Twelve Drummers Drumming Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 capturethe 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