The Art School Dance

by Maria Blanca Alonso

  I moved my hand to his neck, my thumb touching his ear lobe and my fingers burying themselves in the curls of his hair. I wanted him to feel that he was being treated as a pet might be, picked up by the scruff of the neck, and this he accepted, he made no struggle but let the pressure of my hand bring our mouths together. I worked my tongue like a reptile’s between his lips, probing, running across his teeth and surprising him with its impatience. As I pulled him down on top of me my dressing gown obligingly parted, as if from habit, and for some reason I thought of Moses and the Red Sea, as if my Catholic past was wagging its finger even in this most heated of moments. I wished my conscience back into its dusty sacristy.

  With my knee I forced Griff’s legs apart, with my hands I pushed his dressing gown aside, at the same time wondering if Rose would be lying beneath McCready, as still and cold as a cadaver. I pulled the dressing gown from Griff so that I could run my fingers across his bare back, whispering softly, encouragingly.

  Or would Rose be insisting that McCready play the corpse while she screwed her body onto his, her veil pulled back from her face to show her frigid smile?

  ‘No!’ I told Griff sharply.

  He looked at me questioningly, limp and confused, but then became animated once again when I turned him and fell on top of him.

  ‘Be still!’ I snapped, as he started to squirm, and I wondered what it might be like for McCready making love to a corpse.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Hi there honey!’

  I was in a dream, there were things preying on my mind, but a greeting from Bobby was always too effusive to ignore, open and welcoming, as embracing as a cord about the neck to choke out a response.

  I said hello, pausing on the stairs.

  ‘You missed a doozer of a party,’ she told me. ‘You should have stayed over with McCready.’

  ‘I couldn’t, I had too much work to do. McCready behaved himself?’ I asked, though not really wanting to know.

  I believed I already knew enough.

  ‘He got a bit smashed, you know how it is,’ Bobby said. ‘He didn’t upset anyone though, if that’s what you mean. The only ones he argued with are the ones who can take it. And give it back.’

  Bobby grinned, as if she admired McCready’s moody discord, flashed me a broad ‘cheerio’ smile and continued on her way down the stairs. I suspected an insinuation that I myself might be one of those who couldn’t take McCready’s arguments, then wondered why this should occur to me. What did Bobby know about our quarrels, after all? And wasn’t I always the one who did the forgiving, when we did quarrel?

  I went to the common room, to have a coffee and to brood.

  If reality is activity, as one of McCready’s favourite philosophers proposed, then I could understand the likes of Teacher wanting an escape from it. Was this where peace was to be found, in some extreme which was divorced from reality, in non-reality or surreality? If so then McCready would find no peace, I was fast coming to see that, not because of any surfeit of activity on his part but because of his constant searching for some final definition of reality. It was an impossible task, and my worry for McCready was that he might end up like Barney, so driven by logic and reason that he became a shell of a person, the wandering Jew that Griff had spoken of.

  And then my thoughts turned to Griff, wondering how he was, what he was feeling.

  *

  Bobby breezed happily into the art history lounge and sat herself down on one of the comfortably upholstered sofas. From her own station on the opposite side of the room Edith Billington glared at her.

  ‘What are you doing here, Bobby?’

  ‘I work here, remember.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘If I choose to,’ Bobby smiled. She was a part-time member of staff, she worked only two days a week and decided for herself which these would be, would often attend another day unpaid for the sheer hell of annoying people.

  Edith pouted, lips like a pinch of clay puckering around a sour taste. ‘You’re not here just to cause trouble?’ she hoped

  ‘As if I would.’ Bobby settled more comfortably in her seat. ‘Who’ve you got lined up for us this morning, Edith?’

  It was Griff, who opened the door at that moment, took one step into the room and then stopped, his disappointment obvious on seeing the two women facing him. He had expected only Edith, an amenable and inoffensive person, easy enough to handle, cursed his luck to see that Bobby had chosen that day of all days to make an appearance in college.

  ‘Morning Griff, sit down,’ said both women simultaneously, and each patted the seat beside her. Tactfully he chose a neutral corner, equidistant from both.

  ‘So what have you got for us?’ asked Edith with an expectant smile.

  ‘Baudelaire,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh good,’ Edith purrs.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Bobby growls.

  This was the way it would be, the two women at odds with each other while Griff was caught in the middle, like a scrap to be fought over by two bitches. Edith and Bobby were of approximately the same age, but there any similarity ended. Edith’s English manner was plain and polite, very reserved, while Bobby’s American way was so direct that she bordered on the crude and the coarse. Edith sat forward eagerly in her seat, knees together and hands clasped over the notebook which she held like a missal in her lap; Bobby slouched back with her legs apart, stretching the fabric of her jeans in an obscene manner, her fingers scratching idly at her chest as she yawned.

  ‘Charles Baudelaire,’ Griff began, reading aloud from his essay, ‘eighteen twenty-one to sixty-seven, published his first poems in eighteen fifty-seven under the title “Fleurs de Mal”.’

  ‘We know who he was, for fuck’s sake, so get on with it!’ Bobby interrupted, her mid Atlantic accent clear and distinct despite the cigarette she now had clamped between her perfectly capped teeth.

  ‘Bobby! Please!’ said Edith.

  ‘Don’t use that tone with me!’ Bobby retaliated. ‘You sound like you’re reprimanding a pet who’s pissed on the carpet!’

  Edith blushed and told Griff to continue.

  ‘What is Good, asks Baudelaire, a vast and terrible question which seizes the critic by the throat-’

  ‘Oh shit! Someone should have seized him by the throat!’

  ‘-from the very first step in the very first chapter-’

  ‘Seized him by the throat and squeezed the fucking life out of him before he could come up with this drivel! This is vomit-inducing!’ Bobby complained, and went through the motions of throwing up on the carpet.

  When Griff looked up from his essay, reasonable rather than rattled, and asked if she wanted to listen or not, she begged him to please continue, a sarcastic smile stretching her lips and baring her gums.

  ‘Yes, do go on,’ Edith urged him.

  He continued, asking, as Baudelaire himself might have done, ‘What is the good of criticism? What is good criticism?’ His voice lowered a fraction, became less dramatic. ‘Baudelaire believed that the best criticism is that which is amusing and poetic, not that which is cold and mathematical-’

  ‘Bullshit!’ said Bobby.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Griff snapped, his patience suddenly gone.

  Bobby laughed in his face. ‘Fuck me? Boy, you wouldn’t know how to! You probably still think your prick’s for pissing through!’

  ‘Get stuffed!’

  ‘Oh yes? And who’ll do that?’ she sneered, her chest now like two offensive weapons as she leant towards him.

  Upset and embarrassed by the sudden outbursts, Edith tried to restore calm. ‘Please, I rather think…’

  ‘Shut up fuck u, Edith,’ said Bobby, and reaching to the console by her side she switched on the tape deck so that screams from Marat/Sade drowned out her colleagues protests.

  Griff rose from his seat and walked to the door.

  ‘Hey!’ said Bobby. ‘Where’d you think you’re going?’

  ‘I’m not taking this,’ he said. ‘I’m goi
ng to see Teacher.’

  ‘So am I,’ Bobby decided.

  ‘Me too,’ Edith agreed.

  Griff was the fittest and the fleetest, he bounded down the stairs and into the Principal’s office, not waiting to be announced by his secretary.

  ‘Jesus lad, you gave me a fright!’ said Teacher, spilling whisky down the front of his shirt.

  ‘I refuse to face those two fucking women again!’ Griff said, slapping the desk with his fist which still held his essay. ‘At least not both at the same time!’

  ‘Which two women?’

  ‘Bobby and Edith. Who else would I mean?’

  ‘They’re coming here?’ Teacher asked, looking nervously towards the door as he heard voices along the corridor.

  ‘You’ve got to do something, Teach.’

  ‘Bloody right I have,’ Teacher agreed, recapping his bottle. ‘I’m getting out.’

  In a flash he was out of the window, bottle in hand, scampering around to the rear of the building.

  ‘Come back!’ Griff called, but to no avail. He turned and walked back through the secretary’s office as Bobby burst in, Edith close on her heels, both barging past him and ignoring him, wanting only Teacher. ‘Bloody women,’ he grumbled.

  *

  Griff wonders if it was madness which seemed to affect so many people in the college or if it was simply an over-abundance of enthusiasm, a dangerously bright spark of creativity. Over lunch in the canteen, after relating what happened in his tutorial, he was surprised to hear McCready voice a similar doubt.

  ‘It’s got you worried too?’ Griff said, believing that it really was time to be concerned if he and McCready were starting to think alike.

  ‘Yes,’ McCready nodded. ‘It sometimes seems that there’s no sense to anything, and I’m not just talking about Bobby’s tantrums or Teacher’s craziness. There are times when I can’t seem to make sense of anyone, not you or Virginia or even a stranger I pass in the street.’

  ‘There’s nothing much wrong with Virginia,’ Griff believed. ‘You’re surely not comparing her to Bobby, are you?’

  ‘No, not really,’ McCready conceded. ‘I mean, look at her, there’s really no comparison between the two.’

  McCready was gazing over Griff’s shoulder as he spoke, and Griff turned, perhaps hoping to see me, instead dismayed to see Bobby approaching their table, beaming broadly.

  ‘Christ! Can’t she leave me alone for one minute?’

  ‘Hi sweeties!’ Bobby said, smiling her toothy grin as she sat with them and arranged plates of food before her.

  ‘Hi Bobby,’ Griff sighed.

  ‘Hey, that’s a bit half-hearted isn’t it? You’re not still sore at me over what happened in the tutorial, are you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Griff said, and apologised for the argument.

  ‘Aw, think nothing of it,’ Bobby said, with a dismissive gesture of one hand while the other forked food into her mouth. ‘You shouldn’t have come out with all that crap about poetic criticism, though. It stank.’

  ‘He was waxing lyrical, was he?’ McCready smiled.

  ‘You know what Edith’s like,’ Griff said to him, excusing himself. ‘She’s fond of the safe sentimental stuff. It’s what keeps her happy.’

  ‘Oh fuck her!’ says Bobby, and started to laugh. ‘Yes, screw her and her prim opinions. She needs to get laid once in a while, that’s what she needs. Now can you imagine that?’ she said, spluttering over a mouthful of food and raising a hand to her mouth to catch the debris. ‘Imagine someone giving dear old Edith a poke!’

  Griff was none too happy with the way the conversation was going, along its single grubby track. He got to his feet, said, ‘You coming, McCready?’

  McCready nodded and stood.

  ‘What’s the matter, boys? My talk getting a little too close to the bone, huh?’

  ‘Bye Bobby,’ they both said politely, and had almost got to the end of the canteen before she thought of another funny one.

  ‘Hey Griff!’ she called out, and he was foolish enough to pause and turn, many eyes upon him. ‘What do you do when your bone sticks out? Hang your towel on it to dry?’

  *

  Poor Griff. Bobby sensed embarrassment rather than insult in his reaction, and if her accusation has struck a little too close to home then she almost regretted it. The sad little virgin, she thought, the shy and sensitive artist. Probably still hadn’t got his end away after a whole year away from home. She grinned as she walked along the corridor, then paused as she heard music coming from the art history lounge. She approached the room, listened, tried the door but found it locked.

  ‘It’s George Gershwin!’ she recognised, and rapped on the door. ‘Let me in!’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘Barney? Is that you? It’s me, Bobby! Let me in!’

  ‘Piss off Bobby!’

  ‘Open up, you rat!. You’ve got a bottle in there!’

  ‘No I haven’t!’

  ‘Open up!’ she insisted.

  The door was unlocked and Bobby darted in with a pink-gummed grin, her head swivelling about to scan the room and then her hands rummaging around to search for the bottle she was sure existed. She tried the cupboards, the bookshelves, the console; beneath the seats. Found nothing.

  ‘It sounded like a party in here,’ she said. ‘I was sure you had some booze.’

  ‘It’s a private party,’ Barney told her. ‘No booze. Just me and the music.’

  Bobby was disappointed that there was no drink, but happy enough with the music. She sat down and listened, remembered, thought of home, memories tugging her lower down in her seat and disarming her more than any amount of drink could.

  ‘Strange, the way music affects us,’ she said, sprawling across the sofa, closer to Barney. ‘More so than anything visual.’

  Barney nodded, reading her observation as vindication of his belief that the traditional visual arts were now so inefficient as to be redundant.

  ‘Bobby?’

  ‘Yes?’‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure, honey. Fire away.’

  ‘Do you ever, er, get the feeling that there’s something inadequate about sex?’

  Her eyes had been closed, as she listened to the music, but now she opened them, swivelled her head around to look at him.

  ‘You mustn’t be doing it right, Barney,’ she said with a smile. ‘Or not often enough.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the technique,’ Barney boasted, not seeing her smile broaden. ‘We’re getting around too it often enough, too, now that Julia’s got over the birth of the baby.’

  ‘What’s bugging you then?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘You might as well ask what got Kant in a knot, or what disturbed Descartes. It just seems that after it’s over there’s something missing.’

  ‘Like a spoonful of sperm, maybe?’

  Barney frowned at her. ‘Do you want to be serious about this? I’d like to be.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Bobby said, her brow creasing in earnest concentration. ‘Carry on.’

  For a moment Barney seemed uncertain, as though reluctant to continue with the subject, but slowly, hesitantly, he explained. There was something lacking, he felt, after the brief flash of orgasm there was always the feeling of being cheated, as though the orgasm had been nothing more than a taste of some brighter illumination which could be better achieved by other means.

  ‘When it’s over I always get the urge to go away and do something more important,’ was how he sums it up.

  Bobby was silent, not smiling, not saying anything at all.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted.

  She shook her head. ‘I fuck because I want to fuck. When I do, I know what’s involved and I know what I’m going to get out of it. It’s a pastime, Barney, an entertainment and nothing more. I’m not going to bed with someone looking for a blinding insight into the meaning of life, just to enjoy myself.’

  ‘You never get this feeling afterwards, then?’
<
br />   ‘Only if I go to bed with an incompetent fucker,’ she said, quite seriously.

  Barney was thoughtful, giving serious consideration to her answer whether it deserved it or not. Bobby’s head was almost in his lap, her hair already was, tumbling over the cushion which separated them and slipping like silk across his trousers. He twitched a little and shifted slightly, but each movement seemed to bring her closer, as if this was what he wanted. He found himself leaning towards her, wishing that he did have a bottle in the room.

  Then the mood was broken.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ shouted Edith Billington, after the fumbling of her key in the lock had passed unnoticed. Barney’s key on the inside was keeping anyone else’s out.

  Recognising the voice, Barney pressed his hand over Bobby’s mouth, not knowing why, simply thinking it the wisest course.

  ‘Mm!’ Bobby mumbled deliciously.

  ‘I said who’s in there!’ Edith cried again, and by juggling her key against Barney’s she forced her way in, steadied herself as she fell into the room. ‘You!’ she said, seeing Barney, and almost in the same breath, triumphantly, as she saw he was with Bobby, ‘And you!’

  ‘Leave us alone, Edith,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Not until I know what’s going on here! Adultery? Infidelity?’

  Outside, in the corridor, Griff heard the accusation and felt his cheeks redden with shame, as if it has been levelled at him.

  Chapter 10

  Griff found Rose, McCready and one or two others huddled in a tight group in the common room. They were all talking feverishly, animated despite the early hour. He paused a moment before approaching, checking that I was not among the group; he had contrived to avoid me for days, since the trip to London and our night together, no doubt feeling it would be easier to come to term with his feelings if I was not around to confuse them.