Confidence

by Rowland Manthorpe

  Ellie looked at Nadine with fresh respect. ‘You’re good at this, do you know?’

  ‘Focus, Ellie, focus.’

  ‘So what would two involve?’

  ‘Go to the uni paper – that’s step one, obviously. Then maybe go to the local press? “Feminist Banned From Sitting Exams”, “Punished for Legitimate Protest”? Whatever. Then—’

  ‘Would I have to have my photo taken outside a university building, looking sad?’

  ‘Definitely, yeah. Like, holding a folder and a pencil – desperate to learn, but barred from the temple of learning.’

  ‘With the caption. “Eleanor Taber: Sad feminist”.’

  ‘“Eleanor Taber: Learning the hard way”.’

  Ellie spat a pip at a lamp post. ‘Maybe I should quickly make a calendar to fund my legal fees.’

  ‘Totally, that’ll be your only choice. “May” will be, like, your breasts with a sad face painted onto them, and a speech bubble that says, “I have been silenced”.’

  ‘“December” will be you with curly grey muffs over your boobs, a Santa beard and a sack full of feminist classics.’

  ‘“June” will be you, naked, in the committee room, with only the uni letter concealing your va-j-j.’

  They laughed, until Nadine started choking on a cherry.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Ellie wiped her eye. ‘I hope this is going to be all right.’

  ‘Me too.’ Nadine sat up from her coughing fit and gave Ellie’s arm a squeeze. ‘I’m really sorry, I feel responsible.’

  ‘Oh God, it’s not your fault.’

  They sat on a bench in silence, listening to the ‘weeeeeeeee’ of parents pushing swings.

  ‘Do you know what’s weird?’ said Ellie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m actually a lot happier when I’ve got something to push against. Adversity is simpler. Know what I mean?’

  Nadine nodded. ‘Like when people have “allergies” and then they’re given some other bug and their “allergies” go away.’

  ‘So I’m full of bullshit, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Meh.’ Nadine waggled her hand. ‘Fifty:fifty.’

  Ellie laughed. ‘I’d go sixty:forty. Hey, you don’t think it’s worth trying to find out who did it?’

  ‘Hmm, not sure they’re gonna wanna step into your shoes. But enough public attention might guilt-trip them into coming forward.’

  ‘To be honest, I support their actions anyway. The calendar is sexist shit. They only did what we did.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Nadine frowned. ‘This is going to be a tricky message to get across.’

  ‘Well. Suppose I better start hunting out the committee members. Can I borrow your uni card?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll check out The Badger and see who’s the best person to ring.’

  ‘Cheers. Please if they have to take a photo, can you be in it with me please?’

  ‘All right, just . . .’ Nadine looked Ellie up and down, tried to find a place to start, and settled for, ‘Do yourself a favour and wash your hair.’

  14

  Selfishness

  Confidence is selfish. For Nietzsche, who believed that people were innately self-interested, this was simply a statement of fact. He was a full-blown anti-altruist, the sort of person who thinks that selfishness explains everything, that even when we believe we are acting altruistically, we are in fact motivated by self-interest. We give gifts with an expectation of return. We tell ourselves we are being caring, when in reality we are making ourselves feel effective, or keeping the other person dependent on our kindness.

  One thing about Nietzsche: he followed through on his arguments. Having announced that selfishness is inevitable, he went on to declare his support for this state of affairs, on the grounds that selfishness is better for your health. Feeling sorry for people drags you down: ‘It has a depressive effect . . . One loses force when one pities.’ (Like when you listen to someone’s problems until you start to believe that, actually, life is hopeless, and really, there’s no point in trying.) Our vain attempts to pretend we’re less selfish than we are usually end up making life worse for everybody.

  As so often, Nietzsche saw the root of the problem in Christianity, and its repressive regime of ‘life-denying’ instinct suppression. In Christianity, he said, ‘man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to demonise the other part.’ In his version of self-love, we would treat our nasty side with the same affection as our more presentable nice side, recognising good and bad as inextricably intertwined.

  Far from encouraging unpleasantness, Nietzsche believed this robust self-acceptance would actually improve people’s behaviour towards one another. In his work, we find the origin of the now widespread idea that when people are spiteful or mean, it’s not because of any character fault, but because they’re ‘insecure’. Nietzsche believed that nastiness was really an expression of self-hatred, which was itself a reaction to one’s own weakness. And it’s true: when we feel under attack or ‘defensive’, we are less warm-spirited and open to others, more likely to snap or avoid listening. Nietzsche’s answer was to embrace ourselves, good and bad, and in doing so, become more generous to others. ‘The noble man,’ he wrote, ‘helps the unfortunate, not from pity, but rather from an urge produced by the abundance of power.’ In Nietzsche’s conception, there would be no charity for the sake of appearance; no one would ever say something they didn’t mean, just to make someone else feel better. It’s a vision of a dynamic but unforgiving world, in which some people flourish and others fall by the wayside.

  In his later writings, Nietzsche softened his view on selfishness, rowing back from the claim that all actions are unavoidably self-interested. His ethical ideal was still selfishness, but an enlightened, creative selfishness: ‘gift-giving’, he called it, rather than the kind that ‘is hollow and wants to be full’. His model for interaction was a dialogue where the participants satisfied each other by pursuing their individual desires. Like sex: ‘the one person, by doing what pleases him, gives pleasure to another.’ The heart of confidence was not selfishness, but self-expression.

  But, of course, self-expression is selfish – it’s just a bigger word for it, one that implies adventure and deep personal fulfilment. Our desires don’t have to be nastily selfish, but they can’t help being self-centred, if only because when we express our desires, we give them priority over other people’s. Although, as Nietzsche observed, when it comes to our deepest desires, we don’t really have a choice. When we are on the verge of self-expression, it feels like a compulsion: uncomfortable, exciting and overwhelming, all at the same time.

  The air on the boat was cool and clammy. Ellie walked her fingers from under the unzipped sleeping bag and traced a pattern in the dark mould that speckled the wooden wall. The wood brought to mind some other, bigger, non-human time, making her present circumstances reassuringly tiny and meaningless in comparison. If I don’t sit my exams, she thought, trees will still grow. Those were the sort of reflections you could have on the boat, on the water, where time moved at a different speed. Also, the weed. The weed helped.

  Beside the narrow bunk, Oscar was hunched over a gas camping stove. Ellie watched him twist his sandy hair, making it stick up in long, greasy clumps. He bit the end of his tongue as he stared at the water, now beginning to foam almost imperceptibly at the edges. Wearing nothing, Oscar stood to almost full height – living on the boat was giving him a slight stoop – and took two packs of instant noodles from a shelf. He crouched back down, ripping the flimsy wrapping.

  It wasn’t exactly comfortable, being at Oscar’s. (But then, was there ever a casual sexual encounter that didn’t feel awkward?) Oscar wasn’t one for small talk, and whenever they spoke about politics or the environment or some other important thing, Ellie found herself worrying obscurely about putting an ideological foot in it. Instead, she preferred to settle into the silence, to enjoy being around Oscar the way one might enjoy being around a hors
e or a garden. In many ways, sex was the simplest part of whatever was going on. In the moments when she’d climbed off the barely lit canal path and onto the boat, it was completely clear what they were meant to be doing and why.

  ‘You have a boyfriend, right?’

  A steaming plateful of instant noodles was right next to her ear. Ellie craned round and stared at it for a moment, before slowly twisting over onto her side.

  ‘Um . . .’ She took the plate. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay, cool. Thought you did.’ Looking completely relaxed, Oscar passed her a bottle of soy sauce.

  Ellie sat up and shook the bottle ponderously, listening to it sloshing around. ‘Is that . . . okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He grinned quizzically, joining her to sit cross-legged on the bed. ‘Course. Because you’re in charge of yourself.’

  ‘Right,’ Ellie nodded, feeling slightly stupid. She blew on her plate and looked at Oscar through the steam. ‘Just while I’m checking though, how do you feel about me coming round here? Because, you know, if it’s an inconvenience . . .’

  Oscar grinned, as though she were joking, and sucked up some noodles.

  ‘For God’s sake slow down!’ shouted somebody on the path outside. ‘People have to walk here!’

  Ellie felt as if the conversation had died prematurely. ‘You don’t really believe in that, do you? Boyfriends. Relationships.’ Talking, she added, mentally.

  ‘You seem a bit unsure yourself,’ he replied amenably.

  ‘Well . . .’

  They chewed for a while. A cyclist shot by, bell pinging.

  ‘Nobody wants to die alone, I suppose,’ she shrugged. ‘And don’t say we all die alone.’

  Another few seconds of silence passed.

  ‘No, you’re right.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘We definitely don’t all die alone.’

  She smiled. ‘You’re annoying.’

  They finished their noodles. Then they had sex.

  About twenty minutes later, at midday, Ellie was on the canal path, wondering how long it would take to get from here to normality. It was surprisingly hot, and she was dressed for last night in hoodie and jeans. She drifted along the canal towards the park, unable to decide where to go next. After a few minutes she gave up and sat by a tree in the shade, watching the leaves jostle sleepily in the breeze.

  What am I doing? she wondered. It was a treacherous question, but she felt strangely calm about it – if anything, she was quite curious to know what would happen next. Looking back, Ellie could see that she’d been quietly preparing for this whatever-it-was: she’d started back on the pill (they’d told her to wait seven days, but they probably tripled the time frame just to shit you up), she’d stayed a night at Nadine’s in order to normalise being away, she’d gone to the big Sainsbury’s near the canal where they sold the kind of Greek yoghurt she liked – the yoghurt, she remembered, that was sitting by Oscar’s sink.

  Feeling thirsty, Ellie pushed herself up and texted Nadine to ask if she could have stayed at hers last night.

  ‘cd have,’ Nadine returned. ‘U dirty stop out.’

  Ellie got up and rubbed the fine dirt from her back and legs. She decided to walk back to hers along the canal path – she’d never done it before, but there was a path that passed under a bridge only a few streets behind the flat, and she was sure it connected to this towpath. In fact she was certain of it.

  Setting out, Ellie was immediately enlivened – she shivered with a feeling akin to happiness and excitement, but with no direction or object: a rush of sentience that was about nothing more than finding herself alive.

  It was amazingly hot. She tied her hoodie round her waist. Her long-sleeved top was clinging unpleasantly to her sweaty skin. Rolling up her sleeves, she looked longingly at the canal; the water was green-tea-coloured, pearlescent and barely moving. Still, she wished she could throw herself into it, or lean back from the bank and let her hair fall into the cool liquid. Whenever she tried to think about things (Justin, exams, being a bad person), the thoughts weren’t compelling enough to distract her more than momentarily from being hot and thirsty. Aside from those two problems, in fact, she was light, elated – if someone gave her a glass of water right now, she was sure she could die not only happy, but ecstatic.

  As she walked, she thought about walking. It was a strange mode of locomotion, both awkward and flowing. Who was it who said that each step was allowing yourself to fall for a moment? It was strange what Nietzsche had done to walking; he’d reframed it as an intellectual pastime instead of a physical one. And didn’t Rousseau write something about a walker too? Perhaps they were trying to figure out the relationship between philosophy and the everyday. She’d write that in an exam if she got the chance – if her notes on office doors, and trail of emails, and embarrassing newspaper interviews took effect. In this moment, for no reason, she had a superstitious sense the universe would help her out.

  Ellie passed warehouses and mesh fences and houseboats strung with faded bunting, but the familiar bridge didn’t materialise. Her phone rang with an unknown number. By the time she’d decided to pick up, she only had time to say ‘Hello’ before the battery died.

  Finally, Ellie sat down on the bank, wondering if she should ask for directions, and if so, who to ask. She was out of the town centre now – she must have been walking more than an hour, maybe two – and there was nobody around. After brief consideration, Ellie lay down, flat on her back in the middle of the towpath. Bathing in the sunlight, she luxuriated in this glorious moment of not giving a fuck. There was nothing she had to do. She was doing this, and it was fine, wonderful even. The baked concrete and sun’s heat lifted and dissolved her. She might have fallen asleep.

  ‘Ellie,’ someone said.

  She squinted up to see a scrawny shadow peering over her.

  ‘Oh. Mattie,’ she said. ‘Hi. What are you up to?’

  ‘Picking wild garlic.’ He waved a reusable bag. Mattie was wearing a collarless shirt, shorts and those shoes with moulded toes used by renegades for running from the man. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m out for a walk. You don’t happen to know where we are, do you?’

  Ellie arrived back at hers with an exhausted Mattie, who had heroically insisted on giving her a backie all the way up the hill. Justin and Rose were on the sofa, watching one of Rose’s food-porn programmes: mountains of gleaming pasta set among luscious rivers of creamy sauce.

  ‘She’s not got you roped into this,’ Ellie greeted them. They looked like the kind of domestic scene you saw on adverts: cups of tea on the coffee table, Rose’s legs extending across Justin’s lap, Justin yawning and dopily rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Home at last.’ He turned and saw Mattie. ‘Ah, hello stranger!’

  ‘What time do you call this?’ demanded Rose. ‘Your beau and I were about to send out the search party. You may have your picture in the uni paper, miss, but that doesn’t mean you can treat this place like a hotel.’

  Mattie held up his bag like a shield. ‘Wild garlic.’

  ‘Have you two been running?’ Rose frowned, ever on the alert for other people’s calorie consumption.

  ‘Just a walk. It’s so hot!’ Ellie walked straight to the bathroom, opened the shower door and knelt down, black spots clouding her vision. A European-style charger was plugged into the shaver socket. Ellie turned her phone on and let the message play on loudspeaker, half listening as she stripped off her sweat-damp clothes.

  ‘. . . Gareth Walker, Producer . . . breakfast show . . . picked up your story in the local paper . . . love you to come in for an interview with . . .’

  Ellie got in, suppressing a gasp. The water felt incredible – she could feel her skin expanding like a dehydrated berry. She opened her mouth and drank.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Justin called, after a minute. He opened the bathroom door, slipped inside, and pressed his palm flat against the shower wall. ‘Hello. I feel like I’ve not seen you in ages.’

  ‘I know. I’
m sorry.’ She pushed her palm against his. ‘How are you?’

  ‘All ri-i-i-i-ight.’ He circled his eyes.

  ‘You been working?’

  ‘We-e-e-ll . . .’

  ‘Is Rose driving you crazy?’

  ‘Oh, no, she’s okay. I think she’s keeping me sane to be honest – worryingly. But never mind about Rose.’ He clapped his hands. ‘What . . . are you doing tonight?’

  Ellie considered. ‘Nothing.’ It was true. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Well then, if you don’t mind, I have decided to cook for you.’

  ‘Have you?’ Ellie gurgled, swallowing some more water. ‘You don’t need to work?’

  ‘No, I need to see you. You need to talk to me about everything that’s going on. I mean, apart from what I’ve read in The Badger. And more importantly, we both need to relax and have a night that doesn’t feel like a state of emergency.’

  Ellie pushed her hair back, reality creeping back in with the cold. It wasn’t such a bad reality. Justin opened the shower door and kissed her cheek. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she nodded, smiling.

  ‘Who was on the phone?’

  ‘I think it might be someone from the radio.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh my God, you better call them back.’

  ‘Yeah, I will.’ He was getting wet. Drops of water spattered his T-shirt and pinpricked his hairy arms. ‘Justin.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You’re very nice, do you know that?’

  ‘Oh really?’ he beamed. ‘Good.’

  Charlie’s marketing debut started with some unpleasant surprises. First, he had to wear a neon blue T-shirt with ‘Stop and Search’ scrawled across the front and ‘Detain me’ on the back, in graffiti font. Charlie had the dim sense that this might be offensive. The outfit was topped off by a flimsy matching baseball cap, which – Arthur had insisted – was to be worn with the brim completely flat, in a manner you basically had to be Jay-Z to pull off. (Arthur was so straight he didn’t even understand the brand aesthetic.)

  Second, Charlie wasn’t out on the high street approaching strangers; he was in Library Square, where Arthur had instructed him to ‘use his existing networks’. Charlie had thought he’d escape uni people for a day; instead, those very people had become his target demographic.