The Drummer-Girl

by Louisa Adjoa Parker (Weymouth)

It’s Saturday lunchtime and again the girl is there, across the road from Caffe Nero. She bangs a tiny drum for money. She is thin, wears an Animal hoodie, jeans, a blue scarf tied around her neck, her hair scraped off her face in ponytails.

Suddenly it begins to hail. She runs into the café along with others trying to escape the falling pellets of ice. Her disappointment with what life has given her is etched into her face, the corners of her mouth turned down in a permanent sneer.

Her face looks young until you see it close up. She doesn’t buy a drink but stands next to the door, waits for the hail to slow (not to stop –what is a little hail, to her?), then runs back out into the street, carrying her drum.

The girl takes her place on the pavement, kneeling in the wet. The hail is falling on her but more gently now. She begins to bang her drum again, with a piccolo and a blue paper coffee cup, half-full of people’s unwanted change, sitting at her feet.

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What Louisa Adjoa Parker says about The Drummer-Girl:

This was inspired by observing a young woman on consecutive Saturdays, in the same spot outside a local café. I wondered what her life had been like.