Twelve Drummers Drumming (4 page)

Coming through the door, as Miranda had said, was a figure
Tom recognised instantly as his sister-in-law, wearing her dark trench coat, her head bent slightly down, her hand reaching to her neck as if to tighten her scarf. Just behind her, holding the door open, exposing the golden glow of the pub’s interior, was his own good self, which was now staring at his own good self in the village hall. He had been looking right into Mitsuko’s camera, without being cognisant that he was doing so, or paying any attention to the person behind the camera. Clearly, something had been on his mind that day over thirteen months ago, but what?

He recalled his satisfaction at being able to salvage an awkward situation at the church; he recalled the welcoming conversation of those who attended the wake and the good cheer of Eric Swan, the pub licensee who set just the right tone, keeping the mourners focused on amusing tales of Ned Skynner, the village’s Conservative parish clerk until a stroke brought out a Marxist rash, and not worrying about the missing Mr. Kinsey. He recalled the crackling fire in a fireplace large enough for a man to stand in, the moulded beams, the brasses, the scarred trestle tables, but most of all he remembered being with Julia, who so reminded him of Lisbeth that he had to keep his eyes from resting on her too often.

Physically, they wouldn’t have been immediately taken for sisters—Lisbeth with her high cheekbones, long, dark hair, and calm, green-flecked eyes; Julia with her more attenuated features, lighter hair cut short, and caution in her brown eyes—but there were gestures: the way Julia held her glass of white wine with her arms folded across her chest, the tilt of her head when she was absorbed in what others were saying—that evoked Lisbeth in similar social situations, so much so that Tom almost felt Lisbeth like a friendly spirit in the room.

He had been glad that day to see Julia so animated. Perhaps the wine had helped her, or the company, or being away from Alastair. The household he and Miranda arrived at fairly crackled with tension, Julia dull-eyed, but doing her best to entertain her niece, Alastair grim and taciturn, agreeable and animated only when he engaged with Miranda, the little girl who had lost her mother.

Suddenly he remembered what he had been thinking when he had exited the pub, and why he saw, and yet did not see, Mitsuko taking his picture: He had resolved at that moment, as he stepped into the quiet lane, that he didn’t want Miranda to grow up in a busy street in a neighbourhood where her mother had been killed for reasons yet to be determined, and that a rural parish—any rural parish—might offer calm and safety and a new start for both father and daughter.

Now he glanced around the spotlessly clean large hall, which was unpeopled but for him and Miranda. Past the connecting corridor, muffled sounds emanated from the small hall on the west side of the building. He recognised Julia’s voice, rising above the tide of adolescent voices: the members of Twelve Drummers Drumming, which she had organised at her school. There was the occasional thud of wood against taut leather, followed by a raised and slightly exasperated voice—no doubt Julia admonishing her charges to
please
refrain from drumming until they were on stage.

“You know,” he said to Miranda as he moved to the next quilt, featuring some preschool children in messy art activity in the Old School Room, “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be here. No one else is.”

“We’re not, I don’t think.”

“Miranda!”

“The opening is on Thursday. I think that’s what the brochure said.”

“Then how did you and Emily—?”

“The same way we did, Daddy. The door was unlocked.” She pointed to the small vestibule, which connected the large hall to the outdoors. There were two entrances on the south face of the village hall. One led directly to the large hall on the east side, where they were now. The other led to a short corridor, off which was the entrance to the hall on the west side, with its self-contained kitchen and bar. Between large and small halls was a corridor with storage for chairs and trestles on one side and—more vitally—toilets on the other.

“We didn’t want to use those yucky port-a-loos,” Miranda continued.

“But there’s a sign pointing to the other entrance for anyone wanting to use the hall loos.”

“I know. But Emily—”

“I can imagine.” Emily was a little minx, is what she was. “I guess no harm done if we have a little preview, though I do wonder why Mrs. Drewe installed her work so many days in advance of her opening.”

“Remember Mr. Drewe said she had to go to Wales?”

“Yes, of course.” Tom looked over to the door leading to the connecting corridor. “And I suppose that’s unlocked, too?” he asked Miranda.

She nodded. She was slowly spinning in a circle, thoughtfully nibbling at the nub of her cornet, while running her eyes over the marshallings of hanging fabric.

“Let’s just slip through and pretend we were in the toilets. If I look at any more of these quilts, I won’t be able to express the appropriate delight and surprise when I’m at the opening.” If I’m at the opening, he thought; he couldn’t recall getting an invitation, at least a written one. Or were such village events by word-of-mouth?

“Miranda? Did you hear me?”

“Daddy, there’s one missing.”

“You mean since you and Emily were here?”

“No.” She frowned. “I don’t think so.” She pointed to a quiltless area near the east wall. “Shouldn’t there be one there?”

Tom’s glance travelled the length of his daughter’s arm. “Possibly,” he said, a little impatiently. In truth, there did seem to be an odd gap in the grove of quilts. If the intent was to display the entire collection down each side of the three walls of the large hall, why leave a space in that particular spot? Or, perhaps, the asymmetry was an artistic notion. He peered through the shadows at the wall’s surface for the telltale sign, the exhibition label, but then noted that no labels accompanied any of the artworks. Perhaps each was sufficiently self-explanatory.

“Likely Mrs. Drewe didn’t quite finish putting all the quilts up,” he suggested to Miranda.

“Non, regarde, Papa.”
She pointed again, this time to the rod near the top of the wall, below the cornice, feebly illuminated by a drizzle of light from the window behind it. It appeared to match the contrivances for holding the other quilts in the room.

“It might be there to hold other things,” he said, pushing at the door to the connecting corridor, peering through to the door opposite, to the hall. He turned to look at Miranda, who was now on her haunches rooting around on the floor by the skirting board. “Is there something else?”

“Non, Papa.”

“Then why don’t you nip into the ladies’ and wash those hands of yours? I’m just going to poke my head in and see how your aunt Julia is coping with her drummers.”

Julia appeared to be coping quite well. Her back to him, she was adjusting the headband of one of the drummers—Daniel Swan, he presumed, from a shock of red hair that hovered by Julia’s upraised arm. All the Swan children had their father’s red hair. Other than Daniel, of the twelve drummers only Declan Parry and Charlie Pike remained in the hall, each dressed in a brightly coloured sleeveless overcoat, each jabbing at the other with a drumstick thick enough, but not long enough, to be a light sword. He smiled watching their antics, vaguely recalling his Star Wars period and his own wooly energy at that age.

Julia had discovered taiko more or less by chance, in Exeter one Saturday morning after services at the synagogue. Someone had stuck a leaflet on her windscreen announcing a performance of a junior taiko group in Belmont Park that afternoon. Curiosity piqued, she’d gone to the park. It struck her, she later told Tom, that these great primal instruments would be just the thing to capture
the interest of some of her adolescent students, particularly the restless boys. She had taken courses and persuaded the headmaster at her school to let her form a taiko group as an after-school activity, which included fashioning the smaller drums from plastic draining piping. The centerpieces of the ensemble, the costly wooden drums—the
tsukeshime-daiko
and the
o-daiko
, the big fat drum—she persuaded Declan’s father to donate.

“Is there anything I can do?” Tom said, stepping further into the hall.

“Oh, Tom, hello.” Julia turned her head, startled out of her concentration on Daniel’s headband. “Really, Daniel, however did you get this so knotted! Tom, you can stop those two from bashing away at each other. Declan! Charlie! Put down the
bachi
! This is not the way of taiko, now, is it?”

The appeal to whatever spiritual underpinnings lay beneath the Japanese art—Tom would have to find out—seemed to have an effect. Grinning, the two boys slowed their swordplay and finally stopped when Tom gave each a meaningful glance. The collar still had a residual power, he found, more so than simple age or routine maleness, traits which no longer commanded much deference.

“Tom, I thought you’d be out there with your flock,” Julia said with a laugh, finishing with Daniel, who made a move towards the door. “You don’t need to go look at yourself in the mirror, Daniel,” she called after him. “You look fine.”

Daniel turned back with a pout. Of the three boys, he was clearly the best looking. Tom sensed that he knew it, too.

“Miranda persuaded me to look in on Mitsuko’s artwork,” Tom told his sister-in-law.

“Yes, I couldn’t help looking in, too. The quilts are truly wonderful, aren’t they?”

“There’ll be no surprises at the opening at this rate.”

Julia dropped her voice. “I know. Joyce is usually so meticulous, but when I was down here before nine, before the setup crew arrived,
I found the outside door unlocked and the inside door to the large hall wide open. I didn’t even need to use my key.”

“Isn’t this place alarmed?”

“Yes, but half the village knows the code. It hasn’t been changed in years. Anyway, Joyce swears she locked the hall after our rehearsal yesterday. We were the last people here.” She glanced over at Charlie to confirm that he wasn’t overhearing her talk about his mother. “I thought the notion was to keep the large hall closed off until Thursday. Mitsuko booked it from today through to the end of next week. Perhaps someone should put up a Keep Out sign.”

The sound of a chair scraping along a floor came from the back of the room. “You might see to Colonel Northmore,” Julia told him. “He’s in the kitchen with Bumble and your Madrun.”

“Is something the matter?”

Julia shrugged. “I think Madrun just brought him in for a cup of tea.”

“But there’s a tea tent outside.”

“I know. Perhaps he wants to get away from the drumming—though he’ll have to plug his ears for that. Or perhaps he just wants to glower at me again for suggesting taiko drumming at the May Fayre in the first place. I would never have mentioned the idea to Peter … to Mr. Kinsey—”

“I didn’t know you had actually done a performance at last year’s Fayre.”

“No, we didn’t. We weren’t really ready as a group. And with Peter … disappearing … the Fayre last year was rather low-key.” She looked away. “Anyway, the notion seemed to stick. Colm was keen on the idea. Still … I didn’t think it would upset the colonel so.”

“It’s not his to say yea or nay.”

“Are we being insensitive, though? I know it’s ridiculous to have this discussion now—”

“You mustn’t trouble yourself, Julia.”

“I do understand his position. I really do, but …”

She left the rest unsaid. Time had marched on. Two generations had matured since the Second World War; memory of the hostilities weakened with each dying veteran. For Tom and Julia, and for Declan, Charlie, and Daniel, too, the war lived only in books and films, on the whole a period of romance and virtue. Colonel Northmore had not had a good war. He had spent three years in a Japanese prison camp, and if the horrific memories had been softened by time’s passage, the bitterness and resentment had not—at least privately.

“He’s become a bit frail in the last year,” Julia continued in a low voice. “When Alastair and I first arrived in Thornford five years ago, you wouldn’t have known he was in his eighties, even then.” She gestured to the
o-daiko
drum stationed against the wall and raised her voice: “Declan, you and Charlie need to shift that drum.”

As Tom made his way to the back of the small hall, he could hear the boys grunting with effort as they pulled the heavy drum away from the wall on its trolley. He could also hear Madrun remonstrating with the colonel about something, though he couldn’t tell what the subject was. Then the air was fractured by a kind of amplified whine, the sort that adolescents produce when the universe is proving to be a great disappointment. “Miss,” one of them groaned—Daniel, perhaps; Tom had noted his voice earlier breaking out of its boyhood timbre—“come look.”

Tom turned to look, too. He saw Julia move to the other side of the drum and watched the muscles in her face suddenly shift.

“Bloody hell!” She looked his way. “Tom,” she called, “come and look at this. Someone has gone and slashed the drum. Whatever possesses people to do things like this?”