Older men and young women

Thursday, 11 March 2010

The regularly-scheduled meeting of our girls' social club convened in our basement, as the last few have done. We have been holding them-- believe it or not-- in the TV theatre room, because it works pretty well as a small auditorium. There are couches on the platform across the back to seat about seven girls (if they all truly like each other) and chairs and a couch in front to see five more. The club officers (that would be me, Jessy, Paulette and Rita) sit in chairs in front of the TV screen (which does NOT get turned on till the whole meeting's actual agenda gets accomplished, honest. And no, we don't use PowerPoint). The club numbers 14 now, plus Lisa when she thinks to wander in. No-one thinks she is a bother and she is rarely conspicuous-- unless someone grabs her to sit on a lap, as happened tonight.

We did not, however, quite get to finish the whole agenda because of someone else making an interruption. And though the interruption came from the far end of the house, it was more than anyone wanted to ignore for long.

Daddy has recently started jamming with a couple of guys from the neighbouring area, two brothers about his age who like a lot of the same '80s music. They set up the guitar amps and a PA system in the 'work room' that connects Mother's exercise room to the garages and meet there about once a week just to drink beer and run through their repertoire. They have no drummer and usually just use an electronic rhythm box, but often they are singing or telling jokes to each other through the PA and it's kind of hard to not hear them.

I really do not know why they did not observe the five or six extra cars in the front yard tonight. Maybe they did.

Anyway Lisa jumped off Sally's lap and went running in the moment she recognised one of Daddy's old songs, and, of course, being Lisa, she left the door open. Obviously she left the door to the exercise room open too, for next we were inundated with super-distortion guitar sounds and someone (one if his friends, not Daddy) wailing out lyrics. The girls all giggled, then one or two got up to look out the door, and by 8.30 the meeting was pretty much over. I got up, planted my hands on my hips, and stomped down through the house to scold you-know-who (I don't mean Lisa). I got down there and Daddy was just sitting down to the drums-- oh, right, now he has drums in there! --to play. The three men (and Lisa) all looked up and I stood my ground. I was still in the navy-blue tights and plaid club skirt and grey club sweatshirt and still with my hands on my hips. I must have looked like a very angry Sunday-school teacher.

'Oh, hello,' Daddy said, from behind the drums. Then-- drum crash, cymbals, cymbals, cymbals, cymbals....

'"Oh, hello"?' I said. 'Did you happen to know there's a meeting going on the other end of this house?'

The men laughed. Daddy looked a little sheepish. 'Oh, but I thought the doors were closed.'

Then I turned and scowled at Lisa. She immediately got a little red and scurried round behind the drums-- where, of course, Daddy put her on her lap. Before I could get out another word she was tapping cymbals.

Someone looked up and when I turned round there were five or six faces crowding in the door behind me. This was not a good omen.

And 'omen' is what I call it, for it did portend the next hour and a half, namely that first I, and then Jessy, and then a few other girls, all had to-- really were told to, but it amounts to the same thing-- sing along to whatever the men played. I personally sang lead on 'Favorite Waste of Time' and, ironically, 'Favorite Mistake'. Jessy sang with Daddy on 'Stop Dragging My Heart Around'. Lisa sang 'Stop In The Name of Love' (yes, she knows it-- we were all 'raised on the classics' as Daddy says. And she has the volume for it). Some other people sang some other songs. Mother came down with iced tea and, of course, little JJ, whose room is two storeys above the exercise room and so he couldn't get to sleep either. Mother would not be prevailed upon to sing-- not in front of Daddy's friends anyway. But when JJ had been taken back up stairs after falling asleep in the party room down the hall and Lisa was being tucked into bed, Mother descended to the big parlour and sat at the piano in the near-darkness. I heard her tender touch from the kitchen and for fear of disturbing her only lurked just the other side of the open doorway in the small parlour.

It was one of Daddy's songs (I shall not say which), the ballad he had given A Certain British Ingenue during his sojourn in London. It's Mother's half-sister's favourite work if his. But who knew Mother knew it so well?

I listened whilst she played it, with no hesitation or mistakes, and my eyes went wet. Only Daddy's footfalls as he came up to the kitchen, about to find her there himself, made me tiptoe out to the front hall and dash up stairs.

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