A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  I tried to stay awake, but I was so tired that I kept closing my eyes and drifting off. Each time I did, the music became more distant until I found myself in the white car again, with the white lines on the black road hurtling towards me as they had done the night before. I tried to jerk myself awake, but my eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and all I could do was sit there with the car going faster and faster until at last the white lines began to blur into the darkness.

  Oh God, this is it, I thought; this time we're going to crash.

  chapter 7

  I OPENED MY EYES. Everything around me was completely black. I could stretch out my arms and legs without touching anything, but I sensed that I was closed in, as if I were in a box, a box buried deep underground. I couldn't tell which way was up, and which was down. For a moment I panicked, the fear sitting like an invisible animal on my chest, squeezing the breath out of me, clutching me around my neck, trying to throttle me. I struggled against it, crying out for it to stop, to let me live, but as I did its weight grew heavier on my chest and its hands grew tighter around my throat. As my breath grew shorter, I began to feel dizzy, and little by little, my resistance began to fail. I thought, it would be so much easier now to stop fighting any more, to give up. Then I heard something far away in the distance, a voice calling out to me, very faintly. I listened for a moment and heard the voice, a man's voice, calling my name. Someone was coming for me, coming to find me. I just had to stay alive until he got here.

  I took a deep breath in and then breathed out slowly, the way Rob had taught me. As I did, the hands around my throat seemed to loosen, and the weight on my chest grew lighter, leaving a sharp pain there instead. Then I heard voices above me, the clatter of boots and a spade, and someone was scraping the earth off me, pulling me up, and shaking me by the shoulders. The breath flooded back into my body and the darkness fell away. I woke up.

  “Susannah!”

  I was staring into Jason's face. He was as white as a sheet.

  I blinked at him.

  “What's the matter?” He was holding me by the shoulders and shaking me.

  “Er …” I couldn't think of anything to say.

  He took his hands away from my shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Umm … Are you OK?” I said.

  For a moment he looked angry, but then he started laughing instead.

  “God, Susie, you gave me a fright.”

  “What?” I said. “What happened?”

  He stopped laughing, and looked at me intently, suddenly serious.

  “Don't you know? Can't you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Susie, you were screaming your head off. You woke me up and I watched you lying there, trying to think what I should do, so then I started shaking you, and then you opened your eyes.”

  The dream came back to me, but I didn't want to think about it now I was awake.

  “Weird, isn't it,” I said. “Anyway, it doesn't matter, I feel fine now.”

  “Bloody weird,” said Jason.

  For a moment I felt embarrassed, and then afraid. What if Jason gave me the push now he thought I was a weirdo? What if Rob did as well? Maybe I wasn't a free spirit and a wanderer and a philosopher like Nietzsche, with a secret destiny and a task to do. Maybe I was just a lonely freak like Dennis, screaming myself awake in the mornings. Maybe one day I'd be left down there forever in my dreams, buried alive, and no one would call me and come and get me out, and the air would run out and I'd suffocate and never wake up again.

  “I think you should see a doctor,” said Jason.

  “Why?” I said. “Honestly, I'm fine, Jason.”

  “Susie.” He looked serious. “You're damn well going to the doctor. Or else. I can't have you making this kind of racket when you wake up in the mornings. I've heard you do it before, but never as loud as this. Have you got one?”

  “A doctor? There's probably one on campus, I suppose,” I said.

  “Well, make an appointment today, OK?”

  I thought about it. “What am I going to say, though? Doctor, doctor, I can't wake up in the mornings? It sounds like one of those jokes: Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains. Well, pull yourself together. He'll think I'm an idiot. I can't, it's too embarrassing.”

  “Just tell him you scream when you wake up in the mornings. I'm sure they can give you something for it. Some kind of downers, mandies maybe. Get some for me as well.” He laughed, but he looked worried.

  Jason told me to stay in bed while he went off and got a thermometer and took my temperature, which turned out to be normal. Then he ran me a bath, and while it was running we had a quick screw. I could hear the bath filling up, but I wasn't worried it would overflow because the hot water came out very slowly, so slowly that it was often almost cold by the time you got into the bath. And anyway, these days sex never took very long with Jason.

  When I'd first met him we'd gone on for hours. He'd wanted to try out all sorts of things I'd never done before: from behind, sitting backwards on top of him, standing up against the wall, slithering about in the bath, dripping wet, or fully clothed, half clothed, wearing kinky underwear, and so on. Jason had obviously been with a lot of women, and he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. I'd never had a boyfriend like that before: in Swansea it had all been pretty straightforward: a kiss here, a fumble there, maybe going the whole hog once or twice before you got engaged. It was a lot more of a blast being with Jason. I didn't really know why he fancied me so much, but he told me he liked my boyish body, and that seemed enough. There was usually something that turned me on during these sessions, but I wouldn't do anything about it, I'd just store it up in my mind and let him carry on and do whatever he wanted until he came, and then I'd think about it and rub myself up against him until I came. We never kissed each other during sex, or talked to each other. After a while he started wanting to try other things, like doing it up the arse, but I wasn't very keen, and I think it was then that he started to lose interest.

  And I suppose I did too. Once the initial thrill wore off, I began to notice that Jason never tried to find out what turned me on, only what excited him, and I was getting fed up with it. I wanted more from him. We didn't discuss it, but lately, we hardly ever had sex, and when we did it had become a bit of a routine, something we both wanted to get over with as quickly as possible.

  This time, it was over in seconds. Afterwards I got straight out of bed and got into the bath, while he went off to make a cup of tea. When he came into the bathroom, he was wearing his forties' silk dressing gown, which was black with dark green spots on it, and a pair of burgundy leather slippers. The colors set off his pale skin and blond hair, and he looked handsome and distinguished as he sat down on a cane chair in the corner, lighting a cigarette.

  “I've got a surprise for you, Susie Q,” he said.

  He took a necklace out of his pocket and handed it to me. I held it in the palm of my hand and looked at it. It was made of small amber beads, each one a slightly different color, and in between each of the amber beads were some even smaller ivory beads. At the back was an ivory clasp shaped like a tiny flower.

  “It's beautiful, Jason,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He came over and put the necklace around my neck, fixing the clasp at the back. Then he kissed my neck.

  “Well, we're celebrating, you know,” he said, as he nuzzled my ear. Now that I was safely in the bath he seemed very affectionate.

  “Celebrating what?” I said. “Pass me a towel.”

  I thought perhaps if I got out, he'd carry on cuddling up to me, but as he handed me the towel, he went back to sit in the chair. So I wrapped the towel around me, and went over to the basin to clean my teeth, admiring my new necklace in the mirror as I did.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  I turned round as he drew a small box out of his dressing-gown pocket. I walked over and perched on the edge of the bath to have a closer look, and as I bent forwa
rd the towel opened. Jason didn't seem to notice.

  The box was small and round and made of ebony, with curly lettering on it picked out in white, shiny stones.

  “Dents de lait,” I read. “Milk teeth?”

  I looked up at Jason. He nodded. His smile was wide. “And look at this.”

  He pressed a little button on the side of the box and it sprang open. Inside, there was a threadbare cushion of black silk. Laid on the silk were two tiny, blackened baby teeth. Above them, inscribed on the lid of the box, were two letters, C.A., and beside these a date: 1796.

  “Who's C.A.?” I asked.

  “Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, daughter of the Prince Regent. The guy who built the pavilion. Those are her teeth. That's what I think, anyway.”

  I looked at the little black teeth. I couldn't decide whether they were sweet or disgusting. I put my hand out to pick one of them up, but Jason gripped my wrist, a bit more tightly than he needed to.

  “Don't touch,” he said quietly.

  Then he closed the box and slipped it back into his pocket, patting it as he did.

  “Is it valuable?” I asked.

  Jason laughed. “Just a bit, Susie. Just a bit.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty grand, at least.” He laughed again. Then he got up from the chair and hugged me. The towel fell off as he did, but he just picked it up off the floor and started drying the ends of my hair, which were wet from the bath.

  “Susie, we're made for life, if I can pull this off I'll never have to work again. We can buy a house in Spain, get a yacht, sail the world … whatever we want.”

  Buying a house in Spain sounded a bit bourgeois, I thought. But sailing the world on a yacht sounded OK.

  “I'd have to finish my degree first,” I said.

  Jason stopped drying my hair, wrapped the towel round me, and kissed me on the nose.

  “You're priceless, Susie,” he said. “Priceless.”

  I walked into the bedroom, thinking about the tooth box. Jason often got excited about making a killing on one of his antiques, but I'd never seen him like this before. He'd never talked about Spain or yachts or sailing round the world before. I could tell this was different.

  I started getting dressed, sitting on the bed. “How much did you pay for it?”

  Jason was dressing too, on the other side of the room. “You won't believe this, Susie. Fifty quid. Fifty quid, and it's worth fifty grand. I can't believe my luck.”

  “Where did you get it from?”

  “That's the amazing thing. I was over at Bear's parents the other day, you know they've got this incredible place just behind Harrods on Cadogan Square, and I saw it there, stuffed in a glass cabinet in the nursery along with a lot of Victorian children's nonsense. I asked Lady Alicia if she could take it out so I could have a look, and when she handed it over I couldn't believe my eyes. It's definitely Regency, whether or not it's Princess Charlotte Augusta's, and the stones in the top are diamonds. So I offered Lady Alicia fifty quid on the spot, and she seemed happy enough with that. Told me to give the money to the butler.”

  “But Jason, it's worth fifty grand. Didn't you tell her that?”

  “Don't be stupid, of course I didn't.” Jason sounded irritable. “You don't tell the person you're buying from how much you can make on the deal, do you? Anyway, I didn't find out until later exactly how much it was worth.”

  “But they're friends, aren't they, Bear's parents? Surely you should tell them?”

  Jason sighed. “Susie, these people are absolutely loaded. The place is stuffed to the gunnels with antiques. They don't even know what they've got there. Fifty quid, fifty thousand quid, is nothing to them. They've got millions.”

  “Yes, but even so …”

  I turned round to look at Jason, who was winding a long brown and cream silk scarf round his neck.

  “… I don't think it's right.” My voice trailed off, leaving a silence.

  Jason ignored me. He finished dressing, putting on his jacket and adjusting his scarf in the mirror. Then he came over and sat on the bed next to me.

  “Look, Susie,” he said, “you don't understand. These people are shits. The whole time I was at school with Bear, they never came to visit him once. In the holidays, he'd go home and they would have gone off skiing somewhere, or to the Bahamas, leaving him with the servants. The poor kid never saw them. You know what he's like now. He needs looking after, and they still don't do a thing for him. Not a fucking thing. I don't owe them anything.”

  He spoke quietly, but his voice was full of anger, and his eyes glittered as he looked into mine. I sensed it was time to let the subject drop.

  Although it was Friday, Jason was heading back up to London that day to get the milk-teeth box valued. He wanted me to come with him, and maybe spend the weekend up there with Bear and Flick and everyone, but I said I couldn't, and that I had some things to do on campus that day. He drove me in and dropped me off, still in a state of excitement. I waved good-bye as he roared away in the Morgan, hoping none of my friends would see me, and then walked up towards the European Common Room.

  On the way through campus I bumped into Cassie, and we stopped off at the crypt for a coffee. Once we got in there we realized they didn't do coffee, and you weren't allowed to smoke unless it was a joint, so we bought a couple of overpriced Red Zingers instead and settled down on the cushions, which stank of patchouli oil and joss sticks. We talked for a bit about the lecture and Feyerabend and Fiona, and then Cassie said she thought she recognized the girl behind the counter. There was a rumor going round that she wrote a column in a soft porn magazine called Knave under the name Lucy Valentine and that she was looking for someone else to take over now she was in her final year.

  “Don't be ridiculous,” I said, glancing over at the girl. She was thin and tall with pale skin and lank, mousy hair, and she was wearing a baggy smock made of orange sacking. “She can't be Lucy Valentine.”

  “You'd be surprised,” said Cass. “You can do anyone up for a photo and they'll look OK. It's the writing that's not so easy. You've got to have a talent for it.”

  “But she's a Buddhist,” I said. “You can't be a Buddhist and write a porn column.”

  “Course you can,” Cassie replied. “This lot are Bhagwans. They're all breadheads into tantric sex. They've got a new book out called From Sex to Superconsciousness, Taylor told me about it.”

  “OK,” I said. “But I still don't think that's her. And anyway, you're not thinking of taking the job, are you?”

  “I don't know. The money's quite good. I mean, if they keep the photo of her at the top, who'd be any the wiser?”

  I thought for a moment. “I wouldn't if I were you. They'll probably want a picture of you and then one of the brethren will see it and you'll be excommunicated.”

  She laughed. “Fair enough. But what if I wore a wig and called myself, I don't know, Mahogany Vixen or something …”

  “That's terrible.”

  “All right, Cleopatra Brown, then, or Melodica Jones.”

  “Cass, there's something I need to talk to you about,” I interrupted. “It's important.”

  Cassie looked at me, surprised. “Oh. Sorry. I was just …”

  “Sorry, it's not your fault. I've just got a lot on my mind, that's all.”

  “What's the matter?”

  I picked up my tea and blew on it. It was still too hot to drink, so I put it down again.

  “You know I'm going out with Jason?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Well, I'm thinking of going out with someone else as well … I mean, instead.”

  “Who is it?”

  “This guy Rob. He's in my tutorial.”

  “Have I met him?”

  “Maybe. He's got kind of darkish hair and he wears a holey sweater …”

  “Oh, I know the one. I think I've seen you with him on campus. Quite young, not bad looking.”

  “Yes, well anyway, I'm thinking of spli
tting up with Jason and going out with him.”

  “Have you …?”

  Cassie tilted her head to one side and looked at me.

  “Yes, we have. Once. But that's not what it's all about really. I just seem to have a lot more in common with him than I do with Jason. We're both into philosophy and …” I thought of the John Martyn gig. “And music and everything. It's more of a laugh than with Jason.”

  Cassie sipped her tea. “Of course it is,” she said. “It's always like that at the beginning.”

  “He's really nice, Cass. It's not just a passing thing, I really like him. And he seems to be into me.”

  “OK,” said Cassie. “But that's not the point, is it?”

  I didn't reply.

  “Look, Susannah,” she went on, “you've slept with this guy once. You don't have to leave Jason just because of that. Wait and see how it pans out.”

  “But what if Jason finds out? He'll be so upset. He's incredibly jealous of me.”

  “Just be careful, that's all. And I wouldn't worry too much about him, he's probably doing exactly the same thing behind your back.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Well, of course. Everybody is, aren't they.”

  I was about to say, “Are they?” but I stopped myself and tried a different tack.

  “But I'm not getting on very well with Jason,” I said. “We hardly ever … you know.”

  I picked up my tea and took a gulp. It burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

  “Is it him who doesn't want to, or you?” Cassie asked, tilting her head to one side again.

  “Both really,” I said, but as I did I realized it was mostly him.