A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  “Bloody hell, Suse.” Cassie's voice came on the line. “Bit early, isn't it?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She lowered her voice. “Good job I was here, too,” she said in an accusing tone.

  “I'm really sorry, Cass. But it's kind of an emergency. I'm in a bit of a heavy situation.”

  “What's happened?”

  “I've split up with Jason. Just now, actually.” My voice started to quaver slightly, but I kept it as steady as I could. “I'll explain it all when I see you. But for now, I just wondered if I could use your room on campus. I've got the key.”

  “Of course you can.” Cassie's tone had changed to one of concern. “But why don't you come round to mine? You sound upset.”

  “No, honestly, I'm fine.” I couldn't face the prospect of telling Cassie I was pregnant just yet, and anyway, we probably wouldn't have a chance to talk with Rick hovering in the background.

  “Will you be all right on your own over there? Shall I come and see you? I'm worried about you.”

  The more kindness she showed the worse I felt. Tears started streaming down my face. I covered the receiver with my hand in case I started sobbing.

  “Susannah?”

  “Sorry, Cass.” I spoke as normally as I could but my voice came out oddly strangulated. “I've got to go now. This phone box stinks so much I think I'm going to throw up. We'll talk later. Thanks a million. Bye.”

  I put the phone down before she could reply.

  I heaved open the door of the phone box and took a deep breath of fresh air, which smelt of car exhausts. After the reek of the phone box, it was delicious. I picked up my suitcase, which I'd left outside to avoid the puddles, and headed up to the station to catch the Falmer train.

  As I walked up the road, a bus to Hanover came past. By the time I got to the bus stop it was still there, with a queue of people waiting to get on. For a moment, I had an impulse to join it, get on the bus, and go over to Rob's. I pictured the scene in my mind. He'd open the door and I'd be there with my suitcase, and I'd tell him I'd made my decision, that I'd split up with Jason at last, and now I'd come to be with him. He'd be thrilled, of course, and we'd go up to his room, and he'd tell me how much he loved me and we'd lie on the bed and he'd stroke my hair and make me feel secure, and then … and then I'd have to say, but there's just one thing … I thought of how he'd described his relationship with Beth, about how he'd said he wasn't into that whole marriage and family thing, and I realized he'd be horrified when I told him I was pregnant. He'd probably be quite nice about it on the surface, but I'd be able to see that underneath, he'd want to get rid of me at the first opportunity. Pregnancy and babies and stuff just didn't come into Rob's world: they weren't his scene at all. He wouldn't know how to deal with the situation, he'd just be scared and disgusted and embarrassed and think I was an idiot. I couldn't face the rejection of that at the moment, not after what had just happened with Jason. There was no way I could go over to his house and see him now; in fact, it would be better to steer clear of him completely until I'd got out of this mess.

  I walked past the bus queue without slowing down, and made my way up Western Avenue towards the clock tower. The streets were busy with Saturday shoppers. I passed a couple of girls standing looking into a shop window. They were about my age but neatly dressed, with long shiny hair and pink lipstick, wearing identical, spotless off-white jackets. They were trying to decide which shoes to buy, and discussing which disco to go out to that night. They were the kind of girls I normally thought of as stupid and straight, shop girls probably, who lived with their parents and got engaged and saved up for years, and only got married when they'd bought every last teaspoon for their new house. But just for a moment I wished I was like them, part of the old pattern of life where everything was set up for you in advance and all you had to do as you went along was to decide between this pair of shoes, this boyfriend, this disco, or that. I wanted to have a life like theirs, where trivial decisions were the only ones you had to make. Then I realized that, up until yesterday, I had.

  As I passed the clock tower, I noticed that a new record shop had opened there. I glanced in the window as I went by, and saw that inside, it had cut-outs of clouds hanging down from the ceiling, and brown curvy shelves everywhere that looked like mounds of earth, with records poking out of them. There was even a small cardboard tree in one corner, with LPs hanging off it. I hung about pretending to look at the albums in the window display and peering into the shop to see what was going on. Everyone in there was male, and everyone had long hair; there were no straight guys at all. Then, in the corner, I spotted two men with shorter, curly hair, talking to each other. With a shock, I recognized both of them. One of them was Belham, and the other was John Martyn.

  John Martyn had his back to me, and Belham was showing him a record he'd pulled out of a mound of earth beside him. They moved over to the window to look at the sleeve in the light, and as they did, Belham saw me peering in. He took a moment to register who I was, then smiled at me and gave me a little wave. I smiled back and raised my hand but didn't wave it, in a gesture I hoped looked reasonably cool. I prayed that, at that distance, he wouldn't be able to see that I'd been blubbing, and that my nose hadn't gone red and shiny, which it normally did when I cried.

  Before they got any nearer, I turned and scurried off up the hill to the train station, hoping Belham wouldn't notice me carrying the suitcase. For some reason, carrying suitcases in public always made me feel bad. Whenever I had to take one anywhere, even on holiday, I felt as though it showed that I had no proper life at all: nowhere to live, no friends, no one to help me, nothing in the world except my pathetic, unnecessary belongings weighing me down and making my life impossible. For that reason, I usually traveled light. But this time, there'd been no alternative.

  Once I got to the station, I hopped onto the Falmer train, which was pretty busy. The passengers were all shoppers, and I was the only person traveling with a suitcase. It wasn't a very big one, but wherever I put it, it was in the way. People began to look at me and tut as they tripped over it. It seemed to draw attention to the fact that something odd was going on in my life, and I began to hate it. When I got off the train, I felt like leaving it behind, but that would have seemed even odder, and anyway I didn't want to get arrested for freaking out everyone on the train thinking that there was an IRA bomb in there.

  Because of the suitcase, I had to go down the underpass to cross the dual carriageway, instead of nipping through the hole in the hedge like I usually did. I was dreading walking through campus with the bloody thing, but luckily there was no one around. I hadn't realized how deserted the place was at weekends. I stopped at the campus shop and bought some teabags, milk, bread, butter, baked beans and oranges to keep me going for the weekend, still feeling conspicuous, but there was no one in the shop except the cashier. In fact, there were no signs of life anywhere until I got to Cassie's student hall, and even then I only saw a few foreign students making homesick telephone calls in the lobby.

  I got up to Cassie's room, feeling relieved that I'd made the whole journey through campus without anyone seeing me. I fished out her key and unlocked the door. Inside, everything was very neat and tidy, probably because Cassie hardly ever came here. There wasn't much to mess up, anyway: a single bed in the corner, a chair, a desk with an anglepoise lamp and some shelves above it, and on the other side of the room a washbasin with some built-in cupboards around it. On the floor were some petrol blue and black carpet squares and there was a matching petrol blue and black curtain in the window with a sixties' design of circles on it. Outside the window was a bank of grass.

  It was all very plain and unfashionable, not my taste at all. In fact, I'd never noticed any of it when I'd been in here before, but as I looked around now I thought, this is just what I want. I knew I didn't like art deco lamps and old leather sofas and all that stuff that Jason was so keen on; but now I realized I didn't like Rob's Indian scarves and picture
s of Che Guevara that much either. I began to wonder what my taste actually was. It wasn't this, but it was something like it. All I wanted in a room was a bit of peace and quiet: white walls with nothing on them, a bed to lie down on, a desk to sit at, a lamp to read by, a window with a patch of grass outside. And maybe something beautiful to look at, but I hadn't worked out yet what that could be.

  I dumped my suitcase on the floor and hung my jacket up on the hook on the back of the door. I went over to the basin and washed my face and hands, then looked for a towel in the cupboard. I found some towels and sheets neatly piled up in there, just the way they would have been in my mother's linen cupboard at home, which surprised me. I pulled out a towel and dried myself, and as I did I noticed it was embroidered in one corner with the name “Keziah” and a cross. For a moment I wondered what it meant, and then I realized it was Cassie's name, and that it must have been hand-sewn for her by her mother.

  I went over to the bed and noticed that there were fresh sheets on it. It was still only lunchtime, but as I looked at it, the temptation to get into it, go to sleep, and forget about the world, overwhelmed me. I opened my suitcase and took out an old viyella nightdress that my mother had given me years ago. It was pale blue with pale pink flowers on it. I only wore it if I was sleeping by myself and no one could see me. I drew the curtain over the window, took off my clothes, and put on the nightdress. I got the Heidegger out of my bag and got into bed, relishing the feel of the clean sheets against my skin. I began to read in the darkened room, but I was too tired to concentrate. I put the book down, pulled up the covers, and turned to the wall. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell fast asleep.

  By the time I woke up, it was dark outside. I got out of bed, dressed quickly, and went down the corridor to find a loo. Then I went back to the room, picked up my food, and took it into the kitchen. I was dying for a cup of tea.

  Fortunately there was no one in the kitchen. I made the tea, drank it, and then realized I was ravenously hungry. I heated up some beans, toasted some bread, buttered it, and scoffed the lot. Then I sliced some more bread and ate it with cheese, finishing off with an orange. I was still hungry. I wished I'd bought some cake or something. Tomorrow was Sunday and the shops would be shut.

  Just as I was contemplating another round of beans on toast, a girl walked into the kitchen. Damn, I thought. This was exactly the kind of situation I'd dreaded, hanging out with first-year students in the kitchens on campus. She was a good-looking girl, tall and slim with long legs and long blond hair, but there was something about her that told you she hadn't realized it. She looked lonely and apologetic, somehow. I wondered if she was a Christian with stuffed animals on the bed.

  I was about to make a move towards the door when she spoke.

  “Umm … Hhh …” she said.

  Oh no, I thought. A spastic.

  “Umm … Hhhh …”

  She was obviously making a tremendous effort to say something. I couldn't go now. Fuck, I thought. If only I'd taken the food back to my room and eaten it there.

  “Umm … Hhh … hhh … hello.” She finally got it out.

  “Hi,” I said, as briefly as I could. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck here with her. If she took that long to say hello, I could be here all night waiting for “how are you.”

  “I'm Clare,” she continued. She sounded surprisingly normal all of a sudden. Perhaps she wasn't a spastic after all.

  “I'm just making some ummm … hh … hh … hot chocolate. D'you want some?”

  I realized what it was now. She had a terrible stutter. It only seemed to come out on some words, and not on others.

  She looked up and smiled at me. When she did, I realized that she was actually a stunning looking girl. She had very blue eyes almost the color of her jeans, and her skin was tanned, with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose.

  Hot chocolate, I thought. This is what it's come to. It'll be pillow fights and apple-pie beds next. But I had to admit that in fact, just at the moment, a cup of hot chocolate was exactly what I wanted. And, despite her speech impediment, Clare seemed OK. She was very pretty, anyway, too pretty to be a Christian.

  “Thanks. That would be great. I'm Susannah, by the way.”

  I offered her some of my milk for the hot chocolate and we said nothing more as we made it. Not surprisingly, Clare seemed to like keeping small talk down to a minimum. When the hot chocolate was poured out, we stood and talked for a bit, blowing on our drinks. Most of the time, she was able to speak normally, but there were certain words she couldn't say, often ones that began with vowels. When that happened, she'd put an “umm” in front of the word and keep going at it, again and again, until it came out. I sensed that the best thing to do was just to wait while she did it, rather than to supply the word, which was usually pretty obvious.

  After a while, I got used to the way she spoke, and she began to talk more easily. It turned out that her parents lived in Kenya, and that she was studying zoology. She was going to go back there when she'd finished her degree to become a scientist of some sort. She was particularly interested in elephants. I couldn't imagine someone whose interests were more different from mine, but I quite liked her. Maybe living on campus for a while wasn't going to be so bad after all, I thought. At least it made a change from Jason and art deco lamps and quadraphonic stereos and Chateau de Chasselet.

  When the conversation came round to me, I wasn't very keen to supply details. I just said I'd split up with my boyfriend and was staying in my friend's room here for a while, till I got something else sorted out. Then we finished our drinks, washed up our cups, and went back to our rooms. Just before we did, she told me her room number and said I could drop round some time if I wanted, and I did the same.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking. I didn't have much stuff, but I enjoyed deciding where to put everything. The cupboards were all empty: apart from the sheets and towels, Cassie didn't seem to keep any of her belongings in the room. When I'd finished, I sat down at the desk, fixed the anglepoise lamp in the right position, and got stuck into Heidegger.

  I spent the rest of the evening reading and making notes, studying at my desk in the way you were supposed to, instead of lounging about on a cushion on the floor like I usually did. I stopped thinking about Jason, about being pregnant, about what I was going to do. I just acted like a student, a second-year student studying conscientiously for a degree in philosophy. It was a situation I'd always avoided like the plague, living like an ordinary student on campus, but now that it was happening to me it seemed to be a blessed relief.

  At around one in the morning, I got up from my desk, yawned, and went to bed. It was very quiet as I lay there in my viyella nightdress in Cassie's clean white sheets. Just as I was falling asleep, I heard an owl hoot and a mouse squeak somewhere outside my window, but it didn't disturb me. In here, tucked up in my single bed, it all seemed very safe and ordered.

  I slept a dreamless sleep until morning.

  chapter 18

  I WOKE UP EARLY ON SUNDAY MORNING. It was still dark outside, but I got up and went out to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I took it back to bed with me, drew the curtain, and watched the sky lighten over my patch of grass as the dawn became the day. It seemed to happen very gradually yet very fast, in a way that had always mystified me as a child, and still did. I realized I hadn't seen the dawn come up for a long time.

  While I watched, I thought about philosophy. Tomorrow was my last tutorial with Belham before the end of term. I was supposed to have handed in a title for my Modern European Mind dissertation, but I hadn't had time to think about it. I'd been planning to do something about Nietzsche and the way he ranted on in The Birth of Tragedy about philosophy having become a dry, decadent, soulless activity in the West instead of a Dionysian celebration of life and its carnal pleasures, but that seemed a bit abstruse now that I had more pressing questions to tackle—such as what I was going to do about being pregnant.

 
I started to wonder whether there was anything in Human, All Too Human that would help me. I cast my mind back and tried to remember the words from the preface. What was it now, something about the task, the secret destiny, commanding us like …

  I reached over quickly and picked up my bag, which was lying on top of a pile of clothes on the floor by the bed. I scrabbled about in it looking for the sheet of paper with the Human, All Too Human quotes on it, and finally found it tucked away in a corner. It was covered in grease stains from a packet of cheese biscuits that I'd put in and forgotten about. I brushed off the crumbs, unfolded the paper, smoothed it out, and read:

  The secret power and necessity of this task will hold sway within and among our various destinies like an unsuspected pregnancy, long before we have looked the task itself in the eye or know its name …

  Incredible, he'd used those very words. For Nietzsche, the task, the secret destiny was like an unsuspected pregnancy. He'd seen it as a metaphor, not a reality—because he was a man. But my task, my secret destiny, as a woman, wasn't a possibility among many others, like an unsuspected pregnancy: it was an unsuspected pregnancy. I couldn't change direction, or wander off and leave it behind. Maybe the male philosopher could be a free spirit and a wanderer, but a female one couldn't. I was attached, held down to life, by sheer virtue of my biology; even without knowing it, I'd become joined to the fetus growing inside me. So I couldn't fly about, like a bird, living between yes and no. It wasn't an option for me. Unlike the male free spirit, the wanderer and philosopher, I had to make a decision.

  I crumpled the greasy paper into a ball and chucked it over to the bin by my desk. Then I picked up my mug of tea and took another sip. Rob had been right about Nietzsche. He wasn't much good when it got down to the nitty gritty of the human social world. He wasn't going to be any help to me, not in my present condition anyway. He was a man, and a philosopher, and he just didn't deal with questions like what to do about being pregnant. Neither did any of the philosophers I'd come across so far, of course—they were all of them men—but I sensed for some reason, I wasn't sure why, that this new one, Heidegger, might possibly be able to help.