The Piano Teacher

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As an awkward, taciturn 8 year old, the first deal I ever made was with my father.  I agreed to learn the piano. There must have been times, I suppose, when I dropped the determination to be difficult and he may have caught me at one of those moments. The deal was clinched once he’d discovered that Peter, a school chum of mine, had an unloved piano collecting dust in his parent’s front room. I agreed to go round to Peter’s three times a week if my father could find a tutor. I never told them the truth about how it ended and now they’ve gone, I can’t.

 

My father pushed a pen all week, leaving home at precisely 7.45 to catch the train in his crisp dark suit and smart white shirt but the formality of his work was replaced only by the formality of his music. His LPs, all replaced by CDs by my late teens, filled the cupboards and lined the walls. We lost an unfair proportion of our home to his need for Mozart, Monteverdi and Mussorgsky. I can see now how he yearned to be rid of his desk and to perform on the world’s stages. I was intended to be the next best thing. He would live his dream vicariously and he would travel the world listening to his son. But like all dreams, they were not thought through. He had taken no account of my casual attitude nor of my extraordinary lack of talent.

 

Then there was the money. A tutor capable of taking a churlish child to near professional standard required an annual fee that would have stretched his modest suburban income. Miss Truelove, a friend of a cousin of a friend or some such convoluted connection, agreed to take me on as a favour. She was a retired teacher and I guess a bit of cash would have been useful. She lived a 10 minute walk away in a large but sad Edwardian house surrounded by a garden stuffed with huge untidy bushes. Every week she wore the same thinning pink cardigan, a green woollen beret, an ankle length skirt and walking boots. She would sit beside me leaning on her stick listening to my inept attempts to understand scales. My fingers would fight with each other trying to get the right notes. No, not just the right notes but the right notes with the right fingers.

 

A triangle of despond quickly developed; music lessons, Miss Truelove dressed like a cross between a tea cosy and a witch, and me, a boy with no talent and no interest. But I didn’t want to let my father down nor give up something I said I would do. It was part of my being awkward and difficult, as though I could be just as difficult with me as with anyone else. And having a regular laugh with Peter while pretending to practice was a considerable bonus.

 

Week after week, the routine wore on. ‘Will I see you again next week, dear?’ she would ask in her thin voice hoping no doubt that I would shake my head and never approach her doorstep again. But I would nod forlornly and disappear amongst the garden jungle to the front gate.

 

‘How’s it going?’ my father would ask when he got home from work. ‘I’ll have to hear you one of these days,’ he said with a deep smile across his face and, I noted with horror, a measure of pride.

 

At the end of spring I reached my ninth birthday. It was a Thursday, the day of the piano lesson, and my father agreed I could miss that week and invite some friends round. It was a major error. Two weeks without the sight of those yellowing ivory teeth staring at me and those black notes looking like the piano was missing a full set was a pleasure too great. I dreamed of no more doe ray mi-s, no more Twinkle Twinkle Little Star which I had never got right one single occasion. Because I didn’t care enough.

 

‘Enjoy your piano today,’ said my father before he left for work the following week.

‘I’m not going,’ I said.

‘Why not son? Not well?’ I shook my head. ‘Then get over there. I’m paying good money to give you a chance in life. I’m not going to see you squander it. What are you going to do instead, sit in your room and watch the telly?’

‘I hate it. I’m no good at it.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that. Maybe I can arrange with Miss Truelove to listen for a bit.’

‘I hate her. She makes me do boring things and stamps the floor with her stick to make me keep rhythm.’

‘If you want to be a famous musician you have to start with the boring bits. That’s how life works, son. Get used to it.’

‘I’ll never be famous, I’m useless.’

‘Listen, do me a favour. Go this week and I’ll talk to her to see how you’re getting on. Then we’ll talk some more. Is that a deal?’

 

We started the lesson the same way we always did. Scales, up and down, up and down, in different keys. What was the point in those black notes? They didn’t even alternate with the white ones. Sometimes you hit them and sometimes you didn’t. Surely you could make a piano simpler than that. I mulled over this while pressing notes in some sort of order. I didn’t get it right, I never did, but Miss Truelove said nothing. How long did she want me to continue? I looked at her but she did not move. This was not the stillness of concentration. Miss Truelove just stared, glassy eyed, straight ahead leaning slightly on her stick. I quickly got up and stood the other side of the room, my heart beating to get out of my chest. Gradually her body angled like a small tree being felled until a point of no return arrived and her head clunked on to the keyboard in a cacophony of discords with which even I could not have competed.

 

My first instinct was to run but that surely would have proved my guilt. In any event, being brought up by parents like mine meant I already knew the right thing to do. But if I called an ambulance or the police that could look like a double bluff. I’d seen that on TV. Whatever I did, I was sure they’d accuse me. How many times had I said I hated her? What better way of getting out of piano lessons than a dead teacher? I stood by the wall, frozen, until I’d worked out a plan. I kicked her chair away, dragged her body to the armchair by the fire place and laid her in it like she was asleep. I put the stick beside her then moved her teacher’s chair to the window. Finally, I put the beginners’ music back in the piano stool, gave one final look around the room to check for absolute ordinariness and fled down the street and round the block for the twenty minutes I had to consume until I could get home at the correct time.

 

My father was delighted when I told him the lesson had gone well.

 

‘She said you could come any time and listen,’ I said as I buried my head in my burger and chips.

‘That’s great. I’m really pleased. We’ll make a Barenboim out of you yet. Well done, son.’

 

My mother gave a curious smile. She knew I was not happy, knew I was doing it for him and I feared she also knew that my change of fortune was a bit too abrupt. Mothers are good at that.

 

The police were sitting in the lounge when I got home from school the next day.

 

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said my mother. ‘They’re just here to ask you a few questions about Miss Truelove.’

 

They sat me down. The policewoman smiled like a new found aunt.

 

‘We see from her dairy,’ she said, ‘that you had a piano lesson yesterday with Miss Truelove.’

 

I nodded.

 

‘How did she seem to you when you left her?’

 

I shrugged.

 

‘Did she seem well?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Nothing happened out of the ordinary?’

 

I shook my head.

 

The policewoman turned to my mother and gave a slight nod.

 

My mother took my arm. ‘It appears,’ she said, ‘that Miss Truelove died a little while after you left her. I’m very sorry dear.’

 

I looked up at my mother and widened my eyes not daring to say anything. Faking sincerity is not a child’s game and a child knows it.

 

‘Are you alright dear?’ asked the policewoman.

 

I nodded.

 

‘Don’t worry about him,’ my mother said, ‘I’ll see he’s okay.’

‘Sorry you’ve had a bit of a shock, son,’ said my father as we sat down for a meal.

‘I don’t want to do piano lessons any more,’ I said. ‘I don’t like people dying. It’s scarey.’

‘Okay, son. We’ll leave it for now. Perhaps when you’re older.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said.

 

My mother took a mouthful from her plate but all the time she was watching me smile.