I first heard about Mr. Kavanagh from a notice taped to the window of a launderette in Phibsborough, the kind of handwritten notice you almost miss because it has curled at the corners from steam. “Piano, violin, tin whistle. Children welcome. Pay what you can.” At the time, “what you can” meant almost nothing for us. My hours had been cut at the café near Smithfield, the rent was rising, and my eleven-year-old daughter, Saoirse, had started eating her lunch slowly so I wouldn’t notice she was still hungry after it.
She had asked for piano lessons for two years. Not in a demanding way. She would stop outside music shops and look through the glass, or tap little melodies on the kitchen table while I boiled pasta. I used to tell her, “When things settle.” But things in Dublin have a way of not settling when you need them to. They move faster than you can catch them.
Mr. Kavanagh lived above a small charity shop, two streets off the North Circular Road. His stairs smelled of old books, floor polish, and tea. He opened the door before I knocked, as if he had been expecting us for years. He was in his late sixties, with a hearing aid that whistled when he laughed and a cardigan that had lost one button and gained two others that didn’t match. The room behind him was crowded with instruments. A piano leaned against one wall like a tired horse, its wood scratched, one pedal shining from use.
I told him straight away that I had seen the notice but couldn’t afford lessons, not properly. I was embarrassed and over-explaining, saying I could clean, I could do errands, I could pay in small amounts when I got back on my feet. He listened without interrupting. Then he looked past me at Saoirse, who had gone silent at the sight of the piano.
“Can you count to four?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“Grand. You’re qualified.”
That was the first lesson. I sat on a little stool by the radiator while he showed her middle C. He did not speak to her like she was small. He spoke as if she had something valuable inside her and his job was to ask it to come out politely. When the half hour ended, I reached into my purse and offered him the only cash I had set aside, a five-euro note folded twice. He shook his head.
“No charge today.”
“I can give something.”
“You already have,” he said, nodding towards Saoirse, who was still staring at the keys. “You brought me a student.”
I thought it was kindness for one week. Then it happened again. And again. Every Tuesday, after school, we took the bus through the wet grey evenings, past shops closing and people hurrying home, and Saoirse climbed those stairs into a brighter version of herself. Mr. Kavanagh taught her scales, then little Irish airs, then pieces I had heard on the radio but never knew the names of. Some weeks he gave her tea and toast before starting. Once, when her shoes were soaked through, he dried them by the heater and sent her home in a pair of wool socks that looked hand-knitted.
I kept trying to pay him. He kept refusing. Eventually I got stubborn and left money inside a mug on his shelf. The next week, I found it tucked into Saoirse’s music book with a note that said, “For bus fare. Don’t argue with an old man. We always win.”
It was only in December that I understood the size of what he was doing. Saoirse had been invited to play one song at a little community evening near Smithfield, and Mr. Kavanagh asked me to help carry a box of sheet music from his flat. While I was lifting it, an old ledger slipped out. I picked it up to put it back and saw names written in neat columns. Beside some were amounts. Beside many others were words like “later,” “toast,” “Mam sick,” “Dad gone,”
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
