“Are you gifted?” asked Paul.

This took Joseph by surprise.

“What do you mean, gifted?”

Paul thought on this a moment. “I don’t know. Mum says she thinks I am gifted, but I don’t really know what it means. Does it mean you can play the piano?”

Joseph’s thoughts floundered for a reply rather than excuse, whilst Paul waited expectantly, watching Joseph’s face. Finally,

“Well, all sorts of people can be gifted. It means that you do well in certain areas of life much more easily than others, if you see what I mean.”

Paul thought about this, reverting to random chordal tinkering with the ivories, his small fingers appreciating the resistance that the mechanisms held. After a few rambling moments, he said,

“So, I could be anything I liked really, if I was ‘gifted’ for it.”

“You could do anything you like, whether gifted or not for it. You’d just find it harder if you went for something that you were not gifted for. Besides, God gives people certain gifts, so why not use them.”

Paul was genuinely surprised now. “God gives us gifts. I thought it was to do with Genetics and what your parents did and all that.”

Joseph found himself blushing, for he didn’t often let his religious inclinations slip so easily. He often forgot that most children were more secular nowadays, God Bless them. God Bless You, he thought to the boy, as if to solidify the ambling thought to a secret gesture.

“Mmmm. Yes, Paul. But who thought-up the complicated genetics?” He almost added the idea of Was it just coincidence that geniuses crop up after a long family tradition of a particular area? , but thought it might be too heavy for the young chap to digest.

“Evolution?”

He could see an argument looming, but didn’t want to lose control due to a boy’s innocent queries. Nevertheless,

“What’s the probability of all these things we see about us being due to evolution? There’s too much intelligence behind it all.”

To which Paul replied smartly, “But if God invented us, we’d have eyes in the back of our head!”

Joseph smiled. It was a smile of many causes, but it conveyed knowledge and experience to the child, so the many causes did not betray the thinker’s real thoughts.

“Some people think we were perfect once upon a time, but we wanted more, so we ate the apple of sin, and so became imperfect.”

“Like Adam and Eve?”

“Yes, like Adam and Eve.”

Paul rested his elbow on the keyboard, making a startled flurry of noises, and perched his head on his head.

“But…”

“TAKE your elbow off the piano. It’s expensive.”

Paul looked abashed. It had been unconscious, but he knew how much his tutor prized the instrument.

Joseph closed the lid over the keys, watching the young boy lean on the lid as he had on the keyboard, to re-commence his open ponderings.

“Isn’t Adam and Eve a fairy story?”

“And fairy stories can’t be real?”

“No. Well, not real , as in it happens when you get on a bus or talk to your friends, or something. When I play sometimes, the notes from the piano seem real, like the piano itself, but they’re not really, are they?”

Joseph could see conversion possibilities slipping now, but didn’t push. He had many years yet with the boy, and he would undoubtedly still be with him as a friend when he made his career in music.

“Tell you what, Paul. There’s a concert on this afternoon - some Mozart String Quartets, I think. How would you like to go?”

The boy looked down at his shirt and fumbled with a button, his fingers diligently unbuttoning, re-buttoning, half-way at-a-time, face a shade redder, not sure how the adult might react.

“Geoff, there’s wrestling on soon. Do you think I could go another time?”

Joseph wasn’t shocked, really. Just a little disappointed. But he reminded himself stiffly that once upon a time, he was young too.

  • Simon Huggins, 13th February 1992