D = Chapter three

THE PIANO TEACER
Chapter three

As the pattern of weekly piano lessons settled in, a fond familiarity
developed between pupil and teacher. Like the day when Denise had just
arrived for her piano lesson and, as frequently happened in the
neighbouring house, they could hear the woman was yelling again:

"Just look at that floor! You're hopeless. Just like a homosexual in a
brothel. Just like my mother said. You're hopeless. Get out!"

Elsie had been particularly ferocious all afternoon. Her husband Ronnie
muttered and shuffled about, his protestations parried, as ever, by a
barrage of manic outpourings. No wonder he had a tankard reserved at
the local pub on the corner. No wonder he currently resembled nothing
more than a scarecrow. No piece of tatty clothing was quite in place on
his body and nothing was ever properly done up. For Ronnie, items of
clothing were always hurriedly snatched around his scrawny frame. This
was mainly on account of a nervous disposition and being trapped in a
perpetual state of haste to escape another of his wife's chastisements
for some further incomprehensible fault. Not that he had felt any
reason care about his appearance since his marriage. In fact, he took a
little perverse pleasure in the aggravation that his wife felt over the
issue of this scruffiness.
Ronnie's lifeblood was his pint or two, or three, or four, of the
Landlord's Best, which he would sieve up through his now abundant
facial hairy forest.

"Just look at you. You're a disgrace. No wonder you couldn't get into
the Air Force," his wife screamed one day out of the blue, just as he
had put a piece of toast to his mouth.

Bewildered, he tried to think whenever it was that he had applied to
enter this profession of heroes and failed. He had actually spent his
working life as a postman and had often felt that to be heroic enough
on those chilly, drizzly-heading-for-downpour, early mornings. Large
dogs snapped his fingers at letterboxes or pounded proprietorially down
garden paths to greet him. Yorkies terrorised his ankles. For Ronnie,
being a postman though had two advantages:

1.) The early rising got him away from his wife before she woke
up.

2.) He could return at midday with small snatches of local news and
gossip, to assuage his Queen Bee's ravenous appetite for other people's
business and especially their troubles.

Once delivered, this affected a mellowness in her and he could doze off
for an hour or two. Thus peace would briefly hover, until, of course,
her restlessness set in again and she judged that it was time for him
to get on with something from her infinite list of pressing
tasks.

"The Hoover needs mending"

"The back gate creaks"

etc.etc....etc... "Yes Elsie".......

Edward Stenton very much regretted the arrival of these neighbours so
shortly after he had found a refuge. A vacant house next door had borne
hope of the possibility of a younger and happier family, of some small
role for him in welcoming them and offering them some simple
hospitality. Instead, these folk were to be avoided like the plague.
She had a horrible intrusive style about her and he soon suspected her
of peeking through the fence at him. So, under the guise of creosoting
it, he mended all the holes meticulously and planted Virginia Creepers
to engulf this possibility. He soon concluded she was insane and that
the husband was beyond hope, so retreated into the refuge of his own
homestead.

"Denise. Come in quickly dear, she's peeking from that upstairs window
again. Let's not linger," he would say when she arrived for her piano
lessons, and they would dash inside and indulge in a fancy at what the
ghastly neighbour would be dreaming up about them.

"I think that you're my brother's love child, from his time in
Indonesia. Your mother died in a suicide bombing and you've come to
deliver the microfilm for decoding. The piano teaching is just a
front."

"No, no, no. You're my old school teacher and we had an inappropriate
relationship when I was twelve. I am here to tell you that my father
has found out and will shortly be arriving in his Rolls Royce, with two
of his henchmen, Goth and Darius".

"Darius! Why Darius?"

"I don't know," Denise responded, laughing.

Next door, Elsie of course had her ear glued to the kitchen wall and,
with only the faintest of sounds filtering through that all too solid
brickwork, she was running her own formulation of events:

"I can hear them at it again. He's put his record player on and now
they're at it like dogs."

Ronnie sighed.

"I don't think so dear. He's her piano teacher."

"Rubbish! He used to work for the CIA."

Scruffy Ronnie French and his manic wife Elsie, sit glaring at each
other across their kitchen, as the sun goes down and next door after
another magical hour, Denise takes her leave of her dear friend.

"Next Tuesday then."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

"I dream of him touching me. He is a ghostly apparition. I am not
afraid even though he has become physically insubstantial to me. In
order to comfort me he flows around me. His touch procures such
pleasurable chills that I am quivering for him. It is strange to say
that his death has opened this possibility of a new, intimate freedom
between us, which in life a necessary carefulness in our friendship had
placed out of bounds. For instance, when we sat and listened to bird
song in his garden, he would reach out to hold my hand. This was for me
a thrilling moment. I could never expect to intrude upon this
fragility. Now, however, with the physical loss of him I have burst
into a passionate bloom."

to be continued.................