Chapter 11

    Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
   
     These were the words that came to Father Michael’s mind as he stepped out on his porch a few moments after Edna Havincourt had driven off. With so few altar cloths, considering that she lived only five blocks away, she would have done herself a favour to walk. But Catholics would be fond of their cars, like everyone else, and anytime Edna went from A to B it was usually behind the wheel. And the same for a lot of his flock. He himself had a vehicle, of course. The bishop would probably have been upset if he had not. But he used it as little as he could, and some half-wit of a parishioner would inevitably tell him he walked too much. Out of guilt, naturally, because they would not hear what Aristotle had said about walking for your health, and also because they assumed that the principal virtue of Saint Francis of Assisi was his kindness to animals.
  
      McKeon had thought quite a lot about becoming a Franciscan, actually, but finally settled for the ordinary priesthood. There had been something about how well Hlady succeeded in his independence that had made him confident he could do the same, and with the school and its grounds lying across the road in the brilliant sunshine he could honestly feel he had made the right choice in his particular way of fulfilling the words that had come to his mind. It might not have been easy to persuade an order to take on Blackfish Bay, but between his bolt of inspiration on that trip with his father to look at tow boats on the West Coast, and the response of the bishop of the Island, all had gone swimmingly. And so this part of the Lord’s Prayer came to him often as surveyed his accomplishment, or actually crossed the road and wandered through the halls of Saint Bridget’s, because a good Catholic school was a bit of the kingdom on earth. The celibacy of the nuns, the presence of complete doctrine, the relative innocence of the children conspired to create a spirit as consoling as it was purposeful. The concept of consolation was not theoretical: whenever the adults and the troubled marriages and the stupidity of the teenagers and the young adults got him down, a trip to the school almost never failed to cheer him up. In the school, there was hope, and hope was an infused virtue, always justified, in the mind of a sound Catholic priest, by the sensible certainties of the cleansing fires of purgatory.
   
     Did he hear music? It had not been in the air at his first moment of stepping off the stairs down from his porch, but as he crossed the road, the strains drifted through the warm air of the summer afternoon. Well, not exactly strains and not exactly drifting. No soft, slowly lilting, melancholy wafting here; thunderous would be a better word, enormously rhythmical, and all sorts of notes over the whole piano, or at least an awfully big part of it.
    
     That would be none of the sisters, and must be Paul again. He had been scheduled for a meeting with Sister Principal about this time, had he not? But what was he up to now? McKeon’s feet twitched and he remembered that his mother had been pretty good at step dancing, nor had he been incapable of a jitterbug or two himself when so inspired. Was that the sound that had so captivated Deirdre and Maggie, and cost Iris two of her best students?
   
     Then, as quickly as the cascade had started up, it dropped away, and as McKeon climbed the stairs to the school door he heard a much humbler form of assault on the keys, singly detailed, slow, painstaking, as in a lesson, and this procedure continued as he walked down the hallway to the grade eight classroom. There was talking too, regularly interspersed with bursts of laughter, and he recognized the voices of Sister Teresa and Paul.

    In all his years of taking any notice whatsoever of a piano, especially at lesson time, McKeon had always thought of the instrument as, well, naked, unless it had a book or sheet of music notes standing on the ledge above the keys. Thus, when he entered the room, he was mildly stunned to see that whatever Paul was demonstrating to his principal he was demonstrating without a text. The book ledge was bare, and Paul and Sister were looking simply at her hands and the keys. And not precisely her hands in toto, but either or both of her middle fingers.

    Both student and teacher looked up to see him and were about to stop but the priest shook his head and held up his hands in protest. “Don’t get up and don’t stop. That’s an interesting sound, even though it’s pedagogically profoundly basic. I want to see if I can figure out what you’re doing.”
Now by this time, because in her student days Teresa Orlando had, as docilely as such a labour could allow, plodded through what passes for scales in most jurisdictions, Paul had moved his introductory exercise to the key of G, with its one sharp and its geography a fifth from C, thus to challenge Sister’s quick grasp of initial key and all its totally white key simplicity. Her theory on the placement of the half tones was also solid, and the transition had come quite smoothly, although Paul’s simple four harmony notes, in the left hand, definitely took some getting used to. But he had been comfortingly patient, and talked a great deal of supportive history of his grandfather’s discoveries and any other subject in any way related, so she had been able to take all the time she needed to get the numbers right, especially as she had only to think about one finger, so sensibly placed by nature in the centre of each hand. He did not seem to mind a bit that she regularly faltered.

    “You’re serious?” Paul asked of the pastor.

    “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be? Sooner or later some well-meaning member of the parish – or even of the wider community – will come up to me and ask me why I let you steal Deirdre and Maggie away from Iris. And speaking of Iris, Sister, if she’s still upset by Sunday would you go the extra mile and fill in?”

    Now the student principal stopped playing. Both she and Paul looked at McKeon with the horror of self-rebuke. “Oh, Father! I’m so sorry! Here I’ve been thinking only of myself! We never thought of your anxieties. You mustn’t have heard the outcome. Iris is utterly reconciled. First of all she realized that she had heard Paul’s mother and her choir when she was in Vancouver once for Midnight Mass, so she came over Sadie’s to meet him and brought Ian with her in the hopes of a guitar lesson. Which he got. They both went off as happy as can be.” Sister grinned knowingly. “And if I understand Iris McCallum she’s already practicing the hymns for Sunday. She wants to get it right the first time she hears Paul sing. To make me feel a little less guilty for not telling you I want to say that when your phone rang I assumed it was Sadie to let you know the good news, and then when you said it was long distance and you had better take it I just naturally carried on in my assumption that she would call you.”
“She was probably trying to call while I was on the phone.” He turned to Paul. “The caller was one Salamon Hlady, professor of ascetical and mystical theology in my seminary. A most interesting man, with quite the history, not only of his very unusual conversion – he was raised a Jew, and a wealthy one at that – but also including an encounter with your grand- parents. I didn’t recall that part of him until after he called, nor did I think to tell him you were with us now.” He turned to Sister. “He had wretchedly disturbing news that I could not avoid responsibility for trying to do something about, and it upset me so much that my immediate memory was at a total loss. Oh, he’s fine himself. It’s someone we both know that is the problem. Someone who wants to become a priest and shouldn’t, at least in his present frame of mind. It’s very disturbing, to say the least, and perhaps the most alarming part is that the Vatican’s attitude is not part of the solution. But you’re both doing music, and that’s a cheerful subject. So on with it, please, and get me out of my funk. ‘I will solve my problem with the harp.’ So harp away. Comfort me with intervals.”

    “Ah,” said Paul. “We have an observer who knows some of the language. That is exactly what we were doing, constructing meaningful intervals. Sister Teresa, are you ready?”

    “Wouldn’t it be better if you showed him? You surely must understand it all much better than I do at this point.”

    “My demonstrating would ensure my reputation as a theorist, perhaps even a performer, but by no means as a teacher. A teacher is known by his students. Once more into the breach now, although with full leisure so as to give his about-to-be-boggled mind a chance to catch on. And please keep in mind that if you fail he might fire me. Or you might fire me.”
Priest and nun simultaneously broke into laughter, and the pastor spoke for both of them. “After all I’ve been through to protect your reputation, and it sounds like Sister has had to do it as well, I bloody well don’t think so!”

    Sister Teresa tapped out the scale from middle C upward, singing the numbers lightly as she went. When she got to the top of the octave she came back down in the same way. She used only the middle finger of her right hand.

    “That would be the C scale,” McKeon said. “C major. I’m no Bing Crosby, but I know a little about these matters. We had a piano at our house, and of course the seminary. But you sang the scale in numbers. Why not the letters, or the solfa?”

    Sister looked at Paul, still trying to be deferential.

    “No, no. I’m testing your powers of retention,” Paul said. “Or my powers for making things clear the first time. Nicely sung, by the way, Sister, so now for nicely explained.”

    “There are no musical dynamics whatsoever in the letter names for the notes, and only dynamics for a singer in the solfa.” She grinned at Paul. “That’s pretty much a quote. Did I get it right?”

    “Head of the class,” Paul said. “Mind you, it’s a small one.”

    “It may have just doubled,” McKeon said. “Sister, would you repeat what you just said?”

    “Gladly. That way I’ll grow in my understanding. I mean my trying to understand why I was not taught this way as a child myself. The numbers, I mean. It makes such perfect sense, doesn’t it? What child knows his alphabet before his numbers? And wait till you see what happens when you add the left hand.”

    “But that was the other shock. You’re as alarming to the piano teacher’s cottage as Jesus was to the Sanhedrin. You didn’t use your whole hand. You only used one finger. The middle one, I think. Whatever happened to five-finger exercises?”

    “They were temporarily exiled,” Paul said, “to be brought back when there is a real and intelligible use for them. And an intelligent teacher to provide the guidance.”
McKeon nodded. “That makes sense, doesn’t it, if you keep in mind the simplicity of a child? That’s how infants learn, one thing at a time, over and over until it’s boring and then they go on to two things, and so forth and so on. And they love to count. It gives them a sense of order. All right, Sister, give me the left hand. Well, left digit, I suppose it is.”

    Teresa Orlando placed her left middle finger on the D, the seventh below the middle C, and played it and then in turn each of the three notes above, slowly and repetitively, again singing out the numbers, this time a mere four of them: two, three, four, five. Then back down again.

    “Nice alto,” said Paul.

    “Do that again,” said McKeon. “Please.”

    Sister obliged. The pastor counted the notes with her. “I think you’re telling me,” he said to Paul, “that those four notes are all you really need for harmony? We had a fellow at the Sem who plunked chords on a ukulele and sang all the classics from the Roaring Twenties. He couldn’t play melody to save his life, but he sang well enough so nobody cared. I think he actually knew a few more chords than four, but not many.”

    “That sounds like Nick Taylor before my brother Jacob got to him. And your conclusion is bang on, more or less. Ukulele chords in the hands of the incompletely schooled tend to lack the minors intervals or chords in the appropriate places. I could have taught Sister one, four, and five in the bass, but that would have left us with exclusively major moods. Not quite Mozart, which even the littlest pianists are given from the beginning, if they are in the right hands. Ignore the one for now, insert two and three, and all sounds as complete and classical as it should. The astute foursome must be augmented eventually, but for now they should preoccupy the beginner for quite a while. Also, they are snug up against each other, which is also easier on a beginner, not staggered all over the keyboard. Well, all over the octave.”

    “But you haven’t lined your little foursome up with the right-hand eight.”

    “That we can do. Sister?”

    “No,” said Sister Teresa, every inch the principal. “Not at all. My poor brain has had enough for one lesson. And I’ve known our pastor longer than you have. He’ll have too many questions. You’ll have to be the one who shows him.” She got off the piano bench. “I think I can see that Paul is right to use the numbers the way he does, but it’s too new for me to try to pretend I can put them to work as easily. Especially with both of you looming over me. I need to be able to practice on my own, as long as Paul is within earshot for when I get mixed up. But it is a lovely sound. What I really would like to do is give up my job and go away somewhere there’s a piano and put every song I know into nice, simple, arrangements based on this pattern. I could sing as I arranged, first the words, then the numbers, and then the words again. It’s all very formal, very scholastic, without a text or even a piece of paper in sight. It reminds me of phys ed class, which for me was always a lot of fun.”

    “It’s really that good a system?” McKeon looked askance, although Paul wasn’t sure whether he was actually frightened by the thought of Sister taking her leave or still in doubt of the actual musicality of the method.

    Paul took over the controls. “If you have ears to hear with, it’s infallible.”

    Up to this point, McKeon had not actually heard Paul sing in any manner that could be a sustained piece of music, discernable as a fully articulated and resonant passage of at least a couple of bars. In earlier conversations, as can happen with a musician, Paul had inflicted some musical examples in some of the things he had said, and the pastor had picked up from these small excursions the sense that Paul was so secure in his understanding of true vocal ability that he had no interest in trying to prove himself before it was either necessary or useful, especially as music or singing were far from being the only skills that interested him. Thus, like most people, the pastor was not a little astounded at what emerged as the foundation for the numerical system of notation that Paul set out to teach them. Well, teach in McKeon’s case, re-teach in Sister’s.

    “One.” But actually, “WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNN,”as a full throated roar that had to be heard in the school yard. At the same time he thumped his middle finger on the middle C.

    “My God!” said McKeon when he was done. “The parish will never be the same again!”

    “Grandpere Philippe, as much as he appreciated French culture, was no silly nationalist. He always said that as far as the beginning of the scale was concerned, English had all the advantages. It had to be a direct descendent from Sanskrit in this regard, because if you sang the ‘one’ correctly, it came very close to the AUM of the Asian chant system, which is supposed to be the sound of the universe.” Paul winked at them both, at Sister from his left eye, at Father McKeon with his right. “The ‘uh’ as in ‘cup’ is a very basic vowel, like the ‘u’ in should. Linguists argue over which one came first in the vocabulary of our missing link ancestors, but good dog trainers can tell you that dogs have a variety of very simple vowels when they growl, including the ‘i’ as in ‘fish’, so I suspect that all the basic sounds, to the Germans known very intelligently as ‘lax’ vowels, more or less came at once. And believe, no singer really knows what he’s doing until he understands the virtues of the lax vowels concept. In fact, Philippe has always insisted that the long, or pure, or tense, or perfect vowels all have a lax vowel at the core. Thus, when I sing the ‘two’, later on, I’ll do it in such a way as to show the ‘u’ as in ‘should’ which should rest at the centre of its otherwise pure vowel category.”

    “Why can’t you do it now?” McKeon asked.

    “Because for now we are concentrating on arithmetic rather than oratorio technique. Thusly.” Paul thumped on the E below middle C, and sang out another magnificent bit of resonance with the numeral “THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” and now the great bone-rattling qualities of the real bass were anything but indistinct.

    “Magnificent!” said Sister Teresa.

    “Not really,” Paul said, laughing. “I’m actually playing the coward. The ‘oo’ in two is one of my weak points, so I’m putting it off until I’m truly warmed up. Then four and five are dipthongs, which are entirely another story. A lot of patience and discipline required there, I can tell you. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the kids to have it under their belt. Fortunately I have those two keeners Deirdre and Maggie already signed up to be guinea pigs, so I should be pretty well informed on the schedule when we take it up in the classroom. And I’ll also be able to practice my tricks on them, see how well they do, make modifications as required. By the way, you two are outstandingly keen yourselves, in a way. Awfully docile to the punk who just blew into Blackfish Bay and interrupted your busy afternoons. For the majority of professional religious that I know, I don’t think I could say the same.”

    McKeon admitted the point, but all the same felt entitled to keep to a level playing field. “What about professional musicians?”

    “Fair enough. Probably about the same proportions. Although I’ve acquired real hope for Mrs. McCallum. Probably only possible because of my mother. And Ian. I’m quite certain though, that if you were to ask Lerner and Loewe to rewrite “Do a Deer” you wouldn’t get a very friendly answer.”

    “But ‘My Fair Lady’ is such a wonderful musical!” Sister quite exploded with incredulity. “It was perfect! And I’m enough of a music lover to know that you can’t say that about every musical. Why would you want to change anything? You’re joking.”

    “Of course. Also, I’m aware that it was the first musical Nick Taylor could take seriously. He loved it. They had it in a frat house where he stayed the summer he was a reporter for the Star. But that was the year before he met my brother. One of these days he’ll write his own ‘Do A Deer’ or a tribute thereof, but with the numbers. Knowing him, it could go on for days, being a song and a music theory lecture wrapped up in one. You think Bob Dylan can write long songs! This would be a verbal explanation of the Two Part Inventions and the Moonlight Sonata all in one whack.”

    “That would go on for days,” McKeon said.

    “Do you think he might write just a small part for the school?” Sister asked.

    “If you tried knocking, you might get an open door,” Paul said. “You can always ask him.”