The Twelve Days of Christmas: 12

On the twelfth day of Christ­mas, my true love gave to me: twelve drum­mers drumming.

Com­pletely out of the blue, my true love announced, “I’ve been hav­ing an affair.”

“With whom?”

“He’s the drum­mer in a rock group. You won’t have heard of him.”

“But maybe I’ve heard of the band,” I said, although I couldn’t help think­ing to myself that the group’s chosen name pos­sibly wasn’t the most import­ant item of inform­a­tion I needed to know at that pre­cise moment.

“No, they’re — they’re not very fam­ous,” my true love replied, nervously.

“Are you sure? I mean, I know I’m a bit out of touch with music, but I might have heard them play­ing on one of those late night radio shows that -”

“Look, will you just shut up about the band, for pity’s sake? Here I am, try­ing to gently break it to you that I’ve been hav­ing an affair …”

“With a rock drum­mer. Yes, you said.”

“… and you’re really not mak­ing it any easier.”

“Sorry. I was just hop­ing that he might be fam­ous so I could sell my story to the papers.”

It was a cheap shot on my part, and my true love wisely decided to con­tinue the con­fes­sion and ignore it.

“But it’s over now. That’s what I wanted to tell you. In fact, they’re all over.”

Those last three words hung in the air for a moment, while we both real­ised their sig­ni­fic­ance. I took hold of my com­pos­ure by the scruff of its neck before speaking.

“Did you say ‘all’?”

“Er, yes. That’s the other thing that I’ve been mean­ing to tell you.”

I didn’t reply this time, because curi­os­ity had taken over. I was genu­inely fas­cin­ated to hear what the explan­a­tion was going to be.

“You see,” my true love con­tin­ued, “I’ve got this obses­sion with drum­mers. Rock drum­mers. Leather-clad, hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, filthy-mouthed rock drum­mers. And over the past few years, I’ve had flings with a few …”

My true love pro­duced an old shoe-box and handed it to me. Open­ing it, I gazed upon a set of small clock­work toy sol­diers, each with a tiny drum and even tinier drum­sticks. Speak­ing out loud, I slowly and delib­er­ately coun­ted how many sol­diers were con­tained in the box, wind­ing up the key in the back of each one as I did so. When I had fin­ished, the room was filled with the clat­ter­ing of toy drums.

“Twelve?” I gasped. “Really?”

My true love nod­ded, and then passed me a hammer.

“But I prom­ise, I abso­lutely prom­ise you, that I’m not inter­ested in rock drum­mers any­more. I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you can find it in your heart to for­give me, I want you — I need you — to line up all the drum­mers in a row and smash them into hun­dreds of small pieces. That will put an end to it, forever.”

I turned each of the toy sol­diers over in my hands, examin­ing them care­fully. They were excep­tion­ally detailed, and while I could under­stand my true love’s reas­on­ing, it seemed a shame to com­pletely des­troy such beau­ti­fully craf­ted items. No, I had a bet­ter idea.

A few hours later, I called my true love back into the room to watch the toy sol­diers on parade. How­ever, instead of the clat­ter­ing heard before, this pro­ces­sion was almost silent save for the del­ic­ate whirr­ing of the clock­work machinery. With the utmost pre­ci­sion, I had cut away the twelve pairs of drum­sticks clutched tightly in the drum­mers’ hands. They were now all action, but no noise. Com­pletely use­less, in fact. I couldn’t help but smile at a job well done.

Emas­cu­lated — that’s the word I was look­ing for. Yes, emasculated.

Every few days, I feel that it’s my duty to stage a cere­mo­nial march-past by our legion of toy sol­diers. It’s just a little reminder. Twelve drum­mers not drum­ming. My true love understands.