I longed to be able to play the piano like Russ Conway, or
like my father’s friend, Joe who often played the old upright at the far end of
the vault in the pub we had at the time. I pestered long and hard, until at
around age seven I could just about stretch my hand to nearly an octave which
meant that I was ready to have lessons. Learning didn’t come easy. I disliked
the teacher, for one thing, and the smells in what I eventually called that
house of horrors. Escape came in the form of a house move, well, pub move, to a
tiny place near Glossop, Derbyshire. My piano lessons continued with a local
teacher. He made it fun, we got along and I did well. Then came another move.
Back to Blackpool, different pub, on the promenade this time and it was
wonderful. Dad thought I’d be pleased that he’d arranged my piano lessons with
my first teacher.
I began to dread Saturday mornings. My lesson was at twelve
o’clock. I never mentioned it in the hope that my parents would forget and it
would be too late to go, but that didn’t happen. I was at secondary school by
now. I had tried to suggest that I gave it up, but I was never able to fully explain
why I wanted to and my pleas landed on deaf ears.
I don’t know whether my father took me to my lessons too
early, or if the teacher was running late with the pupil before me, but I spent
a lot of time waiting in the horrible sitting room with the hideous grandfather
clock. The room was dingy, crammed with dark furniture and smelled of polish
mixed with whatever was cooking for dinner wafting through from the kitchen.
The clock had a deep, hollow tick-tock and mechanical whirring sound just
before a loud chime every quarter of an hour. It was huge and took up the whole
corner of the room, like it had been squashed in next to the ancient bookcase.
There were some strange books in there. Sometimes I’d look at the fascinating
drawings of the human reproductive organs I’d found in a medical dictionary. I
would rush to stuff it back in the right place when the silence of the upstairs
piano signified the end of the lesson before mine.
It would leave the noisy rhythm of the grandfather clock and
climb the creaky staircase to the small room at the front of the house. There
was a desk in the window where the teacher would sit, barking out orders and
sending out puffs of stinking cigar smoke that filled the air and sometimes
made me feel dizzy. I would place myself on the piano stool in front of the
upright piano, set my music out, sit up straight and wait to be told to start.
I hoped he would stay at his desk but he didn’t. He would lean over me to
scribble a direction on my music and I would hold my breath. I didn’t want to
breathe in his horrid cigar smoke and I was bracing myself for his fat hand on
my shoulder.
Every tick and tock in that old-fashioned sitting room
filled me with immense dread of going upstairs. I was never able to share my
worries. I thought my parents would think I was imagining things or
exaggerating.
In Haworth Parsonage there is a beautiful grandfather clock
on the half-landing. I can’t bring
myself to take much notice of it, except to wonder if it is the same one that
Rev. Patrick Bronte used to wind up every day.
I found this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem,
The Old Clock
on the Stairs
Somewhat back
from the village street
Stands the
old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its
antique portico
Tall
poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its
station in the hall
An ancient
timepiece says to all, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
Half-way up the
stairs it stands,
And points and
beckons with its hands
From its case
of massive oak,
Like a monk,
who, under his cloak,
Crosses
himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful
voice to all who pass, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
By day its
voice is low and light;
But in the
silent dead of night,
Distinct as a
passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along
the vacant hall,
Along the
ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to
say, at each chamber-door, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
Through days of
sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of
death and days of birth,
Through every
swift vicissitude
Of changeful
time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like
God, it all things saw,
It calmly
repeats those words of awe, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
In that mansion
used to be
Free-hearted
Hospitality;
His great fires
up the chimney roared;
The stranger
feasted at his board;
But, like the
skeleton at the feast,
That warning
timepiece never ceased, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
There groups of
merry children played,
There youths
and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious
hours! O golden prime,
And affluence
of love and time!
Even as a miser
counts his gold,
Those hours the
ancient timepiece told, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
From that
chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came
forth on her wedding night;
There, in that
silent room below,
The dead lay in
his shroud of snow;
And in the hush
that followed the prayer,
Was heard the
old clock on the stair, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
All are
scattered now and fled,
Some are
married, some are dead;
And when I ask,
with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when
shall they all meet again?"
As in the days
long since gone by,
The ancient
timepiece makes reply, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
Never here,
forever there,
Where all
parting, pain, and care,
And death, and
time shall disappear, —
Forever there,
but never here!
The horologe of
Eternity
Sayeth this
incessantly, —
"Forever
— never!
Never
— forever!"
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow 1807-1882
