Chapter Seven

   In order to be perfectly honest with himself, Paul had to admit that when he had mentioned the possibility of Michael Thurman filming his class, he was only trying to give Sadie some ammunition for dealing with Iris’ assured mixture of outrage and hurt feelings. He had certainly not told a bold-faced lie, because Michael wore his cameras like Wild Bill Hickok had worn his guns, slung low, hair-triggered, and always ready for action. If it moved, he would film it, if it sat still he would do the same. And vocal technique, whether in song or speech, was constantly a burr under his saddle. And Iris, now with the assured mixture sent to oblivion, was probably right: why would the CBC spend time and money on a small town school? Especially when it happened to be a Catholic school, which getting attention from the public network was sure to draw the ire of not a few citizens, especially in this province. Yet Michael had his instincts, and they always had a basic soundness to them; if they could not be artfully manifested at the moment, no doubt they would emerge down the road.
   
    But now, pondering the boy, Paul began to wonder if Michael had known something he didn’t. That is what artists were for, of course, to see something that others couldn’t until the artist had realized his vision. And Michael had said something at the end of the conversation that now made sense. “Take a look around the town, too. Not just the parish community. Find out what the git-fiddle culture is up to. It won’t be as good as what Nick has run into in Sterling, but give it a shot. I have no intentions of filming drunks doing three-chord versions of old union songs, but a good banjo, fiddle, and decent vocals in a rendering of ‘Which Side Are You On?’” could have some pretty significant symbolic value.” He had paused. “Mind you, the other would be just as significant but we’d have to film it differently. And while you’re over there, find out if anyone still remembers Ginger Goodwin. First Orwell, then Goodwin.” That was Michael, always a six- pack of stories ahead of himself.
And if he had no intention of filming three-chord musicians, neither was he interested in setting up a camera in front of an ordinary class. There would have to be some lyrical value, maybe even dramatic content. How much visual potential did Ian have? To what degree was he actor, that is, capable of defining himself in front of an audience? Lunch was drawing to a conclusion, a happy conclusion, with everyone talking to everyone in good humoured fashion, mostly about school coming and the different teachers they all knew.
   
    “How good an actor are you? Paul asked Ian.
    
    The boy shrugged. “All right, I guess. I dunno. I was in a couple of plays at school. ” He grinned.   “Does being an altar boy help?”
   
     “I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, it does. The mass is a kind of drama and the altar boy is on the stage with a lot of people looking at him. Some of them pretty eager to criticize, too.”
  
     “Yeah,” Ian said. “Like Mrs. Havincourt. She used to get on me about scratching my head and wiggling. Well, wiggling when I was small. The head scratching came later. I always got this lecture about learning to be still because I was in God’s company.” He grinned again. “But she always did this when Father wasn’t around. Then one day he caught her and told her to knock it off. Not in front of me, but I saw him talking to her when I was at the other end of the church and she didn't do it anymore after that.
  
     “Best of both worlds. You’ve lived with critics and then you saw them put in their place.”
  
     “Why are you asking? I thought you were going to give me a guitar lesson?”
   
    “I am. But I’m wondering if you’re up to having it in front of an audience. That way Maggie and Deirdre can see the theory shifted from a keyboard to a fretted neck, and the attendant mothers can also see and hear how it’s done. And if any of them turn Havincourt, junior or senior, I’ll do what Father did. But they won’t, because this time you’ll be wiggling with a purpose, and you will sound just lovely. All right?” Paul had a sudden thought and turned to the adults. “Does Mrs. Havincourt go to daily mass? A lean lady about sixty?”
   
     Sadie and Iris both nodded.
  
     “Sure,” Ian said. “I’m okay with that. What kind of guitar have you got?”
  
     “You’ll see. And you’ll feel it, too, if your fingers are only accustomed to an electric.”
  
     “You got a flat-top then. Oh, I can handle that. My friend Bogie has an old Stella with pretty high strings. We trade around.”
   
    “Better and better. I’ll get Brunhilda and the class can set itself up in the living room. Deirdre, maybe you should sit on the piano stool, in case we get into a duet or two. I take it you’re familiar with E major.” Paul glanced at Iris out of the corner of his eye and saw that she was content not to be the pianist for this exercise.
   
    “Why do you call your guitar Brunhilda?” Maggie asked.
  
     “Because she sings like a Wagnerian soprano,” Paul said. “Even on the big strings.”
    
    The room fell silent as he left, and it was still pretty quiet when he got back, descending from his room with the guitar, still in its case. As the instrument emerged, all those present recognized that this was no ordinary practice beater.
  
     “That’s a Gibson!” said Ian. “Holy smoke! Where did you get that?”
   
    “That’s a good question. I even ask myself, regularly. That is, every time I take it out of the case.” Paul looked at the ladies as he eased himself and the Hummingbird onto a chair. He grinned. “No no. I was not running heroine off the tugs, although it is done. Some of this was my own money, some of this was from certain supporters of the arts that have hung around the family for years. Thurman Engineering and Renard Industries. There is a fund for deserving artists and worthy causes. Saint Bridget’s was determined a worthy cause. It really had nothing to do with me, although it was assumed I would be playing the thing. I used to have something much less awesome, but I left it with the younger siblings.”
  
     “Ah,” said Iris. “Your friend Michael must be from that family then. The Thurmans, I mean. I think I met a woman who was probably his mother at a music festival in New Westminster. A wonderful woman.” Thank heaven, she thought, that Sadie took me on. Well, it wasn’t the first time. She really had dived into uncharted waters.
  
     Ian, as arranged, sat in the chair opposite Paul. “Are you ready?” Paul said. “I’ll show you what I want you to do, and then I’ll give you Brunhilda to work on yourself. Oh, we better check our mutual pitches. Deirdre, if you please. The E above middle C.”
   
    Deirdre obliged, using the pedal to sustain. Paul fingered his E string and found them equal. “Ah. E in Blackfish Bay is the same as E in Vancouver. Let’s hope that’s a good sign. All right, young fellah. Listen up and look closely. Identify the string, the fret, the finger and the number.”
And then it was that the adults and Ian got to hear Paul’s singing voice for the first time. It was a nice moment for Deirdre and Maggie, because just as they had laughed over the prospect of Andy Johnson and his henchmen getting the better of their new teacher, so they had speculated on the adult response to Paul’s singing voice, of which they had, up to this point, been the only witnesses in Blackfish Bay.
“Wuuuun,” sang Paul at considerable length, perhaps four rather slow bars, activating the first string with the middle finger of his right hand, and of course without depressing the E string with his left hand. Then “Two . . . . .” while he stopped the same string at the second fret with the index finger of his left hand. He looked at Ian. “You got it all?”
   
    “I think so.”
   
    “Okay. One more. Three . . . . .” His left index finger muscled the E string at the fourth fret, while his voice sang possibly one of the finest ee vowels the ladies had ever heard. Well, thought Sadie, perhaps not better than Richard Tucker, or that fellow in Brigadoon who sang “Go Home with Bonnie Jean”, but other than that . . . my heavens. No, the girls had not exaggerated. Her new boarder was quite remarkable. And none of the sounds he made had been without understanding, he had been trained to pass on what he knew. These children must be in for the musical ride of their lives.
Paul reversed the procedure, and by then he and Ian had set up a communication system, Ian nodding as he registered the notes on each of Paul’s positions, even to the point of mimicking the relevant fingers. He reached for the guitar as Paul handed it to him, although not without apprehension. Both the women thought of the first time they had handed their husbands a new baby.
  
     “Just pluck that first string for a bit. You usually use a pick on your electric?”
  
     “Yeah.”
  
     “So, just play the string with your middle finger. I’ll explain why the middle in a minute. Right now I want to get you making some sounds, to get used to the brute. She is formidable. I know. I’ve played a lot of guitars and so on, but even I was nervous the first time with Brunie. I probably still am.”
  
     Ian did as bid, got himself reasonably comfortable with the index finger, and then tried a chord.
   
    The “No!” burst out of Paul so explosively that everyone in the room jumped. “On your own time, play all the chords you want, but with me it’s scales, scales, scales until you understand the genius behind the building of this thing! There ought to be a sign in every music store in the country that says ‘If all you can play is chords, go somewhere else.’ And then below that another sign that says ‘If you can find someone who actually knows how to teach scales properly bring him in and we’ll give him the store.’ You don’t have to sing. But you do have to say the number. It’s called a ‘mental word’ and the lack of understanding the correct application of the mental word in music is probably the biggest problem in our society. God had ordered all things in measure, number, and weight. The number and weight bit applies to music.” He winked at Deirdre and Maggie, now of course old hands at all this.
    “Play on, MacDuff. One, two, three; three, two, one. One, two, three; three, two, one . . . . . .” Paul sang with great deliberation, resonance, and utterly no haste. With all the pressure of the onlookers, and Paul’s steady resonant outflow ringing in his ears, Ian stumbled a little, but Paul just kept singing and Ian started to get comfortable, and then the rest of them started to sing and Deirdre bonked the numbers on the keyboard. Paul’s voice simply filled the room, everyone relaxed in the certainty of his understanding and the singing tones of the guitar. Maggie and Deirdre started harmonizing, simply sticking to the words for the numbers and for two or three lovely minutes a great time was had by all.
Paul stopped singing, and the choir and orchestra subsided as well. “Good. Excellent. The first three degrees of the scale salted away quite nicely. Only five more to go. However, we shall make a pedagogical decision at this point and instead of going on to the upper tonic, we shall investigate harmony, and again, the genius of guitar tuning. Anybody know what I mean?”
  
     They all shook their heads.
   
    “Deirdre,” Paul said, “When E is the tonic, with is the dominant below? Answer with music, not words.”
  
     Iris looked anxious, but only for a moment. Her former student plunked the B, and Iris relaxed.
  
     “All right, Ian, do the same thing with the second string. I assume you know the letter name.”
“B”, said Ian, and he plucked it, as luck would have it, with his thumb.
   
    “Right on both counts,” Paul said. “Now, thumbing the B string, or the five as you would be better off calling it, just with your right thumb, play your one, two, three notes up and down the E string. Slowly. All problems disappear in music if you go slowly enough, providing that you already grasp the numbers and fingering relevant to the problem. Deirdre will now be quiet so as not to disturb your thinking.” This time Paul did not sing, but simply counted the numbers with him. “One, five; two, five; three, five;” and so on. Ian settled into the pattern and continued until Paul again stopped him.  
   
     “There you are. Fundamental harmony. Every note in the scale harmonizes nicely with the fifth, just as with the first, so now you know how to double-stop, as it is sometimes called, with one of the strings not needing to be fingered. How’s your head?”
  
     “Good.” The lad grinned. “Are we going to finish the scale?”
  
     “If you like. Do you know the difference between a major scale and a minor scale?”
   
    “I know some major chords and some minor chords.”
  
     “Yes, of course you do. But that’s not what I asked. So I’ll have to answer my own question, won’t I? All right. You’ve played one, two, three; now we’ll study three, four, and five. At first without the harmony. Do you know that four is only one fret past three?”
   
    “Sort of, I guess.”
  
     “You and a million chord players. So three to four is one fret, or a half-tone, and four to five is two frets, or a whole tone. Plunk away. Deirdre, you can follow if you like, but make sure you stay behind him. Five notes is a lot more to think about than three. But those five notes are also a lot easier to deal with if you divide them into their two proper sections: one, two, three; then three, four, five.
  
     Carefully, and dealing quite well with an audience focused on his every move, Ian worked his way up and down the neck within the compass of the five notes, missing the half tone from time to time,  but basically getting it, and then he started adding the second string.
   
    Paul let him go on for some time, then stopped him again. “Excellent. You are now ready to play the first half of ‘Three Blind Mice.’”
   
    At the image of the aspiring rocker wailing on a nursery rhyme, everyone laughed, except Paul. “I’m serious, although I admit it sounds a little odd until you realize why. But it’s very good tune for students. It uses every note in the scale, in an easily intelligible order, and the first half is easier than the second. It’s one of those songs that looks like it was written by a music teacher, because it lends itself perfectly to teaching theory. ‘Three, two, one; three, two, one; five, four, three; five, four, three;” This time he sang, only with no considerable volume. “I’ll save the second part until we’ve studied that part of the scale.” He grinned at Ian. “And if anyone gets sassy with me about it being a song just for kindergarten I’ll just have to show you the Texas Blues version. All right, on to the rest of the scale. And just with the index finger. That’ll be five, six, seven, and eight, or one again, and this time the half-tone comes between the seven and the eight, or one. You find ‘em, you name ‘em, and we’ll all sit in respectful silence. That is, as long as you say the numbers loud enough for me to hear them. And I really admire you be willing to do this with an audience. You must be a born performer. Also, it will save me time, which somewhere down the road I will use for painting.”
  
     “Are you going to teach art too?” Ian asked, as he started, with a stunning deliberation of method, to work his way up the neck. "This is a smart trick, Mr. Cameron, staying on the E string all the way up, and using just the B for harmony. Wow. Wait'll I show Bogie!"
  
     “Just let them try and stop me,” Paul said. “Ordinary schools might teach the three Rs, but in a Catholic school it has to be the three Ms: math, the mass, and metaphysics. And the best way to teach beginning metaphysics is to show the little monsters how to draw and paint landscapes. Attention to the facts of creation, right?”
  
     “Oh my God!” Iris said, not hearing a thing about art and metaphysics but most certainly hearing her son. ‘That is so simple, Paul! It’s just as plain as the piano! And it makes such good sense! But I’ve looked into Ian’s chord books and they don’t show you that method!”
  
     “That’s because they’re chord books. Let us not knock chord books completely. Had it not been for chord books and the fellow who put Nicholas Taylor on to them our mutual friend Michael Thurman would never have discovered him and therefore the solution to my brother Jacob’s dilemma., although that had nothing to do with music. And if it weren’t for Nick I might never have been so keen on school teaching and therefore would never have shown up in this living room. But they are a trap, yes, and I can see why any self-respecting piano teacher would look into a chord book and look right out again. The Two-part Inventions they are not. But on the other hand the Two Part Inventions are not the Moonlight Sonata, which is, of course, a study in triad arpeggios plus the octaves in the left hand, and therefore a student piece molto obligato, albeit somewhere down the road.  Good old Beethoven. Perhaps not quite the teacher Bach was, but formidable and intelligible in his own right. Hitler was such an ass. He wanted the Germans to conquer the world. But his taste in music was so bad that he didn’t realize they already had done just that.” He winked at Maggie, who gave him a smile like the rising sun and thought she would plot to get as many overnights at the Blakeleys as she could possibly manage. “You’re getting on famously,” he said to Ian.
  
     “What?” Ian had been making such satisfying music, venturing into little tunes on his own, including the first part of Three Blind Mice.
   
    It’s such a pleasant sound,” Iris said. “Such a pleasant exercise. A concert audience might not find it terribly exciting but it's not unpleasant to listen to and the student is very much at ease with it." And then Iris McCallum had the insight of her life. "Paul?"
  
     "Yes?" He was watching his student, of course, but there was something in her voice that made him turn his face to her.
  
     "Can you make piano scales work like that?"
  
     "If you like, simply by plunking the B below while you play the E scale. But you know that already and you also know it can't be as interesting on a piano as on a guitar. I suspect your intuitions are on to something else a little more difficult, but definitely related. If I'm right, I'll show you as soon as Ian and I are done, which will be pretty soon. I just have to make sure he knows how to do this for the other available pairs of strings where you get a fifth for nothing."