The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  ‘Small is beautiful,’ he grinned, sheepishly excusing his cowardice.

  Rose, being no more than an infrequent visitor to the painting studio and having no permanent post of her own there, persuaded McCready to make room for her in the chicken-less chicken hutch. It was an unlikely accommodation, for the two of them had never really got on together despite having rooms in the same house; McCready could only suffer with patience Rose’s morbid extravagances and it required a comparable effort for her to bear witness to his ideas. It was only a working arrangement, though, not cohabitation or a trial marriage, and I guessed that each could become so distracted by their work as to forget the presence of the other.

  It was a surprise to me, then, on going to the studio to collect McCready, to find such animated conversation taking place between them. They were working, yes -Rose doing a delicate drawing of a rosary, McCready of an egg- but not in the total silence that I had expected. The conversation I happened upon was of God once again.

  ‘You see, Rose, in defining God as the perfect being you are insisting that he exists, for how can a thing be perfect if it has no existence? And not just existence in the mind, mark you. Since it’s greater to exist as both idea and reality, rather than just as idea alone, then God must exist both in the mind and as a real entity.’

  ‘Yes, I do see,’ said Rose, with an enthusiasm which almost -but not quite- brought a flush to her pale powdered cheeks.

  It was unlike either of them to be so animated by the topic, McCready by its religion or Rose by its philosophy, but I was just relieved that McCready hadn’t lapsed into one of his desperate moods, abstracted and tormented, following his argument with Barney. I coughed to announce my presence and they broke off their discussion, turned to me.

  ‘Interesting,’ I remarked, looking at Rose’s drawing; she had made the figure on the crucifix looks a little like McCready.

  ‘He posed for me,’ Rose said, explaining the likeness.

  ‘And without his shirt?’ I smiled at him, knowing how shy he usually was about his weak chest and thin arms.

  He grumbled something incoherent.

  ‘Anyway, are you coming?’ I asked him.

  He nodded, started to pack away his things, as did Rose. She threw on a black knitted poncho, wrapping it about her like a cloak, and the three of us left the studio together.

  ‘You didn’t have that dress on this morning,’ McCready finally noticed, looking at me as we stood waiting for the lift.

  ‘Very observant,’ I congratulated him. ‘No, I didn’t. I've been home to change.’

  ‘Why? Are we going somewhere special?’

  ‘You know we are. It’s Ceri's birthday bash tonight.’

  Rose had not forgotten that it was the Welshman’s birthday, she wore a low party dress beneath the poncho, yet even this, with its flash of creamy breast, had escaped McCready’s attention.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed how quiet it’s been in the studio today?’ she said to him.

  ‘The party boy will have been boozing all afternoon, then?’ I supposed.

  ‘Probably,’ said McCready. ‘You needn’t have bothered dressing up for him. He won’t notice.’

  I punched him hard in the ribs. ‘I didn’t dress up for him! I dressed up for you!’

  ‘It’s a lovely dress,’ said Rose.

  Second hand silk from Oxfam, like her own, though of a more cheerful colour and not quite so revealing.

  ‘Do we have to go?’ McCready asked.

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘No good will come of it, you know,’ he said, as he was persuaded into the lift. ‘You mark my words, anything can happen when Ceri gets drunk, and it’s sure to be bad. He’ll look at the beer and it’ll curdle, he'll look at us and we’ll end up at each other’s throats. Ceri’s a jinx on everything and everyone when he gets pissed.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Rose told him, taking his left arm as I took his right. ‘We’ll have a great time.’

  Or as great a time as Rose would permit herself.

  The three of us left the college and at McCready’s suggestion agreed to have a couple of drinks elsewhere before going on to the party. He reasoned that if we were drunk enough ourselves by the time we got there then we might not notice how bad it was.

  ‘You should have reminded me about the party,’ McCready said to me. ‘I’d’ve put a suit on, so you wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with me.’

  This was when we’re in the ‘Golden Cross’, a place just behind the cathedral where young men in smart clothes were wooing their women.

  ‘I’d never be embarrassed to be seen with you,’ I reassured him. ‘Anyway, you don’t have a suit. Do you?’

  ‘Somewhere. It’s probably back home, waiting for the next death in the family.’

  I noticed Rose give him an appraising glance, probably picturing him in mourning, smiled and dismissed the matter as we were joined by others who were also delaying their arrival at Ceri’s celebration. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for someone else to take the lead, all regarding the evening with trepidation.

  *

  If the party was a celebration then it was of the pagan kind which was suited to a Celt, almost Bacchanalian in mood. It filled the upper rooms of the ‘Campbell’ and as its centrepiece Ceri was standing on a table as we entered, stripping off his clothes while people who claimed to be his friends poured beer over him. Garments flew through the air like drunken butterflies, flapping madly across the room and then falling to the floor to be trampled underfoot. It was only when he is down to his sodden Y-fronts that he drank down the pint which was offered him.

  A little unsteadily he climbed down from the table and stood before us, his body sticky with beer; he asked what we’d like to drink, then slapped a hand to his side to look for his wallet.

  ‘Where the fuck’s it gone?’ he wondered, finding nothing on his naked person which could be used as legitimate currency.

  ‘Let me get them,’ McCready offered, and bought drinks.

  ‘Chairs,’ said Ceri, as he took the glass, his slurred speech distorting the toast, and staggered off in search of his clothes.

  Before McCready can even think of saying ‘I told you so’ I went off to search out other friends, Griff joined Ceri at the bar, and he was left to wander the rooms and see what there was to be seen.

  Out of a professed fondness for Ceri the place was filled with both staff and students. Barney was slumped in a chair, too drunk to speak of doubts or deities; Walter was auditioning models and testing their breasts for tactile qualities, wanting them so boyish that he could feel the ribs beneath; others were to be seen in varying degrees of animation or inebriation. McCready lost himself in the crowd, it was some while before he found me again, and when he did it was not to discover me with any mutual friends but with a young man who is a stranger to us both. A university student, I thought. Someone from the polytechnic, McCready guessed, probably a rugger-playing engineer by the look of him, short neck and broad shoulders. What was most noticeable, though, at least to McCready, was that this stranger’s face was far too close to mine.

  McCready thrust his own face like a wedge to prise us apart, said, ‘Hey! You!’

  ‘Yes?’ smiled the stranger, polite yet eager, as though he expected a conversation.

  ‘Piss off!’

  Surprisingly, the stranger did, went away without even offering a punch or an argument.

  Quite a boost for McCready’s ego, this was. ‘Did you see that?’ he said to me, chest swelling. ‘Went off meek as a lamb.’

  ‘Your size had him worried,’ I smiled. ‘He probably didn’t realise you’re standing on a chair.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ McCready said, before my sarcasm penetrated his drunkenness.

  ‘No, I know,’ I said. ‘And thank you for getting rid of him, he was a starting to be a nuisance,’ I lied.

  ‘That’s okay. Just don’t talk to any more strangers while I go off for a pee.’

  �
��Yes dear. Whatever you think best, dear.’

  ‘I should’ve twatted the bloke,’ McCready told Griff, as they stood side by side in the gents.

  ‘No,’ Griff said. ‘That’s the wrong attitude. This is Ceri’s birthday, you don’t want to go causing any bother.’

  ‘No, suppose not,’ McCready agreed, accepting that this was the sensible way, but he failed to keep Griff’s advice in mind, for outside the pub at midnight he tried to pick a fight with another who he thought was being a little too friendly towards me. There was much pushing and shoving, a cocktail of voices, threats and advice and incoherent screeches, but this all subsided when a cruising police car pulled up. Apologies and excuses were then exchanged, cautions and promises offered, hands were shaken and vows made to let bygones be bygones in order to preserve Ceri’s party spirit. Reasonable enough, the police accepted, and drove away, but by this time the reason for the party spirit had gone missing.

  ‘Where’s Ceri?’ someone asked.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Over that car.’

  At the end of the road, just visible in the amber glow of the street lights, Ceri could be seen running over the tops of parked cars. A group of us chased after him, McCready and Griff reaching him first and pulling him to the ground. When he smiled up at them his boozy breath scorched their faces.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ McCready demanded, giving him a shake. ‘There’s a police car on the prowl, you know.’

  ‘Fuck em,’ said Ceri. ‘Come on, let’s see if you wimps are up to it.’

  ‘Up to what?’

  ‘Gerrover a car in three strides. Hop, skip'n'jump.'’

  No one else was quite that drunk, not even McCready, so Ceri shrugged himself free and was off again, galloping like a shire horse in the general direction of home. Once on the bonnet, once on the roof, once on the boot he went, or took them in reverse order depending on which way the car was facing. His head bobbed in and out of sight between the parked vehicles a time or two, and then there was a scream as he disappeared completely from view; because the scream came from Ceri, though, no one took it seriously, and the rest of us just sauntered along at the same steady pace. When we reached Ceri he was lying on the ground at the rear of a mustard yellow Volkswagen.

  He was moaning pitifully. ‘Fucking Beetle. No fucking boot.’

  ‘Serves you right,’ said Griff, taking his arm and lifting him to his feet.

  Ceri screamed again and collapsed to the floor.

  ‘Come on, Ceri,’ said McCready, going to help Griff. ‘That police car will be back soon so stop pissing about.’

  ‘Leg!’ Ceri yelled. ‘Leglegleg!’

  Rose thought he might actually be hurt, Griff believed he was faking, and each time anyone tries to move him he screamed all the louder.

  I knelt down and looked at his leg. ‘He just might be hurt,’ I said. ‘Is this a bit sticking out?’

  Bone breaking through the fabric of his jeans? The others crouched around to get a closer look, someone gingerly prodded Ceri’s thigh until he cursed us all away.

  ‘For fuck’s sake get me an ambulance!’ he screamed.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to do, just to be on the safe side,’ Griff suggested, and there followed a general discussion about whether or not we should.

  Rose, sobering up more quickly than the rest of us, went off in search of a telephone, found the discussion still in progress when she returned. Ceri was moaning, now, rather than screaming, and Griff, sickened by the sight of the damaged leg, was throwing up in the gutter.

  She took off her poncho and draped it over Ceri.

  ‘I’ve not snuffed it yet,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying to keep you warm, arse hole!’

  ‘Then come a bit closer, give me your body heat,’ he drooled, then grimaced as another wave of pain washed over him.

  Rose did move closer, though, knelt at his side, but only to brush the hair back from his face and stroke his brow.

  ‘Compassionate, isn’t she?’ said McCready, with a strangely wistful expression. ‘Erotic, too, in a way, hovering at his side like an angel of death.’

  ‘Sober up, McCready,’ I told him.

  ‘Those dark glossy lips, the deep shadows around her eyes, you could imagine her kissing him and sucking out his soul.’

  I ignored him, stood at the pavement’s edge, looking out for the ambulance. Finally it arrived and Ceri was manoeuvred onto a stretcher.

  ‘Right, who’s coming with him?’ asked one of the paramedics, when Ceri had been loaded into the vehicle, but no one answers. ‘Well someone needs to come along.’

  ‘Griff and McCready,’ Rose volunteered. ‘You’re his closest friends.’

  ‘Friends? He doesn’t have any,’ said Griff.

  ‘Don’t be so nasty! Go with him!’

  ‘Go on,’ I urged McCready, and reluctantly they went.

  *

  For the first hour Ceri lay in the casualty department, being reassured by the two of them; two hours after his arrival he was still there, mumbling incoherently while Griff dozed on a trolley and McCready searched the corridors for a coffee machine; three hours pass and there was still little sign of action other than a petite blonde nurse who gave a shimmy of the hips whenever she walked past them.

  They were both cursing when they finally arrived home, McCready angrily kicking open the door as soon as Griff turned the key in the lock. Rose came out of her room on hearing them.

  ‘What kept you so long?’

  ‘The bastard was so drunk they couldn’t do anything with him,’ McCready told her. ‘They’re still waiting for him to sober up.’

  Rose laughed, raised the cup of coffee she held. ‘Either of you want one?’

  ‘Not for me, I’m getting straight to bed,’ said McCready.

  ‘Ah, well you ought to know that Virginia’s been sick, then,’ Rose told him, as he started to climb the stairs to the attic. ‘Must have been too much drink, she threw up in the bathroom. Right after she’d popped her pill, too.’ There was a wicked delight in her tone, the suggestion of a laugh waiting to escape as she said, ‘No nookie for you tonight, McCready.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he spat back, stamping on up the stairs.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Rose tut-tutted.

  As McCready strode into the bedroom I told him I’d heard what he said.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘What you said to Rose. Here am I, sick as a pig, and all you can think about is your nightly fuck.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said, beginning to undress. ‘I didn’t think what I was saying.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘It just came out.’

  ‘You selfish unfeeling bastard.’

  ‘Oh sod it! Fucking well sod it!’ McCready cursed, kicking his feet beneath the blankets to get into bed.

  One blanket remained stubbornly wrapped around his foot and in his temper he kicked out more wildly, at the bed, at the floor, at thin air and at the bedside table on which stood my old oil lamp. The lamp hit the bare floorboards, inches to the right of the rug, and its dimpled glass sphere shattered into fragments, in the myriad reflections I could see the two of us on our first night together, regarding the lamp as if it was something more than functional, something more than decorative. As if it had some special significance for me.

  I’d told McCready that it had been a gift from a friend, a friend who was gone. Well so was that person’s memory now.

  Gone

  *

  Of course I forgave McCready. I always forgave McCready, it was the one habit which typified our relationship, but on this particular occasion he didn’t even notice. There was a meekness about his mood the following morning, a sadness about mine which was rather swamped by a sickly hangover, but his spirits were quickly lifted when he arrives in college to find the letter waiting for him.

  In the common room, by the pigeon holes, he read throu
gh the letter twice, read it again in the studio, making a point of doing so in full view of Griff.

  The smile on his face was a worrying thing.

  ‘Good news?’ guessed Griff.

  ‘Sort of. I’m having a show,’ McCready answered, and named a well-known, well-respected London gallery.

  ‘A show? You mean like an exhibition?’ Griff gave a derisory laugh, dismissing the notion as too ridiculous. ‘Come off it, McCready. You don’t have anything to show. You don’t have any paintings.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So! What're you going to exhibit? Not your twelve foot Hamlet, copied out word for bloody word and scene for boring bloody scene?’

  Executed in pen and ink of canvas, excused by McCready as an exercise in narrative art.

  'Your silly trees?

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘The walls.’

  ‘The gallery walls? Suffering saints tonight!’ Griff shouted out, to the studio and its occupants. ‘The berk’s going to have an exhibition of an empty gallery!’

  The sarcastic words of congratulation murmured by those present were gratefully accepted by McCready, who grinned smugly and said that the gallery would not be empty but would be littered -his word- with the work of Hockney or Hamilton or whoever was showing at the time; while that person was exhibiting their customarily banal stuff, he, McCready, would be exhibiting the vacant spaces between.

  Griff thought it was crazy, he would never get away with it, no self-respecting gallery or artist would ever permit it.

  ‘But they already have,’ said McCready, making the expensive notepaper crackle as he waved the letter beneath his friend’s nose. ‘Everything is arranged. There’ll be posters up stating that while this other chap, whoever he is, is exhibiting his paintings I will be showing the parts of the wall that are left visible.’

  This idea, even more than any previous one, grievously offends Griff’s sense of values or aesthetics or whatever it was he held dear; it was nothing more than a con trick, he complained, it had nothing whatsoever to do with art.