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

said, rising to Paula’s defence. ‘I’ll
tell you what, Tina, if you saw her walking down the street I bet
you wouldn’t say that about her.’
    ‘ She’s a
good looking woman, is she?’
    ‘ Very
classy,’ I said.
    We emptied our
glasses and Tina bought three more drinks, then asked what I was
going to do at the end of the course.
    ‘ Move on
somewhere else to do a degree. This is only a foundation course.
I’ve got three more years to do after this.’
    ‘ Another
three years? Jesus!’
    ‘ And
three more after that, if I’m lucky,’ I added hopefully. ‘If I’m
good enough I’ll go on to do a post graduate course, the Royal
College or the Slade, somewhere like that.’
    ‘ Seven
years at college?’ Diane gasped.
    ‘ If I’m
lucky,’ I repeated.
    ‘ The
first twenty odd years of your life spent at school?’
    ‘ Art
college isn’t like school,’ I pointed out.
    ‘ No,’
Tina agreed. ‘We didn’t have naked women to draw when I was at
school.’
    ‘ Just
plants and bottles and such,’ Diane remembered. ‘Now if there’d
been the chance of some nudes I might have tried a bit
harder.’
    ‘ What?
Someone like old Mrs Bolton posing for us?’
    A couple of
drinks and the good humour of the evening went to my head, my
cheeks felt flushed; when my friends suggested moving on somewhere
else, though, I was reluctant. They probably guessed the reason,
that I couldn’t afford to, and they insisted, said it would be
their treat. We stopped at another pub or two, slowly moving closer
into town, and Tina and Diane took turns paying for the drinks out
of their wage packets; it seemed that everyone had a wage packet to
spend that night and the nearer the three of us got to town the
more crowded the pubs became.
    *
    In town itself
we found ourselves chatting to three young blokes; they were a
little loud, a little brash, but Tina and Diane accepted this and
played them along, it was just a little innocent entertainment
before the serious courting of the weekend. Jokes started as
risqué‚ and became cruder, the laughter of the young men became
more raucous and there were lurid descriptions of the things I got
up to at art school, invented by Tina and richly embellished by
Diane. The young bloke I was sat next to looked at me a little
uncertainly, not sure whether to believe their tales, not sure what
to think of the way I looked; I suppose it came as a surprise to
him that I spoke just like the rest of them, came from a similar
home and had been to a similar school; perhaps it even came as a
shock to him that an art student was not necessarily the alien
creature he had imagined.
    ‘ Well,
what do you think?’ asked Tina, when two of the blokes went to the
gents and the third to the bar.
    ‘ About
what?’ I said.
    ‘ Those
three. Do you reckon they’re worth sharing another drink or two
with?’
    This was
probably the self same question that the two in the toilet were
asking each other, and not one that I really wanted to concern
myself with.
    ‘ It’s
nothing to do with me, you can leave me out of it,’ I
said.
    ‘ Oh no,
you can’t leave yourself out. We’ve been buying the drinks all
evening so you owe it to us to stay. You know that if there’s three
of them and only two of us they’ll bugger off.’
    I shook my
head. ‘I don’t want to get involved.’
    ‘ Who’s
asking you to get involved?’ said Diane. ‘We’re not expecting you
to propose to the bloke, for God’s sake, just keep him
company.’
    ‘ Talk to
him.’
    ‘ Let him
walk you home, even if you don’t fancy doing anything else with
him. We promise we won't breathe a word to Stephen.’
    ‘ I’m not
worried about Stephen,’ I said.
    ‘ Fine,
then. It’s settled.’
    ‘ No it’s
not,’ I told them, but I saw that there’s was no way out, the two
who had been to the toilet were returning from their own
deliberations, the third was setting drinks on the table and Tina
and Diane had me wedged in a corner.
    With