Twelve Drummers Drumming by C. C. Benison Page B

companionable. We just go about our business. We talk about plants and the weather. I don’t ask about his private life and he, in turn, doesn’t ask me what it was like to play at Live Aid—”
    “Oh,” said Tom, who’d once considered asking Colm that very question.
    “—and he showed no interest in Sybella, so no worries there.”
    Although, Tom realised, Sebastian’s sudden materialisation inthe village hall yesterday seemed to suggest otherwise. “Well,” he said, “these drawings look very … assured.”
    “We’d been talking about an art college in the fall.” Colm picked up one of the sketchbooks and began flipping through it. “Perhaps the one in Bristol that Mitsuko went to. She’d be nearer home. Here, that is. Far enough away from London and Oona and her pernicious influence, ha!” He slammed the sketchbook down on the desk. “She was beginning to put together a portfolio. And now …”
    He left the rest unsaid and looked vacantly around the room.
    “Sybella spent many hours up here. And she wasn’t”—he turned to Tom, his eyes flecked with anger—“drugging, as apparently half the village thinks.”
    “That was only the colonel being obtuse,” Tom responded, then thought guiltily of Madrun. And who else? he wondered. The darker thoughts at his breakfast table he pushed from his mind.
    “Advertising people say that one voiced complaint represents hundreds,” Colm said.
    “What a few in the village think isn’t important.”
    “What did you think?”
    “Colm, I’ve only been here a short while.”
    “But you were in an inner-city ministry. You know how people Sybella’s age behave and act when … oh God, I’m sorry … your wife. I’d forgotten that they thought drugs were the reason for—”
    “Have you been told nothing about … how … or why?”
    Colm shook his head and moved to one of a pair of chintz-covered armchairs by the window. “Nothing,” he replied, slumping into the soft seat. “This not knowing. I can’t bear it. It
wasn’t
drugs. And she was healthy … and full of life. And she wasn’t … you know, depressed or the like.” His face crumpled. “I’ve lost my child.” He released a groan awful to hear and covered his face with his hands. Tom sank into the chair opposite, glanced at the dottings of lambkin clouds past the window’s frame, and felt his heart contract with a pity not untainted by the ache of his own loss and the horror, the absolute horror, of losing a child.
    “It’s all right. I’m all right.” Colm abruptly lifted his hands from his face and snuffled. The light played cruelly along the fan of lines at the corners of his eyes, which were red-rimmed and drowning in salt water. He affected to smile.
    “Shall we have a prayer?” Tom asked.
    “Yes, please.”
    “Ought we to wait for your wife?”
    “I know Celia comes to church, but I think in her heart she really communes with Saint Sigmund, if you know what I mean.”
    Tom did.
    They closed their eyes.

    “Thank you,” Colm said, opening his eyes and leaning back into the chair when Tom had finished his prayer. The atmosphere in the room had leavened, as though a kindly spirit had come and gone. After a moment’s comfortable silence, Colm took a deep breath. “Perhaps we should see if Celia’s back. She should be by now.”
    They both rose. Tom took a final glance through the window, at the billowy contours of the South Downs, at the patchwork of emerald fields. Off to the east, through morning’s soft haze, he could make out the outline of St. Nicholas’s blunt tower. Then, his eyes alerted by movement, he glanced down onto the roof of a red Astra pulling up on the gravel apron in front of Thornridge House.
    “When you said your wife had gone out for a ride, you meant on a horse, yes?”
    “Of course,” Colm responded from the doorwell.
    Who’s this then?
Tom wondered. But he didn’t have to wonder long. As soon as he saw the vehicle doors open