Joe Knight Series - Books 1-3

3. Ma Apples

3

MA APPLES

The piano teacher lived a few minutes’ walk from our house, and at the dreaded hour, I set off. Thankfully, it was raining and there were no other kids about. As I walked through the empty streets I wondered if Todd Toshack had any secrets. Didn’t everybody have something that they wished to keep hidden? I couldn’t imagine him having music lessons; it seemed as likely as a great white shark learning ballet.

What did they do to boys caught having piano lessons back in Todd’s home town? I wondered what he might do to me if he ever found out about mine. I tried not to dwell on the possibilities.

I had little difficulty finding the piano teacher’s house as there was a large plaque on the wall outside with musical notes stuck on it. I was a minute or two early. The rain had stopped and some kids were coming up the street toward me. I didn’t recognise them, but it wasn’t worth taking any risks. I rang the doorbell, which played some cheesy rhythm loudly enough to draw the attention of people on nearby planets. The kids were getting closer and I could see them looking to see who was daring to turn up for a music lesson without an armed escort.

The doorbell kept playing its loud, cheesy rhythm until finally the door opened.

I recognised her straight away.

I’d seen a drawing of her in a book of fairy stories that had been hanging around my bedroom for years. Every story had drawings and Hansel and Gretel was no exception. I’d never forgotten that drawing of the witch at the gingerbread house, standing out on the steps to greet the two innocent kids, and l*****g her lips.

“Mr Knight, I presume?”

Face to face with the Hansel and Gretel witch, my mind filled with images of ovens and baked children.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“I … I …”

I stepped inside, a child to the s*******r.

I could smell burning as I followed her down the hallway and into a small room at the back of the house. This was it. The oven was fired up and waiting.

Inside the room, a fire was blazing. I’d never seen a real fire before. My parents were old-fashioned enough, but even they had heard of central heating. Wall to ceiling there were bookcases stuffed with music and books. There were a few framed posters, and one of them I recognised as Beethoven. He looked as miserable as I felt.

In the centre of the room was a piano. Unlike the monstrosity at home, this instrument was gleaming black, with a matching metronome on top. It was easy to imagine a black cat curled up next to a compendium of spells.

She invited me to take off my wet jacket and sit at the piano. After hanging my jacket up by the fire, she came and sat next to me.

“My name’s Miss Applemore, though you can call me Ma. Most of them do. Ma Apples, that’s me. You’ll see why soon enough.”

She laughed. Almost cackled. It gave me the shivers. I decided not to call her anything, and certainly nothing as stupid as Ma Apples.

“Have you any sense of rhythm, Joe Knight?”

Before I could answer, she clapped one out with her bony hands and asked me to repeat it. It was the same rhythm that I’d heard after pressing the door bell.

I gave it a go, clapping so quietly that I could barely hear it myself.

“Not bad. Could you sort it out into crotchets and quavers?”

I vaguely knew about crotchets and quavers from school. But then I vaguely knew about a lot of things. I knew that cars had engines, wheels and seats, but I didn’t know how to drive one. I knew that getting into the school football team and scoring the winning goal in the cup final could make you a hero, though it was as likely to happen to me as becoming the first boy to walk on the surface of Mars.

She was looking at me. “A dreamer, eh?” she said. “That’s interesting.” She was staring right down deep into my eyes, the same way Sirgiman and the headmaster did.

Like she was looking for something.

“I take it that the answer to my question as to whether you could sort out my clapped rhythm into musical notation is ‘no’. But the good news is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can hear it. Do you like stories?”

I thought of hideous witches in dark forests, and foul-looking piano teachers in gingerbread houses who tricked you into ovens, cooked, and ate you.

“Some stories,” I said nervously.

She told me about a little rich girl who once upon a time had piano lessons. I had no doubt that the story would end with her being baked in a pie and washed down with wine brewed from the bones of her family.

“They wanted a miracle and I gave them one. I took their stuck-up brat without an ear for music, and turned her into an exam-passing snob who one day became a music teacher herself. Naturally, I was unable to give her an ear for music, but her parents never knew that and neither did most of her pupils, no doubt. But that’s the cross we must bear.”

I wondered where the story was leading. My parents weren’t rich, despite what the likes of Todd Toshack might think. And I had no intention of becoming a music teacher, whether I had an ear for music or not. I wanted her to cut to it and bake the brat in a pie, and I was happily thinking that very thought when she stopped telling her ridiculous tale and sang out, “Ping pong in-a-bo-ttle Mar-tha Apples.”

She repeated the line, this time clapping along. “Recognise it?”

I did. It was the doorbell rhythm again. I fought the urge to yawn.

“That little girl spent a year unable to remember that rhythm. But once she knew about Ping pong in-a-bo-ttle Mar-tha Apples, she never forgot. Neither will you. Not the phrase and not the rhythm,” she added, a touch mysteriously I thought.

I smiled, politely, wondering what the stupid old witch was going on about. It was the worst story I’d ever heard, hardly a story at all. Maybe my parents were rich after all, wasting money paying this crone to come out with stuff like that and call it a music lesson. Maybe she needed a career at Greenfields High. She would fit in nicely there with all of that craziness stored up inside her.

“Lift the lid,” she said. “What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid.” My fingers touched the gleaming black wood.

“You think there are eighty-eight black and white teeth waiting to chew off your hands?” Her laughter was startling. “Lift it, and show me that you’re not afraid of those teeth, Joe Knight. Show me.”

I lifted the lid, my eyes screwed up so tightly they were virtually closed. The keys really did look like teeth: a giant’s mouth packed with large white molars and smaller, rotted cavities filled black.

“Can you find Middle C for me?”

Before I could answer she said, “Give me your right index finger.”

While I was wondering which finger that was exactly, she took hold of the one next to my right thumb. Her skin felt like sandpaper.

“You have long fingers, Joe Knight, and myth has it that long fingers are piano-playing fingers. It isn’t true. Long fingers are harder to control. You are therefore handicapped and that means we are up against it before we’ve even started.”

Still she held my finger and I wondered when the pain would come. “Ever heard of Beethoven?” she asked me. I nodded, and glanced at the poster on the wall. “Very good,” she said. “And just who exactly was our frowning friend?”

“He was a famous composer.”

“And deaf as a post! Now that was a handicap for a musician, but did it hold him back? Or did it spur him on?” She placed my finger above the note. “Middle C,” she said. “The first home for all music students, Beethoven included. Go on, press it. Let’s see what happens.”

I pressed the note so cautiously that nothing sounded at all, not even when it was all the way down. “Try again,” she said. This time it sounded. “Now give me Ping pong in-a-bottle Martha Apples.” I tapped out the rhythm on that single white key. “Keep going,” she said. “Don’t stop until I tell you.”

She was clapping and singing along, tapping both feet as she did so. I could feel the tension easing with each round. There was something weirdly infectious in that rhythm.

“Stop!”

Her voice broke the spell.

“What kind of piano do you own?”

As I described the monstrosity, her eyes narrowed. Then she looked away. Her fingers were trembling. At last she said, “Well, that’s enough for today. But I want you to do something when you get home. Do you promise me, Joe Knight?”

The day was almost over. No more birthdays for a whole year. At home there was a cake waiting for me with thirteen candles and icing that could make your teeth ache for a week. I was allowed to stay up and watch a video while Dad talked to Doozy and Mum took three hundred photographs.

It was almost bedtime when I remembered my promise.

I went into the front room and sat down on the squeaky old stool that had come with the piano, lifted the lid, and placed my right index finger on Middle C.

The sound was flat and lifeless. I had no doubt that my parents would soon get sick of hearing a tuneless racket, and that would be an end to the whole ridiculous piano business. All the same, I did as I’d promised, tapping out the rhythm that Miss Applemore had taught me, the stupid words sounding in my head, my left hand tapping along on my knee despite my efforts to stop it. The rhythm was even more infectious now. I was becoming lost in it. I could feel myself speeding up with each repetition. Something strange was happening.

Things were about to get weird.