Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Chapter Three



    When it was time to go back to the rectory, Adam insisted on driving Paul there. Paul, not insistently, said he wouldn’t mind the walk, but Adam, quite firmly, said that he had something for Father McKeon that was overdue delivery, so Paul acquiesced. It had been agreed that Paul would move in sometime during the following day, later rather than sooner, giving Sadie time to prepare his room.
   
    She was still somewhat in shock from the sudden turn of events, and asked Paul one last time if he were sure he wanted to stay with two old adults and an overly lively adolescent.
   
    “Why should I not? I’ve never minded living at home with my parents and the siblings. Deirdre could hardly be more of a bouncing kangaroo than my three younger brothers. And I must be a real teacher, I guess, because already I’m anxious about her progress. Hers and Maggie’s too. My grandpere’s method is so radically different than what they’ve been used to that I’m somewhat afraid that they’ll need pretty much a daily dose to not get discouraged or confused and thus fall back on their old system, at least until they’re well started.” He grinned. “I think that even if you were both ogres I’d take the offer just for the kids’ sake. And my curiosity about the efficiency of the system in my hands. I grew up with Maman’s genius. I took in the system with mother’s milk and bedtime stories. I’ve taught bits and pieces to a few of my peers, but I’ve not really had the responsibility that I’ve got now. To tell you the truth, it’s not something I would have asked for, probably. But as you said, Deirdre has a way of taking the nearest bull by the horns and walking him around the ring.”
   
    “But you must have some musical plans for the class?”
   
    “Yes, but that is entirely vocal, as far as I can see at the moment. Voice work and scale study, which is part of any complete course of vocal training. There are some instrumental things you can do, but I’d have to talk that over with the kids themselves, and probably Sister Principal. But there’s no rush with that, as making that operation go as it should depends on how well they do with the first part. The blackboard, their voices, my voices, and the classroom piano and my guitar, depending on whichever works best for a given section of the science.”
   
    “You play the guitar too?” Adam said.
   
    “Yes.”
   
    “As well as we’ve been told you play the piano? Keep in mind that the girls said they’d never heard a piano played like you play it."
   
    “In our household it’s been difficult to have an excuse for playing badly. There are different levels of interest, and different kinds of interest, but the techniques, the sheer science of music, let alone the art, have all been made so affable, so accessible, that our minds just naturally gravitated to trying to do it right.”
   
    “Then I can presume you can teach guitar, and probably as well as you teach the keyboard.”
  
     “It’s actually the fretted stringed instruments I’ve mostly helped my friends with. Are you telling me that Deirdre is also interested in the guitar or mandolin or something of that sort? That’s perfectly natural in someone who loves to sing.”
  
     “Actually, she has mentioned it a few times, but invariably came around to deciding she wouldn’t be able to keep up as well with the piano. That sounded odd to me, and the more I listen to you the more I feel that I’m right, but it’s not my business to push her. I simply like her to be happy with what she does and insist that she do it for her own satisfaction. My father kept trying to tell me I should be a doctor. I kept trying to tell him I simply loved the smell of fresh sawdust, like the farmer loves the smell of new cut hay.”
  
     Paul laughed. “And tow boaters love the smell of salt water and diesel!”
   
    “I wasn’t asking for Deirdre’s sake. I had someone else in mind. But we’ll talk about it in the car.”
Sadie stared at her husband for a moment. It was the first time Paul had seen her face blank with ignorance of the moment. The working mind finally took over, she smiled, as happily as she was honestly curious, and said, “Are you thinking of Ian McCallum?”
  
     “Precisely.”
   
    Adam sent Paul ahead to the car in the driveway, saying that his route lay through the basement. When he emerged, he was carrying a bottle under his arm. “Scotch,” he said as they got into the car. He showed Paul the label. “Single malt. For the good pastor. I’ll tell you the tale. It’s not unconnected with Ian McCallum, as it partially concerns his father. If it hadn’t been for Tom - that’s Ian’s Dad, and of course Iris McCallum’s husband – I would never have had the pleasure of a sharing in the excitement of the good old days of the rum runners.” Adam was grinning from ear to ear. “Everyone should have some little caper in his life by which he shares in the Lord’s reputation as an enemy of organized society.”
  
     “Sounds like an intriguing story.” He was by now very curious about Ian, but they had, considering the future, nothing but time. And the night was now fine, with the temperature coming down to a comfortable level. He had been contentedly staring at the stars when Adam came out, listening to the sounds of a town at night..
  
     “How do you like our little burg?”
   
    “Very much, I think. For one thing, I’m very grateful to be able to go on living by the water. When we were going by on the tugs I used to look at the different places and wonder if I’d wind up living somewhere along the Strait. And Father gave a very lively account of the opportunities I might be interested in.”
   
    “Do you play golf?”
   
    “Not much. I’ve puttered at it, if you’ll pardon the pun. But tennis and basketball have been my main passions and in our family there’s quite an understanding of overall fitness that’s pretty much guided by yoga. My grandfather started studying the East in his Twenties, after he ran into an old Jesuit missionary who had come back to Quebec.”
   
    “You can come to the course with me if you like, but I won’t push you. I have a feeling that you are going to be pretty much in demand all over the place and you’ll have to be careful about not trying to do too much. I really only mention the golf because that’s where the tale of the Scotch begins. There was a bunch of us went straight from the golf course to McKeon’s rectory to settle an argument. It was negotiation time, with the union, so I was in the pack, with my aids, and McCallum as head of the local at that time with his boys from Vancouver, and we have had the custom around here of the warring factions going out for a little golf the afternoon before we start swearing at each other for a week. It works well, but this time there arose a pretty good argument about the social teachings of the Church. It happens that I like history, as you will see from our household library, and I found myself having to play the professor on the subject of Leo XIII’s encyclical on the rights of labour. One of Tom’s people didn’t know I was a Catholic and made some crack about the Church’s wealth and supposed custom of fagging for the rich and wouldn’t believe my rebuttal. So I challenged the bunch of them to come with me to the rectory and get Father to trot us out a copy of “Rerum Novarum”. I honestly had no idea they would take me up on it, I simply felt like I had to defend the existence of the encyclical and make the point that the Pope had done something about the condition of the workers. The odd thing was, it was really Tom McCallum who insisted we go. Heaven knows why, because up to that point that last man on earth he wanted anything to do with was McKeon, because of the school.”
  
     “How so?”
    “Because he’d lost face with the building trades unions over the building of it. The whole thing was almost a miracle in its coming together. There was simply good break after good break. All the right coincidences at the right time that made it happen. Without all of them I don’t see how we could have got it done. McKeon was our new pastor, succeeding a priest who had become an alcoholic, so he was in favour with most of the parish and also a good part of the town, so that stirred up a lot of positive energy, and it also happened that our mill had to undergo some major expansion that brought over the Catholic partner of the contracting firm. And then our outfit had recently acquired a new chairman of the board, an Evangelical Lutheran, who believed in a tax share for confessional schools. He was mad at the government for stalling on the issue, so when he heard of the breeze that was rising in Blackfish Bay he called me up and said I was to be as generous on truckloads of lumber as I possibly could without getting rung in for defrauding the stockholders. It was amazing how it came together. But of course there had to be a fly in the ointment. So much of a triumph as to build a Catholic school this far up the Island was not going to go down well in the halls of Hell.”
   
    “The fly was McCallum?”
  
     “Right. You see, it’s Mrs. that is the Catholic. And the children. Tom has the Irish spelling in his surname, but somewhere back in the bogs his ancestors went the other way. And I gather with a strong attitude about it. But Iris is a strong woman – as you might find out – and she wouldn’t marry him unless he made all the promises. And to give him credit, he kept them faithfully, until the school started to happen.”
  
     “Annoying, isn’t it, how quickly the tests turn up?”
   
    “And there was another fly. There’d been a slump in the local construction scene. There’d been a nice little development, about sixty new homes and a supermarket and hardware store, and then nothing. Some of the builders had decided to stay, bought homes and settled in. We were able to put some of them to work on the new part of the mill, but most of the mill features were too big for the ordinary hammer and saw. Welkin had to bring in their specialists. Then when the carpenters heard about the school, they seemed to assume that Rome was going to pay for it. All that wealth, right? Or maybe the diocese of Victoria. It must have been, I have to admit, a hell of a blow when they heard that the parish could only afford it if more than half the labour was volunteer. And of course Saint Bridget’s was well populated with those kinds of skills. Who ever heard of a logger or a fisherman who wasn’t good with a hammer? By that time, Tom McCallum was making his way as a union leader. With good reason. I know from experience that he was an excellent shop steward at that time. He’s committed to his cause, and I’ve never had any trouble respecting him for it. But he also became committed to the carpenters, which was not quite his business, and claimed he could stop the volunteer work on the school. Either that, or shut the whole thing down. To some degree at least, it was a beer parlour boast. Tom likes his booze, but from time to time he lets it go to his head. And again, to ease his good name, by that time he was not without what he assumed were well placed allies. The public school teachers’ union got into the act as well, because of course they were going to lose students. Two hundred of them in fact. It all boiled up quite nicely for a few weeks, became the talk of the town. But McKeon was a rock in the pulpit and on the streets and for some reason which can only be explained to people who understand that nothing goes really well without prayer both our companies had a very good feeling about what were doing right down to the guys who pulled the boards off the green chain and drove the heavy equipment Welkin lent as much as possible. They too were a force in the beer parlours of Blackfish Bay.”
   
    “Ah,” said Paul. “And to all this drama I owe a job. Thanks, guys.”
  
     “Oh, I think you could probably find a job without any help. But yes, I know what you mean. We need to think gratefully. Anyway, back to my story, because we’ll be there in a second or two. I’ll never know what made Tom decide we should go to the rectory. By then, the school was a done deal, scheduled to open in the fall, and it was known publicly that he was not going to let his children go. Ian would have gone into grade two, the same as Deirdre, and there were two others older. Maybe he’d had a lot of talk from his cronies, about eventually being pushed around by his wife and the priest, and wanted to show the world he wasn’t afraid of the cassock. God knows what goes on in people’s minds.
   
    Whatever it was, he was the leader of the pack and off we went. I was naturally apprehensive, because I had known both McKeon and McCallum long enough to know their tempers were as similar to my own. But it was actually a very happy hour. Father was his usual completely centered self and right off said it was all a wonderful coincidence because he had been browsing the social encyclicals earlier in the day. He got off into the history of the Knights of Labour and its battle with some of the hierarchy, talked about his father and various union tales from the Atlantic coast and we pretty well clobbered two bottles of whiskey he had picked up earlier in the day for his upcoming deanery meeting. I’m the optimistic type and when I came home I told Sadie that I wouldn’t be surprised if Tom changed his mind and let his kids go to the school, simply because we’d all had such a good time together. That didn’t happen, of course, because old habits die hard and God can take forever. Still, it was disappointing. Nor was it the end of the story. The next sad thing that happened was at the liquor store. Father dropped in the next day to replenish his supplies for the deanery meeting. He told me afterward, after the foofoorah, that having a certain degree of care for his reputation, he had thought of saying something to the clerk, the same man as had served him the day before, but he was interrupted by a couple of parish ladies asking questions about the school – fees, or something like that – and did not explain the situation.”
  
     “Oh oh.”
   
    “Exactly. The clerk was also an enemy of the school project, although I don’t think his being a member of the government employees’ union had anything to do with it. He was of the ‘we musn’t divide the community’ frame of mind, and possibly had other issues, as far as I understand. So he wrote a letter to the bishop, and of course Father was upset when he heard from the chancery, not for himself, but because of any harm that might be done to the mindset necessary for bringing the kids into the school. It happened, fortunately, that he spoke to me about it, and I had no hesitation about throwing my weight around. Sometimes being part of management has its advantages. I phoned the bishop and also wrote a very full letter on the subject. And then I undertook the pleasant task of becoming the keeper of the McKeon liquor cabinet, such as it is in all its modesty, and have the added pleasure of making sure he gets to drink single malt as his evening dram, not blends. We had to drink blends at the infamous conference on the rights of labour. I can’t stand the thought that I get to sip at the real thing and the pastor, whose soul works much harder than mine, should have to do with the lesser stuff. Especially when you know that all those clerics in the Vatican can buy the best booze the world has to offer without paying such huge tax markups. I have this funny feeling that the liquor store clerk thinks he’s saved the parish from two alcoholic priests in succession, but I don’t know the man well enough to be able to claim that as a scientific fact.”
  
     “What’s his name? As I’ll be doing my own rum running I’m sure to meet him.”
   
    “Gibbling. Morton Gibbling.”
  
     “Sounds appropriate. Someone should make him a literary character and from henceforth his surname would become the phrase for exalting yourself unto a Supreme Court bench. I wonder what apparent wrongful tendencies of mine he’ll find to comment on.”
  
     The car came to a halt, Adam tucked the bottle under his nylon shell, and they walked up the stairs to the rectory porch. McKeon was quick to answer the bell.
   
    “Ah! Here you are, Paul. Good. Excellent. It’s your mother on the phone. She needs an address. Something about some music someone wants to send you. I was just about to give her the number of the cottage, but I saw the lights of the car and heard the footsteps and I was sure it was you coming back. Evening, Adam. I trust he meets the approval of the Blakeleys.” He showed Paul around the hall corner to the phone table in the living room.
  
     “More than meets, Father, more than meets. So much so that I’m afraid we’ve already stolen him from you. Or rather from the cottage. He’s going to live with us. Deirdre and Maggie Schlegel found him in the classroom, playing the piano as they’d never imagined that a teacher could play, so they insisted that he come home with them for supper and things went on from there. He’s really quite incredible, in other areas as well as music, but he’ll be taking over Deirdre and Maggie’s piano instruction, sort of on a daily basis from what I gather. You’ll be able to rent out the cottage, which is good for the parish finances, and he won’t have to cook for himself. Sadie was all very insistent about it, and I’d get him to teach me the banjo if I thought he knew that too and I had one. Thank heaven he has a sister in the order, so that we got him. I find it hard to understand why the Vancouver archdiocese doesn’t have him contracted for the rest of his life . . . .”
   
    McKeon looked pleased, but a little confused. “He . . . he played for you?”
  
     “Heavens, no, He’s not a trained monkey, or a hired entertainer. It was how the kids were about him. The girls went off to the piano after supper, while the adults talked. There’s a great mind in there. He’s obviously an artist but he’s also as solid as a rock, and as set in the Faith as the best of us. I have to admit I’ve had my doubts over the summer, but now that he’s put his feet under my table and drunk my wine I have to say that I’m only sorry for those who swore that the order was letting us down by taking Sister Barbara away. You should have heard the girls singing, and they were only doing some drill they’d already learned from him, not an actual song. But there is a problem, and of course Sadie is worried sick about it. Iris is not going to be pleased to lose two of her most promising students to a perfect stranger, and Tom will think it’s my decision because of that row we had over one of the boom men in June.”
  
     “Johannsen? I heard about that. Of course you were right. He drinks too much, especially first thing in the morning before he went to work. I got the details from a friend of his sister-in-law’s. He was a drowning looking for a pool, and I was honestly afraid the compensation board was going to be down your neck if you didn’t move him. Our friend Gibbling can be useful at times, and I heard him – in the supermarket, not the liquor store – asking someone where he worked because he knew how much liquor he bought. If he could write to the bishop about me nothing he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to write to Victoria. Besides, he’d probably like to get back at you, just because he suspects you’re up to something. Don’t forget, Adam, it takes all kinds.”
  
     “You’re forgiving.”
   
    “Not at all.” He took the Scotch from his rum runner. “I now get to drink a better malt than I would have allowed myself to, thanks to him, and furthermore you and I get to meet on terms somewhat more regular than otherwise, so we can discuss the problems of the community as frequently as we should, like the wise men in the psalms, sitting at the gates of the city.”
  
     Paul returned to the entrance hall of the rectory. “Thank you for holding the line, Father. Maman had most interesting news. My little brother – one of my little brothers – has come home with my banjo, and my friend Nick Taylor has a tune he wants me to try out on the kids. It fits with the novel they’ll be studying this year. It’s a Kipling poem he set to music a couple of years ago when he was teaching in Skeena. It really works with boys, he said. Maman needed your address for sending the banjo and Nick needs an address for sending the score. He says if the class gets the song up to scratch he can send a recording crew. Michael Thurman might use it on the CBC, in a special series on music.” He grinned at Adam. “My mother sends your wife a special note of affection and gratitude. And she'd like to talk to you. She said she was finding it very difficult to think of me living by myself in a cottage on the beach.” He turned to Father McKeon. “I take it that Adam has explained the new arrangements to you by now?”
   
    “Yes. The Blakeleys, as usual, going the extra mile.”
   
    “I can’t believe it,” Adam said. “You play the banjo too? I was just saying to Father that if I thought you knew how to teach that instrument I’d hire you to teach me. It’s a little thought I’ve had in my mind for years, and all the while thinking I was being ridiculous.”
   
    “She’s putting it on the bus tomorrow. You’ll be walking the D string by this time next week, unless you chicken out. Father knew your address, of course, so I could give it to her."
  
     “Where is Nick now? You mentioned him at supper.” Adam started for the phone.
  
     “In Sterling. In the Kootenays. With a prince among bishops. So much different than the man my grandfather had to live with in his younger years. I’m serious about the recording crew. Meinred Schwartz is possibly the only bishop in the world who truly understands the import of Vatican Two. Nick is teaching music - including Gregorian chant --and contemplation there. The bishop has been after him for years and my uncle, my mother’s younger brother, is president of their little university.”
  
     “Well," McKeon said, you’re moving quickly. I’m not surprised, actually. And speaking of things moving swiftly, the good sisters will be back tomorrow. Sister Teresa wants to see you as soon as it’s convenient. How did you wind up with the Blakeley’s so quickly? I’m delighted, of course.”
   
    “You went off, and I went into the school to try out the piano in my classroom. There were a bunch of kids playing basketball, and when Deirdre and her friend heard me getting up my chops they came bursting in. One thing led to another and they insisted I go home with them for supper right then. I knew you had a long list of calls, so I was pliable. The girls were quite wonderful, took to everything I showed them, and the Blakeleys are born hosts. But of course a solid marriage between nature and grace always takes a toll somewhere, and I gather we will have a problem with the McCallum family. What’s this Iris like? I’m not particularly worried about the man, and anyway I gather I’m not teaching his kid, although I probably should be.”
  
     “She’s a very good woman in many ways. In fact if you decide to attend the ten o’clock Mass on Sunday, which is the one the Blakeleys usually attend, you will hear Iris at the organ. We stand down for the summer, but with the peculiar custom of starting our music up again the Sunday before the school opens. I would have thought they’d wait until after Labour Day, but the earlier start was in place long before I came here, and so I didn’t see any point in interfering with the custom. Mind you, it’s just the organ. We don’t have any pretensions of a choir for that Sunday. What’s the problem with Iris?” McKeon had heard from Adam, but he wanted to hear again from Paul.
   
    “Deirdre Blakeley and Maggie Schlegel and I actually had a very real little lesson. I think Maman would have been quite proud of me. And they've learned some things with Iris very well. The end result was that I have taken over the musical education of the girls, at their insistence. But Sadie is a sensitive soul, and she’s concerned about Iris’ feelings. I gather that the girls are already quite good. But of course my grandfather’s methods are incomparable, and them as get to luck into the heart of them, if they’re real musicians in the Aristotelean sense, cannot resist the greater wisdom.”
  
     “My God! What did you do?”
   
    “Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Just triad and bass practise according to the Philippean grasp of the rule that music is a branch of arithmetic. Thomas Aquinas, first page of the Summa. Or maybe the second page. I’m not my older brother Jacob. It’s an amazing trick, in the hands of those who appreciate it. I appreciate it, and the kids heard it. Basketball and the boys were suddenly last week’s dishwater. I didn’t plan it that way, I’m just the anxious schoolteacher trying to be as well prepared as he can. For a while, it will be an uphill battle. Or I thought it would be, until the girls showed up. With them on the point of the spear, the opposition may melt before our eyes. I’ve already begun to think about a Christmas concert that will knock the socks off the most Philistine of your parents.    Nobody will have to design it, it will just arise out of the processes of the properly organized classroom.”
  
     “'Philistine’. You sound like Matthew Arnold.”
  
     “I should. Arnold was the subject of the my father’s first published academic essay."
   
    Adam returned. “Your mother is an utterly wonderful woman. Now I see where you get it. Don’t expect another compliment from me for the duration of our relationship. I will only mention your Maman, as you call her, when you do something properly. But she has a compliment for you. She says your work of the summer, not always as sweet as the song of the hedge sparrow, has obviously paid off early. She also coughed up that you’re a very good cook and might occasionally give Sadie the night off. Or show Deirdre how to make something called ‘Harry Macklin’s hamburger dinner’? Can you explain what she meant by all that?”

    “Harry Macklin was a friend of Nick Taylor’s. A roommate, in the months before he ran into my brother Jacob. And my work of the summer, getting my chops up on the keyboard with a grade eight class in mind, was sometimes rather noisy. Even through the door that shuts off the basement piano. Maman has said for some time that if I weren’t so keen on painting I’d probably be playing keyboard for a dance band.”
  
     “You weren’t out on the tugs this summer?” Adam said.
 
      “Oh, no. Once Father and I had been on the phone to each other, I thought I’d better get ready. And it was a good summer to be around the family farm. There was a lot happening. That’s normal, of course, but ever since I graduated from high school I hadn’t been present for much of it. Too much time on the briny deep of the Inside Passage. And I wanted to paint. And play a little tennis.”
  
     “No wonder you’re so stoked! Well, your mother has your new address for all these shipments and I’ve delivered the single malt, and the new teacher, so I’m off. I’ll leave you two to solve the problems of the diocese. Make sure you break the seal on that scotch and confirm that it’s the real thing. Real single malt, right to the bottom of the bottle, although not all in one night.” Adam had put in his time at the evening bedside, reading A.A. Milne to his bairns.

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