CHAPTER 72
Steph was intrigued by Simon’s proposal.

“I know he’s a good bloke, but with all this ‘excellence’ towards us abominations, is he perhaps trying to snare us for his sky pixie? Find some really top-class sinners to save?”

I had to laugh at that. “Sort of infernal top trumps, aye? My transgressor’s abominations trump your sinner’s peccadilloes?”

That brought a snort.

“No, seriously, I think he really does care about folk, and we seem to tick quite a few of his boxes. I don’t mean in what we are, Annie, just in what we are willing to give. We just seem to have all landed in the right place for him”

We were sat in the conservatory that day, having just finished some jamming together just for the sheer joy of it. Saburo lay across my lap, and Steph was just wiping the neck of her fiddle when there was a knock on the conservatory door, and Darren came in.

That was another little warm moment. Steph treated the Woods as family, and they came and went almost at will in each other’s houses, and here was Darren doing much the same. A knock to announce his presence, but then straight in. To me, it spoke volumes about his healing, which came so largely from the trust that had been given to him almost without question. He was, of course, carrying his football boots.

“Leave them outside, Darren!” called Steph, and then “You know where the fridge is, there’s a tray of cokes in there”

He was back with us in an instant, swigging the can as he walked, and I took time out to look at him. Dark hair, almost black, but with startlingly blue eyes, he was still small in his build, but the pinched look that had made his cheeks hollow had gone. His eyes were rarely still, though not as they had been. He was no longer looking around for an escape route or a potential threat, but for something that would interest him. He was alive now, not just living.

“Hiya, Annie, how’s you?”

Slowly, too, his speech patterns were changing, which was something which I was uncertain how to take. Was he matching the school, or his home life? The awkward mock-Caribbean of his East London accent would always lie there, but he seemed to be groping for better words, clearer communication. He was either copying what he heard, or someone, somewhere, was being a good teacher. I suspected the latter, and that she lived next door to Steph. I had gained the feeling on my very first meeting with Naomi that when she put her mind to it Something Got Done.

“Fine, Darren my man, what are you after?”

“Was hoping for a go on some music, yeah? That drum thing I was fooling with, lahk.”

Steph grinned. “Yeah, right! Annie, we have established one thing with young Darren, and that is that he is profoundly tone-deaf. He likes the sounds, he just can’t make them. However…he does have a solid sense of rhythm, and I think he might make a good dancer, reminds me of Geoff in some ways”

The lad was actually blushing. “Yeah, so I kinda thought, do a bit of drum, yeah? Ain’t got no tunes and stuff, just the beat…”

That was an afternoon that still makes me smile. Steph brought out her own bodhran, with a variety of sticks and beaters, and slowly eased him through it, and to my surprise I realised that I hadn’t spotted he was actually left-handed. Slipping, Annie.

She talked him through the two roles the hands played, and got him to strike the head in various places, then do it again with the right hand stretching the skin. As the range of potential sounds became evident, he started to grin. Then, she showed him the different beating techniques, including her own preferred double-ended style, and he was away. Not smoothly, but it was there, and we played a couple of simple tunes to let him catch the swing and the drive of three and four time music. Steph ran through some old session standards like ‘Rakes of Mallow’ and ‘Speed the Plough’, and he began to experiment. Steph noticed.

“Darren, now you have the movements down, try something fast. This will sound silly, but if you let rip it can feel a lot easier than the slow stuff.”

She played a couple of reels, then, and he got more and more adventurous, even managing some rim shots in time, and then I decided to test him out as he sat grinning.

“Arm tired?”

“No, is fun, innit?”

“Right, then, this is a song, but I am going to play it on the flute, no words. It starts slow, has some fast bits, goes up and down, yeah? Steph, if you know it….”

“No worries, Annie”

I started the eerie repeated phrases that open the song, and Steph grinned in recognition.

“You do like your Tull, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, but Anderson is someone to aspire to, just without the beard”

I began again, and ‘My God’ began to take shape. I let Steph pick up the slow riff, and then took the vocal line on the flute. Darren just sat there, until something clicked and he began a piano percussion line of his own, almost brushing the skin to keep it soft.

I couldn’t help it. When the big dramatic chunk came I was out of my seat, and Steph went completely hairy with me, and it was a while before we came down to earth, and there was Darren, and his expression was something new. It wasn’t awe, or fear, or amusement at our silliness, it was---there is a phrase, but I am writing about a child. It was the face of someone who had just had amazingly good sex.

“Wow…Annie, you is good, but, lahk, there’s hearing good, and there’s being in the good, and I was so in it, and…wow”

I realised he was crying. “I dint know I could do anything like that, yeah? So right, so good, so…fuck, so real, yeah?”

I looked over at Steph, and there were tears there too.

“Darren, it’s called being a musician. Some people are, some people aren’t, some just need to find the right way to get their music out. Annie, what do you think, he plays with us at the church?”

I grinned back at him. “You’ve got a gig, lad! Practice, practice!”

He wiped his eyes, and laughed. “Knew there had to be a downside, yeah!”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Times began to get frantic after that, and as word got round about the gig we had more than three quarters of our little London cycle group lined up for it, all of them being, as card-carrying supporters of the Bard of Harvard, clinically insane, of course. Geoff’s family were invited, of course, and once more we started to build a nice little band of musicians and banjo player. The plan was a simple one: bring the kids down, feed them a sort of second Christmas Dinner, play some music while they ate and do some louder/hairier stuff afterwards. They would then depart, and we would have a session of playing, drinking and silliness, before settling into our little shelters to freeze off those bits some of us never wanted.

First there came Christmas itself, of course, and although Eric and I were both working we made time out to leave a few presents for our friends, grab a couple of drinks, that sort of thing. Working the holidays renders the period null and void, and it turns into a strange limbo in which the shops shut for a day and---oh, was that it? We didn’t do too much on the present front, but knowing what Steph was getting Darren I added a small bag of different beaters and a case for the thing itself, which was of course a small bodhran.

Tabitha got a new dress, and Eric a new long-flap camper saddle bag to replace the decaying mess of elderly cotton he had owned since sometime before the Boer War, and he bought me…he bought me the most gorgeously and simply feminine pair of Kurt Geiger shoes. They were utterly girly, and it was a true first. They weren’t shoes handed down by Kate (though I do realise she bought them new), they weren’t things I had tried on and bought for myself, they were not even practical. They were, in fact, what Greer called ‘fuck-me shoes’, and they had been bought for me by my man. I did assume, though, that he had had some help. When I opened the box…

“Oh, Eric, thought you only bought me flat sandals, aye?”

The rest of the outfit I later found hiding in my wardrobe, and it was a little black dress and the underpinnings to go with it.

“Why the classy stuff, love? Just want it on so I can be got out of it?”

“No, love. Much simpler reason, though that is still a very nice idea….we have dinners coming up, even if they are only with my lot, or Den, or the Woods, and I want you happy, and pretty, and I want everyone to see you are happy and pretty, and for them to see how proud of you, and how lucky, I am.”

Well, there is only one response a girl can give to a remark like that.

“Do you really think I’m pretty?”

And once more, there are traditions to maintain. They were duly addressed.