[Brenda & Effie 02] - Something Borrowed Read online

  Something Borrowed

  PAUL MAGRS

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2007 Paul Magrs

  The right of Paul Magrs to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7655 1

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One - The Shame of Sheila Manchu

  Chapter Two - Womanzee Must Die!

  Chapter Three - Enter the Smudgelings

  Chapter Four - Dirty Deeds Down South

  Chapter Five - Stitched Up

  Chapter Six - The Wickerwork Man

  Praise for Something Borrowed:

  ‘To pull it off so well requires the combined talents of Alan Bennett, Angela Carter and The League of Gentlemen. The story ends with Magrs paving the way for another sequel and I, for one, can’t wait’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘It sounds daft, and it is – gloriously, zanily ludicrous . . . Magrs presents us with something unique, idiosyncratic and unclassifiable, and ends the second book in the series with a cliffhanger that promises much in store. It can’t come soon enough’

  Guardian

  ‘Magrs conjures an artfully realised, self-contained gothic fairytale world somewhere between Tim Burton and Last of the Summer Wine, with a bit of Wallace and Gromit thrown in, while parts of his prose wouldn’t disgrace the works of Alan Bennett or David Nobbs . . . monstrously good fun’

  SFX Magazine

  ‘The concept is great. There is nowhere better than Whitby for windswept spookery . . . Brenda is certainly a huge, larger-than-life character who is also wry and sweet and vulnerable’

  Financial Times

  ‘It’s never easy to summarise a novel by Magrs. Mixing comedy with fantasy, high art with popular culture . . . Magrs’ talent for fusing the mundane with the surreal proves an effective way of upending conventional notions about gender and sexuality. Underpinning the melodrama lies the tenderly drawn friendship between Brenda and Effie’

  Independent

  Praise for Never the Bride:

  ‘A brilliant extravaganza, gripping, ingeniously plotted, and tragically funny, with unforgettable characters. Paul Magrs is an original talent with a wonderful and sympathetic ear and eye for the hidden craziness of contemporary life’

  Shena Mackay

  ‘I wasn’t at all sure I’d read it as I didn’t think it would be my thing. But . . . I was wrong! Instead, I have spent the weekend ignoring my family and absolutely racing through the book. It is wonderful, I love it’

  Jill Mansell

  ‘An absolutely delicious black comedy . . . quirky, idiosyncratic, wildly funny’

  Susan Hill

  ‘A cornucopia of playfully sinister delights. Funny, poignant, clever and hugely original. I loved it’

  Daren King

  ‘The damp charms of an English seaside town are nicely evoked. Without doubt, Never the Bride will be a Gothic smash’

  Guardian

  ‘A quirky, whimsical, episodic novel that combines perversity, situation comedy and quietly lush moments of poetry’

  Time Out

  ‘Utterly original. I was totally charmed by Brenda’s valiant attempts to create a little ordinary happiness and comfort out of the madness around her’

  The Times

  ‘Utterly believable, immediately enthralling and spiced with a deliciously dark humour. Never the Bride has to be one of the most original and entertaining books of the year’

  Attitude

  Praise for Paul Magrs:

  ‘I love Paul Magrs, he’s a great novelist, clever and ironic’

  Russell T. Davies

  ‘One of the smartest, darkest imaginations in contemporary fiction’

  Literary Review

  ‘He delights in creating characters who are both impeccably ordinary and staggeringly strange . . . an ambitious novel by a powerful writer’

  TLS

  ‘A latter-day Roald Dahl’

  Independent

  Paul Magrs (pronounced Mars) was born in the North East of England. After seven years at the University of East Anglia teaching English Literature and Creative Writing, he now lives in Manchester and lectures part time at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The rest of his time he devotes to writing. He has published fiction for both adults and children. His novels include All the Rage and To the Devil: A Diva! and Never the Bride, the first novel to feature Brenda and Effie.

  For Tiffany Murray

  Chapter One

  The Shame of Sheila Manchu

  Good morning!

  I love waking up in my gorgeous, multicoloured attic at home. I love the north-eastern light and the angry calls of gulls across the sheer blue sky; the ghostly aromas of a hundred thousand cooked breakfasts and the steam rising from the spouts of a hundred thousand teapots over the slate blue rooftops.

  Friday morning. There’s a spring chill in my room and I’m pushing back the night with the thick bedclothes and I’m doing my stretching exercises briskly when there comes the clattering of the letter box at the bottom of the stairs.

  I need to be up and about! Doing things! Getting on with business! I start jogging on the spot. Star jumps. Thump thump thump on the bedroom floor. Not bad for my age, eh? How old would you say I was, hm?

  You’d be wrong.

  Thump thump thump down the stairs.

  Ah. This morning, a note shoved through by hand. I recognise the prim italics of my neighbour and best friend, Effie. She hasn’t written much:Brenda, dear. We’re needed. Are you free today? I will meet you at 9.30 a.m. in our usual spot at the Walrus and the Carpenter. Coffee and walnut cake are on me.

  It isn’t at all like Effie to offer to pay. And what does she mean, we’re ‘needed’? I hope she’s not determined to get us involved in any more funny business. We had enough of that at the end of last year.

  This is supposed to be my retirement. This is my quiet bed and breakfast, and my quiet landlady life. But I’ll meet Effie at the Walrus and the Carpenter nevertheless, and see what it is she wants. Just in case it’s something important.

  I feel as if I am in the swim of things here, at the heart of Whitby. My establishment is quite close to the harbour and the seafront and the bridge across to the old town. I am surrounded by hundreds of these intricate Victorian streets. Living here, looking after guests here, I am in the middle of all the places and things I think I’ll ever need. This morning, togged up in my heaviest coat and fleece-lined boots, I’m taking deep lungfuls of sea air and I nod and exchange a few good mornings with people I know.

  I skirt round the harbour mouth and I’m watching the fishing boats bobbing at their moorings. The rooftops over the bay are shining in the morning sun and, when I look up, there’s the ancient abbey, hu
lking and dark and jagged against the horizon. I try not to look too hard at it. I hurry over the bridge and into the old part of town.

  Whitby still feels like the perfect place for my well-earned semi-retirement. Last year, setting myself up in my B&B, I decided I would take in a few, select, paying guests. I would fuss over them, and make my rooms luxurious for them. I would keep my head down and live out a quiet life in my seaside retreat.

  That was my plan, anyway.

  When I arrived here, descending upon these higgledypiggledy streets, I established a gentle routine of none-too-strenuous work, cookery and contemplation. I made friends here, with a few quite ordinary-seeming souls. I enjoyed mornings of coffee, cake and conversation with my new friend Effie from the junk shop next door. We ventured out to the occasional not-very-extravagant restaurant along the seafront. We went to a bingo night or two, even a tea dance in one of the stately hotels on the Royal Crescent.

  Above all I felt that I was fitting in at last. I was happily inconspicuous. A little tall, perhaps. I am a heavy-set woman, with undistinguished features. My hands are rather large. I tend to keep them out of the way, and try not to gesticulate when I speak. My accent is difficult to pin down, for I have lived in many different towns and counties. I slather my face in thick make-up, so that it always has a slightly unnatural hue to it. Not out of vanity, you understand. I look more like someone covering something up than I do someone deliberately flaunting herself. I hear people wonder: burns? Scars? My clothes are rather demure and modest; old-fashioned.

  I don’t look in the windows of the shops as I pass them this morning. I glide past the sweet shops, the jewellery and novelty shops, and I’m not tempted to glance sideways at my reflection. I’m less self-conscious than I was before. I’m out in bright sunshine, in full make-up, and my head’s held high. Things are better for me these days.

  People find it difficult to tell exactly how old I am. And that’s just as well. That’s how I like it. I appear old enough to be harmless. Old enough for folk to believe I live a blameless life. A life above suspicion.

  Oh, dear.

  My life has been rather fraught with terrors and disasters. And it still is.

  I seem to have the knack for drawing into my orbit people and things, events and occurrences, that can only be described as macabre.

  The Walrus and the Carpenter is a very small café, tucked away in the old part of town, halfway up the long sloping street that leads to the one hundred and ninety-nine steps that take you up to the church and the abbey. If you sit inside that café by the chintz curtains of the bow windows, you can watch everyone traipsing up and down the cobbled lane. After a while you’ll see everyone in Whitby passing by. Maybe that’s why Effie and I have made it our regular morning coffee haunt.

  The bell chimes as I let myself into the small parlour. I’m inhaling the welcoming scent of hot coffee and freshly baked cake. And there she is. There’s Effie, already at our usual place. She’s looking stern and watchful in a new beige mac. She’s also – when I approach I can see them under the table – wearing what can only be described as running shoes. Ambitious, in one knocking on seventy.

  The waitress is very polite. She takes our order and leaves us to our conversation.

  ‘Are you free this evening, Brenda?’ Effie asks airily as she takes a first, scalding sip of coffee.

  ‘I am,’ I say. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular . . .’ she says, and I know she has something very definite in mind. But I play along, and concentrate on a forkful of moist walnut cake.

  ‘I simply thought,’ Effie continues, ‘that our previous experiences might come in handy, that’s all.’

  ‘Previous experiences?’ I shoot her a suspicious look. ‘Which experiences are we talking about here, Effie?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be coy, Brenda. You know very well . . . the kinds of things that the two of us encountered last year.’ I get a dark look from her. She dabs her thin lips with a cotton napkin. ‘And there’s a certain person who might be needing our particular brand of expertise.’

  ‘What have you been telling people?’ I ask her, more sharply than I mean to. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘Now, Brenda,’ she says, dropping her voice. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything at all until you calm down. Eat your cake.’ Her eyes are actually twinkling. She’s loving this. ‘I merely happened to mention to someone who I know is in trouble that you and I have a little experience in . . . well, sorting out situations of a rather delicate nature.’

  ‘Delicate!’ I have to laugh at this. ‘Effie, the situations that you and I got ourselves into last autumn were downright bizarre. They were weird. They were shocking and they were absolutely hair-raising. They were exactly the sort of thing that I used to get involved in during my previous life. My old life, before I came here for some peace and quiet.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Effie cries. ‘And so we’ve both got a bit of expertise in dealing with the . . . supernatural.’

  I sigh. She won’t be put off. Effie has developed a taste for strange goings-on. Things have been a bit quiet during the winter and the early part of this year, but now I can see that she’s all worked up at the idea of something a bit spooky coming our way. I could do without it, myself.

  ‘We were brilliant!’ Effie says, all gung-ho. ‘Remember how we dealt with that nasty, slimy Mr Danby and his Deadly Boutique? When he was offering makeovers to all the women of Whitby and everyone was flocking there to get rejuvenated? And he was sucking their life essences out of them! Well, we soon put a stop to that, didn’t we?’

  I frown. ‘More by luck than design, though.’ I’m still a bit embarrassed to recall that particular escapade. I was the one who clambered naked into his Deadly Makeover machine and made it explode. I was the one who brought an end to his evil boutique, and I’d rather forget the fact.

  ‘And what about that business of the pies at the Christmas Hotel?’ Effie hisses. ‘When we heard that they were made out of the flesh of the waiting staff? Who was it went investigating then? Who was it found the dead body in the meat lockers, eh?’

  ‘It was us,’ I admit. ‘But . . . just because we got caught up in all of that, it doesn’t make us experts . . .’

  ‘Yes it does!’ Effie chuckles. ‘Last autumn we faced all sorts of terrible, supernatural dangers together. Ghosts in my attic! Those awful monkey women from the Deadly Boutique! And we even had to hoist poor rejuvenated Jessie out of her grave, when she came back as a zombie, poor thing. As if she hadn’t already been through enough.’

  ‘Hm,’ I sniff. ‘I’d have thought you’d seen enough funny business. After your fancy man and all.’

  Effie stiffens and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘You’re right. I fell a little in love. Rather foolishly in love. With a supernatural being I should have kept right away from. And I lost him, didn’t I? And if that doesn’t qualify me for dealing with . . . spooky investigations, then I don’t know what would.’

  We sit in silence for a while, and I pour us some more coffee. Effie first clapped eyes on the dashingly handsome and urbane Kristoff Alucard in this very café. From that first moment she was transfixed by him. She was lost. She who had never had her head turned by any man in all her long life. And I think he probably had true feelings for her, too, but he was more interested in the books of arcane lore she has stashed in her attic rooms. It was those that led the suave Alucard to his doom. Using those books, he found his way to the hidden gateway to hell – or Bitch’s Maw – in a forgotten corner of the abbey ruins. Then Effie and I were both there with him in the dead of one freezing night when the tiny, ancient abbess suddenly appeared and sent Alucard spinning off into hell. And that’s where he still is. And here Effie is, with a supposedly broken heart.

  ‘And besides.’ Effie perks up at last. ‘What did the old abbess tell us, that night, eh?’

  I shrug. ‘Something about the Bitch’s Maw. Someth
ing about us.’

  ‘Aha!’ cries Effie. ‘So you do remember. She told us that hell is bursting at the seams. And there are tortured souls escaping all the time. Coming through that portal, Brenda. Escaping here, into Whitby. Here we are, standing on the very doorway into hell. And we have a duty of care. To deal with the monsters, for good or ill.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I tell her. ‘I know. I remember.’ I wish I didn’t, though. I can still see that tiny abbess’s wizened face in the moonlight, up at the abbey. The way she told us that we were stuck with this job. It felt like a life sentence. And I realised then, all at once, that this must be the reason I was drawn here to this town by the sea. It wasn’t in order to live a quiet life at all. I had been dragged here unwittingly, to team up with Effie, the descendant of generations of Whitby witches. And together we had to fend off the forces of darkness.

  What a palaver.

  ‘So what is it?’ I ask her. ‘What’s this latest spooky thing?’

  Effie taps her beaky nose. ‘You’ll just have to wait till this evening. Glam yourself up. We’re going somewhere surprising.’ And with that, she slurps up the last of the molten sugar in her cup.