The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  Chapter Three

  I had grown fond of Griff and enjoyed listening to him. For all that he claimed to be the sanest member of our household -with the exception of me, of course; he would never take upon himself any talent or attribute greater than mine- for all that he made such a pretence at equilibrium, there was so much that disturbed him, so many notions which upset his stability and caused him to doubt whether his faculties were true. In the attic flat where we gathered that evening he was doing his best to explain a few.

  It was Teacher’s reaction to the sensory deprivation centre, as reported with such sombre gravity by Rose that same night, which had turned our thoughts to the question of reality, to what can be known with certainty and what can only be surmised.

  ‘Think of the studio,’ Griff was saying. ‘Picture it. Concrete and light, steel and glass, vanishing lines and tumbling surfaces. All illusion. Then think of the things in the studio, the objects we create, the drawings and the prints and the paintings. They’re all illusions. Right?’

  He scanned the assembled faces until someone responded.

  ‘Right,’ McCready finally agreed.

  Beside him on the settee Rose nodded her head gravely, her hands clasped as if in prayer.

  ‘So are they of any merit, these illusions we create?’

  ‘Mine are,’ Ceri predictably boasted.

  ‘But how can we think of good when we haven’t even considered what is?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Illusion,’ Griff stressed. ‘Illusion. See!’ He pointed to McCready, whose mind had started to wander and who had taken my hand in his to kiss it. ‘A kiss or a smile, especially when you’re longing for it, is no more than a deception afterwards, when it’s reconsidered. It’s reality is doubted -did it ever happen?- and its motives questioned. It’s illusion, deceit.’

  ‘Are you deceiving me?’ McCready demanded of me, feigning panic.

  ‘No. I swear,’ I promised, crossing my heart.

  He kissed my hand again, slavering his tongue between my fingers, sucking on the polished tips. ‘Just as long as I know.’

  I smiled, then swapped the smile for a look of rapt attention as Griff persevered.

  ‘Imagine a table in the studio,’ he said. ‘It’s brown and solid, a Formica worktop mounted on four wooden legs, pierced by screws and stuck with glue.’ He allows us all a moment to picture it before continuing. ‘Now its colour, its size, its weight, the fact that it's combustible at a certain temperature or difficult to move, these are its qualities. Tap the table with your knuckle and its hardness can be felt, that quality is there to be appreciated…’

  I saw Ceri absent-mindedly rap his knuckles against the arm of his chair, then blush with embarrassment when he caught my eye, just as Thomas must have done when his fingers sank into the resurrected wounds of Christ.

  ‘…hit the table again, harder, and you’ll feel pain. The question to be answered is whether the pain is in the table, another of its qualities, or whether it’s in you.’

  Ceri glowered, his embarrassment making him angry. ‘The pain is in me, pillock.’

  ‘Because when you walk away from the table you can still feel it?’

  ‘Right!’

  ‘But then,’ McCready came in, ‘what about the hardness? Was that really in the table or was it, like the pain, in you?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Griff agreed.

  From deep within Ceri’s barrel chest there came a vague uncertain grumbling which might have been described by any of the qualities which Griff had mentioned -it was voluminous, it was heavy, it might well have been painful- and an argument began. This was not what Griff had wanted; he had wanted a discussion.

  ‘What the fuck does it matter?’ asked Ceri, his Pontypool accent becoming more pronounced.

  ‘But you’ve got to see Griff's point,’ McCready insisted. ‘How can we paint an object when we don’t know exactly what it is, or even if it is? Illusions replacing illusions? That’s not on, Ceri.’

  ‘Bullshit! I’m an artist! What I see, what I paint, that’s what is!’ Ceri pounded his fist against the arm of his chair as he expounded once more his single reason for being. ‘And if I’m not certain about a thing then I touch it!’

  Or thump it, as he did again. As he had done so often before.

  Rose sneered, her lips curling like thin crusts of bread; they were made to sneer, her entire frame was as brutal as a hat pin, a single exclamation mark of derision. Her hands parted her hair from her face -she wore no veil tonight, it was in the wash- she tossed it back over her shoulder and tilted her head so that the sneer could be seen more easily. The room was filled with the musty stink of Lily of the Valley exuding from her flowing hair.

  As entertained as I was by the debate I felt the need to get away from it for a while, suggested coffee and went through to the kitchen. Griff followed, perhaps because he was disappointed with the way the discussion is going, perhaps for other reasons.

  ‘Help?’ he said, a little ambiguously, and I wondered if he was offering it or asking for it.

  The kitchen was little more than an alcove partitioned off from the living room. A heavy velvet curtain covered the space where a door had once been and as it fell behind Griff the sounds from the room became muffled, the arguments indistinct and ragged about the edges. Because the kitchen was so small it seemed well stocked, herbs and spices line the shelves, the turmeric and coriander McCready used in the curries which his father taught him how to make, cinnamon and nutmeg for the cakes baked to his mother’s recipes. Stepping around the pyramid of pans which was stacked on the floor, Griff arched on tiptoe to squeeze past me; still it was necessary for him to place his hands on my shoulders, though, to brush his body against mine, and he gave me what I took to be an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Very forward of you,’ I smiled, comfortable with his friendship.

  He returned the smile, briefly, then sighed. ‘I thought it was going to be a pleasant evening.’

  ‘But it is. Isn’t it?’

  ‘What? With arguments starting already? I sometimes think it was a mistake for all of us to cram into the same house.’

  I considered for a moment, was aware, as I did so, of his gaze fixed on me. This was the artist in him, I knew, an aesthetic appreciation; he often spoke of painting my portrait -‘McCready’ll never do it’, he was always telling me. ‘McCready can’t paint’- but I had never found the time, or perhaps the courage, to sit for him.

  ‘No, Griff, I don’t think it was a mistake,’ I finally decided. ‘I think it’s nice to have friends about the place. And it took too long for us to get the house to ourselves to want to change things now.’

  The first two full terms of college it had taken. Rose and I shared originally, but as people vacated the house so we brought in friends and fellow students, first Ceri, then Griff, and finally McCready. Now, midway through the third term of our first year, we had what we wanted, a house of familiar faces, a colony of aspiring artists.

  ‘It’s not all that nice when you want to have a bit of privacy, though,’ Griff lamented.

  ‘You can’t get any?’

  ‘With Ceri farting and belching and getting roaring drunk? You’ve got to be joking! It's like sharing with a flatulent pig. A boozy one at that.’

  ‘Poor Griff,’ I sympathised, and returned his kiss, my lips pecking at his cheek.

  ‘Nice perfume,’ he commented. He was always complementing me, which I enjoyed; it compensated for those times when McCready seemed to take me for granted.

  Mugs were lined up by the sink -two chipped, I noticed; I would have to make some more in college- a spoonful of coffee in each; a wisp of steam was curling from the kettle but the water hadn’t yet boiled.

  ‘Is that enough?’ I wondered, flicking a fingernail against the rim of each cup as I named the people being catered for. ‘You, me, Mac, Rose, Ceri. Is there anyone else?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Griff said. ‘Any more and it would read
like a wedding list.’

  I laughed, asked if this was a proposal in disguise, turned from him to pour boiling water onto the coffee.

  ‘Take those through, will you?’ I said to him, pointing to two mugs.

  He took them, paused a moment to juggle them both into the same hand before moving towards the curtain; the murmur which came from the other side, though indistinct, was heavily accented, a threatening Celtic monotone.

  ‘I think we might need something stronger than coffee if Ceri carries on,’ he remarked.

  I shook my head, stifling a yawn as I did so. ‘No, not a good idea. I think we’ve all had enough for one night.’

  And some had had more than others, this was obvious. Ceri’s cheeks were shining like a scarlet lake when Griff placed a cup of coffee at his feet; or perhaps a rose madder.

  ‘This is Earlsdon, not Montparnasse!’ he was saying. ‘The West Midlands, not Paris!’

  As I followed through from the kitchen and distributed the rest of the coffee Griff shrugged in answer to my questioning glance; he, too, had lost track of the conversation, had no idea what Ceri was talking about. We took up the places we had recently occupied, me on the floor at McCready’s feet, Griff in an armchair opposite. By McCready’s side Rose sat as if mummified, silently transfixed by the Welshman’s scowl.

  ‘Well? Isn’t it?’ Ceri demanded, first of Rose and then of the rest of us. ‘Am I right?’

  Heads were turned and nods exchanged, acknowledging the accuracy of his geography but not too sure about the relevance of the statement.

  ‘Exactly! The Midlands! It’s work, industry, making cars for God knows how many years!’

  ‘Not quite so much work as there used to be,’ said Rose sleepily. ‘Industry is dead.’

  I agreed with her, excusing her emphasis on death, said, ‘They’re not making as many cars as they used to, either.’

  ‘It’s the Midlands and it’s real!’ Ceri insisted, and flashed a warning glance at Griff, the one he blamed for starting the argument. ‘You just stuff the metaphysics and admit I’m right!’

  ‘It’s the real world my father would like me to prepare for,’ Griff conceded, but this wasn’t enough for Ceri; the very tone in which it was said suggested that the term needed qualifying. So the argument continued, not exactly one-sided, since there were two voices at odds with each other, but not representative of the opinions which there had to be when it was remembered that there were five of us present in all. No further opinions were forthcoming, however, perhaps because of the lateness of the hour and the wine we had drunk. Beside McCready on the settee Rose had relaxed and was sprawled this way and that, her long legs splayed apart, one arm thrown out along the back of the settee and the other crossed over her breast, like an amputee crucified. McCready himself had leant forward, as if to escape her embrace, and was resting his chin on my head. It was a weary somnolent scene disturbed only by the exchanges between Ceri and Griff.

  ‘Balls!’ said Ceri, in answer to one particular statement I had missed, and I took McCready’s hand in mine to trace a finger across his palm, drawing two cubes.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked in a whisper.

  ‘Balls to Braque,’ I told him, and we both burst into fits of laughter.

  ‘Go on! Laugh!’ Ceri complained. ‘You can sit there so serious and poker-faced, listening to Griff’s crackpot philosophies, but when I ask for a little common sense that’s all you can do! Laugh!’ He waited a moment, in case we wanted to apologise or explain ourselves; then, when it became apparent that he was to be afforded neither courtesy, he turned on me. ‘You haven’t had much to say for yourself tonight,’ he observed.

  Other than the comment about Braque’s balls.

  ‘I made the coffee,’ I smiled good naturedly, as if this excused me from taking part in the discussion.

  ‘But you’re supposed to have some common sense.’

  ‘Is that because I’m a woman?’ I asked, guessing at one of Ceri’s particular prejudices, for while the men of his world could be eccentric at any age it seemed that it was only women in their dotage who were permitted to be anything other than level headed. I was damned if I would wait until I was carrier-bagged and wrinkle-stockinged before I was allowed my moments of impulse.

  The impulse I then followed drove me to take McCready's face in my hands and give him a long deep kiss. When I returned my smile to Ceri it was even more delighted than before.

  ‘See?’ I challenged him. ‘The woman as artist can be romantic, too.’

  The fine distinction which was in my use of the word escaped Ceri, though, who could only think of ‘romantic’ in terms of sex.

  ‘Who the fuck brought romance into the argument?’ he wanted to know.

  *

  ‘Griff’s in love with you. You know that, don’t you?’

  A fine thing for McCready to say, when the two of us had only just finished our nightly bout of copulation -once a night, as if to a prescription, to help him sleep- and I wondered why he felt the need to mention it. Was he contemplating some kinky three-in-a-bed session?

  Well not in that bed, not in that room. The bedroom was mine and I had put a great deal of effort into making it so; I had painted over the flowered wallpaper with white emulsion; sanded the furniture of its chipped gloss to leave the lighter cleaner wood beneath, ripped up the cracked linoleum and stained the floorboards; I had even taken a saw to the legs of the bed, which had been too much like a vaulting horse in its original state, a monument to Victorian values.

  The room and the bed were mine, and McCready’s, in the low slung hammock of sheets I held him close, said, ‘You’re the only one I want.’

  I guess this was what he wanted to hear, it was nonsense to think anything else, but still he continued: ‘The way he looks at you sometimes-’

  ‘I can’t say that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘-almost undressing you with his eyes.’

  ‘That’s the artist in him. Close observation.’

  ‘That's the lecher in him. Lust.’

  McCready seemed to derive almost as much pleasure from the conversation as he had from our lovemaking and I suspected that his own fertile mind had excited him as much as my ministrations had. I drew him closer still, held his head to my breast which was how he best liked to sleep.

  ‘Poor Griff,’ he sighed. And: ‘Lucky me.’

  *

  Griff woke to motes of dust etching intricate spirals in the air, rose groggily, perching on the edge of the bed to look around and fix objects with an effort, staring hard to stop his world shifting and quivering. The room was in a mess, not a pleasant sight once it settled, clothes littering the floor, tracing the routes he and Ceri had taken to their beds, underpants and socks and shirts with their arms outstretched like limp crucifixions. More clothes piled on top of the bed in the far corner of the room, a formidable heap, still and sombre like a burial mound, would hide the form of Ceri.

  Griff hurled a pillow across the room at the softly breathing heap of clothes.

  ‘Is that you?’ Ceri asked in a low grumble, no part of him seen and his words barely heard.

  ‘It might be,’ Griff pondered. ‘We don’t know for sure, do we? Nothing is ever certain.’

  ‘It’s you alright. Piss off and let me sleep.’

  Sweaty flatulent sounds followed, then a series of belches, and Griff moved before the bedclothes could shift and let the evils smells beneath seep out, gathered up his trousers and sweater and went through to the next room.

  This, too, was in a state of disarray, drawings and notebooks strewn across the table in the centre of the room; other sketches, sheets of notes and half realised ideas were tacked to the walls, with comments and elaborations pencilled onto the wallpaper around them. Griff stepped carefully between the debris which covered the floor and gathered the dust, went up and down a shallow staircase of books to the gas ring on the far side of the room. He struck a damp match against a sodden matchbox, once, twice, then
jumped back cursing, a hand to his naked groin as the match disintegrated and sent dangerous phosphorescent flares shooting in every direction. He pulled on his trousers and sweater before trying again, finally lit the gas and settled the kettle on top of it. It had been his intention to make a cup of coffee, black, but now he found that there was none; the jars which leant precariously from the shelf above the sink, though labelled Nescafe, were all full of powdered pigments. Tea, then, with a slice of lemon, that would refresh him. He took a teabag from the box, dropped it into the cleanest cup he could find, then curled his fingers around the lemon which sat in the middle of the breadboard. When he picked up the lemon, however, the breadboard came with it.

  ‘What the-?’

  He shook the lemon but the board stayed fast, turned it this way and that and saw that the two had been super-glued together. He threw the lemon to the floor, noting that the board still clung obstinately to it, then turned to that portion of the wall which was devoted to work in progress. There, low down near the floor, next to Ceri’s ink-blot improvisations, he saw ‘Still Life with Lemon’, a not too accurate pencil sketch of what should have been his hangover cure.

  ‘Fuck it! I’m going into college!’ he announced, and stamped ill-humouredly down the resonant wooden staircase, slamming the front door behind him.

  It was some minutes later that he sees the first ‘silly tree’.

  He had walked down the High Street, so neat and ordered in the early morning that it looked like an illustration from a children's book or the backdrop to a pantomime. Shops of varied architectural styles glowed rich red and burnt brown in the sun and though the sky was cold, a faded denim colour, the buildings made the most of the light, amplifying what warmth there was and reflecting it to calm the mood and clear the senses.

  After walking no more than a hundred yards he had left the High Street behind, had passed the shops and crossed the roundabout by the library; sweeping avenues of semi-detached houses now took him downhill, towards the park which sloped gently to the railway and the city beyond. Here he took a diagonal line across, from corner to corner, aiming for the narrow footbridge which crossed the railway line, following a path worn in the grass where none had been intended, a short cut which many people used. A little to his right but still some distance away was a squat brick building, quite small, with no windows, only one door and no clue as to its purpose. He had always assumed that it was some kind of shed or store to house the tools which the gardeners used around the park, but he could never be certain, he had never seen the door open. Now, as he approached the structure, he saw that vandals had been at work, that someone had sprayed on one wall, in green aerosol paint, the words ‘a silly tree’.