The Art School Dance (41 page)

McCready tried
them. ‘Locked? At this time of the morning?’

‘
But
they’re never locked,’ said Griff.

‘
You
won’t get in!’ a voice cried out, Ron’s, from the other side of the
doors. ‘You won’t get in cause I’ve nailed em up!’

‘
Jesus!
What’s wrong with him now?’ Griff wondered, and shouted out to the
cleaner to open up, to stop acting like a pillock.

‘
Let’s
try the other doors,’ McCready suggested.

‘
I’ve
nailed them shut too!’ Ron told them, before either could
move.

McCready gave
the doors a kick. ‘Open them, Ron!’

‘
No! I’m
not letting you in my studio ever again! Building your dens and
splashing you paint…’

‘
Ron!’

‘…
. your
filthy naked women all over the place!’

McCready and
Griff started pounding on the doors, telling Ron to stop prattling
on like a senile old fool and let them in.

‘
No!’

They moved
away from the door to confer. Teacher would be too drunk to
communicate with, they decided, so went upstairs to Barney’s
room.

‘
You’ve
got to come,’ McCready told him. ‘Ron’s locked himself in the
studio and we can’t get in.’

‘
Why?
What’s wrong with him?’

‘
Search
us. You’d better come.’

They marched
back downstairs, curious people following from other studios to see
what the fuss was about.

‘
See?’
said Griff, kicking the door.

Barney
hammered on it with his fist. ‘Ron! This is Barney!’

‘
Sod
off!’

‘
Ron!
Open the bloody door this minute!’

‘
Never!’

‘
We’ll
burst it open!’

‘
I’ll
burn the paintings!’

As if Barney
cared about that. He sent someone for help; from Jim, Teacher,
anyone they could find. Then, bracing himself, tucking his chin
into his shoulder, he asked for support.

‘
Right,
men! Let’s have some weight against these doors!’

Shoulders were
bruised as bodies hurled themselves against the doors, the wood
straining and creaking.

‘
I swear
it!’ Ron screamed. ‘I’ll set fire to the lot!’

‘
And
again lads!’ Barney urged, and the doors finally burst open,
spilling people into the studio.

Ron had built
a wigwam of canvasses in the middle of the floor and was
desperately trying to strike a match.

‘
Grab
him!’

They charged,
four or five of them tackling Ron at the same time and bowling him
along the studio floor.

‘
Hold
the nut there!’ said Barney.

Griff and
McCready sat on Ron to stop him struggling.

‘
Let me
go!’ the cleaner cried. ‘You’re crazy!’

‘
We’re
crazy?’

‘
Crazy,
crazy, crazy art students,’ he jabbered, trying to kick them away,
but soon tired and lay back, looking up at the ceiling, panting
heavily.

When they
finally thought it safe enough to get him to his feet, however, he
exploded into action again, squirming free of the hands which held
him and sprinting down the studio, straight into the arms of a
police constable who Jim had just escorted in.

‘
Trouble?’ asked the policeman.

‘
Christ,
Jim, there was no need to call the law,’ said Barney.

Jim
shrugged.

‘
The
nutter tried to set fire to the place,’ Griff said, frantically
retrieving his canvasses from the unlit pyre in the middle of the
floor.

‘
They’re
all crazy in this place, you know,’ Ron confided in the policeman.
‘Crazy, crazy, crazy art students.’

‘
Yes, we
know, so let’s get you away from them, eh?’ the policeman smiled,
his arm around the cleaner’s shoulder. ‘Who’s in charge
here?’

Fingers
pointed to Barney, who was asked if he’d mind going along to
explain what had happened.

‘
Make a
statement?’ said Barney.

‘
Sort
of. If you don’t mind.’

‘
Jesus,’
he swore. ‘If I must.’

It was
afternoon before Barney got back to college, and as soon as he
entered the building there was Edith Billington, demanding to know
why he was taken away by the police.

‘
Adultery, was it?’ she smirked. ‘Is that why they took you
away?’

‘
I
wasn’t taken away,’ he pointed out. ‘I went willingly, to make a
statement.’

‘
A
confession. Admitting your infidelity?’

‘
For
fuck’s sake,’ Barney sighed. ‘Nothing happened in your precious
lounge, Edith. Nothing was soiled, not your furniture, not our
reputations. Everything is as clean as ever it was.’

Edith laughed
mockingly. ‘You and Bobby were just listening to music, were
you?’

‘
Yes.’

Her head
pecked sharply forward. ‘But there was no music playing when I went
into the room.’

‘
It had
just finished.’

‘
Ha!’
Edith snapped her head back. ‘And why was the door
locked?’

Barney
couldn’t remember.

‘
Oh, go
screw yourself,’ he said, and she smiled as she turned, as though a
victory has been won. Recognising the danger in that smile, he
grabbed her by the arm. ‘I’m warning you, Edith, you start
spreading any evil gossip and I’ll-‘

Edith shook
herself free. ‘Punch me on the nose, like you did Walter? It’s
alright, Barney, there’s no need for that. Your sordid secret is
safe with me.’

Chapter
Eleven

‘You see,
Griff, we learn how to live before we learn how to think, we’re
burdened with life and then to find a reason why we should continue
with it. Now that’s fucking cruel, if you ask me,’ said Teacher, as
a middle aged woman in an unseasonably heavy suit frowned at his
language. He paid her no attention, continued: ‘In the minds of
most people the only purpose in life is to pass it on. The
procreation kick, I call it. The propagation of the species. I
won’t have it, though. Shit, Griff, the village idiot and his
retarded sister are just as capable of procreation as the poet and
the artist. More so, probably, since that mindless fucking is
usually all they have the brains for.’

The middle
aged woman drank down her bitter lemon, blew her nose in a lace
trimmed handkerchief and left, clucking at Teacher’s profanities as
she passed. There were many other such people in the ‘Golden
Cross’, office workers and people in smart suits out to lunch, but
Teacher and Griff were too deep in conversation to worry about
offending them.

Griff, willing
to accept that procreation was not enough, was eager to know if the
more experienced man had found anything more worthwhile, more
purposeful.

‘
Not as
yet,’ Teacher admitted.

‘
What
about art?’

Teacher
smiled. ‘Since I’m reputed to be an artist, or was at one time,
that should be enough. But no, I’m not too sure anymore.’

‘
That’s
a fine thing to admit to one of your students,’ said Griff. ‘I’m
supposed to have some conviction about what I do. You’re supposed
to encourage me.’

‘
Sorry,
Griff, but we’re all plagued by doubt from time to time, there
isn’t one of us who doesn’t suffer from a lack of conviction on
occasion.’

‘
Does
that have to stop us being happy, though?’

‘
Ah, now
you’re getting sidetracked,’ Teacher smiled. ‘I don’t think
happiness goes with creativity. It’s something of a perversion, to
my way of thinking, the only thing art can bring is a dull
contentment.’

While
contentment might not be a thing which concerned a person like
McCready, who had said that the choice between happiness, misery
and genius was no choice at all, to Griff it was becoming
increasingly important. Especially so since his night with me. He
was coming to believe that his life could be content with a person
like me.

‘
How
about you?’ asked Teacher. ‘Are you happy doing what you’re
doing?’

‘
Happy
with my art? Yes, I think so.’

‘
Be
honest now.’

‘
Well
maybe happy is the wrong word, though I can’t think of a better one
at the moment. It’s sometimes like a duty, but even that’s not
exactly right. I never had to get involved with art but I wanted
to, it was my choice. Now, though, it seems more like an obligation
than a vocation, a compulsion perhaps, and sometimes painful.
Though there are times when I get satisfaction and want to work,
there are other times when I just carry on despite
myself.’

‘
Right,’
Teacher nodded his understanding, ‘you have to carry on even when
you don’t want to. That’s how the true artist is, there’s always
something driving him and he might never even find out what that
is.’

‘
Does
that mean my work’s good?’ Griff asked hopefully.

‘
I
didn’t say that,’ Teacher grinned. ‘It’s honest, though, and that
in itself is a novelty these days.’

‘
But
things are so confusing at times, Teach. It’s just the same with
Barney and his philosophies. I don’t want to get screwed up with
his ontological arguments and logical positivisms, not the way
McCready does, but I just can’t help it. I find myself forced to
think about these things. It’s like walking past a road accident
and being compelled to look.’

‘
Quite.’

They left the
‘Golden Cross’ and walked by the magistrates court, along the
ancient cobbled alley where there were no morbidly compelling
sights to sully the day. The sky was clear, the sun was high and to
their left the interior of the cathedral was a blaze of stained
glass colour. They make their way to the municipal art gallery
where the students were setting up their end of term
exhibition.

On the steps
of the gallery they found Rose struggling with a plaster column, a
trolley on the pavement holding a half dozen more, each about four
feet in height. They gave her a hand to carry them up to the first
floor gallery.

‘
You’ve
certainly gone to a lot of trouble, Rose,’ Teacher congratulated
her, as they watch her arrange the columns about the room. ‘This
isn’t your final degree show, you know. It’s nothing more than a
dress rehearsal.’

‘
If a
thing’s worth doing at all, then it’s worth doing well,’ said
Rose.

‘
Very
laudable. So what’s going on top of them?

‘
On
top?’

‘
Yes. On
top. They are just for displaying the work, aren’t
they?’

‘
Shit
no!’ said Rose, offended. ‘These are the work!’

‘
Oh,’
said Teacher, with a worried glance to Griff as Rose stepped back,
studied the arrangement of the columns, then muttered something to
herself and changed them around. ‘You think things will go okay
tonight?’ he asked Griff nervously/

‘
I’m
sure they will.’

‘
I
bloody well hope so,’ Teacher prayed, for though he still held
little hope of retaining his post as Principal he was nonetheless
anxious to create a good impression with the dignitaries who would
be attending the opening night, the Mayor and his wife, the bigwigs
from the polytechnic and the university.

He looked
about the room anxiously.

Ceri, out of
hospital now but on crutches, was directing the moving of one of
his larger canvasses. As this was about to be rested against the
vacant wall at the end of the room McCready came in, hurried over
and pinned up a slip of paper on which was printed his name.

‘
That’s
my spot,’ he told Ceri.

Ceri looked at
the blank expanse of wall. ‘All thirty feet of it? Come on,
McCready, don’t be greedy, you’ll only fill it up with silly bloody
trees and the like.’

‘
I don’t
want it all, just that bit,’ said McCready, pointing to the area
covered by the A4 sheet of paper.

‘
Just
that?’

‘
Just
that.’

‘
Well
can’t you move it to one side, then? It’s going to break up my
work.’

‘
No can
do, Ceri,’ said McCready. ‘I need that centre spot for
impact.’

Ceri grumbled
and swore and persuaded his helpers to hump his work back to the
other end of the room.

To Griff
McCready said, ‘I’m getting to like that portrait of Virginia, you
know. It’s not half bad.’

This the
portrait Griff had finally got around to doing, following the night
we spent together, and which now hung on the gallery wall, the
centrepiece of his exhibition. Griff thanked McCready for the
compliment, knowing that the reason the portrait was good was
because there was love involved, a passion which McCready would
never know.

‘
Coming
for an early tea?’ McCready asked. ‘Then we can get back for the
grand opening?’

‘
It’s
not going to be all that grand.’

‘
Still,
it’ll be a lark.’

They went back
to the college, got there just as the canteen opened. Joan was a
little abrupt with them, as she had been with everyone since Ron’s
dismissal, but they paid her no attention.