Twelve Drummers Drumming by C. C. Benison

Dosh—his aunt, who became his second adoptive mother—saved for him in a scrapbook, which she presented to him when his child’sconsciousness began to encompass the world beyond the garden gate. No, it wasn’t anything remotely like the emotional gale wind following the death of the Princess of Wales, but his young parents’ death in an airplane that plunged into the North Sea after takeoff from Stockholm, where his mother had won the Eurovision Song Contest, had captured the public imagination for a time. He himself had been a figure of sentimentality, the poor orphaned—
twice orphaned!—
Xmas (tabloid headlines were invariably truncated) Baby. He could recall from the scrapbook a particularly vivid picture of Dosh, her scolding face turned towards some news photographer, caught outside some shop in Gravesend. In her arms, a bundle of swaddling clothes. Him. Tom Livingston Christmas.
    “I still have your mother’s winning single somewhere, ‘If Wishes.’ It was a good tune.” Colm’s head began swaying as if to an inner rhythm. “ ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ ” he began, his voice, huskier yet sweeter in the decades since
Top of the Pops
, embracing the last note. “ ‘If time would turn back, I’d have you by my side …’ ” He faltered then; a beat passed. Tom opened his mouth to offer to allay the discomforting lyric, but Colm recovered, stronger: “ ‘All life’s trials and sorrows would never abide …’ ” He smiled at Tom in invitation.
    “… ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.’ ” Tom drew out the last words in the voice that ensured his exclusion from any respectable choir.
    “Yes, that’s right.” Amusement crinkled the corners of Colm’s eyes. “Your mother had a lovely, lyric voice. In your case, the apple seems to have fallen really quite far from the tree.”
    Tom laughed. “But I was the
adopted
son of Iain Christmas and Mary Carroll—”
    “I’d forgotten that.”
    “—My natural parents probably had tin ears, as do I.”
    “Well, you have a fine speaking voice, Vicar.”
    “I expect the stage training didn’t hurt.”
    “Eh?”
    “My former life as The Great Krimboni.”
    “Ah, yes—the magic act. Did you get called ‘Krimbo’ at school?”
    “I still get ‘Krimbo’ if I’m in certain parts of the southeast.”
    “I was christened ‘Malcolm.’ Dropped the ‘Mal’ as soon as I could.” Colm’s attention seemed to drift and they sat in silence in the soft air for a moment.
    “I was thinking of a gospel choir for Sybella’s funeral.” Colm plucked again at the threads along his knee.
    “I certainly don’t mind, Colm, if that’s what you wish.” Tom hesitated. “I wasn’t sure where you were planning to—”
    “I want the funeral here and I want her to be buried in the churchyard. This is where I live. I want to be near to her—” His voice broke.
    “I understand.” Tom shifted his eyes to the pool, observing a tiny water boatman rippling the reflection of cedar branches in the glassy surface of the water. He waited for the moment to pass.
    “And Sybella’s mother?” he asked, after a time. “Is this her wish?”
    “Oona can go to hell.”
    “Is she objecting?”
    “She’s being … hard to manage. As she has been her entire career and through our entire marriage. But I’ll sort her out.”
    Tom gave a passing thought to the effects of a funeral of a young woman with celebrity (however faded) parents on the church and the village. He had had his own disagreeable experience with press intrusion—reporters idling on the street in front of their flat or the church in the days after Lisbeth’s murder. One of them had winkled Tom’s mobile number out of some unsuspecting neighbour; then they all had it. He’d thrown his phone into the Avon.
    “And do you know a gospel choir that can arrive on short notice?” Tom asked.
    “I do. Revelation Choir. They did some backup on my