When the Black Cat Came to Tea

On a small road in Central London there is a restaurant where the frequenters of Covent Garden and Leicester Square convene to drink Moet at £20 a glass and indulge in scallops, girolles and pomme purée. Here, however, is not the focus of this telling. Instead, look past the pristine napkins to a place altogether darker. Next to the restaurant is a hunched building, the windows made of small panes and black lattices. It is a place impossible to see when you are looking at it, especially impossible if you are looking for it, but if you happen to pass it and look out of the corner of your eye you will see, in spidery gold lettering, neatly engraved above the building, a sign that reads:

Messrs Scoffe and Banter's Services for the Recently Deceased

It is into this world – this Victorian funeral parlour sitting quite inconspicuously in the second decade of the 21st Century - that you must place half your attention, else you will lose it all together. If you half-listen very carefully, you will half-notice that someone is shouting...

'...and furthermore, he's always the first to wash his dainty hands of any and all responsibility. Only this morning I had to promise him a week's worth of cooking before he'd even contemplate doing the shopping for this evening. And even then he still left me to rearrange the furniture, polish, cook, clean - organise the whole bloody thing! And what's more...'

'Enough, Cornelius. You've had your hour.'

Cornelius Banter paused for breath, upset that his hour had been used up already. The grandfather clock struck three o'clock with twelve slow chimes. Today's recipient of Cornelius's tirade was the shop's raven, a formidable-looking thing with sharp black eyes that stared exasperated at Cornelius who huffed,

'You really are no use at all. It's as if no one cares...'

'Enough!' the raven rasped, his voice like Velcro. 'Scoffe will walk through that door any moment and you can tell him about your petty problems.'

Cornelius harrumphed, sank into his armchair, tucked his chin into his thick orange beard and grumbled quietly to himself.

Fortunately for the raven, who prided himself on being one of the few living beings in the shop, no sooner had he mentioned his name than the creak-tinkle of the shop door announced Sebastian Scoffe. Scoffe was a tall man, thin, with a set of pince nez delicately balanced on his sharp nose. A slick of iron hair lay neatly coiffed beneath the top hat which he had placed on the wrought iron hat stand. It was exceedingly satisfying for Cornelius, who was, by nature, everything that Scoffe was not, to see Scoffe bedecked in bright orange shopping bags, a most unflattering set of accessories.

'Good day, Mr Scoffe,' muttered Cornelius, digging his fingernails into the armrest.

'Good day, Mr Banter. I trust you have made the appropriate preparations for this evening?'

Cornelius snorted. Of course nothing was ready.

'My dear Banter, you do know I hate it when you mumble like that,' Scoffe began, unloading the shopping onto the embalming table. 'Am I to take from your moaning that you have not readied anything? Honestly, it's as if you don't take the Society seriously. I, on the other hand, traversed the length and breadth of town to locate a Waitrose, only to find it closed and with no alternative but to face the indignity of Sainsbury's. Really, Mr Banter, Sainsbury's! I felt so awfully out of place, I'm convinced I've contracted some sort of hideous disease, and the people ...'

Were it possible for a man to become feral in the amount of time it took for Scoffe to unload the shopping, Cornelius would have been foaming at the mouth by the time he launched himself at his colleague. As it was, Scoffe was knocked to the floor not by a feral creature, but a screeching auburn fuzz in undertaker's clothing. The pair tussled on the ground for a few minutes but, since neither was as young as he once was, inflicted little more than slaps and hair pulling before they got tired, called it a draw and put the kettle on.