The Art School Dance (36 page)

‘
Hey!
Where do you think you're going?’ Barney asked.

‘
To the
canteen. It’s time for lunch.’

‘
Then
it’s going to be a working lunch. You don’t think you’re going to
get off as easily as that, do you?’

McCready
should have known, he should have realised that it would not be so
simple.

As they went
down to the canteen Barney launched into one of his meteoric
philosophical journeys, spinning around the arguments suggested by
McCready’s excuse.

‘
What it
boils down to, McCready, is that while there can be certainty about
questions of scientific knowledge, whatever criteria are involved,
questions of religious knowledge are beyond such straightforward
considerations.’

I was in the
canteen as they entered, at a table with Rose and Griff, and I saw
McCready’s gesture of helplessness as Barney led the way to a
vacant table, hoped that all would be well… for both our sakes.

Rose and Griff
were not at all optimistic.

‘
McCready’s got that expression on his face,’ Griff
observed. ‘Smugness about to turn to tantrum.’

‘
And
Barney’s wearing one of his face-cracking smiles,’ Rose recognised.
‘The same smile he wore after he busted Walter’s nose.’

‘
It
doesn’t augur well, does it?’ said Griff, and laid a consoling hand
on mine, in a confusion of genuine sympathy and grotesque
delight.

‘
Doesn’t
augur well at all,’ Rose agreed, peeling her veil back further from
her eyes and squinting hard, as if she needed to witness every
subtle change of expression, every twitch of anger and pain in
McCready’s face.

Barney talked
as he ate, at McCready rather than to him, arguing that the methods
applied to ordinary knowledge could not be used when assessing the
merits of religious knowledge. Religious knowledge was of two
kinds, he explained, one revealed and the other natural. The first
contended that religious knowledge was the product of insight
-revelation, as the word suggested- while the second held that
there were particular events or facts which offered a foundation
for religious knowledge. It was the second of these which was the
more convincing, starting as it did with the order and pattern
which was seen in the natural world. The effects which could be
discovered in nature, the numerous intricate relationships which
existed, were so similar to the effects of human planning that it
could be easily assumed that the causes which produced these
effects were also similar. In the case of human planning the
impetus was thought, wisdom, intelligence, so the argument led to
the belief that there was also a similar intelligence behind the
construction of the natural world. Obviously this underlying
intelligence would be deemed to be greater than that of humankind,
since the order behind the natural world was far more complex than
that behind the human world.

Those of us
eavesdropping on the argument nodded our heads in agreement; it was
left to McCready, the pervert that he was, to search for flaws.

‘
As long
as he doesn’t argue back,’ Griff said to me. ‘He’ll be alright if
only he can nod and listen and agree with everything Barney says.
That’s the way to frustrate the bastard.’

McCready, of
course, could not simply sit and listen. It was as if he
deliberately wanted to be upset.

‘
But
with the human world we see both cause and effect,’ he pointed out.
‘With the natural world we see only effects. And are the natural
effects similar enough to human effects to convince us that they
both have similar causes?’

Barney smiles
as he set aside his knife and fork. ‘Very good, McCready, you’re
starting to think again,’ he congratulated him.

Griff warned
me to prepare myself. ‘Get ready, we’re reaching crisis point.
Prepare for lift off.’

‘
But
what about it?’ McCready asked, as Barney pushed away his plate and
rose from his seat. ‘You’re surely not going to bugger off now, are
you?’

‘
My job
is only to prompt questions, McCready. You should know that by now.
I’m not here to give any answers.’

McCready swore
at him, kicked his chair away and gave chase as the tutor left the
canteen.

‘
Oh,
McCready! Please!’ I begged, then cursed him for the idiot that he
was. ‘You bloody fool, McCready! Come back! Don’t let him upset
you!’

Chapter
Seven

If Walter
had announced a still-life project, pure and simple, then it’s
doubtful that Rose would have shown any interest whatsoever, but
the grand Gallic reference to ‘
nature-morte
’ had her with her ears pricked and eager to join
in, sweeping up from the gloom of the sculpture department to the
painting studio like a fury out of hell.

Walter
proposed his subject quietly, almost secretively, remembering how
Barney had reacted to the last one, whispered his intentions
privately to each student, together with the advice that whatever
subjects were chosen should be unobtrusive enough to be easily
hidden whenever Barney might make an appearance in the studio.

‘
Small
is beautiful,’ he grinned, sheepishly excusing his
cowardice.

Rose, being no
more than an infrequent visitor to the painting studio and having
no permanent post of her own there, persuaded McCready to make room
for her in the chicken-less chicken hutch. It was an unlikely
accommodation, for the two of them had never really got on together
despite having rooms in the same house; McCready could only suffer
with patience Rose’s morbid extravagances and it required a
comparable effort for her to bear witness to his ideas. It was only
a working arrangement, though, not cohabitation or a trial
marriage, and I guessed that each could become so distracted by
their work as to forget the presence of the other.

It was a
surprise to me, then, on going to the studio to collect McCready,
to find such animated conversation taking place between them. They
were working, yes -Rose doing a delicate drawing of a rosary,
McCready of an egg- but not in the total silence that I had
expected. The conversation I happened upon was of God once
again.

‘
You
see, Rose, in defining God as the perfect being you are insisting
that he exists, for how can a thing be perfect if it has no
existence? And not just existence in the mind, mark you. Since it’s
greater to exist as both idea and reality, rather than just as idea
alone, then God must exist both in the mind and as a real
entity.’

‘
Yes, I
do see,’ said Rose, with an enthusiasm which almost -but not quite-
brought a flush to her pale powdered cheeks.

It was unlike
either of them to be so animated by the topic, McCready by its
religion or Rose by its philosophy, but I was just relieved that
McCready hadn’t lapsed into one of his desperate moods, abstracted
and tormented, following his argument with Barney. I coughed to
announce my presence and they broke off their discussion, turned to
me.

‘
Interesting,’ I remarked, looking at Rose’s drawing; she
had made the figure on the crucifix looks a little like
McCready.

‘
He
posed for me,’ Rose said, explaining the likeness.

‘
And
without his shirt?’ I smiled at him, knowing how shy he usually was
about his weak chest and thin arms.

He grumbled
something incoherent.

‘
Anyway,
are you coming?’ I asked him.

He nodded,
started to pack away his things, as did Rose. She threw on a black
knitted poncho, wrapping it about her like a cloak, and the three
of us left the studio together.

‘
You
didn’t have that dress on this morning,’ McCready finally noticed,
looking at me as we stood waiting for the lift.

‘
Very
observant,’ I congratulated him. ‘No, I didn’t. I've been home to
change.’

‘
Why?
Are we going somewhere special?’

‘
You
know we are. It’s Ceri's birthday bash tonight.’

Rose had not
forgotten that it was the Welshman’s birthday, she wore a low party
dress beneath the poncho, yet even this, with its flash of creamy
breast, had escaped McCready’s attention.

‘
Haven’t
you noticed how quiet it’s been in the studio today?’ she said to
him.

‘
The
party boy will have been boozing all afternoon, then?’ I
supposed.

‘
Probably,’ said McCready. ‘You needn’t have bothered
dressing up for him. He won’t notice.’

I punched him
hard in the ribs. ‘I didn’t dress up for him! I dressed up for
you!’

‘
It’s a
lovely dress,’ said Rose.

Second hand
silk from Oxfam, like her own, though of a more cheerful colour and
not quite so revealing.

‘
Do we
have to go?’ McCready asked.

‘
Yes, we
do.’

‘
No good
will come of it, you know,’ he said, as he was persuaded into the
lift. ‘You mark my words, anything can happen when Ceri gets drunk,
and it’s sure to be bad. He’ll look at the beer and it’ll curdle,
he'll look at us and we’ll end up at each other’s throats. Ceri’s a
jinx on everything and everyone when he gets pissed.’

‘
Don’t
be silly,’ Rose told him, taking his left arm as I took his right.
‘We’ll have a great time.’

Or as great a
time as Rose would permit herself.

The three of
us left the college and at McCready’s suggestion agreed to have a
couple of drinks elsewhere before going on to the party. He
reasoned that if we were drunk enough ourselves by the time we got
there then we might not notice how bad it was.

‘
You
should have reminded me about the party,’ McCready said to me.
‘I’d’ve put a suit on, so you wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen
with me.’

This was when
we’re in the ‘Golden Cross’, a place just behind the cathedral
where young men in smart clothes were wooing their women.

‘
I’d
never be embarrassed to be seen with you,’ I reassured him.
‘Anyway, you don’t have a suit. Do you?’

‘
Somewhere. It’s probably back home, waiting for the next
death in the family.’

I noticed Rose
give him an appraising glance, probably picturing him in mourning,
smiled and dismissed the matter as we were joined by others who
were also delaying their arrival at Ceri’s celebration. Everyone,
it seemed, was waiting for someone else to take the lead, all
regarding the evening with trepidation.

*

If the party
was a celebration then it was of the pagan kind which was suited to
a Celt, almost Bacchanalian in mood. It filled the upper rooms of
the ‘Campbell’ and as its centrepiece Ceri was standing on a table
as we entered, stripping off his clothes while people who claimed
to be his friends poured beer over him. Garments flew through the
air like drunken butterflies, flapping madly across the room and
then falling to the floor to be trampled underfoot. It was only
when he is down to his sodden Y-fronts that he drank down the pint
which was offered him.

A little
unsteadily he climbed down from the table and stood before us, his
body sticky with beer; he asked what we’d like to drink, then
slapped a hand to his side to look for his wallet.

‘
Where
the fuck’s it gone?’ he wondered, finding nothing on his naked
person which could be used as legitimate currency.

‘
Let me
get them,’ McCready offered, and bought drinks.

‘
Chairs,’ said Ceri, as he took the glass, his slurred
speech distorting the toast, and staggered off in search of his
clothes.

Before
McCready can even think of saying ‘I told you so’ I went off to
search out other friends, Griff joined Ceri at the bar, and he was
left to wander the rooms and see what there was to be seen.

Out of a
professed fondness for Ceri the place was filled with both staff
and students. Barney was slumped in a chair, too drunk to speak of
doubts or deities; Walter was auditioning models and testing their
breasts for tactile qualities, wanting them so boyish that he could
feel the ribs beneath; others were to be seen in varying degrees of
animation or inebriation. McCready lost himself in the crowd, it
was some while before he found me again, and when he did it was not
to discover me with any mutual friends but with a young man who is
a stranger to us both. A university student, I thought. Someone
from the polytechnic, McCready guessed, probably a rugger-playing
engineer by the look of him, short neck and broad shoulders. What
was most noticeable, though, at least to McCready, was that this
stranger’s face was far too close to mine.

McCready
thrust his own face like a wedge to prise us apart, said, ‘Hey!
You!’

‘
Yes?’
smiled the stranger, polite yet eager, as though he expected a
conversation.

‘
Piss
off!’

Surprisingly,
the stranger did, went away without even offering a punch or an
argument.

Quite a boost
for McCready’s ego, this was. ‘Did you see that?’ he said to me,
chest swelling. ‘Went off meek as a lamb.’

‘
Your
size had him worried,’ I smiled. ‘He probably didn’t realise you’re
standing on a chair.’

‘
But I’m
not,’ McCready said, before my sarcasm penetrated his
drunkenness.

‘
No, I
know,’ I said. ‘And thank you for getting rid of him, he was a
starting to be a nuisance,’ I lied.