The Art School Dance (49 page)

Virginia tried
not to. She dampened her desire with glasses of wine while Goomer
took charge of the evening’s business, replenishing her glass when
necessary and collecting money for any drawings sold. He and Coral
spoke with interested customers, of whom there were surprisingly
many, pointed to Virginia -’that’s the artist’- then took the cash
and deducted their own percentages. Each piece sold was marked with
a red sticker, to be collected when the exhibition had run its
course, which was how Gerald said the professionals did things.

'How much have
I made?' Virginia asked, when the hands on the clock behind the bar
crept on towards ten o’clock.

Goomer told
her, quoted a sum which he agreed was not bad, not bad at all.

'Then enough
and to hell with it! Let’s get rid of the rest for a pint apiece!'
said Virginia generously.

Goomer was
delighted with this bountifulness. 'That’s the spirit, Virginia!
Art for the people, not the elite!' he congratulated her, going off
to conduct more business at the new cut-price.

Red dots began
to dance before Virginia’s eyes, like fireflies landing on her
drawings. She collected bottles of wine and glasses of beer -’no
reasonable offer refused’- and the table seemed to buckle beneath
the weight, its legs distorted by drink.

Fifteen
minutes before the bar closed Gerald arrived, his voluminous shirt
billowing about him like a spinnaker, and he was overjoyed to see
that so much work had been sold.

'This is
marvellous, Virginia! How much have we made?'

Virginia
struggled with the sums; there were some pounds in cash, numerous
cans of lager, half a dozen bottles of red wine and three of white.
'That’s less what we’ve already drunk, of course,' she added.

'What?'

'We’ve drunk
quite a bit of the takings already,' she repeated with a burp.

Gerald stamped
across to the bar where he exchanged words with Coral. When he
returned to Virginia he was livid. 'You stupid little shit! You
don’t give your work away for a drink a time! Not when I’ve gone to
so much trouble with it you don’t!'

'Art’s for the
people,' Virginia sighed, but her words were confused, her mind was
tired, and it came out sounding more like ‘tarts for the
people’.

'You’re
drunk!'

On success?
Then how easily pleased she was, she thought, standing with
difficulty and going across to the bar to tell Coral that she was
drunk.

'Yes, dear,
that you are, faffing pissed,' Coral concurred.

The room now
seemed a little less crowded than it had been before.

'Business is
slackening off a bit, isn’t it, Coral?'

'It usually
does once I’ve closed the bar for the night,' Coral told her.

The clock on
the wall showed that it was eleven forty-five; someone had stolen
the night from Virginia, parcelled it up and tucked it beneath
their coat, walked out with it like a thief.

The bottles of
wine had also been taken.

'Where is it?'
she asked. 'I had more than half a dozen bottles left.'

'I gave them
back in return for your drawings,' Gerald told her.

'Oh, Gerald!
You didn’t!'

'Oh, Virginia!
I did!'

The barman
with the china doll complexion came from the kitchen -at some time
during the evening Virginia had learned that his name was Josh- and
brought with him a tray of food, a midnight supper of chilli and
baked potatoes and whatever else was left from the day’s menu.

Gerald spat
food at Virginia each time he told her what a stupid young woman
she was.

'Tarts for the
people,' she said, trying to recall the noble motives which had
fired her. 'Isn’t that right, Goomer?'

'Legalise
prostitution,' Goomer agreed, and the world seemed a little off
balance, made unsteady by the loopy juice that was still being
splashed about.

They drank on,
first in the ‘Corkscrew’ and then in other places, following Coral
through late night early morning streets to other clubs she knew.
Gerald told Goomer to keep an eye on Virginia -’she’s such a stupid
little shit’- while Virginia kept an eye on Josh and tried to find
words which might communicate how she felt. ‘Let’s go to bed’ would
have summed it up perfectly, but lacked subtlety, so they simply
talked, about Coral and Gerald who were their only mutual
acquaintances, about Goomer, too. Virginia told Josh what she knew
of Goomer, which did not amount to very much, and did her best to
stress that she was not in any way involved with him.

'But you’re
friends, aren’t you?'

'Yes. I think
that’s because we don’t ask too much of each other.'

It seemed a
strange reason to offer for their friendship, but it was true; all
they knew of each other was what they had experienced together and
their pasts were forgotten, their futures were never
considered.

'And you’re an
artist?'

That question
again!

'No, I’m not.
I do Day-Glo posters for chippies and Chinese takeaways.'

Or at least
she used to. Now she was no longer certain. Judging by her
responses and her behaviour during the day it seemed that she
wanted to be the opposite of whatever people thought she was; she
would be a slob instead of an artist, an artist in the place of
something else. And if no one had any opinions as to what she was,
then what would she be?

Nothing,
probably. With nothing to react against, she would be nothing.

Chapter Three

Virginia’s
mouth tasted as though a child had been farting in it all night,
sunlight on red terraced houses disturbed her and unfamiliar
streets confused her, so she looked around for a taxi and an easy
way into town. A shiny black hackney would do, with a matt interior
and tinted windows; she needed subdued surroundings for, even
through half-closed eyes, the fiery red bricks were a painful sight
to behold.

The first taxi
went past even as she tried to whistle and gagged in an attempt to
pucker up; she raised her hand on seeing a second and the driver
made a dangerous U-turn to mount the pavement beside her.

Inside, the
seats gave off a smell of polish and the floor was still wet from a
recent mopping. Virginia was the first fare of the day.

'Going to?'
the driver asked, squeezing the words from the corner of his mouth
rather than turn around to face his passenger.

Virginia
groaned. She was not yet prepared to answer questions or make
decisions.

'Just get me
into town,' she said. 'I’ll work something out from there.'

The taxi made
another exhilarating U-turn and they were off, towards the
chequered-flag city which was still distant enough to be out of
view.

'Looking
rough,' the driver commented, glancing in his mirror.

'What?'

'I said you’re
looking rough. On the razzle last night, were you?'

'Something
like that,' Virginia admitted, but she could tell the man no more;
there was nothing to remember until the morning of an hour before,
when she had awoken on the settee in the house of Josh, the barman,
covered by a blanket and wondering why she could not have been in
his bed instead.

'You got
drunk,' Josh told her. 'You passed out in the kitchen so we put you
on the couch to sleep it off.'

'Did I, you
know, try anything?' she hesitantly asked, and he smiled, said his
wife would not have approved if she had, then fed her bacon and
eggs and pushed her out onto the sun scorched street.

Down the dock
road the taxi launched itself, over cobbles and tramlines to upset
the breakfast which Virginia thought she might have to spit out of
the window if it became too agitated. An undigested egg slapped
against her stomach wall as a dirty high tide lapped against the
landing stage and she told the driver to pull over.

'Pier Head?
Right y’are,' he said, and quoted an exorbitant fare which
Virginia, too sick to bother, paid without question.

With legs
planted wide apart on the pavement to brace herself, she opened her
mouth and bit greedily at the almost fresh air, air which seemed so
thick that it could be sliced with a knife and laid between two
slices of bread. The humour of the day was making her feel giddy,
it swirled with the wind across the Pier Head plateau, forcing her
inland, towards the shelter of the city, to the high buildings and
narrow alleys where the buffeting breeze was unable to reach.

So. What to do
to restore the equilibrium, to stop the hands shaking and the knees
trembling?

A drink was
always the brave solution, so, like the heroine she thought herself
to be and the dolt others said she was, she limped along to the
‘Corkscrew’.

As she
stumbled down the stairs Coral announced her.

'The
artist!'

Virginia
smiled, righted herself and regained what composure she had ever
been blessed with.

'Piss artist
would be nearer the truth,' said Gerald.

'Ouch. That
hurts.' Virginia placed a hand over her breast, where the pain
should be felt. 'Let’s have a bottle of Guinness, Coral, to thicken
the blood and heal the wound.'

'You can’t be
serious, not after all that you knocked back yesterday.'

But
Virginia
was
serious. A
frontal assault was always the best way to attack a hangover,
splashing the stomach with the thick creamy black stuff and scaring
the nausea away.

With a
be-it-on-your-head shake of her head, Coral poured the drink and
placed it on the bar like a challenge. Virginia took it in, sip by
careful sip, feeling a little better with each mouthful.

'You’re a
drunkard,' Gerald told her.

'I am
not.'

'You were
drunk last night. In fact you were smashed.'

'I was
effervescent,' Virginia maintained.

'Effervescently smashed,' Gerald repeated, so obviously
disapproving.

'Don’t knock
it until you’ve tried it,' said Virginia, with a nod to the bitter
lemon he was drinking.

Gerald
snorted, through nostrils which were always flared but now swelled
out even more, prompting Virginia to think of a dragon stoking up.
She half expected to be consumed by his indignation, reduced to
ashes which might be used to bless the brows of the pious.

Gerald stabbed
her in the chest with a blunt forefinger. 'I have been drunk and I
do know what it’s like.'

'My drinking
is of a different kind, though, as creative as my art,' said
Virginia grandly. 'My drinking will take me places.'

'Where? On the
road of excess to a palace of wisdom?' Gerald guessed, denying
Virginia the opportunity to quote. 'William-bloody-Blake!' he
moaned, his disgust so very nearly an offensive weapon.

'What’s wrong
with that?' asked Virginia. 'Didn’t saints live to excess?
Excessiveness takes a person places.'

'And where is
it you want to go, dear?'

'Further!' she
said, impatient with the man and his condescending manner.

'You’re a
stupid little shit!' Gerald hissed, like a flatulent pig, which was
precisely what his contorted face reminded Virginia of. 'A stupid
little shit!'

*

Maybe.
Virginia thought, perhaps, that she might also be lonely. This
occurred to her when Gerald left the bar and she had no one to talk
to. She drank up, then, and wandered the city, went from pub to
pub, through the afternoon and into the evening. She should have
noticed the hint of menace which swept the streets, dusting the
pavements with ill omens; a broken bottle, a dead cat in the
gutter, the very silence of the city, coupled with her own
melancholy, should have warned her that she would be wise to go
home. Vain as ever, though, she teased fate, tickled her chin as
she might have done a child’s, and, swaggering along the streets in
the late evening, she was as obvious as a challenge.

'Do not go
gentle into that good night!' she recited, much too loudly, and a
dark blue Transit van came as if from nowhere, screeching brakes
startling her and voices like threats making her prick with
alarm.

'Alright,
love! Into the back!'

Virginia was
sure that she was not drunk, even though she had been drinking, so
perhaps it was just that her senses were a little numbed by the
chill of the evening; whatever the reason, she did as she was told,
with neither a whimper nor a murmur.

'Sit on the
floor and get those shoes off!'

Looking at
police all around her, two males and a female in the back and two
males in the front, she was made quite claustrophobic by their
size. Stricken with fear, not quite believing that she was hearing
them right, she sat almost immobile, only her lower jaw moving,
opening and closing as though she was a goldfish in a bowl looking
for a way out.

'I said to get
those shoes off!'

This time the
voice sounded almost manic, so she removed her shoes. She was
sweating and her feet stank.

'What’s
wrong?' she asked, slowly coming to her senses; she was told to
shut her mouth, but declined, said, 'What have I done?'

Naive as she
was, she did not realise that this could be interpreted as an
admission of guilt. Nothing was said to her, however; the policemen
were lost in discussion as they examined her shoes.

'Glass?' said
the woman police constable to a colleague, pointing to the
soles.

'Could be,'
the other agreed.

The shoes were
passed around.

'There’s not
much of it, though.'

'But then the
soles are fairly hard rubber. You wouldn’t get much embedded.'

'True.'

Virginia was
curious. 'What’s so fascinating about glass?' she asked.

'Shut up!'

This she did,
but not for long.