There she goes, her hat perched rakishly on her head, her
little dog Minor tugging at his lead, eager to reach the shops and the
butcher’s in particular. Dorothy Price ‘Piano Teacher’ is quite tall, quite
thin and quite straight, ageless and extremely energetic, like so many independent
females.
No matter what people said – and they came up with some quite
passable alternatives – she would not be deterred, either by broken bones
(falling off her bicycle) or by well-meaning advice (from all and sundry). She found
a teacher with the same vision as hers, spent all her pocket money on sheet
music, and eventually, without telling anyone beforehand, applied for a place
at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
The only step left to negotiate was the audition, held in
front of a panel that scrutinized her ability and ambition with close
attention, and announced her eligible, despite that fact that she was thought
too frail for Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata that had secured her entry. A
little Debussy and Liszt would do her good, they remarked. Would Chopin do?
Dorothy wanted to know. At a pinch, was the answer.
When at last the official letter of acceptance came from the college,
Dorothy spent the whole day thumping away at yet more Beethoven and wondering
how to tell her family that she was going away to dream out her dream.
Are you sure that’s what you want?’ everyone wanted to know,
when she finally broke the news. Their misgivings fell on stony ground. Dorothy
Price was not for turning.
Upper Grumpsfield had been Dorothy’s home until she left for
London. She was a country girl at heart, but it did not take long for her to
transform into a city girl. She found romance, but lost it again, for the object
of her affections, a handsome but fickle young man named Jack Cooper, decided
he was too young to settle down and took himself off to Canada, never to return.
Even armed with diplomas and a thousand recommendations,
Dorothy found it hard to make ends meet. To bridge the gap between college and her
dream career, she accompanied singers such as Laura Finch, a rather vain,
rather oversexed young woman who soon found a job entertaining guests on a
cruise liner in the Mediterranean. She would have gladly taken Dorothy along had
Dorothy not preferred to keep her feet on dry land. Apart from that, Dorothy
hated the way Laura always managed to upstage her. The thought of being trapped
on board a cruise liner with her was more than Dorothy could bear.
Instead, she found a job churning out waltzes and polkas at a
ballet school. Her letters home were full of information such as ‘I played
Chopin today’ and ‘my next concert is in two weeks’, which were, strictly
speaking, only half-truths. But the family and friends at home were satisfied
that Dorothy was prospering.
And so the years flew past. In time, the ballet children
became her children. She watched them change from signets into swans, played
for their children and even their grandchildren and well over four decades
passed almost unnoticeably, festooned with tutus, fortified by Chopin and Strauss
and crowned by the twice-yearly school presentations at which Dorothy was the
sole musical accompaniment.
Dorothy, who insisted on being addressed as Miss Price on formal
occasions, the ‘Miss’ being a symbol of independence, never quite forgot her
one entirely magical experience of romance, but she was proud of her spinster
status, and had vowed never to fall in love again. After all, she was doing
what she had always wanted to do, and that is more than most of us can claim.
She was playing the piano all day and every day, tossing her head from side to
side and priding herself on her talent for playing just the right music at just
the right speed.
When the ballet school closed due to waning patronage, Dorothy
took that as a sign from the heavens, packed up her belongings in the tiny flat
in Camden Town that she had occupied since her student days. She hired a van
and driver to transport everything, including her good self, back to Upper
Grumpsfield, and shed hardly a tear.
Since the family home had long since found a new owner, and
after that made way for a new bypass so that people could avoid Upper
Grumpsfield if they had a mind to, her meagre savings went on a little cottage
in Monkton Way. To recoup her cash flow, she stuck a bronze plaque on the letterbox
proudly announcing: Miss Dorothy Price, Piano Teacher.
Villages like Upper Grumpsfield are full of charming and not
so charming characters longing for someone to tell their stories. Not that they
would ask you to do that, but if you were to, they would be flattered, unless,
of course, you hit on some dark corner of their life that they didn’t want you
to know about. Not that Dorothy had any skeletons in her cupboard, but others
certainly did. A village is a micro-cosmos of human endeavour and frailty, she
would say.
So becoming acclimatized to village life proved trickier than
expected, but she was at an advantage. Though most of her adult life had been
spent in London, her life had been more remarkable for its lack of excitement
rather than a surfeit thereof. The tales of horror and scandal that reached her
ears made her wonder if Upper Grumpsfield was really the right place to retire
to.
There was, for example, the elderly woman who had stored her
late husband in the airing cupboard for donkey’s years so that she could
collect his pension at Middlethumpton Central Post Office every Monday morning.
It was sheer luck that they discovered the mummy at all, beautifully preserved
on the topmost shelf thanks to the heat, though how she managed to get him up
there remains a mystery.
To cut that story short, the water tank developed a leak and the
widow, having temporarily forgotten all about the airing cupboard’s well-preserved
occupant, summoned a plumber to mend it for her. That good man got the fright
of his life when a limp hand hung down from the topmost part of the cupboard.
He swore never to plumb for old ladies again.
The powers that be charged the widow with quite a few crimes,
but in the end, a petition signed by the whole village soliciting forgiveness
on her behalf saved her elderly bacon.
That is village life at its most effective.
Or one might want to mention the bronze-skinned little man who
resided in the cottage near the top of Thumpton Hill. His garden won a prize
for neatness every year. His life was not quite as neat. He had been married
seven times and divorced never, though the villagers did not know that, of
course, him being of foreign origin and presumably not accustomed to the
British laws governing bigamy. His wives had just come and gone in various
guises, except for wife number three, who had been run over by a bus two days
into her sojourn because her traditional headwear did not allow her to look
left and right.
The whole dismal story did not come to light until after his
demise, when six squabbling widows fought belligerently over the inheritance at
the solicitor’s chambers. It was only a very small windfall, consisting mainly
of the cottage and its contents. In the end, the widows agreed to move in
together, since none of them was prepared to waive her portion. That particular
episode came to an abrupt end when someone set fire to the cottage and all that
was left of the inheritance and at least one of the widows was reduced to dust
and ashes.
That is village life at its most thorough.
Of course, some people live harmless, harmonious lives,
disrupted only by the occasional neighbourly disagreement or a family storm in
a teacup, so it is no wonder that neighbours wishing they had more excitement
in their own lives tend to over-dramatize that of anyone whose conduct might
give rise to speculation.
Word of mouth secured Dorothy as much publicity as she could
handle, since the little information she had given about herself snowballed
into a dramatic tale of success and stage fright. It wasn’t every day that a
famous pianist returned to her roots. In no time at all she had a long list of
piano pupils and an equally long one of all the things she had been invited to
do for the community. In short, Dorothy soon became an institution despite
herself.
So, whilst Upper Grumpsfield is not famous for its
architecture, its industry or even its beauty, unless you count the picturesque
ruins of Monkton Priory, it is now home to at least one local celebrity, so
typical of the genteel make-ends-meet breed that she could be anyone, anywhere in
the timelessness of English village life. That is really the only wholly
English tradition left, apart from Morris dancing, the Christmas pantomime and
the Watercolour Society. The Welsh, Irish and Scottish boast more traditions,
of course An occasional Celtic individual drifts into the village of Upper
Grumpsfield and lays roots down there, but strangers to a village are usually
viewed with suspicion, So Dorothy being as English as they come, had a fair
chance of being accepted as one of ‘them’.
On the basis of her Englishness, Dorothy came to be admired if
not loved by most. She was not loved by the five sons of Mr Parsnip, the eccentric
vicar of St Peter’s, Upper Grumpsfield’s historic parish church, however, because
having brought culture back to the village, she was now dispensing it to anyone
kissed by the muse, and a fair number who had been ignored by it, which included
Albert, the eldest Parsnip boy.
Mr Parsnip, whose judgement of musical talent cannot be
regarded as reliable, was hoping the younger boys would also be inspired to
have a go, even if that meant getting the heavy old piano tuned, an expense not
foreseen by a vicar’s meagre salary.
Albert was not the only recipient of Dorothy’s piano lessons.
As if to compensate for the onslaught of wrong notes on her finely-tuned ears, occasionally
one of her pupils provided her with so much joy that it made up for the struggle
she was having with those who had been unable
to avoid the lessons however much they protested.
Dorothy's pupils always came to her cottage for their lessons.
They played their piano pieces on her old baby grand that almost filled the
parlour. Sometimes they played very quietly, so that Dorothy could not hear the
wrong notes. But if they played too quietly, Dorothy, who was slightly deaf in
a genteel sort of way, could not hear anything at all. Then she would shout ‘Play
louder!’ until they played loudly enough for her to hear all the notes,
especially the wrong ones.
When the lesson was nearly over, Dorothy would change places
with her pupil, stretch her fingers and start to play loud enough for even the
neighbours to hear. Memories of the ballet school would flood in as she swayed
to the rhythms of her favourite dance tunes. Finally she would strike up one of
Beethoven’s stirring compositions, remarking that ‘I don't know how Beethoven
played, because I wasn't there, but going deaf did not stop him! What's good
enough for Beethoven is good enough for me!’ No one enjoyed Dorothy's playing
more than she did herself.
Anyone who lives in a village like Upper Grumpsfield knows
that community activities such as festivals, dog shows and concerts have guaranteed
patronage, even if the inevitable rivalry does occasionally get out of hand.
The preparations are arguably the most entertaining part, but only if you
happen to be performing or better still on a committee.
Mr Cobblethwaite, the Mayor of Middlethumpton and District, is
not interested in anything except preserving his status by making communal ends
meet, and conserving his liver by sampling every brand of whisky he can lay his
hands on.
Most of the onus of keeping people amused or occupied in Upper
Grumpsfield falls on the local C of E church of St Peter’s and those who either
patronize the vicar’s Sunday services or excuse their absence by giving
donations to whatever good cause is made out to be worthy enough.
