Talbot

Of Pianos and Cleaning Ladies

In March of 1980 I was twenty four years old and about to graduate from a master’s program in aspects of International Management, in the United States.   While I actually graduated in May, I continued for another semester to pursue research related to the field I wanted to enter.   I had decided I wanted to be a crude oil trader and chose to spend a semester researching petroleum shipping in England.   At the time, the London Tanker Broker Panel was the hub of all decisions made related to rates, and brokered shipping contracts.  My grad school had a relationship with Oxford University, and specifically the Oxford Centre for Management Studies, which gave me access to the panel.  So I went.

But there was a small problem.  I did not know if I would find a piano to practice on.  The piano was not a hobby for me; it was not a peripheral musical skill.   It was and in all truth still is a coping mechanism.  When I arrived in Abingdon I had already been sitting there at the piano for twenty years and in all that time had never gone more than two weeks (our summer beach cottage vacation growing up) without being able to play.  In addition to figuring out where the bus stop was, the bus schedule, the closest grocery store, where I was going to do laundry…I had to find a piano to play.  I think that was when I realized how truly dependent on it I had become.  

I asked the folks I knew where I might find a piano.   There was the Sweeny Todd pizza parlor on George Street.  I was told that they had a piano.   So I went there and the manager said there was indeed a piano upstairs in the attic, and I could play it all I wanted.  So I went up and found it.   Even though it looked like junk before I even touched it, at least it was a piano.   So I started to run through some chords and scales and it didn’t make any sound.   There were no strings in it.

Now I need to mention that in April of that year, two months earlier, I had what is called a ‘conversion’ experience and had become a Christian.   This after a number of very troubled years that are the subject of a different story.  But in the excitement of new faith, even though my old ways of debauchery had not yet faded away, I would describe myself as a very prayerful person.   And I started praying.  I wanted a piano and saw no reason why God wouldn’t give me one.

And another note to keep in mind is that when I lived in that part of England it rained every day.

What followed after the pizza parlor let down was about three weeks of searching all over the central part of Oxon (Oxford ‘County’) for anything that even resembled a piano.  And I had no luck whatsoever.   As my search moved in concentric circles away from the center of town, I was pretty soon beyond where the in-town bus lines went, and so found myself walking further and further in the rain.

I traveled for two hours to a store that sold pianos, and it had moved.

The next shot at it was two hours in the opposite direction to the new address, in the rain, and it had closed.  Out of business.

I will always have the memory of me leaning on the iron gate with the “Closed” sign on it, after weeks of chasing down so many different leads, in the rain, and I started laughing.   I had given up.   In a moment of a sort of rebellious resignation I said out loud something along the lines of… “I’m done with your little game of keep away.   I’ve had it.   If you want me to have a piano (God) you’re going to have to roll that sucker right up the driveway to my front door.   I ain’t looking anymore.”   And I swore to myself that I wouldn’t.

I don’t remember how many days or weeks went by and I did not go on any hunting trips.   But one day I was walking along a footpath at the Thames river and I heard a piano being played.   I could tell it was not a recording, it was someone practicing.

I diligently followed the sound until I ended up walking through a courtyard and into what was some kind of a hall.  Just as I went into the door the music stopped,  and I heard a very heavy door close.   I walked around the corner, found the door, and entered the hall.

There in front of me was a stage with a nine foot grand piano, that turned out to be a Bechstein.   To my right was a wall of windows overlooking a huge garden sloping down to what turned out to be the river Cherwell.   I slowly walked up to the piano like I was in a dream and sat down to play.

It is hard to describe the moments that followed.   It was something like jumping into a cool pristine river when you are on fire.  I could not stop playing and one riff led seamlessly into another, one improvisation effortlessly modulated into this signature, then that…and there was simply nothing that piano could not do.   No trill was too fast or the descent into it too difficult to modulate.   I had never experienced a sustain pedal that could cut the volume so quickly and let the piano ‘chime’ with such resonance and beauty.   I could hit volumes I didn’t even know a piano could produce.   I just couldn’t find the limit to the piano’s power.  In the undergrad music school where I studied piano my teacher had two Bosendorfers (perhaps the finest piano you can buy new) side by side, and this piano made them seem like the one back at Sweeny Todd’s.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but the sun had gone down and I had to leave or I might miss the bus back to Abingdon.  On the bus back home I was in a daze.

As soon as I could take time I went back, but the door to the hall was locked.   I felt panicky but one of the students, a young woman, asked me if she could help and after I explained the circumstances she suggested I speak with the Bursar and ask for permission to get back in.   I was given an audience.

When I explained to her how I had found the hall opened and went in to practice, and how I was a student at OCMS, and in fact, the Bursar at that school was also my landlord, and how he could vouch for me, and how I needed a piano…I spoke so fast it was like I had thirty minutes of explanation to get out there before she might say “no” and throw me out, but only five minutes to talk.  She just looked at me like I was an alien from outer space.   A very odd and curious alien from outer space.

“Do you know where you ARE?   Decided emphasis on “ARE”

I didn’t.

What followed was a rushed back and forth exchange with her interrupting herself and with an incredulous expression on her face, repeating the question, “Do you know where you are?”

I admitted that I did not.   She told me that I was at Lady Margaret Hall, and specifically the Talbot Building, which was (at the time) an all girl’s school.  She then seriously admonished me, explaining that I was trespassing and that they don’t even allow their own students to practice on that piano.   She asked indignantly if I knew the quality of the piano and I very excitedly answered that I DID!  I knew exactly how fine a piano it was.  She was in the process of telling me to get out, when the elderly cleaning lady who had been invisible as she was emptying trash bins and dusting office shelves, sheepishly spoke up,

“You really ought to hear him…”

The Bursar and I stopped in mid-sentence, stunned, and turned to look at her.

She went on to explain that she had heard the piano the other day and quietly snuck in to listen.  She said she was there the whole time I played.   I never saw her.  The Bursar obviously held her in very high regard and I watched in disbelief as the cleaning lady sold her on the idea of showing me some grace.  And grace it truly was.

I left the office that day with permission to come back one specific day each week, and she would allow me to play.

On the bus on the way back I smiled, considering two things:  we shouldn’t be too specific when we ask God to help us with something.   We might mistake a broken down piano in the attic of a pizza parlor as an answer to prayer just because it has strings. 

And the other; sometimes angels look like a little old cleaning lady holding a trash bin.    

Talbot, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

John Villegas-Grubbs

Greyjump.com