Dead Men's s Boots

‘Well, it’s like the drummer was scoring for different players – at least two, maybe three – but he wanted to plan it all out on the one sheet because that’s how he was seeing it in his head. As one massively complicated rhythm made out of all these separate bits and pieces.’

I stared at the sheet, trying to translate the dense scribbled marks into sounds inside my mind. They still defeated me.

‘Show me,’ I said.

Pomfret sucked his teeth. ‘Easy to say. I need something to be the drums.’ He looked around the table.

He took his coffee cup and turned it upside down in its saucer. ‘High hat,’ he said. Then he did the same with mine. ‘Snare.’ The sugar basin was a steel cylinder full of sealed packets, which he just dumped out onto the table. The basin itself, upturned, was placed next to the coffee cups. ‘Bass.’ That left two spoons, which he put one inside the other, bowl end towards him. ‘Cymbals.’

He demonstrated each item. Flicking the saucers made the coffee cups rattle briefly and hollowly.

‘This is how it starts,’ Pomfret muttered. Rattle rattle thump rattle rattle ring thump ring. ‘Then you get a back-beat coming in here like this – just the bass.’ Thump rest thump thump rest thump rest thump thump rest. ‘Okay, and now this. The hand drums. Beat then break. Beat, then two breaks. You do that – on the edge of the table.

I gave it my best shot, unwillingly at first and feeling like an idiot. The waitress at the counter was looking over at us with something that was either concern or annoyance or maybe a mixture of both. But Pomfret didn’t care: he was listening to some inner voice now, head tilted at a slight angle, gaze flicking from the sheet to empty space and then back again. The beat seemed to be accelerating – or at least Pomfret was playing it faster, his fingers flicking across the table so fast they almost became invisible.

And, amazingly, something was starting to show through: as I whacked the table in crude synchrony with his skein of rattling, clanking sounds, there was a dim sense in my mind of random and disconnected things coming tight, coming together, and making meaning as they came – like the loose strings of a cat’s cradle drawn taut between some child’s fingers: noise into signal.

Pomfret seemed less impressed.