Written by Chris Cottom
Peter and I parade our scarlet guardsmen on the parquet floor of our playroom: drummers and
tuba players, saxophonists and trumpeters. Mum gets them from the grocer in boxes of Rice
Krispies, painting a slash of silver on the underside of mine, gold on Peter’s. Today it’s my
turn and I hope for a drum major, strutting and stern. Instead, it’s another trombone player.
When, next time, Peter gets the major, he hands him to me, fetches the tiddly pot of silver.
When Peter’s girlfriend, Susan, wanders into my room, mini-skirted and shoeless, it’s
obvious they’ve been snogging. She runs her finger along my shelf of Ladybird Books,
from Making a Transistor Radio to The Story of Cricket. She giggles and seizes a dusty
Action Man, his fatigues faded and left boot missing, along with his foot.
“Aww, you still play with these, kiddo?”
“Um…” I mumble, my cheeks burning.
Peter’s watching from the doorway. He strides into the room, hand outstretched.
“Hey, that’s mine,” he lies.
Fifty-five years later, watching the Queen’s funeral, I’ll swallow hard as each regimental
band marches up The Mall, a dozen soldiers wide, bagpipes howling. I’ll remember another
funeral, with only scraps of a body, a rookie squaddie, blown to bits by a Bogside bomb. I’ll
mute the telly to say a prayer for Peter, by far the better brother, never less than gold.
.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work’s appeared in 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Flash Frontier, NFFD NZ, NFFD UK, Oyster River Pages, The Lascaux Review, and other fine places. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien. @chriscottom.bsky.social chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom.