Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Chapter Six



    “You and Father McKeon must have been praying,” Sadie said to Paul. He had been waiting on the rectory porch with his stuff, easel and guitar case included. The priest was not there, having been called to the hospital. They loaded quickly. “Iris McCallum called me, just after Adam left and the girls, thank heaven, were still lollygagging upstairs, so we could talk. Well, I would have told them to get out anyway, but it was one less thing I had to do to keep the airwaves as uncluttered as possible. They wanted to come down with me, of course, but I said I wanted to talk to you by myself after the phone call, and anyway they were to get busy with such and such because Iris was coming for lunch.”
  
     “What? I mean, that’s great but what happened? Father and I were actually talking about Latin before Mass, but I’m sure he was thinking about her as much as I was once we started.”
   
    “She initially phoned to ream me out. Told me she’d been ambushed by the mother of one of her students, after the girls got on the phone last night, and why hadn’t I told her myself?” Sadie drove away from the curb. “And so on and so forth. Iris can push a point just like her husband. It must be quite something to hear them go at each other. But in this case she had a lot of points. I think we covered just about every objection to you that there could be. We’ve fought before. Usually because she gets wound up in Tom’s attitudes toward ‘the bosses’ And there have been other issues. I have to be pretty gentle with her, of course, because she’s living in a mixed marriage. Thank God I don’t have to. Adam came fully conversant with the long catechism."
  
     "I was very lucky. But this time it was Deirdre we were arguing over, so gentleness didn’t matter a fiddler’s damn. And I really thought that I’d lost her for a bit there. But your good friend Michael Thurman turned the tide, out of nowhere, I think. Well, not out of nowhere, but you know what I mean. I used the possibility of a television programme as you suggested, and it turned out she had seen some of Michael’s show on Glenn Gould. She was even struck by the filming, somehow. And then she remembered being in Vancouver for Christmas, seven or eight years ago, and realized she’d heard your mother’s choir, with Michael and some other young men, at Midnight Mass. Then . . .” Sadie’s voice caught in her throat . . .”Then her resentment collapsed, the great musician that is in her emerged and she gave the most wonderful description of that liturgy. Your friend should have been at her house to film her. And then at the end she really got to me, she told me how she had wanted so much to be able to talk to your mother, but couldn’t, and was so glad there would time to do so in Heaven. So it was the perfect opening, I simply asked her come to lunch and talk the choir leader’s son. She said she would. Are you up for it??
  
     “If she’s the best north of Victoria, how could I refuse?”
   
    “Bless you. And I invited her to bring Ian, her son. He wants to be the next John Lennon, or Les Paul, or something like that, but there’s no one around here can show him anything better than a few chords, as far as I know. And he won’t take piano from her, nor theory. Deirdre and Maggie know all about this. Do you mind?”
   
    “Did you tell her might teach him?”
   
    “I must confess I hinted at it, but I insisted that I hadn’t talked to you yet and that you were going to be very busy.”
  
     “Adam explained on the drive down. You really would like to see him in Saint Bridget’s, right?
   
    “Of course. But politics is the art of the possible. Especially religious politics.”
   
    “Will he be a burden, or distraction, for Deirdre if he’s around the house?”
  
     “I don’t think so. They’re on good terms, they don’t despise each other as so often happens at that age, but she’s quite independent minded about boys. Not totally, of course. We’re not talking Little Flower here, but she does sometimes give off the aura of the sisterhood. And she loves to learn. It’s knowing this that made me realize that she must have spotted something truly attractive in your method. It’s at this point that I have to admit that Iris is about some things as blind as a bat. She was going on about Deirdre having everything and poor little Maggie needing the music. Good Lord, she has no idea of how well those children read on their own.”
  
     Paul grunted, quite profoundly, quite physically. Sadie was reminded of a boom man she had noticed one day with Adam down at the mill pond, grunting just like Paul as he set his pike pole against one of the largest logs headed for the jack ladder. “Method, method, method,`` he said.

    "How in the name of Christ can you teach a child music when you don’t ask her, exhaustively, how her imagination works? What does ‘Muse’ mean? Did you know that the ancient Greeks originally had only three Muses? Not the twelve or whatever they had later? Just three: memory, study, and music. You can put them in any order you like according to circumstances, but when teaching, I go with that line up. For me, it works very well. You have to get your recollections in order before you can apply yourself to making music. But back to Ian the Unknown. Yes, if he seems tractable, I’ll take him on. For the sake of your friendship with his mother. But that’s it. Anyone else he’ll have to teach himself. Which would be good, if he’s got his mother’s mind for such things. And the only way to perfect your knowledge is to teach anyway.”
  
     She patted his hand. “Thank you. You certainly don’t look like a fairy godmother, but you behave like one. I don’t feel like a pumpkin anymore.”
  
     In his new cell, in the north-east corner of the second story of the Blakeley home, Paul got in a couple of very good hours at his easel, albeit with water colours. The view across the strait, past the islands and on to the mountains of the mainland cried out for a friendly assault, and he was delighted with the opportunity to be back at work so soon, but there was of course the old problem of having to admit that it was not quite Monet’s ‘Cap d’Antibbe’, nor Cezanne’s ‘Lake at Annecy’, nor was he working in oils. Still the old hassle: he was better in oils with people, especially life drawing class, than he was with the ocean. He had stared so long, so happily, into the bosom of the sea and seen so much that he had yet to be able to capture on a canvas. But life was long, as William James had said, you put your head down and went at it, and one day the world would acknowledge that you had done your work.
   
    The girls had been up and at their breakfast when Paul and Sadie had returned. They were notably excited by the easel and the guitar, but Sadie said they were to leave Paul alone so he could establish himself in his room and get on with his painting. They had not registered perfect compliance, so Paul appealed, truthfully, for understanding. “All right, both of you, what is the one thing each of you fears having to do the most?”
  
     “Play the piano in public,” Maggie said without hesitation.
   
    “Sing solo in public,” said Deirdre. She was slow with her answer because for reasons she could not understand she had not wanted to admit this. Why had she wanted Paul to think her brave?
  
     “Those are the things that really scare you?”
   
    “Yes.” It was a chorus.
  
     “Then they must matter. A lot. Maybe they’re going to be your vocations, the number one thing you have to do, the gift you have to give out. Like painting for me.”
  
     “But you don’t have an audience when you paint!” said, Deirdre. “What’s there to be afraid of?”
  
     “The audience is only half of what you’re afraid of. The other half is the music or the song. It’s like a boxing match. Can you beat the other guy? It’s like that with painting. It’s the subject you’re afraid of. Can you capture the essence of it? It’s the same thing with writing, by the way. There is probably no audience on earth as terrifying as a blank sheet of paper. I know. My Dad, my older brother and his friends. Essays, stories, scripts. They’re all terrifying. And there is always a time when you can only overcome the fear all by yourself. Sometimes I’ll let you in. But not now. Now I’ve been away from my easel for three days and we have to get reacquainted. It really is like praying. You have to put your will into getting the mood, the Muse, to come to you. Think of Jacob, wrestling with the angel. And you have a job down here. Your old music teacher, who has done you a lot of good you must remember, is coming for lunch. You have to fill the house with the best spirit of hospitality that you can. And you two probably know this Ian pretty well. Do you think he’ll come?”
   
    “If he gets it into his head that you can teach him guitar,” Deirdre said, “he’d come even without his mother.”
   
    Just after twelve, Paul heard a car pull up in front of the house. He put down his brush and looked out the window. A boy as well as a woman got out of the car. Paul put his brush in the water jar and headed downstairs. The first minutes were going to be critical, and because Sadie was at that moment taking something out of the oven, he was the adult that was standing with the girls when the door was opened, by Deirdre.
  
     Had she not had Ian with her, Iris McCallum would have been free to simply concentrate on being friendly to Paul, the son of the woman whose musical abilities were still ringing in her head. She was, in fact, full of questions, eager to make amends, and the bringing along of her youngest was not without sacrifice. A musician is a musician is a musician, But, she was also a music teacher mother who had no feeling whatsoever for guitar instruction and now, after all that enmity, convinced that only this new young man could create musical peace and order in Ian, she was profoundly anxious that her son pass into Paul’s care.
  
     All this was as plain as daylight to Paul, who had seen over and over again those moments of critical anxiety when a would-be student awaited `to see if Maman would take him on. Or her on.
Iris’ face alone would have melted his heart and bent his will and forced him to surrender yet again another invasion of the hours he had left for painting.
   
    The boy was the same story, except that he was a boy, and was determined to cover his anxiety with as surly a look of indifference as he could. And this from a face on a level with Paul’s, for, like his father, Ian McCallum was born to be tall. Had teenagers always been like this, Paul wondered, or was it only the Elvis generation? The answer to that question didn’t really matter. What was important for the sake of a proper digestion of lunch was to set everyone’s heart at ease as soon as possible.
   
    “You came,” Paul said, looking straight at Ian. “Good. I was afraid you might not. Last days of the holiday and all that stuff. But the film business knows no seasons. They start making
Christmas shows in October. Or earlier. We haven’t any time to waste. I hear you’re nuts about the git-fiddle and could be up to a little real teaching. We’ll get at it after lunch if you don’t mind. You didn’t bring your axe, but I have mine and we’ll see how quickly you can learn to count on one string. We need somebody who can play a strong solo on the finest Christmas carol you’ve ever heard and we have to get at it right away. Not that we’ll just do Christmas carols. I was playing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ before you could tie your own shoes.” Paul gave a friendly little bow and waved them on. “In you go. Sadie and the girls have made lunch for the Queen, but she’s late and you two will just have to take her place.”
  
     By this time Sadie had her head out of the oven, and had the children not been present, she might have hugged Iris, but she didn’t and everyone got to the table because it was a very good place of reference as well as covered with food. Ian was also a very good object for everyone to focus on, especially as Paul seemed to have him well in hand. Sadie had placed Paul in Adam’s chair at the head of the dining room table.
  
     Having geared himself for rejection, Ian was still a little dazed. The luncheon dishes, however, moved from hand to hand in orderly fashion. “You’re doing a Christmas show? I thought you were a teacher. The new teacher at Saint Bridget’s. I don’t go there, but I’d heard about you coming.” He grinned. “There’s a lot of talk around town because you’re not a Sister.”
  
     “Yeah, right. We’ll deal with that later. It’s not me that’s doing the show, Christmas or whatever. I am the teacher, but I have a friend at CBC Vancouver and Toronto who told me he could come here to make a television show if my students got themselves up to snuff. His name is Michael Thurman and he makes great films. Your Mom’s seen some of his work. He studied music with my older brother and my mother and he knows what quality is. So we can’t fool around. Nor, I think, can we make his production a Saint Bridget’s only. We have to involve more of the community. So, you’re the perfect first addition to my class, which, if it cuts the mustard, will be probably more or less the center piece. Capice?”
Ian was thawing from his apprehensions and started to laugh. “That’s what Guido says. Guido Sordini. He’s a friend of mine. He’s in your class. And we’ve been altar boys together.”
  
     “Ah! You were the guys who made it so I had to get out of bed this morning and stumble my way through Father’s mass. Thanks. Mrs Blakeley, no lunch for this guy.” But of course Ian’s plate was full by then, and the lad was digging into it.
   
    “He’ll have to go without dessert,” Sadie said, quite beaming. She and Iris had begun exchanging grateful little smiles, and the girls were all eyes on the two males. But they were not being sentimental, Paul was sure. They simply cared about Ian, from the viewpoint of the faith, something of a waif. Paul thought of his own father, and what it might be like to see him and Tom McCallum in the same room. Angus had also grown up without the one, holy, etcetera.
   
     But what he said was, “How many chords do you know?’
  
     “Maybe a dozen. I learned them out of a book.”
  
     “Just like my friend Nick Taylor,” Paul said. “He got a lot of songs out of books too. But he sang. Better than Elvis in a lot of ways. I’m not saying he sang better, but he sang better songs. Elvis could never have sung the one you’ll have to learn if we do this Christmas show. Do you sing?”
   
    “Not much. I just like playing.”
   
    “Good. I mean good that you like playing. The singing will come or it won’t. Besides, you’re at the age, if I might say so, that your voice is changing and it can be better that you don’t sing much. Have you ever heard of a song called ‘The Carol of the Birds?’
   
    “I have,” Iris said brightly, relaxing from the reality of the tone that was passing between her son and her recent enemy. She sang a couple of bars from the carol found in the usual collections.
Paul shook his head. “Sorry. I should have asked if you’d ever heard of John Jacob Niles, the folk song collector.”
   
    “No,” said Iris. “But that is the ‘Carol of the Birds’ that I know. Is there another version?”
   
    “Not another version, another song. I know the one you just sang. But they’re quite different. You’ll see when you hear it.”
  
     “Would you do it for us after . . ?” She stopped. “No.” She shook her head at the instant look on Paul’s face. “No. No, no, no. I’m sorry. As Sadie said, you’re not a trained monkey.”
  
     “After lunch I could get Ian started on it. Once he’s got a proper scale under his belt. It’s usually done in C, maybe D – in my case that is - so he’ll have to get on to some theory pretty quick. You’re a G,D,and A man, right? The easy chords, all six strings and all that stuff? Actually, we’ll do it in C, just so you can see how clever they were when it came to setting up guitar tuning.” He turned back to Iris. “John Jacob did it somewhere else. Very high, Maybe G. He was a counter tenor in his own Appalachian way.” Paul laughed. “Or maybe it was still in C but an octave up.”
  
     “Is this a song you learned from your mother?”
  
     “No. This one escaped the Cameron canon. Possibly John Jacob’s recording was a little late for my Jacob and his crew. But it did come to us through Nick Taylor, whom I’m sure Sadie must have told you about, because he will probably be involved in the filming. His younger brother Charlie, quite the wicked banjo picker, sent him the album when Nick and Cassandra were living in Kwakiutl Harbour. Cassandra was teaching there, while Nick studied Saint Thomas and rattled away on his different instruments. The next year he was teaching, up in Green River. In the little Catholic school. He had his kids do ‘Carol of the Birds’ there, at the big Christmas concert that all the schools participated in, in the theatre. Knocked ‘em dead, as they say. Nick wrote me quite the letter. The public school people had been pretty ugly, some of them, about the new parish priest creating the Catholic school. Over the decade before Nick and Cassandra got there, there had been a few incidents.”
  
     “Is this filming really certain? Living here, it’s hard to imagine CBC Vancouver being interested in our little burgh. Although what I heard your mother’s choir doing really was wonderful, and if your Michael Thurman was part of that . . . .”

    “Oh, yeah. He was part of that and just kept on going. And he has an axe to grind. So many Canadian voices, singing or acting, are just not that good. So, if things work out, it’s a chance to set a good example. If the kids can do it, why not the adults?”
  
     “Ah,” said Sadie. “ So that’s your intention: to shame us all into being better singers. Well, that wouldn’t hurt. The liturgy deserves the best.”
   
    Iris had now totally relaxed. She knew, for one thing, that Ian would not leave the house without coming away understanding more about the guitar than he had ever dreamed he could, and she knew for another, as a musician herself, that Paul was an artist’s artist and a musician’s musician. She had a feeling that what she had experienced at the midnight mass years ago had been only the tip of the iceberg. She also realized that it was actually comforting to have an expert around, someone who, without being a tyrant about it, knew more than she did. That had not happened to her for a while. Always knowing more than her students was somewhat tiresome, when one thought about it. “Mr. Cameron,” she said, “I think we should think about Sunday. What are some of your favourite hymns? I don’t think it would be right to build the entire liturgy around you, even if you are a new and significant arrival, but one or two of those you love best would lend just the right tone to the proceedings, don’t you think?” She also realized, not without pain, knowing what her husband was likely to say, that she wanted her son under the care of this young man for more than guitar lessons. It was obvious to anyone with the least degree of faith that he had an enormous grasp of the heart of the matter. Would that she had had the simplicity to speak to that little woman that night in Vancouver. It was, now, as if she had a second chance, like the labourers for the vineyard hired later in the day.
  
     “The ‘Crusaders’ Hymn’ some call it,” Paul said, almost without thinking. “’Oh God of Loveliness.’”
  
     “I know that! We have it in the book. The congregation sings it quite well, actually.” She looked at him, remembering the midnight mass. “I have the feeling that with you on hand, they will sing it better.” And then Iris felt, although she did not say anything, that Paul would not find her accompaniment the same as his mother’s, and she felt inadequate. But it would be all right. He bore no malice, had no false ambitions, no arrogance, no attachments to his skills, nor for that matter his family’s, except in the sense that he was eager to share it wisdom with anyone willing to listen. And her son, it was plain to see, was all ears. She would do the best she could, and that would be good enough. His voice would make up the difference.

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