The Art School Dance Read online

  ‘Not tonight, not while those two harridans are in the house,’ I said. ‘I’d rather it wasn’t then, there’d only be a scene.’

  ‘So when? When will the house be empty?’

  ‘There’ll be no one home this afternoon,’ I knew. ‘Gran will be at the old folk’s club and my mother will be out shopping.’

  ‘We’ll get your stuff now, then,’ Paula said. ‘I’m owed an afternoon off after working all day Saturday.’

  She checked with Ben, we collected her car from the flat and drove over to my house; when Paula parked the car outside the front door I asked her if she’d wait there.

  She nodded, said yes, could perhaps guess why I would prefer her not to go into that dreary house. I smiled my thanks, then let myself in. The place was empty and quiet, just as I’d supposed it would be, and I ran upstairs to get my things. There wasn’t much, just a suitcase full of clothes, a box of records and a few sketchbooks; I only needed to make two trips to the car and I had emptied the house of the past eighteen years of my life.

  ‘Is that it?’ Paula asked.

  ‘It’s all I need,’ I said, and we drove off without me even giving a backward glance; I was glad to be away from the place, it was my first step into the future.

  *

  It took less than an hour to move my things into Paula’s flat. She had arranged to take the whole afternoon off and so we had it to ourselves, there was no need to go back to college. We hung my clothes in the wardrobe, stacked my records next to Paula’s and put my sketchbooks on a shelf beneath the tiers of books. By mid-afternoon I was settled into my new home.

  ‘We ought to celebrate,’ said Paula.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Fish and chips first, with lots of vinegar, and then we’ll wander around town and have a drink or two. We can act like a couple now,’ she said happily, ‘and we’re going to enjoy every minute of it.’

  Paula got out of her secretary clothes, put on jeans and let down her hair. Because there was a chance that we might have more than a drink or two the car was left at the flat, we walked, and Paula’s arm curled around my waist so tightly, my arm draped her shoulders so fondly; there was no longer any reason to be secretive about our feelings. We bought fish and chips and ate them from the paper as we walked through the park, our fingertips stinging with salt and vinegar which we licked from each others hands, threw a few scraps to the ducks but they weren’t interested, promised to bring them some bread next time. In the park there was a large bronze statue, some long-dead local philanthropist seated on a chair, covered by a dull grey-green oxide and tarnished by the elements; only the toe of the extended right foot was free from rust, polished and shiny where children had rubbed and then made a wish. I had done it as a kid and did it again now, Paula too, not minding that people might see us, laughing and keeping our wishes secret so that they might come true.

  ‘You do think you’ve done the right thing, don’t you?’ Paula asked me later, when we stopped for a drink; her fingers were twined around mine, she was almost brushing her lips against my mouth as she spoke, our faces were that close.

  Across the room, against the bar, I could see my two old school-friends, Tina and Diane, looking in our direction; I nodded an acknowledgement to them, but nothing more, knowing that they would want explanations and preferring to have them speculate.

  ‘Why? Do you think I might not have?’ I smiled at Paula.

  ‘No, I’m sure you have. You’re going to blossom now, flourish, burst forth every day.’

  ‘Do you mean as an artist, or orgasmically?’

  ‘Either. Both. Each at the same time if you like.’

  As we laughed, heads together, I could see Tina and Diane still staring hard, as though they would give anything to be in my place, and I told myself that electing to move in with Paula was the most responsible decision I had ever made, even though my family might regard it as the most sinful thing I’ had ever done.

  *

  The two of us quickly settled down to life with each other, Paula was right when she said that seven days spent together would be no different to one. We were both in college during the day, and in the evenings we sometimes went out but more often than not stayed home. The only difference now was that ‘home’ had become a place I enjoyed being, a place where I felt comfortable and content. It seemed shameful to say this, I didn’t want to dismiss the eighteen years of love and care which my family had devoted to me, but it had to be accepted that I would have left them sooner or later; I was sorry that Gran and mother aren’t happy about the way it had happened, that it had not come about in the way they expected, but there was no way I regretted my decision.

  It was a couple of days before it occurred to me to wonder if they knew where I was. They probably did. I was sure they’d have guessed.

  ‘You mean you didn’t leave them a note?’ said Paula.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I confessed guiltily. ‘I just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Then I really think you ought to go and see them, tell them where you are.’

  ‘They’ll have guessed.’

  ‘All the same, they deserve to be told by you rather than someone else. You owe them that much, at least.’

  *

  I went on Sunday, none too happily, and got there just after ten o’clock mass had finished, when I knew there would be people home. I let myself in and found my mother and Gran sitting down to breakfast; when they looked up their faces were so grave that they might have been carved out of stone.

  I stood there before them, nervously jiggling my door-key in my hand.

  ‘Where have you been all week?’ my mother asked.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘You didn’t leave word where you were going.’

  ‘But-?’ I prompted.

  ‘We can guess,’ she said, sadly nodding her head. ‘You moved your things out, so you must have gone to her.’

  ‘Her name is Paula.’

  ‘That’s not what we call her,’ Gran butted in nastily. ‘So you’re shacking up with that woman?’

  ‘I’ve moved into her flat.’

  ‘Then may God forgive you.’

  ‘He probably respects my openness and honesty,’ I said.

  ‘Honesty? Ha!’

  ‘I’m more honest than all those hypocrites you’ve been knelt next to this morning.’

  ‘If you ever have the nerve to join them in church again the roof will fall in on you.’

  ‘My conscience is clear,’ I told Gran.

  ‘Conscience?’ she scoffed. ‘You don’t have one! Your soul is as black as pitch!’

  As usual it was me and Gran at each other hammer and tongues, with my mother mostly silent.

  I shrugged. ‘You just don’t understand.’

  ‘No, girl, I don’t,’ Gran said, and I could sense the sadness behind the anger. ‘We brought you up well, your Mum and Dad and me, and we were proud of you. You were a good child, you did well at school, you had all the chances-’

  ‘The chances Dad never had?’ It was always a case, in Sleepers Hill, of a child doing better than its parents. ‘Yes, I know, and I’m sorry you don’t like the way things have turned out, but I’m not sorry that I’ve changed. I wish I’d never been born a Catholic,’ I said, regretting what Gran would see as the greatest advantage of all, ‘I wish I’d never been born a Catholic because it seems like I wasted the first sixteen years of my life being a bigot.’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak like that in this house!’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘It’s my home.’

  ‘But it’s my mother’s house. It used to be my father’s, now it’s hers, but it’s never been yours. You just live here.’ It was cruel of me, I knew, but Gran herself was cruel, talking about Paula as if she was a tart, talking about me as if I was scum, and I wasn't going to take it any more, I was angry, I no longer loved my family and didn’t think I had done since the da
y my father died. ‘You’re just the lodger,’ I said, turning even nastier. ‘You’re no better than a family pet. You’re just here so you can be looked after until you die, until you’re old enough and sick enough to be put down.’

  The argument was between me and Gran, as it always was, but this time there was no joy in winning, for the very first time an argument reduced the old lady to tears. Mother, too, was crying. I went towards her, realising that I hadn’t put an arm around her since my father’s funeral, but now, when I tried to, my mother held out a hand to tell me to stop.

  ‘Keep away,’ she said. ‘Just give me that door-key.’

  I looked at the key, which I still had in my hand; its imprint was on my palm, where I'd clenched it in my anger. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I don’t want to see you back in this house until you’ve left that woman.’

  ‘Then you’ll have a bloody long wait!’ I shouted, and flung the key onto the table.

  As soon as I left the house a depression fell. I spent the afternoon walking the streets of my childhood, found myself crossing the dry dusty recreation fields, walking by the canal which cut through the terraces in ever decreasing steps, dropping from one lock to another. Scraps of land beside it sprouted a scrub-like grass here and there, every so often there was the bricked-up ventilation shaft of a disused mine, and this landscape of my childhood was not the stuff of which dreams could be made, the water in the canal was scummy and filthy and the terraces crowded in on all sides. Looking around me, it was little wonder that the thing I craved above all else was freedom.

  *

  Paula lifted my depression gently, little by little, when I arrived back at the flat it was plain that mine had not been a happy day. I had spent so much of the afternoon outdoors, walking and thinking, that I was almost blue with cold, so Paula sat me on the settee before the fire and ran a hot bath for me, then shepherded me through to the bathroom. I was too tired and depressed to protest when Paula stood there to watch me undress, then helped to scrub me and bring some life back to my body; I was as depressed as I had ever been but Paula didn’t ask why, just soaped me down and washed my hair and towelled me dry. Then she wrapped me in a bathrobe, we went back to the living room and drank soup from mugs -my mother would always serve it in cereal bowls, I told her- had a glass of whisky each and curled up side by side on the settee.

  ‘Poor dear,’ Paula finally said, and I felt like weeping in her arms. ‘It wasn’t very nice, then?’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘It wasn’t very nice, then?’ she said again, and I did my best to return her slight smile.

  ‘They don’t want me back there,’ I told Paula, and went through the details of what had happened.

  ‘Are you sorry?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry they reacted like that,’ I said, but knew what Paula meant. ‘I’m not sorry I’ve done what I’ve done, though. They just don’t understand, but I know that it’s right, moving in with you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But why are people like this, Paula, especially the people in this miserable town? Why are they so nasty, why are they such bigots?’

  ‘Tradition, habit, it’s the way they’ve been brought up and it’s all they know. Don’t hate them, Ginny, just pity them. Be grateful that none of it has rubbed off on you and remember that you’ll be getting away this summer.’

  ‘Yes, I need to get away. But that’ll mean leaving you, though. Can I do that?’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do I do?’

  ‘Well,’ Paula said, ‘if you don’t want to leave me, but you can’t stay in this town, then perhaps I might leave with you. Or maybe you might find a college nearby, close enough to come back each weekend. If you learned to drive you could borrow the car.’

  ‘But would you come with me, if I moved further away?’

  ‘It’s not an impossibility,’ she smiled. ‘I could easily get a job, wherever you went.’ She kissed me, her touch reassuring, then said cheerily, ‘But that’s not going to be for a while yet. Think of all the months we’ve got ahead, together in this flat. Forget about what we’re going to do until nearer the time. Six months from now who knows how we might feel about each other.’

  ‘You think we might feel differently?’

  ‘I think we should never take anything for granted, because that might be the death of us. I’ve always known that you’d move on this summer, but I’ve not let myself fret over what’s going to happen to us. There’s nothing we can do but take the days one at a time, as they come.’ She saw my worried look and laughed, said, ‘Don’t be so fretful! You might have had a miserable day but I love you and I can make it better.’

  And she did, by the time I reached college the next morning I was feeling more optimistic about the future. Dangerously optimistic, it proved. My buoyant mood was soon dipping again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Just as I was telling Gus and Jeff about being disowned by my family -and receiving their congratulations on what they believed to be a considerable stroke of luck- Paula popped her head around the door of the studio to let me know that Ben wanted to see me.

  ‘What’s it about?’ I asked, as I walked along to the office with her.

  Paula shrugged. ‘I know as much as you. He just told me to get my girlfriend along to the office snappy. I think it’s alright, though, he seems to be in a good mood.’

  I passed through Paula’s office and into Ben’s inner sanctum. He was behind his desk and looking as uncomfortable as ever, never quite at ease unless he was in the studio with a brush or pencil in his hand.

  ‘Sit down, Ginny,’ he said, and despite what Paula had told me of his mood he sounded portentously officious. I sat facing him, wondering what was going on. He looked at a letter he held in his hand, waved it at me and said, ‘I’ve received a complaint.’

  ‘About me?’ I asked.

  ‘This is it, the letter, with copies sent to the local rag, the governors of the college and any other narrow-minded pillocks who might care to take notice.’

  ‘Is it about me?’ I asked again.

  ‘Yes, indirectly, or why else would you be sitting there? Indirectly, it’s about you; more particularly it’s about that portrait you put in the exhibition for open day.’

  ‘The portrait of Stephen? And the letter’s from his father?’ I guessed.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well I didn’t put the portrait in the exhibition, did I? You did, against my better judgement,’ I reminded Ben. ‘I had a nasty feeling about that picture all along, I told you not to include it but you wouldn’t listen, so if anyone’s to blame for the upset it’s you.’

  ‘Whoever, whatever, I’m not blaming you so you can shut up.’ He regarded the letter again. ‘This man is complaining about the type of work we encourage here, he calls it permissive, and a few other long words he can’t spell correctly. All in all the letter is a very nasty piece of business.’

  ‘Like I said, you can’t blame me.’

  ‘And like I said, I’m not.’

  ‘You just wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘And you’re not bloody well listening!’ he said, thumping his fist on the desk. ‘I’ve not brought you here to take the blame for anything, you’re not here to be hauled over the coals.’ He smiled, then, disconcertingly. ‘In fact, Ginny, you’re here to be congratulated.’

  I didn’t quite follow. ‘Congratulated? For what?’

  ‘For the notoriety you’re about to achieve,’ Ben said. ‘For the attention you’ve attracted.’

  ‘Attention? Oh yes, there’s that alright,’ I laughed. ‘There’ll certainly be plenty of attention when that letter’s printed in this week’s ‘Chronicle’.’

  ‘But don’t you realise, you little tit, that there’s nothing better for the arts than a bit of controversy? Think of any great artist and at some time he’s been troubled by controversy.’ Ben was beaming with delight, rubbing his hands with g
lee. ‘And you can sod the ‘Sleeper's Hill Chronicle’, too. We’ll let this slip to the dailies. I can just see the headlines: community divided over painting, art school has town in uproar, Sleeper’s Hill shaken awake by controversial portrait. Don’t worry, Ginny, you’ll get all the credit, but this is going to do us all a world of good.’

  ‘I’d rather I didn’t get any credit at all, Ben,’ I said.

  ‘Why not? Get your name in the papers and every art school in the country is going to recognise it as soon as your application for a place drops through their letter box. You’ll be going along for interview with a reputation, you’ll be known. Making yourself known is half the battle when you’re applying for a place on a degree course. You’ve got to make an impression so you’re sure you’re remembered.’

  ‘No, Ben, I’d rather it didn’t happen like that,’ I said. ‘That portrait has caused enough trouble already.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, we’ll all benefit when your photograph’s slapped across the front pages. Now,’ he said, taking me by the chin and turning my head, ‘which is your best side?’

  The man just wouldn’t listen. I told him one last time to forget the idea, then left. In the outer office Paula gave me an anxious look, having heard Ben’s voice raised and wanting to know what it was all about.

  I told her later, after college.

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ she said. ‘With publicity like that you can’t lose.’

  ‘I know he’s right, and I know I can’t lose, but I’d rather not win in the way he’s suggesting. I’d prefer to get onto a degree course because my work is good, not because I’ve had my name in the paper.’

  ‘But your work is good.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘So why not help things along by taking a reputation with you, as well as some competent paintings?’

  ‘They’re more than competent.’

  ‘Yes, of course, so there’ll be no cause for guilt when you’re accepted, you’ll know that you got there on the merit of your work.’

  ‘No. I would have got there because of the publicity,’ I argued obstinately.