Marching to the sound of a different drum5 min read

You wouldn’t have wanted my old mum in charge on the bridge of a destroyer or even in front of you in the checkout queue. She once helped me put washing out on a rotary clothes line by starting from the outside line and, when that was full, trying to work her way in, steadily getting wrapped in washing as she tried to progress. She said in explanation that it seemed easier. So it’s perhaps not surprising that she wasn’t much good at taking on the burglar/mad axe-man/rapist when he paid us a visit.

It was just before my brother went off to uni. and he was cultivating louche. He’d been given an amazing dressing gown the Christmas before. A description doesn’t do it justice. It was silk I think, shone like burnished copper and was patterned in black. It shimmered and dazzled in the light but he wore it sparingly, mainly, I suspect, because in our cold council house you really wanted to be wearing a couple of bear pelts or three duvets not a flimsy silk kimono. I can’t imagine what would have happened if anyone outside the house had seen it: a few years before kids at the bottom of the street had tried to hang him and his mate because they were there. His mate’s ma had had to take her pinny off and stride down the hill to say if anyone was going to hang her lad it would be her not some snotty-nosed kids from the ‘bottom end’.

It was a cold New Year’s Eve in the late fifties. My brother was going out with friends to see the New Year in. Mum and I were going round to neighbours. He’d said not to wait up and that he would be late. I was about nine I guess so midnight seemed quite late to me anyway.

We had duly stayed up till midnight and then strolled home. Mum had had a couple (or so) drinks and was still lively so we were going to have a ‘nice cup of tea’ before going to bed.

We were in the kitchen talking and waiting for the kettle when I thought I heard a noise upstairs. Mum said she hadn’t heard anything and we carried on talking while the kettle wheezed and thought about the effort needed to pass luke-warm. Then we both definitely heard a noise from upstairs and what sounded like someone coming down stairs.

“There’s someone upstairs.”

“There can’t be.”

Thump.

“There is mam.”

“It’s a burglar!”

“What shall we do?”

The captain looked out from the bridge at the darkening sky and grey arctic sea. Somewhere out there was a sub or burglar/mad axe-man/rapist with just one thought in its/his mind. His eyes narrowed and then a slow smile crept over his fine aquiline features.

“Let’s sing.”

“Sing?”

“Sing. It will let him know there’s someone here and he’ll go away.”

And the captain broke out with ‘There ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced that singing was better than depth charges and wasn’t sure of the words so, just in case, I retrieved the carving knife from the kitchen drawer as I joined in. I think we both sang a kind of descant.

The sound of someone or something coming down the stairs continued, getting a little louder with every step.

The captain’s eyes narrowed (again). “So that’s the way he wants it”, he said to number one. And then, brilliantly “Sing louder”, she said.

So we sang louder.

Mum was in the middle of the room facing the door. I was to the right of the door, clutching the knife. Now there was no sound from the stairs. The burglar/mad axe-man/rapist would either flee through the front door, traumatised by our singing and vowing to change his ways or come down the hall and into the kitchen. There was an ageless pause and a terrible silence, broken only by an increasingly discordant duet.

As I write this I realise why I hated being in the school choir.

We carried on singing but heard a muffled noise from the other side of the door. The door handle slowly turned. The door opened wide. A figure stood in the doorway silhouetted against the dark of the hall with a sinister half-smile on his face and there was a terrible flash of burnished copper. ‘Why is the burglar/mad axe-man/rapist wearing my brother’s dressing gown!’ I thought, expecting even a crazed psycho to have better taste than an adolescent swot. My mother took in the scene in an instant and let out a very long, very piercing scream.

The scream was more effective than our singing because the smile vanished from his face, and there was real terror in his eyes as my brother turned and looked behind him, wondering what horror had followed him down the stairs.

Later, when the kettle had finally boiled, he said there was nothing much happening out. He would have come down earlier but it sounded like we were having a party and he couldn’t be bothered to put clothes on again.