The Art School Dance (35 page)

‘
Read
on,’ Griff smiled.

McCready read
on and the words leapt out from the page at him: ‘‘Look it up! If
you have any difficulty in comprehending this brief then translate
into English whatever modification of the language you are familiar
with. Finally, you might bear in mind a dictum of Thomas Aquinas:
That which makes two pieces of flint two pieces and not one is not
the fact that they are both flint, for in this respect they do not
differ. Good luck. B.Goode, Sen. Lec., F. Art.’’

McCready gave
a short gasp of puzzlement, crumpled up the paper and tossed it
over his shoulder.

‘
What
is
rechauffe?’
Griff asks. ‘What does it mean?’

They sat down
to consider the roots of the word, which they thought might
possibly be French, and as they were pondering over it Ceri marched
into the studio, quiet and purposeful, carrying a roll of newsprint
under his arm. This he unfurled and taped to the wall behind a
selected balloon; then he turned and left, still quiet, still
purposeful. On his second entrance, a minute later, he was carrying
a bucket of very liquid paint.

‘
What’re
you doing, Ceri?’ asked McCready.

‘
Sorting
out the fucker and his project,’ Ceri answered gravely, and put the
bucket down with all the reverence deserving a chalice. He rolled
up his sleeves, picked up the bucket again, and in one quick
movement hurled the contents at the balloon. The balloon bounced
beneath the glossy torrent and the paper received most of the
paint, showing what might or might not have been the silhouette of
a balloon. The paper was taken down from the wall and laid flat to
dry.

‘
Is that
it, then?’

‘
That’s
it,’ said Ceri, hands on hips and chest heaving, looking down at
the soaked paper.

‘
What’s
that?’ asked Barney, regarding the mess into which he had almost
stepped.

‘
It’s
Ceri’s response to your project,’ McCready told him.

Ceri nodded.
‘An accurate and precise interpretation of the situation.’

‘
Too
creative,’ Barney told him, walking away and leaving a trail of
sticky footprints across the floor.

‘
Pretty
mindless, though,’ thought Griff.

*

‘I’ve got
the buggers in knots upstairs. They’ve got cameras and callipers
and rulers and bits of string in play, there’s only Ceri using any
paint and all he’s doing is flinging it about the place. They don’t
know whether they’re coming or going.’

Barney was
effusive as he told the others in the senior common room. Most of
the staff, like the students, were confused by his project, Teacher
was too dulled by drink to care, and only Walter showed outright
disapproval in his dark, black-eyed glare.

‘
This is
your balloon project?’ said Bobby.

‘
It is
indeed,’ said Barney, his grin aimed at Walter, extracting every
ounce of pain that he could. ‘It’s put a stop to their bloody
painting, hasn’t it, Walter? Knocked the bloody nudes on the head
for good.’

‘
It’s
only a fad,’ Walter believed, trying to sound unconcerned. ‘They’ll
soon grow out of it, like they grew out of playing conkers or
wanting to be train drivers.’

‘
But
that’s where you’re wrong, Walter. This is the beginning of the end
for you and your kind. You’re going to be exiled to the ladies’
evening class for good now.’

Walter’s nose
was still swollen, his eyes bruised, he had been too humbled by
Barney’s single blow to respond to these fresh taunts. He hunched
his shoulders and sulked.

‘
What
are they actually going to do with these balloons?’ Bobby asked
hesitantly, not wanting to seem too ignorant.

‘
Anything they can, apart from paint them.’

Walter got to
his feet. ‘You’re so bloody childish,’ he said to Barney. ‘Sticking
balloons up all over the place is so infantile.’

‘
So
infantile that you can’t even understand what it’s all about,’
Barney smiled. ‘It’s just too childish for you to appreciate, isn’t
it?’

‘
It’s
childish to keep waging battle like this. We’re supposed to be
educating the students, not fighting for their favours.’

‘
And
educate them I will, Walter, just as soon as I’ve got them out of
your clutches. Why don’t you just leave me to it, find yourself
another flat-chested girl from the foundation course and hide away
upstairs with her?’

Bobby giggled
and Walter blushed. Years ago he had convinced himself that his
interest was aesthetic, as innocent as the Reverend Dodgson’s
preoccupation with Alice, but Barney’s mentioning the penchant and
Bobby’s tittering at it made him feel guilty. He was unsure whether
to make light of it, to laugh along with the joke and say yes, he
would go upstairs and fondle a seventeen year old virgin, or
categorically deny that anything licentious was ever in his mind
when he confronted his models.

‘
Can’t
think what to say, can you?’ Barney knew.

‘
Sod
off,’ Walter replied, shuffling across the room to pour himself a
cup of coffee from the percolator.

‘
Poor
Walter,’ said Bobby.

‘
Just
what is it about him that grabs everyone’s sympathy?’ Barney wanted
to know. ‘Julia’s just the same, always sorry for him.’

‘
He’s so
inoffensive, that’s the thing. Certainly too inoffensive to deserve
your insults. I don’t know how you can treat him the way you
do.’

‘
It’s
easy. He may seem inoffensive to you but he’s buggering up the mind
of those students upstairs. Someone has to stop him.’

‘
And
you’ve taken that role upon yourself, have you? Righter of wrongs,
champion of the good? Christ, Barney, you almost make it sound like
a crusade.’

‘
Why
not?’ he said, and looks at the Principal dozing in the chair
beside him. ‘Nobody else cares enough to intervene. Teacher
certainly won’t do anything, the idle bugger.’

Teacher
stirred, but said nothing.

‘
Say
that louder,’ Bobby challenged Barney, and smiled when he declined
to. ‘No, you won’t, will you? Teacher would beat the crap out of
you if you started on him the way you do with Walter.’

‘
Well,
he
is
a big bastard, ‘ Barney
conceded. ‘Thumping him would be like thumping an outside
toilet.’

Bobby shook
the Principal roughly, told him that Barney is calling him a
shithouse.

There was a
low grumble, which might have been an acknowledgement or a
rebuke.

‘
The
driving force behind our art school,’ Barney said, but still not
loud enough to cause offence.

Walter
returned with his coffee, sat quietly brooding, and silence settled
on the room again, like an overweight bird come to roost. Barney
smiled to himself, satisfied with the confusion his project was
causing. Bobby split a matchstick and begins to use it as a
toothpick, digging away at her teeth. Barney gave a deep yawn, his
mouth opening wide, blamed his tiredness on his daughter who now
seemed to disturb the peace of every night.

‘
Ah, so
the joys of fatherhood are wearing thin already?’ Bobby
guessed.

‘
Not at
all. It’s just that it’s a rather more tiring business than I
imagined it would be.’

Bobby refused
to accept this. ‘No, it’s more than tiredness, Barney. You can’t
fool me. It’s the way that life has become stale and domesticity
stifling, that’s what’s got you weary. I’ll tell you what you need
to do.’

‘
Yes?’

‘
What
every creative married man needs to do once a bambino comes along.
You need to get yourself a mistress.

‘
You’re
joking.’

‘
No I’m
not. A mistress would bring some novelty back into your life and
help you love your family again.’

‘
I do
love my family,’ Barney maintained, but was forced to add, ‘it’s
just that the baby makes things difficult at times, that’s
all.’

‘
It’s
your abstract considerations tying your brain in knots, that’s what
it is,’ said Walter. ‘You need to pick up a paintbrush again,
Barney, and find some peace of mind.’

‘
Pick up
a piece on the side, more like,’ Bobby continued to argue. ‘Untwist
his testicles, that’s what he needs. It’s his balls that are in a
knot, Walter, not his mind.’

Barney offered
neither a grumble nor a frown, nor wasted any breath on telling
them to keep their advice to themselves; he was sane and he was
sensible, reason was in control, he knew that his only problem with
family life was in finding the peace he needed to work.

‘
Anyway,’ he said to Bobby, and without really considering
his words it was more an aside to himself, ‘I thought you’d be too
busy with your own love life to find time to bother with me and
mine.’

‘
Bother
with you?’ she laughed, and threw back her head. ‘Jesus, Barney,
you didn’t perhaps think I was offering myself to you? I might have
mentioned you taking a mistress but I certainly wasn’t auditioning
for the part!’

‘
No, of
course not.’ Barney tried to correct himself, and felt his cheeks
redden as he laughed with her, saying, ‘No, I was just meaning,
well-’ For once words failed him, her continued amusement annoyed
him and he snapped, ‘Bloody hell, Bobby, I wouldn’t touch you with
a disinfected dipstick!’

‘
Liar,’
Bobby smirked, leaning forward provocatively. ‘You were just
itching in your pants at the thought of bedding me.’

‘
Ha!’ he
snorted. ‘Bedding you would be like bedding- like bedding Barbara
Streisand!’

‘
And
you’re saying that prospect doesn’t turn you on?’

‘
Yes. I
mean, no. She certainly doesn’t.’

Walter shook
his head, said, ‘The poor man’s been away from painting too long,
he’s completely lost his aesthetic sense.’

‘
Aesthetic, nothing. Her nose is too big,’ Barney protested,
only realising just how pathetic his protest sounded when he had
blurted it out.

‘
Listen
to the man!’ Bobby cried, now laughing so loudly that other people
in the room were turning around. ‘He must be the only man left on
the planet who worries about the state of the mantelpiece when he’s
poking the fire! Talk about fussy!’

The
conversation was getting out of hand for Barney, too heated for him
to give any consideration to what he was saying; he could handle a
discussion on Descartes, or a lecture on logical positivism, but
the talk with Bobby was deteriorating and his responses were just
gushing forth without thought or effect.

‘
Well,
this isn’t getting any work done,’ he said, after taking a deep
breath to stem the previous flow of inanities.

‘
Why
don’t you take me for a drink and see if you can’t soften me up?’
Bobby called after him as he marched away. ‘You never know your
luck! I might be persuaded to let you fuck me!’

*

Though everyone
else was confused, and Ceri was still flinging paint about the
place in abstractly expressive bursts, McCready seemed to be making
no effort at all to respond to Barney’s project. The balloons in
the painting studio become puckered as the days passed, like
freshly washed fingertips pegged out to dry, and they hung limply,
nothing more than sad sacks of stake air. When the deadline came
for the completion of the project Barney was waiting for
McCready.

‘
So,
McCready, are you going to make your apologies?’

‘
Apologies, Barney? For what?’

‘
I don’t
see any response to the project I set,’ said the tutor, looking
around the walls where the few desultory attempts at a solution had
been displayed.

‘
That
doesn’t mean to say I didn’t respond,’ McCready said, with a clever
smile.

‘
Okay
then, let’s hear about it,’ Barney demanded, inviting McCready to
sit and explain.

‘
The
clue was in Thomas Aquinas,’ McCready began. ‘I delved a little
more deeply into the man’s work and came up with his conclusion
that for change to occur there must be a cause.’

‘
Reasonable enough,’ agreed Barney.

‘
So,
imagine if we worked back from effects to causes… we could either
work back indefinitely, or eventually reach some ultimate original
cause, like a God for example. The first of these options, the idea
of infinite causes, has to be ruled out, because with this there
could be no beginning to the series. If there’s no beginning,
there’s no succession. If there’s no first cause there can be no
second, no third, and so on.’

‘
So?’
said Barney, interested, for this was the sort of response to the
project that he had had in mind.

‘
So we
have to accept the second option, the idea of an original God-like
cause.’

Barney waited
for McCready to continue.

McCready
didn’t, though; he sat back with his arms folded, smiling
smugly.

‘
Then
what’s the answer to our problem?’ Barney finally asked.

‘
God
knows!’ McCready laughed, rising from his stool and starting to
walk away.