The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  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, splas
hing 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.

  'Look, I’ve got identification,' she told them, reaching for her pocket.

  'JUST-DON’T-MOVE!' warned the WPC, moving threateningly closer.

  Virginia froze and the discussion continued around her. After some minutes her buttocks began to ache, seated, as she was, on the hard metallic floor of the van. She shifted about and no one jumped on her, so she risked speaking up again.

  'I can prove who I am. I’ve done nothing wrong.'

  Nothing.

  'I can prove where I was not five minutes ago,' she told them, trying to remember the name of the last pub she had visited.

  No reaction.

  'What do you want with me? What am I doing here?' she asked, supplication creeping into her voice.

  Silence.

  She groaned. 'Shades of Franz Kafka.'

  'You just watch what you’re saying!' the young policewoman cautioned.

  'Easy, Wilkie, take it easy,' said a sergeant.

  Luckily for Virginia the woman named Wilkie took the advice of her older colleague.

  'But just tell me why I’m sat on the floor without any shoes,' Virginia pleaded.

  Wilkie seemed only too happy to. 'Because people in your position panic and start to kick out. We don’t want a boot in the face from a little bitch like you.'

  Virginia considered the explanation, even managed to sympathise somewhat with the policeman’s unhappy lot, but this did not explain why she had been picked up in the first place. She had tried to be reasonable with them and got nowhere, so she decided to use a little honest, down-to-earth, I-know-my-rights aggression.

  She steeled herself, then spoke. 'Now listen, friend-'

  'We’re none of us your friend!' one of them screamed at her, and she apologised, so losing the initiative.

  She did, however, manage to whisper that they could not keep her in that van without a reason, that they either had to take her down to the station and charge her, or let her go.

  Obviously impressed with her grasp of matters legal, they nodded to each other; it was either in admiration, or perhaps fear, worry that they had picked up a student of law, a bright young thing who could have them out of that Transit van and back on the beat before they could say ‘Robert Peel’.

  The one with the broadest grin -Miss Wilkie, of course- leant forward. 'Well how about if we take you down to the station and charge you with being drunk and disorderly? Will that keep you happy?'

  Virginia had visions of the Statue of Liberty weeping sadly, of Justice slumped forward with broken sword and teetering scales. She crept back into a humble silence, not knowing what else to do.

  Ten minutes passed. The occasional glances which were cast in her direction seemed to challenge her to move, to ask for an excuse to stamp on her. Then the rear door of the van opened and a small, frightened man peered in.

  Frightened? He should have been in Virginia’s position.

  'No, officer, that’s not her,' said the man, after a moment’s scrutiny.

  Wilkie seemed disappointed. 'But she’s just like you described; tall, slim, brown suede jacket.'

  'Sorry, but it’s not her,' the man repeated, shuffling nervously from foot to foot, gratefully hurrying off when the sergeant dismissed him.

  'You can go as well, Wilkie,' the sergeant added.

  WPC Wilkie frowned. 'What about her?' she asked, nodding to Virginia.

  'We’ll see Miss- what’s your name, by the way?'

  'Virginia.'

  Wilkie laughed. 'Virgin-ya. La-de-bloody-da!'

  'Alright, Wilkie, back to your vehicle and on patrol,' said the sergeant; then, to Virginia, 'We’ll see you home.'

  Upset by Virginia’s smile of innocence, Wilkie slammed the van door, no doubt to go off in s
earch of some other scapegoat.

  Without actually mentioning her address -she was now sober enough to think herself in full command of the situation- Virginia directed the driver towards the cathedral. The van bumped over the kerb and across pedestrian shopping areas, dodging the benches and the concrete flower tubs. Confident, now that she had been exonerated, she applauded the reckless driving and asked what it was that she had been accused of.

  'Suspected, love, you were only suspected,' the sergeant said, and explained that there had been a break-in at a shop in the precinct. The description of the culprit who had kicked in the shop window had been so vague, of course, that it had matched that of Virginia.

  'Jesus Christ! So that’s what all the business with the glass was about? You thought I’d kicked in some shop window?'

  'Right.'

  'You were going to mess up my good name all over a few splinters of glass? This whole fucking city’s covered with broken glass, for God’s sake!'

  Virginia was becoming righteous and indignant again, and it did not go down too well; she was reminded that the threat about drunk and disorderly still held.

  'Just forget it, it was a mistake,' she was advised, and there were no smiles on any of the faces around her, so she was silent, seething and anxious to be home.

  'You can drop me here,' she said, when they were in the shadow of the cathedral, and the van slowed to a halt.

  'Goodnight, take care,' someone said, as she climbed out of the van and walked away.

  She made no reply until she reached an alley some twenty yards away. Then she turned.

  'Bastards! When are you going to handcuff the flowers, too?' she shouted, then disappeared into the night.

  *

  'I’ll sue the fuckers! I’ll have them for harassment and defamation of character!'

  Goomer applauded. 'Very smart, Virginia, and once they’ve got away with their harassment and defamation, which they most certainly will, then they’ll have your name, your address, even the colour of your knickers. You’ll be chased all over the city, down to Cheapside every other night.'