Cravendish
CHAPTER EIGHT
If there were to be only one word in order to describe Celeste Peabody's home, that word would be ‘exotic’. Every inch of space was taken by something picked up from somewhere else; African masks, ornaments from the Asian subcontinent, up to and including an obviously tourist-crafted Boomerang. If there was an airport selling tat somewhere, it had found its way onto Celeste Peabody's walls. And everything clashed. The United Nations would have had to send an envoy to demarcate borders for the objects, in that many cultures were coming into conflict with each other, while remaining inanimate and without life. Fairly soon, though, somebody would have to come and mediate before there became an International Incident on the architrave. Where Cravendish and the dotty Celeste Peabody stood conversing, there were only minor conflicts between once allied nations.
Celeste Peabody defined the eccentric in her flower dress and cowboy boots bought from a shop just outside Dulles Airport, "Well, you see, my Sister, that's Primrose - well, you see my Sister, oh she's an adventurous one that Primrose! So my Sister Primrose, she was here for the week - taking a break from all her adventuring, she said. She's gone to all seven continents you know! Europe, Asia, erm - you know, all seven! From Bangkok Airport to JFK, to Lisbon -"
Cravendish would have ordinarily let the woman finish, indulging her in her eccentricity, but he was aware that the sun set in six hours and he wanted to be out of there before then, "You mentioned something about this foreign girl, as you called her?"
Celeste seemed affronted at the interruption, but took it somewhat in her stride, "Yes, yes! I was coming to that! Anyway, Primrose, my Sister, she's been to -"
Cravendish was winding up the ratchet to a higher and faster gear, "All seven continents, I know, Mrs Peabody."
"Celeste, dear! Just Celeste?" she admonished him with a punishing tap on his forearm.
"Sorry. Celeste. Please continue?" said the exhausted Cravendish.
"So Primrose -"
"Your Sister."
Celeste shot Cravendish a bruising look, "My Sister - who's telling this story, eh? Anyway, when she's away, Primrose, my Sister, visits those old and ancient towns with their stalls and marketplaces, picking up the odd trinket here, and the unusual object there - anyway, one trip to somewhere in Europe, my Sister, Primrose that is, finds this little brooch, with this squiggly writing on it. I think she called them Rooms -"
"Runes." Cravendish corrected.
"Yes! That's it! Runes! So she - that is to say Primrose - Primrose brings it with her, here. Well, she knows how I love to hear about those trips - Frank! Not a word - so she brings it with her." Frank, her poor silent husband simply glanced pleadingly at Cravendish to please end his misery, but the inimitable Celeste was unrelenting in her anecdotal riposte, "Well, we were out in the Front Garden that morning, showing Primrose my periwinkles, and along comes this young lady dressed in these bright colours. I looks at her, and I says to myself, look, there's one of them foreign girls that come around about here! She spots us, and takes a liking to the brooch. She says it looks like something from her homeland, and that the writing says something about peace, friendship, family - whatever. So my Sister, Primrose, she invites the young lady to look at it. Well, that's when it happens -"
"The noises you mentioned?" cut in Cravendish.
"Yes! The noises! Well, myself and Primrose, we look about to see where the noises are coming from. Didn't she just up and run off? With the brooch?"
Cravendish was a little confused, but that came particularly from the unrelenting addition of unnecessary syllables, "Did she?"
Celeste formulated excitement from every spray-tanned pore, "That's what I'm telling you! Yes! She did! Frank - I swear -" And poor Frank wasn't even looking up from the Racing on the telly that time.
Cravendish's excitement exceeded Celeste's own, "Alright. But did she have a cat?"
Celeste thought for a minute, before answering, "Oh, no. Not even a clip to tie her hair back. She might have had a scarf?"
Cravendish's confusion took a peak once more over the parapet of logic, "What? Oh, no - I said cat, not cap."
Celeste seemed not to have noticed her faux pas, "Erm, I don't remember one? Is it important? I just want my Sister, Primrose's brooch back, Mr Cravendish -"
"Just Cravendish." reprimanded Cravendish automatically.
Celeste suddenly looked about her for no sane reason, "Oh. Can you do it?"
Cravendish smiled and nodded, "I will do my best."
Celeste shot him a look from a blowpipe of eccentricity - one that was perhaps upon her walls and fighting for space with a Taiwanese Silk Scarf, or a Spanish Castanet, "Never mind that! Will you do it?"
Cravendish replied mildly, "Erm, yes?"
Celeste Peabody and her ilk were the informal ambassadors for Brayburn, making up the senior contingent of the local populace, and almost all of them were as insane and needy as she was. As Cravendish walked down the garden path to the gate that would let him out, he thought he saw something odd, out of place, glinting in the garden off to the side, but it surely wasn’t vitally important right now. It would keep. Cravendish had more pressing matters right now; the Kite Competition, on Brayburn Beach, where his infatuation, Claire, would be.
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There were kites, as far as the eye could see. Large tailed beings danced between long dragon-like canvas creatures, while the small, agile athletic boxes flittered, spun and crashed unceremoniously to the crowd below, who scampered out of it's dangerous path. A dragon became entangled with a gravity defying tiger, wrestling dangerously into the path of a crow, narrowly missing a bi-plane kite, while the smallest, cheapest and most immaturely driven kite simply glided confidently about the sky, only marginally troubling a seagull, which was hovering amongst those paper flyers, as it surreptitiously and secretly waited for someone to drop a bit of battered fish, or half a sandwich, fallen to the ground and now had become a full half-sandwich of sand. Arguments were rife, as expected, and Marshals were out amongst the advertising boards that were the Pro part of the Pro-Am, totally and completely resenting the Am from even thinking they could compete in the highly competitive world of flying bits of canvas, bound to wooden poles and held with a bit of string in a marginally strong wind.
For Cravendish it was very nearly his version of Hell, and he would never have even contemplated the venture of walking amongst the great disturbance of anxious people and their massive and abundant egos, if not for the fact that he knew Claire Ditherall would be present. And she was.
She was in the midst of a group of young men, holding court and flirting outrageously as she did so. Her manner was so far removed from how she was around Cravendish. She seemed to revel in this, but when she talked to him, it felt like she merely tolerated his presence. She never, not once, put her arm about him the way she casually rubbed her body against the attentive collection of easy come, easy goers like these young men. Cravendish was so obviously better for her than them. What could they do for her, exactly? Other than provide her with energy, attention and cheap, attractive dimples, good looks and probably a prodigious seed?
Oh, right.
So that was it? the shallowness outweighed the commitment? The fantasy outweighed the reality? The shark outweighed the shrimp?
Then she spotted him and moved toward him, smiling and receptive, holding her audience at bay as she stood in front of Cravendish.
"Oh, you came, then? I wasn't sure you were going to, because I remember you saying how much you hated it? Still, good to see you here! Come over and join us! That cute one over there, he said he's going to play me a song on his guitar in a bit. Pretentious, or what?" she giggled, "But he is cute. Come on Cravendish! Join us!" And so she ran back to the boys, her arm outstretched in a pose to pull Cravendish with her, but she was so obviously into them, and Cravendish was becoming a round berry, a bit hairy and green - Cravendish was becoming a gooseberry. He turned back toward town. He still had so many things left to do.
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