A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  I went downstairs, stood in line to take out Being and Time, had my book stamped, and then walked over to the Falmer Bar to make my call. There were two phones on the wall in the corridor outside it, and a dark-haired, good-looking guy was talking on one of them. I turned my back to him and dialed the number on my card. I could have gone back over to the surgery, but phoning seemed easier, more impersonal. When the receptionist answered, I gave her my name and asked for the result of the test.

  “Jones … Jones,” she said, looking for it. “Now what was it for?”

  I lowered my voice. “Pregnancy,” I said.

  “Sorry?” she asked.

  I hunched over the receiver. “Pregnancy,” I said again, slightly louder.

  “What was that?”

  I was just summoning up the courage to bellow the word into the receiver when she found what she was looking for.

  “Ah, right, Susannah Jones. Now let me see …”

  I wondered whether this woman was trying to torture me.

  “Yes, right, it's positive.”

  Everything slowed down. I looked at the people passing by in the corridor and they were moving in slow motion. I felt the phone receiver in my hand, and it weighed a ton. There was a silence around me that stretched for miles.

  “Miss Jones?”

  I summoned my voice, which came slowly up from my chest.

  “Miss Jones, are you there?”

  “Yes,” I said, finally.

  “Would you like to make an appointment to see the doctor?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you.”

  There was a silence. Then I said, “I'm going to put the phone down now. Good-bye.”

  I put the receiver back on the hook and stared at the wall. I noticed that the bricks were very pitted and a strange brownish red, with mustard-colored cement in between them. The phone was gray, not black, and made of shiny plastic. I looked down at my feet and saw that I was standing on some gray linoleum tiles with black streaks on them. It was hard to tell whether the streaks were dirt or part of the pattern. I looked at them for a long time and noticed that they were so regular that they must be part of the design. They were probably chosen to blend with the dirt.

  I walked out of the Falmer Bar and out of campus to get the train. All the way home, I kept noticing the details of everything, and asking myself questions. The seats on the train: why did the fabric on them feel like the hairs of a brush? Were they made of some kind of carpet? Was this fabric especially made for train seats? The scratched bus windows: were they glass or were they plastic? Why were they so yellow? Was it nicotine, or was it just the way plastic went after a while? The tarmac on the road: were those blackened patches pieces of chewing gum covered in grime, or could they be something else? Knots of tar perhaps?

  It was the same with human beings. When the man in the train office spoke to me, I found it hard to distinguish his voice from the voices of the people behind me in the ticket queue. On the bus, the conductor's voice seemed to merge with the voices of the passengers chatting to each other, and I didn't realize that he was speaking to me. It was as though every feature of the world around me, every sight and every sound, was screaming at me for attention and I had no way of telling which one mattered and which one didn't.

  As I came up to the door of the flat, I found myself looking at it as though for the first time, noticing the big black door handle and the way the dark blue paint was chipped here and there with white showing through underneath. I wondered whether the door had been painted white before, or whether it was just the undercoat. I let myself in and climbed the stairs to our floor. When I got there, I saw that the light was on in the flat. It was shining through a small stained-glass window above the door, and I saw the way it threw patches of red and green onto the wall of the hallway, illuminating it brightly and changing the color of the wallpaper. I looked up at the little window and noticed that it was Victorian, with a picture of a small brown singing bird etched in the middle of it, and on either side, pieces of colored glass bordered with gray leading. It was pretty. I'd never noticed it before.

  I got out my key to unlock the door and then I paused. I had forgotten that the light shining through the door meant something. It meant that Jason was in. I could hear his footsteps now, coming down the hall. As he came nearer, I reminded myself that he was my boyfriend, and I was going to have to tell him what had happened.

  chapter 15

  WHEN JASON OPENED the door, it was as though I was looking at him for the first time. I thought how tall and handsome he was, with his fair hair and his square shoulders and his sparkling blue eyes. When he hugged me and burrowed his head into my hair, kissing me on the neck, I thought how lucky I was to have such a good-looking, affectionate boyfriend; and when he helped me take off my jacket and scarf, hung them up, and led me down the corridor to the sitting room, I thought how warm and comfortable his flat was and what a nice place it would be to live in with him.

  Cajun moon, where does your power lie

  As you move across the southern sky

  A record was playing as we came into the sitting room, and I listened to the words, even though Jason was talking to me.

  “… It really all depends on whether it was from George III or the Prince Regent,” he was saying. “There's no problem really, it's not that it's worth any less, it's just that you've got to find the right collector.”

  The room was brightly lit. All around were statues of nymphs dancing, holding balls of light in their hands. In the middle, under a pool of light from a fringed standard lamp, was a coffee table with tools and wires piled up on it. Beside it was a battered leather armchair and a sofa. I sat down on the sofa. Jason sat down cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table with a screwdriver in one hand and a nymph in the other, and began to thread an electric cord through her body. As he worked, he carried on talking.

  “We know it belonged to Princess Charlotte Augusta, but the question is, who gave it to her. I'm pretty sure it was from her father, the Prince Regent, but Dalton isn't convinced. And it's only the Prince Regent stuff that he collects.”

  I had no idea what he was on about, so I kept quiet and listened.

  “… He doesn't think the Prince would have given the baby a present like that. Apparently, the night of the marriage was practically the only time he ever had sex with his wife. He hated her. The baby's birth was seen as a disaster.”

  What have you done, Cajun moon …

  I began to feel queasy, but I said nothing.

  “He thinks the box might have been a present from the baby's grandfather, George III,” Jason went on.

  The box, I thought. The box. Then I remembered the box that Jason had shown me, the one he'd got from Bear's parents, the one that was supposed to make his—our—fortune.

  He looked up at me. “You know, King George, the mad, inbred one.”

  Now I got it. He was talking about the milk-teeth box, and how it might not have been a present from the baby's father, the Prince Regent, but from her grandfather, George III, and how this somehow made a difference to something.

  “You saw those letters the Princess wrote. She had a terrible childhood. Once she was born, neither of her parents wanted her around,” Jason continued, “so the poor kid was stuck away somewhere, and the only person who bothered to visit her was Granddad. She used to clap her hands together when she saw him. Sad, isn't it?”

  I tried to focus my mind on the tooth box. I thought of the portrait of the robust little girl I'd seen at the Pavilion, and her tiny blackened teeth lying on the frayed silk inside the box. I thought of how her selfish parents sent her away after she was born and never went to visit her. Yes, it was sad. But then I remembered the diamonds spelling out dents de lait on the lid of the box, and I thought, well, somebody must have loved her.

  I hadn't answered Jason, and now I realized that he was looking at me.

  “Are you all right, Susie?” he said. “You look as though you've seen a ghost
.”

  “I'm fine,” I said. “Just a bit … tired, I think.”

  “Let me get you a drink, that'll perk you up. I'm on G & T.”

  I noticed a tumbler sitting on the table beside the wires. You could see the bubbles of the tonic and the greasy slick of gin in it, with a slice of lemon and some ice cubes. I found myself wondering why the lemon stood upright in the glass, and how much juice came out of it into the drink, and whether it made any difference to the taste of it.

  “No thanks,” I said. The thought of drinking a gin and tonic turned my stomach.

  “Cigarette, then?”

  “God, no.”

  Jason lit one for himself. “Well, let's have some wine later over dinner instead, I've got a really nice bottle for us tonight. Bear's coming down for the weekend. He should be arriving any minute. I'm doing coq au vin, it's all cooked and ready, waiting to go. I've just got to heat it up when he arrives. I hope you're hungry, Susie Q.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I noticed that there was a faint smell of chicken in the flat. And I realized that if it got stronger, as it would do when he heated it up, I would feel very sick, and possibly even vomit.

  I was going to have to tell him.

  “Jason,” I said. “I …” My voice trailed off. I couldn't finish the sentence.

  Jason looked up at me, surprised. “What is it?”

  “It's just that …”

  “Go on, spit it out.”

  “I don't … I don't think I'll be able to eat the coq au vin, I'm not hungry at all. Sorry.”

  Jason gave a short laugh. “Well, don't get your knickers in a twist about it.”

  He got up and came to sit on the sofa with me, still holding his screwdriver. He put his arm round me and tilted his head to look into my face.

  “What's the matter? You don't look right at all. Did you go to the doctor this week about your screaming?” He'd been bullying me for weeks to go.

  “Yes, I went today, actually.” I tried to sound smug, but failed.

  “And what did he say?”

  “Well, I had a test …”

  “What kind of test?” There was a note of panic in his voice.

  I raised my head and looked him in the eye. I heard my voice break the silence.

  “Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with me, I'm perfectly normal.” I was trying to sound calm. “But I'm pregnant.”

  Jason dropped the screwdriver and it clattered against the leg of the coffee table. We listened to the sound of it. Then we both looked down at it lying on the floor.

  Eventually, he spoke. “You're not, are you?”

  “Well, I wouldn't say I am if I wasn't, would I?” I sounded angry, even though I hadn't, up until that moment, felt angry at all.

  Jason took a deep breath, held it, and let out a sigh. Then, to my astonishment, his face broke into a broad grin. He put his arms around me and pulled me onto his knee, hugging me, murmuring my name and stroking my hair. I felt awkward. He was treating me like a baby.

  “Pregnant!” he said. “My little Susie, pregnant!”

  A wave of fear came over me when I heard his words, and the hairs on my scalp prickled. This was all wrong. To Jason, I was a child, a pregnant child. He didn't seem to understand what was really going on here. But at the same time, his excitement was infectious, and for the first time since I had heard the news, I felt a tiny shaft of pleasure deep inside me.

  Jason shook his head. “I can't believe it,” he said. “How on earth …? How did it happen?” He was smiling at me, bemused.

  “The usual way,” I said. The anger was still there.

  “OK, sorry, of course … but … I thought you were on the pill.”

  “I was. But I forgot to take some of them.”

  “I can't believe it,” he repeated, shaking his head again. “Me, a father.”

  I realized with a shock that Jason had taken it for granted that I was going to have the baby, and that it was his. It was all going too fast. I shouldn't have told him. I should have made my mind up first about what I wanted to do, and then told him my decision. As it was, I'd just blurted it out before I was ready and messed everything up.

  “Actually, I'm not sure …” I began. “I don't know …”

  At that moment, the doorbell rang.

  Jason got up to answer the door. I heard voices in the corridor, and then the voices went off to the kitchen. I looked around the sitting room again. It was exactly the same as it had been last time I came in here, yet I felt as though it was the first time I'd ever seen it. I wondered what it would be like if I had come here as a stranger, been introduced to Jason and the flat, and been asked to decide whether I liked them or not, whether I wanted this man to be my boyfriend and this flat to be my home. What would I have decided? I wasn't sure yet. They were both nice, but I hadn't quite made up my mind.

  Bear came in with a gin and tonic in his hand, looking dapper in a forties' style pinstripe suit, his long, dark hair flopping over his forehead. He was wearing a pair of John Lennon specs with pale pink glass in the lenses. His clothes and hair were flamboyant, but there was something careful and neat about him all the same.

  “Hello, old stick.” He bent over to peck me on the cheek, then sat down beside me on the sofa.

  “How's it going?” I said.

  “Sheer hell,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said. We both laughed.

  Underneath the suit, he was wearing a granddad shirt with the top buttons undone. His skin was smooth and olive-colored, with one or two silky, dark hairs on his chest. I thought he looked a bit like Rob. I wondered, if I hadn't known he was Bear, whether I would have fancied him. I thought probably not, but I wasn't sure why. After all, he was good looking and well dressed, and I liked him. In fact, in many ways, I liked him better than Jason. I felt closer to him, he was more the same type of person as me. So why did I sense that he was somehow off limits? Was it just because he was Jason's best friend? I started thinking about it, asking myself questions in the same way that I'd done with the seats on the train and the windows in the bus and the undercoat on the front door and the lemon in the gin and tonic. Then I thought, I've got to stop doing this, it's weird behavior.

  Jason came in with a bottle of uncorked wine in one hand and three empty wine glasses in the other.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Hurry up and finish your drink, Bear. We're celebrating tonight. In style.” He waved the bottle of wine. “Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.”

  I didn't expect Bear to ask what we were celebrating, because with Jason we were always celebrating something, but this time he did.

  “Wow,” he said. “Must be something special. What year is it?”

  “1966,” replied Jason. He put the bottle and the glasses down on the coffee table, clearing away the tools and the wire.

  Bear watched him and grinned. “Who'd a thought thirty year ago,” he said, adopting a ridiculous Yorkshire accent, “that we'd a been sitting here drinking Chateau de Chasselet, eh Josiah?”

  Jason laughed and sat down on the sofa between me and Bear.

  “You're right there, Obadiah,” he replied. “In them days we'd a been glad to have the price of a cup of tea.”

  “A cup of cold tea,” said Bear. “Without milk or sugar.”

  “Or tea …”

  They were off. They knew every line of the Monty Python sketch by heart, and by the time they got to the bit about living in a corridor they were holding on to each other in fits of laughter. I watched them, laughing as well, though I'd often heard them do the routine before.

  “A corridor! We used to dream of living in a corridor!”

  They carried on, doubling up with laughter and stopping to catch their breath every now and then. I waited for my favorite line about living in a brown paper bag in a septic tank, but when they came to it, I stopped laughing. I wasn't sure why at first, but then I realized it was because I felt excluded from the joke. It was about Bear and Jason, and what they had been t
hrough together at public school. It was to do with their past. And it had nothing to do with me.

  They were hugging each other now, forced to give up speaking the lines because they were both in hysterics. They had forgotten me, and what it was we were supposed to be celebrating.

  Then Jason recovered himself and sat forward to reach for the wine bottle on the coffee table.

  “Sorry, Susie,” he said. “Got a bit carried away there.”

  Bear lay back on the sofa and sighed. There were tears of laughter rolling down his face.

  “There's another one you might try,” I said. “It's called the Philosophers' Football Match.”

  “Really?” said Jason.

  “Yes, I've only heard about it from some students on my course, I haven't seen it. The Greek philosophers are on one side, and the Germans are on the other. It's really funny.”

  “Sounds hilarious,” said Jason. Then he leaned over and tousled my hair. “If you're a philosophy student, that is.”

  He said it affectionately. He wasn't being nasty, he was just making it clear that Bear was the person he did Monty Python sketches with. And I wasn't.

  “OK, guys,” said Jason, straightening up his shirt and running his hands through his hair. “Time for a spot of Romanée-Conti, I think.”

  He picked up the bottle, poured out a glass, and held it up to the light. Then he tilted the glass, swirled it around, and sniffed it before taking a sip and sloshing it around his mouth as though he was cleaning his teeth. Finally, he swallowed it, gave a sigh of satisfaction, and sat back to think about it.

  Normally I liked the glugging sound of wine being poured, and the idiotic rigmarole Jason went through when he tasted wine, but tonight it filled me with dread.

  Jason poured out a glass each for me and Bear and handed them to us. I took mine without a word.

  “Bear, we've got some wonderful news,” he said.

  “Go on then, spill the beans,” said Bear, sitting forward, wiping his eyes.