Emotionally Weird

by Kate Atkinson

  * * *

  I made my excuses and left before Grant Watson remembered I owed him an essay. As I was getting into the lift a voice shouted, ‘Wait for me,’ and a breathless Bob rushed in and said, ‘Beam me up, Scottie. And be quick about it.’

  ‘I’m going down not up, and what are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘I’ve been to a philosophy tutorial,’ Bob said, the unfamiliar word sitting uncomfortably on his tongue. Bob had no idea how he’d ended up taking five of his eight degree papers in philosophy and presumed it must be due to an administrative error somewhere. And, of course, philosophy attracted exactly the wrong kind of girls for Bob – earnest intellectual ones, for example, who wanted to discuss Foucault and Adorno and other people Bob had tried very hard not to hear of. If Bob could have designed a girl he would have started by getting rid of her vocal cords. In Bob’s ideal world, Bob’s girl would be, not me, but Lieutenant Uhura or Honeybunch Kaminski. Or – better still – Shug.

  Bob frowned at a photocopied sheet he must have been given in the tutorial and started catechizing me. ‘Have you ever heard of Secondary Rules of Inference?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Law of the Excluded Middle?’

  ‘Sounds like something from Gilbert and Sullivan.’

  ‘Is that a no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me doubtfully. ‘Monadic predicates?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hypothetical Syllogisms?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Not really?’ Bob said. ‘What kind of an answer is that?’

  ‘OK – no, then.’

  ‘The Law of Identity?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘No,’ I said irritably, ‘this is boring.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Reductio ad Absurdum?’

  ‘Endlessly.’

  Bob waved a sheaf of past exam papers in my face and said, ‘This stuff’s unbelievable. Listen.’ (‘Stuff’ was Bob’s all-purpose word for everything.) He proceeded to read a question, in a ponderous tone, from the exam paper –

  Symbolize the following propositions in the symbolism of Predicate Logic:

  (a) Cupar is north of Edinburgh.

  (b) Dundee is north of Edinburgh.

  (c) Cupar is not north of Dundee.

  (d) Cupar is between Edinburgh and Dundee.

  (e) There are places between Edinburgh and Dundee.

  (f) If one place is south of a second place, then the second is north of the first.

  (g) If one place is between two others, and is north of the first, it is south of the second.

  (‘Nxy’ is ‘x is north of y’; ‘sxy’ is ‘x is south of y’; ‘bxyz’ is ‘x is between y and z’; ‘c’ is Cupar’; ‘d’ is Dundee’; ‘e’ is ‘Edinburgh’; universe of discourse: places). Show by formal derivation that (a), (d), (f) and (g) together imply (b). You may need to supply a further premise expressing one of the properties of ‘is north of’ referred to above.)

  Bob shook his head in a fish farm sort of way. ‘Wow, who thinks this stuff up? What are they on?’ We had exited the lift by now, of course, as it only takes a sentence to travel the two floors to the ground, and then a longish paragraph to reach the Students’ Union where, to a seemingly endless diet of ‘American Pie’ on the jukebox, I plied Bob with (Scotch) pie and beans in an effort to cheer him up. Terri was asleep at a table. She was wearing a long cloak and a pair of high-heeled black boots with a little astrakhan ankle-trim and had a moth-eaten black lace parasol clutched in her nerveless hand. She looked like someone Jack the Ripper would be attracted to. I told Bob to tell her to meet at two o’clock in the Tower and left him playing table football while I went to a women’s liberation meeting.

  ‘Liberated from what,’ Bob said, rolling his eyes, ‘that’s what I don’t understand.’

  * * *

  ‘Before we can produce a blueprint for praxis we have to understand the ideology behind the revolutionary consciousness—’ Heather broke off her one-sided conversation to tell me I was late. ‘You’re late.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  Heather had recently declared that separatism was the way forward for women and the logical conclusion of this, she explained, was that we must all become lesbians. Heather was having some trouble finding anyone willing to take her up on this theory, let alone the praxis, although Philippa had volunteered (‘Well, I’m willing to give it a go,’) as if we were talking about playing a new rule in lacrosse.

  Heather glared at me and then continued zealously, ‘The subordination and oppression of women within capitalism is the real issue. We all know that male hegemony leads to the oppression and subjugation of women.’ Kara nodded in vigorous agreement, without taking her eyes off the piece of petit-point she was absorbed in stitching.

  ∼ Who’s Kara? Nora asks.

  ‘You were asleep.’

  Proteus had been shucked from a Moses basket and was being dandled on Olivia’s knee. He smelt like sour milk and he was drooling like a dog all over Olivia’s velvet dress. Foolishly or ironically or riskily – almost any adverb would do for this situation, Olivia was sitting next to Sheila, Roger Lake’s stay-at-home wife. Sheila had no idea that Roger was having an affair with Olivia, a fact that always added a certain frisson of tension to these meetings for everyone else. Heather, before becoming a lesbian separatist, had also had a fleeting affair with Roger Lake – an affair that Sheila Lake did know about – and which added even more of a frisson to the proceedings.

  Olivia smelt of Miss Dior while Sheila was wearing babyscent, which is a perfume made from Milton fluid, curds and vomit. The newest little Lake was outside in the corridor in a handed-down Silver Cross pram built like a tank.

  ‘Engels says that the emancipation of women remains impossible as long as women excluded from socially productive work…’ This was just like being in one of Archie’s tutorials, except I could tell Heather to shut up when she got too overbearing.

  ‘So you don’t think being a housewife is socially productive work?’ Sheila snapped at Heather. Proteus turned his head and gave her a surprised look.

  ‘Well, Sheila,’ Heather said carefully, ‘in a society defined by the white, western, ruling-class male—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kara said. Philippa barged into the room at that moment, lugging a mountain of student essays and a bag of hamster bedding and apologizing loudly for her lateness. ‘I was doing the Cartesian Circle with first-years,’ she said, making it sound like an exotic eastern European folk dance or a forgotten play by Brecht.

  ‘We were talking about the sexual imperialism of housework,’ Heather said.

  ‘You were,’ Sheila said tartly.

  In my opinion, these meetings would have been much improved by the presence of a few men. Seeing Philippa reminded me of Ferdinand – I wondered if he was awake by now and if I could find the time to visit the McCue house today and come upon him as if by chance.

  I was distracted suddenly from these pleasant thoughts by noticing that, like the eyes in certain portraits, Heather’s nipples seemed to have the uncanny ability to follow you round the room. This is the kind of observation that once made, cannot be unmade. Unfortunately.

  ‘Some of us have to stay home and rear the children,’ Sheila spat at Heather. ‘If it was left up to you, the human race would die out.’

  ‘It won’t be long before men are relegated to a biological footnote anyway,’ Philippa said breezily and then, apropos of nothing, ‘We’re having a party tonight, by the way, everyone’s welcome.’ In my experience, a party is simply an invitation to disaster but everyone in the room nodded and murmured enthusiastically. Everyone except Sheila who reared up like a cobra in front of Heather and said, ‘You think that screwing anyone that takes your fancy is a gender equality issue.’

  ‘Well, Sheila,’ Heather said querulously, ‘if you want to be the private property of some man, that’s up to you.’

  ‘Better to b
e private property than to be a public whore,’ Sheila hissed triumphantly. Heather suddenly grabbed a chair and prodded it at Sheila like a lion tamer (this is how accidents happen) and screamed, ‘At least I’ve worked out how to use birth control.’

  I decided discretion was the better part of valour and made my apologies: ‘I’ve got an essay to do.’ Olivia followed me out, handing Proteus back to Kara who gestured vaguely at the Moses basket at her feet. Olivia replaced him in the basket and pushed it under Kara’s chair as far out of harm’s way as it would go.

  The last thing I heard as she closed the door was a high-pitched wail as if someone had jabbed a baby with a pin.

  ‘I don’t know why people bring children into the world,’ Olivia said. ‘They don’t seem to love them and the world’s so awful anyway.’

  ‘Have you got an essay on George Eliot, Olivia?’ I asked (rather callously, I can see now).

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t choose that one. I’ve got a Charlotte Brontë if that’s any good to you?’ She was going to say something else but then she started to look uncomfortable and fled towards the toilets. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  I followed her and held her lovely blond hair out of the way for her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said politely.

  ‘Do you want that coffee now?’ I asked, but she shook her head and said she was going home. Olivia lived in a civilized flat on the Perth Road that she shared with three other girls. All four of them knew how to cook and use a sewing-machine and they held ‘dinner parties’ and shared Immac and Stergene and did each other’s hair and cleaned up each other’s vomit when necessary. Olivia had a pleasant room painted dark green, full of nice things like oil-lamps and healthy plants and old embroidered linen from Dens Road market. Olivia sat in her pleasant room and listened to Bach and Pachelbel and worked hard, waiting for Roger Lake to squeeze her into his timetable.

  * * *

  At the back of the Tower a student who sold the Socialist Worker on Saturdays thrust a yellow leaflet into my hand. In crude black letters it said, ‘END THE FASCISM NOW! – All concerned meet in New Dines 6.00 p.m.’ A sudden gust of wind caught it and whisked it out of my hands.

  Terri was waiting inside, sitting on a sofa in the foyer of the Tower – a warm place panelled entirely in a lovely russet wood, polished to a lacquered finish.

  ‘I’ve been to the pound,’ she said, looking more downcast than usual.

  ‘The pound?’

  ‘The lost dogs’ home. To look for the yellow dog. He wasn’t there though.’

  Perhaps Chick had taken the yellow dog to his own home, decided to make a pet of it, but that seemed unlikely somehow. I couldn’t even imagine Chick having a home, much less keeping a dog in it.

  We sat in the foyer discussing the dog’s whereabouts right through the two o’clock bell and the general hubbub of people going to lectures and only at ten minutes past the hour could we finally bring ourselves to make our way to Martha’s room.

  We were delayed further by Dr Dick haranguing us in the English department corridor about unwritten work and unattended tutorials and only breaking off to declare himself ill. He did look rather sick – his skin as white and waxy as an arum lily – but no more than usual.

  ‘Do you have symptoms?’ I quizzed. ‘Sore throat? Headache? Swollen glands?’

  ‘Headache,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Pounding, throbbing behind the eyes? Or dull ache at the back of the head?’

  He looked unsure. ‘Well, a sort of sharp, piercing pain at the temple.’

  ‘Brain tumour, then,’ Terri said.

  ‘Go and lie down,’ I suggested gently, ‘and try not to think about marking essays.’ Luckily he took this advice and went off, clutching his forehead and moaning quietly to himself.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Professor Cousins said, leaping out of his room and doing a little jig in front of me. ‘I was hoping I would see you today,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you about our mutual friend.’ There seemed no point in telling Professor Cousins that it was only an hour or so since he had last seen me since time, as we all know, is a subjective kind of thing.

  ‘Our mutual friend?’ I queried.

  ‘The dog of yesterday. And Chick, as well, of course,’ Professor Cousins said fondly. ‘Quite a wag, isn’t he?’

  ‘We have to go to Martha’s creative writing class now,’ I explained to him; ‘we’re already late.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Professor Cousins said. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what creative writing really is. And does it have an opposite?’ he laughed, manoeuvring himself between us and taking an arm of each as if we were about to do some complicated reel.

  * * *

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Martha said, ‘you’re so late you’re almost early. It’s now twenty minutes past the hour,’ she said sternly, ‘that’s twenty minutes late, if you can’t manage the math. Sitting in again?’ she added sharply to Professor Cousins.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he said. ‘I’m so terribly interested in what you’re doing.’

  Martha always bade us move our terminally uncomfortable chairs into a circle, as if we were in therapy or about to play one of those getting-to-know-you games – ‘My name is Effie and if I was an animal I would be a…’ But what would I choose to be? Not a domestic pet, surely, forever at the whim and behest of someone who thought they owned you, and certainly not a beast of the field useful only for its milk and meat and skin. Some shy creature perhaps, hidden deep in the untamed forest?

  There was the usual roll-call of names – Andrea, Kevin, Robin, Kara, Janice Rand, Davina. Davina was a keen mature student from Kirkcaldy, a divorcee and one of the few grown-ups at the university. Shug didn’t do the creative writing paper, saying that his mother’s weekly Willie Low shopping-list was a more creative piece of writing than anything produced at the university. Bob did do the creative writing paper, he just didn’t know it. For weeks, Martha had stood at the front of the class at the beginning of every hour and frowned at the class list in front of her, puzzling, ‘Robert Sharpe? Does anyone know a Robert Sharpe?’ I never spoke up, I didn’t really want to admit to knowing Bob.

  I was sitting next to Terri – a black wolf prowling the night. Terri’s assignment for Martha was poetry. Terri’s poems came under the collective title My Favourite Suicide and you can probably imagine the content matter. Some of them (although undoubtedly derivative) were surprisingly cheerful –

  I drank the glass of

  milk you left on the

  bedside table. it was

  sour. thank you

  Martha was wearing a long cashmere plaid woven from the dull colours of infinity, that she had fixed, toga-style, with a brooch made – disturbingly – from the claw of some game bird, a grouse or a ptarmigan maybe, set with a purple amethyst.

  Andrea was making a great show of sharpening her pencils and laying everything out on her little table while Kevin was staring at the space Olivia’s feet would have occupied if she had been there.

  ‘I think we should begin with a little exercise to flex our writing muscles,’ Martha said, speaking very slowly as if she was on prescription drugs but I think it was just her way of trying to communicate with people less intelligent than she thought she was. How tedious this all seemed. I wasn’t sure I could sit still for a whole hour.

  ‘Write me a paragraph,’ Martha enunciated clearly, ‘in just ten minutes, which incorporates these three words – bracteate, trowel and vilifies.’

  ‘That’s four words,’ objected Robin, sitting next to me in the circle. Robin was wearing a leather trench coat that had apparently once belonged to a member of the Waffen SS.

  Martha gave him a considered look. ‘Not the and,’ she said finally.

  ‘Not the and,’ Professor Cousins chuckled, ‘a strange sentence if ever there was one; it could only possibly make sense in context, couldn’t it?’ Martha made a resigned kind of noi
se and busied herself with the insides of her briefcase.

  Professor Cousins was sitting between Kara and Davina. Davina was writing an historical thing about Shakespeare’s mother, Wordsworth’s sister or Emily Brontë’s hitherto unmentioned illegitimate daughter – I could never quite remember which. Personally, I don’t think it right to make up things about real people – although I suppose there’s an argument for saying that once you’re dead you’re not real any more. But then we have to define what we mean by real and none of us wants to go down that tortuous path because we all know where it leads (madness or a first class honours, or both).

  Martha turned back to the class and said sternly, ‘A paragraph with structure to it, not abstract free-fall. No nonsense.’

  I wrote down bracteate, trowel and vilifies and then sat staring at them. I seemed to remember doing this exercise in one of the many primary schools I had attended, although with more useful words (sand, bucket, red, or perhaps porridge, bowl, hot). I had no idea what bracteate meant. It sounded like a kind of seaweed. I doodled helplessly.

  Professor Cousins meanwhile was labouring diligently over his work, making strange exploded diagrams with spidery connecting lines. He was too far away for me to copy anything from him; the light in Martha’s room was scanty. Kara, on his other side, leant over surreptitiously to try and see what he was writing but Professor Cousins put his arm protectively around his scribblings, like a small boy. The Moses basket that contained Proteus had been shoved more or less into the middle of the circle of chairs, as if he was going to be the centrepiece of a voodoo ritual.

  Kara was writing a Lawrentian kind of novella about a woman who goes back to the land to discover her emotional and sexual roots, a journey which seemed to involve unnecessarily large amounts of dung and mud and seed of all kinds, but mainly male. Strangely, the genteel Martha seemed to relate to this. At some previous point in her life she chose to suddenly ‘share’ with us, she had run a smallholding in upstate New York with her first husband, a famous playwright whom she couldn’t believe none of us had heard of. Martha said she and this first husband had found ‘the continuous juxtaposition of the cerebral and the bestial in country life very stimulating’. As she ‘shared’ she fingered the bird claw at her neck, a faraway look in her eyes.