EXETER UNIVERSITY’S MAIN campus is on the outskirts of the city, spread over a couple of small hills. With its woodlands and lake and beautiful views, it is – save for the concrete hulk of the physics tower – one of the most attractive university campuses in the country. A Hepworth bronze stands on the combed lawn outside the Queen’s Building, its abstract curves robustly reassuring, and cedars throw pools of shade over the rolling grass, betraying the campus’s origins as a country estate. Being in the south-west, the climate is mild, even in autumn when one would expect a nip in the air. Coming from Oxford, where the return of well-muffled undergraduates traditionally marks the turning of the season, it took a while to acclimatize to these balmy conditions. For the first few weeks at Exeter I was always too hot, stomping up the steep paths in woolly jumpers and arriving at lectures overheated and self-conscious about my armpits.
I was studying biology and geography, with the intention of specializing in ecology in my final year. Ever since reading Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful at school I had set my sights on becoming a conservationist and following in David Attenborough’s footsteps (Life on Earth had been a landmark). However, I had not reckoned with my complete lack of mathematical ability. Never mind saving the whale, I was barely competent with a calculator, and the ‘statistics for biologists’ module was beyond me. Unfortunately, passing this was compulsory; those that failed got kicked off the course. The only consolation was that I’d found an ally, Hilary, a frustrated art student who was as bad at biology as I was.
During this time I saw nothing of Tim. Our walk back to my hall of residence had been uneventful and I was too busy trying to juggle a boyfriend back home in Oxford with a slew of social engagements – not to mention coursework – to think much about our disquieting encounter. I had heard from Mike that Tim was seeing a girl my own age, which had surprised me, even though he had flirted with me. It had been a game, or so I’d thought, but now I wasn’t quite so sure. I confided in Sally, another friend, whose kohlrimmed eyes widened when she heard that an aged lifer had been hitting on me. ‘Ooh, creepy.’ She tossed her black hair. ‘Can you get us an invite to one of his parties?’
‘I’ll see,’ I said, unsure if I wanted to get involved with a man with Tim’s history. I soon forgot. Someone else had distracted me. His name was Claude and he was a mature student from the West Indies studying drama. He was also a dancer, choreographer and the campus sex-god.
‘You start with your legs apart like this.’ Claude stood with his back to us, demonstrating. He raised his arms above his head in a fluid, sweeping motion, muscles gliding beneath his gleaming skin, and held the pose, looking up at his extended fingertips. Against the light, his sculpted arms stood out like the boughs of a tree on a winter’s afternoon. He lowered them to his sides and repeated the movement in time with the music, swivelling to face us as the jaunty vocals from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat cut in:
Way, way back many centuries ago
Not long after the Bible began,
Jacob lived in the land of Canaan
A fine example of a family man . . .
‘Now, side to side.’ Claude began to dance, clicking his fingers and swinging his hips, while we bobbed about trying to copy him and bumped into one another. As a first rehearsal for an ambitious student production, it wasn’t going too well. ‘No, no, no!’ he roared; stopping the music. ‘Again, from the top.’ The opening chords swelled and we did our best to repeat Claude’s instructions, while he prowled around us, criticizing. He circled the group and came up behind me, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. ‘What is your name?’
‘Kate.’
‘Ket?’
‘Kate.’
‘Kate.’ He repeated my name deliberately, as if making a mental note. I started to turn round, but he grabbed my shoulders and made me face front. ‘Your arms,’ he growled, running his hands down them and raising them in the air, ‘are like a bird flapping’. He waved my arms about, as if I was a puppet. The other students laughed. I could feel my already flushed face turning even hotter, and not just from embarrassment. Claude’s body was right up against me. ‘What I want to see,’ he slid his hands to my wrists, almost folding me in an embrace, and drew them up again, this time achingly slowly, ‘is a smooth arc, as if you are painting a rainbow in the sky. You got it?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered hoarsely.
‘Good.’ He dropped my arms unceremoniously. ‘So next time, do it.’ And he strode back to the front of the mirrored studio to restart the music, leaving me burning with a mixture of shame and desire, a desire so physical that it seemed as if every single nerve ending was vibrating on high frequency.
One evening, after a particularly frustrating biology practical, I dragged Hilary off to the Ram Bar in Devonshire House, the student union building, and we got smashed on cheap beer. There was a disco going on nearby and, attracted by the loud music, we decided to give it a go. ‘Look,’ Hilary nudged me as we bopped half-heartedly to Spandau Ballet, ‘isn’t that the choreographer you were telling me about?’ She indicated Claude, who was lounging against the bar, propped on one elbow, surveying the room. He caught our eyes and grinned. ‘He’s gorgeous,’ Hilary shouted in my ear. Claude was wearing a black singlet and black trousers, dancer’s clothes, as if he’d just come in from a work-out. He looked as predatory as a panther. Tentatively, I smiled back. Ten minutes later, we were getting down to Bob Marley, Claude’s hands on my hip bones. When he asked me back to his room for a drink, I said yes.
Claude’s seduction technique was both blissfully romantic and deeply sexy; the kind of seduction girls fantasize over before the reality of wet kisses and sweaty hands spoils the illusion. He put on a tape of Percy Sledge singing, ‘Let Me Wrap You in My Warm and Tender Love’, drew me close and looked deep into my eyes, as if I was the woman he’d been waiting for his entire life. This time it was a proper slow dance, a dance that meant our bodies shared as much surface area as was humanly possible. It was also a dance that I was not very good at, having been a wallflower at sixth-form discos. I kept bumping his knees and standing on his toes, until he gently instructed me to stand off-centre and place one leg between his. Trembling at such intimacy, I obeyed. It worked like magic. Instantly, we were locked together and moving as one while Percy sang ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ and my insides turned to liquid with the press of Claude’s thigh.
For a few weeks after that, I achieved the exalted position of Claude’s official girlfriend. We didn’t have much in common, apart from dancing and sex, but it was an acceptable arrangement for both of us. We didn’t use condoms, either: Aids had just been officially recognized, but neither of us saw it as a threat. No one did. It was just another news story, something that happened to gay men, and therefore not relevant to us. As for getting pregnant, Claude swore to me that the withdrawal method had never failed him, so when my period was late, I put it down to my erratic cycle. End-of-term tests were approaching, and the problem of the statistics paper was far more pressing. I knew I’d flunk it, and the thought of losing my place at Exeter was devastating.
This was brought home by a sharp word from a lecturer in a biology practical, and I was weeping silently over a petri dish when Mike stopped in front of me and demanded to know why I was contaminating my experiment. ‘God knows what’ll grow on that now.’ He leaned towards me. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t do it.’ I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my lab coat. Mike rolled his eyes. ‘It’s not difficult. You’ve just to make sure you measure—’
‘I can’t do any of it. I’m useless. And I hate biology’ I could feel myself building up to a uncontrollable blub. Mike came round the bench and put an arm around my shoulders. ‘Hey. It’s not the end of the world.’ He offered me a handkerchief that smelt yaguely of chemicals. ‘You could always try another subject. You’d be surprised how many students change courses, even at this stage.’
‘Really?’ Hilary, who was sitting with me, pricked up her ears.
‘Yeah. Depends what you want to switch to, of course.’
‘Art.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Not here.’
‘English?’ I ventured. It had always been my best subject at school.
‘You’ll be lucky. It’s the most over-subscribed course at Exeter.’ Mike saw I was starting to well again and added hastily, ‘I could be wrong. Check with the faculty secretary. They’ll tell you.’
Hilary and I whisked round to the Faculty of Arts the minute biology was over. Mike was right. The were no places to be had in English. Most of the other courses were also full. The only departments left with any vacancies were philosophy and sociology. I didn’t have a clue about either of the subjects, but I knew a man who did. Taking Hilary with me for moral support, I went to find Tim.
For a student who was supposed to be the department’s star turn, Tim was surprisingly scathing about sociology. ‘Load of long-haired layabouts whining about the state of the country and blaming it all on the government. How they have the nerve to call it an academic subject is beyond me. Liebfraumilch? Or Chianti?’ He held up a raffia-covered bottle. ‘If there’s any left. My wine stocks took a hammering last night.’ A bearded man who had ambled in through the open doorway said mildly, ‘I object to that.’
‘I don’t see how. You were pissed as a fart.’
‘Your remarks about sociology. You can’t slate what is, after all, a social science, just because it demonstrates the pathetic inadequacies of capitalism.’
Tim waved a dismissive hand in his direction. ‘Kate, Hilary, meet Tom. Note the excessive facial hair. I defy you to guess what he does.’
Hilary and I glanced at each other. Tom held out his hand. ‘Someone has to keep the old boy in check.’ He had twinkly eyes and a kind face and we took to him immediately. Tom sat down in an armchair and crossed his long legs. ‘So what do you think of this place. Bit of all right, isn’t it?’ He pointed to the window, which opened onto a balcony with white-painted balustrades. ‘We take our drinks out there in the evening. Tim likes to keep up colonial traditions. Snifter at sundown, what?’ He mimicked Tim’s voice.
Tim bared his teeth. Hilary giggled. I looked out at the darkening sky. It was just possible to make out the outlines of trees, a shouldering mass of rhododendrons, distant railings, a field.
‘Another night.’ Tim drew the curtains. ‘Come earlier next time.’ He gave me a glass of red wine and clinked his Coke glass against it. ‘Bottoms up.’
I took in the room, which was thickly carpeted with patterned rugs, some of them laid on top of each other, and hung with Impressionist prints – Degas’s dancers, van Gogh’s sunflowers, Renoir’s drinkers, Monet’s water lilies. Most striking of all was a large framed picture of a naked woman, inked in spare black brushstrokes over a wash of bruised blue. She was seated with her back to us, knees drawn up and head bowed, a pose that was contemplative rather than erotic, although the swell of her thigh and the slight spread of her buttocks hinted at a teasing lushness. But it was the curve of her back that drew my eye; the purity of the outline, the single, assured sweep of the brush. Tim must have noticed me staring at it, because he said, gruffly, ‘Picasso’s Blue Nude. One of my favourites. Before the bastard started giving women nostrils like horses.’
‘There’s another figure in it,’ I said, looking more closely at the shadow of a head lower down, more bowed.
‘It’s the same one. He scratched out the first version and redrew her. The difference is, most artists cover their workings. Picasso isn’t afraid to show you it’s not his first attempt.’
We stared at the picture together. It was positioned centrally above the head of the biggest bed I had ever seen in my life. The bed, which took up at least two-thirds of the room, had more than a touch of the Hugh Hefners in its ostentatiousness and was draped in a rose-pink counterpane piled with gold velour cushions. I perched gingerly on the edge and sipped my wine. Tim sat down next to me. ‘So you want to study philosophy.’
‘Excellent choice.’ I opened my mouth to protest that I hadn’t made up my mind yet, but he held up a silencing hand. ‘Seriously. Forget sociology. It’s a load of self-indulgent claptrap. And it won’t be of any use to you. Unless you want to be a social worker.’ He spat out these last two words as if they tasted disgusting. Tom, who was talking to Hilary, caught this, but Tim ploughed on. ‘Philosophy, on the other hand, will give you a grounding that can be applied to every area of your life. With a philosophy degree you can walk into any job confident that you have the mental equipment to tackle whatever challenges come your way.’
‘If you can actually get a job,’ Tom interjected. ‘Employers think philosophers sit around contemplating their navels all day.’
‘The practice of philosophy gives you a logical framework with which to view the world.’ Tim’s voice had acquired an edge. ‘It gives you the tools you need for thinking, it gives you the basis for reasoning and discussion. And those are the essential requisites for any managerial position.’
‘Being able to bullshit, that’s all you need to make it in business. Bullshit. Philosophy.’ Tom mimed weighing, holding out his palms. ‘No, can’t tell the difference. Still, you should know. Tim’s a management consultant,’ he added, for our benefit. He leaned towards me and hissed in a stage whisper, ‘He’s got a pinstriped suit in his wardrobe.’
‘How does that work?’ asked Hilary. ‘Being a student and a businessman. It must be like having a split personality.’
‘I’m a part-time director of an engineering company based in Stockon-on-Tees. I travel up there periodically, but most of the work I can do from home.’ Tim got up stiffly. ‘I don’t find it conflicts at all. Another drink, girls?’
‘Someone say drink?’ Keith lurched into the room, looking more pop-eyed than when I’d last seen him, closely followed by Mike and another post-grad I hadn’t met before called Alastair. Tim handed them tumblers of wine and someone put Steely Dan on and other people drifted in, attracted by the laughter and the noise. It was very late when Hilary and I finally staggered home, our ears ringing with music and our eyes blurry with booze. The next day, when I opened my bag, I found a slim volume of Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy inside it. A postcard had been tucked into the pages, with the inscription, ‘Read this! Tim. P.S. I make no apologies for taking this liberty. It was good to see you again. Would you like to come to dinner next week? We can talk about Russell.’ I turned the card over. It was a picture of the Blue Nude.
‘Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?’ asks Russell in his opening chapter on appearance and reality. He goes on to doubt the existence of the table in front of him, a concept I was having difficulty grasping, since the table in my student room bore seemingly irrefutable proof, not just of its own lively existence (coffee rings, biro scribbles, penknife gouges, cigarette burns), but of someone else’s. My baby’s. Two blazing blue lines in a circle on a small white stick were confirming what intuition had already told me, even if reason had tried to wriggle out of the truth. I was pregnant.
Dr Jameson, the wheezing physician at the university health centre, corroborated this with the weariness of one who had seen it far too many times before. I don’t remember discussing my options with him, or being offered counselling, but I doubt it would have made any difference. I believed fervently in a woman’s right to choose, and the alternative meant destroying any chance of getting a degree, and so compromising my entire future. That was how I saw it then, and although I don’t hold such clear-cut views now, at the time it seemed the only thing to do. There was some comfort in finding out that I wasn’t the only one – many of my girlfriends admitted privately to having had abortions – but no one talked about it publicly. Gonorrhoea, masturbation, being gay, these were all openly discussed. We were, after all, broad-minded, liberated, politically correct young people. We had renamed a student union building after Nelson Mandela and banned speakers from the National Front. But some prejudices run too deep. It was easy enough not to buy Cape grapes or to write protest letters to banks, but when it came to terminations, no amount of marching made the subject more accessible. Not, at least, when it was happening to you. Then abortions were no longer a cause to embrace but a desperate dilemma; the political made agonizingly personal.
I didn’t expect Claude to want to take on any responsibility – things were on the wane between us – and although he offered to let me go and live with his family in the Caribbean, it might as well have been another planet as far as I was concerned. After some bitter recriminations, we parted. I was twenty years old, six weeks gone, and nine weeks into a disastrous first term. The festive season was in full swing, students were partying to Slade, and, true to form, everybody was having fun. Except me. I sat in my room eating salt-and-vinegar crisps and oranges, which was all that I could stomach, trying to make sense of ‘the world of universals’ in my philosophy book. I did not take up Tim’s offer of dinner and sent some weak excuse via Mike. It seemed pointless to go and talk about the future when I wasn’t even sure if I’d be back next year.
The train journey home to Oxford was three hours long and stuffy. My nausea was getting worse, exacerbated equally by the smell of stale coffee and the prospect of telling my parents about the pregnancy. I wasn’t sure how they’d react: they were amazingly tolerant when, in my gap year, I’d rung them from Jersey to tell them I was engaged, even converting the garage into a bedsit for my fiancé. They’d been equally supportive when we became disengaged and I decided to go to university after all, albeit two years late. Apart from that, I had rarely given them any trouble, even as an adolescent. Claire, my fifteen-year-old sister, was the one that gave them all the grief, skiving off school and playing loud music and throwing door-slamming tantrums. Debbie, my well-behaved middle sister, and I were the ones Mum set her standards by. ‘Kate and Deb never did that,’ she would hurl at Claire in menopausal fury. ‘Why can’t you be more like them?’ Since I had two years on Deb, I was the one who, ultimately, was supposed to set an example. I was meant to be the trailblazer, the good sister showing the others how to act, and I had, winning awards and competitions at school, getting good grades, going to university. I had not let them down. Until now.
That afternoon, when I told them my news, Mum threw me out of the house.