A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  “I have let you know,” I said. “That's why we're here now.”

  “But you were going to go and have this abortion without telling me, weren't you?” he said, turning round to face me.

  “No. Yes. I don't know.” I stood rooted to the spot, unable to explain myself.

  “How could you?” he repeated, shaking his head. “How could you?”

  He covered his face with his hands and went to sit on the bed, his back to me. I didn't know what to do, so I went over, sat on the chair by his desk, and waited until he spoke again. When he did, his anger seemed to have subsided a little.

  “So, why did you call me in now?” he said, his back still turned. “What did you expect me to do?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you. I haven't made my mind up about what I'm going to do. I thought maybe you could … help.”

  “Oh, right,” he turned round to look at me. “Well, here I am. At your service.” He sounded bitter.

  “Look, Rob.” I leaned forward, speaking as calmly as I could. “I realize I've made a complete mess of all this. But it hasn't been easy trying to work things out. We haven't known each other for long. You told me that you'd broken off with Beth, that you weren't into marriage and all that, so I assumed you'd be the same with me.”

  “But …”

  “Let me speak,” I said. “Yes, I did go to Jason first. It wasn't a great relationship, in fact it was bloody awful, but he'd been my boyfriend for quite a while, and you and I had only just met. And yes, if you want to know, he did let me down.”

  There was a pause while he took this in. “I didn't come to you after that,” I went on, “because I couldn't face being rejected again. I knew you weren't into marriage and that whole scene. I thought maybe you were into me just for … well, you know, a quick screw.”

  It was the truth, but not the whole truth. I had sometimes wondered if it was just sex that had kept Rob and me coming back to each other. Rob had been going out for years with a girl who wouldn't sleep with him, and I'd had a gay boyfriend. In that respect, we'd both been in the same boat. But there was something else as well, something I had to approach tactfully.

  “And I didn't think you were in a position to help,” I said. “He was a bit older than you, and …”

  “What, you mean, he'd got more money than me.”

  “Oh, for God's sake.” There was an element of self-pity in Rob's tone that irritated me. “Well, yes, I suppose I did think he'd be able to help more in that way. But then I realized … he made me realize … that it was a shit relationship and it wouldn't work, however much money he had.”

  “So have you split with him completely?” Rob asked. He sounded suspicious.

  “Yes, completely.”

  When I said that, I knew it wasn't as simple as it sounded: if I had the baby and it was Jason's, we'd have to have some kind of continuing relationship with each other. Jason had his faults, but he wouldn't ignore the fact that he was a father, and I wouldn't want him to. But there was a finality in the way I spoke about him now that rang true, both to me and to Rob, and we sat there for a while together, listening to my words reverberate around the room.

  Eventually, Rob spoke. “OK, let's work this out. How many times did you actually …?”

  For a moment I didn't understand what he was asking. Then I said, “What, you mean with Jason? Before Christmas? After I met you?”

  “Yes. I want to work out the probability.”

  “Let me see,” I tried to cast my mind back. I remembered the time Jason and I had had sex the morning before I was due to meet Rob for lunch. The bath water had been running and I hadn't worried about turning off the taps.

  “Only once, as far as I can remember.”

  “And you and I must have … I don't know, I suppose we saw each other about three times a week for five weeks, that's fifteen times …”

  I wondered why I'd never done this calculation myself.

  “Say twice each time, that's thirty …” Rob went on. “Or what about that time when …”

  “OK, OK.” I didn't need chapter and verse. But I could see now that the baby I was carrying was most likely to be Rob's. I couldn't imagine why I hadn't thought of doing the sums before. Anxiety, probably, or shame, or maybe that I just didn't think that way. I began to feel relieved. Whether or not I had the baby, at least I was talking to the right man.

  “God,” I said suddenly. “Just imagine that.”

  “What?”

  “Just imagine if the first time we'd … if the first time you'd lost your virginity … I'd got pregnant.”

  Rob shook his head. “This whole thing is insane.” His voice was quieter and calmer now.

  We sat in silence, and after a while he said, “I'm sorry I shouted at you. Come over here.”

  I walked slowly over to the bed, wondering what was going to happen next. I sat down beside him, leaving a wide space between us, but he put out his arm and pulled me towards him. Then he put his other arm round me and I put my arms round his. We stayed there for a long time until I started crying.

  “I've completely ruined everything,” I said, tears spilling down my face.

  “Yes, you have really,” he said, wiping them away with his hand. “You've been nothing but a pain in the arse since I first met you. But it's my fault as well. And I love you, Suse. I wish I didn't, but I do.”

  We fell back onto the bed, still holding on to each other.

  “I …” I hesitated. “I've missed you too.”

  I didn't say I loved him, but I felt as though if I had, it wouldn't have been a complete lie.

  He leaned over me and started to stroke my hair. I lay back and let him. It felt good, as though he could brush away all the worry of the last few weeks just by wanting to. Then he began to nuzzle my ear.

  “Wouldn't it be just my luck, though,” he murmured, as though thinking to himself. “The first time ever.”

  I smiled.

  “You're supposed to get a free go the first time, aren't you?” I said. “That's what the boys in Swansea say.”

  He chuckled.

  “It's not fair,” he said. “I want my free go.”

  I laughed, and we rolled over on the bed together, holding each other close.

  We made love slowly and carefully that night, afraid that any sudden movement would disturb the baby, even though we both knew it was still a tiny fetus far up inside my womb. I was acutely aware of my swollen breasts and the curve of my belly, and I sensed that Rob was too, but he didn't mention it until afterwards.

  “Blimey,” he said. “It's like being in bed with Raquel Welch.”

  “Oh shut up,” I said, getting out of bed to put my T-shirt on.

  “Don't.” He pulled me back into bed. “I was only joking.”

  “But it's freezing in here,” I said, lying back and pulling up the blankets.

  He got up and lit the gas fire, shivering in the cold air. Then he lit the hurricane lamp by the bed and got back into bed. The room began to seem warmer, more from the cozy glow of the lamp and the fire than the temperature of the air.

  “Susannah, why don't we go ahead and have this baby?” he said, once he'd settled back in beside me.

  “It can't be that difficult,” he went on. “Millions of people do it every day all over the world.”

  “It is that difficult,” I said. “And millions of people all over the world do it very badly.”

  “Yes, but it would be different with us.” He propped himself up on one elbow and turned to look at me. “We wouldn't do it the way our parents did, in a nuclear family. We'd bring the baby up communally, in a group of adults, with other kids around, in an atmosphere of … I don't know, freedom. Creativity. It wouldn't be like it was for us, with our fathers going out to work and our mothers being frustrated housewives; we'd have equal roles, and we'd all share in the childcare.”

  “It's a nice idea,” I said. “But it wouldn't work.”

  “I don
't see why not. We could start here, in this house. We already do live communally in a way, we've got a rota and a kitty and everything …”

  “Oh great,” I said. “Well, that'll be fine, then.”

  Rob looked at me, puzzled. “Well, you've got to start somewhere, you know.”

  “OK.” I said. I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Fair enough. But does anyone take any notice of your rota and your kitty?”

  “Well, we've never quite … got it together,” Rob said. “I don't know why. I think maybe we haven't been motivated enough. Until now.”

  I pictured the freezing cold, dusty toilet on the landing with the pile of newspaper on the floor to use as loo paper, the sitting room downstairs with its bare red light bulb and the blankets hanging in the windows, and the kitchen with its piles of dirty dishes in the sink and its carrier bags of rubbish stacked up by the bin that no one could be bothered to empty. I'd seen it all before, in dozens of student houses. They were all the same. They were the kind of places where you'd hesitate to drink a cup of tea, let alone bring up a baby. That was why I'd always avoided living in one.

  I didn't want to be rude about Rob's living arrangements so I said nothing about the state of the house. Anyway, it wasn't his fault that the others didn't bother to clear up; his own room was always fairly tidy and welcoming.

  “You mean, we could set up a commune with the people who live here?” I said. I tried to keep my voice neutral. “With Jan and Mark and Dino? And Hervé?”

  When I said Hervé I almost laughed, but I stopped myself.

  “I don't see why not,” Rob said.

  “But why would they be interested in looking after a child? None of them have kids themselves.”

  “Well, Jan and Mark might do. Some time.”

  I'd only met Jan and Mark for about ten minutes, but they didn't seem in the least likely to start a family and set up a commune with us. They had the air of a straight couple who kept themselves to themselves and were probably only sharing a house because they were too broke to get a place on their own.

  “I'm sorry, Rob, I can't really see it,” I said. I was trying to be polite. These were his housemates, after all. “I think, if we were going to do it, we'd have to live somewhere else.”

  “Well, why don't we go somewhere warm, then,” he said. “California, Spain, somewhere like that.”

  I turned to look at him. His face was framed by his long, dark hair, and his eyes were lit up with excitement. He looked beautiful, the way he had that day when we'd kissed in the Meeting House, the way he had the first time we'd slept together here, in his bed, in the light of the hurricane lamp. For a moment, my heart skipped a beat and I thought, maybe he's right, maybe we can do anything we want, the two of us: have the baby, live in a commune, move somewhere sunny, somewhere far away from all this cold and damp and fog.

  “But what would we live on?” I still sounded cautious, but I was beginning to be swayed by Rob's enthusiasm.

  “Oh, I don't know,” he said. “I could find work, laboring work, anything. I've done that already in the holidays, building sites, that kind of thing.”

  “Really?” I looked at him with admiration. I hadn't realized Rob was capable of manual labor. I'd thought he was just a philosophy student.

  “Yeah. I mean, I'm not all that keen on it, but I can do it.”

  “Do you wolf whistle girls in the street, along with the other guys?” I asked. I was going off the point, but I was intrigued.

  “No,” he said, “Of course I don't. I can't stand all that male chauvinist bollocks. I mean, I must admit, I did join in at first. The brickies call you a poofter if you don't. But then they found out I was doing philosophy at college, so they called me a poofter anyway, and I stopped bothering with the wolf whistles.” He laughed.

  There was more to Rob than I'd imagined, I realized. Maybe he wasn't quite as young and inexperienced as I thought. Maybe he did know how to handle himself in the real world.

  “But if we did that …” I got back to the point. “If we did move away, we'd have to chuck in our degrees, wouldn't we?”

  “Well, only for a while,” he said. “Just for a couple of years or so.”

  “But that's how it starts,” I said. “It's only for a while, until the baby grows up, and then all of a sudden it's too late. You never get back to it.”

  He sighed and turned away from me in the bed.

  “You know, you're a very negative person in some ways, Susannah. You always find ways to bring me down. Of course living differently isn't going to be easy, but if we really want to we'll find a way.”

  With that, he got up out of bed and put on his jeans. I looked at him in the light of the hurricane lamp. His body seemed to have filled out slightly since the last time I saw him.

  “Have you put on weight?” I said.

  He patted his belly. “Christmas,” he said. “These jeans are killing me. I'm going downstairs to make us a cup of tea. And when I come back, you'd better have come up with a plan of action.” He sounded irritated, but he leaned over and kissed me, and then went off to get the tea.

  I got out of bed, found my T-shirt, and scuttled back in under the blankets to put it on. The room was warming up, but it was still cold. I propped myself up against the pillows, looked at the ceiling, and started thinking again. Rob had been joking, but I wanted to come up with some kind of plan before he came back. Nothing too airy-fairy; something concrete, workable.

  In a few minutes, Rob came back with two steaming cups of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives. He put the cups on the side table by the bed, put on a record, and got back into bed beside me with the biscuits. We each took one, and then another, and then another, munching in silence. We were both starving but neither of us wanted to go out and get anything to eat.

  John Martyn drifted into the room. Curl around me like a fern in the spring …

  “I saw Belham in the holidays,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “How come?”

  “I rang him up to ask his advice about my dissertation. And he suggested we meet in town for a coffee.”

  It was a small lie, but I wished I hadn't said it. I didn't really enjoy lying these days, not the way I had when I was with Jason.

  “Really?” he said. “Do you think he's trying to get off with you?”

  “No,” I said. “Don't be ridiculous.” That wasn't a lie, but it was pretty near one.

  “Actually, it might have been me who suggested it,” I went on. “I can't remember. Anyway, I told him I was pregnant, and he said the university was quite … forward thinking about this sort of thing. He said he'd help as much as he could.”

  “How?” said Rob. “How could he help?”

  “Well, they have family accommodation on campus, you know.” I realized the words “family accommodation” didn't sound very inspiring, but I carried on. “I'm sure Belham would help us get a room there. They even have flats, I think. That way we could continue our degrees, maybe get some part-time work to pay the bills, and look after the baby together.”

  I stopped. Rob said nothing. “It's a possibility, isn't it?” I added.

  “I don't know,” he said. “Sounds a bit grim.”

  “And there's one other thing,” I said. I might as well give him the works, I thought. Now we're on the subject of grim. “I'd want us to get married. If we have the baby, that is.”

  Rob reached over me to pick up his cup of tea. I noticed that he was keeping his arm well away from my body. He said nothing, so I reached over too and picked up my cup, blowing on the tea to cool it down. He offered me another biscuit from the pack, but I shook my head. Suddenly I wasn't hungry any more.

  “Well, what do you think?” I said eventually.

  He didn't take a biscuit out either.

  “I'm sorry, Susannah,” he said, looking straight ahead. “But I can't do that.”

  I took a sip of tea and swallowed it. It tasted bitter and brackish in my mouth. So I'd been right
all along, I thought. Rob was just a boy, a dreamer. When it came down to it, he wouldn't be able to make the commitment to me, or to the child. To him, the world of being a parent, of hard work, of marriage, was “a bit grim.” It wasn't his fault: he was only just out of his teens. He wasn't ready for any of this, I should have known that.

  “OK,” I said. “Fine.” I got up out of bed.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  “Don't worry,” I said. “Just to the loo. I'm not about to walk out on you.”

  I put on my jeans and pulled Rob's holey sweater over my head. Then I remembered the cold, dusty floor in the toilet and went over to get my socks and boots. While I was putting them on, Rob spoke.

  “Look, just give me some time,” he said. “I need to think …”

  “There's nothing to think about,” I said, walking over to the door. I tried to keep my voice light and steady.

  “You're not going to run off, are you?” There was a note of panic in his voice.

  ‘No,” I stopped myself from adding “not yet.” Then I opened the door and walked down the corridor.

  I stayed in the toilet on the landing for a long time, remembering the night I'd felt sick in there before, the first night I'd slept with Rob. The window was still jammed open and the pipes were still dusty, and it was even colder now than it had been that night, but I didn't want to go back into the bedroom just yet, so I sat down and tried to think.

  I could understand why Rob didn't want to marry me: it was against his politics, against his ideals. He'd held out against Beth all these years and now he had me hassling him, this time with a baby involved. We'd only just met, and I wasn't even sure that I wanted to marry him, but I knew that if I was going to have this baby, I wanted to be married. Here at Sussex I could persuade myself that I was a liberated single parent, but back home it would be different. I'd be an unmarried mother, to be pitied and despised by all the girls I'd been to school with, girls who'd got married and had kids straight out of school; girls that, up until now, I'd pitied and despised myself. And I couldn't imagine explaining it to my family. My mother would be devastated—she was in a fragile enough state as it was; and Auntie Luned and Uncle Ifor would be shocked out of their minds, ashamed to show their faces ever again in the congregation. Rob just didn't understand. Wales wasn't the same as England, as Woking; down in Swansea, we were still living in the fifties, if not the nineteenth century—at least in my family, anyway.