‘So you have to match the musical note to the length of the beat, yeah?’
He nods.
‘And on this sheet here is a lovely chart, designed by me, showing the note, the name of the note, the length of the note and the corresponding rest symbol. You with me so far?’
More nodding.
‘So you’d look at the note here, find it on the chart and then draw it on the stave. After all the notes are in place, you’ll be playing and identifying the song.’
He’s not nodding.
‘Soroush?’
‘What’s a stave?’
I sigh, pointing to the lines on the page of the blank music sheet. ‘Ringing any bells?’
‘But how do we know what line to put it on?’ he asks.
‘Soroush, we ran through this in the last lesson. Each line and space has a note name attached. Remember the note G– always placed next to the swirly bit on the treble clef because it’s also known as the. . .?’
‘Triple clef?’
I want to bang my head repeatedly on the desk until he leaves. ‘The G clef,’ I reply, sighing. ‘Where the swirly bit in the middle of the G clef meets the line, that’s the note G. So what note comes after G?’
‘H?’
‘There is no H note in music, Soroush. There is however an H in homework, which I’d really recommend you do every now and again.’
He stares at me blankly, while Suzanne at the front of the class giggles. I don’t know why she’s laughing–shethought thatcompositionwas the stuff you put in the garden to help the plants grow.
‘A, B, C, D, E, F, G,’ I tell him. ‘That’s all the main musical notes. They just repeat, on and on and on. So A always follows G, just like D always follows C. It goes line, space, line, space. So if G is on this line, what note do we put in the space directly above it.’
‘. . . A?’
Hallelujah, I think he’s got it.
‘And we can easily remember these by our acronyms. The lines, EGBDF– every good boy deserves—’
‘Fellatio!’ I hear a voice say from the back of the room. I really want to laugh but as a teacher, I can’t be seen to be encouraging sex jokes in my class, no matter how amusing. ‘Any more of thatand you’ll be staying an extra hour after school,’ I tell Aaron Wiley, who tries to act all innocent but forgets he’s the only boy in class whose voice hasn’t dropped yet.
‘Football,’ I continue, ‘and in the spaces, the word FACE from bottom to top, showing the position and letter of the notes. This is all on Google classroom. I suggest you take some time to go over it again.’
The bell finally rings, and I dismiss everyone, especially Soroush, with a wave of my hand, like a Roman emperor. As they leave, I hear Aaron say, ‘He used to be able to take a joke. He’s been a right moody git recently.’
The fact that I immediately want to add on an additional year to his detention for his cheek means he’s probably right. I am a moody git, but it’s hard not to be. This separation has been much tougher than I could ever have imagined. I thought being away from Kate at university was hard, but unlike uni, now I can’t call her. I can’t meet up with her on the weekend. Every part of me wants to text her and tell her Aaron’s remark but that wouldn’t be appropriate, no matter how much I miss making her laugh.
I hang back in class for a bit. I’m not in any rush to get home and I have access to a proper piano here instead of my Roland FP90 keyboard, which is sitting in a box under the bed gathering dust. Kate bought me that with her first proper lawyer wage and I’ve barely touched it. I suddenly feel decidedly ungrateful.
‘Now you have no excuse not to do gigs!’ she’d said. ‘All those open-mic nights you’ve been procrastinating about, all those songs you’ve been working on. . .’
‘All those people just waiting to tell me I suck,’ I’d replied, facetiously. ‘Can’t wait.’
‘God, have a bit of faith in yourself! Honestly, Ed, you’re so bloody talented. Don’t waste it. Besides, so what if someone thinks you suck? I think Liam Gallagher sucks, but I doubt he goes to sleep on a giant pile of money, worrying whether I likehis music or not.’
I vaguely remember making some lame joke about ‘rock and roll never sleeping’, but when I think back to then, it makes me realise just how much she believed in me. Before university, I had all these ambitions to become an incredible singer–songwriter, but once I got there, I saw just how many people were in the same position as me, and all of them just that little bit more confident or talented or charismatic. By the time I graduated, I’d already applied for a fast-track teaching qualification. How could I expect Kate to continue believing in me, when I didn’t believe in myself?
I close the classroom door and walk over to the piano, knowing that I’ll have at least an hour before the cleaners arrive and the sound of an industrial Henry Hoover will drown me out.
