The Art School Dance (25 page)

*

There was more,
much more, and at lunchtime people departed the studio in a daze,
angry or near to tears. Thinking it time that I socialise, now that
I had made my impression on the group, I joined others in the
canteen, over lunch made the acquaintance of some of my fellow
students. One girl named Rose, a long thin creature dressed all in
black, grinned at me.

‘
Caught
you with your knickers down last night, didn’t I?’ she said. She
wore a cloche hat with a veil and she raised the lace from her
mouth to slip a spoonful of yoghurt into her mouth.

‘
You
did?’

‘
At
Fraser’s party. I was at the top of the stairs when I saw you along
the landing, your drawers just about to drop down to your
ankles.’

‘
Oh.
Right.’

The grin
broadened, the lips thin like the rest of her features, as she
asked, ‘Good fuck, was he?’

I had no reply
to that.

A heavily
built Welshman asked if this is what’s known as the ‘art school
dance’, said his mother warned him about such things and he was
looking forward to joining in.

‘
It’s
more like a tart’s cool dance than an art school dance where
Virginia’s amour is concerned,’ Rose laughed. ‘That guy bangs away
like a shit-house door.’

Indeed? And
how did she know that?

As the group
broke up, left to our own resources for the rest of the day, I
asked Rose what she planned to do.

‘
About
what?’

‘
About
the talk Mr Goode -Barney- gave us.’

‘
Haven’t
the faintest,’ she confessed. ‘Go for a drink I suppose. What do
you say?’

‘
Why
not?’ I agreed.

Rose led the
way, from the college and along the street, to the bar where I had
met my lover of the previous night, smiled at a young man we passed
in the doorway but then shook her head.

‘
No,
celibacy’s got to be the thing for a spell,’ she promised herself,
descending a dark flight of stairs to the bar. ‘At least until I
get the devotion to art going and sort things out. It’s going to be
fucking difficult, though, if the rest of the tutors are anything
like Barney.’ She ordered drinks at the bar, looked around the room
while she was waiting to be served. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘There’s your
stud of last night.’

I looked, but
only briefly, for I had also come to the same decision as Rose.

‘
No, I’m
for celibacy too.’

‘
Good
girl, Virginia.’

Chapter
Two

‘I know
you’re in there, girl!’ Ron bellowed, standing erect at the far end
of the studio, his knuckles white as his shaking hands tightly
gripped his broom. Before him was my den, a construction of black
polythene pinned to easels, to exhibition boards and discarded
paintings. There were many other such constructions in the studio,
jutting out from the walls at every angle to make cubicles in which
people could work in privacy, but it was mine which was the
largest, the length of the far wall and half the height of the
studio. Ron had diligently steered his broom between all the other
compartments, leaving a dusty rectangular border around each and
smearing streaks of paint across the floor, but had now been
brought to a halt by the large black bivouac. ‘I don’t know why
you’re in there,’ he cried in exasperation, ‘but I know you’re
there!’

I was in the
den because of the painting, thirty six square feet of cotton duck
stretched over twenty four feet of two by one timber. The surface
of the canvas vibrated with lines, shimmering when caught in the
periphery of the eye’s range and shifting more slowly when gazed at
directly, coming forward and then receding, pulsing gently like
some living creature whose sole intention was to mesmerise and
envelop. Up to twenty different vanishing points disguise the
buildings which had originally been there and a simple enough
landscape had been swept away in some futuristic mayhem, planes
pulled askew and angles exaggerated to ridiculous degrees, as
though the fabric of the structures had been ripped away and
replaced by a fine elastic film. No colour could be applied, for
the network of lines was too flimsy; to apply colour would be like
painting a cobweb with a coat of gloss, or applying a layer of
undercoat to a moth’s wing.

The canvas was
a complicated exercise in perspective, a response to Barney’s
insistence that what was good in a painting had to be established,
prompted by the premise that mastery of such disciplines as
perspective would lead to said knowledge. Barney, though, had said
that it was too Socratic an approach, that being Socratic it would
necessarily involve balance and compromise. Such qualities were
impossible with a concept like goodness, he insisted; a thing was
either good or not good, there could be no degrees of goodness.

There were
arguments, I was sure, but for that moment they were elusive, like
flitting insects coloured grey by my lethargy. I wondered aloud if
it would always be like this, if all my proposals would be
ridiculed and dismissed so easily, and the question brought a smile
from Barney, together with a further glittering piece of reasoning.
The merit of a theory, he told me, or of any proposition or
proposal, lay in the very fact that it could be refuted, for if it
could not be refuted by the facts which it sought to explain then
its accuracy was no longer dependant on those facts, and therefore
useless.

This seemed
nonsensical to me. ‘You mean to say that if the facts don’t turn
about and deny a theory then the theory is useless, since it
doesn’t relate to these facts?’

‘
Right.’

‘
But if
the facts do deny the theory then the theory is again useless,
since it doesn’t explain the facts as it set out to do.’

Barney smiled
and agreed that this was so, which left me so confused that I built
the den and hid myself away inside it. It was an understandable
reaction, but one which Ron lacked the imagination to
appreciate.

Looking about
him, exasperation in his every movement, the cleaner saw Griff
working nearby, said, ‘She’s in there, isn’t she?’

‘
Dunno,’
Griff lied.

‘
You’ll
have to take it down! I've got to clean in there!’ Ron shouted,
turning his attention back to the den. Then he repeated himself
more softly for Griff’s benefit. ‘I’ve got to clean in there,
see?’

‘
I
see.’

‘
Come
out!’ the cleaner cried, but there was not even the slightest
ripple on the glossy black surface of the den. He pleaded with
Griff. ‘Go on in there and get her out for me. Please.’

‘
Sorry,
Ron, but Virginia won’t listen to me. Besides, I couldn’t even find
my way in there. It’s like a labyrinth.’

A masterpiece
of construction was how I had described it.

‘
Please,
Griff.’

‘
Sorry,
Ron.’

‘
Then
I'll have to see the Principal about this!’ Ron cried. And louder
still, at the den: ‘I SAY I'LL HAVE TO SEE THE PRINCIPAL ABOUT
THIS!’

There was
still no response so he turns and sadly shuffled away to sweep the
saner areas of the studio, looking back over his shoulder every
three or four steps as if in accordance with some vexed
choreography. When he had passed through the door to the adjacent
studio I finally crept out, blinking in the brighter light of day,
and crossed to where Griff was working.

*

It had taken a
term but, despite Barney’s complaints, all us first year students
had begun to evolve our own styles, from Ceri, whose controlled
expressionism involved making clinically exact copies of Jackson
Pollock, to me, whose neo-conceptual confusion meant that I was not
yet exactly sure what I was doing. Griff was into a Day-Glo
mysticism, painting mandalas in vibrant colours against pastel puke
backgrounds. His curls danced across his shoulders as he nodded to
acknowledge my presence.

‘
The
den’s coming down, then?’ he asked.

‘
No
chance,’ I told him.

‘
It
really should, Virginia. It’s dangerous, having all that polythene
around you.’

Especially
when the only light inside was a paraffin-fired hurricane lamp.

But then
Griff’s paintings were considered by some to be a hazard to health,
prolonged exposure to which could cause such violent bouts of
nausea that the canvasses had to be turned to the wall and all the
windows opened to clear the air.

It wasn’t
necessary for me to remind Griff of this. I simply pretended to
throw up as I walked away.

‘
You’re
crazy, you are,’ said Griff.

‘
Am I?’
I wondered.

It was
becoming a favourite question of mine: Am I? And if I am, then who
am I?

The words of
some poet came to mind as I left the puke coloured paintings and
took the lift to a lower floor -‘when we dream that we dream...’-
but I was unable to complete the quotation. Nor could I remember
who the poet was, or if the words were relevant to my present
confusion.

In the canteen
I found Ceri, sat beside him and tried to describe this confusion,
its doubt and uncertainty.

‘
Sod
theories. Who needs them?’ said Ceri, abstractedly picking at his
nose. He rolled a tiny black pellet between finger and thumb and
flicked it away; it stuck to the window beside him, unseen at first
against the dusk outside, then appearing like a blackhead when I
looked at my reflection in the darkening glass.

‘
But
it’s so easy, Ceri, so natural to doubt things, to question what
they are. Or even if they are.’

‘
Bollocks!’ Ceri spat out the word, not allowing me time to
dwell on the blemish on my mirrored cheek. ‘You’re supposed to be
an artist, Virginia. What you see, what you paint- that’s what
is.’

‘
But how
can the senses be trusted when they’re so easily deceived?’ I
wanted to know, and pointed to our reflections in the canteen
window. ‘I mean, if those are illusions then why couldn’t we be,
too?’

Ceri snorted.
He was too much the bullet-headed bigot to harbour such doubts and
too much of a bruiser to let people challenge his views. He pounded
his fist on the table, making cups and saucers jump to
attention.

‘
If I
see this table, then it exists,’ he maintained. ‘If I’m not
certain, then I touch it.’

Or thump it,
as he did again.

My finger
traced baroque patterns in the coffee which had spilled across the
table. ‘But what about dreams?’ I ventured. ‘We believe in those
for a time, then discard them in favour of so-called reality.’

‘
You’re
crazy, Virginia, or you will be if you carry on thinking like
that,’ Ceri sneered, his eyebrows falling like hoods to darken his
gaze. He kicked away his chair as he stood up. ‘Come on, enough of
this metaphysical bullshit. Let’s go for a drink.’

As I followed
Ceri out of the college I envied the confident roll of the
Welshman’s frame, so loaded down with conviction that it seemed to
move with difficulty. For myself, I was so desperately lacking in
the precious stuff that I could only allow myself to be led
wherever he chose to take me.

*

Drinking with
Ceri, the evening went by like a blurred photograph, a dozen frames
of Muybridge photographs fuzzing into one, and as the images flowed
into each other the drinks seemed to be consecutive sips from one
single pot. Ceri, noting how well the beer was going down,
suggested that we might move on to a party.

‘
A
party?’ I said.

‘
At
Fraser’s.’

‘
Oh no,
no parties, especially not at Fraser’s.’

Fraser’s
parties had already achieved a certain notoriety. He would give at
least one a fortnight and they were infamous for their lack of
food, lack of drink and lack of any music other than the
static-riddled stuff crackling out from a cheap radio perched on
top of the fireplace. Fraser himself would be absent for most of
the evening, finally appearing, if he did at all, close to
midnight, when he hoped the party would be in full swing and
everyone having a good time despite his lack of effort.

No, no
parties.

‘
It
might be different tonight,’ Ceri said optimistically.

‘
You
really think so?’

No, probably
not, but we went along there all the same, and to our surprise what
we found was an actual party, people enjoying themselves, rather
than the funeral wake we would have predicted.

‘
Obviously nothing to do with Fraser,’ I commented, and
breathless words rushed along the hallway as Jean came to greet
us.

‘
No,’
she panted, her plump face bursting with a flushed enthusiasm where
previously she had only ever been seen as pale and doughy. ‘It was
my idea, actually, well, mine and Marie’s. We made pizza, lots of
it, and got bread and cheese and stuff. Someone brought tapes. I
mean, it’s time Fraser gave a proper party-’

‘
Yes,
Jean, well done,’ I congratulated her as I squeezed
past.

Accepting that
it was a party, then, I picked up food and drink and made a tour of
the house. It was actually crowded for a change, too crowded to
confine itself to the usual single dismal room, and I bumped
against dancers and stumble over reclining bodies, was chased from
one room by profoundly heavy conversation, from another by cloying
fumes of smoke as people sat in a circle beneath a dim orange light
and passed around joints, soothing their charred throats with
draughts of lime cordial. It was in the only quiet room in the
house that I found an atmosphere in which I could relax, in the
room with the surreal ashtray and the mutilated mannequin’s torso.
Flickering candles were the only light there, the faint strains of
acoustic guitar music the only sounds, and, always one for the
anonymous quiet, I was drawn into the room.