Cravendish
CHAPTER ONE
‘Brayburn Welcomes Careful Drivers’ relayed the stone-pocked and scorched, black bordered and Times New Roman Fonted sign upon the approach to that mostly bleak and history-disregarded seaside town - somewhere south, but thankfully not too south. So set in its Edwardian autochthonous ways was it that at one time there was a proposal that the town's motto should have been changed to, 'Every day is silent and grey and every day is like Sunday.' - if only The Smiths had let them. It was, however, Arcendis Herba, much to the chagrin of the local dog population.
These mid-annual warmer months soon became subject to the Great Caravan Emigration, the activity that once more sucked motion from the pathways into Brayburn, a cholesterol-like disease that so many other quaint seaside towns would suffer in solidarity, as they too became clogged with the furry fat of Tourism. But they well knew that without those visitors, colloquial towns like Brayburn would become so quiet that they might be shot under a tent to put them out of a miserable life which had become beyond repair. Brayburn itself, however, held onto one or two more of it’s surprises. Those surprises were enough to stir the blood - if not the spirit - even if that holder of said stirrer was long, thin, pallid and himself in need of some urgent reviving.
For Cravendish was, as it was often remarked, a grey man. He didn't want to be - nobody wants to be - but somehow life had that way of stealing the little and the large ambitions and wishes from all in Brayburn, dampening their desires to aspire to be more than they already are. For Cravendish, it was simple. Well, relatively speaking.
Not so long ago and with much, it has to be said, personal excitement, Cravendish had started what was excusably referred to as a Detective Agency in that lacklustre seaside town, as a measured way of gaining a tithe of adventure. It didn't end up that way, of course. Without the funds, the cases or the personnel to expand the business, Cravendish was rather stuck. And yet, despite unwarranted comments to the negative, Cravendish remained steadfast in his desire to succeed while making the Belletrist Coffee House his semi-permanent office, to all inappropriate intents and purposes. His business was sneakily nestled away on the necessary wobbly table at the back of the Coffee House, while the only indication of any actual business acumen and intent was his name handwritten on a piece of paper, folded neatly down the middle and menstruating greyness. Were it that this was all that completed his motivation in life everything would be fine, but all Cravendish really desired was Claire.
Claire Ditherall. Claire Niamh Ditherall. An Irish girl, and Barista at the Belletrist Coffee House. She personified beauty, desire and ambition in one perfect package for Cravendish, and it behooved her to simply pay him the tiny slither of attention he desired, so that she would perhaps see he was frankly more than that odd tall man who sat in the corner, making one cup of coffee last that bit longer than an hour and a half, and maybe she would give him more attention than just her magnificent and friendly Eirean smile. She truly was the rose and Cravendish was the thorn; he was little more than an annoying prick. Truthfully, however, Cravendish was anything but little, as he stood barely over six foot six in his above average height, forgetting to allow for his shirt sleeves and trouser legs to catch up, dripping as they were somewhere above his wrists and ankles respectively.
A simple stare out the window of the High Street Coffee House presented the town to its full, if unwieldy, potential. It was a tan and beige affair - Edwardian, as previously stated, blocky and square in sight, ordered and dignified here and there with the distinct separation of colours and textures to this visage. Despite the sky blues, the whites and the latte browns there came the puddle drip of the occasional gaudy candy stripe, lime green streak and the overbounding and extensive use of pine in all its evil manifestations. It suggested, if a little morbidly, a pre-war abandonment of something akin to outsider art and, ultimately, that everything had come from the firm hand of a lunatic. All that said, it was a comfortable little place, despite the sandy streets and the cufflink silvers that hit everything with a corner, like a shiny brick of subtlety.
There was a dignified bustle to everything; even street cleaners metaphorically doffed their caps to the gentry that made up the locals - out of deference, rather than a definite motivation. It guaranteed a Christmas Bonus, and that certainly didn't hurt when the kids bayed at their parent's heavily booted feet, salivating over the latest must-have, or the wife or girlfriend really insisting they don't want much, but turn lycanthropically on their other-half when all they are given on that most Holy of Days was a scarf and a set of kitchen knives.
The locals themselves fell into two categories; the young, youthful and rowdy with their haircuts and their free-form gallivanting, and the old, middle aged and upwardly mobile, who often took exception to the former. It presented the undeniable impression that most of these second-category people were born middle aged, forgetting that once upon a time they too had possessed the flush of youth and with it all the inherent disgusting and dirty naughtiness that shudderingly allowed babies to have babies.
Not Cravendish, though. He was forty three and still lived with his Mother. Not out of choice, it has to be said. He had come to a crossroads in his life where there arose a balanced decision between the business or his flat, and the business came first - then it had come first, at least. It was possible that it could be neither before too long, if he didn't get that big important paying case.
Cravendish knew he was destined for more, so much more than this. He was acutely aware he was little more than a glorified odd job man at the present, what with the Case Of The Missing Remote Control and the Great Robbery Of The Twenty-Five Pence By Rogers, The Butcher amongst his only adventurous and creative highlights. Just that one defining case, that one chance and he knew that Claire would see he was worth much more.
Then, like a slightly rusty hammer of inspiration clanging on the worn dustbin lid of causality, making the fat rat of possibility drop its lunch in the puddle of yellow water and despair, something remarkable happened.
She was more makeup than woman. If it was possible for her to make a sudden turn, there would be two of her; one without makeup, and the one principally made up of it. At some point that morning she must have looked at herself in the mirror and thought her lips weren't quite wide enough, so rectified it with a tree trunk full of lipstick. How she managed to keep her eyes open with that much eyeliner, defied the laws of physics and of common decency. She could have written War And Peace with the amount of graphite on her eyelids. Her nails were long and perfect to a sharp, dangerous edge, like scoops on a digger but painted red and much, much smaller. Her shape resembled two boulders precariously placed one above the other, with a chestal protuberance that could sMother small children at a distance. She wore a fur coat made from the skin of some animal she may or may not have fought as a prize, like the Nemean Lion she arm wrestled Heracles for, completing the ensemble with some kind of scared little animal too afraid to unfurl from her head, lest it be beaten to death by the woman's innate strength of will. Her voice was Estuary-like, but an Estuary on the landholding of some peer of the highest order.
"Mr Cravendish?" asked Mrs Bunny Cotes, eloquently, but with all the meaning and subtlety of a tank rolling over a saloon car. Bunny Cotes cast a shadow dangerously over Cravendish's table, making the other shadows run and hide in the dark corners amongst the cobwebs. She repeated her question, this time for clarity, sticking in the gear of Cravendish's muddled mind, "Mr Cravendish?"
"Just Cravendish." said Cravendish. He wasn't even particularly insistent. It was a practice of automatic response to the flagellated misnomer.
A look of surprise shot across Bunny's face. This was not how he liked to be treated, "Hmm. We'll see." she threatened, settling into her usual mode of clear and quiet danger, "I am led to believe you are in some way a Private Detective? We asked around the town, and were given your name and your - location?" Bunny's use of emphasis on that word could have taken out the table in front of her, and maybe the one next to it, simply drowning them in malice.
If the child of Bunny could have been described in terms of bread, she would be a Cottage Loaf in a party dress - plump but doughy. She had a voice that cut through lead and made the ears ring in contempt, "Do you like my tiara?" she screeched in increasing intonation, demanding attention.
Neville Cotes was the stellar polar opposite of his wife. If a man could concave from both sides at once, still leaving room for a suit of clothes to hold on for dear life to a less angular bone structure than a discarded rag, it was Neville Cotes, yet he had a commanding voice hidden amongst the downtrodden visage of a man continually depleted and divested of the knowledge that, while he wore the trousers, he most certainly didn't iron them, “Now-now, Princess, love?" he said to the little monster beside him, "Mommy is talking to the long man."
Princess, as aptly as a spoiled child could be named, scowled at Cravendish beyond her curled fringe and mismatched teeth, insisting deeply to anyone she felt she could command, "Do you like my tiara?!" The expensive looking bauble encircled her head in a desperate plea to hold on despite the girl's excessive and energetically insistent bobbing.
Bunny Cotes continued with the ignorance of someone used to the girl's actions, demonstrating the contempt of one who was loathe to admit that this object had ever come from her body, suggesting Princess was some kind of immaculate conception. Neville showed the face of a man who wished it had been thus also, "You see, we have use of your services, Mr Cravendish."
"Do you like my tiara!" The ball of puppy fat strapped into a delightfully plump little girl was unused to being ignored, as was further evidential by the eye-roll Neville gave in response. Cravendish felt compelled to reply to Princess, with an nurtured respect for someone shouting louder than him and demanding while demonstrating power beyond the receiver.
"It's fine." insisted Cravendish to the girl, distractedly, "And just Cravendish." he said to the Mother.
"Thank you!" huffed Princess exaserbatedly, finally sated in the attention she most insistently demanded. But Bunny was poised with a riposte.
"Princess, dear? Go and play with the man's grubby pen while I talk to him, there's my little Princess?" The trio of Cravendish, Bunny and Neville watched as the girl grabbed the pen from Cravendish's hand, shook it violently and moved on to a nearby table, where she began to sketch roughly something resembling a long thin stick on a newspaper someone was still in the process of reading. One look from Princess stopped there being more than an opening and shutting of the victim's mouth, imitating a broken statue flapping in a strong breeze, "Mr Cravendish, we are tourists in your fine town - well, mostly fine - staying at the Royal Monarch Hotel - beautiful Egyptian sheets - and we are missing something. It's all en-suite too. You see, we have lost a particularly valuable diamond studded collar, sMothered in the Cuffermund Diamonds." A smirk of pride at the ostentatious nature of borrowed wealth ran mercilessly across Bunny Cotes's mouth, nearly drowning in the lipstick mire.
Unfortunately for Bunny, though, Cravendish only replied with, "Right. So -"
For further clarification, Neville leaned in conspiratorially like a thin tree in a strong gale, "The collar was attached to our cat at the time, just so you know."
"Ah." mused Cravendish.
Still incensed at Cravendish's obvious lack of awe at the mere mention of her provinent gems, Bunny shot him a glance that was both hurt and angered at the same time, "Rufus-Puss the Third - Ruffy." she said, turning her nose up at the shortening of the cat's pedigree name.
Still nonplussed, Cravendish replied, "Okay -"
Bunny was having none of it. She forced the pause into pregnancy, so that when she said, "So?" it shot out at Cravendish like a bullet.
Cravendish was beginning to feel punished under such scrutiny, almost forgetting who and where he was. In fact if someone were to insist he give them his name on pain of death, he might very well put the blindfold on himself, "Sorry?" White feathers were in Cravendish's future, it seemed.
And it was that if looks could kill, Bunny Cotes would be on trial for mass murder, "Are you going to retrieve my diamonds?"
Cravendish was relieved. Perhaps if she had demanded he jump from the roof, he might have done it simply out of duty, "That? Certainly! Just a cat? Should be easy -"
Bunny leaned in to Cravendish's face, within perfume-cloying distance, making him involuntarily flinch, and placed her boxer's fist onto the table top, which suddenly and fearfully forgot to wobble. Cravendish could feel the hot air on his cheeks. At that moment, he became both fearful for himself and sorry for her husband, Neville, "Oh, Mr Cravendish - let me make this absolutely clear, and out of earshot of my beautiful Princess; the collar is what is important. The cat? Well -" The look Bunny gave suggested that if the cat were there right then, she might well have eaten it. Again, Cravendish felt sorry for Neville, but for entirely different, and quite possibly insurgent reasons.
Here it was, something that Cravendish had been waiting for! The little bird of fate had perched on his shoulder and decided not to defecate for once. He even cracked a smile, "Okay. So - shall we talk money?"
Bunny Cotes shot Cravendish a look as though he had stood, slapped her about the face and called her rude names for no apparent or justified reason. She, in fact, almost choked at the mere mention of currency, "Oh, come now, Mr Cravendish! I never talk money." She turned to her husband, who was standing right next to her. Despite this, she still called his name as though he were outside at an industrial tool symposium, "Neville!"
#
In the shark finned wake of the Cotes's subdued rampage, the handful of patrons of the Belletrist Coffee House returned to what passed for conversation, compensating for the gap in volume by inserting some themselves as an antidote to the inimitable Bunny Cotes. If a pin were to drop, it would have been drowned out my the cackle of laughter emanating from one particular table, where the coven were in mid spell and it fired something of the paranoid android within Cravendish. Luckily his reverie was interrupted by the sweet lilt of the Irish brogue.
"Friends of yours?" asked Claire Ditherall with a whip of her silken ponytail.
"The - what, those Cotes's? Oh, no." Cravendish had become apprehensive of replying, still uncertain as to whether Bunny was listening even now.
"I know." Claire smiled, releasing a few more trapped doves from Cravendish's heart, "Just pulling your leg. So, a case at last, eh, Cravendish?"
Caught somewhere between desire and constipation, Cravendish apprehensively replied, "It would seem so. Claire -"
Claire's ponytail danced like a belly dancer with fleas, "A missing cat? Not really much of a task, is it?"
"Well, its actually the diamond studded - Claire -" Cravendish's desire was fighting for attention, but losing strength with each wobbly ponytail.
Claire looked into Cravendish's eyes, making the little hairy and excitable libido creature within him cheer with laudable appreciation, "Well, whatever it is, it shouldn't be much trouble for you, eh? Sorry, were you trying to ask me something?"
That once solid wall of courage had abandoned Cravendish, turning out to be a painted cardboard frontage held up by weak balsa struts and doused in water. All he managed, therefore, was, "Oh, no, it's alright. Thanks." What he was thanking her for, not even he could fathom. The resolve he had once held had escaped him, climbed over the fence and was halfway to France.
"You're welcome?" said Claire, mostly confused, yet brandishing a modicum of amusement in accompaniment to her twist and turn. Cravendish was left with nothing but to leave under a quite stormy mist of confusion. He did have an appointment to keep, and that would at least allow the sluice gates to open enough to drain the embarrassment from his cheeks and return to his usual pallid, dull greyness and not before too long. His stomach began to rumble.
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