The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  At the flat, while I opened the wine we bought on the way, McCready was despatched to the bedroom to set the records turning. Music carried through to the living room, where it seemed that the world and his brother had congregated, to the extension speakers which he had connected to an old record deck to fake a quadrophonic sound.

  He knelt on the floor and watched the turntable spin, was still there when I came looking for him.

  ‘McCready?’ I said.

  ‘You know, you really have to look hard to remind yourself that there’s only one groove,’ he said, ‘to remind yourself that the stylus will track along until it reaches the end.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. It’s important, don’t you see? A quick glance or an unpractised eye and you could easily think that there’s more than one, that the grooves are so many that they’re impossible to count. It would be a lot easier if the groove was extended in a straight line, more easily understood if it could be seen this way, rather than going around and around in ever decreasing circles.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘That’s me,’ he smiled up at me, ‘going around in circles, never knowing if the circles are diminishing or if there’s an end in sight.’

  'Then forget the old vinyl and let's switch to CDs,” I said.

  He returned my uncertain smile, rose and walked with me, back into the living room. I thought this was the extent of his mood, the limit of his deliberations, but they had obviously led him further than I could have suspected, for he scrutinised the people who babbled and laughed and drank, looking hard at them as if he could make no sense of the scene.

  Then he shouted, above the music and the general hubbub, ‘So these are your friends, are they? Christ! What a bunch of shits!’

  The outburst was deserving of a punch in the mouth, and perhaps this was what he was hoping for, thinking that pain might make everything more tangible. As it was, no one made a move towards him, he walked across to the window and gazed out, his back to everyone. I looked from face to face, an apology in my eyes, and people started to file from the room; I went to the door with them, wishing each one a sorry goodnight.

  ‘Act like that and the poor girl will have no friends at all,’ Griff said, popping his head back around the door.

  McCready picked up the nearest thing to hand, a bottle of washing-up liquid, and hurled it. Luckily the bottle was plastic, it didn’t break, but the force of the impact sent greasy green smears across the wall.

  The room was then empty, McCready sat before the fire, I squatted beside him and asked what was wrong; I wanted to understand, rather than argue.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It sometimes seems like I’m asking so many questions and not getting any answers.’

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘That’s just it, I don’t even know what the fucking questions are.’

  Nothing was ever simple for McCready. I ventured the suggestion that he might be trying too hard to be a genius.

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ he asked, not even giving any consideration to whether or not my diagnosis might be accurate.

  ‘Well I’d rather be normal and happy than a genius and miserable,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and I’d rather be a genius and miserable than normal and miserable.’

  *

  It was fifteen minutes later that there was a tentative tap on Griff's door. He opened it to find me standing there. It must have been obvious to him that I’d been crying.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked, as Griff led me into the room and sat me on the settee beside him.

  ‘McCready? He must be a little drunker than we thought.’

  ‘No, it’s more than that.’

  ‘What’s his excuse?’

  ‘He says he’s generally pissed off, says he’s asking so many questions and not getting any answers.’

  ‘What questions?’

  I laughed and sniffed back the tears, a tissue to my face. ‘That’s just it, he says he doesn’t even know what the questions are. How’s he going to be able to come up with any answers if he doesn’t even know what the questions are?’

  ‘Existential anguish?’ said Griff, without sympathy.

  ‘I told him he was trying too hard to be a genius, racking his brains for ideas. I said I’d rather be happy and normal than a genius and miserable.’

  ‘And what did he answer to that?’

  ‘That he’d rather be a genius and miserable than normal and miserable.’ I was laughing still, even as the tears flowed, and it annoyed Griff to sense that there might be any fondness in my mood. ‘Is that how he is with me?’ I asked. ‘Miserable? Is that all I can do for him, make him miserable?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Griff reassured me. ‘He’s just in one of his awkward moods. Ignore him. How about some coffee?’ he asked, getting to his feet, but I shook my head. ‘Come on, I promise you it’s alright,’ he said. ‘I washed all the cups myself this morning.’

  I laughed a little more brightly at this, agreed to a cup, held back my tears and dried my eyes. As Griff set the kettle on the gas I asked, ‘Is Ceri not back yet?’

  ‘No, and it doesn’t look as though he will be now. If he’s boozing he’ll probably kip on the nearest couch he can find.’ Griff turned, a bottle of milk in his hand. ‘White, with sugar?’

  ‘Make it black,’ I said. ‘I think I’m feeling as tipsy as McCready’s pretending to be.’

  Griff returned to the settee with the coffees, sat beside me again. ‘Have all the tears gone now?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so.’ I was a little embarrassed by my behaviour, said, ‘I’m sorry, Griff. It’s the first time he’s ever made me react like that.’

  ‘That’s alright. Just make sure you don’t let him do it to you again. You don’t deserve it.’

  ‘If only I knew what to do, how to help,’ I said, sipping at the hot black coffee.

  ‘The best thing you can do for the moment is keep out of his way. In fact I think you’d be better sleeping down here tonight.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, there’s no need for that. I’ll just finish my coffee and go.’

  ‘But you’re tired, I can see it in your eyes, and McCready is pissed off or in a mood or whatever. Do you really want to go back upstairs and risk another one of his tantrums?’

  ‘He wouldn’t hurt me.’

  ‘I should hope not. You can do without his moods, though.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Of course you can. It’ll be better all round if you let him sleep it off, whatever it is that’s plaguing him. It’ll teach him a lesson. It’s obvious Ceri won’t be back tonight so you can use the bedroom. Have my bed, I wouldn’t ask you to use his cess-pit, and I promise you the sheets are clean.’

  My eyes were still moist, they made my smile sparkle. ‘If you’re sure, if it’s no bother.’

  ‘No bother at all. Go on, off to bed with you. If there’s anything you need I’ll be here on the settee.’

  Waiting.

  Chapter Five

  Griff cared for me, or would do if given the opportunity; he would certainly claim to feel more for me than McCready appeared to do. The outburst of the night before, petulance in the guise of creative anguish, only confirmed what Griff had always believed, that McCready was selfish and unfeeling. The sad thing would be that I continued to suffer this. Already the tears had gone, I had woken bright and cheerful and gone directly upstairs to make my peace. The anger was left to Griff, then, a bitter confusion of it which left him too unsettled for any work.

  The debilitating creative fatigue which fell upon him drove him all about college, from room to room and nook to cranny, and his last resort in this search for a haven of peace was the library. Immediately on entering he could sense the calm, a serenity which might allow him to think or not think, whichever way the mood took him. He stepped lightly across the carpeted floor, weaving between the enamelled steel bookshelves from which the names leap out at him: Sar
tre and Strawson, Gombrich and Greenberg, Marcuse and McLuhan. Fuck them! In the mood he was in it had to be Harold Robbins or nothing for Griff, there was just too much of the aesthetics and the abstract considerations about, the rows of books pulsated with erudite questions and unfathomable answers and he wanted to be rid of them for a while.

  At one table, almost hidden behind a mound of books, Edith Billington, one of the art history tutors, beckoned to him. He ignored her, determined not to be distracted, and walks on.

  ‘An astonishing insight into Artaud’s madness,’ he heard her say as he climbed the stairs to the upper gallery, her voice soft like a prayer, quivering with respect for the dearly departed.

  Silly cow! Why study the madness of the past when it was there all around them?

  Study cubicles lined one wall of the gallery and most of these were occupied; pens scratched paper, heads were thoughtfully cupped in cramped hands and the sight of it all sent Griff reeling. He crossed to the opposite wall, this one all glass, and was confronted by a panoramic view of the city. Opening a window he lit a cigarette and blew smoke out into the fresh air so as not to upset the librarian. He looked down at the ground, three floors below.

  ‘That’s no way out, Griff,’ said a gruff voice.

  He turned around and saw Teacher, the man’s bulk bearing down heavily on one of the easy chairs, a glossy art journal like a crumpled comic in his lap. His face was a deep red, though the room was cool, the usual unruly shock of fiery red hair flared about his head.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of jumping,’ Griff told him. ‘Just taking another look at the world.’

  ‘Well don’t look too hard, mon ami. This world of ours doesn’t suffer close scrutiny.’

  Aiming at the winking lights of a distant aircraft Griff flicked his cigarette away; of course it never reached, he watched it go tumbling and spiralling to the ground and then sat opposite Teacher, low in the seat, his hands deep in his pockets.

  ‘It’s a bastard of a thing at times, isn’t it?’ he said, though it was not so much the world that had him troubled as some of the people in it.

  ‘Ah! Sounds like you’re in just the right mood to join me in a drink,’ said Teacher, taking his hip flask from his pocket and passing it across the low table which separated them.

  Griff felt the leather sides of the flask between his fingers, wondered if this was the way an art student was expected to behave, systematically evacuating the senses as all good bohemians do. No, he decided, he will have a drink because he wanted to, not because it was expected of him, took a mouthful of whisky and placed the flask back on the table, as solid and erect as a challenge.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?’ he said, after a lengthy silence.

  Teacher shook his head. ‘You’re probably bored or pissed off or confused. It happens all the time.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So how should I respond?’

  ‘Cry if you want to, it’s allowed. ‘The young man who has not wept is a savage, the old man who will not laugh is a fool’. That’s Santayana, if I remember correctly.’ Teacher chuckled. ‘And here we sit, you young and weeping, me old and laughing, neither of us savage or foolish, so things can’t be too bad with the pair of us. Have another drink.’

  Griff took a second sip, then asked, ‘Have you seen McCready’s letters on the front lawn?’

  ‘That I have!’ said Teacher, breaking into a laughter which was loud enough to be out of place in the surroundings. ‘A good idea!’

  ‘Christ, Teach, not you as well,’ said Griff, disappointed. He was becoming heartily sick of McCready’s ideas, his sense of values or aesthetics or whatever upset by the frequent favourable responses they received.

  ‘They’re good ideas,’ the Principal repeated, then added, ‘but that’s all they are. Art is about something more than ideas, remember; it’s also about craft and skill and emotion. You produce a genuine work of art and it’ll last. McCready’s ideas will be forgotten by next term.’

  As Griff was assimilating this, searching for some consolation in Teacher’s words, the library doors swing open and a tall thin figure entered, balding head, corduroy jacket, his high-pitched voice echoing shrilly as he asked the librarian if the principal was around.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Teacher moaned. ‘Walter.’

  He tried to shrink, to become a part of the chair, but his bulk was too easily seen, the librarian had already pointed him out. Walter’s long stride quickly took him up the stairs and brought him face to face with Teacher.

  ‘Not now,’ Teacher told him. ‘Go away, Walter.’

  ‘It’s Barney-’ Walter began.

  ‘Funny, I could have sworn it was Walter,’ Teacher smiled at Griff.

  ‘-I hear he’s due back from his leave of absence.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I just can’t work with him anymore.’

  ‘Then resign.’

  ‘Something has to be done about him.’

  ‘Ask him to resign?’

  ‘For God’s sake can’t you be serious for once?’

  Before Teacher could caution Walter over the irreverent outburst his name was called out again -‘Mr Teacher! Mr Teacher!’- and Ron came running up the stairs, using his broom quite adroitly to speed him along.

  ‘Oh merde,’ Teacher sighed.

  ‘Mr Teacher! Mr Teacher!’

  ‘Yes, Ron, what is it?’ he asked, handing his flask across to the cleaner.

  ‘It’s about all that stuff in the studio,’ Ron gurgled, becoming accustomed to the invitation to drink whenever he confronted the Principal.

  ‘The paintings? Yes, I have to admit that some of them aren’t up to much.’

  Ron moved his broom back and forth on the floor before him with one hand, raised the flask to his mouth again with the other. ‘Well, it’s not so much the paintings, Mr Teacher, as all those cubicles and things, especially that big chicken coop of McCready’s. I can’t manage. They’ve got to go.’

  ‘The students all need a place to work in,’ Teacher explained. ‘They need a bit of privacy and seclusion.’

  ‘But it makes it difficult for me,’ Ron complained. ‘To sweep up, like.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Ron, but I’m sure you’ll be able to cope.’

  ‘Well I can’t!’ Ron insisted, banging his broom down hard. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do for you, then,’ Teacher said, preferring to placate the man rather than argue the point.

  ‘And another thing,’ said Ron, drinking again and then setting the flask down on the table.

  ‘Shite! What now?’

  ‘That chicken’s still making an awful mess.’

  ‘Walter. Will you see to it?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘See to it!’ Teacher insisted, and the senior lecturer stamped off unhappily, the cleaner moving unsteadily at his side.

  When they had gone Teacher picked up his flask from the table, then shakes it.

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said. ‘That greedy little cochon has guzzled the lot again. He’s turning into a dipsomaniac, that man.’

  Teacher rose from his seat, crossed the floor and spoke into a telephone extension which hung on the wall; he was smiling when he returned but Griff didn’t ask why, just looked into the beaming face and felt the glowing grin reflected in his own. Within minutes more footsteps were heard on the stairs, the sound of delicately slim heels this time, and the head of Teacher’s secretary bobbed into view, swivelling around on its elegant neck to search him out. Moving towards them, on dancer’s legs through drunken dreams, she placed a plastic carrier bag on the table.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said disapprovingly, ‘and I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m the boss, aren’t I?’ said Teacher, taking a fresh bottle of whisky from the bag. ‘I ought to know what I’m doing.’

  The young woman sniffed and tossed her head, her hair
flowing fragrantly behind her as she did so. Griff also sniffed, taking in her perfume as she walked away.

  ‘Nice,’ he commented.

  ‘No she’s not,’ Teacher told him. ‘She’s a snooty young bitch and she’ll have to go. She should never have come to an institution like this in the first place. She doesn’t fit in.’

  ‘The same might be said for a lot of us.’

  They drank from the new bottle of whisky.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Teacher, ‘I’ve been so out of touch I’d almost forgotten that Walter works here. I take it he still does?’

  ‘He ventures out of his room once every fortnight or so,’ said Griff, ‘tells us what’s wrong with our work, finds a girl from the foundation course to pose for him and disappears again.’

  ‘He’s still got a thing about girls with no tits?’

  Griff nodded. ‘Flat as dinner plates, his models are.’

  Looking down at the lower floor they both catch sight of a girl seated directly below them. She was a fashion student with film star looks, busty, far from tit-less, and from their vantage point they could see into the open neck of her blouse almost down to her navel as, with an exhausted sigh, she closed the books she had been studying, pushed them into the centre of the table and sat back, eyes closed and head resting against the wall behind her.

  It looks almost as if she is pouting up at her two unseen admirers.

  ‘Not Walter’s type at all,’ Griff commented.

  ‘Christ, no,’ Teacher drooled. ‘You could dive in there and get lost for a week.’

  He took the bottle from Griff and had a drink. Elbows resting on the low wall before him, he looked down at the girl with an old fashioned lust and an adolescent mischief. Grinning at Griff, he poured some whisky into the cap of the bottle and held it at arm’s length; his hand moved a little, backwards and forwards, from side to side, and then slowly tilted the cap. A thin stream of honey coloured liquid hit the table, moved across the girl’s work, over her lap and down her cleavage, all before she could even open her work-weary eyes. Teacher and Griff ducked their heads out of sight as she screamed, sending furniture scattering all about her; her angry stride could be heard across the room despite the soft thickness of the carpet and then she could be seen at the librarian’s desk gesticulating wildly.