The Art School Dance (26 page)

There was only
one person there, on the settee, and I sat beside him, told him,
after an awkward silence, that he was James McCready, that he was
studying sculpture. It was an inane thing to say but he smiled
pleasantly and agreed that I was right. The question of who I was
-am I, and if I am, then who am I?- seemed to lose any importance
for once, for he believed that I was Virginia, sometimes with the
surname Plain, and that I was studying fine art.

It was some
time later that I said, ‘Most people seem to have left. Perhaps
it’s time we did, too.’

McCready
-‘Forget the first name,' he said, 'I hate the James bit, it was my
father’s name too so how unoriginal is that?’- got to his feet and
offered to walk me home, at which I smiled, as a person might do
who had already taken this courtesy for granted.

The house I
had moved into with Rose was a short walk away, a terrace in a
suburban high street, the first after the shops and adjacent the
launderette, a pub handy across the road.

‘
I like
it here, it’s convenient,’ I said, as I opened the door and entered
the hall. I pointed to the first door. ‘That’s Rose's room. Mine is
the next one. We have a sitting room upstairs. Come on.’

I led the way
up the staircase, directed McCready to the sitting room while I
went along the landing to the kitchen to make coffee. When I
eventually joined him before the unlit fire I sighed and rested my
head back, looking up to a point where wall met ceiling though my
focus was slowly drawn to somewhere infinitely more distant.
Searching for something to say, feeling that I ought to speak, it
seemed that all my words had been wasted on Barney, that there was
nothing left.

Ultimately it
was McCready who broke the silence by saying, ‘Should we go
downstairs?’

To my bedroom?
Was this really what I wanted? No, not really, but for the moment
it seemed more preferable than anything else, so we went.

*

My bedroom was
more compact than the sitting room, just a bed in one corner, a
wardrobe opposite and a single chair in front of the fire. In what
light was able to creep through from the hallway there could be
made out various tints of browns and greens, shades of mother
earth.

‘
Matches?’ I asked, and McCready tossed me a box which I
took to a low table by the bed, a piece of furniture hidden until
now by the shadows. I struck a match, it flared, and slowly a warm
glow radiates from an old oil lamp, filling the room with a soft
light.

McCready
followed me into the room and looked more closely at the oil lamp.
Its base was heavy brass, formed in the shape of tiger’s feet, and
the pink of the fuel, held in a dimpled glass sphere, coloured the
walls of the room. The light itself burned behind another glass
sphere, this one etched with an intricate floral pattern.

Noticing
McCready’s interest, I told him that it was a present from a
friend.

‘It’s
nice,’ he said.

‘
Yes,
isn’t it?’ I agreed, and in the brief silence which followed I saw
him look at the lamp as if it was more than functional, more than
decorative.

Or perhaps he
thought that this was the way I regarded it, for he asked, ‘So what
happened to him?’

‘
Him?’ I
echoed.

‘
Sorry.
I just assumed-’

‘
Yes,
well I haven’t been in touch with the person who gave me that for
quite some while.’

‘
Ah.’

McCready then
sat in the one chair before the fire, perhaps a little relieved
that there was no one else to complicate the situation. For my part
I was a little annoyed that what might be termed a ‘situation’
could have progressed to this stage. Months earlier I had slept
with the one man I promised myself, that obligation had been
fulfilled, and now there should be other things to occupy me.
Still, I thought, for the moment I might as well go with the tide,
with its ebb or flow according to how things developed. It was only
one night, after all. Then, perversely, as if to add substance to
any hopes which the libidinous side of McCready’s nature might
have, I knelt on the floor beside him, rested my arms across his
knees and my cheek against his thigh. As he stroked my hair, pale
blonde but reflecting the pink lamplight, I imagined paintings I
thought I might be able to do, paintings which danced before me as
I stared mutely at the flickering shadows.

This should
have been enough for me, but finally I accepted the further
possibility, said, ‘It looks like you’re staying the night. Let’s
go to bed.’

It was a
simple suggestion, like an invitation made out of kindness, and the
two of us moved to my bed. For some reason known only to myself,
though, I chose to sleep in pyjamas. McCready went to the bathroom,
to swill his mouth and freshen his face, and returned to find me
covered from neck to ankle in fluffy pink cotton, smelling of
childhood and nursery days. He was obviously puzzled, but to his
credit was not repulsed, he stripped to his underpants and joined
me, kissing and touching tentatively, as if unsure of what came
next.

And all that
came next was sleep, warmth, dreams within dream, and the
recollection that the words -‘When we dream that we dream... we are
beginning to awaken’- came from Novalis.

Chapter
Three

I had grown
fond of Griff and enjoyed listening to him. For all that he claimed
to be the sanest member of our household -with the exception of me,
of course; he would never take upon himself any talent or attribute
greater than mine- for all that he made such a pretence at
equilibrium, there was so much that disturbed him, so many notions
which upset his stability and caused him to doubt whether his
faculties were true. In the attic flat where we gathered that
evening he was doing his best to explain a few.

It was
Teacher’s reaction to the sensory deprivation centre, as reported
with such sombre gravity by Rose that same night, which had turned
our thoughts to the question of reality, to what can be known with
certainty and what can only be surmised.

‘
Think
of the studio,’ Griff was saying. ‘Picture it. Concrete and light,
steel and glass, vanishing lines and tumbling surfaces. All
illusion. Then think of the things in the studio, the objects we
create, the drawings and the prints and the paintings. They’re all
illusions. Right?’

He scanned the
assembled faces until someone responded.

‘
Right,’
McCready finally agreed.

Beside him on
the settee Rose nodded her head gravely, her hands clasped as if in
prayer.

‘
So are
they of any merit, these illusions we create?’

‘
Mine
are,’ Ceri predictably boasted.

‘
But how
can we think of good when we haven’t even considered what
is?’

‘
Huh?’

‘
Illusion,’ Griff stressed. ‘Illusion. See!’ He pointed to
McCready, whose mind had started to wander and who had taken my
hand in his to kiss it. ‘A kiss or a smile, especially when you’re
longing for it, is no more than a deception afterwards, when it’s
reconsidered. It’s reality is doubted -did it ever happen?- and its
motives questioned. It’s illusion, deceit.’

‘
Are you
deceiving me?’ McCready demanded of me, feigning panic.

‘
No. I
swear,’ I promised, crossing my heart.

He kissed my
hand again, slavering his tongue between my fingers, sucking on the
polished tips. ‘Just as long as I know.’

I smiled, then
swapped the smile for a look of rapt attention as Griff
persevered.

‘
Imagine
a table in the studio,’ he said. ‘It’s brown and solid, a Formica
worktop mounted on four wooden legs, pierced by screws and stuck
with glue.’ He allows us all a moment to picture it before
continuing. ‘Now its colour, its size, its weight, the fact that
it's combustible at a certain temperature or difficult to move,
these are its qualities. Tap the table with your knuckle and its
hardness can be felt, that quality is there to be
appreciated…’

I saw Ceri
absent-mindedly rap his knuckles against the arm of his chair, then
blush with embarrassment when he caught my eye, just as Thomas must
have done when his fingers sank into the resurrected wounds of
Christ.

‘…
hit
the table again, harder, and you’ll feel pain. The question to be
answered is whether the pain is in the table, another of its
qualities, or whether it’s in you.’

Ceri glowered,
his embarrassment making him angry. ‘The pain is in me,
pillock.’

‘
Because
when you walk away from the table you can still feel
it?’

‘
Right!’

‘
But
then,’ McCready came in, ‘what about the hardness? Was that really
in the table or was it, like the pain, in you?’

‘
Exactly,’ Griff agreed.

From deep
within Ceri’s barrel chest there came a vague uncertain grumbling
which might have been described by any of the qualities which Griff
had mentioned -it was voluminous, it was heavy, it might well have
been painful- and an argument began. This was not what Griff had
wanted; he had wanted a discussion.

‘
What
the fuck does it matter?’ asked Ceri, his Pontypool accent becoming
more pronounced.

‘
But
you’ve got to see Griff's point,’ McCready insisted. ‘How can we
paint an object when we don’t know exactly what it is, or even if
it is? Illusions replacing illusions? That’s not on,
Ceri.’

‘
Bullshit! I’m an artist! What I see, what I paint, that’s
what is!’ Ceri pounded his fist against the arm of his chair as he
expounded once more his single reason for being. ‘And if I’m not
certain about a thing then I touch it!’

Or thump it,
as he did again. As he had done so often before.

Rose sneered,
her lips curling like thin crusts of bread; they were made to
sneer, her entire frame was as brutal as a hat pin, a single
exclamation mark of derision. Her hands parted her hair from her
face -she wore no veil tonight, it was in the wash- she tossed it
back over her shoulder and tilted her head so that the sneer could
be seen more easily. The room was filled with the musty stink of
Lily of the Valley exuding from her flowing hair.

As entertained
as I was by the debate I felt the need to get away from it for a
while, suggested coffee and went through to the kitchen. Griff
followed, perhaps because he was disappointed with the way the
discussion is going, perhaps for other reasons.

‘
Help?’
he said, a little ambiguously, and I wondered if he was offering it
or asking for it.

The kitchen
was little more than an alcove partitioned off from the living
room. A heavy velvet curtain covered the space where a door had
once been and as it fell behind Griff the sounds from the room
became muffled, the arguments indistinct and ragged about the
edges. Because the kitchen was so small it seemed well stocked,
herbs and spices line the shelves, the turmeric and coriander
McCready used in the curries which his father taught him how to
make, cinnamon and nutmeg for the cakes baked to his mother’s
recipes. Stepping around the pyramid of pans which was stacked on
the floor, Griff arched on tiptoe to squeeze past me; still it was
necessary for him to place his hands on my shoulders, though, to
brush his body against mine, and he gave me what I took to be an
affectionate kiss on the cheek.

‘
Very
forward of you,’ I smiled, comfortable with his
friendship.

He returned
the smile, briefly, then sighed. ‘I thought it was going to be a
pleasant evening.’

‘
But it
is. Isn’t it?’

‘
What?
With arguments starting already? I sometimes think it was a mistake
for all of us to cram into the same house.’

I considered
for a moment, was aware, as I did so, of his gaze fixed on me. This
was the artist in him, I knew, an aesthetic appreciation; he often
spoke of painting my portrait -‘McCready’ll never do it’, he was
always telling me. ‘McCready can’t paint’- but I had never found
the time, or perhaps the courage, to sit for him.

‘
No,
Griff, I don’t think it was a mistake,’ I finally decided. ‘I think
it’s nice to have friends about the place. And it took too long for
us to get the house to ourselves to want to change things
now.’

The first two
full terms of college it had taken. Rose and I shared originally,
but as people vacated the house so we brought in friends and fellow
students, first Ceri, then Griff, and finally McCready. Now, midway
through the third term of our first year, we had what we wanted, a
house of familiar faces, a colony of aspiring artists.

‘
It’s
not all that nice when you want to have a bit of privacy, though,’
Griff lamented.

‘
You
can’t get any?’

‘
With
Ceri farting and belching and getting roaring drunk? You’ve got to
be joking! It's like sharing with a flatulent pig. A boozy one at
that.’

‘
Poor
Griff,’ I sympathised, and returned his kiss, my lips pecking at
his cheek.

‘
Nice
perfume,’ he commented. He was always complementing me, which I
enjoyed; it compensated for those times when McCready seemed to
take me for granted.

Mugs were
lined up by the sink -two chipped, I noticed; I would have to make
some more in college- a spoonful of coffee in each; a wisp of steam
was curling from the kettle but the water hadn’t yet boiled.