Playing for Time

Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie, thought Jeanette, but when it was considerably closer to being a lie than it was to being the truth then it might as well have been, and especially when there was imminent risk of her being found out.

     It had started out as being nearer to the truth than it subsequently became. Her book club hadn’t even been discussing a book you might call directly about music, let alone piano playing. The subject of the meeting had been one of the “new generation” of historical novels and there had been a reference to the spirited heroine (though it was now taken for granted that heroines of historical novels were spirited and using the adjective was labouring the point) playing the harpsichord. A couple of the members had said they had heard recordings of it, and liked it, but nobody was surprised when the question “Do any of you play the harpsichord?” met with a chorus of “no” and synchronised head-shaking.

     “But I play the piano,” Jeanette had said. 

     She found herself the centre of attention. True, it was not as if she had said that she had climbed Mount Everest or had a passionate affair with Prince William or been short-listed for the Booker Prize. But it was gratifying, and more enthusiastic than she would have thought.

     “Oh, I wish I could play the piano,” Edwina had said, and as Edwina was the kind of person who seemed to be able to instantly master everything, that meant something.

     In a manner of speaking Jeanette could, indeed, play the piano.  Or had once been able to play the piano. When she was a child, there had been a piano in her parents’ house, the kind that isn’t really out of tune but isn’t really in tune either, and is more of a piece of furniture that comes in very handy for vases and photographs. She had been able to pick out a tune, and had quite enjoyed it. She had tended to stick to C Major, or at most a key with only one sharp or flat, and her left hand performed pretty much the same function irrespective of what her right hand was doing. She had never taken any exams or learnt to read music properly – the latter not helped by the fact that there was an old piano primer in the stool that numbered the fingers which made life much easier.

     But now her piano-playing had been referred to and had been imprinted on the minds of the others in the book group.

     Jeanette wasn’t one of those people who are totally hung up on honesty at all costs, and was no stranger to the cheque being in the post (well, it usually was soon after) or being the teensiest bit inclined to tell the odd porkie about her wine consumption habits on those forms they gave you at the doctors. Well, didn’t everybody! Probably most doctors included. But nor would she have thought of herself as someone who told lies for the sake of it.

     The trouble was, once she’d started, they slipped out so easily, Her favourite composers? Bach and Schubert. This was, in fact, the unblemished truth, but only when it came to listening to them.  Her own fingers had never troubled them. Oh, and she liked jazz too, and improvising. But her heart really belonged to classical music. People looked at her with new respect, she thought, and that was by no means unpleasant. Anyway, where was the harm in it? It wasn’t as if she were hurting anyone, was it?

     “Oh, Jeanette, you could just be a life-saver!” Howard exclaimed, as they gathered together to discuss Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger. 

     She genuinely didn’t heard any alarm bells ringing. “I doubt that,” she joked, “I’m never likely to be on Baywatch!” 

     “But you play the piano,” said Howard, who was a teacher at the local high school. “And next month we’re having a recital in the hall by Berenice Babington.” Berenice Babington was one of the town’s most famous children. She was a well-regarded mezzo soprano. True, she wasn’t quite in the Jessye Norman or Gundula Janowitz league, but it had been said more than once that the “discerning” appreciated her “warm and thoughtful” interpretations of, for the most part, 19^th and early 20^th century Lieder. “It’s sold out already – and she didn’t even go to our school, she went to a private one out of town! But our accompanist – the senior music teacher, Terence Hambleton, has had to go back to Canada – his mother’s very ill, it’s terribly sad. And to be frank, none of the others could cope with her programme. They’ve said as much themselves!”

     Jeanette heard herself saying, “I’m sure I’m not good enough either,” but Howard took it for false modesty. If he had but known it it was the first true thing she had said about her piano playing for weeks. 

     She opened her mouth a couple of times like a stranded codfish, and didn’t say another word. She even contributed to the discussion.

     That evening Howard emailed her the programme. She had reached the stage of panic that seems to have a calm core, but that calm core is deceptive. Not nearly as deceptive, though, as the impression she had given of her piano playing abilities.

     True, Berenice’s programme for the school recital wasn’t the most demanding or adventurous. But so far as Jeanette was concerned it might as well have been the musical equivalent of the search for the Higgs-Bosun particle. She knew there was no way on God’s Sweet Earth that she could attempt to play the Lieder by Schubert and Mahler and Richard Strauss that Berenice was going to sing at the school. Or was not going to sing at the school.

     I am going to look very stupid and very small and won’t be able to hold my head up in town ever again, she thought.

     An all too obvious solution occurred to her. She could pretend she had injured her arm. It would be easy enough (and she could travel to another town) to buy bandages and a sling, true, a plaster cast might be a problem, but she could still make one of her arms look convincingly injured and out of commission. 

     But Jeanette was inclined to be superstitious and there was such a thing as tempting fate. There was also such a thing as being found out. And then she would look even more ridiculous. 

     I have more than a month, she thought, perhaps I might be able to muddle through, somehow. For at least a couple of days, she actually believed that. She found the details of someone in a neighbouring town (oh yes, neighbouring towns could be very useful) who gave piano lessons. Her name was Irene Sanderson. Of course she couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that Irene knew someone who knew Howard, but she decided to take that risk. 

     Irene lived in a cosy flat overlooking a little park, and wasn’t at all how Jeanette would have imagined a piano teacher to be, if she had given the matter much thought. She wasn’t fractious and fiery tempered and full of flamboyant gestures, but nor was she prim-mouthed and ruling (figuratively) with a rod of iron. She was just a very nice friendly woman, ten years or so older than Jeanette, and also a very good and patient teacher. She had the knack of explaining things and breaking them down into manageable chunks. I could be quite enjoying this, thought Jeanette. She could be, but of course, she wasn’t. Irene was impressed, too. “You’re taking this seriously,” she said, “Not like some adult learners. Not that I’m the one to condemn them for having fun, and I’m still honoured to help them have it. But you could reach a reasonable standard pretty quickly.” The last remark had a dual effect on Jeanette. For a split second it gave her a glimmer of hope. But it faded as quickly as it had come. For what Irene had meant was maybe being able to take Grade 1 or even Grade 2 in a couple of months. It wasn’t accompanying a professional singer in a recital of classical Lieder. The compliment was a reality check. Not that reality had ever deserted her, but just the necessary concentration of the lessons had turned, perforce, into a means of temporary distraction. She had always been scornful of the obsession with mindfulness, but had begun to see it might have some truth in it. Still neither the illusion of mindfulness nor the mental exertion of reading music was particularly robust. Almost before she had realised it, she burst into tears. “Oh, my dear child!” exclaimed Irene. She had a habit of using the word “child” – it could have been irritating, but somehow it wasn’t. “It was meant as a compliment, not to upset you or pressure you, you know!”

     “It wasn’t what you said,” Jeanette muttered, “Well, I suppose it was, not directly.” She had needed to break down but had also realised this was one of those circumstances where a prolonged fit of weeping, if it did no harm, would also do no good. But come to that, what could? She had to tell somebody. It came out in not so much of a rush as in a series of stumbling spates. She didn’t want Irene to interrupt, not really, but at the same time, just the sound of another voice, even in an “I’m listening” grunt might have been welcome. Yet she somehow sensed that the older woman wasn’t sitting in judgement, or certainly not as much as she every right to.

     “Well, now you know the whole stupid business,” she said, finally, “I’m in an unholy mess I can’t get out of and nobody to blame but myself!” 

     “Oh dear,” Irene said simply. “It’s true there are messes you can’t get out of, at least not quickly, but you can generally get around them or beyond them.” Those were fine and well-meant words, thought Jeanette, but she still couldn’t see how. 

     “As for nobody to blame but yourself – well, of course you’ve done a silly thing. You know that yourself, so I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise. But so have most of us at one time or another, me certainly included, and in my case it ended up in the divorce courts. And no, I wasn’t the wronged party.” Somewhere in her mind Irene could acknowledge that probably was worse and harder to live with, looked at on the grand scale (she could have wished a metaphor you could link to music hadn’t come into her mind!) but right now the grand scale didn’t interest her and offered little consolation. “I can see how it happened,” Irene said, “I’m not condoning it, but I can certainly see how it happened. And let’s be honest, in the vast majority of cases it wouldn’t have mattered much. In fact, child, I’m quite flattered that you thought playing the piano was such a marvellous skill to have. Mind you, it’s brought me a great deal of pleasure. And what you’re thinking now is that you wish your batty and boring piano teacher would stop tripping out her platitudes!”

     “You’re neither batty nor boring!” Jeanette insisted. 

     “Well, I try not to be the latter! But I may be able to help you. And I mean offer some actual practical help, not just reassuring words. I know Berenice. Oh, we’re not bosom buddies, at least not now, but we were at the same music college. If you’ll forgive me another platitude it seems both centuries ago and as if it was yesterday. We had some of the same interests outside music – we both loved riding and ice-skating and cartoons. I suppose I was beginning to realise that I was never going to be a great concert pianist. That being the star of your local high school doesn’t launch you onto that kind of career. I knew that Berenice was different. To be frank I’m surprised she hasn’t gone even further than she has, though I know she always said that she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice any semblance of a family life or preserving some privacy to her musical career. And she was always so respectful to her accompanist, appreciated them. I was thrilled to hear she was coming to play a concert here, and I have tickets.”

     “Then it’s a shame you won’t be able to hear the concert, thanks to my idiocy,” Jeanette muttered.

     “If you were one of my little pupils,” Irene said, not entirely mock stern, “Then I would remind you of that song they all want to learn to play, Let it Go. But letting things go isn’t easy, especially when it seems like the consequences are still sitting on your shoulder. I could have a word with Berenice. I’d like to take this as a chance to rekindle our friendship anyway, and I think I know her well enough and she knows me well enough, after all these years, to know I’m not interested in reflected glory, though I won’t deny I’m proud of her friendship.”

     “That would be kind,” Jeanette said, as if providing the expected reply to a prompt.

     “We all like to try to turn the clock back a bit….”

     “I wish I could!”

     “Jeanette, if you persist with this, I will not only play Let it Go over and over, I will also sing it, and trust me, to say my voice isn’t on a par with Berenice’s is the understatement of the year. Of course you can’t turn the clock back. But there are skills you don’t lose, you know. I love teaching, and it’s brought me great joy. But don’t run away with the idea that I’ve lost my love of music. And I still make demands on myself, too. I have most of my old music from college days, and have bought some new stuff, too. This is going to sound incredibly egotistical, but even if you hadn’t – exaggerated your skill levels somewhat…..”

     No, that’s the understatement of the year, thought Irene, but this time she didn’t interrupt.

     “Then you must admit it would make far better local headlines and give more of that famous warm glow if the famous mezzo-soprano was reunited with her old college friend for her home-town performance.”

    Jeanette wouldn’t have believed it was possible to physically feel a burden lifting, but she did. All at once that light at the end of the tunnel presented the possibility it just might not be the headlights of the onrushing train. She didn’t deserve it, of course. But she still grabbed it with both hands.

     The concert was a huge success. Jeanette felt a terrible hypocrite when Howard said, “No disrespect, and I know you must have been looking forward to this, but Irene accompanying her, and then the two of them telling tales of their student days afterwards – it was wonderful!”

     A better person than I am would make a full and frank confession here, thought Jeanette, but she did not. She also realised that though she had been given the most massive get out of jail card, she was still very much on parole. Her piano playing skills could well be called on again.

     But that was by no means the only reason she carried on with her lessons and felt a deep thrill of joy when she realised that she actually could play some, if not all of the repertoire that she could never have played before!