The Art School Dance (45 page)

I looked up at
the night sky, away from them and their kind, refusing to admit
that I might envy them their ordinary lives.

I heard a
voice behind me. ‘You’re Virginia. You’re a painter.’

I turned,
smiled at McCready. ‘The cricket match is over, then? Did you
win?’

‘
Do I
ever?’

He was in that
state of inebriation where aggression would give way to self
pity.

‘
You’ve
really got it bad today, haven’t you?’ I said.

‘
Got
what bad?’ he asked.

‘
Whatever it is you get, whatever it is that ails
you.’

I couldn’t
tell if he blushed, not in the moonlight. Probably not.

‘
Aren’t
you going to comment on my performance tonight, at Edith’s?’ he
asked.

‘
No,’ I
say.

‘
Why
not? Why don’t you shout at me, curse me, call me a bastard or
something?’

‘
I’d
prefer to understand rather than to argue,’ I replied.

‘
But if
I can’t understand then what chance have you got?’

I shook my
head and finally McCready apologised, said he was sorry for
behaving the way he did.

‘
Don’t
bother about it,’ I told him.

‘
You
really can forgive me anything, can’t you?’ he smiled, hugging me
to him.

*

There was the
slightest hint of a sunrise at the edge of the sky, a weak orange
glow in the east. I sang to myself as I walked along the road, but
kept coming up with ballads which were too emotive. I sang louder,
like a drunkard, trying to blot out the memories which were being
evoked.

‘
Alright
dear, keep the noise down.’

Why? There
were no houses nearby, there was no one to disturb. The only one
disturbed was me myself. I stopped singing and looked to my right,
saw that there was a police car cruising slowly along at my side.
It accelerated a few yards ahead and then stopped; one of the two
officers inside got out.

‘
What’s
in the bag?’ he asked, as I reached him.

‘
Just a
few clothes.’

‘
Let’s
have a look.’

What did he
think? That I was a cat burglar? I opened the bag while he looked
at the contents, then zipped it up again.

‘
A bit
early for travelling, isn’t it love?’

‘
I’ve
got an interview in the morning,’ I lied. ‘I had to leave
early.’

‘
Where’s
the interview?’

‘
Up
north,’ I said.

‘
Hitching?’

‘
That’s
right.’

‘
Get in
the car, then. I reckon we can give her a lift as far as the
motorway, eh?’

‘
Don’t
see why not,’ said the other policeman, the one behind the wheel,
as he leaned across to open the back door.

I climbed in
and they drove on.

‘
Don’t
think I’m being funny, but did you have a boozy night?’ guessed the
policeman in the passenger seat.

‘
Sort
of,’ I admitted. ‘End of term party.’

‘
Students,’ the driver smiled, with a shake of the head
which is not disapproving.

‘
Know
how to enjoy themselves,’ his partner nodded.

‘
May as
well while they’re young, before they have to settle down to a
responsible life.’

‘
Right.
There’s something to be said for freedom.’

Oh Christ!
They were going to envy me! Mercifully we reached the motorway and
the car came to a halt.

‘
Here
you are love, and mind you stay on the roundabout. No wandering
down onto the slip road or we’ll have to chase you.’

‘
You can
trust me,’ I promised.

‘
Well,
good luck with the interview. Might be an idea to suck a few mints,
get rid of the smell of the booze on your breath.’

‘
Thanks,
I’ll do that. And thanks for the lift.’

The police car
drove off, circled the roundabout and headed back towards the city.
I waited until it was out of sight, then walked a short way down
the slip road. After all, what chance was there of someone stopping
for me there on the roundabout?

The sun had
now started to climb over the tops of the trees, it was morning and
I was tired. I sat down on my bag, elbows on my knees, ready to
stick out a thumb whenever a car should come along. I yawned and
tasted yesterday in my mouth, wondered if tomorrow would taste as
bad. Bed would be much more preferable to sitting there in a
morning which was still chilly, bed with McCready -or Griff?- and I
set myself a deadline, a half hour perhaps, said I would go back
into the city if no one stopped for me in the next half hour.

It was twenty
minutes before I heard the first car approach. I raised a thumb,
not bothering to look up until its wheels nearly took off my
toes.

‘
What
the-!’ I said, jumping to my feet. I was ready to curse the driver
when I recognised the battered old Volvo saloon, saw the red head
inside shaking with amusement. ‘Teacher!’

‘
Oui, c’est moi
,’
Teacher grinned, and the smell of whisky was strong, wafting out of
the car as the window was would down. ‘
Comment ca va
, Virginia? Do I take it you’re finished
with college too?’

‘
I don’t
know, it doesn’t make sense to me anymore,’ I said. Then: ‘Yes, I
guess so. For the summer at least.’

‘
Want a
lift then?’

‘
Where
are you going?’ I asked, not that it mattered.

‘
North’s
the way the car’s pointing.’

I looked in
that direction, then turned back to face the way I had come.

‘
Well?
What about it?’ Teacher asked. ‘Make your mind up. You can’t sit
there all day like one of McCready’s silly bloody
trees.’

BOOK
T
HREE

VIRGINIA
FAIR

a portrait of
the young woman as someone who does

Day-Glo
posters for chippies and Chinese takeaways

Chapter One

Damned,
Virginia was damned, Nature, God and all the ministering angels
were damning her while punctured clouds baptised her, a bitter rain
seeping uninvited down her neck and to that soft hollow of the
spine which one man, at least, had professed to love so dearly. Her
hair would stink, no doubt already was, lank locks which could
flatter those of Medusa and her sisters, and she realised too late
that she should have shown more presence of mind, should have had
the foresight to take a bath before allowing herself to be so
ingloriously expelled. Yes, she should have glossed her hair with
his apple-scented shampoo and feathered her armpits with his
apple-scented talc; an orchard could flourish beneath such a
heavenly torrent. There had been no time to consider such things,
however, not when her health, perhaps her very life, had been in
jeopardy; a knife between the shoulder blades is the cowardly man’s
way of saying ‘go, you done me wrong’, and she could picture
herself in his saffron coloured tub with the modest plastic curtain
pulled across, lathering her groin as in he came, shivering to see
the condensation on the tiles and considerately tossing her the
electric fire. To keep her sizzling warm? No thank you! Virginia
had left in a hurry, unwashed, with barely the flash of a second in
which to fill the plastic bag she now clutched, its neck tight in
her frozen grip so that the treasures it held should not become
sodden.

As she weaved
her way across wet pavements shiny with street-light haloes she
wondered if it was an Aladdin’s cave she carried, or a Pandora’s
box. She would have to check, the speed of her departure had not
allowed her fingers time to discriminate as they snatched out
desperately for belongings. But first she needed shelter, from
nature who was peeing on her and that vengeful deity who was
tormenting her, spinning a teasing spider’s web of tribulation
about her body.

Yes, God is a
man and vengeance is His; masturbate and you go blind, fornicate
and He’ll blast you with rabies.

Rabies? No,
she knew that she meant babies, and she worried that her mind might
becoming as weak as her body was weary, addled and beaten to
nonsense by the elements. And yet she felt that it was better to
suffer the present divine deluge rather than be saddled with
offspring, shackled by the baptismal rites which would bind her to
a baby. She could see the child in her most restless dreams, the
pink face so unlike her own, gurgling ‘mummy’ from the font at a
prodigious age; it was mischievously reflected in the puddles
through which she splashed.

Shelter! she
almost cried aloud. Give me shelter, God damn you!

Gratefully she
skipped squelchingly into a convenience which she happened upon,
the place appropriately named at last, and with the glossy white
ceiling between herself and the Other’s churlishness she thumbed a
dripping nose towards heaven, shook herself and looked around,
thinking about her riches and acknowledging that she had to act
quickly before the swag disintegrated into nothing more than a wet
dream. Crossing her fingers she dipped them expectantly into that
bran tub of delights, searching the plunder for clues and
directions.

First she
pulled out a book, hoping for something prophetic but finding only
one of his trashy pieces of literature. Cursing, she tried again
and tangled her fingers in a midnight feast of textures; his silk
shirt, her jeans, his silk boxer shorts.

No
knickers?

No.

This was
particularly remiss of her, she thought, to forget her undies, and
as she stuffed his silk things into her pocket she imagined him
being left with her knickers, wondered what it might now be like
for him if he had to walk about with his penis tucked into her
tight cotton briefs, wondered if it might give him a twenty four
hour erection. Becoming annoyed with these base thoughts, impatient
with the awkward fumbling about, she tipped the remaining contents
of the bag into a washbasin, carefully lest there be Ming or
crystal or other negotiable bric-a-brac there, and she saw her
world before her like a childhood bowl of vomit; observing it, she
had to make an inventory, for to itemise was to make concrete.

'One
distasteful novel,' she noted, 'his, to be kept for the moment in
case there’s no toilet paper in this place. One pair of silk boxer
shorts, his again, these to be worn out of necessity, but only
after first uttering a prayer that motorists pass me by with
caution.'

This was a
prayer unlikely to be answered, it had to be admitted, considering
the way that Virginia was being treated by the One above; luck was
all bad and she would probably be flattened by a charabanc full of
sex-starved house-surgeons, squashed like a toad in the road and
left to the mercy of their clammy groping hands.

'Anyway,' she
sighed, willing to submit to the ordeal if only out of curiosity,
'I also have one red silk shirt, his, this also to be worn if the
after-shave which lingers about it is not too painful to recall;
one hairdryer; one address book; two bank statements. Huh! It’s not
much to show for four months with the swine!'

The goods went
back into the bag, and Virginia and hers -for they were now hers-
went into a cubicle. There she changed her sodden blouse for his
silk shirt and emerged a new woman. She looked into a mirror to
consider the transformation.

Yes, she
smiled, she believed that his red silk rather suited her. But
wasn’t the hair a mess, though! This was thank to He who was in the
beginning, is now and forever shall be Virginia’s greatest scourge.
The marks of the lash could be felt beneath the fine red silk and
it had to be admitted that the Lord was a mighty powerful
adversary. This time He would be thwarted, though, by the ingenuity
of Virginia and the technology of this marvellously industrious
century; a flick of the comb and a blow of the wave and all would
be well.

'Hello!
Anybody there?' Virginia called out, her voice roaring about the
cavernous place and rattling the loose ceramics. 'Atten-dant!'

Where was the
berk?

'Yes?' came
the quiet reply, and Virginia followed the voice to find the
creature, reluctantly dragged from its lair like a worm straining
against the pull of the early bird.

The creature
-Virginia found it difficult to think of the attendant as anything
else- pushed glasses against a snub protuberance in the middle of
its face, tilted back its head to keep them there and looked down a
nose so tiny that it might not have existed.

Virginia said
that she needed a socket.

'A what?'

'A socket.
Soc-ket! Ee-lec-tric-it-ee!'

'Eh?'

Virginia
counted to ten and there was her renowned self-control; she was
patient with the worm. 'A hairdryer.'

'A what?'

'Hair-dry-er!'

The
contraption was waved where the nose should have been and a smile
crept across the puckered face of the attendant, mouth stretching
as only the mouths of the intellectually constipated can, lips
parting to offer a graveyard of moss-green teeth.

'Oh. A wash
and brush up. Ten pee.'

'Pee
yourself,' said Virginia. 'All I want is the use of those three
holes in your wall.'

'Still
constitutes a wash and brush up. Still costs ten pee.'