The Art School Dance (18 page)

‘
Do they
have a word for it, what we’re going to do?’ I asked
her.

‘
I
believe it’s called cohabitation,’ Paula smiled. ‘When do we start?
Today? Can you pick your things up tonight?’

‘
Not
tonight, not while those two harridans are in the house,’ I said.
‘I’d rather it wasn’t then, there’d only be a scene.’

‘
So
when? When will the house be empty?’

‘
There’ll be no one home this afternoon,’ I knew. ‘Gran will
be at the old folk’s club and my mother will be out
shopping.’

‘
We’ll
get your stuff now, then,’ Paula said. ‘I’m owed an afternoon off
after working all day Saturday.’

She checked
with Ben, we collected her car from the flat and drove over to my
house; when Paula parked the car outside the front door I asked her
if she’d wait there.

She nodded,
said yes, could perhaps guess why I would prefer her not to go into
that dreary house. I smiled my thanks, then let myself in. The
place was empty and quiet, just as I’d supposed it would be, and I
ran upstairs to get my things. There wasn’t much, just a suitcase
full of clothes, a box of records and a few sketchbooks; I only
needed to make two trips to the car and I had emptied the house of
the past eighteen years of my life.

‘
Is that
it?’ Paula asked.

‘
It’s
all I need,’ I said, and we drove off without me even giving a
backward glance; I was glad to be away from the place, it was my
first step into the future.

*

It took less
than an hour to move my things into Paula’s flat. She had arranged
to take the whole afternoon off and so we had it to ourselves,
there was no need to go back to college. We hung my clothes in the
wardrobe, stacked my records next to Paula’s and put my sketchbooks
on a shelf beneath the tiers of books. By mid-afternoon I was
settled into my new home.

‘
We
ought to celebrate,’ said Paula.

‘
How?’

‘
Fish
and chips first, with lots of vinegar, and then we’ll wander around
town and have a drink or two. We can act like a couple now,’ she
said happily, ‘and we’re going to enjoy every minute of
it.’

Paula got out
of her secretary clothes, put on jeans and let down her hair.
Because there was a chance that we might have more than a drink or
two the car was left at the flat, we walked, and Paula’s arm curled
around my waist so tightly, my arm draped her shoulders so fondly;
there was no longer any reason to be secretive about our feelings.
We bought fish and chips and ate them from the paper as we walked
through the park, our fingertips stinging with salt and vinegar
which we licked from each others hands, threw a few scraps to the
ducks but they weren’t interested, promised to bring them some
bread next time. In the park there was a large bronze statue, some
long-dead local philanthropist seated on a chair, covered by a dull
grey-green oxide and tarnished by the elements; only the toe of the
extended right foot was free from rust, polished and shiny where
children had rubbed and then made a wish. I had done it as a kid
and did it again now, Paula too, not minding that people might see
us, laughing and keeping our wishes secret so that they might come
true.

‘
You do
think you’ve done the right thing, don’t you?’ Paula asked me
later, when we stopped for a drink; her fingers were twined around
mine, she was almost brushing her lips against my mouth as she
spoke, our faces were that close.

Across the
room, against the bar, I could see my two old school-friends, Tina
and Diane, looking in our direction; I nodded an acknowledgement to
them, but nothing more, knowing that they would want explanations
and preferring to have them speculate.

‘
Why? Do
you think I might not have?’ I smiled at Paula.

‘
No, I’m
sure you have. You’re going to blossom now, flourish, burst forth
every day.’

‘
Do you
mean as an artist, or orgasmically?’

‘
Either.
Both. Each at the same time if you like.’

As we laughed,
heads together, I could see Tina and Diane still staring hard, as
though they would give anything to be in my place, and I told
myself that electing to move in with Paula was the most responsible
decision I had ever made, even though my family might regard it as
the most sinful thing I’ had ever done.

*

The two of us
quickly settled down to life with each other, Paula was right when
she said that seven days spent together would be no different to
one. We were both in college during the day, and in the evenings we
sometimes went out but more often than not stayed home. The only
difference now was that ‘home’ had become a place I enjoyed being,
a place where I felt comfortable and content. It seemed shameful to
say this, I didn’t want to dismiss the eighteen years of love and
care which my family had devoted to me, but it had to be accepted
that I would have left them sooner or later; I was sorry that Gran
and mother aren’t happy about the way it had happened, that it had
not come about in the way they expected, but there was no way I
regretted my decision.

It was a
couple of days before it occurred to me to wonder if they knew
where I was. They probably did. I was sure they’d have guessed.

‘
You
mean you didn’t leave them a note?’ said Paula.

‘
No, I
didn’t,’ I confessed guiltily. ‘I just wanted to get away from
there as quickly as possible.’

‘
Then I
really think you ought to go and see them, tell them where you
are.’

‘
They’ll
have guessed.’

‘
All the
same, they deserve to be told by you rather than someone else. You
owe them that much, at least.’

*

I went on
Sunday, none too happily, and got there just after ten o’clock mass
had finished, when I knew there would be people home. I let myself
in and found my mother and Gran sitting down to breakfast; when
they looked up their faces were so grave that they might have been
carved out of stone.

I stood there
before them, nervously jiggling my door-key in my hand.

‘
Where
have you been all week?’ my mother asked.

‘
You
don’t know?’

‘
You
didn’t leave word where you were going.’

‘
But-?’
I prompted.

‘
We can
guess,’ she said, sadly nodding her head. ‘You moved your things
out, so you must have gone to her.’

‘
Her
name is Paula.’

‘
That’s
not what we call her,’ Gran butted in nastily. ‘So you’re shacking
up with that woman?’

‘
I’ve
moved into her flat.’

‘
Then
may God forgive you.’

‘
He
probably respects my openness and honesty,’ I said.

‘
Honesty? Ha!’

‘
I’m
more honest than all those hypocrites you’ve been knelt next to
this morning.’

‘
If you
ever have the nerve to join them in church again the roof will fall
in on you.’

‘
My
conscience is clear,’ I told Gran.

‘
Conscience?’ she scoffed. ‘You don’t have one! Your soul is
as black as pitch!’

As usual it
was me and Gran at each other hammer and tongues, with my mother
mostly silent.

I shrugged.
‘You just don’t understand.’

‘
No,
girl, I don’t,’ Gran said, and I could sense the sadness behind the
anger. ‘We brought you up well, your Mum and Dad and me, and we
were proud of you. You were a good child, you did well at school,
you had all the chances-’

‘
The
chances Dad never had?’ It was always a case, in Sleepers Hill, of
a child doing better than its parents. ‘Yes, I know, and I’m sorry
you don’t like the way things have turned out, but I’m not sorry
that I’ve changed. I wish I’d never been born a Catholic,’ I said,
regretting what Gran would see as the greatest advantage of all, ‘I
wish I’d never been born a Catholic because it seems like I wasted
the first sixteen years of my life being a bigot.’

‘
Don’t
you dare speak like that in this house!’

‘
Why
not?’ I asked. ‘Is it yours?’

‘
It’s my
home.’

‘
But
it’s my mother’s house. It used to be my father’s, now it’s hers,
but it’s never been yours. You just live here.’ It was cruel of me,
I knew, but Gran herself was cruel, talking about Paula as if she
was a tart, talking about me as if I was scum, and I wasn't going
to take it any more, I was angry, I no longer loved my family and
didn’t think I had done since the day my father died. ‘You’re just
the lodger,’ I said, turning even nastier. ‘You’re no better than a
family pet. You’re just here so you can be looked after until you
die, until you’re old enough and sick enough to be put
down.’

The argument
was between me and Gran, as it always was, but this time there was
no joy in winning, for the very first time an argument reduced the
old lady to tears. Mother, too, was crying. I went towards her,
realising that I hadn’t put an arm around her since my father’s
funeral, but now, when I tried to, my mother held out a hand to
tell me to stop.

‘
Keep
away,’ she said. ‘Just give me that door-key.’

I looked at
the key, which I still had in my hand; its imprint was on my palm,
where I'd clenched it in my anger. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘
Because
I don’t want to see you back in this house until you’ve left that
woman.’

‘
Then
you’ll have a bloody long wait!’ I shouted, and flung the key onto
the table.

As soon as I
left the house a depression fell. I spent the afternoon walking the
streets of my childhood, found myself crossing the dry dusty
recreation fields, walking by the canal which cut through the
terraces in ever decreasing steps, dropping from one lock to
another. Scraps of land beside it sprouted a scrub-like grass here
and there, every so often there was the bricked-up ventilation
shaft of a disused mine, and this landscape of my childhood was not
the stuff of which dreams could be made, the water in the canal was
scummy and filthy and the terraces crowded in on all sides. Looking
around me, it was little wonder that the thing I craved above all
else was freedom.

*

Paula lifted my
depression gently, little by little, when I arrived back at the
flat it was plain that mine had not been a happy day. I had spent
so much of the afternoon outdoors, walking and thinking, that I was
almost blue with cold, so Paula sat me on the settee before the
fire and ran a hot bath for me, then shepherded me through to the
bathroom. I was too tired and depressed to protest when Paula stood
there to watch me undress, then helped to scrub me and bring some
life back to my body; I was as depressed as I had ever been but
Paula didn’t ask why, just soaped me down and washed my hair and
towelled me dry. Then she wrapped me in a bathrobe, we went back to
the living room and drank soup from mugs -my mother would always
serve it in cereal bowls, I told her- had a glass of whisky each
and curled up side by side on the settee.

‘
Poor
dear,’ Paula finally said, and I felt like weeping in her arms. ‘It
wasn’t very nice, then?’

‘
You can
say that again.’

‘
It
wasn’t very nice, then?’ she said again, and I did my best to
return her slight smile.

‘
They
don’t want me back there,’ I told Paula, and went through the
details of what had happened.

‘
Are you
sorry?’ she asked.

‘
I’m
sorry they reacted like that,’ I said, but knew what Paula meant.
‘I’m not sorry I’ve done what I’ve done, though. They just don’t
understand, but I know that it’s right, moving in with
you.’

‘
Good.’

‘
But why
are people like this, Paula, especially the people in this
miserable town? Why are they so nasty, why are they such
bigots?’

‘
Tradition, habit, it’s the way they’ve been brought up and
it’s all they know. Don’t hate them, Ginny, just pity them. Be
grateful that none of it has rubbed off on you and remember that
you’ll be getting away this summer.’

‘
Yes, I
need to get away. But that’ll mean leaving you, though. Can I do
that?’

‘
Can
you?’

‘
I don’t
know. What do I do?’

‘
Well,’
Paula said, ‘if you don’t want to leave me, but you can’t stay in
this town, then perhaps I might leave with you. Or maybe you might
find a college nearby, close enough to come back each weekend. If
you learned to drive you could borrow the car.’

‘
But
would you come with me, if I moved further away?’

‘
It’s
not an impossibility,’ she smiled. ‘I could easily get a job,
wherever you went.’ She kissed me, her touch reassuring, then said
cheerily, ‘But that’s not going to be for a while yet. Think of all
the months we’ve got ahead, together in this flat. Forget about
what we’re going to do until nearer the time. Six months from now
who knows how we might feel about each other.’

‘
You
think we might feel differently?’

‘
I think
we should never take anything for granted, because that might be
the death of us. I’ve always known that you’d move on this summer,
but I’ve not let myself fret over what’s going to happen to us.
There’s nothing we can do but take the days one at a time, as they
come.’ She saw my worried look and laughed, said, ‘Don’t be so
fretful! You might have had a miserable day but I love you and I
can make it better.’