The Art School Dance (39 page)

Feet weary
with the dust of town and country were once more cajoled into
action, stepping left then right in a mindless military manner. It
seemed to me that I had been so long without sleep, with so many
plodding steps behind, that I had forgotten how to feel tired; I
might have yawned if only someone could have demonstrated how it
was done, thought that stretching the jaws to their limit was the
way but could not be sure. Under cover of such distractions crept
the first sinful thought, a sly suggestion which came up from the
rear to tickle the genitals and assault the self control. I had
Griff’s hand in mine and was holding him close to me. A rosary of
prayers went through my mind, but prayer could not quieten the
passions, no number of masses or Novenas would be able to quell the
temptations I felt.

I moved my
hand in Griff’s in what could only be read as affection, soft and
caressing, and the touch was like sandpaper against my skin
scouring away my conscience layer by feathery layer. Nothing was
said and it seemed that the sound of our rasping fingers echoed
about the street, announcing our unspoken intentions. We paused
once, to light cigarettes which became fierce red fireflies dancing
before our faces, not bright enough to illuminate my thoughts but
vivid enough to make my cheeks burn with shame.

But why shame?
Would McCready feel any? Did he ever?

We walked on
to the house, in the brown brick shell of which were our separate
rooms, and I unlocked the door.

And then, at
the door to Griff’s flat, I left him, bade him goodnight and
carried on up the stairs.

I set the
kettle to boil, watched it for what seemed many minutes, and the
gas barely agitated the water, as if the watched kettle was peeved
by my attention to it. I went through to the bedroom, took off my
clothes and put on my dressing gown, returned to the kitchen where
the blue flame of the gas seemed to cringe and wither before me.
Money for the meter, I tricked myself into believing that the gas
pressure was weak and I needed money for the meter, and as I went
back downstairs I imagined that my dressing gown was rustling like
a tree in a storm. There was no one to hear, but I felt like an
intruder. At the door of Griff’s room I stopped, knocked,
waited.

Griff was also
in a dressing gown, much like mine, short and loosely tied at the
waist, and he had no questions to put when I asked if I might come
in but invited me forward with a gesture of the hand. We sat side
by side on the couch, I notice that the room was tidier than usual
with Ceri in hospital still, I wondered for a moment where McCready
might be.

‘
Yes?’
Griff then said, but still expected no answer, for we both seemed
to realise that there were no appropriate words. He stretched out
his arm, along the back of the couch and around my shoulders, as if
he was Vitruvian man and I am his woman.

I moved my
hand to his neck, my thumb touching his ear lobe and my fingers
burying themselves in the curls of his hair. I wanted him to feel
that he was being treated as a pet might be, picked up by the
scruff of the neck, and this he accepted, he made no struggle but
let the pressure of my hand bring our mouths together. I worked my
tongue like a reptile’s between his lips, probing, running across
his teeth and surprising him with its impatience. As I pulled him
down on top of me my dressing gown obligingly parted, as if from
habit, and for some reason I thought of Moses and the Red Sea, as
if my Catholic past was wagging its finger even in this most heated
of moments. I wished my conscience back into its dusty
sacristy.

With my knee I
forced Griff’s legs apart, with my hands I pushed his dressing gown
aside, at the same time wondering if Rose would be lying beneath
McCready, as still and cold as a cadaver. I pulled the dressing
gown from Griff so that I could run my fingers across his bare
back, whispering softly, encouragingly.

Or would Rose
be insisting that McCready play the corpse while she screwed her
body onto his, her veil pulled back from her face to show her
frigid smile?

‘
No!’ I
told Griff sharply.

He looked at
me questioningly, limp and confused, but then became animated once
again when I turned him and fell on top of him.

‘
Be
still!’ I snapped, as he started to squirm, and I wondered what it
might be like for McCready making love to a corpse.

Chapter
Nine

‘Hi there
honey!’

I was in a
dream, there were things preying on my mind, but a greeting from
Bobby was always too effusive to ignore, open and welcoming, as
embracing as a cord about the neck to choke out a response.

I said hello,
pausing on the stairs.

‘
You
missed a doozer of a party,’ she told me. ‘You should have stayed
over with McCready.’

‘
I
couldn’t, I had too much work to do. McCready behaved himself?’ I
asked, though not really wanting to know.

I believed I
already knew enough.

‘
He got
a bit smashed, you know how it is,’ Bobby said. ‘He didn’t upset
anyone though, if that’s what you mean. The only ones he argued
with are the ones who can take it. And give it back.’

Bobby grinned,
as if she admired McCready’s moody discord, flashed me a broad
‘cheerio’ smile and continued on her way down the stairs. I
suspected an insinuation that I myself might be one of those who
couldn’t take McCready’s arguments, then wondered why this should
occur to me. What did Bobby know about our quarrels, after all? And
wasn’t I always the one who did the forgiving, when we did
quarrel?

I went to the
common room, to have a coffee and to brood.

If reality is
activity, as one of McCready’s favourite philosophers proposed,
then I could understand the likes of Teacher wanting an escape from
it. Was this where peace was to be found, in some extreme which was
divorced from reality, in non-reality or surreality? If so then
McCready would find no peace, I was fast coming to see that, not
because of any surfeit of activity on his part but because of his
constant searching for some final definition of reality. It was an
impossible task, and my worry for McCready was that he might end up
like Barney, so driven by logic and reason that he became a shell
of a person, the wandering Jew that Griff had spoken of.

And then my
thoughts turned to Griff, wondering how he was, what he was
feeling.

*

Bobby breezed
happily into the art history lounge and sat herself down on one of
the comfortably upholstered sofas. From her own station on the
opposite side of the room Edith Billington glared at her.

‘
What
are you doing here, Bobby?’

‘
I work
here, remember.’

‘
Today?’

‘
If I
choose to,’ Bobby smiled. She was a part-time member of staff, she
worked only two days a week and decided for herself which these
would be, would often attend another day unpaid for the sheer hell
of annoying people.

Edith pouted,
lips like a pinch of clay puckering around a sour taste. ‘You’re
not here just to cause trouble?’ she hoped

‘
As if I
would.’ Bobby settled more comfortably in her seat. ‘Who’ve you got
lined up for us this morning, Edith?’

It was Griff,
who opened the door at that moment, took one step into the room and
then stopped, his disappointment obvious on seeing the two women
facing him. He had expected only Edith, an amenable and inoffensive
person, easy enough to handle, cursed his luck to see that Bobby
had chosen that day of all days to make an appearance in
college.

‘
Morning
Griff, sit down,’ said both women simultaneously, and each patted
the seat beside her. Tactfully he chose a neutral corner,
equidistant from both.

‘
So what
have you got for us?’ asked Edith with an expectant
smile.

‘
Baudelaire,’ he replied.

‘
Oh
good,’ Edith purrs.

‘
Oh
shit,’ Bobby growls.

This was the
way it would be, the two women at odds with each other while Griff
was caught in the middle, like a scrap to be fought over by two
bitches. Edith and Bobby were of approximately the same age, but
there any similarity ended. Edith’s English manner was plain and
polite, very reserved, while Bobby’s American way was so direct
that she bordered on the crude and the coarse. Edith sat forward
eagerly in her seat, knees together and hands clasped over the
notebook which she held like a missal in her lap; Bobby slouched
back with her legs apart, stretching the fabric of her jeans in an
obscene manner, her fingers scratching idly at her chest as she
yawned.

‘
Charles
Baudelaire,’ Griff began, reading aloud from his essay, ‘eighteen
twenty-one to sixty-seven, published his first poems in eighteen
fifty-seven under the title “
Fleurs de Mal
”.’

‘
We know
who he was, for fuck’s sake, so get on with it!’ Bobby interrupted,
her mid Atlantic accent clear and distinct despite the cigarette
she now had clamped between her perfectly capped teeth.

‘
Bobby!
Please!’ said Edith.

‘
Don’t
use that tone with me!’ Bobby retaliated. ‘You sound like you’re
reprimanding a pet who’s pissed on the carpet!’

Edith blushed
and told Griff to continue.

‘
What is
Good, asks Baudelaire, a vast and terrible question which seizes
the critic by the throat-’

‘
Oh
shit! Someone should have seized him by the throat!’

‘
-from
the very first step in the very first chapter-’

‘
Seized
him by the throat and squeezed the fucking life out of him before
he could come up with this drivel! This is vomit-inducing!’ Bobby
complained, and went through the motions of throwing up on the
carpet.

When Griff
looked up from his essay, reasonable rather than rattled, and asked
if she wanted to listen or not, she begged him to please continue,
a sarcastic smile stretching her lips and baring her gums.

‘
Yes, do
go on,’ Edith urged him.

He continued,
asking, as Baudelaire himself might have done, ‘What is the good of
criticism? What is good criticism?’ His voice lowered a fraction,
became less dramatic. ‘Baudelaire believed that the best criticism
is that which is amusing and poetic, not that which is cold and
mathematical-’

‘
Bullshit!’ said Bobby.

‘
Fuck
you!’ Griff snapped, his patience suddenly gone.

Bobby laughed
in his face. ‘Fuck me? Boy, you wouldn’t know how to! You probably
still think your prick’s for pissing through!’

‘
Get
stuffed!’

‘
Oh yes?
And who’ll do that?’ she sneered, her chest now like two offensive
weapons as she leant towards him.

Upset and
embarrassed by the sudden outbursts, Edith tried to restore calm.
‘Please, I rather think…’

‘
Shut up
fuck u, Edith,’ said Bobby, and reaching to the console by her side
she switched on the tape deck so that screams from Marat/Sade
drowned out her colleagues protests.

Griff rose
from his seat and walked to the door.

‘
Hey!’
said Bobby. ‘Where’d you think you’re going?’

‘
I’m not
taking this,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see Teacher.’

‘
So am
I,’ Bobby decided.

‘
Me
too,’ Edith agreed.

Griff was the
fittest and the fleetest, he bounded down the stairs and into the
Principal’s office, not waiting to be announced by his
secretary.

‘
Jesus
lad, you gave me a fright!’ said Teacher, spilling whisky down the
front of his shirt.

‘
I
refuse to face those two fucking women again!’ Griff said, slapping
the desk with his fist which still held his essay. ‘At least not
both at the same time!’

‘
Which
two women?’

‘
Bobby
and Edith. Who else would I mean?’

‘
They’re
coming here?’ Teacher asked, looking nervously towards the door as
he heard voices along the corridor.

‘
You’ve
got to do something, Teach.’

‘
Bloody
right I have,’ Teacher agreed, recapping his bottle. ‘I’m getting
out.’

In a flash he
was out of the window, bottle in hand, scampering around to the
rear of the building.

‘
Come
back!’ Griff called, but to no avail. He turned and walked back
through the secretary’s office as Bobby burst in, Edith close on
her heels, both barging past him and ignoring him, wanting only
Teacher. ‘Bloody women,’ he grumbled.

*

Griff wonders
if it was madness which seemed to affect so many people in the
college or if it was simply an over-abundance of enthusiasm, a
dangerously bright spark of creativity. Over lunch in the canteen,
after relating what happened in his tutorial, he was surprised to
hear McCready voice a similar doubt.

‘
It’s
got you worried too?’ Griff said, believing that it really was time
to be concerned if he and McCready were starting to think
alike.

‘
Yes,’
McCready nodded. ‘It sometimes seems that there’s no sense to
anything, and I’m not just talking about Bobby’s tantrums or
Teacher’s craziness. There are times when I can’t seem to make
sense of anyone, not you or Virginia or even a stranger I pass in
the street.’