Twelve Drummers Drumming (5 page)

“Maybe it split by itself,” Charlie—he was identifiable by his unbroken voice—piped up, his pimply face registering a troubled expression. “It was too tight, like.”

“Charlie, don’t be ridiculous.” Julia’s voice was sharp with exasperation. “Look at it.”

“What’s the matter?” It was Miranda, on the other side of the drum.

“There’s a tear in the drum,” Tom replied.

“ ‘Tear’ is being kind,” Julia responded tartly.

Tom, Julia, and the three boys stared at the instrument in helpless dismay. Miranda joined them. Yes, “tear” wasn’t the word. The word was “slash,” or, rather, two slashes, neatly and crisply executed, one vertical, the other horizontal, forming a perfect Greek cruciform, with flaps of drum skin, released from tension, curled outwards from the new central opening. Whoever had cut the membrane had done it swiftly with a good sharp instrument. Then, as he had at St. Dunstan’s in Bristol, when he journeyed across the dimly lit nave towards the porch of the south door on the lookout for his curiously delayed wife and noted hymnbooks pitched onto the stone floor, Tom felt a twinge of unease. At St. Dunstan’s, he had quickened his pace, flung open the door to the porch, and gasped at the walls defiled by graffiti, stark even in the half-light of a November afternoon. He had stood almost in awe at the violence of the act, though that, unlike this vandalised drum, had less the mark of method. He felt stirrings of anger now as he had then, furiously picking up the hymnbooks before stumbling across the body of his wife and having his world crash around him. He must have made some involuntary movement, for Julia glanced at him sharply, and meaningfully, as though she could sense what was flashing in his brain.

“Tom—” she began gently.

But Colonel Northmore was beside them, walking stick in one hand, and Bumble, his Jack Russell, on a lead, in the other, Madrun flying behind, mug of tea in hand, the light glinting off the cat’s-eye spectacles she wore in fashion and out. “Disgraceful!” the colonel barked, then coughed, as though speaking cost him some effort. “Can’t imagine how that would happen.”

Julia opened her mouth as if to retort, but turned her head away instead. Tom saw an accusatory look sharpen her eye like a needle. He moved to comfort her, but in doing so caught, just for a moment, the desertion of a devilish twitch to the colonel’s stone face, the end
of a smile so fleeting, so uncharacteristic, he had to remind himself that it had been there. But at that moment he also caught the whiff of something else, a subtle, pheromonal presence in the hall’s unventilated air. It reminded him of moments in his ministry; it was a familiar, though never welcome, scent, not one characteristic of village halls in rural England. And when he smelled it, repulsion contended with pity. Only in one instance—that fateful afternoon at St. Dunstan’s—did pity sweep every other emotion aside.

“Hey, there’s something in there,” Daniel shouted, pointing. Though fourteen and gangly, he was nearly as tall as Tom.

Yes, there was something in there, but what? Tom’s anxiety grew as he moved to block Daniel from advancing nearer the drum. He glanced at Charlie, whose pocked face had gone as white as a new starched surplice.

The breach in the drum skin was almost at eye level for Tom. He arched himself forwards, pushed one of the leathery flaps aside, and peered in. The interior was grey shadow, and in that shadow lay another—darker, more substantial. As his eyes adjusted to the thin light the membrane permitted, he could make out the contours of a figure supine in the basin of the drum, knees bent slightly to one side as if seeking comfort in the tiny space. A woman, he recognised instantly. The feet, opposite him, at the drum’s far end, were small and pointed in winklepicker boots. One arm rested awkwardly across the stomach like a pale stick. The face, turned in sympathy with the legs, was pushed forwards by the curve of the drum and partly obscured by a disarray of dark hair. But glinting along the scallop of one exposed ear was a row of small silver loops. His heart crashed. He stretched to seek purchase along the drum and looked into the figure’s face. There, along the ridge of her left eyebrow, were two more tiny silver hoops. That confirmed it.

“It’s Sybella,” he said in a half whisper, turning to his expectant audience, glancing at his daughter. “She’s asleep.”

He was a priest in Christ’s church. He didn’t like to tell a lie.

I
t took but a second for Declan to surge towards the drum. “You lazy cow!” he shouted. “Get out of there now!”

“Leave her be,” Tom warned over Bumble’s excited barking, grabbing Declan’s arm before he could advance any further.

But Declan proved difficult to restrain. “Sybella, you stupid bitch, get out of my drum! Get out!
Get out!
I’ll
kill
you, you stupid cunt.”

That was it. “Charlie! Daniel! Take Declan outside.” Tom gestured towards the two boys, who appeared nonplussed by their friend’s fury. “Mrs. Prowse, would you mind taking Miranda out? Colonel …?”

But Colonel Northmore, who had been glaring at Declan with disgust, turned and began to move away, tugging at Bumble’s lead.

“Julia, stay with me a moment.” Tom grunted as he passed off the flailing and strangely powerful teenager to Charlie and Daniel. The two boys took Declan by the arms and half pushed, half dragged their friend towards the door, but he proved too strong for them, thrusting them aside, sending one of them, Daniel, stumbling backwards
across the floor. Daniel crashed into the colonel. The old man seemed to totter for a second as he attempted to maintain his footing, and then went tumbling to the tiles with a sickening cracking noise, echoed by the clatter of his walking stick as it rolled across the floor and succeeded by a noisy protest from Bumble.

“Colonel!” Julia cried, moving to bend over the crumpled figure. Oblivious, Declan struggled back towards the drum, dragging Charlie with him like a limpet. But before Tom could reengage in restraining the flailing youth, Charlie, with renewed vigor, twisted Declan around; with a look of determination and a kind of glee, he drove his fist into his friend’s stomach. Declan’s face blazed with shock. He jackknifed backwards, his mouth an oval as if he were about to spew; then he, too, hit the floor. The dog stopped barking in that instant, as if he, too, were astonished. The merciful silence was interrupted by a massed chorus of tiny bells, then a quizzical voice:

“Daniel? What the hell are you doing? What’s going on here?”

It was Eric Swan standing in the open door that Madrun and Miranda had just vacated. He pushed his Tudor bonnet back on his brow, stirring the plaited ribbons. The bells on his shin pads continued their mad tinkling.

Tom gave a passing thought to the scene: one elderly gentleman being licked by his terrier and two Ninja Turtle youths flat on the floor, a third huffing with exertion and kneading his fist, and two adults challenged as effective referees. The intrusion of a man dressed as a morris dancer just made the awful turn of events seem that much more inconceivable.

“Colonel,” Julia said gently, kneeling to the floor, resting one hand under his head, and readjusting his regimental tie, which had flipped around his neck, “that was a very nasty crack. I don’t expect you’re able to get up, are you?”

Northmore appeared to think about it for a moment, then a shudder of pain travelled across his craggy features. “I’m sorry, my dear.” He winced. “I don’t think I can. My legs …” He winced again.

With her other hand, Julia pulled her mobile from her trouser pocket. As she flipped it open and pressed a button, she glanced towards the
o-daiko
drum and addressed Tom. “I don’t know how she can sleep through all of this.”

“I hope she’s in a coma,” Declan moaned, clutching his stomach.

“Alastair, where are you? Good, then you can get here quickly. You’re needed at the village hall,” Julia spoke urgently into the phone. “Alastair, it’s an emergency. Don’t give me an argument. Yes, I said it was an
emergency
. Of course I mean medical. Of course I’ll phone for an ambulance.” She snapped the phone shut. “He’s in his car,” she said to Tom, who noted a flicker of fury in her expression. He wondered if she’d called her husband unnecessarily simply to be punishing.

“Eric,” she said to the Church House Inn’s proprietor, who, receiving no reply to his query, was eyeballing the hall’s taiko paraphernalia, “would you fetch a couple of cushions from the bar? I think you’ll find they’re just tied to the seats. We’d better call an ambulance,” she added to Tom as Eric jingled his way to the kitchen. “Torbay Hospital would be best.” Northmore had closed his eyes. His lips were drawn tightly and his face, normally slightly flushed, had turned the shade of candle wax.

We’ll be getting more than an ambulance before long
was Tom’s anguished thought, as Eric handed two plush crimson seat cushions to Julia. Impatient to clear the hall, he said:

“Eric, perhaps if you take the boys and Bumble outside.” He turned to the remaining supine figure. “Declan? Do you think you’re well enough to get off the floor?”

Declan groaned with measured theatricality. “I suppose so,” he muttered petulantly, glaring at Charlie.

“What about our performance?” Charlie and Daniel wailed as one.

Julia adjusted the pillows under the colonel’s head. “We’ll see. We can do Chido-setsu and Yuki Jizoh. And for the finale, we might be able to do Heart Beat. Let us deal with things here first.”

“Our lot can go on first, if you like,” Eric volunteered, taking Bumble’s lead and shepherding the boys towards the door. “Now that I’ve found my morris stick,” he added, glancing meaningfully at Daniel, holding up a solid-looking wooden stave of about eighteen inches.

“Perhaps someone should wake Sybella.” Julia rose and looked down at the colonel. She flipped her phone open once again. “I almost don’t blame Declan. What does the girl think she’s playing at? Destroying the drum skin and crawling in to sleep it off. I thought she was reformed.”

“How are you feeling, Colonel?” Tom bent down on one knee, while Julia spoke with emergency services.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Northmore opened his eyes—his irises were iron grey—and looked directly into Tom’s. “I’ve been through worse, padre.”

“I expect you have, Colonel.” Tom smiled and rose. “I just need a word with Julia,” he continued, drawing his sister-in-law aside when she’d finished her call. “Dr. Hennis should be here shortly,” he promised the injured man. “And an ambulance.”

“I’m furious with Sybella,” Julia remarked when they’d moved away a distance. “I’ve a mind to bring in the police and …” Something in Tom’s expression stopped her. “What? Tom, what is it?”

“Julia,” he began in a low voice, “I’m going to tell you something. It’s going to be very upsetting, but I’m going to need your help.”

“Now you’re frightening me.”

He took a deep breath. There was no good way to cushion it. “Sybella isn’t asleep.”

Julia frowned. “Stoned, then? What do you mean?”

“Sybella is dead.”

“D
ead, you say?”

The colonel’s croak intruded into Tom’s consciousness. Julia’s saucer eyes, searching his own, were holding him transfixed.

“We were referring to—” Tom managed to begin, but Julia’s fingers were pressing into his arm, her lips opening, as if to emit a scream. “We were referring to—” he began again, possessed by an impulse to silence her with an embrace.

“Yes, I know. To the girl. Got fixed up with a very good hearing aid some years ago.”

“But how …?” Julia groaned, her hand still locked to his arm, her eyes now turned to the
o-daiko
drum.

“I don’t know.”

“You must be strong, my dear.” The colonel addressed Julia. They both turned to the recumbent figure. The simple instruction of a man who had suffered war in its cruelest strain seemed magically to lessen their dread. Tom felt Julia’s fingers slip from his sleeve. He pulled his mobile from his pocket.

“Police?” the old man asked.

“Yes, Colonel, I’m just on it now.”

“Màiri White is likely outside somewhere.” Julia, her face pale, made to dash for the door.