A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  I wanted Jason to stop, but there was nothing I could do. I felt like a paralyzed rabbit in the headlights of a car.

  “Susie's pregnant,” said Jason. “I'm going to be a father.”

  I looked at Bear. The color seemed to have drained out of his face.

  Jason held out his glass with a flourish and clinked it against Bear's. “Here's to us,” he said. Then he turned to me and clinked my glass against his. “Here's to all of us.”

  We each took a sip of the wine, and then Bear and I put our glasses back down on the table. I noticed that Bear's hand was shaking.

  Jason held his glass up against the light to look at it again.

  “Lovely, isn't it.” He seemed not to have noticed that neither of us had spoken.

  “I can't believe it,” he went on. “First the milk-teeth box, and now this. Just as I'm coming up to thirty. Everything's falling into place at last. I'm on a roll here.”

  He looked at us both and laughed. “You two are still in shock, aren't you,” he said. “Well, so am I. We haven't had time to discuss it yet, have we, Susie”—he glanced at me—“but we wanted you to be the first to know.”

  Bear struggled to say something, but failed.

  Jason laughed again, and went on chatting while we listened in silence, until eventually he got up and went into the kitchen to see to dinner.

  It was an opportunity for Bear and me to talk to each other, but neither of us said anything. Bear finished his wine and poured himself another glass, his hands still shaking. He was drinking fast. I hadn't touched mine after the first sip.

  After what seemed like an age, Jason called us into the kitchen and sat us down for the coq au vin. He had set out clean linen napkins, fresh glasses and another bottle of wine on the table, and there was a basket of French bread in the middle of it.

  He brought the casserole over from the stove, holding it with an oven glove.

  “Ta da,” he said.

  As he lifted the lid of the casserole, the rich smell of the meat almost made me gag.

  “Jason, I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm not feeling very well. I think I'm going to go and have a lie down.”

  I got up, thinking he would get up too and come to the bedroom with me so that we could at least have a quick chat before he went back to eat with Bear. But he didn't.

  “You poor darling,” he said. “You must be exhausted. All this excitement. Go to bed and snuggle down. I'll come in after supper.”

  As I got up, he touched my arm. “Goodnight, sweetie pie.”

  I bent over and kissed him on the cheek. “Goodnight. Don't stay up too late.”

  Then I said, “Goodnight, Bear.” I didn't dare look at him. He didn't say anything back.

  As I turned, I saw Jason lean over, touch Bear's arm, and whisper something in his ear. He seemed to have forgotten about me already.

  I turned the light off as soon as I got into the bedroom, opened the curtains, undressed in the dark, and got into bed. The cool sheets felt good against my skin, and the darkness of the room was deep and soft. It was a still, clear night and I could see the stars and a crescent moon outside. I took a deep breath and felt the tang of a thin current of salty air in my nose, coming in through the drafty window. In the distance, I could hear the rhythmic, sucking noise of the sea. I closed my eyes and ran my hands over my stomach and breasts. They were swelling already. This is all wrong, I thought. None of this should be happening.

  Don't trouble your mind, whatever you do …

  The roar of the sea grew nearer, and the darkness deeper and softer. I felt them coming towards me, and I tried to resist them. I needed to stay awake. I needed to think about what to do. But soon they began to wrap me up, and before long I surrendered and fell fast asleep.

  chapter 16

  NEXT MORNING I WOKE UP EARLY. There was a fine tracing of frost on the window pane, and through the open curtains I could see the sun shining in a clear blue sky. Somewhere outside, a bird was singing. When I heard it, I got straight out of bed. I wanted to be out there too.

  Jason was snoring gently, and as I pushed off the sheets and blankets, he turned over, sighed, and went back to sleep. I put on his dressing gown and walked quietly through the sitting room to the bathroom, not wanting to wake anyone as I went. Bear was sleeping on the sofa, his dark head just visible on a pillow under the blankets. Beside him, on the coffee table, were the remains of the night before: a full ashtray, two dirty wine glasses, a bottle, a mirror, a razor blade, and a rolled-up pound note. I tiptoed past him but I needn't have bothered: like Jason, Bear was dead to the world.

  In the bathroom, I went to the loo, washed my face, and cleaned my teeth. Then I opened the dressing gown and looked at my body in the mirror over the sink. I thought I could see that my nipples had darkened and that my breasts looked bigger than usual. I got up on a chair and looked at my belly in profile, and it seemed that there was a curve to it that hadn't been there before. I ran my hands over it, wondering if I was imagining that my stomach had already swelled into this womanly shape. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt curious and amused, as though I had tried on a new dress in a feminine style that I wouldn't normally wear: a dress that I could take off and never wear again if I decided it didn't suit me; a dress that—if I did decide I liked it—would make me look like a different kind of person altogether. I had a choice now: I could either carry on looking like a student girl with long hair and jeans and no bra under her T-shirt; or I could be a sexy, flouncy kind of woman who wore a dress, and proper underwear, and perhaps even stockings with seams up the back. I hadn't had that choice before. I knew that sooner or later, I was going to have to decide what I was going to do; but just for this morning I was going to take a walk outside, try out my new look, and see what the world made of it.

  I brushed my hair, put on some lipstick, and went back into the bedroom to find some clothes. I felt like wearing a skirt, but I couldn't open the wardrobe in case I woke Jason, so I pulled on my knickers, jeans, T-shirt, socks and boots as usual. Then I went into the hall to look for the antique fur coat that Jason had given me. I'd never worn it. It was gray and cinched in at the waist, with a huge shawl collar and four big black buttons to do it up at the front. When I'd tried it on, I'd thought it made me look ridiculous, as though I was a little girl dressing up in my mother's clothes. He'd told me that it was made from lambs taken from their mothers' wombs before they were born and skinned, which had put me off it even more. But now I found it, buried under the other coats, and put it on. I went back into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror, and saw that my hair looked wrong hanging down over my shoulders, so I pinned it up with some old-fashioned hairpins I sometimes used to put my hair up in a bun. I turned up the collar of the coat, put on some more lipstick, and let myself out of the flat.

  Outside, a bitter wind was blowing off the sea, and I was glad to be bundled up in the fur coat. I walked down Brunswick Square to the promenade. Although it was freezing cold, the sky was a piercing blue, and the sun was making the gray sea glint like silver. I sat down on one of the benches and looked out over the railings at the beach. In the far distance, a black tanker was moving slowly across the horizon. Nearby, on the wall of a flowerbed, a fat tabby cat was licking her paws and sunning herself. I breathed in the smell of the sea, rested my head on the back of the bench, closed my eyes, and put my face up to the sun.

  I stayed there for a long time, occasionally opening my eyes to scan the sea and the sky. There didn't seem to be any particular reason to move. The shawl collar of my coat was shielding my ears from the wind; my face was warm in the sun; and the rhythmic suck and crash of the waves on the shore was making the noise of cars and people seem distant and insignificant. There was no one around that morning except me and the tabby cat and the tanker on the horizon; and like them, I didn't see any reason to hurry.

  Eventually I began to feel hungry, so I walked along the promenade before cutting up to the shops on Western Avenue. I bough
t some warm bread rolls and a can of frozen orange juice as a treat for breakfast and headed back to the flat. Bear and Jason were still asleep when I got in, so I stayed in the kitchen, made some coffee in the percolator, buttered the rolls, laid a breakfast tray, and took it into the bedroom.

  The smell of the coffee woke Jason as I came in. He sat up and stretched, his bare chest looking almost blue-white against the pillows.

  “God, that smells good. Just what I need.”

  I poured him a cup of coffee and put the tray on the bed. When he saw the rolls and the orange juice, he said, “Susie, you are a darling,” and began to help himself.

  “Jason, we've got to talk,” I said. I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and there were bags under them.

  “I know, we've hardly had a minute to ourselves, have we.” He began licking the frozen orange juice off a spoon.

  “I don't think you've really taken in what's going on here.” There was an angry edge to my voice.

  He stopped licking and looked at me. “What do you mean? Obviously it's come as a complete shock, but I'm quite pleased about it really. I think it might work out rather well. I think it's time I—we—did something like this.”

  “Well, if you're so pleased about it, why didn't you come to bed with me last night?” I tried to keep my tone even, but I could hear my voice rising.

  Jason picked up a roll and bit into it, saying something indistinguishable as he did, and finishing “… with Bear here.”

  He didn't seem altogether capable of holding a conversation, but I carried on regardless.

  “Well, you could have come in and talked to me when I went to bed, couldn't you?” I said. “You haven't asked me how I feel, whether I want the baby, what I want to do about my course, what I want to do about … us. You haven't asked me anything.”

  Jason frowned, as though he was having trouble understanding my words. He kept sniffing, as though he had a cold coming on.

  “Sorry, Susie, I've only just woken up.” He paused. “So what you're saying is that I haven't asked you anything. How you feel. Whether you want the baby. Of course you want the baby, don't you?”

  “There's no of course about it, Jason. I might, and I might not.”

  “But why wouldn't you?”

  I couldn't believe he could be so obtuse. “Because it's a bloody accident, isn't it,” I said. “Because this isn't what I planned. Because I'm a twenty-year-old student with no money and a boyfriend who lives in bloody cloud cuckoo land.”

  Jason blinked and rubbed his eyes. “But you know I'll look after you. We're going to have plenty of money after I sell the milk-teeth box. It couldn't be a better time for this to happen. What's the problem?”

  I sighed. It was hopeless trying to talk to him.

  “You've just got no idea, have you,” I said. “You haven't got the faintest clue what it means for me to be pregnant.”

  Jason was still frowning, and then he tutted and shook his head.

  “God, I'm an idiot,” he said. “Haven't asked you anything. How could I be such a fool.”

  He got up out of bed naked, went over to a chest of drawers, opened one of them, and rummaged about in it. He took out something, came over with it, and put out his hand. In his palm was a gold ring with a greenish blue stone set in the middle of it.

  “There you are,” he said. “It's an aquamarine. The color of the sea. I was saving it to give you for your birthday, but we can use it as an engagement ring. You'll want us to get married, won't you?”

  He looked up at me. His blue eyes seemed to have darkened and softened. I looked down at him, at his broad chest and his fair-skinned body, and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It's lovely. Thank you.”

  “It's beautifully set, probably late nineteenth century. I got it up at Bermondsey. Of course, I can get you something else if you'd rather …”

  “No, it's fine. It's lovely.”

  “Try it on.”

  I slipped it on the fourth finger of my left hand, just to please him.

  He held my hand and looked at it. “It fits fine. It looks nice on you.”

  “Actually, I think it's a bit tight.” I took it off and put it on the bedside table.

  He seemed to have forgotten that he'd just asked me to marry him, and that I hadn't answered yet.

  He got up and went over to put his dressing gown on. Then he came back and sat next to me on the bed and kissed me on the cheek.

  “The amazing thing is,” he said, “that Flick and Toby are getting engaged. She told me about it last week when I was in London. They're going to throw a big party for the engagement and then have a huge wedding. They're planning it already, or rather Flick is.”

  I said nothing.

  He put his arm round me. “I'm going to phone her and tell her the news right now. And my parents. Who knows, maybe we could make it a double wedding.”

  A wave of nausea came over me. I pushed him away from me and put my head forward over my knees. I felt faint.

  “Please, Jason,” I said. “Stop it. For God's sake.”

  “What is it?” he said. “What's wrong? Morning sickness? Shall I get a bowl?”

  “Yes.” For a moment I thought I was going to throw up, and then the sensation passed. “I mean, no. I don't know.”

  Jason was about to go off for the bowl, but as he got up I gripped him by the shoulder.

  “Stay here a minute,” I said. “Just sit down and listen to me for once. Forget about Bear, Flick, your family, and whoever else for now. This is between you and me. I don't want anyone else involved. OK?”

  My voice came out in a rush, but there was a calm quality to it that took him by surprise.

  “OK then,” he said. “Fine. Fire away.”

  “There are some things you don't know about this,” I began. There was a pause.

  “Go on.”

  “Well …” I didn't want to tell him, but then I thought of the ring and Flick and Toby and his parents and the double wedding and realized that I had to.

  “The thing is, I might want an abortion.”

  Jason said nothing.

  “Or I might not. I haven't decided yet.”

  “OK,” he said. “Fair enough. You need time to think about this. But you know how I feel. I want you—us, I mean—to have this baby.”

  “And there's something else.”

  Jason waited.

  “It might not … there's a possibility that it might not be yours.”

  I looked at him. He pursed his lips together, bowed his head, and began to rock very slightly back and forth beside me on the bed.

  “Sorry,” I added. “Sorry.”

  I put out my hand to touch his shoulder but he pushed it away.

  “I'm sorry,” I repeated. “It was just something that happened.”

  He stopped rocking and looked at me, his eyes glittering. “Just something that happened? What the hell are you talking about?”

  It was rare for Jason to lose his temper, but I knew he was capable of it. We'd only fought once or twice before. I thought of that time in Bermondsey when I'd given him a light slap and his arm had flown up against my shoulder and face with his full force behind it.

  “It all started when you went away and didn't phone me for days. I got fed up and …”

  “Who was it?” he interrupted.

  “Someone on my course. No one in particular,” I said.

  “I knew it,” he said. “That stupid little hippie boy. Are you still seeing him? Or fucking him, should I say?”

  “No, of course not.”

  There was a long silence. Jason stood up, picked up the ring on the bedside table, and put it in his dressing gown pocket. Then he looked down at me, still sitting on the bed.

  “How could you?” he said. “You scrubber.” I looked away from him. “You dirty little scrubber. Get out of my house.”

  I stood up and faced him. I was trembling and my h
eart was beating fast.

  “OK,” I said. “I'll be glad to. Leave you here with your boyfriend. He'll look after you, won't he.”

  Up until that moment, I'd never let the thought that Jason and Bear were lovers come into my mind. But as I spoke, I knew that they were, and that they had been all along, and that somehow I had always known it.

  Jason seemed to take a step back, stagger, and then recover himself.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” I turned away from him, conscious that I didn't want him to hit me, not anywhere near my stomach, anyway. But when he spoke, his voice was quiet and cold.

  “How dare you,” he said. “Now, I'm going to go into the bathroom, and when I come back I want you out of here. Take your things and get out. For good. I never want to see you again.”

  “Fine.” I went over to the wardrobe and began to look through my clothes, turning my back to him. As I did, I heard the door slam behind me.

  chapter 17

  “CASSIE?”

  I was standing in a phone box on Western Road. It stank of urine and stale fags, and I was trying to wedge the heavy door open with my foot to let out some of the smell. As I did I noticed that the bottoms of my flares were trailing in the yellow puddles on the concrete floor, so I stood on tiptoe and tried to push the door with the side of my leg and my elbow instead.

  “Who is it?” asked a male voice.

  “Susannah,” I said, and then I remembered that I should have made up a name. Cassie often told her boyfriend that she was with me when she was with the tutor or off on one of her other flings, and now I realized I might have blown things for her. After all, it was only eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. If she wasn't in Rick's bed, she'd be in somebody else's.

  “Oh, right,” said the voice. I recognized it as Rick's. “Hi, Susannah. I'll just go and get her.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Sorry to phone so early,” I said, but Rick had already left the phone.

  While I was waiting, I breathed into the sleeve of my jacket to try and stop myself gagging on the smell in the phone box. I hoped she wouldn't be too long or I'd have to find another one and ring back.