The Music Room

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Book excerpt

Chapter One - Apprentice Days 

I was soon to be fifteen. I carried fantastic stories in my head. I held off the future dreaming of adventures in the Baltic Lands, imagined myself there fighting with Scots knights and mercenaries in the German service. And when I grew tired of that, I saw myself a Bronco Warrior, on the run with the last of the fighting Chiricahua. I was bored, but resigned to putting in the time until June. I wanted to be anywhere but St Mary’s School. I dreaded what lay ahead when I left school: I wasn’t going on the Baltic Crusade, or preparing to ambush the Cavalry; I was going down to Reid’s foundry, a dirty noisy place where they built diesel engines for ships.

St Mary’s was a school for boys, but on Sunday mornings at Mass I stared at the plump freckled girls. That helped shut out the soporific voice of the priest. Unexpectedly my life changed when I saw the new music teacher.

January 1954; the day school started after the Christmas holidays, the door of the music room clicked open and a lovely young woman came in. Her name was Isobel Clieshman. She was Springtime. I reckoned she was about twenty-three. She was lovelier than Hedy Lamarr or Joan Leslie, film stars I’d a crush on. Isobel Clieshman was real, and I wanted her to speak to me, but I’d have died had she. I felt so tender towards her; and guilty at the bulge in my pants.

There was hesitance in her walk; a movement of her sad eyes around the room. A look of regret that she had finished up in St Mary’s and not some nice middle-class school in Glasgow.

To my class, she was ‘The Proddy music teacher.’ The verdict was ‘Nae fuckin’ tits.’ For the wretched boys of St Mary’s the pinnacle of female beauty was a fat arse and big knockers; a waspy belt pulled tight at the waist to give an hourglass shape. The boys lusted after Miss O’Hagen, a raven haired woman, run to fat. In her science class she talked about the body. She invited a boy to feel the pulse at her wrist; then squeezed her tit.

“The pulse beats in time to my heart.”

The boys loved it. I was glad I had Isobel Clieshman all to myself.

I adored the delicate points of her small breasts, the long slender legs. She arrived at the untidy time of school life, the end of Fourth Year. We loafed at our desks, idle, and impatient to be away from St Mary’s. The music teacher was so different from the young Catholic teaching assistants, faces scrubbed pink, fresh from convent training where the nuns had wasted their heads with stories of Baby Jesus, The Blessed Virgin, and All the Saints. Miss Clieshman stood out from the sober female teachers shrouded in thick wool twin sets, tweed skirts, and sensible shoes.

I wondered what malfunction of fate had brought Isobel Clieshman to St Mary’s. It was a bleak Catholic Technical School existing to feed boys to the doomed shipyards, foundries, and sugar refineries of the town. Sometimes she seemed so lonely, staring into space. I called her Cliesh and she belonged to me.

Most of the teachers in St Mary’s looked down on the pupils. But from the start Cliesh showed an interest in us. In those few months, she taught us that there was more to music than bawling out hymns and sea shanties. We were surprised when she asked us to bring our records from home. Cliesh wanted to know where we’d bought them, and we told her about Saturday afternoons searching for bargains.

Someone handed over a record of Cauliga by Hank Williams and the class sang along with it

“Cauliga was a wooden Indian standing by the door ...” It was good fun.

“Did anyone else bring a record?” Cliesh said.

I’d got to the point where I had to do something or go mad. Cliesh displaced my dreaming of Baltic Crusades and Chiricahua life on the frontier.

The evening before the music class searching for courage I’d walked The Cut, an aqueduct inserted on the hills above the town. I meant to lay my heart bare and to Hell with the taunts of the class hard men that I was nuts and sucking up; or the possibility that Cliesh might reprimand me, then have James Malone thrash me for impertinence. It was crazy one way love.

I stuck up my hand; a smart arse. ”Bessie Smith, Miss.”

She listened to the introduction of Careless Love; it was an old record, the lyric muffled. Cliesh caught the tune on the piano.

“Tim Ronsard, will you sing?”

“Yes, Miss.”

The hard men tittered.

She played; I sang, voice pure.

“Love, oh love, oh careless love,

You fly to my head like wine,

You’ve ruined the life of many a poor man, and you nearly wrecked this life of mine...

Night and day I weep and moan...”

Cliesh fluffed a chord change and stopped the gramophone. She handed me the record, “Thank you, Tim. You’ve all been very good.”

I caught her eye and she turned away. Cliesh dismissed the class a few minutes early.

The next class Cliesh played the orchestral suite from Carmen and The Flying Dutchman on the gramophone. She barely looked at me. Then she played a selection from the Siegfried Idyll on the piano; I had to look away.

She asked me to stay behind after class and put away the gramophone. I didn’t want to leave. “I’ll clean the black board, Miss?”

“All right.”

I cleaned the blackboard slowly, perfectly.

“Where is your surname from, Tim?”

“Donegal, Miss.”

“You’ve heard of Ronsard?”

“No, Miss.”

“He was a French poet. Did you know your name was French?”

“No, Miss.”

We stood at her desk close to the piano. She wore a finely tailored jacket and matching skirt of soft heather and mustard wool; a white silk blouse tied at the neck with a loose cascading bow. She glided across the floor, slender legs in sheer stockings, elegantly shod. That day her lips were red and full, eyes heightened with touches of blue, the eyelashes long, and black.

Cliesh told me about the French who’d fought with the Irish rebels against the English in the Rising of ‘98. The ships of the French Navy that landed General Humbert’s Black Legion. After parole and repatriation some of the French stayed on.

“Perhaps you’re a descendant of a Naval Officer, or a legionnaire.”

“Oh, I wish that was true, Miss.”

Cliesh smiled. She’d made me proud of my name.

I was stiff with desire after being so near her. I ran into the yard, ready for home. I was ambushed by the class hard men: McAllister, Burns and Montague. McAllister grabbed my shirtfront, his face close.

“Whit the fuck dae ye want wi’ tha’ Proddy bastard?”

His teeth had green stains and his breath stank; his neck around the shirt collar was stained with tide marks. McAllister grabbed hard between my legs “Ah! Ronsard wants tae hump the Proddy. Cunt’s got a fuckin’ hard on; an’ her wi nae tits.”

I pushed McAllister away. Burns came forward.

“Ronsard; whit kin’ a fuckin’ name is that? Cunt’s a swank; ‘mon we’ll gie him a right fuckin’ kickin’.”

There was a scuffle. Montague pushed me to the ground. James Malone, Depute Headmaster, stopped us and sent me to clean up. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said.

I heard the drag of leather on cotton as Malone drew his Loch Gelly tawse hidden under the left shoulder of his jacket. The tawse: a quarter inch thick leather strap, two inches wide, and two tongues. Malone’s was pliant and oily-soft from over-use. Leather cut air as he made a practice swing.

“Right, McAllister. Hands up. You’re a waster, boy. You’ll be in gaol soon.”

I got away before Malone changed his mind and decided to thrash me too. I knew the drill. McAllister, hands crossed, right hand uppermost, waiting. The smack of leather on flesh as Malone gave him ‘Six of the Best.’ Pupils had a choice. They could take it on one hand; after three blows, change to left hand. McAllister’s hands would be numb and useless for a couple of hours. The palms beaten raw, a spider web of blood blisters spreading across his wrists. I’d no time for McAllister and his mates. They were thugs, but I hated Malone when he punished pupils.

I hid in the School Library. I’d a key given me by James Malone when he asked me to run it. I locked the door, unlocked the kitchen to the rear of the library washing the drying blood from my face, nursing my black eye, and bruised lip. I shouldn’t have been there so late on Friday afternoon.

Footsteps thudded on the wooden stairs. The heavy tread of a man, the fluttering clicks of a woman’s heels as she tried to keep up. The door to the library opened, I heard James Malone’s voice and he had Cliesh with him. I eased the kitchen door open. James Malone, back to me, spread his arms.

“Come in, Miss Clieshman. You have not seen our room full of books.”

James Malone was a tough little man. He’d been under twenty when he won the Military Medal in France in the last month of the Great War. When he left the Army James Malone went to Glasgow University, winning a Double First in English and History. He dedicated his life to teaching. He was the cleverest teacher. A few of the staff respected him; many were in awe of him: the pupils feared him.

“Are you settling in?” James Malone said.

“Oh yes! I think so,” Cliesh said.

“Good. We have a library, and, at long last, a music teacher.”

Malone knew everything about St Mary’s. He managed the school, patrolling the buildings and the grounds, gauging the mood of staff and pupils. He taught English and History. In the classroom, I often forgot that I feared him.

Before Cliesh came to the school, only James Malone showed any interest in us. His teaching was inspiring. He knew that a small group of Fourth-Year boys went to the cinema, and he would ask us about the films. Then he opened the door to the past. James Malone used The Grapes of Wrath to discuss the Great Depression, the New Deal, and American entry to the Second World War. When he knew that we’d just seen a Western, he’d describe the Frontier and Manifest Destiny. A dire film about Robin Hood and he told us about The Crusades and the peripatetic Scots knights and mercenaries hiring their swords to the Germans in the Baltic lands. I loved every minute of it.

“How is Fourth year doing?” Malone said. “It’s a pity we do not have more time with them. They leave us when they are fifteen.”

“Yes, it’s sad,” Cliesh said. They leave so young.”

“Ronsard looks after the library. I trust him. Last year he ran off all the exam papers for the school on the Gestetner.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s fond of you, and when he sees you he’s glad and embarrassed. But he’s just a boy; when he can’t see you, he’s miserable.”

“Just what do you mean, Mr Malone?”

I cringed; there was a lump in my throat. My stomach shrank and the sweating started. I’d got her on James Malone’s wrong side. Cliesh would hate me.

“Ah, Miss Clieshman. Don’t be angry. You behave impeccably. It’s hard for you, not among your own kind, and living away from home.”

“Will that be all, Mr Malone?”

“No, Miss Clieshman. I worked to bring you to St Mary’s and I’d like you to stay. Not everyone in the school approves of a Protestant teacher; they’d have you removed.”

“I see.”

I wanted to strangle the teachers who hated Cliesh.

“Stay a moment. Ronsard has an injured face. Don’t ask him what happened.”

I wanted James Malone to shut up.

“Was he fighting; is he all right?”

“Yes, but feeling sorry for himself.”

“What happened?”

“He objected to rude remarks the class hard men made about you. They attacked him. He blacked an eye and split a lip before he was knocked to the ground. That’s when I stopped them.”

“That’s awful, Mr Malone.”

“Miss Clieshman, the Age of Chivalry is not dead. It lives on in Young Ronsard; you must give him your beautiful silk scarf and tie it to the strap of his satchel. He is Your Champion.”

James Malone stifled a chuckle. It was hard to listen to him and Cliesh. The back of my shirt was wet. I blushed, face burning; felt a fool. My heart raced and thumped in my ears like a cannon on automatic. Cliesh and James Malone must hear it. I didn’t give a shit about Malone, but how could I face Cliesh after this?

I stayed in the kitchen for another half hour to be sure they’d left the school. There would be trouble when my mother saw I’d been fighting. I walked home with an aching face and a sore heart.

The headmaster invited Cliesh to form a small choir to sing at the prize giving. I joined along with a few others. The weeks until the summer break merged as we rehearsed. The choir met most days and on some Sundays. I wanted to sing for her and see her.

Cliesh changed with the season. Summer was the time of her opening. She wore light dresses of delicate red and yellow, her hair flowing as she let it down, or, bound loosely with a wisp of silk. She was at ease, her features gentle and beautiful. It was joy to be near her.

Loving Cliesh made me careless. I dreamt about her every day. I was idle in the woodwork class, toying for weeks making a wooden crucifix, staring into space, and thinking about the clothes Cliesh wore, the tailored jackets and skirts, the sheer stockings, her shapely legs, and the elegant shoes, I went into forbidden territory and thought about her delicate breasts and more. Lust blotted out guilt.

A hard hand hit me twice on the back of the head.

“You’re useless, Ronsard,” the woodwork teacher said. “Plain lazy. Hands up.”

The bastard gave me six of the best with his Loch Gelly. My hands were raw and numb. He wanted me to cry, but I kept staring at him, thinking fuck you.

“Get out of my sight,” he said.

I walked home, suffering for love nursing my sore hands, rubbing life into numb fingers, bruised palms and wrists, whispering “I did this for her.” I was crazy.

I sat at the kitchen table and wrote Cliesh in Gothic letters in my notebook. I drew a heart round her name, and pierced it with arrows. My mother picked up the notebook and shook her head.

“Who’s that? I hope she’s a Catholic. You’re a soft lump, Tim Ronsard. You see and behave your self.”

I tried not to think of leaving school at the end of June. I devoted myself to rehearsals.

The audience liked the songs. The enthusiasm for Handel’s Where’re you Walk was unexpected. Everyone loved I Met Her In The Garden Where The Praties Grow. The chorus stayed with me.

She was just the sort of creature, boys,

That nature did intend

To walk right through the world, me boys,

Without a Grecian Bend.

Nor did she wear a chignon,

I’d have you all to know.

And I met her in the garden

Where the praties grow.

I sang for Cliesh from my heart.

She shook hands with each one of her boys that last day and said farewell. I held onto her hand, and saw affection in her eyes. Cliesh’s fondness crushed me; I’d wasted my love, my dreams broken glass. School days were over.