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

she
was, if she had been to college herself.
    ‘ What
does your boyfriend do for a living?’
    ‘ Works
in an office.’
    ‘ An odd
combination,’ Paula thought. ‘An office worker and an art
student.’
    There was an
unspoken agreement that Paula’s own secretarial role was not to be
compared with Stephen’s.
    ‘ Yes,
it’s starting to seem that way,’ I agreed. ‘It’s a bit of a strain
at times.’
    ‘ Awkward.’
    ‘ It’s
getting hard to cope with, I think.’
    ‘ You
don’t seem to have much in common any more?’
    ‘ Nothing
at all in common,’ I realised. ‘Nothing apart from the teenage
years we shared, and what we shared then doesn’t interest me any
longer.’
    ‘ That
can happen in a lot of relationships,’ Paula understood, and I
found myself speaking of things which I had kept to myself for so
many weeks, talking of how Stephen suddenly seemed a stranger after
so many years, confiding that I could now go for days without
seeing him, where once I had needed him at every available
moment.
    ‘ He’s
your first boyfriend?’
    ‘ The
first serious one,’ I said, and laughed even as Paula did, thinking
of what this meant in Sleepers Hill.
    ‘ They
all say that around here, don’t they? They ask ‘is it serious’,
like it’s a sickness or a complaint and they’re looking for a
medical opinion. I’ve lost count of the number of times my mother’s
asked the same thing of me.’
    ‘ And you
daren’t admit it’s serious, even if it is, because you’re
frightened everyone will start making wedding plans.’
    ‘ Right,’
Paula agreed, nodding her head vigorously. ‘But most of the time
you can’t tell if it’s serious or not, so why can’t people leave
well alone?’ She gave a soft sigh of exasperation. ‘They say
northern people are friendly, that they’re always willing to help
each other, but more often than not they’re just being plain bloody
nosy if you ask me, poking into other folk’s business.’
    This was just
the way I felt, and I enjoyed the chat with Paula until it was
disturbed by people returning from lunch. Thinking over the
conversation, later, it struck me that it had been very much like
going to confession, and I remembered how comforting that used to
be. Confession was on Thursday evenings and the church was never so
quiet as it was then, only a score or so people to one side of the
nave, waiting, some seated and some kneeling in prayer. There would
be none of the constant shuffling and coughing of Sunday mass, you
could sense the solemnity of the sacrament, belief hung thick in
the air like incense. On Sundays the church was a bright and airy
place, the high vaulted roof, the stained glass windows streaming
light, but in the gloom of Thursday nights any sense of space was
lost, there was a dark blanket like thunderclouds which weighed
down on the penitents, and one by one they would enter the
confessional, a dark box with wood panelled sides the colour of a
wine cask, and speak their confessions through a fine mesh screen.
The priest could be seen only as a vague profile, looking much like
an Impressionist study or one of Seurat’s crayon drawings, and his
voice would be low and grave, roughened by altar wine and the many
cigarettes he smoked, as he encouraged the penitents to be open
about their sins. There were venial sins, mortal sins, sins of
omission, and they were absolved of them all, though not
immediately, for more often than not there would be a discussion of
the sins, their nature and their circumstances; eventually, though,
the priest would recite the Latin absolution and impose the penance
–Our Fathers, Hail Marys, decades of the Rosary- to be said in the
main body of the church.
    I
recognised then, after confiding in Paula, just how much I felt the
loss of the sacrament, I understood the comfort it had afforded; it
was as much a ceremony as a sacrament, a ritual which appeased the
spirit rather than cleansed the soul, and it was always the