[Brenda & Effie 01] - Never the Bride Read online

  ‘It went wrong with me,’ she said. ‘Somehow the hypnotism didn’t work. I came round too soon. I woke up and I was standing inside the machine! It was like a sort of tanning booth - you know the type of thing. But it was different. It wasn’t just lit up inside, it was pulsating, with flashing lights and clouds and—Oh, Brenda. It was like a nightmare. I was standing there swaying and it was like being on drugs or something. I screamed and screamed, right there inside the Deadly Machine, but nobody came. Nobody would set me free. I felt like I was going to die.’

  ‘But what is it, Effie? What did it do?’

  ‘I don’t know! I could feel . . . tiny little hands all over my body, patting and stroking and primping me. They were kneading me and rolling me about like a lump of dough. I screamed and thrashed about, but to no avail. I was being spun round and round . . . and I remember thinking, This is it! I’m being . . . made over!’

  I stared at her. She looked exactly the same as she always did. ‘What happened? Why didn’t the process work?’

  ‘I wasn’t docile and still enough, I suppose,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘That’s why he mesmerises his victims. So they don’t kick about and pummel at the doors in fright at the terrible things that go on inside that machine. Honestly, Brenda, it was like being inside the mind of a maniac!’

  ‘You kicked your way out?’ I gasped.

  ‘I never knew I had that kind of strength.’ She seemed rather proud of this. ‘But that’s precisely what I did. I was thrashing about so much that my foot connected with the heavy cubicle door and the thing flew open! And there I was, starkers, toppling out into the middle of this white-tiled, laboratory-type place.’

  ‘Starkers!’ I cried. ‘He undressed you?’

  ‘I suppose he must have,’ she said, ‘but there wasn’t time to be embarrassed.’

  I was amazed at Effie. Usually she was so prim. But here she was, relating her terrible nude adventure, barely even raising a blush.

  ‘Mr Danby wasn’t in the laboratory. That devil hadn’t even stuck around to see how his handiwork turned out. But his helpers were there, his assistants in the beautifying process. They were milling around me, flapping their arms and shrieking. I don’t suppose they’d ever known anyone to stagger prematurely out of the make-over machine before. They squealed and shouted, motioning me to get back into that dizzying deathtrap. But I wasn’t about to take any of their nonsense. I demanded my clothes! I demanded to be set free!’

  ‘But what did they say? Did they explain themselves?’

  Effie frowned, concentrating. ‘My impressions are pretty scrambled, but I don’t think they were even speaking English. They were tiny, like children, in white plastic space-suit things. They were squabbling and gibbering in some sort of foreign language. Nasty-sounding.’ Her eyes widened as she pictured them. ‘They were like little children, but they had awful, withered up ancient faces, like little primates.’

  I tried to picture Effie surrounded by these panicked, unpleasant beings, bellowing for her clothes.

  ‘I grabbed one and twisted its arm, hard and spitefully. Remember that ju-jitsu class I took in the summer? Came in handy. I was so riled, I could have broken the creature’s arms. I must have looked a fearsome sight because they brought my clothes, all neatly folded, and stood back as I dressed. Then they showed me to the back door and pushed me out into the night, as peremptorily as their master had got me through the front. Evidently they knew that the process had gone wrong, and they wanted me off the premises. I stumbled out into the misty night and found myself in a very ordinary backyard in Frances’s Passage. It took me just minutes to walk through the labyrinth of alleys back to the prom. I came straight here.’ She held out her glass for more brandy. ‘Brenda, can I stay tonight? I keep thinking about that man and his monkey-like women assistants. I fear they’ll come after me in the night.’

  ‘Of course!’ I cried. ‘I’ve three rooms, all clean and made up . . .’

  Effie nodded, cradling her balloon glass in both hands. ‘It was one of the most hair-raising experiences of my life.’

  ‘What would have happened,’ I said slowly, ‘if the hypnotism had worked properly? If you’d stayed in the machine till the end of the process.’

  ‘I suppose I’d have been the same as Jessie. A full twenty-five years younger.’

  I nodded. ‘You must be more strong-willed than her to withstand the mesmerising.’

  She agreed. ‘I’ve always known my own mind.’

  ‘But what would be so wrong with regressing twenty-five years? Surely the process was only horrible because you woke up too early.’

  Effie’s eyes were haunted. She looked ghastly and drawn. ‘I can’t explain it, Brenda, but it was evil, whatever it was. There is something in that machine, and in that boutique, that isn’t right. Whatever they’re doing, it isn’t for the good of their clients. The purpose of the Deadly Machine isn’t just to give women make-overs. There’s more to it than that. I could feel it.’

  Then Effie declared herself exhausted. I swept into action. I was the dedicated and professional B-and-B lady, showing my guest to her room downstairs, making sure she had everything, making sure of her comfort. ‘Tomorrow,’ I promised her, ‘we can start to get to the bottom of this business.’

  She lay back in the clean, crisp linen of my best guest room. ‘When I close my eyes . . . I can still see the swirling mist and lights inside that machine. It felt terrible, Brenda. I could feel it pulling and sucking at me . . . sucking away the time and the years and all my experience . . .’

  I let Effie sleep in for much of the next morning. I knew it wasn’t like her to stay in bed so late. Usually you can hear her rattling about in that huge house of hers next door, and she seems to rise even before I do. She doesn’t half clatter around among all that dusty junk. It’s odd, really: she sounds so careless and rackety within the privacy of her own four walls, yet when you see her out and about she’s so proper and tidy.

  On the Wednesday morning, however, she was sleeping placidly in my B-and-B, recovering from the shock of her make-over ordeal. At eleven I took in a tray with a modestly tempting breakfast of kippers. She seemed muddled but grateful.

  I left her to it and, struck by a certain impulse, rang the Christmas Hotel. ‘I’d like to be put through to the staff quarters,’ I told the girl on the reception desk.

  ‘Madam doesn’t like the phone lines to be used by the staff,’ I was told, quite frostily.

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ I said. ‘Madam will just have to lump it. This is an emergency.’ I could hear grumbling in the background as I was put through to the relevant line. There was a snatch of a Christmassy jingle, then the phone rang for a good few minutes. At last I heard a male voice. Young-sounding. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed Jessie,’ he told me. ‘She went out first thing. I’m her nephew, Robert. Can I pass on a message for you?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, surprised. ‘Robert! She’s told me all about you. She said she’d got you a job for the autumn season. Have you just started? How are you liking it?’

  He sounded sardonic in his reply: ‘I’m not wholly convinced I’ll make a career as a Christmas elf. But it’s OK, I suppose. For a while. And it’s nice to spend time with Aunt Jessie. We’ve always got on well.’

  ‘I’m Brenda. I’m an acquaintance . . . well, a friend, really, of your aunt’s.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘She could do with some sensible people unconnected to this madhouse. She needs people to talk sense into her.’

  ‘Sense?’ I said. ‘What about?’

  Robert the elf sighed heavily. ‘This make-over business. She’s taking it too far. It’s like an obsession. I mean, fair enough, they’ve done an amazing job on her. She looks much, much better than she has done for years. But it’s all she’ll talk about! She’s swanning round the hotel like a pin-up girl for the Deadly Boutique.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘We saw her. We were amazed. It’s certainly impressive. It’s almost unc
anny.’

  Robert snorted. ‘Uncanny is exactly what I’d call it.’ He sighed. ‘Now she’s got all the old dears stirred up about it and they’ve been trooping down to the place. They can’t wait to get done! They’re scraping their pennies together and making appointments.’

  My heart-rate stepped up. I imagined queues of old women, anxious to go through the same trauma as Effie. ‘You know, Robert . . . they should be warned. I don’t think anyone is doing themselves any favours by visiting the Deadly Boutique.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Brenda,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried to tell my aunt that - I tried this morning, first thing - but she won’t listen. All she can think about is the good it’s doing her. How, at the age of sixty-six, she looks forty-one and how, after her next appointment, she’ll look even younger, in her twenties, perhaps. Well, that’s not natural, is it? There must be a catch.’

  I liked this Robert. He seemed a sensible young man. ‘Exactly my thinking. We need to stop Jessie going back.’

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘it’s her morning off. She’s already there. She’s at the Deadly Boutique right now!’

  For the size I am, I’m quite nimble on my pins. Even though the rest of me can seem a bit ungainly I can dash about when I want to. I can move quickly and stealthily, and that was precisely what I did when I’d finished on the phone with Jessie’s helpful nephew. I didn’t tell Effie I was nipping out. She’d only have wanted to accompany me and, despite her protests, I could tell she was still shaken up by her recent escapade.

  It was too soon for her to return to the boutique.

  So I went by myself.

  I ran down our hill and through the narrow streets towards the prom. I ignored neighbours and acquaintances alike as I barrelled along, filled with ire and determination. When I came to Frances’s Passage I took a deep breath and stepped bravely into its chilly confines. There was a waft of something clammy and evil down that ginnel. It was obvious to me, straight away. I surveyed the front of the boutique, and everything was as Effie had described it, down to the outrageous flowers flaunting themselves in the bow window.

  The door was locked. A sign was hanging on the inside, claiming that the place was closed. I knew that couldn’t be right: Jessie Sturgeon was inside, probably crammed into the Deadly Machine, having goodness knows what done to her. I rapped heavily on the shiny black door, then I pushed hard against the wood with my shoulder. Nothing. And when I pressed my ear to the glass panels, I couldn’t hear a thing. Not a dicky-bird.

  It wasn’t the kind of silence that makes you think the interior is deserted, that everyone has packed up and taken a day off. It was the kind of silence that makes you think of creeping, underhand, untrustworthy things. Of foul deeds going on, just out of view. Of nefarious people hiding their wicked selves away . . .

  I decided to sneak round the back. Effie had said they’d let her out of the back door into what appeared to be an ordinary yard. There was an elaborate network of back alleys and interconnecting yards, as there was in all of these Victorian warrens, but I was sure to find the right one in the end. It would just take perseverance.

  I shivered when the church clock bonged out the hour. Eleven. Jessie’s appointment had been for ten, her nephew had said. I was already too late.

  All of those backyards looked the same, concrete and cobbles, lichen and moss, dripping grates and drainpipes, and cold, grey stone. I went creeping about, clattering past bins and hauling myself up to peep over crumbling walls. It’s a wonder I wasn’t mistaken for a burglar. But it was uncanny: there was no one about. No net curtains twitching, no one bringing out the rubbish. Not even an old moggy prowling about the place. Silence. No one.

  Except . . . one building. It was as anonymous as the rest, but the back door was silvery. It was a new, solid-looking metal door. As I watched, perched half-way up a wall, it opened and out came three of the strangest-looking women I have ever seen. They were carrying large glass bottles filled with a variety of greenish liquids. They had a selection of hoses and funnels, too, and they were gabbling away to each other quietly in a strange tongue.

  I shrank back so they wouldn’t see me, and narrowed my eyes, appalled at the sight of them. All I can say is that Effie had been quite generous when she described Mr Danby’s assistants as withered-up primates. To my eyes, they were the most peculiarly horrid creatures I have ever seen. Their flesh had turned white, like fish bellies, while their hair was colourless and stringy. They were the height of infants and wore bizarrely unflattering boiler-suits. They gibbered and whispered and they were pouring the green liquid down the drain. It ran, glistening and oily, into the sewers and the little women gathered to watch it go.

  I couldn’t guess what they were up to. It looked as if they were disposing of some by-product of their experiments.

  Then, as soon as they had appeared, they hurried back indoors and the silver door was slammed shut.

  There had been no sign of Jessie. For all my scrambling about, barking my shins and knees, I had learned nothing.

  I hadn’t liked the look of that green fluid, though. It was like bitterness and bile, and they were siphoning it straight into the water system . . .

  Effie is the type to go pottering round auction houses and stately homes. To her, an evening’s entertainment is a concert, some soothing and hummable classical thing. It isn’t her idea of fun to go to a pie-and-peas supper, and suffer the tawdry thrills of bingo.

  But that night we had to attend the Christmas Hotel. Effie muttered only a few complaints as we trip-trapped up the sloping streets to the smart row at the top of the town. That night the view out to sea was dramatic. The clouds were plumped up and tempestuous. The seabirds were weirdly quiet.

  On the way I filled Effie in on my adventure in the back alley.

  ‘Green liquids.’ She frowned.

  ‘Do you think they’re trying to poison everyone?’ I asked her. ‘Pouring something nasty into the water system . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it to me,’ she said. ‘It sounds more like they’re disposing of something they don’t need. There’d be easier ways to poison us than chucking things in the sewers. With pies and peas, for example.’

  ‘I do hope Jessie’s all right.’ I sighed.

  ‘We’ll soon find out, won’t we?’ said Effie, heartily. She was displaying a good deal more bravado than I’d expected. As she led the way through the hotel’s grand entrance, I saw that her dander was up. She had been scared, mortally scared, the previous evening, and now she was determined to sort this business out. She had an enemy in her sights: Mr Danby. He had done something nasty to her, which made the business straightforward in Effie’s mind. She had to sort him out.

  Meanwhile . . . it was Christmas time at the Christmas Hotel.

  Everything that could be had been well and truly trimmed with tinsel, holly, mistletoe and fake snow. Carols rang out through hidden speakers, three or four different ones at once, in a weird, festive cacophony. Party hooters and crackers were going off and we were offered, as always, a cup of mulled wine from the silver tureen on the reception desk as soon as we stepped inside.

  Effie and I took some, relishing its spiced warmth. We’d need to be fortified indeed, if this macabre adventure carried on as it had begun. A tall, rather good-looking young man was wielding the ladle. He nodded at us knowingly. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Robert. You are Brenda, aren’t you?’ His friendliness and searching glance made me feel self-conscious. I wasn’t used to that degree of scrutiny.

  ‘Yes,’ I mumbled, ‘and you’re Jessie’s nephew?’

  He was dressed in one of the hotel’s absurd elf outfits. The indignity of it! The boys were forced to wear skin-tight green felt one-piece suits with pointy green hats and stick-on pointy ears. The poor thing looked quite at home in his costume, even the two dots of red on his cheeks and the fake freckles across his nose. I introduced him to Effie.

  ‘I knew it was you two, soon as you walked in. Auntie Jessie
said you were unmistakable.’

  Now I felt even more self-conscious. I felt lumbering, hideous, and my scarred, twisted flesh itched under the layers of makeup. I struggled to listen as the boy talked - so insouciantly. He was so handsome and young that, I found myself staring, in a trance of my own self-loathing.

  ‘So Jessie’s here?’ barked Effie, breaking the spell. ‘She returned safely from her appointment at the boutique this morning?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘She came back at lunchtime, ready for her afternoon shift. I saw her briefly and she seemed fine. Well, this time the treatment hadn’t had such a dramatic effect. She’d only regressed another couple of years. Nothing as drastic as last time. She seemed disappointed by that.’

  ‘She should think herself lucky she’s still alive,’ Effie said bitterly.

  Robert looked shocked.

  ‘Effie’s been there,’ I explained. ‘She knows what—’

  We were interrupted quite rudely then, by a raucous, hectoring voice that cut through our conversation from the direction of the old-fashioned lift cage. We turned quickly and guiltily to see who was calling.

  Of course, we already knew.

  There, in her motorised scooter, Christmas green and red, bedecked with tinsel, bows and mistletoe, sat the gargantuan form of Madam: the owner, manageress and genius of the Christmas Hotel. We didn’t know her real name. We knew her only as Mrs Claus and, seeing her there, all thirty stone of her, clad in red velvet with a wreath of holly leaves crowning her snowy bouffant, no other name would have suited her. She advanced on us, flanked by a royal guard of elves, all uniformed as Robert, all solemn with yuletide responsibilities.

  ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ she bellowed at us. ‘It’s rare to see you two at one of my evening gatherings.’ Her face was bright red. At first it looked like makeup - like the red spots on the elves’ cheeks. But her complexion was crazed with broken veins. The reek of spirits wafted off her - very powerfully. ‘Robert!’ she yelled. ‘I need you to call the bingo numbers. You’ve got the clearest and nicest speaking voice of all my elves.’