A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  After a while, I heard the sound of voices downstairs and a bunch of people let themselves noisily into the house, crashing down the corridor into the sitting room. I quickly let myself out of the toilet, praying that none of them would come straight up to the loo, and went back into Rob's room. He was fast asleep, so I went over to the record player, turned it off, and got back into bed quietly, so as not to wake him. I didn't feel like talking to him any more; whatever we had to say to each other had been said. So I lay awake beside him, staring up at the shadows the hurricane lamp cast on the ceiling, and listening to the sound of music thumping down below.

  chapter 28

  I HARDLY SLEPT THAT NIGHT, not even when the music downstairs stopped and the whole house became silent in the early hours of the morning. As I lay awake in bed with Rob breathing peacefully beside me, the tears came back again. I wanted to sob my heart out, but instead I lay there crying silently in the dark, looking up at the ceiling into nothing. When the pillow got wet, I turned it over and lay back, wiping my eyes and cheeks dry and pushing the hair off my face. Then I found myself patting my head and stroking my hair, and I almost had to stop myself from murmuring, there there, don't worry, everything will be all right. I kept stroking my hair, though, and as I did the tears subsided and a calm descended, and I realized what I had known all along: that, when push came to shove, I was on my own with all this. The question of whether to have the baby or not was mine: it was me having a sleepless night, not Rob. I knew he cared about me, but in the end it was me that was responsible for my body, for my baby, not him. He was trying to do the right thing, with his laboring job and his rota and his kitty and his commune in California, but he obviously hadn't got a clue what was involved in bringing up a child; he wasn't in a position to help me, however much he wanted to. And I couldn't do it all on my own, I knew that. Or if I could, I didn't want to. I didn't want to go back home to Swansea and live with my mother and be pitied by everyone; and I didn't want to stay here at Sussex either, and spend years struggling to get my degree, bringing up my child alone in the family accommodation section on campus or in some damp, cold little flat in Brighton. I was going to have to have the abortion. It would be sad, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. Maybe one day, when Rob and I were older, we could have a child. But for now, I'd have to go through with this abortion, and the sooner I got it over with, the better.

  At around seven o'clock I got up and got dressed, tiptoeing round the room as quietly as I could so as not to disturb Rob. When I was ready to go, I woke him up to say good-bye. He'd been confused, and told me to wait, and tried to persuade me to phone the clinic and postpone the operation. He'd even offered to marry me if that was what I really wanted, but I told him I'd changed my mind, that I didn't want to marry him any more. I was going to the clinic, and that was that. When he realized he wasn't going to talk me out of it, he'd offered to get up and try and get his car started and drive me in, or at least come with me on the bus, but I said I'd prefer to go on my own. Before I went, he held me close for a long time, but I noticed that as I left, he turned over to go back to sleep with a look of relief on his face.

  I was sitting in the waiting room of The Arbours, wondering when I would be called for my examination. It was a windowless room with chairs around the edge of it and a low table in the middle covered in well-thumbed women's magazines. There was a vase of artificial flowers on the mantelpiece and a David Hamilton-style print on the wall, of a girl in a big summery hat standing in a meadow blowing a dandelion in the wind. The pink-and-white wallpaper was of the wipe-down variety, and there was a plastic chandelier over the light bulb. Someone had been trying to brighten the place up, but not very hard.

  The other women in the room were either middle-aged or very young; there seemed to be no one else in their early twenties there. None of us spoke. Most of the women had their heads buried in the magazines, though they seemed to be leafing through the pages rather fast; there were only a few of us looking at the floor, gazing at the girl with the dandelion, or counting the rosebuds on the wallpaper.

  “Mrs. Jones, please come this way.” A nurse was standing at the doorway of the waiting room.

  I got up. “It's not Mrs., it's Miss,” I said as I walked over to her.

  There was a rustle of magazines.

  “This way please, Mrs. Jones,” she said, ignoring me.

  “Miss,” I said. “Not Mrs., Miss.”

  There was a shifting of bodies on seats. Somebody coughed.

  “Or Ms, if you like,” I added.

  The nurse glanced at the rows of women and raised her eyes heavenwards. Then her face fell and she clicked her tongue. I didn't dare look at the women but I knew, from the scowl on her face, that they hadn't responded. They remained dead silent, but there was something in the air that made me feel they were on my side, rooting for me, for Miss, or even Ms.

  The nurse marched me off down the corridor without looking at me. She was small and sallow-faced, not much older than me, with her hair scraped back in a ponytail. As we walked along the corridor, her nylon uniform rustled and her shoes squeaked. I glanced sideways at her, and saw that her expression had darkened to one of fury.

  The nurse stopped outside one of the doors in the corridor and knocked.

  “Mr. Skinner?” she said, poking her head round the door.

  There was a murmur from inside.

  “Mr. Skinner will see you now, Mrs. Jones,” said the nurse. Then she turned on her heel and walked back off down the corridor.

  Inside the room, the doctor was sitting at a desk beside an examination couch with a little curtain around it. He indicated a chair without looking up, so I sat down and waited for him to speak.

  Eventually he turned to me. “So,” he said, “we've fallen by the wayside, have we?”

  For a moment, I was nonplussed. I stared at him. He was a florid man with a big, meaty face and fat, stubby fingers.

  Then I said, “No. We haven't.” I was about to say more, but I stopped myself.

  There was a silence. Now it was his turn to look nonplussed. To cover his embarrassment, he coughed and began to read the notes on his desk.

  “Ah, I see,” he said after a while. “Sussex University.”

  I was expecting a comment about women's libbers and burning my bra, but instead he said, “Would you mind drawing the curtain and hopping up onto the couch, young lady, so we can have a look at you?”

  He spoke with exaggerated politeness now. “You need only take your lower garments off.”

  I walked over to the couch and pulled the curtain around it, then took off my jeans and pants. There was a long piece of paper stretched over the middle of the couch so I lay down carefully on top of it.

  The doctor came in with a pair of plastic gloves on and a silver instrument in his hand. He asked me to put my feet flat on the couch with my knees up in the air and open my legs. Then he inserted the instrument into my vagina. It was cold and it hurt.

  “Try not to tense up,” he said.

  I shut my eyes and attempted to relax. I told myself this was just a routine examination, that there was nothing to worry about.

  “Yes,” he said. “About eight weeks, I'd say. No more.”

  Then he pulled the instrument out, wiped it, told me to put my clothes back on, and walked out of the cubicle.

  When I was dressed, I went out to see him. He was writing at his desk and didn't look up.

  “Right ho, my dear,” he said. “Off you go, then. See you later.”

  I walked over to the door and let myself out.

  Back in the waiting room, I sat down again and glanced at my watch. My operation wasn't due for another hour, but I knew I'd be called before that to get changed and go down to the theater. This was my last chance: if I was going to leave, it had to be soon.

  I picked up an out-of-date magazine with a picture of Miss World on the front. I remembered her now. Helen Morgan, from Barry. One of her cousins was a friend of my mother'
s, but that was nothing unusual in Wales: it was a small place, and everyone there seemed to be related, or had gone to school together, or shared the same hairdresser, or something. There'd been great excitement back home when Helen Morgan had won; my mother had even rung me up to tell me. And then someone had found out that Helen was an unmarried mother, and she'd had to hand back her crown. Miss Venezuela had taken over, making some remark about how Miss World ought to be pure and undefiled, and how in her country, bad girls like Helen would never have been allowed to win.

  My mother had been confused, because she was sure that Helen was married; and then it transpired that she was—she'd got married after she'd had the baby. But as it turned out, that was another reason to sack her; apparently, it was also against the Miss World rules to be married. So whatever Helen did, short of being a virgin and parading around in front of a bunch of men in nothing but a swimsuit and high heels and a tiara, she was always going to be in the wrong.

  I put down the magazine and picked up another, but the words seemed to slide about in front of my eyes. The moment had come: it was time to choose. I looked up at the women, as if they could give me some kind of sign. We all ignored each other, yet I could see the tension etched on their faces. I wondered what they'd been going through in the last few hours, days, months. I wondered what their stories were, and if they could tell me, whether it would help me to decide what to do. We could have talked to each other, perhaps, to ease our fear, but none of us spoke. Or maybe this was the best way to deal with it: each of us in silence, alone. Because, when it came down to it, we all had to face this business of having—or not having—babies on our own. There was no escape. Something Kierkegaard had said about the Virgin Mary in Fear and Trembling came back to me:

  Yet what woman was done greater indignity than Mary, and isn't it true here that those whom God blesses he damns in the same breath?

  I glanced at my watch. Another quarter of an hour to go, and I still hadn't made up my mind. The hairs on my scalp prickled again. Perhaps it really was a question of either or. Perhaps the truth of it was that I'd either have the abortion and have a career, or I'd have the baby and drop out of doing philosophy for good. I thought of the biblical quote in Fear and Trembling:

  And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.

  I hadn't really understood it, but now I did. There would have to be a sacrifice: my child or my work. My child or my self. But perhaps I couldn't be the one to choose which it should be. I remembered the voice, the man's voice, that used to call me in my nightmares. Perhaps I'd have to wait for it now. Perhaps it would tell me what to do.

  The nurse came into the room with a list on a clipboard, and the surgeon put his head round the door.

  “Now then,” he said, his red face beaming as we looked up at him. “Who's next for the chop?”

  chapter 29

  Let us go further. We let Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham had faith. His faith was not that he should be happy some time in the hereafter, but that he should find blessed happiness here in this world. God could give him a new Isaac, bring the sacrificial offering back to life. He believed on the strength of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since been suspended.

  The nurse read off my name from the clipboard.

  “Susannah Jones.”

  I waited for the voice. But none came.

  Why wasn't there a voice, the man's voice, God's voice? Do not lay your hand on the child or do anything unto him.

  It didn't come. And now I realized why: the man's voice in my dreams had only ever called my name. He had never told me what to do, and he wasn't about to now. I was going to have to decide for myself.

  “Jones, please?”

  I stood up. There was a silence around me that seemed to stretch into eternity. The room suddenly looked vast, and everyone in it very far away.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Yes,” I said. I heard my voice echo around the room.

  I said it again, just to be sure it was me who had spoken.

  “Yes.”

  I'd done it. For better or for worse, I'd done it.

  I walked over to the nurse. She glanced at me, sniffed, and ticked me off her list.

  The surgeon had already gone off down the corridor. The nurse and I fell into step behind him. Then we turned off and stood in front of a door.

  “Could you please change in there,” she said. “You'll find a gown to put on. Make sure you take off all your jewelry and put it in the tray provided. When you've finished, I'll come and collect you.”

  I went inside, took off my clothes, and put on the theater gown. The back kept opening, so I held it closed with my hand. I took off my watch and the silver bangle that Rob had given me and put them on the tray, then sat on the chair and waited for the nurse.

  She came back wheeling a trolley bed and I climbed onto it. We went into another, larger room where there was a man in the corner preparing a needle.

  “This won't hurt,” said the nurse, which made me think it would.

  He came over and injected the needle into my arm.

  I stared up at the ceiling. There were some polystyrene tiles on it. They didn't look as though they'd been put on very straight, and one of them was yellower than the rest. I wondered why. Perhaps it was older than the others, or perhaps someone had used the wrong glue. It was hard to tell.

  Abraham had faith …

  I began to feel sleepy and the tiles began to swim before my eyes. I closed my eyes and saw myself looking through a window at the black cars traveling down the white road, so fast that they became a blur.

  … He believed on the strength of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since been suspended.

  “I think she's out now, doctor,” said the nurse.

  *

  When I opened my eyes, I expected to find myself on the trolley bed, waiting to have my operation. No time seemed to have passed. But I found myself in a darkened room with a door that opened out onto a brightly lit corridor. There was a cramping pain in my belly and I felt nauseous. I could feel a sanitary pad soaked with liquid between my legs. I must have had the operation, I thought. It must all be over.

  I leaned over and turned on the bedside light. On the bedside table was my watch and the silver bangle, still on the tray. I picked up the watch and looked at the time. It was 5:30 a.m.

  A nurse walked in, one I hadn't seen before, and turned on the main light in the room. It was a fluorescent strip, and it flashed like a strobe before it came on. She was a pretty woman in her twenties with one of those carefully flicked back hairdos that you saw on singers like the Nolan Sisters.

  “Right, Mrs. Jones, we just need to do a few checks, and then we'll let you go home,” she said.

  I couldn't be bothered to correct her about the Mrs. She came over and took my temperature, checked my pulse, then carefully pulled down the blankets and inspected the pad between my legs.

  “That's fine,” she said, pulling the blankets back up. “Now if anything unusual happens, if you start bleeding profusely or your temperature goes up, then come back and see us.”

  “OK.” I was still groggy from the anesthetic. I could hardly follow what she was saying.

  “There's a toilet and a bathroom down the corridor where you can change your pad. Have you got one handy?”

  “I don't know.” Then I noticed my suitcase in the corner. “Yes, I think so.”

  “You'll need to be ready to go by six.”

  “Six?” I said. “Why the big rush?”

  “Well, normally it's seven,” she said. “But today's a public holiday.”

  “Is it?”

  She looked at me, surprised. “Yes. New Year's Day, of course.”

  Of course. Last night must have been New Year's Eve. I'd completely forgotten.

  “You couldn't get me a cup of tea, could you?” I said. “I still feel half asleep.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Against the
rules. But I can bring you some water.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Great.” There was a sarcastic edge to my voice but I was too tired to make much of a fuss.

  The nurse left and I lay back for a minute. I felt exhausted. All I wanted to do was to go back to sleep, but I had to get up. I looked at the window. The curtains were drawn, but I could see from the gap in the middle that it was still pitch black outside. I'd be out there with my suitcase in a minute, hobbling about with a pain in my belly trying to find a bus. God, what a way to celebrate the new year.

  I heaved myself out of bed and stood in the middle of the floor, my legs still wobbly from the anesthetic. I was still wearing my theater gown. I went over to the suitcase, found my washbag and towel and a pair of woolly socks, put them on, and shuffled down the hall, trying to hold the gown shut at the back. I cleaned myself up, then came back and got dressed. A cup of water was waiting for me on the bedside table. I drank it, then put my watch and bangle back on. I was glad they'd got me up early now; I couldn't wait to get out of the place.

  I picked up my suitcase, and then I remembered something. There was a little pocket inside it where I'd packed the milk-teeth box Bear had given me. I took it out now and held it in the palm of my hand. Dents de lait. The little white stones in the lid sparkled under the fluorescent light. I opened it, and there inside were Princess Charlotte Augusta's little blackened teeth. What was it Bear had said to me? You can keep it for the next one. That was it.

  I put the milk-teeth box in the pocket of my jacket, zipped up my suitcase, walked out of the room, and went over to tell the nurse I was going. She asked me to sign a form, then held the door open for me.

  “Bye, then,” she said as I walked through. “Good luck.”