Chapter 20

    Dutiful and docile child that she basically was, one of Maggie's biggest personal problems of the current schedule was the how to address the young man that had so recently arrived in Blackfish Bay, not only to be her classroom teacher, but also, it had surprisingly turned out, her personal music mentor. She no doubts that the sudden relationship would continue, in spite of the profoundly disturbing telephone call she had come to report. Mr. Cameron carried such an air of determination within himself that it seemed nothing could stop him from doing what he had said he would do, not Mrs. Grayson, formidable as she was, nor indeed all the music teachers in Blackfish Bay, or even up and down the entire east coast of the Island! Besides, the little secrets of the keyboard had worked so well when she was by herself back at home that she could think of no alternative but to continue on to learn more of them. And her Mom had been curious as well!
   
    That she would call him "Mr. Cameron" in the classroom was a foregone conclusion, of course. but not such a simple affair after all because in all her school years previous since she had arrived at Saint Bridget's she had called her teacher "Sister". She would probably do so again, in the heat of the moment, and everyone in the class would laugh. But of course each of them would probably make the same mistake, for the first weeks, and then it would be her turn to laugh.
   
    But he plainly did not want to be called by his surname in an informal situation, especially in Deirdre's house, and even more especially by the piano bench. Yet his wishes had not necessarily made her compliance easy. For one thing, she knew of a family where the children called their parents by their first names and she didn't like it one bit. The thought of calling her father "Horst" did not sit comfortably at all. It made her feel like a stranger, and utterly bereft of the warmth that came into her heart when she thought of him as "Dad". But would calling Mr. Cameron "Paul" offer a little too much warmth? Thus she had mused, until the telephone call and its aftermath.
  
     Mrs Grayson's attack had made up her mind for her. It had not only been quite nasty in itself, and she suspected was totally undeserved, but it had reminded her that anyone could be vulnerable to gossip or negativity, and that made her feel protective. It is difficult to feel too formal around someone for whom you feel protective.
   
    So when she burst into the room she simply, and loudly, burst out with "Paul! Oh good!. You're here! I was afraid you might have gone to the school. My Mom just had a dreadful phone call from one of the other piano teachers. Mrs. Grayson. She's heard something about your teaching, I guess, and called up to try to convince my Mom that it's just one of those methods that music publishers come up with every once in a while. I think she called them chord books, or something like that." She spoke as she walked into the room, but with her message delivered and her mind thus unburdened, she came to a full stop, awaiting the reaction to her news.
    
    Paul sat back in his chair, stared first at the messenger, then at the ceiling, and stroked his chin, vigorously massaging the tip of his jaw between left thumb and forefinger. He also looked at Sadie, who, he assumed would know Mrs. Grayson. In fact, he thought to himself, Sadie did look somewhat concerned. So he grinned, and chuckled from the lowest possible point in his diaphragm.
   
     "And what did your Mom say?"
   
     "She didn't say much, actually. Mrs Grayson seemed to be doing most of the talking."
    
    "How well does your Mom know Mrs. Grayson? I mean, are they friends like Sadie and Iris McCallum?"
   
     "Oh, no. Not at all. Mrs. Grayson is way older than my Mom, and she always seems to think she can tell my Mom what to do. They both come from Brandon originally, you see, and Mrs. Grayson knew my Mom when she was little. Mom told me - not today, but earlier - that Mrs. Grayson didn't like it when my Mom became a Catholic. She said she did it just so she could marry my Dad, and that she'd regret it. I think Mrs. Grayson thinks that being a Catholic is the worse thing that can happen to you. But my Dad thinks that's pretty funny because she's always playing Schubert's Ave Maria at weddings. She'll even sing it if there's no soloist. That's when my Dad calls her Madame Tremolo."
  
     "Oh, Maggie," Paul said. "You must become a novelist when you grow up! You've just rendered us one of the most delightful little character sketches I've ever read, so to speak! I shall have to meet the famous Mrs. Grayson. And no doubt I will, and, having in mind what she said about the perils of belonging to the Scarlet Woman, I shall have to put on my best Sherlock Holmes hat and discover just how much she knows about the beginnings of the Anabaptists, which is the heresy that Mennonites descend from, much improved over their beginnings, thanks to the labours of Menno Simons." He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Sadie relaxed.
  
     "Henri Daniel-Rops," he said to her. "Jacob reads him in the original French. My Dad picked up on him when his history of the Church was first coming out not long after the War. The Anabaptist bit is from a more recent work in the series, if anyone wants to research for the purpose of taking on the learned Mrs. Grayson. My Grandpere knows all this stuff from his own earlier studies, of course, but even he says nobody lays it all down better than Daniel-Rops. He sent Jacob the first volume for his high school graduation present."
  
     "Your brother can read French?" Maggie said.
  
     "He loves languages," Paul said. "And once he was thirteen, and had moved from a little town in Ontario to Vancouver, he was growing up with a new mother who spoke French and a nanny, so to speak, who spoke German. And his new father understood very well the stupidity of the so-called educators of Western Culture when it came to the classical languages, so he also began to read Latin and Greek as they resound in the Scriptures, not as they limp and piddle from the pens of the pagans. But we mustn't get sidetracked. Not even into the early history of the Anabaptists, as interesting at that might be, especially for students of life drawing. Did you hear any more about chord books and their partially useful but also seriously inadequate approach to the wonderful world of music? And your dear Mom wasn't brow-beaten by the dragon from Brandon? Obviously not, or she would have pulled a Mrs. Berry - Anne of Green Gables - which I assume you both know off by heart, like my sisters, and forbidden you to come. . . ."
  
     "Hah!" burst out Maggie. "My Dad would have killed her! You should have been there when I was showing him what you'd been showing me and Deirdre! You don't really understand, Paul! How could you? You've never even talked with him, let along met that side of my family. He's the black sheep, as they say. Well, that’s what he calls himself, because he studied accounting. Money stuff. But his people are all musicians. Well, a lot of them. Violinists, opera singers, teachers. All that stuff. They're one of the most famous families in Hamburg. My Dad can sing, too, but he refused to take any kind of lessons. And he always had a thing about coming to Canada. But he was laughing for quite a while after I showed him what you taught me. And then he said . . . . he said to my Mom . . . ." Maggie's voice faltered . . . . “he said that maybe you could solve the problem of the Moonlight Sonata. Do you know what he meant by that?"
  
     Paul thought for a long moment. Finally he said. "I think so. As soon as you see your Daddy again please tell him that I think I can do just that, and I will be very happy to begin as soon as possible. But we still have to deal with Mrs. Grayson and her misinformation. Have you ever seen one of these chord book piano methods she was referring to?"
  
     "No. I didn't know what she was talking about. But it was a little scary. I mean, you blow into town like a whirlwind and start teaching us a bunch of things we've never heard of before, and you show us how to do stuff we've never imagined doing, but we don't really understand it, so when an adult comes along and tries to tell us you don't really know what you're doing, or that it's all been tried before and doesn't really accomplish that much, we don't know what to say."
  
     "But you did know where to go."
   
    "Well of course. You're here. In Deirdre's house."
  
     "But what if I weren't here?"
  
     "I suppose we might have to find a book?"
   
    "It doesn't exist."
   
    "But what about those other books that Mrs. Grayson was telling my Mom about? If they're not altogether right there must be books that are right. Right?"
   
    "Actually, a book does exist. But not on paper. Only in my Grandpere's head. And Maman's. And I suppose mine. It's in what is known as the oral tradition, like things used to be before they invented printing, so writing things down for widespread publication wasn't really possible. Books were enormously expensive, so students spent a lot of energy memorizing. That sometimes made them vulnerable to bad teachers, but then the same things happened with cheap printing. Music students became vulnerable to inadequate books on scales and studies. At this point memory made a re-entry, but with very little real musical analysis. This left the Renaissance with a lot to answer for."
  
     "Were there Mennonites in the Renaissance?"
  
     "There were Anabaptists, which was the beginning of the Mennonites. And the Baptists. The names are misleading, because what Anabaptists were about was not believing in baptising babies. They wanted to wait until the person was much older. People get funny about children. Rudolph Steiner decided that children should not be taught thirds and sixths in music class. Obviously he didn't understand that music was a branch of mathematics, according to theory, but the education system he founded taught his way anyway. But let's not get too far into religion class. I've got some stuff I want to show you. We have to keep you and Deirdre as even as possible, and at the moment she's a good jump ahead of you. But I won't show you what I showed her. She can show that to you.
Are you good at geometry?"
   
    "I don't have any problems with it," Maggie said. But mostly she was wondering how come she had been able to think of Mr. Cameron as vulnerable to anything Mrs. Grayson had to say.