Chapter Four

Tree on the Hill

MY FIRST DRUM, thinks I, was an adufe, or pandiero quadrado, in the shape of a square, its two goat skins stitched along the sides of the frame. I clutched the adufe with my thumbs and the pointing finger of my left hand, while the rest of my fingers beat the rhythm on the skins, the seeds rattling pleasantly within. I imagined myself a true adufeira, just like Catarina Baptista, she being a popular adufeira from Trás-os-Montes who came to live one day in Monchique. It was she who taught me the adufe rhythms – ritmo de passo and ritmo de roda – whenever I begged for alms. When I took leave of the Convento do Desterro to find my papai, Senhora Baptista celebrated by playing her adufe as I rode by her on the streets of Monchique. She sang an old song of her adufe not being played with her hand but with a golden ring, a gift from her heart:

Este pandeiro qu’eu toco não se toca com a mão,

toca-se com anel d’ouro, prenda do meu coração.

Here, in Scarborough, without an adufe, I beat my fingers on the tea-table, the bedpost, the cover of a book – whatever I could find and whenever my papai and mamãe weren’t attending to me, because they forbid me to drum my fingers. To be sure, papai would still my hands if he caught me. He would mutter something about it being impolite, not to mention hoydenish. But then, one afternoon, it being the day of the summer solstice, 1815, I heard the strongest of heartbeats – tah-tah da-dum, tah-tah da-dum – summoning me below stairs.

I sneaked out of doors, into the small kitchen garden, where I beheld a most astonishing sight. My papai’s valet, MacTavish, wore a brass drum, the shape of a gigantic pot, resting high up on his left hip. This drum, so similar to the caixa used by the Portuguese military, hung suspended from a leather strap that he wore over his right shoulder. With a stick in each hand, he beat the drum with the air and spirit of a valiant soldier, making a tempest of sounds of which I had never heard before.

‘Viva! MacTavish,’ I greeted him when he had done. ‘Is that your caixa?’

‘Ay, ay – ’tis my bres drume.’

MacTavish told me that when he was just a lad of nine years, he enlisted in the army as a drummer boy after lying about his age. He came from a poor family of ten children, and his parents reasoned that one less bairn to feed would mean more parritch an’ broo of broth for the others. He and two other young lads in the village enlisted at the same time, eager to wear a smart uniform and to eat tasty chum in the army – mighty English roast beef – these sorts of things being promised to them by a jolly Captain MacAdoo, who, by beat of drum, raised volunteers for a regiment of Foot Guards.

A drum-major taught MacTavish and the other lads the drum signals – march, alarm, approach, assault, battle, retreat and so forth. Why, there were even drum beats to signal the taverns to stop serving ale to the soldiers, or to signal the idle women, they being camp followers, to take their leave. And every so often they had to drum out a miscreant from the army with the Rogue’s March. According to the drum-major, the French Army enlisted boys as young as seven years to be drummer boys, and many years ago, the British Army had done the same.

‘I’m five, and that’s nearly seven.’ I counted on my fingers. ‘Could I be a drummer boy?’

‘Ye’re a wee bit bairn wi’ wee bit han’s. Listen,’ he removed his drum, ‘Ah’ll tell ye a’ aboot Mary Ann Talbot instead.’

I learnt the strange story of Miss Talbot, who claimed that, as a youth, she had been disguised as a foot-boy against her will by a certain Captain Bowen, and she had served in the army as a drummer boy. As an eyewitness to the siege of Valenciennes, she observed many a soldier on both sides swallow fire. She said the drummer boys had been ordered to keep a continuous roll despite the cries and confusion on the battlefield.

‘Och! The lass murgullied the drume roll, nae doot.’ He shook his head.

‘Murgullied?’

‘The lass bungled the drume roll. ’Tis true that only lads make gude drummers.’

I scoffed at his maxim, when nothing could stop the rhythm that poured out of my soul. I snatched the sticks from him, and I began to beat the skin of the drum in the same pattern he had done and without bungling it. This shocked MacTavish to see a wee bit lassie striking a bres drume. But soon he clapped his hands and stamped his feet to the beat – tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too. Amazed by my brilliant display of primitive drumming, MacTavish promised to teach me the drum signals, but only if my papai agreed to it.

The day next, I advised MacTavish that papai had granted my request to become a drummer boy and that I could commence my lessons that very afternoon if I didn’t practise more than half-an-hour. I tried my utmost to sound convincing, knowing that my papai and mamãe had walked out and that their stroll would take – oh yes – exactly half-an-hour.

MacTavish looked askance at me. ‘Ye’re a bardy bairn. Ah’ll speak wi’ the Colonel aboot it.’

‘But you cannot now,’ I shook my finger at him. ‘Papai is doing his manly duty. He took mamãe for an airing.’

Fortunately for me, MacTavish’s suspicions gave way to his passion for drumming. ‘Ah’ll meet wi’ ye oot in the yaird,’ said he.

There, under our Scots pine, my first lesson covered something called ‘technique’ – a fancy word, methinks, for holding the sticks properly and for standing upright with my left heel jammed into the hollow of my right foot. In the upper or left hand, one must position the stick firmly between the thumb and two middle fingers and rest it on the third finger above the middle joint, while in the lower or right hand, one must hold the stick with the whole hand, the little finger gripping it firmly like one does with a sword.

Next, my maestro demonstrated how to perform a long roll – rat-tat tat-tat, rat-tat tat-tat – and a stroke roll. He placed his bres drume on a footstool where I could reach it and practise the rolls. And once those beats became easy and familiar to me, he taught me how to close a roll with two heavy strokes with the upper hand, followed by two strokes with the lower hand, quickening the strokes each time till the roll was closed – rat-tat tat-tat t-rrr-r-r-r rrr-r-r-r-rrr.

Eager for my second lesson, I met with MacTavish the following ‘Soonday’, and he taught me the open flam and the close flam – a-ra a-tat-a-ra a-tat – all of which I learnt quickly. To challenge me, he demonstrated two drum signals – advance and retreat. He had no sooner done so, than papai stalked into the garden. Unbeknown to me, papai had returned early from his stroll with mamãe.

‘Sir!’ MacTavish saluted him soldier-like with a pull of his cap.

Papai cast a severe look at me. ‘Sofia-Elisabete, did I not refuse your request to become a drummer boy? ’Tis not proper for a young lady to be a drummer.’

‘Please, papai, please.’ I stamped my feet – left-right-left-right – in a most unladylike manner.

‘Permission denied, again.’ He turned to rail at his man. ‘Confound it, MacTavish! I am the master of this house, yet I find I’m running down the stairs and then back up the stairs because of your drum signals. I’ve no idea if I’m supposed to be advancing or retreating.’

‘Colonel, Ah’ve faithfully discharged my dooty an’ teatched the lassie a guid drume beatin’,’ MacTavish spoke with his usual dry manner.

‘What duty?’

‘Sir?’ MacTavish shrugged, his eyes twinkling.

Papai turned round to scowl at me. ‘Why, you rascal pup. Prepare to be court-martialled little drummer boy.’

Alarmed, I tossed the sticks to MacTavish, and I took to my heels, my papai uttering a dreadful oath or two behind me, for he had stepped on one of Tin-Key’s turds in the garden. ‘Confound it! That pug is getting turnspit duty,’ thundered he whenever he stepped on Tin-Key’s turds. Mamãe would always joke that the entire town could hear him and that the town-folk would say, ‘Hark! The Colonel must’ve stepped on another turd to-day.’

I duly appeared for my court-martial in papai’s study, where he questioned me concerning my bad habit of lying, not to mention my hoydenish behaviour. In my defence, I pleaded that I never really lied, but rather, I helped the truth along whenever it needed it. To be sure, this argument neither pleased nor persuaded him, and so he withheld my goose-grog at dinner that day, and the day next and the day after that.

‘Papai, I wish for goose-grog again. Please?’ begged I. But my bitter complaints over the loss of my goose-grog failed to sway him.

‘It is your punishment,’ he reminded me. ‘The alternative would be a good flogging with the cat o’ nine tails, so which would it be, drummer boy?’

‘By gock, the army this is not,’ mamãe shook her finger at papai. ‘You daren’t tease her in such a coarse manner.’

‘But…’ Papai had no sooner uttered a word of protest, than mamãe held up her hand to silence him.

‘Now, then,’ she turned to me in earnest, ‘your father will never use the cat on you; for, if he does, I shall use the cat on him.’

Papai waggled his brows at her. ‘Madam, I wonder if perhaps you meant the wildcat?’

Mamãe goggled her eyes and pointed her chin at me for some reason, and I wondered why parents must act so silly at times.

One afternoon, while Maddison, my mamãe’s maid, and I strolled near Quay Street, I observed papai leaving the chemist’s and placing a flask inside his coat pocket. I waved, I jumped, I hallooed to gain his attention, but he acknowledged this hoyden not and thereafter ducked into The Golden Ball for a prime ale – the best thing for his health as he was wont to say. When the time for dinner arrived and we had taken our places at table, I discovered the reason papai had been skulking in town.

‘Colonel, where were you this afternoon?’ mamãe inquired with an arched brow. ‘Gadding about as usual?’

‘Mrs Fitzwilliam, you are looking at a man who takes pleasure in gadding about.’

‘I saw papai gadding about to-day.’ I giggled at papai who nearly spilt his wine on the table.

‘Oh? Where was this?’ wondered mamãe.

‘Near Quay Street. Papai went to the…’

‘My dear Sofia-Elisabete,’ exclaimed papai. ‘You shall ruin my little surprise.’

‘What surprise? Oh, tell me, tell me, papai,’ I gazed at him with curiosity.

Papai gulped down his Madeira, and he became thoughtful. ‘I am now of the mind…to grant your request to learn the drum signals – yes, yes. I shall purchase a small drum more appropriate for your wee stature.’

I jumped down from my chair with alacrity to kiss papai’s hand. ‘You’re the best of papais,’ I told him. With great tenderness of feeling, he chucked me under my chin. Mamãe bit her lip, and she tapped her fingers hoyden-like on the table, no doubt wondering why papai had changed his mind of a sudden.

Ere long papai presented me with a small drum and small drum sticks with small buttons on the ends. MacTavish tightened the calf skin head to create a crisp sound. He slung the drum strap round my neck, and he checked the length of the drum carriage, ensuring it rested on my left thigh such that when I bent my knee, the drum balanced on it.

Equipped with my wee drum, I mastered the drum rolls – faint roll, faint stroke, hard roll, hard flam, stroke and flam, half drag, single drag, double drag, &c. – and the drum signals, including the Rogue’s March, Troop, Retreat, General, Dinner Call and the Taptoo. MacTavish declared me a musical prodigy, a true musitioner, and he taught me the drum beating for the ‘Grenadier’s March’, ‘The Female Drummer’ and ‘Rule, Brittania’.

Mamãe took great pride in my drumming skills, and she would sometimes ask me to beat the Dinner Call to save our old butler from having to search for papai out of doors, where he sat under his Scots pine thinking those great thoughts of his. Like a true army man, as soon as he heard the Dinner Call, he would hasten within. ‘Where are my pease on a trencher and mighty roast beef?’ he would joke.

Once, when papai disappeared in the evening and mamãe wished him home, she shook me awake. ‘We need to find your papai,’ whispered she. I rubbed my sleepy eyes, wondering why mamãe seemed beside herself with worry. In the gloom of the night, we drove up and down the streets in our hired hackney, with a window let down, she peering into the dark alleys near Quay Street, I beating the Taptoo – the signal to retire to quarters. Sure enough, papai shuffled out of a public-house. Mamãe told him to get into our hackney, and get into it he did, albeit against his will. ‘I shan’t be henpecked, I shan’t,’ grumbled he. I thought I had dreamt it all. But the next morning when I awoke, papai lay splayed on the ground near my bed, stinking of the wicked liquor. I never did ask mamãe about our nocturnal quest, and I think she preferred that I didn’t.

With my parents at odds with each other for several days, I turned to spying on MacTavish. One afternoon I hid behind the Scots pine, from where I secretly observed MacTavish flirting with Maddison. He followed her round the garden, beating his drum most passionately and singing ‘Hot Stuff’, an army song. When he had done serenading her about stuff, he issued her a challenge.

‘Dance a reel wi’ me, lassie,’ he pressed her. ‘Are ye afraid o’ my Scottish might?’

‘Ye doan’t freeghten me wi’ yer wee stuff,’ Maddison replied with an insolent coolness ere she stalked away.

‘Viva! MacTavish.’ I jumped in front of him, which made him start. I begged him to show me the drum beating for ‘Hot Stuff’, but he coloured and said I was too proper a young lassie to learn an army drinking-song, and besides, my papai would drumhead court-martial him in the garden if he did. This confused me, when the song rallied the British troops, did it not? ‘Advance, Grenadiers. And let fly your Hot Stuff!’

‘MacTavish, did you let fly hot stuff in the war?’

‘Na.’

‘Did your friends let fly hot stuff?’

‘Na, na. Blown to atoms, they were, by an exploding shell.’ MacTavish explained that drummer boys had to assist with carrying the wounded to the regimental surgeon and thus they were exposed to fire on the battlefield. And that is how his young friends had perished and never got a chance to become soldiers. He and his friends had gone to war for the glory of Britain and a’ that, but instead, he had buried what had remained of them. When he became old enough to serve as bât-man to an officer, they assigned him to the Colonel – the Colonel having been a lieutenant colonel at the time – and he has served the Colonel ever since.

I wrinkled my brow. ’Twas difficult for me to understand how one could lose friends in an instant from a shell. With an inward shrug, my thoughts soon returned to drumming and my wish to be the best drummer boy – nay, the best drummer girl. Now that I understood drum notes and their proportion to one another, and the rules relative to time, I practised the method of carrying the drum while marching a quick step behind ‘Drum-Major’ MacTavish as he strutted to and fro like a coxcomb, marking the beat with a cane that he held high in his right hand.

One Sunday, as MacTavish and I marched round the garden beating our drums, we nearly stumbled upon papai, who lay sprawled underneath his Scots pine, dreaming with his eyes half-closed.

‘MacTaveeshhh, pray lead me to…to…the front door. I do believe the house is backwards,’ papai rose to grip his man’s shoulder. ‘I wish to be at home now.’

‘Sir, ye’re at whome, just nae within.’

‘Confound your Scotticisms, MacTaveeshhh, I wish to be at home,’ demanded papai.

‘Sir, ye’re in Scarbro’ an’ at whome already.’

‘No-no-no…impudent scoundrel,’ papai wagged his finger at him. ‘I know a Scots pine when I see one. I dare say I am not within.’

‘Exackly, sir.’ MacTavish sighed as he removed his bres drume. ‘Aweel, aweel, did ye meet wi’ Mr O. P. Umm to-day?’

‘To be sure I did.’ Papai nodded slowly. ‘He is a great friend of mine.’

‘Ay, a raal jintilman that one,’ MacTavish drily said.

MacTavish led papai to the house, where I could hear papai bellow, ‘A-a-a-aggie, I’m with-i-i-in now.’

The next evening Father O came to see us, or rather, my papai, the two of them settled in papai’s study for a long while. I had never seen papai brought so low, and it frightened me. When I asked why papai seemed unhappy, mamãe turned grave as a judge, and she motioned for me to sit by her.

‘Human happiness is transient – it comes and it goes – and such is life,’ advised she.

This puzzled me. ‘Where does it go?’

Mamãe became wistful. ‘It goes inside your heart, where you keep it safe, and where you are reminded of it from time to time until you wish for it again.’

‘Do things remind you of Elias?’

‘Very much so,’ mamãe drew her arm round me. ‘My son died, but I have many a happy memory of him. After I had mourned him, I wished for happiness again when I met you and your papai.’

‘Will papai wish for happiness again?’

‘Oh, indeed,’ mamãe brightened. ‘We each of us must endure life’s changes with fortitude, faith and prayer. Your papai sometimes forgets this and loses his faith. He may be flawed, but he loves us with all his heart. So “let us God’s word obey, ‘love one another’, be happy whilst we may.”’

And that is what I did. I waited and loved, I waited and loved, until papai regained his health and happiness. It seemed as though an age had passed ere he could muster a smile or tease me again with a gooseberry kiss. It occurred to me that papai’s gloom was connected to that hateful man, Mr O. P. Umm. ‘Adeus! says I’, because I never wished Mr O. P. Umm to return to our Scarborough abode.

One morning, after breakfast, papai suggested that he and I go for an airing. While we strolled the sands of the serene North Bay, a bright white arc appeared on the horizon in the thinning fog bank.

‘Look, papai, it’s a Scar-bow. Viva! Scar-bow.’

Papai turned sentimental. ‘Perhaps it portends a new resolve for me.’

‘Will you be happy again?’ I wondered aloud.

‘O, filha da minha alma,’ he reassured me, the daughter of his soul. ‘Don’t you know – I recently discovered, whilst we sojourned in the old wood, that I have a half-brother and half-sister?’

My eyes became wide with wonder. ‘Hurrah! How lucky you found them.’

‘I guess I am rather lucky,’ mused he. ‘That’s why they call me Lucky Fitzer.’

‘Papai, I wish I had half of a brother.’ Methinks I had uttered something clever to make papai laugh for the first time in many weeks.

As we continued our stroll on the sandy strip, hand in hand, my attention became drawn to the waves nearby that rolled to and fro gracefully upon the shore in a rhythm of their own. Could I ever produce that soothing sound on my drum? Determined to find out, I gathered some twigs, imagining how much softer it would sound than a drum stick. I then recalled the adufe and the seeds that rattled between the two skins. With great care, I scooped up two handfuls of pebbles and crushed shells that papai stored in his pockets for me.

Once I had described to mamãe what was fixed in my mind, she sewed tiny pouches for the pebbles and shells, and she tied each pouch to a sturdy stick. She gathered the twigs I had brought her, tying them into two bundles shaped like whisks. ‘Let us surprise your papai on his birth-day next week,’ suggested mamãe. Together we practised in secret one of our favourite songs, my mamãe and I singing the beautiful melody while I worked out a unique drum beating using my different sticks.

The day of my papai’s birth-day having arrived, Father O toasted him at dinner, wishing him many happy returns of this day, and we feasted on dressed lobster and papai’s favourite apple charlotte. When we had done, mamãe beckoned everyone to the drawing room for a musical performance. She helped me with the strap of my drum, whereupon we began to sing ‘Tree on the Hill’, the pebbles and shells creating a pleasant sound on the skin of my drum and marking the rhythm in 4/4 time – p-rum p-tush p-rum p-tish, pa-da dum-dum ta-tishhh, pa-da dum-dum ta-tishhh.

On yonder hill there stands a tree;

Tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

For an interlude, I switched to the twig whisks, which mamãe had placed on a small table near me. I stroked the whisks in a crescendo roll, followed by a diminuendo roll, bringing to mind the advance and retreat of a zephyr that makes the needle-like leaves quiver on a Scots pine. Papai always said it is then that the wind can be heard. ‘Its susurration is ancient and divine and, for me, salubrious,’ he would explain. He called it his wind music, and he claimed that it inspired many a waking thought for him and that these waking thoughts blended into his dreams.

And on the branch there was a nest;

Nest on the branch, branch on the tree,

tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

Using the pebbles and shells this time for a second interlude, I conjured up the crackling of an egg shell as the baby bird secured his freedom and was born, marking his natal day.

And in the egg there was a bird;

Bird in the egg, egg in the nest,

nest on the branch, branch on the tree,

tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

I closed with a good roll using the twig whisks, evoking the sound of a sudden rush of windswept pine needles on the ground. Twwwoooooshhh. And then, slowly, I scratched the surface of the skin of the drum several times with the whisks – tsshk tsshk tsshk – to recall the scattering of a few errant pine needles. Our performance at an end, I removed my drum, and I curtseyed very prettily to my adoring audience of two. ‘Bravo!’ papai cheered me. He hoisted me up to kiss my cheek, and he teased me by tapping my nose with one of the twig whisks. With his shiny eyes and broad grin, he summoned up an earthly happiness, albeit a fleeting one, which did not signify; for, the eternal joy of music was now and for ever locked deep in his soul.