by Stephen Orr
William entered the music suite and climbed the stairs to his teaching room. His first student was already waiting. ‘G’day, Charlie.’
‘Sir,’ the boy replied, catching his teacher’s eye then looking away.
‘Been waiting long?’
‘A few minutes.’
William entered the room and switched on the light. The fluoro flickered and then came to life. That was the Lindisfarne way—things working despite age, ability or lack of maintenance. Like most of the teachers—grey-bearded, nasal-haired men with their own body odour issues. Yes, they all knew their stuff—got their boys through with near-perfect scores—but whenever you turned them on they always flickered. Lindisfarne teachers always had at least one button missing from their shirt. Some had descended to picking their nose in class.
‘Sit down, Charlie,’ William said, pulling up a chair for the boy. ‘I’m late. Am I late?’
‘No, I’m early.’
‘Good. Should we start with some scales?’
Charlie took his acoustic guitar from its case as William spread the sheet music on a stand. ‘How did you go?’ he asked.
Charlie bit his lip. ‘Okay, I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘It’s just remembering.’
‘Well, let’s see. Sit up straight.’
Charlie straightened his back, looked at the music then slouched again.
‘Straight,’ William repeated. He stood, came around behind the boy and pulled his shoulders back. ‘Like that. Can you stay like that?’
‘I guess.’
‘How tall are you?’
‘Taller than my dad.’
‘That’s not a height. You must be five eight. You’re gonna have to put your shoulders back.’ He continued applying pressure. ‘Can you keep them there?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I let go?’
‘Yes.’
William let go and Charlie held himself straight. ‘I can’t do this and play.’
‘Try.’
William sat down and the boy began. He started on a low E and made his way up the fretboard. William watched his fingers: long digits covered in sun-bleached skin. Knuckle-bound fingers—clumsy, craving precision—stretching and twisting up a path of semitones.
William was consumed by the small, simple movements. He slipped in and out of this hypnosis, trying to make a remark, but failing. He wasn’t really listening or watching. His eyes moved onto the boy’s long and slender arms. Awkward, bent up at improbable angles—marionette limbs, bouncing about in defiance of music. ‘Good,’ he said, coming out of his trance. ‘But you’ve slouched again.’
‘You never see Chris Shiflett standing like that.’
‘He doesn’t need to. He’s got millions.’
‘I don’t want to be classical.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘I’m not interested in Mozart.’
‘Listen, Charlie Price, I’m getting paid to teach you good habits. All of the Kurt Cobain stuff, and the wanky solos, that comes later.’
Charlie had a broad smile across his face. ‘I didn’t say I wanted to be Kurt Cobain.’
‘It was just a wild guess.’
‘I just want to be a good guitarist.’
‘Well, sit up then.’
Charlie straightened, and then slouched. ‘What?’
‘Christ.’ William knew there was no point pursuing posture. It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t agree, he just didn’t care enough. His mind couldn’t make the connection between a straight back and a blues riff. William understood. He’d once been fourteen years old. He could remember not seeing the point of folding and putting away clothes he’d be wearing the next day. Of hanging up towels that dried just as well on the floor. Of having to tell his parents about the book he was reading when they didn’t read (or seem to care about) books.
‘I tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘You wanna be a star, you learn how to write a good song.’
‘I can.’ Charlie took out his iPhone. He offered William an earpiece and took one for himself. He pressed play and they listened. It was solid, grunting, granny-flat rock—Charlie and two mates—guitar, drums, bass and vocals. The song described how love made you feel when it’s hot, when it’s cold, when you’re down, when you’re happy, when you’ve had enough. There was barely a riff that hadn’t been stolen, a chord progression borrowed or lyric reworked. Charlie was still blue without you, suffering without his lover (like no other) and searching for a way to fix this thing that’s torn us apart. Despite this, the song worked. It was fresh, catchy, in-your-face, smelling of Rite Price teen spirit.
He stretched back in his seat, tapped his feet, stare at the wall and smiled.
William could see how tall he really was. It was as though his legs had been stretched by some device. They were more scaffold than limb, clamped at the knees, narrowing into wishbone ankles that somehow supported his whole body. He studied his face. His pine-blond hair, twisted into small dreadlocks (yes, there’d been a letter home, but it was still in his school bag); a refined nose, ending in a chiselled tip, flat, broad cheeks and blue eyes that were hidden, curious, peeping out through slits like gun emplacements.
Charlie looked at him. William closed his mouth, removed the earpiece and said, ‘Not bad.’
‘Not bad?’
‘It’s fine … it’s got quite a catchy chorus.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes, keep at it. You fellas played anywhere yet?’
‘Just my living room, when Dad’s at work. Mr Ordon lets us have a room at lunch sometimes. If the Glee Club’s not singing.’
William was caught up in the boy’s eyes. ‘That’d be your thing, wouldn’t it?’
‘Doris Day.’
‘You wouldn’t know who she was.’
‘On Moonlight Bay.’ Screwing up his nose.
A week later William was back outside the Lindisfarne College music suite. He looked at the whitewashed walls, the tinted windows and brass plaques to honour former music masters. He didn’t know why this annoyed the hell out of him, but it annoyed the hell out of him. Wasn’t music meant to be risky? Wasn’t it meant to say something? Didn’t it have the job, like books and poems and paintings, to question? So why the obsession with Beatles medleys, ‘My, my, My, Delilah’ and ABBA tributes? Was it that music, and what he was meant to pass on, had become so much wallpaper? Admired, and made, by the ordinary? And if so, where did that leave him? A perfectly respectable Sid Vicious.
‘Dutton!’
Pete Ordon, Lindisfarne’s head of music, approached him from behind and held his shoulder. ‘How are you, Jimi?’
‘Good,’ William replied, pointing to a pair of school-blazered, saxophone-playing teddy bears in the window. ‘Your idea?’
‘One of the mums—she hand-sewed the blazers.’
‘Desperate housewife.’
‘You should go clean her pool.’
‘I’d rather fuck a donkey.’ He visualised a Volvo mum waiting outside a classroom, trying to catch a glimpse of something else to complain about. ‘We should make them do something useful.’
Pete knew when William was getting started. He didn’t have the time or inclination to listen, so he asked, ‘How are your students going?’
‘Fine. Usual bunch of little rock stars.’
The stocky teacher smoothed the greying hair on the sides of his head and grinned. ‘Well, you’re just the one. What’s your group called?’
‘Nimrod’s Cat.’
‘Very eighties.’
‘That’s how long we’ve been playing.’
Pete loosened his tie and said, ‘Don’t give up … any day now.’
‘Fuck off, no one’s paying you to compose symphonies.’
‘No one listens to symphonies any more.’
William smiled. ‘That’s okay then. Sit back and teach. Whatever happened to that string quartet you had performed?’
‘It was recorded, and cop
ies distributed.’
‘What, ten, twelve?’
‘Three hundred. What about Nixon’s Cat?’
‘Nimrod’s. You’d be surprised.’
Pete started to go but then stopped. ‘I meant to ask if we have any decent guitarists this year?’
William visualised the faces—the sweaty brows and big ears, the pimples, the peach fuzz and clumsy fingers. ‘Little wog called Alessio … Scuzzi, Scuzzioso, something. Very classical. Straight back. Bought himself a foot stand.’
‘Good.’
‘And Charlie Price, you know him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great kid. Very serious. Works his arse off.’
William could hear himself saying it, but didn’t quite believe it. Charlie was an average student, not the type who could sight-read a new piece. William could see himself in Charlie—all of the desire, the rock’n’roll fantasies, the smashed guitars (he couldn’t really afford to smash) and witty replies at the press conferences he held in his head—but whether he had the determination, stamina or talent to achieve anything of this remained to be seen.
‘Do you get much out of him?’ Pete asked.
‘Well, he’s a nice enough kid.’
‘I had him last year. Shy as all hell. Reckon I got three words out of him all year.’
‘Really? He talks to me.’
‘Good, he must like your lessons. Not that he’s unpopular. All the other boys flock around him—you know, being athletic. But he never seems that interested in them. Often see him in the library sitting by himself, reading.’
William thought this was strange. ‘Some of them mature earlier.’
‘I suppose. His mother died of cancer a few years back. I remember them having a service in the chapel. The whole junior school was there. Charles was in the front row with his mates, and his dad, and I thought it was strange how he just stared at the ground the whole time.’
‘That explains it, eh?’
‘What?’ As he remembered conducting the choir at the service, looking around and noticing Charlie. He could still see his feet, turned in at an angle, and his hands in his pockets. Could remember talking to him afterwards, and not knowing what to say. ‘Charlie, we’re all here for you,’ he’d managed, holding his shoulder and smiling at his father, Damien.
William waited. ‘Well, that’s handy to know, eh?’
The music department secretary stuck her head outside the door. ‘Pete, parent on the phone.’
‘Tell ’em to fuck off.’
She wasn’t happy.
‘Coming.’
And he was gone—past the school crest on the wall, the coat-of-arms acid-etched into the glass doors and a young boy waiting with his saxophone. ‘Mr Ordon swore.’
William took a step towards him and said, ‘Keep it to yourself, he’s under a lot of stress.’
He started his day with Alessio, who explained how he’d been studying a video of Segovia and wanted to learn to play in the same manner—the runs, the fingerpicking, the dancing fingers and light touch.
‘As I say to everyone,’ William explained, ‘it all comes back to scales.’
‘I know as far as F sharp.’
‘How much practice do you do?’
‘Three hours a night.’
William knew it couldn’t be true. Three hours would produce a half-decent ‘Cavatina’. But here was a small, stove-shaped Italian who could barely produce an in-tune ‘Three Blind Mice’. ‘Three hours?’
‘Yes.’
There was no point arguing. He’d only tell his mum and then she’d be on the phone blaming him for her son’s lack of Segovia-like attributes.
After Alessio there were another three beginners, and an hour and a half of clock watching and wandering thoughts. At one point he saw himself standing up, walking from the room and strolling across the Lindisfarne lawns. He could see himself sitting under a pine tree, lighting a cigarette and stretching out on the soft grass, covering his face with a cap and cursing the armless Virgin. The city skyline tasted of Turkish coffee, garlic sauce and cold beer. But then he opened his eyes and saw ten stumpy fingers murdering ‘Yesterday’.
A simple melody, he thought. How can you get it wrong?
‘No,’ he said to the boy, moving his fingers. ‘Up close, behind the fret.’
But then, his last lesson before lunch, he looked up to see Charlie standing in the doorway. He stood to greet him. ‘Come in, Charlie, sit down.’
William pulled out a chair and they both sat. As Charlie unpacked his guitar he flicked through the boy’s music folder with refreshed eyes. ‘So, how did you go?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
‘You’re still guessing?’
‘The more you do it the worse it sounds.’
William held up a finger. ‘That’s a good sign—repetition. That’s how you learnt your times tables, wasn’t it?’
‘And Hail Mary, and Our Father. They’re more interested in that crap here. Sorry, you’re not Catholic?’
‘It might come in useful one day.’
‘When?’
‘When you’re on your deathbed.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Tables’d do me more good.’
‘Okay, let’s hear you then.’
Charlie looked at the music, squinted, adjusted his guitar and positioned his fingers.
‘Watch the music, not your fingers,’ William said.
‘Then I won’t be able to play.’
‘Try.’
He started with a G major scale. As he played he bit his bottom lip, pushed his tongue against the inside of his mouth, fumbled, stopped and looked at William apologetically, then kept on slowly and carefully as he moved up the fretboard.
William was studying his face.
Cancer, he wanted to say. That must have been hard.
I guess, he could hear, as a reply.
Do you miss her, he imagined saying, but this time there would be no reply, as the boy looked down at the ground, and shrugged.
Instead he said, ‘Excellent. You seem to have the pattern. Keep it up. Use it as a warm-up. I know you’d rather be playing “Smoke on the Water”, but any idiot can do that stuff. Now, your pieces.’
Charlie continued. William looked at his tightly twisted dreadlocks. ‘I like your hair,’ he heard himself saying.
Charlie stopped, surprised. ‘My sister does it. She’s a hairdresser. I can ask her to do yours if you like.’
‘No, I can’t see it. I had a mullet at one stage, a permed mullet, but that was before you were born.’
Charlie was smiling, and William felt he had to keep going. ‘My mate’s girlfriend was training to be a stylist, so.’
Charlie screwed up his nose. ‘You, with a perm?’
‘They were strange times.’
‘You’d look good with dreads. She wouldn’t charge.’
William could feel himself approaching the line, and watching and listening to what was on the other side. He could smell youth, and fear, and the excitement of everything for the first time. He could hear a buzzing guitar, and flat notes, and felt the vibrations through his fingers and toes. Staring into Charlie’s eyes, he wondered what to say. At last he managed, ‘You should come and play a few numbers with my band.’
‘That’d be great. I’d love that. What sort of things do you play?’
‘Mostly original. A bit of distortion, a bit of attitude. You know, Iggy Pop?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’re a little bit punk.’
‘Fuck, that’s what I want to play.’
William just smiled.
‘I better not say that, eh?’
‘Just make sure no one’s listening.’ And then, continuing to forget he was a teacher, he showed Charlie a few blues patterns he could play for solos.
Charlie had also forgotten it was a lesson. This was black and sticky, and rock’n’roll; it was a recording studio at three in the morning, a hotel room, a front bar—anywhere but school. He wa
s no longer sitting beside his teacher. It was someone else all together. As he practised the box pattern, bending notes, hearing real attitude coming from his fingers for the first time—he forgot everything.
He was no longer wearing a uniform, a tie. He’d moved beyond linear equations and yard cards into a world of his own devising. There were no rules, no paths to stay on, no tenses to stick to—just a string of unremarkable sounds that followed each other into melody. He had no control over them. They seemed to have their own life. They sang—ranging high and low, groaning, fading. This was a lesson that couldn’t be taught. ‘It’s so simple, but it sounds so good.’
‘Exactly. It’s the blues—poor man’s music.’
And he was back on the strings, obsessing.
William looked at the clock and noticed they’d gone fifteen minutes into lunch. Still, he didn’t say a word. He played some chords and Charlie improvised over them. Half an hour later the lunch bell sounded and he said, ‘Okay, that’s it. I think we lost track of time.’
‘Who cares?’ Sliding his guitar into its case.
‘Your mum might.’ Realising his mistake. ‘Or your dad.’
‘He wouldn’t care.’
‘Yes, he would.’
But Charlie just looked at him and shook his head. ‘Next Thursday?’
William extended his hand and Charlie shook it. ‘Rock’n’ roll.’
‘Fuckin’ eh,’ the boy replied, grinning.
‘It’s just unlike you,’ Damien Price said to his son, as they sat opposite each other in their living room.
‘I didn’t realise the time.’
‘Well, he should’ve.’
Charlie had no reply. He just sat back with his feet on an old coffee table, staring at another dumb game show. At fourteen he’d already worked out that most people were stupid. Magazines provided ample proof: baby bumps, Malibu mansions and a thousand Barbie dolls lip-syncing their way through life. That wasn’t the worst of it. At least they’d found a way of making money. It was the morons who paid to read about it. And here, more peanuts jumping around on the telly.
He watched the audience encourage the contestant. Yes, this is why there’s rock’n’roll, he guessed. In the absence of revolution, anarchy or sensible people running things, a guitar, bass and drums would have to do.
‘Tell him to sort it,’ Damien Price said, picking a crumb from the corner of his mouth.