The Art School Dance (51 page)

Virginia
lengthened her stride as she saw the ferry, grey smoke and white
gulls in its wake, fighting its way against the tide, upstream
first and then in a wide freewheeling arc to her side of the river.
The cream painted girders of the landing stage strained noisily
against each other and against the swell, groans and cries of
ancient seamen echoing from the depths of the river where people
sometimes reported seeing flashing lights and strange
creatures.

Drunk, they
probably were, like she sometimes was, walking home after too late
a night.

She just had
time to buy cigarettes and a newspaper at the kiosk before
tottering down the walkway, across the gangplank and onto the
vessel. The morning now becoming warm, she made her way onto the
top deck. There, at the prow of the MV Mountwood, there were
problems controlling the newspaper as sea breezes, bringing the
taste of salt mingling with engine oil, whipped at the pages.
Serrated edges lashed her face while black newsprint stained her
hands. Not actually annoyed, just too lazy to persevere, she jammed
the wayward tabloid between the wooden flesh-creasing slats of her
seat.

Up and down
with a comforting rhythm the boat made its way across the river.
She watched the Liver building creep closer, the two mythical birds
on top tied down for fear they might wing away to some more
prosperous city. She only ever saw the birds from a distance; close
to, standing in the shadow of the building, it was always
impossible to look up at its height without feeling dizzy. Try it
this morning and she might well keel over and crack her head, and
this without having had a single drink to blame.

Made sensible
by the breeze she bought a second newspaper and headed inland,
first of all to the Kardomah, there to munch toast, sip coffee and
watch the earliest of the morning shoppers hurry past the window,
up early with a reason while she had none. The hot buttered toast
was just what she needed. Crisp outside, spongy and doughy inside,
it was cooked to perfection, a sign more certain than the weather
forecast that the day would be a good one.

'Excuse me,
but do you have the right time?' a voice asked, damning her
optimism.

The question
surprised her, for what would she be doing with the time? Her life
was regulated, on those occasions when timetables and such things
were important, by light and dark and the habits of others. Who
needed the time? Certainly not Virginia. And what was it, anyway?
It was only when one refrained from asking the question, as Saint
Augustine suggested, only then that one could ever know.

'No,' she
consequently answered, almost apologising; she was always almost
apologising, because of her childhood which had been built around
good mannered responses.

Being asked to
commit herself so early in the morning upset her and she finished
her coffee hurriedly, scalding her tongue and tasting nothing.
Then, as she rose to leave, a thought took seed, a tiny germ of a
notion. What if the man had actually wanted the time? What if some
concrete, non-abstract entity given the name ‘time’ was reported to
be in Virginia’s possession? Ridiculously she patted the pockets of
her jacket, instinctive responses in control, then moved her hands
behind her to check on the pockets of her trousers. There was
nothing unexpected there, of course, and she felt foolish as she
stepped out onto the street, naked and conspicuous, acting out her
alien ceremony. Quickly she lost herself in the crowd, not sure
whether to curse or bless the bobbing heads which milled about
her.

Once she had
forgotten her embarrassment, and grown accustomed to the people
about her, she turned her attention back to the previous night. She
would have to ask Goomer what had happened.

After trying a
couple of less obvious places she found him in the ‘Marlborough’.
He was with an old Filipino sailor named Gus, telling him lies of
how he had come by a collection of rope ladders and quizzing him as
to how they could best be fastened together. Encouraged to accept a
drink or two, the old man was talking ten to the dozen of ‘timber
hitches’ and ‘rolling hitches’ and ‘single Matthew Walkers’.

'Of course,
hitches undo too easily for your purposes,' he was saying, as
Virginia entered the bar. 'You just pull the ropes in opposite
directions and they come free, so you’d be better splicing or
making a seizing knot.' He looked up from the length of string with
which he was demonstrating and grinned. 'I’m not getting too
technical, am I?'

Goomer turned
on his smile, too obvious for Virginia but perfectly pleasing Gus.
'Well, it does sound a bit complicated,' he said, his voice
trailing away and his smile becoming broader.

'I could do it
for you, I suppose,' Gus offered. 'If only the things aren’t too
heavy for me to carry home.'

'Oh, that’s
okay, Virginia can bring them round for you. Can’t you,
Virginia?'

So he had
them, after all.

Goomer said to
Gus, 'Would you? Would you really?'

Gus nodded,
his gnarled arthritic fingers itching to get started. 'Of course.
There’s nothing to it.'

'We’d pay you,
of course.'

'You’ll do no
such thing,' he said, stubbornly independent.

'Buy you a
drink, then. What’ll it be?'

He declined
the offer for the moment -’some other time, perhaps’- and got
shakily to his feet. They both thanked him in advance for his
favour and he waved over his shoulder as he left.

'Canny,' said
Peter, from his side of the bar. 'Is that what they call
guile?'

'No, Peter,
that’s what they call making an old man feel wanted. He can’t wait
to get started, he’s delighted to think that he’s still of some use
to people.'

'A likely
excuse to ease your conscience,' said Peter, and went to serve
someone at the far end of the bar.

Left in
privacy, Virginia asked Goomer about the night at the seaside.

'Worried?' he
grinned.

'No. Just
curious.'

'Then I won’t
tell you anything about it. Curiosity is not constructive.'

'But how did
the ladders get back over here? And why wasn’t I with them?'

'You
are
worried.'

'I’m not!'

Peter brought
empty glasses to the sink at their end of the bar and swilled them
in water. 'What’s wrong?' he asked them.

'Amnesia,'
Goomer told him. 'Virginia can’t remember what she did last night
and she’s worried.'

'Curious,' she
corrected.

'Ah, Virginia,
if you want to drink with the men you’ve got to act like the men,
learn to take it.'

The favourite
aphorism rankled Virginia. 'Go away, Peter.'

'See?' said
Peter to Goomer, smiling as though the response had proved some
point.

Virginia made
a slow exaggerated pirouette, looking around the room as though she
found it and its occupants distasteful; after she had made a
complete turn she drank down what beer was left in her glass.

'Come on,
let’s get out of this place,' she said to Goomer.

His reaction
was to suggest that Peter get out the backgammon set, ignoring
Virginia, perhaps resenting being told what to do.

'Well I’m
going,' Virginia announced, and walked away.

'You’ll be
back!' Peter shouted after her. 'And don’t forget to tell your
friends! The ‘Marlborough’, Seel Street, that’s where it’s all
happening!'

*

Like a
stickleback floundering in the hand of a mischievous child Virginia
stood on the steps of the pub. Clouds whispered as they dispersed,
dun grey burdens becoming feathers of misty white, and she looked
up at their hallowed canopy as she wondered where she should
go.

For food, this
was the sensible answer, so she turned right, then right again into
Bold Street.

People passed
by, handsome men, women and girls with their limbs made white and
lustrous by the lambent sun, created for kisses and caresses, their
knickers nearly reflected topsy-turvy in the pools which were the
last of an afternoon shower of rain. Frilly, spotted, warm and
silky, they fired Virginia’s dreams as she walked past the bombed
shell of Saint Luke’s church and entered the perimeters of the
district she knew best of all. Restaurants were plentiful here
-Greek, Chinese, Indian, Italian- necessitating another decision
which made Virginia grieve, for the need to make decisions seemed
to dot the way of her calm progression like so many stuttering
punctuation marks.

She settled
for the ‘Kebab House’, since this seemed to be the quietest, walked
down the aisle between the Formica topped tables and sat in the
shade of a synthetic rubber plant so that she might eat
unnoticed.

Young
waitresses dressed casually seemed to be students, every one, and
she remembered those days fondly as one approached her, her
notebook held before her like a route map. Flicking away the menu
which was offered Virginia told the girl that she would like afelia
with salad, some hot bread and a dish of tahini sauce; she thought
that the waitress might be impressed by this comfortable
self-assured poise. The way in which the girl masked her admiration
was commendable, she must have been a drama student Virginia
supposed, her features remained impassive as she scribbled down the
order. Watching her buttocks bounce beneath the short skirt,
Virginia thought of rump steak; she wished she had ordered rump
steak; too late, though, so she sat back and smoked a cigarette
while she waited.

She ate her
food slowly and late afternoon came conveniently close. A brief
stroll around the city passed away accumulating minutes but offered
no revelations other than the observation that the streets were
emptying. The twilight period, it was, which marked the end of
another day’s commerce and the start of another evening’s
entertainment, the police changing shifts and priorities,
forgetting the shoplifters in favour of the drunk and disorderly.
Virginia vowed to keep out of their way, sidestepped any she saw as
she retraced her steps up Leece Street, to the ‘Philharmonic’ where
she thought she might again find Goomer.

*

Liverpool
Philharmonic. It seemed to her that she had lived her life in that
place, a thousand times over like some doctrine of eternal
recurrence. True, there were other places of significance in her
life, but the ‘Phil’ was one which she would forever hold dear, for
all that the quality of the beer was steadily deteriorating and the
bar was being taken over by students. In the middle of its tiled
floor she paused, assuming a pose which suggested even more
decisions to reach; the stance made a mockery of her already
predetermined course, however, and with a drink in her hand she
made her way into the small room on her right, a holy sepulchre of
a place, where she laid claim to the seat nearest the door, giving
her easy access to all exits and saving her the inconvenience of
fighting her way across what would later be a crowded room. With
just a hint of the lemming in her blood she had returned.

There is a
feeling to be had when one lies back with head angled towards the
sun, relishing the golden goodness of its warmth, and such was the
effect that this particular room’s stained glass window had on
Virginia. With a contented gaze she studied the pre-Raphaelite girl
depicted on the glass, unsure if the strange raw umber instrument
she held was a lute, a mandolin or a poorly drawn guitar. The light
was bright, but not so strong as to hurt her eyes -she had no need
to squint- and her attention alternated between the radiance of the
glass and the deep wine of the wood panelling, her mind meandering
from the manuscript at the border of the window to the ivy, from a
curl in the girl’s brown hair to the words of the legend itself:
MUSIC IS THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF MANKIND.

Subdued and
anaesthetised, Virginia was lost somewhere between sense and
nonsense, and in fitful periods of near consciousness she would
realise that she had wandered from the window, that her attention
had drifted to peripheral details such as a barmaid in the next
room or the fireplace to her left. It was all a part of the process
of relaxing, as near to meditation as she ever came.

As the evening
progressed so the room filled with people. Cigarette smoke rose
slowly as though to deny that it was lighter than air, and the
colours of the window were reflected by the soft denim wisps,
refracted by the dust and the motes which floated about the room.
The dark brown of the walls changed to a vitreous blue-grey, so
lacking in substance that she felt sure she could pass through
them, out onto Hope Street.

Seeing Goomer
enter, she chose a less spectacular exit from the room, joined him
at the bar.

'You know, I
think I’m in love with this sodding city,' she said, apropos of
nothing, waving her arms to take everything for her own.

'I think
you’re getting drunk again,' Goomer countered, lacking soul.

So unstable
was Virginia’s mood that the remark immediately demolished her good
humour. 'Why do people always have to think like that? And why do
they always have to say it like that?' She looked at the faces
which crowded the bar. 'People!' she spat. 'All pretence and
bullshit! Just look at them! They have more poses than a nude
descending a staircase!'

'What’s
suddenly brought on this outburst?' asked Goomer.

'People!' she
said again, feeling them crowding her.

'They all seem
happy enough,' Goomer thought, his mood more mellow than hers and
allowing no room for discrimination.

'They’re
preposterous, ambitious, all clumping along like donkeys after
rotting carrots.'

Goomer said
that this was a little ungracious and she said that his remark was
more than a little fatuous, a glib phrase dropped meaninglessly on
the fence, neither here nor there, the sort of thing which might be
said to appease a child.