The Art School Dance by Maria Blanca Alonso Read Free Book Online

as they sucked at the rim, and Stephen smiled
proudly, as if it was important that he should impress my
family.
    Stephen had
learned a lot about impressing people since he started work. He was
polite, he spoke as they did about inconsequential things, idle
gossip and tittle-tattle. I switched on the television, though
there was nothing of interest showing, and waited for them to
finish their chat.
    ‘ Shouldn’t you be getting off now?’ I said to Stephen, when
I thought the conversation was dragging on for too long. ‘It’s
getting late.’
    He looked at
his watch. ‘Yes, I suppose I ought to be going. Do you want to
stroll part of the way with me?’
    I got his coat
from the hall, and to my annoyance even this afforded a subject for
further conversation; it was admired, its material fingered, he was
asked where he bought it and heads nodded approvingly when he
answered, acknowledging that Stephen was going up in the world.
Donning my own jacket soon put an end to all that, for I wore the
leather one with my name on the back.
    ‘ You’re
not going to shame Stephen by wearing that, are you?’ said
Gran.
    ‘ I don’t
mind,’ said Stephen.
    ‘ It’s
dark, no one’s going to notice,’ I told Gran.
    ‘ But why
‘da Vinci’? Are you ashamed of your father’s name, is that it?
Going to change it by deed poll, are you?’
    It did
sound like some kind of arrogant self-recommendation, I had to
concede, in the same way that my signature –‘V.Fair’, never
Virginia Fair- looked like a teacher’s report whenever I put it to
a piece of paper, but there was no point in starting an argument,
Gran and I had had the same one many times before, so I took
Stephen by the arm and led him to the door as he called out his
goodbyes. We walked along the street at a fairly brisk rate, and it
occurred to me that perhaps Stephen was a little ashamed of the way I dressed after all. That would
never change me, though, he could take me as I was or he could drop
me.
    Maybe this was
what I wanted, and I wondered if Stephen would ever leave me of his
own accord. It would certainly ease my conscience if, when the time
came, he was the one to make the break, but I didn’t think I wanted
the break to come just yet, nor even as soon as it eventually did,
or in the way that it came about. And it was quite apparent that
Stephen didn’t want to bring an end to our romance just yet either,
for around the corner from his house, in the shadow of an alleyway,
he paused to embrace me and we kissed as we had done when we first
met, furtively and with an adolescent ardour. This had to be the
one thing that bound me to him, I thought, the brief moment of
passion, the regular physical release. Perhaps without this I would
have found the creative aspect of my life hindered, distracted by
frustrations. In this respect I still needed Stephen, for a little
while longer at least; in this respect I would admit to being
selfish.
    *
    The following
morning, in defeat and desperation, I decided to take Stephen’s
portrait into college, to work on it there in the hope that I might
finish it by Christmas, thinking that I might get some advice on
what was wrong and what could be done with it.
    To my
astonishment people were enthusiastic when they saw it. Ben noted a
vitality in the painting, a vibrant animal quality; Maggie, the
painting tutor, said that it was not just a portrait but a portrait
of a living person; Ian, the printmaker, qualified this by adding
that the person was not just any living person but a person who had
‘lived’. Even Gus liked it, says that I was really starting to
paint at last, and there were others among the students who were
also complimentary.
    This praise
was all very well, quite gratifying, but I was still left with the
problem of pleasing Stephen; he was expecting a painting he could
show to his parents, something they could be proud of, and they
weren’t going to be too pleased to see their only son looking like
an ageing