‘With Walter? But she isn’t his type, is she? She’s not flat chested?’
‘Almost pert, I’d say they were. Like two little pears about to ripen.’
‘Is that right?’ Ceri turned to me. ‘Shit but that’s no good! I need someone with breasts like pillows, big enough to hide my face in!’
‘A mother figure,’ Griff understood.
‘You just keep my mother out of this, fucking pervert!’ Ceri said, thumping away on his crutches.
Was I drunk or was all this really happening to me? I went out onto the balcony, taking more drink with me to chase away the drunkenness. Below, people walking the sane streets looked up at the college as if wondering what they were missing.
‘Not much! You’re not missing much!’ I shouted, and two young men shouted something back, stuck two fingers up at me.
I looked up at the night sky, away from them and their kind, refusing to admit that I might envy them their ordinary lives.
I heard a voice behind me. ‘You’re Virginia. You’re a painter.’
I turned, smiled at McCready. ‘The cricket match is over, then? Did you win?’
‘Do I ever?’
He was in that state of inebriation where aggression would give way to self pity.
‘You’ve really got it bad today, haven’t you?’ I said.
‘Got what bad?’ he asked.
‘Whatever it is you get, whatever it is that ails you.’
I couldn’t tell if he blushed, not in the moonlight. Probably not.
‘Aren’t you going to comment on my performance tonight, at Edith’s?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Why not? Why don’t you shout at me, curse me, call me a bastard or something?’
‘I’d prefer to understand rather than to argue,’ I replied.
‘But if I can’t understand then what chance have you got?’
I shook my head and finally McCready apologised, said he was sorry for behaving the way he did.
‘Don’t bother about it,’ I told him.
‘You really can forgive me anything, can’t you?’ he smiled, hugging me to him.
*
There was the slightest hint of a sunrise at the edge of the sky, a weak orange glow in the east. I sang to myself as I walked along the road, but kept coming up with ballads which were too emotive. I sang louder, like a drunkard, trying to blot out the memories which were being evoked.
‘Alright dear, keep the noise down.’
Why? There were no houses nearby, there was no one to disturb. The only one disturbed was me myself. I stopped singing and looked to my right, saw that there was a police car cruising slowly along at my side. It accelerated a few yards ahead and then stopped; one of the two officers inside got out.
‘What’s in the bag?’ he asked, as I reached him.
‘Just a few clothes.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
What did he think? That I was a cat burglar? I opened the bag while he looked at the contents, then zipped it up again.
‘A bit early for travelling, isn’t it love?’
‘I’ve got an interview in the morning,’ I lied. ‘I had to leave early.’
‘Where’s the interview?’
‘Up north,’ I said.
‘Hitching?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Get in the car, then. I reckon we can give her a lift as far as the motorway, eh?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ said the other policeman, the one behind the wheel, as he leaned across to open the back door.
I climbed in and they drove on.
‘Don’t think I’m being funny, but did you have a boozy night?’ guessed the policeman in the passenger seat.
‘Sort of,’ I admitted. ‘End of term party.’
‘Students,’ the driver smiled, with a shake of the head which is not disapproving.
‘Know how to enjoy themselves,’ his partner nodded.
‘May as well while they’re young, before they have to settle down to a responsible life.’
‘Right. There’s something to be said for freedom.’
Oh Christ! They were going to envy me! Mercifully we reached the motorway and the car came to a halt.
‘Here you are love, and mind you stay on the roundabout. No wandering down onto the slip road or we’ll have to chase you.’
‘You can trust me,’ I promised.
‘Well, good luck with the interview. Might be an idea to suck a few mints, get rid of the smell of the booze on your breath.’
‘Thanks, I’ll do that. And thanks for the lift.’
The police car drove off, circled the roundabout and headed back towards the city. I waited until it was out of sight, then walked a short way down the slip road. After all, what chance was there of someone stopping for me there on the roundabout?
The sun had now started to climb over the tops of the trees, it was morning and I was tired. I sat down on my bag, elbows on my knees, ready to stick out a thumb whenever a car should come along. I yawned and tasted yesterday in my mouth, wondered if tomorrow would taste as bad. Bed would be much more preferable to sitting there in a morning which was still chilly, bed with McCready -or Griff?- and I set myself a deadline, a half hour perhaps, said I would go back into the city if no one stopped for me in the next half hour.
It was twenty minutes before I heard the first car approach. I raised a thumb, not bothering to look up until its wheels nearly took off my toes.
‘What the-!’ I said, jumping to my feet. I was ready to curse the driver when I recognised the battered old Volvo saloon, saw the red head inside shaking with amusement. ‘Teacher!’
‘Oui, c’est moi,’ Teacher grinned, and the smell of whisky was strong, wafting out of the car as the window was would down. ‘Comment ca va, Virginia? Do I take it you’re finished with college too?’
‘I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to me anymore,’ I said. Then: ‘Yes, I guess so. For the summer at least.’
‘Want a lift then?’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, not that it mattered.
‘North’s the way the car’s pointing.’
I looked in that direction, then turned back to face the way I had come.
‘Well? What about it?’ Teacher asked. ‘Make your mind up. You can’t sit there all day like one of McCready’s silly bloody trees.’
BOOK THREE
VIRGINIA FAIR
a portrait of the young woman as someone who does
Day-Glo posters for chippies and Chinese takeaways
Chapter One
Damned, Virginia was damned, Nature, God and all the ministering angels were damning her while punctured clouds baptised her, a bitter rain seeping uninvited down her neck and to that soft hollow of the spine which one man, at least, had professed to love so dearly. Her hair would stink, no doubt already was, lank locks which could flatter those of Medusa and her sisters, and she realised too late that she should have shown more presence of mind, should have had the foresight to take a bath before allowing herself to be so ingloriously expelled. Yes, she should have glossed her hair with his apple-scented shampoo and feathered her armpits with his apple-scented talc; an orchard could flourish beneath such a heavenly torrent. There had been no time to consider such things, however, not when her health, perhaps her very life, had been in jeopardy; a knife between the shoulder blades is the cowardly man’s way of saying ‘go, you done me wrong’, and she could picture herself in his saffron coloured tub with the modest plastic curtain pulled across, lathering her groin as in he came, shivering to see the condensation on the tiles and considerately tossing her the electric fire. To keep her sizzling warm? No thank you! Virginia had left in a hurry, unwashed, with barely the flash of a second in which to fill the plastic bag she now clutched, its neck tight in her frozen grip so that the treasures it held should not become sodden.
As she weaved her way across wet pavements shiny with street-light haloes she wondered if it was an Aladdin�
�s cave she carried, or a Pandora’s box. She would have to check, the speed of her departure had not allowed her fingers time to discriminate as they snatched out desperately for belongings. But first she needed shelter, from nature who was peeing on her and that vengeful deity who was tormenting her, spinning a teasing spider’s web of tribulation about her body.
Yes, God is a man and vengeance is His; masturbate and you go blind, fornicate and He’ll blast you with rabies.
Rabies? No, she knew that she meant babies, and she worried that her mind might becoming as weak as her body was weary, addled and beaten to nonsense by the elements. And yet she felt that it was better to suffer the present divine deluge rather than be saddled with offspring, shackled by the baptismal rites which would bind her to a baby. She could see the child in her most restless dreams, the pink face so unlike her own, gurgling ‘mummy’ from the font at a prodigious age; it was mischievously reflected in the puddles through which she splashed.
Shelter! she almost cried aloud. Give me shelter, God damn you!
Gratefully she skipped squelchingly into a convenience which she happened upon, the place appropriately named at last, and with the glossy white ceiling between herself and the Other’s churlishness she thumbed a dripping nose towards heaven, shook herself and looked around, thinking about her riches and acknowledging that she had to act quickly before the swag disintegrated into nothing more than a wet dream. Crossing her fingers she dipped them expectantly into that bran tub of delights, searching the plunder for clues and directions.
First she pulled out a book, hoping for something prophetic but finding only one of his trashy pieces of literature. Cursing, she tried again and tangled her fingers in a midnight feast of textures; his silk shirt, her jeans, his silk boxer shorts.
No knickers?
No.
This was particularly remiss of her, she thought, to forget her undies, and as she stuffed his silk things into her pocket she imagined him being left with her knickers, wondered what it might now be like for him if he had to walk about with his penis tucked into her tight cotton briefs, wondered if it might give him a twenty four hour erection. Becoming annoyed with these base thoughts, impatient with the awkward fumbling about, she tipped the remaining contents of the bag into a washbasin, carefully lest there be Ming or crystal or other negotiable bric-a-brac there, and she saw her world before her like a childhood bowl of vomit; observing it, she had to make an inventory, for to itemise was to make concrete.
'One distasteful novel,' she noted, 'his, to be kept for the moment in case there’s no toilet paper in this place. One pair of silk boxer shorts, his again, these to be worn out of necessity, but only after first uttering a prayer that motorists pass me by with caution.'
This was a prayer unlikely to be answered, it had to be admitted, considering the way that Virginia was being treated by the One above; luck was all bad and she would probably be flattened by a charabanc full of sex-starved house-surgeons, squashed like a toad in the road and left to the mercy of their clammy groping hands.
'Anyway,' she sighed, willing to submit to the ordeal if only out of curiosity, 'I also have one red silk shirt, his, this also to be worn if the after-shave which lingers about it is not too painful to recall; one hairdryer; one address book; two bank statements. Huh! It’s not much to show for four months with the swine!'
The goods went back into the bag, and Virginia and hers -for they were now hers- went into a cubicle. There she changed her sodden blouse for his silk shirt and emerged a new woman. She looked into a mirror to consider the transformation.
Yes, she smiled, she believed that his red silk rather suited her. But wasn’t the hair a mess, though! This was thank to He who was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be Virginia’s greatest scourge. The marks of the lash could be felt beneath the fine red silk and it had to be admitted that the Lord was a mighty powerful adversary. This time He would be thwarted, though, by the ingenuity of Virginia and the technology of this marvellously industrious century; a flick of the comb and a blow of the wave and all would be well.
'Hello! Anybody there?' Virginia called out, her voice roaring about the cavernous place and rattling the loose ceramics. 'Atten-dant!'
Where was the berk?
'Yes?' came the quiet reply, and Virginia followed the voice to find the creature, reluctantly dragged from its lair like a worm straining against the pull of the early bird.
The creature -Virginia found it difficult to think of the attendant as anything else- pushed glasses against a snub protuberance in the middle of its face, tilted back its head to keep them there and looked down a nose so tiny that it might not have existed.
Virginia said that she needed a socket.
'A what?'
'A socket. Soc-ket! Ee-lec-tric-it-ee!'
'Eh?'
Virginia counted to ten and there was her renowned self-control; she was patient with the worm. 'A hairdryer.'
'A what?'
'Hair-dry-er!'
The contraption was waved where the nose should have been and a smile crept across the puckered face of the attendant, mouth stretching as only the mouths of the intellectually constipated can, lips parting to offer a graveyard of moss-green teeth.
'Oh. A wash and brush up. Ten pee.'
'Pee yourself,' said Virginia. 'All I want is the use of those three holes in your wall.'
'Still constitutes a wash and brush up. Still costs ten pee.'
It was obvious to Virginia that the woman was not au fait with the way the hierarchy worked; worms belonged at the bottom, where they had always been and ever would be, and she was tempted to pound the grubby creature, to push it back into its servile niche. By way of compromise, not especially fond of violence, she took the greasy chin between finger and thumb, turning the face a fraction to divert the foetid breath, and spoke gently yet with authority.
'Listen, creature of dirt, if you do not introduce myself and my hairdryer to your electricity outlet I shall force your brittle spine through and around the nearest U-bend.'
She has always been a great one, Virginia, for the persuasive patter and the well-chosen word.
'Here! You can’t say that to me! I’m a council employee!'
'I just did. But don’t worry, I shan’t repeat myself.'
She pinched the old woman’s flesh with difficulty, her fingers slipping over the slack oily skin.
'Alright! Alright! It’s over there!' the attendant cried, appreciating the truism about actions speaking loudest of all.
Virginia thanked her, worm though she might be, for her politeness was her one great failing and had been with her since the cradle. She crossed the floor and inserted the plug into the socket, hoping the hairdryer worked for it would have to be sold at the earliest opportunity. As she dried her hair she only regretted that she had not had time to take the stereo. Yet what was music without style? Her appearance was her fortune, to be cared for and maintained, and a fifty watt sound system would have little effect on her tangled locks... unless the music was to his taste and made each lock stand on end!
She smiled, pleased that she had retained her sense of humour though she might have lost all else, and the machine teased and caressed her hair into more silken strands. She noticed a hint of grey in places, which she thought was quite distinguishing. So how about tinting the curly bits between the legs? What an impact that would have! She could imagine young men mute in wonder, approaching with open mouths, tentatively touching, thinking that her genitalia might be sterling silver. She would smile and beckon them on and suggest that they suck it and see.
All this while the cretinous lavatory attendant was intruding on the reverie, reflected in the mirror over Virginia’s shoulder, but it seemed like admiration in the bloodshot eyes so the poor unfortunate was not chastised. Let her look and learn and be consumed by evergreen envy.
The work was finished and the recovery completed. Virginia packed her things into the bag and walked to the exit. As the atte
ndant followed her she heard a slight cough, that respectful hiccough which said ‘thank you for allowing me to serve’. A gratuity was hoped for, no doubt, and Virginia gave a shrug, rummaged through her pocket and tossed away a shiny silver coin. Then she was gone, out onto the street before her lucky French franc -what luck had it brought her recently?- could be recognised in the brightly artificial light below. Her duty was fulfilled.
She was a great one, Virginia, for returning the favour and seeing that justice was done.
*
The rain had stopped, a blessing which Virginia could only acknowledge with the greatest reluctance, guessing that it had been given grudgingly and was in no way indicative of a brighter future. Still, she was happy to feel her hair flowing freely behind, rather than hanging in lank strands about her face, and she bounced on her way, past the railway station and then uphill. Before her the cathedral stood tall and conceited, dripping against the grey sky, a dull beacon directing her home. Stepping into its shadow she crossed the road and counted her way along the row of once grand houses, now all alike in their disrepair.
Her key slipped smoothly into the lock of number eleven, so this at least had not been changed; hopefully everything else would be as she had left it.
She entered the hallway and climbed the uncarpetted stairs, noticing that the bannister was a little less safe and the walls a little more yellow, the paper peeling and jaundiced. These apart, it seemed that nothing much had altered. Music and voices mingled in the common ground outside each room, and if the people within were different this would not matter to Virginia, for they were always very much of a kind. What was important was that her own flat should be as she had left it, that it should still be hers and not let out to anyone else; the rent had been paid during her absence, certainly, but this guaranteed nothing.
On the third floor, at the end of the corridor, she saw the doors which led to the two rooms of her flat; neither appeared to have been tampered with, the postcard from Parma was on one and the picture of Thomas Aquinas on the other, both with colours a little more muted than before but still firmly fixed.
The Art School Dance Page 32
