The Art School Dance (64 page)

'Cold lager,'
she said, limping to the bar.

'Hello again,'
said the barman, as he poured the drink.

Virginia
looked at him, looked at her surroundings; both were unfamiliar but
she returned the greeting, said, 'Hello.'

'You don’t
remember me? The pool cue?'

Pool cue? What
was the idiot talking about? She took her drink from him and sat
down on the far side of the room, gulping at the lager to stop her
heart racing.

Who the hell
had that been in the ‘Corkscrew’? Who was owed so much money that
they would chase after her intent on murder?

From her
corner of the room Virginia regarded everyone with suspicion. It
was an unwarranted caution, her pursuer could not have caught up
with her so quickly nor found her so easily, but still she searched
every face for some glint of recognition, some hint of menace. And
each time her sweeping gaze reached the bar the only acknowledging
look came from the barman.

Surely he was
not the one who had chased her from the ‘Corkscrew’? No, it was
impossible, he had probably been on duty behind the bar for the
past hour or two. In any case, the brief glimpse she had got of her
pursuer had suggested lighter hair, a slimmer build.

Made thirsty
by her exertions and her panic, she drained her glass. Still too
rattled to venture out onto the street, she went back to the bar
for a refill.

'Lager
again?'

'Please.'

The barman’s
head was bowed over the glass as he filled it, but his smiling eyes
peered up at her. 'How did the dirty photos go?' he asked.

That was when
they had met before; she had called in this same pub on her way to
take the photographs for the jeweller.

Virginia
laughed as she recognised him, said, 'They weren’t dirty
photos.'

'You sound
disappointed,' the barman remarked, passing across her drink. He
waved away her offer of payment, said, 'It’s alright, I’m on my own
tonight, acting boss.'

And he, for
his part, sounded somewhat disappointed to be on hi sown. Rather
than return to her seat across the room, Virginia pulled up a stool
and sat at the bar; the barman was less busy than before, the bar
was not as crowded as when Virginia had entered and they were able
to strike up a conversation.

'You’re a
photographer, then?' said the barman, and Virginia did not deny it.
'It must be exciting, glamorous.'

'Yes, I do
glamour studies from time to time,' she said, stressing the word as
though it was a euphemism for something more sordid. She leaned
forward, inclined her head, said, 'Yes, indeed.'

'Yes indeed,
what?' the barman asked, with a knowing smirk.

Now let’s not
get too unsubtle about this, Virginia cautioned herself.

'I bet you’ve
had many a snapshot taken of you,' she said. 'A muscular brute like
you.'

'Oh, I’ve had
snaps taken,' he said, swelling his chest, making the broad vee of
hair expand as his shirt stretched. 'Never anything that you’d call
glamorous, though.'

Virginia
smiled to hear the word given its now customary emphasis.

'No?' she
said, and then, 'No, I suppose not.'

'And just what
do you mean by that?' he demanded.

'Well, it does
take guts to strip off and bare all for the camera.'

'It wouldn’t
frighten me,' he boasted.

'It
wouldn’t?'

'No! It
wouldn’t!'

'Well, if you
ever get it into your head to, you know-'

'Have another
drink,' he invited.

Willingly. She
had another couple, customers came and went and she began to feel
at ease, her early evening fright forgotten.

At one point
the barman -he introduced himself as Mark- leant forward with an
exaggeratedly confidential air and whispered, 'Dirty photographs,
I’ve nothing against them you know. I’ll try anything once.'

His reek of
aftershave almost made Virginia swoon.

He served a
customer, quickly and sloppily, hurried back to her to add with a
leer, 'In fact I’ve tried almost everything once.'

Virginia
leered back.

'Stay a
while,' he said, now passing her a double whisky as he called ‘last
orders’ in a loud and commanding voice.

'You just try
to stop me,' said Virginia.

Mark gave the
remaining customers their last drinks of the night, urged them to
drink up even as they were paying, then busied himself about the
room, collecting their glasses.

'One more?' he
offered Virginia, stacking empties at the bar while the more
sluggish customers struggled to finish their drinks, returned to
the tables, clearing them and wiping them, constantly casting quick
glances back at the bar to make sure that she was still there.

'Now I think I
deserve a drink,' he said, when he had ushered the last of the
people from the premises, and Virginia produced money with a
flourish, offering to pay. He refused, said, 'There’s no need for
that. I’m the boss tonight, remember.'

'If that’s how
you prefer it,' she said, feeling a shiver run down her spine.

Mark poured
himself a large vodka and tonic, brought it around the bar and sat
on a stool beside her. His trousers were tight, they stressed the
bulge between his legs, and as his knee nudged hers it was assumed
that they would leave together. When they finally did so, after he
had locked up the pub and they had stepped out onto the street, he
linked his arm through Virginia’s as if they were a happily married
middle-aged couple. The street was empty and their steps echoed
noisily in the night.

Hush, Virginia
thought, though she was at a loss to remember why there should be
any need for silence.

'Where do you
live, Mark?' she asked.

'Not far, we
don’t need a taxi. Just the other side of Duke Street.'

Walking
distance, as he said.

There were
people leaving public houses, places where the staff had not been
as eager to close as Mark; some headed home, or to their bus stops,
while others were obviously keen to go on to clubs. The city centre
was quite busy at that time of night.

There were the
usual police vehicles parked at strategic points, at the foot of
Bold Street, at the corner of Whitechapel, and others cruising
around, Transit vans with a clutch of constables inside and police
cars with just two officers. Virginia thought nothing of the sleek
white Ford which cruised slowly past, then turned into a side
street ahead and parked. She was happily chatting with Mark,
clutching him to her and giving him the occasional squeeze, when
the two uniformed policemen walked across the road towards
them.

'Good evening,
boys,' said Mark.

He obviously
knew them, and they him; they greeted him by name, but wasted no
more time on pleasantries.

'We want you,'
said one of them to Virginia.

'Me?'

'Her? Why?'
asked Mark. 'What’s she done?'

Virginia was
caught first by one arm, then the other, and Mark surrendered his
hold on her quite freely.

'Soliciting,
ripping off punters,' said the policeman who gripped Virginia the
tightest, strong fingers painfully digging into her flesh.

'She’s a
tart?' said Mark. 'But she’s such a looker.'

Flatterer.

'She’s a thief
and a cheat and riddled with disease,' said the second
policeman.

'And to think
I might have taken her to bed with me.'

Might have?
There was no doubt that he would have,, the dirty fornicator, that
had been the only thing on his mind. It was immaterial now, though;
for the moment the only thing that mattered to Virginia was the
accusation.

'What do you
mean, soliciting?' she asked.

'Come on.' She
was tugged across the road. 'This isn’t the sort you want to pick
up, Mark. You’ve just had a lucky escape, pal.'

Mark shook his
head, was already walking briskly along the street and glancing
around anxiously, worried that there might have been witnesses.

'But I’ve done
nothing!' Virginia shouted out to him, and to people passing by,
but though some stopped to stare curiously after her no one
bothered to intervene as she was bullied across the street and down
the darkened alley.

The patrol car
was parked some yards ahead, in a deserted car-park at the rear of
a block of shops. As she was pulled protesting towards it she saw a
figure climb out. If this was also a police officer there was no
sign of a uniform.

'Here she is,
Wilkie, we’ve got the bitch,' said one of Virginia’s escorts.

Wilkie? Did
she know the name?

As they neared
the car she made out the silhouette of a woman, not a man;
youngish, blondish, sort of sporty and athletic. In the weak lights
of the car-park she saw the woman as a blur of a shape dashing
across an equally dimly lit wine bar.

'So we meet
again, Virgin-ya!'

The disdainful
use of the name was familiar, Virginia recalled the only other
person who had ever addressed her with such loathing, the WPC in
the back of the Transit van wanting to arrest her for something she
had not done, the constable who had pulled her up for drunken
driving and taken such delight in her predicament.

'What’s all
this about?' Virginia asked, as she was backed into a corner by
Wilkie and her two uniformed friends. 'I’m no prostitute.'

'No? Then what
do you call having sex with another woman’s husband?' asked one of
the constables, pushing her roughly against the wall. He turned to
Wilkie. 'We’ll just take a spin around the block. Okay? We’ll be
five minutes.'

'Fine,' Wilkie
nodded with a nasty smile.

'Here! Don’t
leave me with her!' Virginia panicked, as the two policemen got
into their car.

They paid no
heed, drove slowly away. Virginia’s view of the departing vehicle
was blocked by the advancing form of Wilkie.

'You know my
name, don’t you, Virgin-ya?'

Virginia
nodded. 'You stopped me for drunken driving.'

'You know my
husband’s name, too?'

Your-?'

Sex with
another woman’s husband is an offence, punishable by the law, if
that other woman is an officer of the law.

'My husband,
Josh.' There was an interminable pause, while Wilkie let the
reality of the situation sink in. 'I knew he’d been having it off
with someone, the cheating bastard,' she went on, in a
frighteningly even tone. 'I didn’t know it was you, though, until a
mate delivered your summons and saw Josh’s picture in your squalid
little room.' She hit Virginia once, in the stomach, to take the
wind from her. 'Pictures of my husband hanging over your fucking
bed!”

*

It was surely
more than five minutes before the patrol car completed its circuit
of the block. To Virginia it seemed like an age. In her pain and
her panic she stupidly called out for the police, screamed for them
to help her as she sank to the ground, her arms around her head to
shield her from the blows. On the ground, however, she was even
more vulnerable, feet came in to accompany the fists and she felt a
lip split, a tooth chip. When she heard voices she thought there
were angels murmuring over her; when the blows stopped there was
still no cessation of pain but rather a constant buzz of it, as if
dentists’ drills were boring into every bone of her body.

'Okay, Wilkie,
that’s enough.'

'Yes,' Wilkie
panted, exhilarated by her violence. 'She’s in court in two days’
time. She has to be fit for that.'

'You get off
home, then. We’ll see her to the Royal, have her stitched up.'

'Right.
Thanks, lads. Just see to it that she’s stitched up slowly,
eh?'

There were
nasty chuckles, the sound of footsteps receding, and Virginia was
bundled into the back of the patrol car.

'Don’t bleed
all over the seats,' she was told.

'And don’t
fuck a copper’s husband next time.'

The two
policeman then chatted between themselves, one saying, 'It’s a
nasty part of town to wander around late at night.'

'A mugging a
minute some nights.'

'Or cruel
buggers looking to kick the shit out of people just for the fun of
it.'

'Right.
There’s no way I’d wander around Toxteth on my own at night.'

And there was
no way Virginia had been near Toxteth that night. She lived there,
for God’s sake, and felt safe there. But who would believe her if
she said anything to the contrary?

There was no
wailing of a siren, no screeching recklessly around corners and
through lights, no rush to get her to the casualty department.
Instead she had to suffer a leisurely ride around the city, giving
her time in which to fully appreciate her pain. When they finally
reached the hospital and she was escorted into casualty by the two
policemen one of them had a quiet word with the staff on duty.
Virginia could not hear what was said, but she could guess, she was
made to wait and it was morning before she got away, a full bright
morning which hurt her bruised eyes. She had a stitch or two in her
lip, two more above her eye, and it was suggested that she might be
wise to visit a dentist, there were a couple of teeth which needed
attending to.

'Thanks,” she
said, sarcastically grateful. 'Thanks very much.”

She walked
through the university grounds, the shortest route from the
hospital to her flat, and the campus was swarming with students
going from lecture to lecture. Young students, mixed students,
girls in skimpy blouses and men in tight tee shirts. There were
looks cast in her direction but she could guess that none of them
were the ‘come hither’ looks that she usually hoped for; she had
looked in no mirrors, she had no idea what her face looked like but
she supposed that it must look frightful. She wondered where Mark
might be, or Constance or Trev, and how they might react if they
saw her now.