The Art School Dance (21 page)

At ten thirty
the undertaker and his crew arrived. Uncle Jack did all the
talking, they went through to the front room, then he came back to
tell the assembled mourners that they could view the bodies if they
liked.

They took off
the lids! I’d forgotten about that!

‘
Ginny
should go first,’ my uncle said. ‘Ginny?’

And see Gran
and my mother with their accusing glances, critical of me even in
death? A little guiltily I shook my head. A few people frowned and
muttered, some nodded as if they understood, most filed through to
pay their last respects.

‘
Are you
sure you don’t want to?’ Uncle Jack asked me, when everyone else
had seen the bodies.

‘
I’m
sure.’

The undertaker
shrugged and went to replace the lids. A few minutes later we
followed the coffins out to the cars. There were people standing at
every door along the street, clutching handkerchiefs and tea towels
to their tearful faces, and I felt awkward at being the centre of
attention. Their pity came at me in waves.

Everyone
agreed that it was a beautiful service, once we were at the
‘Bellingham’ and tucking into sausage rolls and ham sandwiches. I
could see no beauty in it, though. The church was cold, the incense
had a fragrance of must rather than mystery and the priest’s
platitudes were ones I had heard before. The only thing that
surprised me was when the priest asked the congregation to pray for
me as well as for the deceased; he gave me a cold hard glance when
he said this, as if any prayers should be offered to Saint Jude,
the patron saint of my hopeless case. There was the surprise, then,
but no beauty.

There was no
beauty when we moved on to the cemetery, either, which was perched
on a hill a mile or two outside town. It was a bleak desolate place
and the town seemed to creep up on all sides, as if the living were
so tired of their existence on Sleepers Hill that they were eager
to sidle in beside the dead. There were more platitudes from the
priest, the altar boys looked appropriately solemn, all of the
mourners shivered and some wept.

At a distance
I saw Ben, standing apart from the rest. When the graveside service
was over and earth and holy water had been splattered on the
coffins I was left alone for a while, as was customary. I looked
prayerful for a moment or two, then turned to walk over the frozen
rutted soil to the cars.

Ben fell in
step beside me.

‘
Coping?’ he asked.

‘
Just
about,’ I answered. ‘It’ll be a bit easier when I get shut of all
these people, though.’

I nodded
towards the waiting cars, to the relations who were gathered
there.

‘
I
thought you might be in need of a bit of support.’

‘
Thanks,
I think I am,’ I said. ‘Do you fancy tagging along for the
booze-up?’

‘
The
what?’

‘
Drinks
and butties at the ‘Bellingham’,’ I explained. ‘You know how they
do things around here, give the dead a good send-off, say how
wonderful the deceased was while they eat and drink at the expense
of the unfortunate bugger.’

‘
Even
though they might have hated the poor sod.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve
seen what it’s like, I’ve been to a few of those
affairs.’

‘
Can you
spare the time, then?’ I hoped.

‘
Of
course,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the car, I’ll follow.’

‘
I’ll
come with you and show you the way.’

‘
No, you
need to go with the rest,’ he told me. ‘Go on,’ he urged, when I
hesitated, ‘it’s expected of you. You’ve just got to remember your
place for a little while longer.’

‘
And
after that? Can I get away from this bloody hole once it’s
over?’

*

Ben was the
first person I looked for when we were all gathered at the
‘Bellingham’, I almost ran to his side as if he was the father I’d
lost; the further condolences which came my way, trying to distract
me, I was easily able to shrug off.

‘
Isn’t
it a fucking crime?’ I said to him.

‘
That
they died?’

‘
That
people behave like this.’

‘
That’s
the way funerals are, Ginny, packed with people you don’t want to
see. There’s never any escaping them, they follow you to your
grave.’

‘
But
when this is over, then I can get away?’

‘
Or when
your affairs are settled. The affairs of the dead don’t end when
they’re buried, they tend to drag on for a little longer than
that.’

‘
I don’t
mind, that’ll do for me, the fact that I’ll be free to
go.’

Because Ben
was such an imposing figure, and perhaps because no one quite knew
who he was, the relations tend to avoid the two of us and we were
left alone in a corner of the room. Uncle Jack, wanting to be seen
as the host of the wake, made a little speech which was full of
grandiose words and grammatical errors, saying how much everyone
was going to miss Gran and my mother and how everyone’s thoughts
would be with me in the weeks and months to come. They wouldn’t,
though, no one’s thoughts would be with me, I would be away from
that place so quickly that any good wishes would have to travel at
the speed of light to catch up with me.

The speech
seemed to mark the end for many people, they seemed to think that
their obligation had been fulfilled and they came across to shake
my hand or kiss my cheek as they left; but then there were the
obstinate ones, those who would stay until every drop had been
drunk and every scrap eaten.

‘
Ben,’ I
whispered, ‘do you think we could creep downstairs and have a drink
in the regular bar?’

‘
You
really should be the last one to leave,’ he told me.

‘
But can
you blame me if I don’t want to stay? I mean, just look at these
people.’

He didn’t
bother to look, he’d seen their kind before. ‘Okay, come on.’

We walked
downstairs and I told him that the ‘Bellingham’ had an ordinary
bar, that it wasn’t necessary to have a meal in order to drink
there. He probably knew this, but said nothing, just let me witter
on.

I started to
laugh.

‘
What is
it?’ Ben asked.

‘
Paula
told me that very same thing, that you don’t have to have a meal to
drink here. This is one of the first places we came together, see.
I was a bit uneasy because I thought it was a posh
place.’

Downstairs we
had pints of beer, more sensible drinks than the spirits and
fortified wines there had been upstairs; on beer I could get drunk,
the other stuff just made me sick.

‘
What
are you going to do?’ Ben asked me.

‘
Now
that I’ve been kicked out of college, you mean? I’m not
sure.’

‘
You can
still apply for a degree course, you know. Nothing has really
changed. You’ve got plenty of good work, so just add to it in the
time you’ve got left and stick your application in along with the
others. Forget the fact that you won’t finish the foundation
course. I’ll see to it that you get good references.’

‘
Thanks
a lot, Ben,’ I said, for I knew that what he was proposing was not
quite legitimate.

‘
So?
Will you give it a try?’

‘
We’ll
see.’

We finished
our drinks and had another, I saw one or two mourners come down the
stairs so hid in the toilets.

Back with Ben
again, he said, ‘Paula’s waiting, you know.’

‘
Waiting?’

‘
She
wouldn’t come, she wouldn’t call around to see you, she thought you
might prefer to be alone. She sent along the message, though, told
me to tell you she’s waiting.’

‘
She’s
not been put off by all that’s happened?’ I asked.

‘
Don’t
you know her better than that?’ he answered.

I thought for
a moment, then said, ‘Can you give me a lift into town, to her
flat?’

‘
Now?’

‘
I’d be
grateful if you could.’

‘
You
really ought to go back upstairs.’

‘
But you
know I’m not going to, don’t you?’

‘
Paula’s
in college, she’s not at the flat.’

‘
That
doesn’t matter.’

Ben looked at
the people still leaving the wake, probably regarding them in much
the same light that I did, said okay, he would give me a lift. We
drank up and went out to his car, were in town in a matter of
minutes. He dropped me off at the door to Paula’s flat, asked if he
should give her the rest of the day off.

‘
No,
there’s no need for that,’ I told him.

‘
Right,
then. I’ll see you again?’

‘
Or
perhaps read about me in the papers,’ I grinned. ‘Bye, Ben. Thanks
for everything.’

*

Less than an
hour later I was walking down the hill, turning to the right, away
from college and towards the station. I didn’t care where I might
be going, the next train would do, that would be the one I’d catch.
I had paused in each room in Paula’s flat, had seen the flat, not
for the first time, as the place I would like to live and thought
that some day I might return to such a place, to share it with
Paula or with a person very much like her. For the moment, though,
I needed to be elsewhere, away, some place other than Sleepers
Hill. I had left my funeral outfit and smart black coat on Paula’s
bed -imagining how she might laugh, to think of me wearing such
things- and I walked down the hill in my favourite leather jacket,
the one with my name on the back to say that I didn’t give a toss
about anyone else. Ginny da Vinci, that was me, and I could see
people knew it by the way they stared after me, annoyed by my
jaunty step.

BOOK TWO

VIRGINIA
PLAIN

a portrait of
the young woman as an artist

Prologue

‘Mister
Teacher-?’

Over the
intercom the voice seemed to crackle with age, like that of some
wizened old harridan, and this was the one reason Teacher had to be
grateful to the infernal squawking machine, that it could rob that
bitch of a secretary of some of her beauty and youth.

But
Mister
Teacher?
And spoken with such a clipped lack of respect? Where was the
regard he was due? Where was his title: Principal?

‘
-I have
some letters waiting for your signature,’ he was told.

‘
Then
forge it,’ he said. ‘Before you do, though, just nip out and get me
a bottle of whisky, there’s a love.’

‘
Go get
it yourself,’ his secretary answered, sniffing audibly, disguising
her disdain for him with a snooty appreciation of her expensive
perfume. ‘And I am not your love.’

‘
You
should be so lucky,’ he grumbled. ‘Now just cut out the
insubordination and shift your lazy arse across to the
supermarket.’

‘
How
dare you talk to me like that!’

How dare he?
Quite easily. It was one of the perks of the job, to speak down to
people; he had suffered the acid tongue often enough in his younger
years, and now it was his turn to dole it out. But still, if she
didn’t like it…

‘
If you
don’t like it you can always leave,’ he countered, with a curtness
which hinted at an executive decision, and as quickly as the idea
came to him so he warmed to it. ‘Yes! Leave, why don’t you? You
were never cut out for this job in the first place.’

‘
Ha!
I’ll be at my desk longer than you’ll be at yours!’

‘
You
bitch!’ Teacher cursed her, as the intercom went dead.

*

Getting on for
fifty years of age, single, and earning sufficient thousands per
annum to live quite comfortably, Principal Teacher would have been
justified in feeling proud of his achievements; after all, not
quite fifty was a good age to be head of an established college of
art, a few years younger than was customary. He had positively
leapt up the ladder of promotions, climbing rungs at a time. His
mother would have been pleased for him, many another man would have
been content with such success, but for some reason he felt
unfulfilled.

Slouched
behind the desk in his cork-tiled, shag-piled office, the curtained
double glazing filling the wall behind him, he felt drained of all
sensation, swamped by the muteness of the materials. The softness
of the office numbed him, no sound intruded to shake him from his
torpor, neither from the streets outside nor from the five floors
of art school which towered above; the steel and concrete block was
packed with workshops and studios, there would be students
hammering and chipping and blasting, nailing wood to wood or
slapping wedges of clay into shape, attacking stone with chisels or
scorching metal with welding torches, but not a sound crept into
the padded cell of his office. He felt that the room had been
expressly designed to dull him; if he had a wife he would have
confided as much to her at the end of each tedious day, complained
that he was plotted against, told her that there was a subtle
conspiracy afoot to sap him of all drive and ensure that he
remained no more than the titular head of that college of art.

And a wife, if
there had been one, would have laughed.