The Art School Dance (30 page)

‘
He says
he’s moving everything in there, himself and his work.’

‘
I'm
sure he’ll come back to me in the evenings,’ I smiled. Looking
around I noticed Joan staring hard at me from her post by the
kitchen, didn’t know if this was to make sure I cleaned my plate or
if she was simply impatient to see us gone. Rose and I were the
last two in the canteen.

‘
And he
really does have a chicken up there in the studio,’ Rose
added.

‘
I
guessed he had,’ I said, for though McCready and I kept no secrets
from each other he had never openly admitted to the existence of
the creature; pressed, he would tell no lies but leave much
teasingly unsaid.

‘
Weird,’
Rose remarked.

‘
You can
say that?’ I marvelled.

‘
What do
you mean?’

Rose lifted
the veil from her face, peered at me through heavy mascara eyes
which seemed deep and remote. We all had our eccentricities, I
supposed, but they were so much a part of us that we took them for
granted and failed to recognise them as such. McCready’s use of a
chicken as a life model was no stranger than Rose’s predilection
for the morbid and insensate; it was a ‘Scapegoat’ of the modern
age, except that I doubted McCready would ever paint his subject
with quite the same attention to detail as Holman Hunt.

Rose wore an
expression of earnest conviction, comfortable with her own version
of sanity, and it was perhaps in order to question my sanity that
she asked, not for the first time, what I saw in McCready.

What could I
say to someone who would seem to prefer her men as still and inert
as cadavers? A passionate spirit and a vibrant mind would not
recommend McCready to Rose. I remembered the sensitive art students
I had pictured before I came to college, less coarse than the
wham-bam boys I had known back home.

‘
He’s
sensitive,’ I said, though this was not quite accurate, for what
I’d first taken to be sensitivity actually proved to be
shyness.

McCready
sensitive? In some ways, I supposed, but as I worked through that
afternoon I grew increasingly annoyed with him, casting frequent
glances to the door in the expectation that he would arrive late
for our lunch-date, come with his excuses if not an apology. By
late afternoon my temper had me too distracted to continue, I
packed away my things and went to search him out.

My first
thought on entering the painting studio was that Walter had made
great strides in his move for the advancement of life-drawing. The
clucking of McCready’s chicken apart, and the pungent perfume of
Ceri’s two tramps, the profusion of naked breasts bore witness to
the traditionalist’s success. They seemed to be flashing
everywhere, some to be envied for the beauty of their form, others
pitied for their scrawniness. But the dizzying blurs of flesh had
me confused for a moment. Vorticism, was it? The Italian Futurists?
Umberto Boccioni catching his models in motion? Then I saw that no
one was attempting to catch the scene on canvas or paper, that
those students who were present were all sitting back to be
entertained, no more involved in events than a theatre
audience.

I ignored
McCready for the moment -the way he cradled the chicken in his lap,
I was prepared to let him cuddle the creature all the way to bed-
skirted the naked melee to ask Griff what was happening.

‘
It’s
Pam and Karen-’

Only the two
of them, I saw that now, as the fuller woman caught the other by
the hair and held her still.

‘
-my
model and Walter’s,’ he said wearily, the only one of the audience
not enjoying the drama.

‘
Steal
my work, will you?’ Pam was snarling.

‘
Mr
Grundy asked for me,’ Karen protested. ‘He chose me.’

‘
A
question of job demarcation,’ Griff explained to me. ‘Is there a
tribunal Pam can go to? Do life models have a union?’

The thin girl
wore a robe which hangs loose at the front, her flat breasts were
like fried eggs topped with raspberries and one was smeared with
paint. Pam was the more warlike of the two, though, her face was
livid and her firm full breasts quivered with rage as she tightened
her grip on her victim.

‘
I’m the
college model! I get paid for it and I’m not having a little slip
like you cheat me out of work!’

‘
But-!’
Karen began, then squealed with pain as her hair was twisted like a
tourniquet at her throat.

Walter entered
the studio, drawn by the noise, hesitated just long enough for Pam
to catch sight of him.

‘
You!’
she growled, casting aside Karen and stalking slowly towards him
like a cat.

She had a
magnificent body, there was no denying that, and I look on as
open-mouthed as the rest. And all McCready could do is cuddle that
stupid bloody bird in his lap!

‘
I asked
Karen to pose for me,’ Walter told Pam.

‘
But I’m
the model! It’s my living! My livelihood!’

‘
I can’t
use you, Pam, you’re too-’

Walter looks
at her breasts jutting towards him like weapons, barely containing
a grimace, as if he was repulsed by them.

‘
Yes?’
Pam demanded.

‘
I-’

‘
He
can’t use you ‘cause you’re tits are too big,’ someone sang
out.

Pam turned and
glared, rounded on Walter again shouting something about his
perversions and her rights.

Griff sidled
up beside me. ‘Fancy coming for a drink?’ he asked, accepting that
there would be no more work done that day.

I nodded,
looked over to McCready; he was too engrossed with his chicken to
take much notice, so I left him to his own devices, knowing that he
would find me when he wanted me. When he was in such a distracted
mood -of course it wasn’t the chicken that had him preoccupied- it
was generally best to let him be. On this occasion, though, I might
have been wiser to speak to him, to draw him out of his mood before
it became too deep.

*

It was more
than an hour before McCready caught up with me, in the bar of the
students’ union, and with the exception of Griff and I the party he
found assembled were mainly graphics people, friends I had made in
the design department. When he joined us there was a noisy
discussion in progress about their latest brief, a make-believe
piece of advertising, and it was plain that the majority of them
were dissatisfied with it. There were times when their work could
be boring, and this particular project was especially tedious for
them, it brings home to them the realisation that the situations
they were faced with were so contrived, in no way relevant to the
tasks which would face them after college.

‘
Narrow,
regimented and lacking imagination,’ was how one of the design
students now described their course.

‘
We’re
given no chance to be creative,’ another lamented. ‘It’s design
this, project that, promote the other.’

‘
McCready’s the lucky one,’ said one of the group, seeing
him approach, a voice rising above the discontented murmurs of the
others, and by the envious look which was cast McCready’s way he
knew -as did I and Griff- exactly what was coming next. ‘He’s got
so much freedom to do what he wants.’

‘
Right.
We slog away to please others while McCready and his kind just
please themselves.’

The thumb
jerked in the direction of ‘his kind’ was probably what annoyed
McCready most of all; it was even more irritating than the naive
complaints he heard. Still, there was no need for him to react the
way he did. Griff, another of ‘his kind’, had the tact to remain
silent, so why not McCready?

‘
But
that’s what you’re here for, for fuck’s sake!’ he says, showering
them all with spittle. ‘You’re boring inconsequential people
learning how to satisfy the boring inconsequential demands of other
boring inconsequential people!’

I shot him a
quick glance, a scowl which told him that he would have done better
to keep quiet, and the conversation died like a weak and tired old
man.

McCready
sulked off to the bar.

‘
Why did
you say that?’ I asked, following close on his heels.

‘
Because
they’re acting like bloody primadonnas. I mean, surely they
couldn’t have been so stupid that they didn’t know what graphic
design is all about when they came here, so why are they getting so
uptight?’

‘
That’s
still no reason to speak to them like that. They’re my
friends.’

He said
nothing more when we rejoined the company, at least nothing which
could be misconstrued or cause offence; he just sat and listened
and kept his hand in mine. He never spoke up when the purpose of
graphic design was applauded; he made no comment when fine art was
said to be self-indulgent and its students described as gratuitous
wankers; he didn’t even complain when I invited people back to the
flat for a drink, merely came along dutifully, his hand still
clasping mine.

At the flat,
while I opened the wine we bought on the way, McCready was
despatched to the bedroom to set the records turning. Music carried
through to the living room, where it seemed that the world and his
brother had congregated, to the extension speakers which he had
connected to an old record deck to fake a quadrophonic sound.

He knelt on
the floor and watched the turntable spin, was still there when I
came looking for him.

‘
McCready?’ I said.

‘
You
know, you really have to look hard to remind yourself that there’s
only one groove,’ he said, ‘to remind yourself that the stylus will
track along until it reaches the end.’

‘
Yes?’

‘
Yes.
It’s important, don’t you see? A quick glance or an unpractised eye
and you could easily think that there’s more than one, that the
grooves are so many that they’re impossible to count. It would be a
lot easier if the groove was extended in a straight line, more
easily understood if it could be seen this way, rather than going
around and around in ever decreasing circles.’

‘
I
imagine so.’

‘
That’s
me,’ he smiled up at me, ‘going around in circles, never knowing if
the circles are diminishing or if there’s an end in
sight.’

'Then forget
the old vinyl and let's switch to CDs,” I said.

He returned my
uncertain smile, rose and walked with me, back into the living
room. I thought this was the extent of his mood, the limit of his
deliberations, but they had obviously led him further than I could
have suspected, for he scrutinised the people who babbled and
laughed and drank, looking hard at them as if he could make no
sense of the scene.

Then he
shouted, above the music and the general hubbub, ‘So these are your
friends, are they? Christ! What a bunch of shits!’

The outburst
was deserving of a punch in the mouth, and perhaps this was what he
was hoping for, thinking that pain might make everything more
tangible. As it was, no one made a move towards him, he walked
across to the window and gazed out, his back to everyone. I looked
from face to face, an apology in my eyes, and people started to
file from the room; I went to the door with them, wishing each one
a sorry goodnight.

‘
Act
like that and the poor girl will have no friends at all,’ Griff
said, popping his head back around the door.

McCready
picked up the nearest thing to hand, a bottle of washing-up liquid,
and hurled it. Luckily the bottle was plastic, it didn’t break, but
the force of the impact sent greasy green smears across the
wall.

The room was
then empty, McCready sat before the fire, I squatted beside him and
asked what was wrong; I wanted to understand, rather than
argue.

He shrugged.
‘I don’t know. It sometimes seems like I’m asking so many questions
and not getting any answers.’

‘
What
questions?’

‘
That’s
just it, I don’t even know what the fucking questions
are.’

Nothing was
ever simple for McCready. I ventured the suggestion that he might
be trying too hard to be a genius.

‘
And
what’s wrong with that?’ he asked, not even giving any
consideration to whether or not my diagnosis might be
accurate.

‘
Well
I’d rather be normal and happy than a genius and miserable,’ I
said.

‘
Yes,
and I’d rather be a genius and miserable than normal and
miserable.’

*

It was fifteen
minutes later that there was a tentative tap on Griff's door. He
opened it to find me standing there. It must have been obvious to
him that I’d been crying.

‘
What’s
wrong with him?’ I asked, as Griff led me into the room and sat me
on the settee beside him.

‘
McCready? He must be a little drunker than we
thought.’

‘
No,
it’s more than that.’

‘
What’s
his
excuse?’

‘
He says
he’s generally pissed off, says he’s asking so many questions and
not getting any answers.’

‘
What
questions?’

I laughed and
sniffed back the tears, a tissue to my face. ‘That’s just it, he
says he doesn’t even know what the questions are. How’s he going to
be able to come up with any answers if he doesn’t even know what
the questions are?’