Chapter 4: Call It What It Is

Call It What It Is

Sunday 20^th October 2013

This week has been strange.

Not bad.

Actually, quite a lot of it was very good.

But strange.

The Warning

We received a warning at the beginning of a lecture on Tuesday. Every student at Westmouth was given the same warning. The head of department walked in before our lecturer began, which immediately made everyone realise something unusual was happening.

There followed an announcement, delivered in a grave tone, that five young women had been subjected to attempted attacks during the past three weeks. Two incidents occurred on campus and three in Westmouth Hill Park, which borders the eastern side of the university and provides one of the main walking routes between campus and town.

None of the women suffered physical injury.

That sentence is doing quite a lot of work.

All five escaped, but apparently they were understandably traumatised.

This was described to us as the attacks not having been “successful”. I understand what was meant. Whatever physical violence the person responsible intended, he did not accomplish it. That distinction matters enormously. But language also matters, and I have been thinking about the word unsuccessful ever since.

Five women were confronted by somebody who intended to hurt them. They had to escape. They have presumably replayed those moments repeatedly since. Places they used every day have changed for them. Their calculations about where they can go, when they can go there and who must accompany them have changed.

The intended violence was unsuccessful. The attack was not.

All five women were harmed. They escaped physical injury. Those two statements can exist together.

The police haven’t caught whoever is responsible. University security is being increased. Female students have been advised not to walk alone, particularly after dark. This is sensible advice. I shall follow it. Lily will follow it, albeit reluctantly, because she runs through the park and dislikes being confined to a track.

It is still difficult not to notice where all the verbs land.

Women should avoid. Women should remain. Women should arrange. Women should tell somebody where they are going. Women should change their routes, change their hours and change their habits.

The person responsible has changed nothing except everybody else’s lives.

That does not mean the university should withhold practical advice for fear of sounding unfair. Practical advice can be necessary, and the circumstances requiring it can still be profoundly unjust.

Once again, two things can be true at the same time.

But I wish the warning to the entire student body had included more about our collective responsibility. Walk friends home. Notice when somebody is being followed or harassed. Stop treating women’s safety as a private administrative task that each woman must complete correctly. Do not make somebody feel foolish for being cautious, and do not make her feel culpable if caution fails.

One man in a seminar later said that it was unfair if women now viewed every man on campus with suspicion.

I can imagine that being viewed suspiciously is unpleasant.

I can also imagine that being pursued through a dark park is worse.

No one has accused every man. No one needs every man to announce that he personally has never attacked anyone. The conversation does not become more balanced when the people facing the smallest danger demand an equal share of sympathy.

The atmosphere on campus changed after the warning. Not completely. Lectures continued. People still sat outside the Union. The cafés remained full. By Wednesday afternoon, students were complaining about reading lists again.

But numbers were exchanged. Plans were made. Women waited outside lecture halls for one another. People who had previously said, “See you later,” began saying, “Text me when you’re home.”

The atmosphere on campus was peculiar. You could almost feel everyone recalculating the campus. The geography hadn’t changed. The paths were the same paths. The buildings were the same buildings. The park was still exactly where it had been last week.

But suddenly everybody was thinking about them differently.

I certainly was. You can never be too careful, not as a woman in 2013, but familiarity with a place can make you less cautious. After a couple of weeks of walking through campus every day, I felt at home here. Campus has felt safe. Very safe.

Safe enough that I have walked back to Campus Heights alone after evening events without thinking about it. Safe enough that I don’t normally notice who’s walking behind me. Safe enough that I’ve become complacent.

Our campus did not suddenly become dangerous on Tuesday morning. We learned that it had already become dangerous for five people.

There is a difference.

The Rest of the Week

The rest of the week continued, tainted by the knowledge of what had happened.

Law continues, and lectures are becoming marginally less terrifying. I still leave some of them convinced that the lecturer has spent fifty minutes speaking a specialist dialect of English which everybody else learned over the summer. Then somebody asks a question that reveals they understood even less than I did, which is reassuring in a way I probably shouldn’t admit.

I contributed twice in seminars this week. One answer was correct. The other began correctly, wandered into a hedge and had to be rescued by the tutor.

Progress.

Dr Bennett remains excellent.

The Westmouth Union met again. I did not interrogate anyone this time. Mostly. I asked one question. It was shorter. Other than that, I remained in the audience and managed not to challenge its president in any revolutionary sense. Henry did, however, greet me with “Carrington” and remind me that my name remains on the list for the first-year debate.

It appears that signing a piece of paper creates consequences.

The Celestial Quartet had its second rehearsal. The name has survived, despite Finn claiming he only supported it because every alternative was worse.

Beethoven is beginning to sound like Beethoven rather than four people independently playing Beethoven in approximately the same room.

Ari continues to advocate for Shostakovich No. 8 with the calm persistence of somebody trying to persuade three friends to accompany her into a haunted house. Por una cabeza continues to consume an entirely unreasonable percentage of rehearsal time because it is simply too much fun. Finn has now decided that one particular pause should last long enough to make the audience uncomfortable.

We do not have an audience. We still have no performance arranged. We nevertheless spent twenty minutes debating the order of a programme we are not yet capable of performing for an audience we do not yet possess.

This may be what professional preparation looks like.

University Orchestra rehearsal was also good. Fourth Desk remains Fourth Desk.

The Dvořák is wonderful.

There were several moments when all the cellos entered together and remained together, which our conductor greeted with the cautious pleasure of a man encountering a shy woodland animal.

There is a particular passage we worked on several times where the whole cello section gets this huge, warm line underneath the orchestra and every time we reached it, I had that feeling I had missed without quite realising how much I had missed it.

Playing inside a section is different from playing alone. You don’t merely hear your own instrument. You feel everyone around you drawing the same phrase in the same direction.

When it works, sixteen bows somehow become one.

When it doesn’t, the conductor stops you and asks why you are rushing.

I like the cello section. I am gradually learning everybody’s names. Fourth Desk feels less like somewhere I have been placed and more like somewhere I sit.

That is a small distinction, but an important one.

Badminton

Badminton was less harmonious.

Wednesday was our first proper practice as a mixed-doubles team. Last week was fun. Paul and I became partners almost accidentally. We discovered we were surprisingly good together and nearly beat an exceptional pair. This week we arrived as partners, which apparently activated a part of my personality normally concealed for the protection of the public.

I became a coach.

Paul had not appointed me, but this did not deter me. I became somewhat ... Directive.

Paul would probably use a different adjective.

The issue is this: we have a communication problem. Not generally. Well, not really. No, I mean on the court.

Badminton doubles only works properly if both players know what the other is doing. It requires communication. If the player at the back moves forward, they need to call so their partner can react. If one player has the better shot, they need to say so. If both players reach for the same shuttle, the opposition receives a point and an entertaining demonstration of poor organisation.

Paul is a very good singles player. He is fast, powerful and reads the shuttle well. He is not accustomed to playing with somebody capable of reaching shots he assumes are his responsibility.

There were too many times when Paul came forward without saying anything. Which meant I didn’t know whether he was coming. Which meant we both attacked the same shuttle. Which meant the back of the court was completely exposed.

I explained this.

Then I explained it again the next time he did it.

And the next time.

Then, much like a Brit abroad who doesn’t speak the local language, I explained it louder. This continued for rather longer than it should have until he eventually became irritated—I have no idea why. I was only trying to help us improve.

Then I became irritated because he was irritated.

Excellent.

At one point he said, “Give me a break.”

Which I interpreted as, “Stop explaining the thing we are specifically here to practise.”

What he probably meant was, “I understand, please allow me more than fourteen seconds to turn understanding into instinct.”

In retrospect, his request was reasonable.

Eventually, though, he came forward without calling, and we nearly collided. I told him once again that he had to communicate.

“I know! For fuck’s sake, Lana!”

Lana.

This was not, objectively, the most important part of the sentence.

But it was the part I heard.

He called me ‘Lana.’

Not Alannah. Lana.

Pretty much only my mother uses my full name. Most people now call me Lana. Paul has always called me Alannah. In fairness, that is my name, and it’s how Lily first introduced me. And I have never corrected him.

I pointed out what he had done, and he immediately apologised.

I told him there was nothing to apologise for.

The truth is, I prefer Lana. That’s why I started using it. And I didn’t know I cared about what Paul called me until he called me Lana.

We were standing on opposite sides of our half of the court. I was holding my racquet, attempting to look severe. He was plainly irritated with me.

And I smiled.

This did not improve his irritation.

It may have been the worst possible moment to become pleased about something entirely unrelated to badminton.

Jem told us to stop messing about and receive his serve. His language was somewhat less polite.

We actually won every game we played, which suggests the session went well. It was evidence that we were individually better than the people we played. Those are not always the same thing. Still, I thought we had made progress. Paul thought I had removed most of the enjoyment from the afternoon.

His precise words were that it was supposed to be fun. This sounds reasonable.

I replied that winning is more fun, which is objectively true. It is also, I have since concluded, not a complete answer. Not from my point of view.

I have missed competitive badminton more than I understood. For two years, I told myself that I did not need it. I had music. I had exams. My knee was more important than a game. All of that was true.

Then I stepped onto a court again, felt the old part of my mind wake up and discovered that it had merely been waiting. A score begins, and I want every point. An opponent finds a weakness, and I want to close it.

Somebody tells me that the national champions may be beatable, and suddenly I want to compress two years of lost conditioning and an entire doubles partnership into three weeks.

Paul wants to win too. I can see it the moment a game becomes close. But he has played badminton for enjoyment, while I spent years being taught to find enjoyment in preparation, repetition and winning.

Neither approach is wrong. A partnership cannot operate according to only one of them.

I spent an hour demanding that Paul communicate while failing to listen to what he was communicating. There is probably a lesson in that.

I dislike it.

We walked out barely speaking. I said it had been a good session. He said, “You think?”

It is possible that it was a good session for our results and a bad one for our partnership.

Next time I see him, I owe Paul an apology for turning Wednesday into an unscheduled coaching seminar. I still intend for us to enter the tournament with the aim of winning it. I shall simply try to remember that my partner is a person rather than an improvement project.

I may even let him enjoy himself.

Within reason.

Running

Lily was waiting for us at the entrance to the sports hall.

She had run laps around the university track while we played. The track is well-lit, busy, and currently much safer than running alone through the park. But Lily is a cross-country runner, and regards repeated laps as a reasonable substitute in the same way I consider humming a suitable substitute for an orchestra.

She asked Paul if he would run with her.

The reason did not need explaining. She wanted to run around the campus and through the park without doing it alone.

Before Paul could answer, I announced that running would help both his conditioning and mine, and agreed to join her at six the following evening. For both of us.

Paul’s involvement in this decision was like a cello’s involvement in the decision to be tuned, although I did ask him if he was okay with it. He agreed. I’m not sure I gave him much choice.