The Art School Dance (8 page)

‘
Well,
what do you think?’ asked Tina, when two of the blokes went to the
gents and the third to the bar.

‘
About
what?’ I said.

‘
Those
three. Do you reckon they’re worth sharing another drink or two
with?’

This was
probably the self same question that the two in the toilet were
asking each other, and not one that I really wanted to concern
myself with.

‘
It’s
nothing to do with me, you can leave me out of it,’ I
said.

‘
Oh no,
you can’t leave yourself out. We’ve been buying the drinks all
evening so you owe it to us to stay. You know that if there’s three
of them and only two of us they’ll bugger off.’

I shook my
head. ‘I don’t want to get involved.’

‘
Who’s
asking you to get involved?’ said Diane. ‘We’re not expecting you
to propose to the bloke, for God’s sake, just keep him
company.’

‘
Talk to
him.’

‘
Let him
walk you home, even if you don’t fancy doing anything else with
him. We promise we won't breathe a word to Stephen.’

‘
I’m not
worried about Stephen,’ I said.

‘
Fine,
then. It’s settled.’

‘
No it’s
not,’ I told them, but I saw that there’s was no way out, the two
who had been to the toilet were returning from their own
deliberations, the third was setting drinks on the table and Tina
and Diane had me wedged in a corner.

With smiles
and barely disguised nudges the young men seated themselves, the
arrangement as before, as if they had agreed on partners; the
conversation resumed on much the same level, as regards volume and
content, and the bloke at my side shuffled close to me, almost
falling into my lap in a fit of laughter at one of Tina’s crude
wisecracks. I turned away, despairingly, looked across the bar and
saw Paula enter with a couple of friends.

I tried to
hide my face but Paula saw me and waved, called over, ‘Hi there
Ginny!’

The others
looked at her, Tina and Diane and the three young men.

‘
Who’s
that?’ asked Tina.

I heard one of
the young men pass some covetous comment, another gave a low
admiring whistle.

I whispered to
Tina. ‘Remember what you said before, about a girl having to be a
tart to take her clothes off in front of people?’

‘
Yes?’

‘
And I
said that if you saw her walking along the street you wouldn’t
think that?’

‘
Yes?’

‘
Doesn’t
look anything like a tart, does she?’ I smiled.

Tina looked
again at Paula, trying to picture her without any clothes. ‘You
mean that’s her?’

‘
Fucking
gorgeous,’ one of the blokes decided.

Chapter Six

I was staring
at the canvas of crucified beef, trying to decide if there was any
room to fit in a screaming pontiff, when Paula sneaked up on me and
mentioned something about the twelve days of Christmas.

I
automatically responded with, ‘My true love sent to me?’

‘
Can you
work the twelve days up to Christmas? That’s what I’ve managed to
arrange for you.’

‘
That’ll
be great,’ I said, thinking of all the money to be earned, but then
asked, ‘Can I, though? Term doesn’t finish until the
eighteenth.’

‘
It’ll
be alright, Ben will give you a bit of leeway,’ Paula assured me.
‘There’s not all that much happening during the last week of term,
in any case, apart from trips to the pub. You’ll have to miss out
on those, I’m afraid.’

I shrugged.
‘We all have to make sacrifices.’

‘
For the
ones we love?’ Paula smiled, and I grimaced. She asked, ‘So which
was one was Stephen?’

‘
Which
one?’ I said, then realise she was thinking of the three young
blokes she’d seen me with. ‘Oh, he wasn’t one of those,’ I told
her, embarrassed that she should imagine me getting involved with
callow youths like that.

‘
No?’
she said, and her smile took on the character that was often
described as ‘knowing’, almost a smirk.

‘
No! And
before you suggest it, no, I wasn’t being a two-timer or whatever
you want to call it.’

‘
It’s
not for me to pass comment if you were,’ Paula said, but her barely
contained grin demanded that I make further excuses.

‘
I just
went for a drink with a couple of old pals,’ I said. ‘It was them
who wanted to chat up the lads.’

‘
Yes?
And you didn’t enjoy the evening, then?’

Actually, I
hadn’t, the one I had been paired with had grown less and less
attractive as the night wore on and had had the nerve to complain
because I couldn’t afford to share the fare for a taxi home. The
cheek of the boy, expecting that a kiss and a cuddle in a shop
doorway would buy him a chauffeur driven ride home.

‘
You’d
rather have been with your boyfriend, then?’ Paula supposed, and
answered for me. ‘Yes, of course you would. Why else would you be
working so hard to earn the money for her Christmas
present?’

I frowned. It
was difficult to explain exactly why, and suddenly it seemed that
Paula was as silent as a priest in a confessional, waiting for my
confidences. I had to admit that there was the need for money to
buy Stephen a present, since he could no longer have the portrait,
but over and above this consideration there was the simple desire
to have a little more cash. Paula nodded when I complained of how
depressing it was at times, trying to manage on little, nodded as
if she understood from experience. I wondered again how old she
was, if she had been to college herself.

‘
What
does your boyfriend do for a living?’

‘
Works
in an office.’

‘
An odd
combination,’ Paula thought. ‘An office worker and an art
student.’

There was an
unspoken agreement that Paula’s own secretarial role was not to be
compared with Stephen’s.

‘
Yes,
it’s starting to seem that way,’ I agreed. ‘It’s a bit of a strain
at times.’

‘
Awkward.’

‘
It’s
getting hard to cope with, I think.’

‘
You
don’t seem to have much in common any more?’

‘
Nothing
at all in common,’ I realised. ‘Nothing apart from the teenage
years we shared, and what we shared then doesn’t interest me any
longer.’

‘
That
can happen in a lot of relationships,’ Paula understood, and I
found myself speaking of things which I had kept to myself for so
many weeks, talking of how Stephen suddenly seemed a stranger after
so many years, confiding that I could now go for days without
seeing him, where once I had needed him at every available
moment.

‘
He’s
your first boyfriend?’

‘
The
first serious one,’ I said, and laughed even as Paula did, thinking
of what this meant in Sleepers Hill.

‘
They
all say that around here, don’t they? They ask ‘is it serious’,
like it’s a sickness or a complaint and they’re looking for a
medical opinion. I’ve lost count of the number of times my mother’s
asked the same thing of me.’

‘
And you
daren’t admit it’s serious, even if it is, because you’re
frightened everyone will start making wedding plans.’

‘
Right,’
Paula agreed, nodding her head vigorously. ‘But most of the time
you can’t tell if it’s serious or not, so why can’t people leave
well alone?’ She gave a soft sigh of exasperation. ‘They say
northern people are friendly, that they’re always willing to help
each other, but more often than not they’re just being plain bloody
nosy if you ask me, poking into other folk’s business.’

This was just
the way I felt, and I enjoyed the chat with Paula until it was
disturbed by people returning from lunch. Thinking over the
conversation, later, it struck me that it had been very much like
going to confession, and I remembered how comforting that used to
be. Confession was on Thursday evenings and the church was never so
quiet as it was then, only a score or so people to one side of the
nave, waiting, some seated and some kneeling in prayer. There would
be none of the constant shuffling and coughing of Sunday mass, you
could sense the solemnity of the sacrament, belief hung thick in
the air like incense. On Sundays the church was a bright and airy
place, the high vaulted roof, the stained glass windows streaming
light, but in the gloom of Thursday nights any sense of space was
lost, there was a dark blanket like thunderclouds which weighed
down on the penitents, and one by one they would enter the
confessional, a dark box with wood panelled sides the colour of a
wine cask, and speak their confessions through a fine mesh screen.
The priest could be seen only as a vague profile, looking much like
an Impressionist study or one of Seurat’s crayon drawings, and his
voice would be low and grave, roughened by altar wine and the many
cigarettes he smoked, as he encouraged the penitents to be open
about their sins. There were venial sins, mortal sins, sins of
omission, and they were absolved of them all, though not
immediately, for more often than not there would be a discussion of
the sins, their nature and their circumstances; eventually, though,
the priest would recite the Latin absolution and impose the penance
–Our Fathers, Hail Marys, decades of the Rosary- to be said in the
main body of the church.

I
recognised then, after confiding in Paula, just how much I felt the
loss of the sacrament, I understood the comfort it had afforded; it
was as much a ceremony as a sacrament, a ritual which appeased the
spirit rather than cleansed the soul, and it was always the mystery
of such rites which held me to the church, this rather than that
blind faith which was the comfort of others. My mother and Gran
were devout Catholics still, despite all the troubles they had
suffered, but theirs was a truly blind faith; I felt sure that if
their God was a good God then he would be forced to look kindly on
my reasoned agnosticism, certainly more kindly than he would look
on their unreasoned acceptance. If their God
was
good, that is.

*

I suppose that
Sunday coming around further turned my thoughts to religion; with
no religion other than my painting the holy day seemed such an
empty day, nothing more than an interlude between one week and the
next. My mother and Gran went to their usual early morning mass,
and as always, just before they left and immediately on their
return, there was an uncomfortable silence, looks cast in my
direction which I could only regard as accusing; we no longer
argued about the lapsing of my faith, but I always sensed their
disapproval.

Perhaps to
ease the tension which would come with their return, and in some
way make amends for their disappointment in me, I prepared
breakfast for them -they would never eat before mass, they always
went to communion- fried up platefuls of bacon, eggs, tomatoes,
black pudding. I timed it just right and the food was ready as they
came in and took off their coats, all they needed to do was sit
down at the table.

‘
This is
nice,’ said my mother, pleased, but Gran just stood there, all
dressed in black with a shiny silver brooch on the breast of her
coat, and looked me up and down. I knew Gran was looking at my
clothes, the paint stained jeans, and noting that since I hadn't
got on a sober dress this meant that I wouldn’t be going to church
at all. I told her to sit down and get her breakfast before it went
cold -mother was already at the table- but she just stood there a
moment or two longer, then turned away.

‘
What
about your breakfast?’ I asked her.

‘
I need
to go to my room and say the Rosary,’ Gran muttered, not even
having the courtesy to face me as she spoke.

I wanted to
curse her as I listened to her slow step clumping up the stairs.
Seething, I set about my own breakfast noisily, knife and fork
flashing like the tools of a psychopath.

‘
It’s
Sunday,’ my mother excused the old lady, ‘and she always hopes
you’ll go to church. So do I.’

‘
And if
I did would it make me as unchristian as her?’ I asked
acidly.

‘
Now
there’s no need for you to say that, Ginny. You know she’s a good
woman at heart.’

To others,
maybe, to her fellow church goers, but to me she was becoming a
wicked and vindictive old hag. I couldn’t stomach Gran and I
couldn’t stomach the food I’d cooked; I pushed my plate to one side
and told my mother that I was going for a walk.

*

Luckily Sunday
was only one seventh part of the week and it was soon over with, I
was able to get back to work. I’d finished the painting of the meat
a week or so before the end of term. In it the pope was wailing and
screaming like someone demented, his face on the body of Arthur the
butcher who I’d painted into the background, behind the carcass of
meat, white apron spattered with blood and gore, a dripping cleaver
in his hand. I’d reached that crucial point where I knew the work
was finished, where to do any more would be to spoil it; the same
went for the portrait of Stephen, and I was at a dead end. There
was less than a week to go before I started work on the post, after
that was the holiday, I didn’t want to begin another major work
just then, there wouldn’t be time to get into it and it would be
too easy to lose the rhythm. I passed the last days of the term
with minor stuff, then, objective drawings to fill out my
portfolio, still-lifes, sketches, studies of corners of the studio.
And then came the last life session of the term.