s wearing a mohair jumper with a horse’s head appliquéd on the front. No, it’s a unicorn. She’s looking at me like a crazy woman and I have no idea what she wants from me. I believe I gawp in response.
‘What did you make of this first book of Qab by Beatrice Mapp? Were you as intrigued as everyone else here? Were you hooked?’
I shake my head. ‘Not at all. I thought it was horrible, to be honest. Not my kind of thing at all.’
Marjorie looks at me pityingly. ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry that your first week in the club has been blighted.’
I shrug. ‘I mean, it was interesting and all. And I was fascinated by this lady, this grand Bloomsbury lady, and how she came to write about such strange things . . .’ I realise I’m trying to make up for lack of enthusiasm. Typical me. I hate disappointing people. ‘In fact, I’d rather have read about Beatrice Mapp, and found out more about what made her tick.’
There is a general muttering of agreement from the rest of the club. Effie asks if there was ever a biography or many articles about the old lady.
Marjorie swiftly shakes her head. ‘She was very mysterious. I doubt we will ever know what put Qab into her mind. No one was ever close enough to Beatrice Mapp to know much about her.’
Even as Marjorie says this in her sugary tones, looking at each of her club members in turn, I know that she is completely wrong. I don’t know how I know it, but I just do.
I’m going to have to dig deeper. And Henry is the man to help me.
‘You were very quiet towards the end, Penny,’ I say.
We’re walking home, the crusty snow crumbling like the hardest meringue beneath our feet. The moon is bright on us as we amble along.
Effie is quiet, musing about Qab, she says. I expected her to be a bit more sarcastic about the whole do, really.
‘You know when I went to the loo?’ says Penny suddenly. ‘You were all busy yakking away, trying to untangle the plot of the book. Well, I nipped into the customers’ loo on the first-floor landing. There are lots of old prints and paintings in there and it was quite interesting, I spent some time looking at them all. Anyway, while I was . . . using the facilities, I put my bag and my book on this little shelf at the side.’
‘You haven’t got your bag!’ Effie points out.
‘Exactly. I’m telling you what happened.’
‘Oh, it was such a pretty, beaded jet thing, wasn’t it?’ I ask.
‘So I was sitting there, minding my business. I can still hear all your raised voices in the main shop. And I’m staring at this painting above the shelf where I’ve put my stuff. It’s not a very good watercolour. Mountains and a lake. Looks like the Lake District to me. Quite nice, though, and as I’m looking at it, the colours are seeming that bit more vivid. The lake itself even seems to ripple in the sun . . .’
Effie gasps. ‘The painting was coming to life!’
Penny nods grimly. ‘Of course, I leap up to examine the thing.’
‘Good girl.’
‘And it’s only a five-by-eight print in a cheap frame. But there is something weird about it. I try to touch the glass . . . but it isn’t glass. It’s something soft and sticky . . . like cooling toffee. When I press my fingertips to the painting, the glass yields to them. My fingers start sliding into the picture. I can feel this awful sucking on them, as if it’s drawing me in . . .’
‘Good heavens!’ goes Effie.
‘So what did you do?’ I ask.
‘I yanked my hand back, quick as I could. I knew it was nothing good, whatever was going on. But I pulled back too violently. I knocked my stuff off the shelf. My little black clutch bag and my novel went flying the other way. Right into the picture. Into the watercolour lake itself, with a little plop. I cried out and the picture gave a little . . . shudder kind of thing. And then it was back to normal.’
‘Well!’ I gasp. ‘What an experience! No wonder you were a bit subdued when you came back through.’
We walk on a bit more quietly, downhill, till it comes to the corner where Penny has to peel off in order to return to the Miramar.
‘What was it, though?’ she says urgently. ‘What could it be?’
Effie and I exchange a glance. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find out.’
‘I wish I hadn’t lost my book,’ she says glumly, and so before she goes off, I give her mine.
Effie and I walk in silence back to our street. Before she nips into her house, Effie says, ‘I wonder if it was what I’m thinking, hmm?’ But she doesn’t tell me what that is. Old bat’s gone inscrutable again.
When I get home, I find that Henry’s hanging about, wanting a word. He looks proper settled in now, and I’m glad. He’s the picture of rumpled suavity in his dressing gown and frayed silk ascot. I lead him up to my attic sitting room and out comes the cream sherry.
He sits in the bobbly armchair and scratches his beard, and I can see he’s perturbed about something.
‘Your friend Robert called by this evening.’
‘But he knew I was at Penny’s book group!’
Henry shakes his head. ‘Came to see me, as it happens. Brought me a bottle of whisky. Very kind of him. Welcoming me back to Whitby and all that.’
‘He’s very thoughtful.’ Of course, I’d forgotten. Henry and Robert met and went through rather a lot together during that terrible affair to do with Goomba the bamboo creature at the Hotel Miramar.
‘Told me something a mite disturbing, though, did Robert,’ adds Henry Cleavis gruffly.
‘Oh yes?’
‘I don’t know if it just slipped out, or whether he was meaning to warn me, or to fill me in on what had been going on while I was away. Anyhow. Out it came.’
‘What?’ The sherry glass is suspended halfway to my mouth as I perch on the end of my paisley two-seater settee. I know what he’s going to say.
‘Why didn’t you tell me yourself, Brenda?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘That you were married.’
Ah.
‘This Frank person. Robert told me all about how he turned up out of the blue. You knew him years ago, didn’t you? And he came after you, out of the past, and dogged your heels, causing an almighty fuss until he won you over.’
I sigh deeply. Henry doesn’t know the half of it. Or does he? Maybe he’s feigning this innocence now. Last time we met, he knew bits of my past that I’d forgotten. I wonder what he really knows about Frank. Perhaps he’s testing me out. But how can Henry ever really understand about Frank and me, and about what Frank did?
Frank did more than dog my heels. I was just about blackmailed into getting married to him. It’s far too complicated and shaming a story to go into right now. And anyway, who does Henry Cleavis think he is, demanding explanations from me like this? I feel myself flush with anger and I swallow down my sherry in one go.
Then I tell him: ‘I thought I felt something for him again. I did. I mean, the wedding – that was a mistake. A horrible . . . blackmail kind of situation. We were in hell at the time. No, I mean it, literally, in hell. And the only way I could save my friends was by getting wed to this . . . terrible man-monster who’d been after me for donkey’s years.’
‘Oh, Brenda!’ Henry’s face is tender with concern. I can hardly look at him. Who’s he to look so bothered now? Where was he when I most needed his help? ‘So where is he now, this brute? Left you in the lurch, did he?’
I shake my head sadly. ‘It wasn’t like that. Poor Frank. We went through so much together. And we even found that we really got on, in the end. We complemented each other. Pretty soon I was even glad that he had found me again. We made a go of it . . . for about a year.’
‘A year!’ Henry Cleavis cries out. He looks like someone who can’t imagine spending a whole year with another person so intimately woven into his life. He’s an old perpetual bachelor. That’s what Henry Cleavis is.
‘And then he was taken from me. Suddenly. Just a couple of months ago.’
‘Taken? He was . . . killed?’
‘As good as.’
‘Oh, Brenda. I’m sorry. No wonder you were quiet about it all. No wonder you never mentioned it.’
I shrug. Pour us some more sherry.
‘How did . . . how did it happen?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it now, thanks. Just rest assured that Frank’s out of the way.’
Henry’s nose twitches at the mention of my husband’s name. Like it always does when the subject of monsters comes up. He can’t help himself. He’s a monster-slaying machine. It’s been his job for almost a hundred years. He can’t be all that cut up about my Frank’s demise. If Frank was still about, Henry would be the one trying to kill him, I suppose. And not out of love for me – oh no. Just because that’s what Henry is most passionate about. He has devoted his long life to the killing of the creatures of the night.
And if Frank was anything, he was certainly that.
‘I’ll leave you now,’ Henry says tactfully. ‘Bit worn out after all my travels, to be honest.’
I show him to the door. He pauses on the top landing before going to his Red Room. ‘How was your literary evening?’
‘It was hardly that. Bunch of old women gossiping and talking about Beatrice Mapp.’
I’m not sure if I imagine it, but a dark cloud passes over his face at the mention of the Edwardian lady novelist’s name.
‘However, we did find something in the shop. Something weird . . .’
‘Oh yes?’
But I tease him. I won’t tell him yet about what Penny found in the lav at The Spooky Finger.
Thursday.
Tonight it’s been Robert’s shindig at the Hotel Miramar. I could sense that Henry was tense the whole time, owing to the fact that the last time he was there, he was fighting for his life. But there was nothing like that tonight.
It was a rather boozy evening. Everyone was there, though I found myself having to explain to Henry what had become of Sheila Manchu, the proprietress of the Hotel Miramar, whom he knew, and who came a cropper on one of our adventures.
‘You’ve faced more mystery and danger than even I have in recent years,’ Henry tells me. He’s having to shout a bit because we’re at a booth near the dance floor. I shush him quickly and laugh him off.
I notice Effie’s up on the floor, sprightlier than ever in a vintage frock trimmed with feathers. Her arms are bare and they look plumper and firmer than usual as she waggles her hands about. No bingo wings on Effie tonight.
Only I know why. I just hope Henry doesn’t clock her apparent rejuvenation. If I were her, I’d try drawing less attention to it.
Something makes me feel nervous tonight, so I’m hitting the sweet sherry rather harder than is sensible for a woman with my responsibilities. But there is a tension in the Yellow Peril, this gaudy niterie beneath the Miramar, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.
There are glances passing between clientele. There’s a whisper of menace in the air. A palpable threat hanging in the dry ice itself. I catch glimpses of faces contorted in savage, predatory expressions as the strobe lights flicker. Even though everyone’s in party hats and Slade and Wizzard are playing their usual festive hits, I note the dead black eyes and rictus grins of the enemy. The enemy within . . .
Or maybe the sherry is just making me bibulous and paranoid?
Except . . . when Henry gets me up to dance, holding me close during Elvis’s ‘Blue Christmas’, I can feel the shape of his biggest crucifix beneath the bristly tweed of his jacket.
He sees my look of alarm and leans in. ‘They’re all around us, Brenda. There’s more than I thought. We’ve got our work cut out.’
I give him a sickly smile. I don’t want to spend all of Christmas on a stake-out, thank you very much.
Then he surprises me by saying out of the blue: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Help! I think. What am I guilty of not telling him about now? I feel itchy and cross, clutching this scratchy old man to my bosom. What right does he have to go cross-questioning me on the dance floor? ‘What about? Are you on about my Frank again?’
Henry shakes his head tersely. ‘Not this time, no. I’m on about Effie and her fancy fella. You never said.’
‘Oh. Ah.’
‘Exactly. Didn’t you think maybe I’d be interested? Given that I’m here with all my slaying paraphernalia? To know that she’s got the Prince of the Undead staying with her? Shacked up with her?’
‘Who told you?’ I say. Sounding shifty, I know. Like I’ve been protecting that bloody old cadaver.
‘Robert let something slip when he was round last night. About Alucard living next door to you. For about as long as the vampire infestation has been going on. Funny, that, isn’t it?’
I roll my eyes. ‘Robert was a proper blabbermouth last night, wasn’t he?’
Henry Cleavis stares up at me and frowns. The disco lights gleam on his shining pate and suddenly I feel like slapping him for being so earnest. He says, ‘I’m glad he was a blabbermouth. Obviously, you don’t see fit to keep me informed about what’s going on.’