The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  Standing on the corner of Egerton Street and Catherine Street she smiled, knowing that behind her, by the river beneath the birds, the two hands of the clock were about to merge into one. A dozen brisk steps to her left took her to the door of the ‘Grapes’ just as it was being unlocked.

  Stepping inside, into the brown leather rooms, her pleasure at being the first customer of the day was quickly dispelled; her name was called out, appended by a familiar ‘darling’.

  Gerald. He was seated in a comfortable manner, wearing his customary voluminous Hawaiian shirt; this morning, though, the swathes of fabric were at rest, not billowing about him in a flurry of activity, as he slouched over a plate of scrambled eggs.

  'What are you doing here?' Virginia asked.

  'Having breakfast, dear. It’s the only place on Sunday mornings.'

  'But so early?'

  'We have an arrangement, the landlord and I.'

  At that moment the landlord came from behind the bar, dressed in a white boiler suit which was so spotless that it made a lie of any suggestion that he might have been working. He asked Gerald if Virginia was with him.

  'With me? Yes, I suppose she is now that she’s here. Give her a drink.'

  'Only she caused a bit of bother last night,' the landlord continued, eyeing Virginia suspiciously.

  'I did?'

  'She did?' said Gerald, and then chuckled. 'Yes, I imagine she might have done. If she did, you’ve got to excuse her. She’s an artist.'

  This was obviously excuse enough for the man in the white boiler suit; he asked Virginia what she would like, went to the bar and returned with the required pint.

  'Thanks,' said Virginia, and then, taking advantage of the sudden friendliness, she asked what she had done to cause bother. She could not even recall having been in the pub.

  'Forget it, I have,' said the landlord with a wave of the hand, and went away to serve customers who were beginning to queue at the bar, leaving her to her confusion.

  'A sweet man,' Gerald said, pushing away his empty plate. He asked Virginia if she would like some breakfast, but before she could accept the offer -if that is what it was- more people came into the bar, extracting darling hellos from him. Each greeting meant another body pinning Virginia to her seat, hemming her in, and to each one she was introduced as ‘Virginia, an artist friend’. She was flattered at first, as always, but soon became suspicious of the status afforded her and wary of the ease with which Gerald tossed it about, along with his dear greetings. She would have left, found some place else to drink; the only thing that kept her in her place, like a moth pinned in a display case, was the fact that so many outstretched legs had her caged and there were so many drinks placed before her.

  They were generous people, Gerald’s friends, and the glasses on the table multiplied; for each one she emptied it seemed that another two full ones arrived, and she tried to down them as quickly as she could, to reduce their number to a respectable level so that she could leave. There were three full pints left, then just two. Soon everything would be alright, she would be able to depart without embarrassment, having supped up and shown to be a boozer rather than the artist Gerald made her out to be.

  She would finish one more and then she would go, she decided, choking down the last two thirds of a pint and chewing the dregs between her teeth. It was difficult, a struggle, but the glass was emptied and she got to her feet.

  'You’re going?' Gerald asked.

  'I’m-'

  Drunk again, and tired, and need to get away from your obnoxious friends.

  'You’re going?' Gerald repeated. 'Now that you’ve drunk your free drinks and everyone else has left me you’re going?'

  She looked around. Gerald’s friends had gone without her noticing, they seemed to have dematerialised, their legs were no longer fencing her in and their chatter no longer making her wince.

  'I’m-' she tried again.

  'Fucking off!' said Gerald in disgust, as Virginia fell back against the quilted brown leather, probably only some cheap synthetic substitute but feeling so comfortable. 'Fucking off! You’ve taken my drinks and now you’re fucking off to your Sunday afternoon mass! Fucking hypocrite! Fucking Catholic!”

  Hypocrite? Virginia could take that. Catholic? Never!

  'My conversion was a painful one,' she told Gerald. 'Very painful, with the Sisters of Notre Dame beating the faith out of me. Christians?' She scoffed at the word, for the Sisters had been anything but Christian. 'They’d hit you with whatever came to hand, beat the shit out of you.'

  The memories came back. Sister Marie Gleeson drawing blood from the palm of one shy twelve year old just because she could not remember that ‘amatis’ came after ‘amamus’; Sister Bernadette Mulligan asking how an alkali could be identified and thrashing the girl who said ‘suck it and see’; Virginia herself being battered by a sadist named O’Toole when she accidentally bounced a hockey ball off the greenhouse -no one believed that it had been a miraculous stroke of the stick- and through the stained glass window of the chapel.

  Catholic? Virginia? No longer. After that last transgression she had been branded a heretic at sixteen, bruised and pronounced a pagan.

  'It sounds like a grand place,' said Gerald. 'Boarding, was it?'

  'Boarded, more like, where the local kids had put out the windows. It was bus ride from home, that’s all, and anyone who failed their eleven plus hated the place. So did we, even though we’d passed. So did the headmistress, because she’d been sent there rather than to one of their older places. Too new, see, no tradition. She saw herself as a missionary and she didn’t like the idea, treated us worse than dark savages. No, there was nothing going for the place, not from anyone’s point of view. So call me a hypocrite if you like, but never a Catholic.'

  Gerald apologised. 'Sorry, Virginia, I didn’t mean to offend you. Let me make amends and cook you Sunday dinner.'

  'Sounds nice,' she said, for the drink had given her an appetite.

  They got to their feet, clumsily because they were both drunk, and shuffled from the bar. Gerald only lived two streets away, midway between the ‘Grapes’ and Virginia’s flat, in a place much like hers but rather more comfortable. His flat had furniture, for one thing, and Virginia sank back contentedly into a rocking swivelling armchair, then immediately felt sick. She struggled to her feet again, noting that each time she did so it became a little more difficult. She went to the bathroom.

  'Yes, have a bath if you like,' Gerald called through from the kitchen. 'Dinner won’t be ready for a while yet.'

  Good idea, Virginia thought. She stripped off her clothes, lay in the bath and turned on the taps.

  Chapter Ten

  Even feathery grey clouds edged with the weakest of whites were too painful to consider, laughing and luminous, skipping across the sky like mischievous children banging doors. They were too much for Virginia so she kept her tired eyes fixed on the ground, on the cracks in the uneven pavement which seemed to be guiding her along. She had no need to look around for landmarks, or search for a taxi; she thought she knew where she was going.

  She had come to on a settee again, hungover, a little short on the details of what had happened. Gerald, dressed in the flowered black kimono he used for a dressing gown, had 'tut-tutted' and offered her a fried breakfast, then 'tut-tutted' again when she had run to the bathroom to throw up. When this was done all she could accept from him was toast and coffee.

  She had to get a grip of herself, she knew; once she was over this present minor relapse she really had to start taking better care of herself.

  The cracks at her feet led her along, though one gritty black furrow looked much like another they did not deceive her but took her faithfully back to the worn steps she recognised. She would forego the rope ladder for once, the thorns around its base would be as vengeful as the sky was mocking. She took out her key, inserted it into the lock at the third attempt and pushed her way into the hall.

  'If that's you then you've g
ot it coming!' a voice cried, as she climbed the stairs between the second and the third floors.

  'Shut your face!' she shouted back, and walked along the corridor to her room. Someone had drawn a moustache and glasses on Thomas Aquinas in her absence, the sight of which caused her to spin around and scream, 'You fucking Philistine!'

  'What's all the noise about?' Goomer asked, coming to his door. 'What are you screaming about now?'

  'Look!' she said, pointing to the defaced picture.

  'Someone's scribbled on it. So? I don't know why you've got the guy pinned up there in the first place.'

  'He's a reminder to me that even philosophers can become saints,' Virginia said, wetting a finger and smearing the whiskers across the face of the holy man.

  'Silly cow.' Goomer went back into his flat, then reappeared almost immediately. 'Oh, I forgot, there was someone looking for you yesterday evening.'

  'Who?'

  'Dunno.'

  'What did he look like, then?'

  'Dunno that, either.'

  'Explain yourself, Goomer.'

  Goomer yawned and stretched, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. 'I didn't open the door. He was just a voice on the other side, didn't say what he wanted, just asked where you were. I said I didn't know.'

  'I suppose you were in bed, copulating with your friend Dean.'

  'I don't think men can copulate with each other, Virginia.'

  'No, I don't suppose they can,' she said, walking back down the stairs. She could not think why she had gone to her room in the first place, there was precious little left there to interest her. On the way down she banged on the door where she guessed today's protagonist lived, then hurried outdoors. The voices which assailed her, on her way into and out of the house, were sometimes male and sometimes female, sometimes old and sometimes not so old, and she did not want to risk tangling with anyone younger than an octogenarian spinster. Give her someone on crutches and she might cope, but confronted by an agile arthritic she might have to fight dirty.

  On the street she passed by brawling young boys on their way to school. Was it still only that early? There was no watch on her wrist but she could feel the hairs there itching their way into the five minutes to nine position. What a time to be up and about! She might as well have been a schoolteacher for all the rest that she got!

  She turned left, skirted all the way around the cathedral to avoid the brats on their way to school, approached town through the Chinese district. Burnt brown birds, ducks or geese or whatever, hung in the windows of restaurants she passed, and she had to avert her gaze to hold onto any contents there might be in her stomach. Ahead a horde of jabbering Chinamen tumbled out of one doorway, delirious after a night of booze and Mah Jong, and she just had to doff the cap she never wore in admiration of their stamina; they were only little buggers but they certainly knew how to keep going.

  Her route took her onto Seel Street and as she passed the 'Marlborough' she saw Peter, collecting the morning delivery of milk from the step.

  'There was someone looking for you last night,' Peter told her.

  'Who?'

  'No idea.'

  'Don't tell me, he was just a disembodied voice on the other side of the door.'

  'Huh?'

  'It doesn't matter,' said Virginia, and Peter went indoors with the milk.

  Virginia went to the newsagents next door, bought a newspaper and a packet of Polo mints.

  Very well, she thought, as she sucked on a mint; someone was looking for her. That probably meant debts, and she racked her mind to think who it might be. She still owed Coral money, certainly, but Coral would sit tight and wait, she would not send people knocking at the flat. Who else, then? The bank manager? No, of course not.

  Too much thought brought on a pain in the head, a knot behind the eyes which reminded her of her hangover. She shrugged, as best she could with the dull throb which hurt her brain, and spat out the mint. Let the problem sort itself out, she decided; she had her health to worry about and that was enough. A cup of coffee in the Bluecoat Gallery started to settle her stomach, a subsequent glass of cold milk attacked the sickness and soaked up the poisons, rose back up the throat to swill out the tubes and then reluctantly subsided. She burped as she left the bistro and the fresh air shivered at the stench which left her mouth. She was winning the battle. Another hour and opening time would coincide with a revitalised constitution. This time she spent in walking to the Pier Head, in challenging the heavy swell of the river to make her nauseous. She laughed in triumph when the contents of her stomach failed to rise above chest height, and laughed again, more loudly, when she spat out another Polo mint -marvellous things, Polo mints, bursting like mortar shells when they struck the pavement- and saw it hit a seagull on its dirty orange beak. An old woman who had no more imagination than to throw stale bread at the creatures looked away nervously. Virginia smiled her 'you've-got-nothing-to-worry-about-from-me' smile and turned inland, away from the river. The sickness of the early morning was creeping away in defeat.

  In the 'Corkscrew' Virginia was not surprised when Coral told her that someone had been looking for her, though perhaps a little disappointed to have it confirmed that this person was not Coral herself. After all, better the devil you know.

  'Mind you, I'm not surprised there are people after you,' said Coral, the corners of her mouth signalling all kinds of smiles and smirks.

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'Oh, nothing,' she said. Then, strangely, she asked, 'How's Josh?'

  'Don't you know? He works for you, after all.'

  Coral shrugged, sniggered like a young girl and walked the length of the bar, wiping away imaginary stains. Virginia knew what was wrong, it was that Coral begrudged her her success with Josh. He was beautiful, after all, there was no denying it, and poor Coral was just too bitter. Or perhaps it was that Coral had never actually noticed her barman's beauty until she imagined him with Virginia, in her mind's eye seen the two of them sitting side by side and hand in hand exchanging kisses. She was probably thinking that she would have to find someone else to make up her tatty foursomes, would have to find someone else to suffer the lisping undersized circus creatures who were her excuses for men.

  She came back down the bar, laughed for no obvious reason, then went off again to serve a customer; she repeated the same pattern bravely, choking back her bitterness with the thick false laughter.

  Like a heroine, Virginia thought.

  'You don't mind me being involved with Josh, do you?' she asked, when the lunchtime rush slackened off and they had time to talk.

  'Why should I?' said Coral, with a surprised smile.

  'Well, he does work for you.'

  'So?'

  'So he's been behind that bar with you, five nights a week for God knows how long. Aren't you kicking yourself, now, for not trying anything on with him? Aren't you just a little bit envious, seeing me come along and sweep him off his feet?'

  The question was a serious one, with no hint of conceit, but al it brought from Coral was a further stream of laughter, the breezy buffeting kind which seemed to have stricken her so badly of late. Virginia could not understand it, it seemed more hysterical than heroic.

  'Kicking myself? Me? Oh no, not me!' Coral sniffed back her tears, scrubbed her fingers across her face and squeezed the stubby knuckles into her eyes. 'Oh Virginia, you really are precious!'

  As much an object of ridicule as she felt, her every word scoffed at, Virginia did not refuse the offer. She waited while Coral, still chuckling, checked the till, nodded with approval as she saw twenty pounds pocketed for immediate expenses, then went with her through the busy streets where shoppers hurried about, clutching purses as though they had not the slightest intention of opening them.

  'Aren't people tragic?' Coral said, her derision now switching from Virginia to the passing throng. 'Look at them and you can see they think they're so smart, but really they're all such easy touches, so stupid and gullible.'

&nb
sp; Virginia hurried along at her side, occasionally stepping behind to let the larger woman's bulk cut a path through the more thickly crowded parts of town. Abreast or astern, she noticed an urgency of the people around her, the wise concentration in their eyes.

  'They seem to know what they're about,' she thought.

  'Don't you believe it. Not one of them, is as clever as they pretend. These fools and their money will soon be parted, you can get any amount out of them.'

  'When you see them, when they're drinking, perhaps,' said Virginia, thinking just how perfectly the description suited Coral herself, who leant money so freely.

  'You're just in one of your intolerant moods,' she suggested.

  Coral stopped sharply in the middle of Church Street and the crowds made confused eddies around her. 'You don't believe me?' she said. 'You don't believe that people can be made to cough up anything?'

  'No, quite frankly I don't,' said Virginia.

  'Right.' Coral held out a hand. 'Give me a fiver and I'll show you.'

  'You're on,' said Virginia, rising to the challenge. She fumbled in her breast pocket and produced a five pound note. 'There you are.'

  'No, there you are,' said Coral, folding the money and tucking it into her purse. 'I've proved my point and that's five pounds off what you owe me.'