by Paul Magrs
I set off at once. He’s suggested a small greasy-spoon café quite near to the Miramar. He often goes there for breakfast, so he knows it’s open and that we won’t be disturbed.
I scoot out of my establishment and scurry up the hill that will take me to him. There aren’t many people about, to see my haste and harried face.
When I get there he’s sitting hunched over two steaming beakers of tea. His hair’s all mussed up and his collar’s standing up out of his jumper awkwardly.
‘Jessie is in terrible danger for her life,’ I tell him, once I’m settled on the squeaky vinyl seat. I lower my voice under the genial chitchat of Radio 2, which blares out through speakers. Robert frowns at me and I quickly tell my tale. I tell him about me and Henry witnessing her rampage in the Silver Slipper amusement arcade. Then I tell him about our meeting with Martin and his confession – and then its unfortunate sequel. Martin fleeing across the stodgy sands. Jessie pelting out of nowhere. Striking him down. Slashing him to bits with her claw-like hands and vicious teeth. Dragging him off across the clinking shale of the beach towards her cave.
‘Oh, my God,’ Robert says slowly. ‘She killed him? Are you sure?’
I nod. ‘Of course we are. The three of us were standing there, Robert.’
‘But are you sure, Brenda? You really saw all of this?’
‘It was dark, of course, and we were all in the shadows from the cliffs. But we saw enough. We heard Martin’s cries and his death throes. Then we could see Jessie. She was like a thing possessed, Robert. We saw her hefting up Martin’s body like a side of beef . . .’
Robert stares down at his greasy tea. ‘I’ve tried to protect her. I’ve tried to get through to her. To tell her what would happen if . . . if she went too far. But her mind is gone, Brenda. She is completely feral. She’s hardly my aunty at all now.’
‘Oh, Robert,’ I say. ‘Jessie will always be your aunty. You have to believe that. And she will always care for you. It’s just that . . . well, she’s gone a little bit wild. That’s all.’
‘That’s all!’ he barks, too loudly, and sobs. ‘And what about Martin? Have you told the police? The authorities? Won’t they just go straight out and shoot her?’
‘Ah.’ I feel myself looking shifty. ‘We haven’t reported his death. We haven’t said a word. The three of us decided not to.’
Robert narrows his eyes. ‘How come?’
‘Henry says he wants to deal with this . . . in his own way.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ I say. ‘But he went all strange and determined-looking. He says that fighting monsters is his job. Monsters and things without souls are his business.’
‘But Jessie has a soul still!’ Robert grasps my hand and won’t let go. ‘Can’t we make them see, Brenda? She isn’t really evil! She hasn’t lost her soul!’
I look at him and I don’t know what to say.
Because now, as it all settles in, I don’t believe that’s true. I think Jessie has lost everything. There is nothing of Robert’s aunty left now.
The poor boy is clinging on to nothing.
There are more rooms in the Hotel Miramar than I’d have thought possible. The corridors are narrow and dark and they smell of ginger biscuits. I have to keep squeezing past busy chambermaids, who block the way with their little trolleys of cleaning things and miniature toiletries. I shouldn’t really be up here, uninvited, but Robert let me in. Urgent business.
At last I’m standing in front of room 163. I take a deep breath. Fancy me falling for the bloke who wants to clean up the town, I sigh. I go and give my heart away and it’s to the feller who wants to destroy one of my friends who is going through a rough patch. Admittedly, a pretty bad rough patch, but still. I knock hesitantly on the plywood door. Have I really given my heart away? Is that what I’ve done?
Henry Cleavis looks sheepish and tired when he opens the door to me. He shoos me in and glances furtively up and down the passageway. Who does he expect is following me? I scurry in and sit on the edge of the bed, which is too soft and squashy for comfort.
Three things strike me first off. First: the dashing figure Henry cuts in his paisley silk dressing gown and his loosely knotted cravat. Quite the gentleman adventurer. Second, I don’t think much of the décor in Sheila’s hotel. Rather dated, almost sleazy – patterned nylon sheets and wood-effect fitted cabinets, indeed. And third – and this is the shocker – I realise that there are weapons everywhere. Henry has unpacked all his luggage and he’s got a veritable arsenal laid out on every surface. He’s polishing them up – these gleaming daggers, machetes, nunchakus – and readying himself for war. I’m sitting there watching him buff up an elephant gun.
He has noticed the look on my face. ‘Now, Brenda,’ he says, ‘I’m not wanting some long conflab about this. On the nature of good and evil. And whether we can, um, call Jessie an innocent savage or not.’
‘How did you know what I was going to say?’
He gives a sharp bark of a laugh, shoving some kind of rod down the length of the gun. ‘Because I know you, my dear. Think about it from the monster’s point of view, Henry. She doesn’t mean it. Doesn’t mean the things she does.’
‘But that’s true!’ I burst out.
He shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter. She still needs to be dealt with. Whether she intends to do harm or not. Can’t have her running about Whitby taking bites out of people, can we?’
His face creases up into the gentlest, sweetest of smiles and he comes to sit next to me on the too-squashy bed. How can he be so lovely, and still be talking about murder? It’s him with the savage streak, really, isn’t it? It’s him who’s cold-blooded. Now his arm’s gone round my shoulder. Bless him, he can’t even reach the whole way. I dwarf the poor feller.
‘I know she’s your friend, Brenda. It’s very loyal of you, this. Arguing on her behalf. But this is why I am here in Whitby, you know.’ He gestures round at the room, and its deadly display of armaments. ‘I’m here to deal with the monsters. There’s an unusually high level of, um. Activity, I suppose we’d call it.’
I stare at my sensible shoes and my thick tights miserably. I know exactly what he’s talking about. I even contribute to that statistic. It looks as though Henry and I are on different sides, this time.
‘Look at me, Brenda,’ he says. He gently tilts my face so that I’m looking straight at him, into his eyes. They are wise, full of compassion. Like warm caramel, they are. He’s pushed his smooth, whiskery face right up to mine. I feel a bit uncomfortable, truth be told. It’s startling, this intimacy lark. I’m out of practice. I feel myself flinch under his steady gaze. He’s too close. He’ll see all the lumps and blotches under my make-up. He’ll see right through me. The puckers and gathers of the scars under my chin, and up the left-hand side of my face: all the great jagged zigzags that craze my complexion. In the seedy half-light of mid-morning in this hotel room, I feel as if he is studying me.
Henry leans forward slowly and kisses me on the end of my nose. I blink in surprise. He has drawn away before I even realise it.
‘I think a lot of you, you know,’ he tells me. ‘And I would never let anything hurt you. You know that, don’t you?’
I nod, dumbly. It’s as if he’s robbed me of speech, of volition. Inwardly, I curse myself. I’ve let this little feller put me off my stroke. I came here to warn him, to tell him to leave poor Jessie alone. To abandon his monster-killing schemes. Instead he has felled me with a single blow. It’s humiliating! It wasn’t even a kiss on the lips. Not an ounce of high passion anywhere in it. A tender peck on my mighty nose and he’s stolen my gumption and my ire. I get up to go, and shuffle dazedly to the door.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ is all he says, going back to his gun-polishing. Outside, heading for the lift, I’m thinking: there must be some magic in this. Some kind of spell he’s put on me. I swooned! I bloody well swooned when he leaned in for the kill! I’m furious, but my heart’s beating like m
ad as I ride down to the foyer. Silly old woman!
Downstairs I find a whole lot of bustle and busyness going on. There’s a huge black van at the front and Robert has abandoned the desk in order to give instructions to the garden furniture men. The name of the furniture manufacturers, Danby’s, is emblazoned in gold script down the side of the van, and on the front of the men’s overalls.
Danby’s? A shudder of dread passes through me. That was the name of the owner of the Deadly Boutique. Surely it can’t be the same man? Could he have branched out into garden furnishings? I hope not. I hope it’s a coincidence. The recurrence of the name seems like an ill omen and I try to shake the thought away.
The men are carrying between them the most exquisite tables and chairs, all woven out of blond bamboo. They are taking them round to the back of the hotel in a grand procession to the beer garden, where Robert is in charge. He is issuing instructions as to where everything should be placed for now. Afterwards he will finesse the layout, he tells me, and create the paradisal sanctuary that Sheila requires for her barbecues.
‘It’s going to be marvellous,’ I tell him, watching men manhandling ornate chairs.
Robert stares into my face for a moment. ‘He’s got to you, hasn’t he?’
‘Who?’ I say. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Cleavis. He’s put you in a funny mood.’
‘Mood?’ But it’s true, though. I know what he means. My head’s swimming, even now that I’m out in the sunshine and away from the giddy dusk of his room. What’s he done to me? What have I allowed him to do?
Robert looks piqued. ‘Did you warn him? Did you tell him to keep away from Jessie?’
I am a bit shamefaced at this. I mumble, ‘Of course I did. But he’s like . . . a man on a mission . . .’
‘It’s others in this town he should be going after,’ Robert says darkly. ‘Mrs Claus, for instance. Why isn’t he gunning for her, eh? Now we know she was the one really responsible for the murder of Rosie Twist. He should be dealing with her.’
‘You’re right,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what we should tell Henry.’
‘Have you heard what she’s planning? It’s the most wickedly hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard of.’ Robert pauses here, to help extricate one of the large wickerwork chairs, which has become entangled in the box hedge as the men try to haul it through.
‘What is she planning?’ I ask him.
‘Tomorrow evening,’ he says, ‘Mrs Claus and all her elves are going to hold a service of commemoration for Rosie Twist. Outside the Christmas Hotel, because that’s where Rosie got shoved off the cliff.’
‘But that’s awful! Mrs Claus was the one who had her shoved!’
‘Mrs Claus just wants to get into the papers. Wants people to think well of her.’ Robert’s face is hard with fury. ‘It’s her who’s the monster. Not my Aunt Jessie.’
What surprises me over the next day or so is Effie’s behaviour. I know she doesn’t think much of Jessie. I know she thinks that, in accordance with our mission to guard the Bitch’s Maw, Jessie should be dealt with. But, as far as she is concerned, Jessie is our problem. She belongs to us, and the town. It isn’t up to some interloper to come in and do away with our womanzee.
She tails Henry Cleavis round the town. Wherever he goes the rest of that day, Effie is always right behind him. At first he isn’t even aware of this shadow in her twinset and stout walking shoes. Henry is determined and tooled up. He has all kinds of weapons secreted about his person and he wanders around the town, and across the beaches, in search of Jessie. And Effie is there, dogging his footsteps at every turn, all of Thursday and then into Friday.
She tells me what she’s been up to, Friday morning, in the Walrus and the Carpenter. We’re having tea and buttery fingers of cinnamon toast.
‘So he hasn’t found her yet?’ I ask.
‘Not a chance.’ Effie cackles. ‘I kept on his back till after midnight. Followed him all the way back to the Miramar. He looked so dejected! And exhausted, humping all his knives and guns around in his little bag.’
All of yesterday I was busy at work, at home. I’ve got a rush on. Every room is booked all of a sudden, and the work has piled up at my place. In a way I am glad, though, that I was able to keep out of it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be trailing after Henry.
‘He never saw you at all?’
‘Oh, he did in the end.’ Effie grins, crunching into the crystallised sugar on her toast and wrinkling her nose. ‘He turned round in the street and shouted at me! Really! It was so embarrassing. This was on his lonely, defeated walk back to his hotel in the early hours. There weren’t many people to witness it, but I was still embarrassed. I was crouching on the ground, behind a car. He called me over like a tutting, disapproving headmaster.’ But Effie doesn’t look as if she cares that much, not really. ‘He’s got no right to hunt our Jessie down. I told him so, there and then. Silly old fool. Who does he think he is?’
‘I’m just glad things have gone a bit quiet on the womanzee front,’ I say. ‘Perhaps it will all blow over . . .’
Effie looks perturbed. ‘She’s had a taste of human flesh now, remember. I don’t think that’s the last time she’ll kill.’
Effie’s right. And I remember the swiftness and savagery of her attack on Martin the elf, down on the beach. If I close my eyes I can still hear those ghastly noises. I can see the startled look on that boy’s face as Jessie lunges out of nowhere. Or am I imagining that in retrospect?
‘But what’s our plan?’ I ask her. ‘We don’t want to let Cleavis kill her, or send her back to hell. But what are we going to do about her?’
Here Effie bites her lip. ‘We’re her protectors, in a way, aren’t we? We were told that hell will spill certain of its denizens into this town, and our job is to look out for them. I take that to mean that we are their protectors, rather than their destroyers. We are here to make sure they don’t cause too much bother.’
I nod slowly. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘I’ve thought about this a lot, these past few days. Since Jessie has gone to the bad. I’m sure that is our role here.’
In that case, I think, we’re not doing that good a job of it, are we? That’s what goes unspoken between us at this point. We look at each other a bit guiltily and finish up our toast.
Effie pays our bill because it’s her turn. Then we wend our way up the cobbled lane to the foot of the one hundred and ninety-nine steps. Quite a lot of tourists about today. It’s hard going, just fighting our way up our usual route. Effie tells me that she wants to go down on to the sands, to check out Jessie’s cave.
‘Right now?’ I ask uncertainly.
Grimly, she nods. She’s a brave woman. Bearding the womanzee in her den. But she’s right. We need to see if she’s there. And what state she’s in.
We veer off past the holiday cottages and the kipper shop. We amble along easily under the great shadow of the rocks. And then we slip down on to the beach, where there is no one about. It’s deserted here and bleak. It’s like walking across the surface of the moon. Robert was very wise in finding his aunt a hideout here.
To cover our nerves we start talking about the memorial event to be held this evening on the western cliff. ‘What’s Mrs Claus playing at?’
‘Good press, no doubt,’ says Effie, stumbling a little on the rocks. ‘But the ironic thing is, with Rosie Twist dead, there’s no one to write about her noble gesture.’ It’s true, The Willing Spirit has gone completely silent since Rosie came a cropper.
We draw in close to the cliffs, peering at the dark mouths of the cell-like caves and trying to remember which is Jessie’s. I hope she’s taken to sleeping in the daytime, like any self-respecting member of the undead.
‘There’s the remains of a fire.’ Effie points. ‘She must be in the cave there, look.’ As we approach we see various signs of her recent presence. There are hanks of matted hair clinging to the jagged rocks. The fire’s ashes are dead and cold: it ha
sn’t been lit for days. We find charred and chewed bones. Dribbles and spots of browning blood. ‘This is it,’ Effie whispers.
And so we creep closer to the cave mouth.
There’s a stench here. An awful animal stink. This is what she has come to. A whole lifetime of struggle and toil, and she ends up here. Crouching in the dark and coming out at night to terrorise the town.
Effie pauses in the entrance. I can hear her swallow before she perks up: ‘Jessie?’ Her voice is rather shrill. ‘Jessie, dear, are you there?’
She’s going to come bounding out, I think. I look at Effie’s frail and slightly stooped back, thinking: she won’t stand a chance. When Jessie comes screeching and tearing out of there with her claws outstretched, Effie hasn’t got a hope. For a moment I marvel at my friend’s courage. Then I step up to stand beside her in the entrance.
‘I don’t think she’s there,’ I say, after some moments of staring into the darkness. ‘I think she’s abandoned this hideout.’ Something about the desolate smell of the place makes me think this. Jessie has moved on. Perhaps she’s hiding further inside the system of caves, within the cliffs. Perhaps she’s in the sewers under the old part of town. She’s drawn even further away from society as if even she has realised that she has passed beyond the human pale.
‘Let’s go, Effie,’ I say at last. I hate to admit it, but I am relieved when Effie decides we can stop looking into the cave. I’m glad she doesn’t suggest crouching and squeezing ourselves into that low aperture in the rock. I have a horror of being confined. I don’t think I could go any further into that hole, not knowing what was in there waiting for us.
I’m happy to turn, with Effie, and leave the beach behind.