The Art School Dance Read Free Page B

quickly, before Stephen could protest that
this is his duty. Though the room was warm I still had on my
greatcoat, unbuttoned, and it billowed out behind me like a cape as
I crossed the floor; one or two people stared, someone sniggered,
but I didn’t care and I stood proudly at the bar, not as tall as
Stephen but still tall enough to look imposing, proud that I was
different, with no hint of shame or embarrassment. Returning with
the drinks I sat close to Stephen, shoulder to shoulder, and I
could smell his aftershave again, a delicate fruity fragrance. I
sneezed, blew my nose on a tissue, noticed him frown when he saw
that it was stained with paint.
    He smelled
more fragrant than I did, I realised, quickly tucking the tissue
away, and thought I should have splashed some perfume on, but there
was only my mother’s, a musty funereal fragrance, not used since
Dad died. I said no more about the life class but the memory was
still there, and with it came the faint recollection of Paula’s
perfume, the vaguest hint of something expensive beneath the slight
tang of sweat. Idly I wondered what it might have been. Something
that would not be tickling the sinuses, I supposed. Something
expensive.
    ‘ So.
What should we do?’ said Stephen, interrupting my thoughts, drawing
me back to the present, to the noisy garish
surroundings.
    When I looked
at the clock over the bar I saw that it was just after eight, asked
if his parents were going out that night, knowing that they usually
did on Tuesdays.
    ‘ Yes,’
he said. ‘They’re going to the Labour Club about half
eight.’
    ‘ So,’ I
sighed, looking around at the crowd, not really wanting to share
their company any longer. ‘What should we do? The
pictures?’
    But I knew
this wasn’t what Stephen had planned, not what we usually did on
Tuesday evenings, and I wasn't surprised when he said, ‘It’s too
late.’
    ‘ We
could still catch the main film.’
    ‘ You
know I hate that, going in when the programme’s
started.’
    ‘ Well
then- What?’
    ‘ We
could go back to my house,’ he casually offered, as if it was a
novel idea.
    *
    As we walked
from the pub, along the drab streets, yellow sodium lights spilled
from the narrow cobbled alleys we passed, or splashed across the
tediously tidy brickwork of newer estates, the redeveloped areas of
our resurgent town. By that time in my life, eighteen years old, I
was really getting to hate the place. I wanted somewhere new, a
town with an art gallery, a city with a university and some
entertainment other than the cinema, a place where there were
cultured people. Stephen had never been cultured; he might have
been nice in many ways, but by no stretch of the imagination could
he ever be called cultured.
    I felt his
body warm against mine and realised just how cool the night had
become. He was warm in a way that a coal fire wasn’t, warm as only
another person could be, and I thought, sometimes, that it was the
warmth of people that I needed, rather than the people themselves.
My father used to be warm, and my mother too, while he was still
alive; they were strict but they were fair and in their warmest
moments I had been able to feel their love burning like a flame.
When my father died, though, his flame naturally went with him and
my mother’s was dimmed at the same time.
    The one thing
that was burning at that particular moment, however, as I walked
home with Stephen, was the memory of the life class, and having him
on my arm, his hip nudging mine, was like a bellows pumping the
flame, making the coals glow brighter. When we turned into the
close the first thing I did was check that the living room light
was off, which it was, meaning that Stephen’s parents were out,
enjoying their customary Tuesday evening of beer and Bingo. As
cautious as ever, though, when Stephen inserted his key into the
lock and opened the door he called out that he was home, and we
waited for a reply; if there was none, which was usually the