The Piano Exam

by Gordon Lawrie

Lisa smile is still there.

  In my fumbling confusion to rectify my error, I blurt it out. “Sorry. I was admiring your dress, Mary. It’s lovely - I mean it’s a lovely colour.”

  “It’s functional,” she replies. Then I remember. We believe we should only wear what is necessary to provide due modesty.

  Mary has already warned me that this will need to be an intensive session, so without further ado she has me play through all the scales and a couple of arpeggios. It’s slow, but the mistakes have decreased. Then I move on to the James Hook piece, which remains ‘clunky’ she says, but she encourages me to play it a little slower for accuracy, and in the end I play it three times, whereupon she declares it ‘ready’. The Kirchner has improved massively with practice, and is now almost up to ‘poor standard’ she says. However, I should be comforted by the fact that standards are not high and may even, in the opinion of Mary Maxwell-Hume, be declining. I’m not sure if this reassures me or not. I play this only twice, I think because that’s as much as she can stand of it.

  Then we come to Study In A Flat. I really have tried to practise this piece hard, but although I like it, I’m aware that playing anything in A Flat is just a step too far at this early stage in my piano career. Mary listens to me stumbling through it twice, then she shrugs her shoulders.

  “You can only do your best, Brian.”

  “And if I fail, I get my money back?”

  “I’m sure you’ll pass,” she says.

  “You’re so confident,” I say to her. “I don’t know how you can do it. If I were teaching me, I’d have given up on me long ago,” I explain, wondering if that makes any sense at all.

  “Ah yes, but I have a trump card,” she announces. And with that, she comes to sit beside me on the piano stool, the first time tonight that she’s been this close in that red dress. She’s very close anyway, but now she takes my hand for good measure.

  “Let us pray, Brian.”

  I have absolutely no idea how to react to this, so I just go along as she closes her eyes and says quietly, “Heavenly Father, grant thy servant Brian all thy grace in his piano exam next Thursday. Be with him as plays his scales and arpeggios, plays the work of Hook and Kirchner, and give him the strength to move the examiner as he performs Study In A Flat. Amen.”

  There’s little more that I can do other than say “Amen”, too, although I do manage to thank her in a bemused sort of way.

  “You will do well, Brian. But I think we’re done tonight, and our session has lasted one-and-a-half hours. That’ll be one hundred and eighty pounds, please. Cash, if you don’t mind.”

  It’s as well that I made an extra visit to the cash machine on the way to her house. The money’s handed over, and then we make our way to the door and my shoes.

  “Good luck, Brian,” she says, shaking my hand. “Do well.”

  “I promise to do my best. Shall I let you know how I get on?”

  “If you wish. But I believe you will pass, Brian. God will be at your side,” she insists, as she closes the door behind me for the final time.

  Each evening in the week that follows I spend two hours practising the various aspects of the exam. I even spend some time on scales, so that by the day of the exam the major keys of C, D and G are reasonable, as are the minors in A and E, although the rest range from poor to the entirely hopeless E flat. I live in hope the examiner won’t ask me to play it, and if he does, it won’t count too much. After all, that’s why I’m doing the British School of Music’s piano exams. I can play the two better-known pieces without too many stops, but they don’t sound anything like the recordings I’ve downloaded to my iPod. I’ve also discovered that people record themselves playing this sort of thing on YouTube. These sound great to me - a six-year-old plays the Hook in one clip quite brilliantly - and they get (mostly encouraging) feedback as well. By comparison I’m awful, that’s the truth of it. Mercifully, the Study In A Flat is unknown, so apart from Mary Maxwell-Hume’s own private performances, I’ve nothing to compare myself with.

  Fortunately, the Thursday proves to be a busy day at my school, taken up largely with a major fight in the playground involving nine biting and scratching girls, so I have little chance to get nervous. But as I leave the building and head for my Honda Jazz in the car park, my legs immediately turn to jelly, and my hands are sweating already as I start the car and turn the steering wheel to head for Trinity. The heavy traffic simply heightens my blood pressure and a visit to the usual cash machine - two hundred pounds withdrawn, just to be on safe side -means I arrive at the exam venue with less than five minutes to spare.

  As Mary has promised, it’s actually a church hall on the corner of her street, less than two hundred yards from her own house, and I fleetingly wonder if at this very moment she might be on her knees at the piano praying for me to do well. If her guarantee is to hold good, she stands to lose almost five hundred pounds in repaid tuition fees, although I realise that I’m so bad that I’m not sure I’ll be able to face her again. One half of the double doors of the church hall is open, while the other sports green sheet of A4 paper attached with BlueTac with the words “Music Exam” and an arrow pointing inside. The exam, it seems, will not be held in the hall itself, but in a meeting room off a corridor up the side, and a couple of empty chairs are waiting for me outside.

  Sitting on one, I can hear the faint sound of the piano playing. I’m not sure it’s all that good, but I’m sure the player is miles better than me, and probably about eight years old. It’s therefore rather a surprise when after a period of silence the door opens and an older man, round and balding, emerges with a wide smile and carrying some music and a certificate.

  “The examiner asks if you could just please give her a moment and then she’ll call you in,” he says to me. “She’s very nice, actually,” he assures me. “Good luck.”

  I thank him with a nod and a nervous smile in reply. So the examiner’s female. A minute or so later, there’s a call: “Brian Reid?” and I stand up and walk through.

  It’s a bright, airy room, far brighter than the church hall itself. In the centre of the room stands a grand piano, my instrument of execution, bathed in evening sunlight like a guillotine. But it takes me a moment to sit down because the examiner is not looking me, she’s seated at a table at the side of the room, deeply engrossed in writing up notes either on the previous candidate, or on me. By the way, she’s a nun, fully dressed in a red habit - cowl, wimple, the lot - and sitting sideways on to me with her head down, I can see no part of her, not even her face. Hold on a moment - I catch a sight of her toes. I think she might be barefoot.

  Without looking up, she says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Reid. I gather you’re attempting Grade Three, and you would like your results today. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’ll be one hundred pounds, please. Cash. Could you just lay it on the table please while I make out a receipt and complete this form for you?”

  I do as I’m told. The voice is faintly familiar. As I say farewell to five twenty pound notes, I’m vaguely aware of Chanel No. 5, but I’m so nervous and confused that my imagination will be playing tricks with me. The money disappears into a bag below the table, leaving me standing before her as she continues to make notes.

  “Make yourself comfortable at the piano, please,” she commands, and again I do as commanded.

  “Now,” the examiner says, referring to what I assume is my entry form in front of her, “I gather you will be playing the Hook and the Kirchner from the approved list, and then you’ll play a piece for me by M. M. Hume.” Then she looks up at me for the first time. “Is that correct?”

  To begin with, I’m speechless. Surely it can’t be? It’s the same… No, my nerves are confusing me and in any case all I can see of this woman is a very small circle round her face. They probably all look the same that way, which I
’m sure is the whole point. Anyway, I’ve got an exam to pass.

  “Is that correct, Mr. Reid?” she repeats. She gives me a Mona Lisa smile that seems vaguely familiar. “By the way, my name is Sister Mary.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “It’s nice to meet you, too, Sister Mary, and, yes, that’s correct.”

  “Shall we commence?” Again, it’s not really a question. I nod. “Let’s start with some scales, shall we? I’d like you begin with the key of C. Take your time - you have thirty seconds.”

  Thirty seconds? That’s one note every second. I play the scale very slowly indeed on the way up, take care at the top, then even slower on the way down. Sister Mary smiles enigmatically.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Now, how about the scale of G?”

  The key of G has one sharp. Even I can manage that in half a minute, but I take nothing for granted and proceed at funereal pace. Surely the dreaded E flat must follow soon.

  “Now the key of D,” she says, not even looking up.

  I’m almost caught out because D and E flat are next to each other on the piano, and I almost play the wrong note to start with. But I use my thirty seconds and play the scale correctly.

  “And finally a minor key.” Maybe this is it. “How about E minor?”

  Incredible. It’s just about the easiest one