A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  “You don't need to worry about me, Rob,” I said. “I can take care of myself. Really, I'm fine.”

  Once again, my words sounded harsher than I wanted them to. He looked down, miserably. I tried to break the tension. I said, as brightly as I could, “I'll tell you what, though. I'd love a cup of tea. I'm dying of thirst.”

  He sighed and got up to put his jeans on. I looked at his body. It was slender, almost like a girl's, but with smooth muscles under his skin, and a wisp of downy brown hair running down the base of his back. It seemed a sweet, childish spot. I put my hand out and rested it there for a moment, in what I hoped was a gesture of reassurance. He didn't respond. Instead, he stood up, buttoned up his jeans, and went downstairs to get the tea.

  I lay there thinking about what to do next. I'd have to get up soon and get back to the flat. If Jason had come back by now, he'd know I'd been out for the night. I could say I'd slept on campus. Where, though? The best idea would be to say at my friend Cassie's. She was on my course, and she had a room on campus which she didn't use much, because she was living at her boyfriend's and only went back there occasionally to have it off with her tutor, who was married. We were always using each other as alibis.

  Of course, Jason would be suspicious. He wasn't one to think very hard about my comings and goings, but he seemed to sense it when there was someone else in the offing. Once, I'd gone out for tea with a bloke on the course, and he'd never stopped going on about it. A bun and you're anyone's, he'd said. This time, his antennae would pick up a lot more. I wasn't very good at lying, or at covering my tracks, not where Jason was concerned, anyway. He could get anything out of me in the end, if he wanted to. He might just let this pass, but if his suspicions were aroused in any way, he wouldn't let it drop. My best bet was to get back to the flat before he appeared. I'd have to get a move on.

  By the time Rob came back with the tea, I'd got dressed and was sitting on the bed, putting my boots on. He started as he came in the door, a cup of tea in each hand.

  “God, you're not going already are you?”

  “Sorry, Rob, I've got to get back.”

  I took the tea, blew on it, and began to sip it even though it was boiling hot.

  He looked crestfallen. “Why?”

  I started feeling irritated with him again. I was beginning to get sick of all these questions. “Because. Just because, that's all. I've got things to do.”

  “What things? Sorry, I mean, OK, fine. Shall we meet up later, then?”

  “I don't know.” I sighed. I searched for something else to say, but I couldn't come up with anything much.

  “… It depends,” I added.

  “Oh.” He sounded hurt. “So … when … when will I see you again?”

  There was a pause and then we both started laughing. It was a line from a song we'd joked about together in the Falmer Bar, the day we'd been in there and the fight had broken out. We'd been sitting there with our beers talking about what Wittgenstein meant by saying that “all swans are white” and we'd suddenly noticed all these other heavy philosophical questions coming out of the jukebox at us.

  “When will we share precious moments?” I carried on.

  “Are we in love, or just friends?” he remembered.

  I knew the final line, but I didn't want to come out with it. Not in the circumstances. Then I did. I couldn't resist it.

  “Is this the beginning or is this the end?”

  It had cracked us up at the time. It was the sort of question that Wittgenstein, along with the Three Degrees, was forever asking. But now, it didn't seem so funny, and I wished I hadn't said it.

  Rob looked upset again, so I tried to cheer him up. “Everybody was Kung Fu fighting,” I said.

  He laughed. “Those cats were fast as lightning.”

  “In fact it was a little bit frightening …”

  We started giggling and he sat down on the bed next to me, took my tea out of my hand, put it on the floor next to his, and pushed me back. I pulled away, jokingly, but he grabbed me and held me tight, and soon we were kissing and pressing our bodies up against each other in a way that took us straight back to where we had been the night before.

  I wriggled out from under him and sat up. “Rob, I'm sorry, I've really got to go.”

  He sighed. “Go on then. Bugger off if you must.”

  The way he said it was half moody, half playful.

  “I'll phone you.”

  “You do that.” This time, there was a bitterness in his tone that made me wonder if he knew about Jason. Maybe someone had told him I already had a boyfriend. Or maybe he'd remembered that he hadn't given me his phone number. I'd been thinking of asking for it, but I wasn't going to now, with the mood he was in.

  He didn't say anything else. He just lay there on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, as though he was waiting for me to go. So I got my things together as quickly as I could, and then I went over to say good-bye. He was still looking up, away from me.

  “Rob?”

  “What?”

  “Just one thing. Were you calling me this morning?”

  He sat up. “What do you mean, calling you?”

  “You know, when I woke up. I heard somebody calling me. Was it you?”

  “No,” he said. He lay back down again. “It wasn't me.”

  Then he turned over on his side with his face towards the wall.

  I walked over to the door. “Bye then. See you around.”

  He didn't reply, so I left the room.

  I walked quickly down the stairs, stopping off at the dusty toilet on the way, and let myself out of the front door, hoping I wouldn't bump into Hervé or any of the others. As I stepped out into the street, I saw the dark-haired girl from the gig the night before coming towards the house. I turned and walked quickly the other way so she wouldn't see me, wondering who she was and why she was coming here. As I turned the corner, I glanced back and saw her letting herself into the house with a key. I carried on walking fast, but as I did, I thought of Rob as I had left him, lying upstairs on the bed looking at the wall. Maybe that's how she'd find him when she went in to his room. Maybe … I stopped my train of thought right there. I didn't want it to go any further. But, ridiculous as it was, I felt a pang of jealousy.

  When I got back into the flat, the phone was ringing. I ran over to it with my coat on, leaving the door open behind me, and picked it up. It was Jason.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he said. “I've been ringing you all morning.”

  I was just about to launch into an explanation of how I'd spent the night on campus in Cassie's room when I remembered it was him who had been missing for several days, not me.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  He laughed, and I realized I wasn't going to be subjected to an interrogation as to my whereabouts the night before. This time it was him who was in the wrong.

  “Sorry, Susie, I should have phoned before.” So he hadn't phoned before this morning, I thought. I had the upper hand now.

  “Where are you? What are you doing? I've been worried sick about you,” I said. An image of me and Rob lying on the bed kissing flashed through my mind. “Worried sick,” I repeated.

  “Sorry, Susie Q.” He called me this when he was trying to be nice to me. If anyone else had done it, I would have thought they were a creep. But with Jason, it didn't seem to matter.

  “I'm in London,” he went on. “I've had to stay up here to do a bit of business. Can you come up tonight?”

  “Why? What for?”

  “I just thought it would be nice to see you.”

  There was a pause. “I love you,” he added, as though that explained everything.

  I could hear the clink of glasses and laughter in the background. He sounded as though he was phoning from a bar or somewhere, even though it was a bit early in the day for that. Wherever it was, it didn't seem like a good place to have a conversation.

  “Are you drunk?” I said.

 
“Of course not, Susie,” he said, slurring his words slightly. “I just want to see you.”

  I could feel my resolve weakening. Jason was sweet when he was drunk. He was phoning me because he was happy and he wanted me to be there, it was as simple as that.

  “I can't, Jason,” I said. “I'll miss my lecture tomorrow.”

  “Oh, for God's sake, Susie, missing a few lessons won't kill you. They'll never notice. Go on, please. For me.”

  “But Jason …” I said, making one last effort to resist.

  “We're having a great time here. We're at this new drinking club. There's a party on here tonight and I don't want you to miss it. I'll meet you off the train at Victoria. Get the 6:30. All right?”

  I gave in.

  “OK then,” I said. If I got up early the next day and got the train back, I could probably get to my lecture on time.

  “But I can't stay long,” I added.

  “Don't worry, we won't. We'll be back to sunny Brighton in a flash. See you at the station, Susie Q. Bye.”

  He put the phone down before I could reply.

  chapter 5

  I GOT THE SIX-THIRTY TO VICTORIA that evening. I found a window seat on an empty table near the buffet car, and put my shoulder bag down on the aisle seat next to me. I hadn't brought much with me, just a few books, a notepad, a pencil, a toothbrush, and a pair of clean knickers for the next day. I rummaged about in the bag and, as the train pulled out of the station, I began to read, mainly to put off anyone asking me to move my bag so they could sit beside me.

  I'd taken the book out of the library to mug up on my lecture next day. The lecturer was a famous Austrian professor called Paul Feyerabend who'd outraged everyone by saying that science wasn't very scientific, which didn't sound all that outrageous to me, but apparently it was. Anyway, the rumor on campus was that all the scientists who normally stayed in their labs in the “B” block and never came out were going to be there, having apoplectic fits in the front row.

  The book was called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. I got into it straight away, looking up occasionally to think, gazing out of the grubby window at the frozen brown fields passing by under a colorless sky. Kuhn seemed to be saying, in a roundabout way, that scientists are more interested in their careers than in finding out the truth. Again, this didn't surprise me very much. But the way he wrote about it was persuasive. He was saying that, in science, belief systems or “paradigms” evolve around certain ideas—for instance, Copernican astronomy or Newtonian physics—and then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, they're dropped. None of the paradigms fit together, and there is no rational progression from one to another. They change mainly because of social and financial pressures in what he called “the scientific community.”

  As I read, I realized why this idea had caused such a furor at Sussex. You could see why the scientists were incensed by the notion that one theory was no truer than another, and that academics just came up with stuff to keep their mates happy and hold on to their jobs. It was the kind of thing everybody knew, but nobody ever said, that is until Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend came along. I made a mental note not to miss the lecture, whatever happened in London.

  After about half an hour, I went to the buffet car and got a cup of tea and a piece of fruitcake. British Rail fruitcake was so horrible that, once you'd eaten a piece, you didn't feel like eating anything else, however hungry you were. I was starving and I didn't have much money, so it was just what I needed. I carried the tea and the cake back to my seat, looking forward to getting back to the scientific revolutions, but when I got there I found a bloke sitting opposite my seat by the window.

  He was very far out, this guy, a complete freak in fact. The sort of person Jason and his friends would have called a hippie. He had long, curly blond hair and a beard, strands of which were plaited together. He was wearing a long, electric blue woolly cloak of some sort and had a large brown felt hat on his head. Under the band of the hat he had stuck some ears of corn, which bobbed as the train moved. I took all this in at a glance, and sat back down, pretending to ignore him.

  I started reading again, but it was hard to concentrate. On the other side of the table, the guy was laying out some tarot cards. He was arranging them in rows and murmuring to himself. I noticed that he was referring to a crumpled, handwritten instruction sheet in his lap. I put my head down so my hair fell forward and peered out through my hair. I could just make out the heading at the top of the sheet: “Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot.” The muttering continued.

  I took a swig of tea and a bite of fruitcake. I didn't know much about Aleister Crowley other than that there were loads of freaks in Brighton who were into him and that they practiced something called sex magick. A girl I knew on my course had once slept with one of them, and had told us how he'd started praying in the middle of it. He'd explained to her later that, according to Aleister, if you prayed during your “nuptive moment,” you'd get what you wanted, but that it was no good her praying, it only applied to men. We'd had a good laugh about it at the time. The Crowley heads were ridiculous and most students took the piss out of them, but to tell the truth I was slightly scared of them as well.

  I carried on reading my book.

  We may have to relinquish the notion that changes of paradigm carry scientists closer and closer to the truth …

  Opposite me, the freak went on turning up the cards.

  Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles …

  The mumbling grew louder and a card landed in the middle of the table, just above my book.

  Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are almost always very young or very new to the field …

  At the edge of my vision, I could see that the card's face was turned towards me.

  These are the men likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them …

  At the bottom of the cards were two words: “The Lovers.”

  I looked at the card, without moving my head. It was drawn in the style of William Blake, but not at all well. At the bottom of the picture were two babies, one dark and one fair. The lovers were a king and queen, and over them stood some kind of god figure with a long beard, his arms outstretched. I kept my face expressionless. If this was the freak's way of chatting me up, it wasn't going to work. The lovers. Not bloody likely.

  I remained glued to my book all the way to Victoria, only raising my head as we came into the station. I got up before the train stopped, intending to stand in the corridor and wait. I'd had enough of staring at pages and trying to concentrate with the lovers hovering over the edges of them. I felt annoyed, and a little unnerved as well. I walked into the aisle without looking at the freak, but as I passed him, he touched my arm to stop me, and handed me a card. I was so surprised that I took it, glancing at it without taking it in, before closing my hand over it. I nodded quickly at him and moved away into the corridor before I looked at it again.

  On the back of the card was a design of mystical curling snakes and yin and yang symbols. I turned it over and there, on the front, was a picture of a red-haired man with massive thighs, bulging eyes and a bristling mustache. There were two small horns sticking out of his head, and a silly little triangular hat perched on top of it. He was dressed in a medieval costume with a green tunic and tights and pointy yellow shoes, and there was some sort of lion next to him that seemed to be biting his leg. In the background was what looked like a bunch of grapes, with butterflies and fairies and whatnot flying about. At the bottom of the card were the words: “The Fool.”

  The train pulled to a halt, and as I got out onto the platform, I stuffed the card into my bag. A mass of people were pouring off the train, so I walked along with them and tried to get lost in the crowds as quick as I could in case the freak came after me, although now he'd given me the fool card instead of the lovers, I wasn't sure that he would. In fact, I
felt a bit embarrassed now about the way I'd assumed that he'd been trying to chat me up, when all the time he'd probably been sitting there thinking what an idiot I looked.

  I went straight to the ladies', and when I thought the coast would be clear, I emerged again on the platform to wait for Jason. We'd arranged to meet by the barrier, but he wasn't there. I wasn't surprised. Jason was always late for everything. But as I stood there, I started to get angry, mainly with myself. This whole evening was going to be one big hassle, and I'd be lucky to make it to my lecture next day. I knew already how things would pan out. Jason would say he'd drive me down to Brighton in the morning, and then he'd oversleep and I'd have to get the train at the last minute. I should never have come.

  After half an hour I was in a foul mood, but then I saw the tall figure of Jason walking towards me through the crowds, his fair hair flying out around his head. He came up to me and breathed brandy all over me as he kissed me. He was wearing his old leather RAF flying jacket, with fur inside, and I put my head against it and smelt its reassuring, familiar smell. As I did, my anger evaporated.

  “Sorry, Susie,” he said. He put his arm around me as we began to walk off together. “I just didn't realize the time. I've been drinking all afternoon with Bear.”

  Bear was Jason's best friend. They'd been at public school together, and they were still inseparable. Bear's real name was Rupert, but nobody called him that. The nickname Bear had stuck from his schooldays, and it was a kind of joke now, because he didn't look in the least like a bear, being slight and rather elegant. I liked Bear. I wasn't quite sure why, but there seemed to be a bond between us.

  “Bear's waiting in the car,” said Jason. “We're going for cocktails at Madagascar, OK?”

  “What's Madagascar?”

  Jason laughed. “Oh, I thought I'd taken you there, Susie Q.”

  “No,” I said. “It must have been someone else.”

  Jason laughed again, ignoring the sarcasm in my voice. “Sorry, Susie, I thought I had. Anyway, it's this new members-only bar that's just opened. You'll see. It's great.”