by Paul Magrs
‘We follow our noses,’ Effie says. ‘So . . . let’s follow them back to the Hotel Miramar.’
Sheila greets us effusively in the foyer of her hotel. This time she’s wearing a silken oriental shift, which strains over all of her curves. She shows us to the lounge bar and has a tray of drinks brought, so we can wet our whistles as we think over her case.
Effie sips her bitter lemon and realises Sheila is staring at her with a curious kind of respect. ‘I understand that there is a tradition here, in this town,’ Sheila says quietly, so that guests at the other bar tables won’t hear.
‘Pardon?’
‘For women in trouble like me, going to the women of your family, Effie. And begging them for help. I understand this tradition goes back for generations. Hundreds of years, even.’
Effie is frowning. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
‘Oh, I am.’ Sheila smiles. ‘Like it or not, you’re the local wise woman, you are. And everyone knows it, somehow.’
‘I assure you—’
‘And you’re lucky, because you’ve got Brenda to help you.’ Sheila glances round at me, clinking her half of shandy to mine. ‘You’re a formidable team, I understand.’
‘Who have you been talking to?’ says Effie darkly.
Sheila shrugs, suddenly inscrutable. She sips her drink in a very ladylike fashion, and a great wash of sadness seems to come over her again. ‘You will help me, won’t you?’
I pitch in. ‘Maybe you should think about whether you have any enemies here in Whitby. Start making a list of those who might resent you so much they’d be prepared to write you a poisonous letter . . .’
‘I don’t know!’ Sheila bursts out, going red. ‘There could be dozens! People here have resented me for years. They think I’m sleazy and rich. They come here to enjoy themselves, and then they go whispering about this being a house of ill repute . . . a decadent pleasure palace . . . It could be just about anyone . . .’
I nod, thinking: those are just the terms Effie always used to use when talking about the Hotel Miramar. Most people, when mentioning the place and Sheila herself, would allow a pleasurably thrilling note of scandal to creep into their tone. But would someone like Effie, say, actually write to Sheila with the express intention of upsetting her?
‘I think we need to see it, Sheila,’ says Effie gently.
We both watch as Sheila glances round to make sure she is unobserved. Then, almost reverentially, she reaches into the gold-embroidered clutch bag on the table in front of her. The envelope and paper are a very plain white. She unfolds the letter and lays it in front of us. It’s typewritten, so not many clues there. Effie and I crane forward to read.
Sheila Manchu, you fat old hag, you are a vile strumpet and a festering harlot. You and your husband came here, you slag, and you shamed us all with your nasty and devilish ways. You used your hotel as a front for crime and drugs and sexual perversion, all sorts of wickedness. Everyone in this town despises you! And all of us are glad your old husband is dead and gone into the fiery pit like he has. The gateway into hell is right on your doorstep, Sheila Manchu, and it’s waiting for you next. You’ll be shoved in there quicker than you can blink one of these days, oh yes. You and your horrible hubby, you’ll be writhing on a spit as Satan turns it through all eternity . . . You’ve never fitted in here, and everyone here has hated your stinking guts for thirty-odd years. The people of Whitby would burn you if they could get away with it. Everyone makes snide comments about you. When you walk through town people turn aside to comment, and to tell each other how horrible you are. There’s whispering behind your back all the time. Behind every smile there’s venom and bile.
I must say, it would have given me quite a turn too, had it arrived on my doormat with the day’s usual freight of junk and business correspondence. I read it through a couple of times and what snags my eye most is the mention of the gateway to hell. Funny thing to drop in, I think. Very specific. Almost as if someone knows it is a proper geographical location rather than a metaphor. Who else in Whitby would know about the Bitch’s Maw? Who else besides Effie and myself ? Not many, surely, would be aware that the gateway is concealed in the ruins of the abbey. I shudder at the very thought. But for now, I keep it to myself.
‘I can see why that would be distressing,’ says Effie, stiffly sympathetic.
Sheila is close to tears again. She’s shredded her beer mat into fluffy pulp. ‘It’s that bit about everyone whispering and making snide comments behind my back. That’s the worst bit.’
She stops and lets this sink in. I realise that what she’s just described is a familiar paranoia of mine. On my worst days, that’s exactly how I imagine the world works, with everyone sniggering, pointing and commenting behind my back. Poor Sheila!
‘Yes, well,’ says Effie. ‘That’s very helpful, seeing that. May we take it away with us?’
‘Of course,’ Sheila tells us, and watches as Effie carefully stows the letter in her own plain brown handbag.
No sooner has she done this than we are suddenly joined by a fourth person. She pops up as if out of nowhere, all garish colours and insinuating manner. Rosie Twist is in our midst and we all clam up. How long has she been listening? What has she gleaned? She’ll know something juicy is in the offing: we all seem so guilty and quiet.
‘Hello, Rosie,’ Sheila says, with a sniffle.
‘I’d heard something has happened to upset you, Sheila. What’s up?’ Rosie’s manner is, as it is with everyone, pushy and peremptory. There’s never any standing on ceremony with Rosie.
‘It’s nothing,’ Sheila says, mopping her eye make-up.
‘Come on, I’ve never seen you like this. You’re indestructible! You never get upset! You could have the seven plagues of Egypt unleashed on the Miramar and you’d take it in your stride . . .’
‘Just leave it, Rosie,’ Effie snaps. ‘Whatever it is, Sheila’s hardly going to tell you about it, is she? Unless she wants it splashed on the front page of The Willing Spirit.’
Rosie shrugs. ‘Please yourselves. As it happens, I was asking out of the spirit of friendliness. Not anything else.’ She moves to turn away, sulkily.
‘Oh, Rosie,’ Sheila bursts out. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you—’
‘I’m quite used to it,’ Rosie says. ‘Everyone thinks the worst of me. Just because of The Willing Spirit.’
‘That’s because it’s the most awful, gossipy rag,’ Effie tells her.
Rosie glares at her and storms out of the bar.
‘Silly woman.’ Effie sighs.
‘You shouldn’t upset her,’ Sheila says. ‘She wields a lot of power with that paper. She could destroy anyone in this town. And she knows it.’
‘She’s nowt,’ Effie says, using a very precise Yorkshire term. ‘And she doesn’t scare me. Hardly anything does.’
Now I know Effie is saying this for effect. There are plenty of things that scare her. And somehow, as the shandy goes right through me like a fizzy wave of foreboding, I feel we’re straying close to something that’s going to scare us both daft.
I have an early night, Saturday, because of all the sleep I’ve been missing. But round about one in the morning I’m awake again and I’m afraid I make something of a fool of myself.
Who can blame me, though? After the ghastly, wakeful nights I’ve had, when I hear the noises at one a.m. of course I assume they come from the same source as the sounds that have taunted me for a fortnight or more. I leap out of my bed, furious with fatigue, and I lumber heavily to my bedroom door.
Now, if I had stopped to really listen to those noises, I’d have realised they were different from what usually comes to haunt me. These weren’t pitter-patter, scritchy-scratch. These were heavier treads on the stair carpet; these were doors slamming downstairs. These were tipsy giggles from my paying guests. But I hurtled out on to my landing, bellowing at the top of my voice. I’m squirming, even as I remember this, and the spectacle I must have made of myself in my volu
minous nightie with my wig not on. I must have been terrifying as I came crashing down the top flight and then the bottom flight of stairs, screeching and howling like a great bald golem.
I came face to face with Mr and Mrs Marsden from Room Three. They were struggling with their keys and they looked appalled to see me. In fact, they looked horrified at the sight of me. They both shrieked and I was brought to my senses with a jolt.
Almost immediately, others were coming out of their rooms to see what was going on. The couple from Room Two, across the landing, looked bleary and perplexed.
I started stammering apologies. They must have thought I was a wild woman. A maniac. They would all want to leave early in the morning, I was sure of it.
‘I thought we had burglars . . . It’s so very late in the evening, you see . . .’
Mr Marsden had a protective arm round his wife. He waggled his Yale key at me. ‘We have been out dancing. Enjoying ourselves. We didn’t expect to be greeted like this.’
He looks me up and down. And then I see that all of them, all four of them – and the other two, now coming up from downstairs to see what’s going on – they’re all looking me up and down, somewhat disturbed by my physical presence. Mrs Marsden is still whimpering in her husband’s arms, she got such a fright when I jumped round the corner. And I think: I’ve got no make-up on, nor my wig. All my scars are on show. I might as well be standing here in the nuddy. I’m here before my paying guests in all my glory. My horrifying glory. No wonder they’re looking at me like that.
I apologise again and beat a hasty retreat.
‘Get an alarm fitted!’ Mr Marsden yells after me, and I colour with shame.
He’s right. But an alarm would be no good against the noises I usually hear in the night.
I lie awake in my bed for some time, imagining what these couples under my roof will be whispering to each other in their rooms: what will they be saying about me? Will they leave straight away in the morning? Have I disturbed them that much? I’m dreading getting up to do the breakfasts. Imagining their snide looks. Their smirks.
I toss and turn, dreading the coming of the real noises.
I try to distract myself by thinking about Sheila Manchu’s case.
On our walk back into town at teatime, Effie talked a bit about her experience of Sheila over the years, which didn’t amount to much. She wanted to fill me in on the things I didn’t know, since I only arrived here last year. There wasn’t much to tell me, beyond the tittle-tattle I had already heard. For over thirty years stories had circulated about the town, of the petty crimes and misdemeanours and the scandalous things that went on at the Miramar. Effie tried to make me appreciate quite how wicked it all seemed, back in the seventies. People would discuss Sheila’s doings in whispers. And, while Mu-Mu was still alive, there was always that threat: the glamorous danger that came with his name. People were scared of Sheila and her husband. They were connected to all sorts of badness.
This is how my thoughts go swirling round in my head, over and over, as I lie there in the night, spent and exhausted. Waiting for my haunting to start up again. But nothing comes. Not tonight. Or if it does, I am insensible to it. For the first night in ages, I sleep like a dream.
And I wake feeling marvellous. And if my guests give me funny looks over their breakfasts I hardly notice. Luckily, no one leaves early, and no one asks for a refund.
The next day or so passes in a haze of hard work. I feel obliged to smarm up to my house guests by cooking them a proper Sunday lunch. I know it’s not the kind of thing most B&B ladies do, but it’s my firm belief that extras like this are what draw the punters back. My guests this weekend are rather surly and ungrateful, I think. In the end I regret spending my time basting the joint, straining the greens, fluffing up the Yorkshire puddings. I am pleased to see the back of my visitors, come Monday morning. Funny, some of these people passing through your life, you just don’t seem to take to them. By lunchtime on Monday I can hardly recall their faces.
My memory’s not the best though, as you know. Especially when it comes to faces.
Still, Monday afternoon gives me one of those rare moments when the synapses (is that the right word?) fire off in the right order, and the old skeins of cobweb come floating down from the rafters of my mind and suddenly something comes back to me. Light dawns! Sparks shoot across my vision. My face cracks out in a huge grin.
I have remembered something so gobsmackingly obvious I can hardly credit the fact I would let something so important slip out of my head.
I’m in the beer garden of the Hotel Miramar when it happens.
I’ve had a wander up there alone, just mulling things over. Sometimes I think better when I’m not accompanied by Effie’s constant chatter. I can’t tell her this, of course. She’d be mortified. Anyway, it’s a stuffy, standstill kind of afternoon, and I know Effie is home, stewing over the puzzle of Sheila Manchu’s letter. As ever, I prefer to be up and doing. Before I know it I’m up at the Miramar and I’m delighted to bump into Robert, who is on duty for the afternoon.
We’re out in the beer garden – or the scrubby bit of grass at the back that Sheila wants to turn into a beer garden – when I have my blinding revelation. We’re standing on the terrace and Robert is describing to me what the garden will look like.
‘A barbecue?’ I’m saying. ‘Marvellous. I’m surprised she’s never had one before.’
‘She’s going for the whole Polynesian, Tikki look,’ Robert’s enthusing. ‘Waitresses in grass skirts and what-have-you. She’s ordered all this very expensive bamboo garden furniture . . .’
‘It’ll take her mind off her upset,’ I muse.
‘That’s what I think it’s for,’ he says. ‘She’s throwing herself into this beer garden project so she doesn’t have to think about whoever it is who means her harm.’
I turn back to him. ‘Do you have any ideas who it might be?’
Robert looks uneasy. ‘Loads of people in Whitby have secrets. There’s lots of shady characters, too. People who enjoy making others suffer. What I’m thinking is, what if there’s a whole rash of these letters? Who knows what might come tumbling out into the open?’
He loves a bit of melodrama, does Robert. Still, the thought makes me shiver, as we stand in the afternoon sunshine. And that’s when I have my revelation, or my flash of remembrance, or whatever it is.
‘Oh, look, it’s him!’ I hiss, clutching Robert’s arm.
There’s the old feller, coming out through the French windows, into the garden. He’s stretching and yawning, presumably after a post-lunch nap. He’s in his green tweeds again and his walking boots.
‘It’s really him! I know who he is! I remember now!’
Robert looks alarmed. ‘Who? Brenda, what are you on about?’
Very dapper and self-possessed he looks, too, as the sunshine gleams off his bald pate and his immaculate moustache. He hasn’t heard me squawking out – luckily. I’m drawing Robert back behind the box hedge, so we can watch him unobserved.
‘I know who he is!’ I whisper harshly into Robert’s ear.
‘Brenda,’ he says impatiently. ‘You are acting very oddly.’ Bless Robert: he feels it’s his duty to alert me to these moments. As if I could rectify them somehow and start to behave properly!
‘Henry . . .’ I gasp, as memories come floating back to me through the past’s vortex. ‘His name is Henry.’
From afar we watch the old gent take a few deep breaths. Then he strides out, wielding his walking cane. He toddles off happily down the garden path.
Robert frowns. ‘What’s the big deal, Brenda?’
I watch the old feller disappear round the corner, off on his walk.
‘I’ve seen him about the place. In the nightclub, and then in town. He recognises me too, but he hasn’t come over to talk to me. He’s just nodded and winked . . .’
Robert laughs at this. ‘You’ve got an admirer, Brenda!’ He’s chuckling, but I’m disturbed by all of this.
‘Henry Cleavis . . .’ I say. ‘But . . . but it can’t be. It really can’t be him.’ Now I’m pacing heavily around the yellowed grass of what will become Sheila’s beer garden. I’m just about pounding my fists into my brow, forcing the memories to return. ‘Think! Think! When did you last see him? When did it end?’
Robert’s after me, concerned. ‘Brenda . . .?’
‘It really can’t be him, Robert,’ I gabble. ‘There’s something wrong here . . .’
And then I’m off, before Robert can say anything more. I’m pulling my anorak back on and hurrying round to the front of the hotel, even trampling on the flowerbeds in my haste. Back to the main road. But Henry Cleavis has gone. I’ve missed him again.
But it can’t be him, can it? Surely he’d be dead by now.
Me, with my long-lived life: I’m used to knowing people and leaving them and losing them and having to forget them. Just for my own sanity’s sake. Otherwise there is just too much to remember. Too many memories to fit inside one body.
And so, in order to ensure that I go on surviving, I have to quite deliberately make sure that I forget them. And so these people – these lovers, friends, allies and enemies – they vanish somewhere, back in the past. That’s the cruel way it’s always been. No one – hardly anyone – endures as long as I do.
But now this . . . Henry Cleavis. Here in Whitby. He has come back. He has reminded me that he was once in my past. Here he is, sprightly and cheery as ever before.
If I knew which way he’d set off walking, I’d go chasing after him. I would. Now I know it’s him, I’d hound his footsteps.
But I’ve missed him. All I can do is hurry home, back down the hill into town. I knock up Effie and she’s been having a siesta. She looks rumpled and cross when she comes to the door. I don’t know how she makes any money in that shop of hers.
‘What? What is it?’ she demands.