Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Chapter 14



    When Deirdre awoke the next morning, it was indeed to a completely wonderful world. The sun was still shining - her bedroom was on the eastern side of the house - and the entire prospect of the school year, she was well aware, had completely changed. If her last year had been plagued with a constant, smoldering, resentment of the piano, for reasons all the more disturbing because she could never quite put her finger on them, now the months ahead shone like a clear, starry night. After all, she had quite loved piano lessons at first, and she certainly loved music itself - and always would, she had determined in her worst moments - but now she had a teacher whom she knew she could have complete faith in not to threaten that affection through some tiresome, tedious, attitude toward the study of music itself. How had it happened? Where had he come from?

    Well, he came from Vancouver, of course. But all sorts of people came from Vancouver, or back from Vancouver, as in the case of her older siblings, and none of them had ever exhibited Paul's incredible attitudes toward music. And not just for instruments like the piano and the guitar, but oh, how he sang! And he had shown no interest whatsoever in being anxious to entertain: he merely brought out a ringing line or two for the sake of what he was teaching. He reminded her of someone, didn't he? But who?

    Ah. Mary Poppins, of course. Except Mary Poppins was only a book, only a story, and she was old enough to know that so often real people failed to be like people in books. Unless they were saints, of course. Good heavens! Was he a saint?

    Probably not. He laughed too much. But he was very lively, and obviously very good. Her mother had not thought twice about inviting him to live with them. It seemed like a very natural thing to do, only Deirdre had not gone to Catholic school and Church all her life in order to understand that when things worked out well, and especially exceptionally well, only nature was involved. She looked up at the crucifix on her wall, and said out loud, "Ah. This was your doing, wasn't it? You knew it was going to happen all along, and just let me be miserable about those scales because you could do something about it."

    Sister Barbara had told them that if you could talk out loud to God in a church full of people, or in a classroom, saying the Our Father, it made no sense not to speak to him in your own room when you felt it would help. "But don't be anxious to hear him talk back to you," she had also said. "People who have that happen to them often have a hard time explaining themselves to others. Just think of Joan of Arc. He has never spoken out loud to me, not even when I knew he was telling me I should become a nun. But that doesn't mean he wasn't listening to me. And he'll listen to you. With a perfect ear. And anyway, what could he say that isn't already in the Bible and the Church?"

    And, true to Sister Barbara's words, the figure on the crucifix did not speak, but as Deirdre stared at it, she got the feeling that the Lord had noticed and approved of her understanding that he was part of getting Paul to their part of the world. But then she had a very brand new and startling idea, and instantly wondered if the crucifix had put it into her head. She did not hear a thing, she was certain, but she thought . . . guitar.

    With that, she bounced out of bed, washed her face in the upstairs bathroom, jumped into her jeans and blouse and headed downstairs to the dining room. She could hear voices there, and one of them was her father's. He had not yet left for the mill, but was the voice speaking for the moment and he sounded so authoritative that she immediately had second thoughts about the guitar. It would not be the expense Adam Blakeley would frown at, should Paul decide to charge her parents, but the fear that she might be getting spoiled, might be getting too much attention. Was not piano enough, especially when it felt like Paul's method just might put her -  and Maggie - in a league all by themselves?

    As she entered the dining room, her father was still talking authoritatively, and still looking like the mill manager giving orders concerned with twenty sections of logs, so she tried to forget about guitar studies, but as soon as he saw her his face changed, so did his voice, and he said, "Oh, good! There's something to change all this shop talk and economics." So she knew it would be all right to bring up the subject. "Did you know that Paul used to work on the tugs when he was a student. He even hauled logs for us. What do you think of that? What a small world. Sleep well?"

    Sadie poured her a cup of coffee and went to the kitchen to make her some toast.

    "Very well. And I woke up to a really neat idea, so long as nobody thinks I'm greedy. Mr. Cameron, will you teach me the guitar as well as the piano?"

    "Sure. So long as you only call me Mr. Cameron in the classroom. When I'm sitting at your parent's breakfast table hearing my surname makes me think you've just dropped in to sell me an insurance policy. Or an encyclopedia. Ask me again, so we can create the right mood for such an important question."

    "Paul, will you also teach me the guitar as well as the piano?" She drawled out his name, conscious that she would have to keep her wits about her in the alternate situations. "I'll have to practice knowing whether I'm at home or in the classroom."

    "I certainly will. Then we'll have a real conservatory, because conservatories prefer, even insist in some cases, that the students study a second instrument, an addition to their first choice. It helps to make the theory stick, for one thing. Especially if you work with numbers. And in Grandpere's school the guitar makes the modes totally intelligible as well as terribly exciting. You must have overheard me thinking in the night, because I was actually wondering if I could talk you into it. And the inseparable Margaret Schlegel if she wishes. But of course I had to wonder if I were being an ambitious tyrant. You know what Beethoven said about the guitar? That it was an orchestra unto itself? But he must have heard it played by someone who knew the modes and could tune the bass strings accordingly. Otherwise, it only has that sonority in E, in the Mozarabic mode. The Western music, as far as the guitar is concerned, has been a victim of Spain, where the people's music is flamenco."

    Sadie was back in the dining room. "What did you say, Paul?"

    "I said your lovely daughter might just be God's answer, as a female, to all those wretched women, supported either by Anglican or Catholic bishops who have committed intellectual mayhem and all sorts of iniquities by having irresponsible brainwaves which banished numbers from their proper role in music studies."

    Adam roared with laughter, not for the first time at breakfast, as he and Paul had been well into anecdotes about tow boats and their customers before the tone became serious just before Deirdre descended the stairs. "The next time we have an international conference on lumber tariffs I'm taking you with me. Your way of jumping around from one expert position to yet another will completely destroy the usual line we get from the Americans. I'm starting to feel sorry for them already. Just look at Sadie. You've absolutely dumbfounded her."

    "No, no. I'm the dumbfounded one. Deirdre overheard me thinking. Now she's an intelligent girl, right? An intelligent person always needs to take as broad and deep a look as possible at any subject they're studying because it's an art or science close to their heart. They are made wiser in their first choice because they find patterns that are similar in their second, or third, and so on. And particularly on the keyboard, because everything is laid out so obviously in terms of the geography, and also because you cannot change the tuning - unless you're Ira Gershwin and have a lot of money - it's perhaps not as easy to see the fundamental necessity of the math as it is with the guitar. You can get the ultimate out of a piano without changing the tuning, but you cannot with the guitar. With the guitar you have to be able to put all three bass strings into their best foot forward according to the modes and scales. So their tuning shifts wonderfully. And I don't mean just for things like slide guitar, or bottleneck as some call it, but classical as well. You wait until you hear F tuning, for example, which so many would-be guitarists know nothing about, even though F major is the leading choice for hymn tunes."

    "Are you planning to play hymns on the guitar?" Adam asked.

    "Heavens, no. Well, not at Mass. But they sometimes turn up in informal gatherings, especially at beach parties. My brother is downright wicked at sneaking them in when the mood hits. It drives the devil crazy. And of course hymns are a first choice for instruction because any student who goes to church has already heard them. So right way they know a tune they can learn by ear and put the numbers and solfa to. Do you have a guitar in the house?"

    "I'm not dumbfounded," Sadie said, "My head is perfectly clear. But I am amazed, primarily because I can't remember a summer in which Deirdre put in so much time muttering about going back to school. That seems to have stopped. Oh, there's the toaster. Back to the kitchen. I'll let Deirdre stay at the table in case she's dumbfounded by all that about the key of F and what you can do with a guitar that you can't do with a piano. Yes there are guitars - plural - in the house, or have you forgotten that you live here now? Our oldest boy - Reg - he took lessons for a while, and used to play a bit. But it didn't seem to stick with him, so he never took it with him when he moved out."

    Paul grinned. "I never forget mine. And Deirdre could certainly borrow it. But that would mean trucking it back and forth between her room and mine. It's different when you have your own instrument in your own room and can try things anytime you feel like it. Studying an instrument is like putting a watch together. There are an awful lot of little things you need to deal with, slowly, one at a time. But unlike a watch, over and over again. You need privacy for that, because it's very difficult to feel that you're not annoying everyone else around, at least some of the time, especially when you're not getting it right."

    Adam looked at his watch. "You know, I'd really like to stay and hear more of this conversation, Paul. I don't think I've heard anyone talk about music before as if he were discussing an engineering problem. You put a whole new spin on the subject. But we're loading a small, local, freighter at ten, and I'd better show up for the event. See you at supper. Don't let our youngest cram her head too full. I can see she's keen."

    "Bye, Dad." Deirdre was chomping on her toast. "Yes, she is keen. How things can change in a few days. Paul, are we going to start right this morning?"

    "Yes, but with piano, so you can see how the theory is laid out so neatly. Guitar is not so obvious, and because we'll be making you an expert in the modes, you'll be re-tuning even more than a bottlenecker."

    "You weren't laying out theory yesterday?"

    "Oh, yes, but not in four-part harmony. Only two-part."

    Deirdre put down her toast in shock. "FOUR-part! Right away?"

    "Why not? You must be playing stuff with four voices by now."

     "Of course. But I memorize those pieces. I can't imagine learning the theory for them. All those stupid letters, note after note. What a nightmare! It would be like being attacked by a huge flock of crows! Or worse. A huge flock or ravens. You can't be serious. You're joking."

    "I'm not joking. I'm dead serious. And what's more, we'll be starting in A major." He winked at Sadie, who he could see was starting to follow her daughter's sudden anxiety. Sadie was only partially reassured.

    "A major!" Deirdre exclaimed. "My God, Mr. Cameron - Paul - that's THREE SHARPS! That's even more crows! That's all the crows on Vancouver Island!"

     Paul waved both hands, like a traffic cop slowing down a speeding car. "Hold on. You don't see what I mean. Yet. Crows for Iris McCallum, when she was your age, yes. But not for you. For you, in the hands of the maestro, only one letter, which after you find it immediately becomes the number One, and the sharps for now are irrelevant. If you know how the major scale goes together the identity of the right black keys is automatic."

     "But what will you use for a book?" Sadie asked. And why A major? I started in C, and thought everyone did."

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