[Brenda & Effie 00] - A Treasury of Brenda and Effie Read online

  I was somewhat taken aback at this development, but tried not to let on. “Well,” I said, “Don’t miss the coach back to London at three.”

  The Neill’s only laughed at this, and departed the B-and-B with nary a smudge on them.

  “You’d do well to leave Things well alone,” Brenda said, when I settled my bill. “Especially at your age.”

  “There’s life in the proverbial yet,” I replied solemnly. “And there’s a mystery in this town that may prove revelatory to viewers up and down the land.”

  I thought I heard her tutting as I descended the stairs, but it may have been only the wheel of my suitcase. After all, if there was nothing odd about the white people and their magnetism, there was no danger for any of us, was there?

  Miss Jacobs met me in the high street outside the Walrus and the Carpenter cafe. She wore dark glasses and a small, stylish beret. I clasped her hand in glad welcome. “I’m glad you still believe in me, Effie.”

  “Don’t be soft,” she said. “Now, I’ve just seen those numpties troop past in a great gaggle. I think they’re heading for the seashore.”

  “Shall we go after them, then?”

  “I think not,” she said. “It’s time you visited the Abbey, Professor. We can see everything from there.”

  I steeled myself. This was it. Revelation was in the offing, not to mention an extraordinarily long climb. We had to leave my suitcase at the foot of the steps, and even then I was obliged to stop three or four times before we could attain the churchyard overlooking the bay. The white people were well assembled by now, but no rapture seemed to have happened as yet. They were turned out toward the wide ocean, water lapping their trouser-cuffs.

  “Look at them,” Miss Jacobs said. “Poor fools. Anyone with real sensitivity would know the focal point isn’t down there. It’s up here – where the first settlers were.”

  Her tone had changed in a moment. I girded myself. “Am I addressing Hilda?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “You were the founder of this town?”

  “We were,” she said. “Years ago for you. Nothing for us.”

  “You talk as if there were two of you.”

  She chuckled softly. “The Hilda are legion! And we have met before. Have you not spoken of otherworldly Things half your life?”

  I gasped at this. “You! The alien beings of 1979! That we should meet in such a place, and through such an intermediary. You were involved with Whitby’s foundation?”

  “The Hilda are the Great Architects of Space and Time. We created Whitby – and Hartlepool, too!” She turned her head. “Behold!”

  I looked over my shoulder. Where the ruins of the Abbey had stood, proud against the blazing sky, I could now see a monastery. Not the 7th century stone building that was, but an older place entirely. The original monastery. I swore softly to myself. If it didn’t look like a flying bloody saucer! “Impressive,” I said aloud. “But I don’t see what this has all been for. You dragged me here. You line up Miss Jacobs –”

  “A sympathetic conduit for our energies…”

  “But what do you want?”

  The lined face scrunched up suddenly. “Credit!” she hissed. “The Hilda created the great places of the Earth. You cannot deny it, who have seen its beauty this weekend. Yet who knows us? Our story is garbled, our reputation nil! You, Quakermapp, have glimpsed us before, yet still our history is untold!”

  I gaped in response. “Well, I – but I – the BBC, I mean – Well!”

  “You would be recompensed,” the Hilda said, more moderately. “Name your fee.”

  “I don’t have many wants nowadays,” I told them. “I’d just like to know the truth – about the world beyond this one.”

  Effie frowned. “You would desire only that? To voyage beyond the material world and glimpse the great projects of the Hilda?”

  “You’ve done other stuff?” I spluttered.

  “But of course,” she said. “We have forged creations beside which even Whitby begins to pale! You will see them all – with your friend, the Jacobs woman, if you wish…”

  It was the great invitation of my life. After thirty years of being considered a crank, it nearly made my knees buckle. Far below, the white people were having a chant: it sounded rather like plainsong, but if you listened closely you could make out the words. “Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside…” Overhead, the screeches of wheeling seagulls were more harmonious.

  I know it wasn’t pleasant for Effie to find herself returned to her senses there at the top of the cliff, and me in a tangle of limbs at the bottom of it. I am looking down from Elsewhere, you see. I know there were questions for both of you. There probably would have been a police investigation if it weren’t for that freak bolt of lightning that struck down from the heavens and destroyed all the tracksuit people in one explosion of static electricity.

  I wrote this from beyond, partly as a warning to other users of PreDestination, although the Hilda will probably close it now. The ley lines will fade away too. No more people in white track-suits will trouble the North Yorkshire coast. They were only a side-effect of the Hilda’s great purpose, anyway. That is, commissioning me. Me, the washed-up TV star of yore!

  And now here I am, voyaging through the cosmic infinite world of Things! My mind as bright and sharp as ever it was!

  And one day I shall return. Not only to Earth, but to the BBC. Perhaps Hollywood, even. And the story shall be told: the secret history of Things and how they concern us all. Oh yes, Brenda, the world’s more full of wonder and oddness and terrors can you can conceive of.

  Yes, most of all I wrote it to say thank you to the pair of you and explain somewhat. To tell you about the great invitation, and how I was spirited away, and how I might have brought you with me Effie Jacobs, but I just could not. It didn’t need Brenda putting me in a headlock to tell me that you two belong together, on Earth, in Whitby.

  Brenda and Effie, living a quiet, un-unearthly life, for as long as you live.

  Love,

  Bernie