English Ben & Detective Dave (Ch. 1 – English Ben)
Note: This is the first chapter of my novella English Ben & Detective Dave, a Buttercup Burger Mystery. I’ll be publishing a new chapter here every Monday.
BUTTERCUP BURGER WAS SITTING in a small café, reading a book in the dim light, when the waiter came over to her table and asked if she would like anything.
Buttercup thought about that for a moment and said, “Yes, please. Light?”
The waiter, a stout, neatly-dressed fellow with dark eyes and a charming accent, said he would try to find some candles for her table, “but most people liked to sit in small dark cafés because they were dark”.
Buttercup was a little surprised by this. She thought it silly to not want to read all the time. All the people she knew liked to read, and besides, she liked to read. She usually walked around with her nose in a book as they say, although if it were a nice day she would take a long walk in the park and sit by the lake and talk to the ducks. The ducks were very friendly and always shook their tail feathers and flapped their wings whenever Buttercup came to the lake, because Buttercup always brought some bread to share, which is only polite after all.
“Why would they sit in the dark?” said Buttercup, remembering the waiter. “How do they read?”
“They don’t,” said the waiter. “They have the conversación.”
“Oh.” Said Buttercup. “What’s that?”
“Conversación is when two people talk to each other about interesting things—like how we’re talking now, except both people want to talk.”
“Oh.” Said Buttercup again. “Like those two people in the corner? They’ve been talking to each other for quite a while.”
Buttercup pointed towards a darker part of the café. As the waiter looked at the men, he suddenly seemed very nervous. He told Buttercup that he had forgotten something in the kitchen, su perdón, and he’d have to go see to it right away.
Buttercup watched the waiter disappear into the kitchen and wondered why he left so quickly. Was it something to do with the two men she pointed at? She looked at them again. They didn’t look scary. The one closest to her was older and heavier set. He was dressed in a dark suit, and looked like he ran some kind of business. The younger man had a ring in his ear—like a pirate! He was dressed in a more casual way, but still quite presentable. They were certainly having a—what was it called again? Oh yes, a conversation. They were having one.
The problem was, Buttercup couldn’t hear what they were saying. “I wonder,” she thought, “would they object if I listened to their conversation? Just so I would know what one is like.” Buttercup started imagining she was having conversations with people, and she would impress them by saying how many conversations she’d had before. “Quite a few,” she would say. “Not just with people I know, either, or waiters. I’ve had conversations with people I don’t know, and not-waiters.”
Buttercup thought this was quite charming, so she decided to ask the men if she could listen to them. But as she was walking over to their table, she though it might be rude to interrupt them. Not knowing how these conversations worked, she became quite concerned that she might make a mistake. She stopped at the booth next to their table, and sat down quietly so as not to disturb the men. In truth, the men never heard her, because Buttercup hardly ever made a sound at all. It all came from trying to be as quiet as she could for most of her life, and her habit of wearing sensible shoes. She was trying to decide what to do next when she realized she could hear the men talking quite clearly now.
“Oh dear,” she thought. “This can’t be good. This is eavesdropping—only, it’s worse. I’m… I’m booths-dropping.”
Buttercup sat for a moment trying to think about what she ought to do next, and if the men would be upset, when it began to dawn on her that she wasn’t eavesdropping, or even boothsdropping, because she couldn’t understand what the men were saying. They were talking the right language it seemed, but none of it made sense. She could only make our every second or third word, and even then not in a row.
Man #1: “C’mon, guv, do us a fayvuh—dinnie yeh say I cud ‘ave a fortnight?”
Man #2: “Aye, Ben, but that ‘us afore I ken that ye’d tried to skip—and I’ll ‘ave me skin ‘n blister done a fair sight better.”
Buttercup was suddenly hoping she would never have a conversation with anyone. Why, she wouldn’t even know how to say hello! But then she realized that one of the words the men had said was “fortnight”. That was something English people said. Perhaps this was an English conversation! Buttercup had the sudden vision of herself telling people (which people she was not clear about) that she had not just heard American conversations, but English ones too!
She was interrupted from this happy thought when one of the men, the younger blond man named Ben, jumped up and ran out of the café very quickly.
“Goodness!” she thought. “These conversations can be very exciting! I had no idea.”
Buttercup was very excited by her day, so she went home straight away and made herself some tea. She tried to read some more, but she kept thinking about English Ben and the conversation she’d almost understood, so she had to keep reading the same paragraph over and over again. After the third time on the same paragraph, she gave up and went to bed, and dreamed of having long conversations with English Ben, not-waiters, and other people she didn’t know.
