Love & Virtue, page 12
‘I really can’t tell you how unsexy that meeting was,’ I told Eve. ‘He was almost militant.’
‘The military has massive problems with sexual abuse; you might as well say that he was religious about it.’
I laughed, then was silenced by the glare of the adjacent table. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Sure.’ Eve stood and stretched, her arms raised above her head, soft tendrils of armpit hair on full display. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipples were proud beneath her white singlet. While her arms were above her head, she said, loud enough for the whole room to hear: ‘I’m going to write a dialogue.’
Loud shushes from the surrounding tables, like sprinklers had been turned on.
Because I didn’t respond to Eve—rather, bowed my head under the weight of the shushing—she leaned towards me and repeated herself, in quieter but no less proud tones. ‘In the exam. I’m going to write a dialogue.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Remember in the lecture when Paul said we don’t have to write an essay? I think he was hinting that a dialogue would go down well.’
‘How original,’ I whispered—too weak to convey my sarcasm.
‘Hardly.’ Eve smiled like she thought it was very original indeed. ‘It’s very Socratic of me.’
When I sat the exam the following morning, I wrote a dialogue, without being conscious of making a decision to do so. I did not answer the question—rather, a teacher and a student discussed it. Both the teacher and the student spoke in a voice like Luke’s: clipped and precise, no f lorid tokens of respect. The dialogue had a sparring quality. When I finished and looked at the clock, I found there were forty-five seconds to go. Too nervous to reread what I’d written, I looked around at the other students. Then, conscious that I was staring, I looked down at my desk, sitting on my hands, and waited for the invigilator to call ‘pens down’. When she did, I jumped.
Outside the exam room, I found Eve. She was standing in a small crowd of people I had never met before. They were discussing the exam animatedly and didn’t part when I approached. I had to tap Eve on the shoulder, so she could turn around to face me.
‘It was fine. Exactly what I had prepared for. If anything’—here she turned back to the group, to make sure they were listening—‘it was a bit easy.’
‘Easy?’ They laughed. ‘All right. Easy for you, maybe.’
I laughed too, and squeezed myself into their circle. When I saw Luke approaching, I moved to make space for him.
‘How’d we go?’ he said, looking only at Eve.
Everyone in the circle watched.
‘Just happy it’s over,’ she said, with affected modesty.
We went to the pub, our conversation bouncing happily on a pleasant cocktail of adrenaline and relief. It was our last exam for the semester, the sun was shining and the sky was a brilliant winter blue. We sat in the courtyard, and our beers looked golden.
Eve told everyone that she had written a dialogue. I grabbed a beer coaster and started folding it into quarters, then gently ripped it along the seam, trying to get the line as straight as possible.
Eve did not ask me how I found the exam or what I had written, but I was sure that if she did, I wouldn’t have said anything about a dialogue.
AFTER EXAMS, EVE suggested that we attend the philosophy department’s Women in Philosophy mixer. The event was designed to make the discipline seem less masculine, or threatening, or whatever.
‘It sounds lame,’ I said.
‘It’s about creating safe spaces for women who study philosophy. What about that is lame?’
‘I don’t know, it sounds tokenistic. I get my “women in philosophy” quota every time I talk to you.’
Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Just come. We’ll meet some cool people.’
Upon arrival at the mixer, it only took one glance around the room to see that Eve was right. Eve headed straight for a woman who looked to be in her sixties standing towards the back. She was wearing slim cigarette-leg pants and a white shirt. Her hair was short and curled across her forehead. ‘That’s Eileen Murphy,’ Eve whispered to me as we approached. ‘She’s head of department.’ At Eileen’s side, talking animatedly, was a very short, very thin woman closer to our age, with a brown bob that looked both exquisitely sleek and also like it was never touched—like it just fell casually into symmetrical, face-defining shape.
The two women paused their conversation, and Eve opened, as always, boldly. ‘I’m surprised at the turnout. Not what you’d expect from a Women in Philosophy function.’
I followed quickly. ‘We only came because we thought it would be a quiet place to hang out just the two of us.’
They both laughed. The brown-haired woman looked to Eileen, waiting for her to respond first.
‘It’s atrocious, isn’t it?’ said Eileen. ‘You know, every year, female undergraduates are in the majority, but by the postgraduate level they’ve all been weeded out.’
Eve straightened. ‘Weeded out?’
‘By the men. Talking over them; undermining their contribution; telling them that subjects like literature are less important than good old-fashioned pragmatism.’ She listed each of these on her fingers, with a little wave at the end, as if to say: I could go on. She faded into an arms-crossed silence.
‘I’m Violet, by the way.’ The brown-haired woman extended an elegant hand, tipped with shellac-painted nails in a red so dark it was almost black.
I took her hand greedily, and Eve and I introduced ourselves.
Eve asked Violet and Eileen about their work. Pointed, interesting questions with little asides and exclamations that suggested she knew what they were talking about. Eve never admitted to not knowing a philosopher. She would qualify her ignorance: ‘I haven’t read any of his stuff, but I’ve heard of him.’
When Violet asked politely whether I’d read anything by the philosopher she worked on, I said, ‘No.’ I blinked a few times in the silence that followed. ‘I haven’t heard of him either.’
Eileen laughed, which Violet took as a cue. ‘Haven’t heard of him,’ she said.
I noticed Violet often repeated people in conversation, especially when they said something to make her laugh. When she did, she appropriated the joke. Her sexy, smoky laugh, combined with that tight brown bob, was so deeply affirming, it was as though the joke was hers in the first place and you, through conversation, had merely returned it to her.
Violet invited Eve and me to the pub with some other master’s students. When she asked Eileen if she would come, the older woman just shook her head. ‘You know me.’
Violet said to us, by way of explanation, ‘Eileen has a nosocialising-with-students policy.’ Then, to Eileen, she added: ‘Come on. It will be fun.’
Eileen raised a hand, brushing her off. It was an authoritative gesture that would have made me shrink. ‘Trust me, Violet,’ she said, ‘if going to the pub with students is that much fun, then you shouldn’t be there.’
WHEN WE ARRIVED at the pub, the only person I recognised was Professor Rosen. The postgraduate students and several faculty members sat at a long wooden table in a dark corner at the back. Professor Rosen was looking blankly at the table, rotating his beer glass slowly with his thumb and forefinger.
Eve and I sat with Violet at the opposite end. I got us a jug of cider, and Eve ordered a bowl of chips.
‘So, did you two meet in Paul’s class?’ Violet was so poised that a shoestring fry, in her hands, could have passed for a cigarette.
‘Sort of,’ Eve said.
‘We actually met at Fairfax. Our rooms are next to each other.’
‘You live at college?’ She nibbled the end of her chip. ‘Do you hate it?’
Several minutes passed in which Eve criticised the residential college system in general. I was called upon to provide anecdotes, the telling of which Eve mostly did herself, such as the time I was interviewed at Rumwold College and told that the college wasn’t interested in hearing about unwanted sexual advances ‘every time’. For a moment, as Eve settled into the jug, and her gestures became as f luid as her conversation, I worried I would be called upon to recount how personal and humiliating drinking games like Never Have I Ever could be.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Professor Rosen was standing behind Violet, one hand on the back of her chair—or on her back; from where I sat opposite her, I couldn’t tell. I looked to where he had been sitting and saw several empty chairs.
Paul smiled at Eve and me, with a nod of recognition. ‘Violet,’ he said, ‘these girls were in my first year class this semester.’
She raised her eyebrows—two manicured parentheses. ‘Girls?’
‘Fine.’ Professor Rosen held up both hands in surrender. ‘Not girls. Pupils, colleagues, learned friends.’
‘I’ll take learned friends.’ Eve smiled.
‘I dunno. I prefer tiny little lady-person,’ I said.
They all laughed at that, nobody louder than Paul. I looked over at him and found his eyes ready to meet mine. I looked away first.
I’d expected Violet to be rude, but she approached him like a friend, making no attempt to subdue her charm. She looked up at Paul with a wide smile and, with a neat swoosh of her bob, motioned him into the chair at her side. Her only signs of hostility seemed performed—she disagreed with almost everything he said, but in a tone I interpreted as playful, like his opinions were objectionable, but totally unrelated to his person.
Whenever I said something funny, Paul would look at me, even after the conversation had moved on, a smile playing in his eyes. I found him so different from the person in our last meeting who sat on the other side of his desk and wouldn’t look at me, except with irritation. He must be drunk, I thought.
When he left to get another beer, Eve did not wait for him to leave our sight before leaning forward and gazing intently at Violet. ‘What’s the deal?’
‘With Paul?’ Violet turned to watch him leave. Another swoosh of smooth hair. ‘Oh. He’s brilliant, obviously. Knows it, infuriatingly.’
Eve pressed on. ‘I’ve heard that rumour . . .’ she said. ‘The girl who’s at Oxford now?’
‘Oh yeah. That was ages ago.’ Violet took one of the remaining chips and wiped it along the bottom of the bowl, gathering up f lecks of salt. ‘Like, in his first year of teaching’—Eve exhaled, a little burst of disapproval, and Violet shrugged—‘which makes it all the more astonishing, of course. Just, why would you do it, you know? Surely it’s not worth risking your career when you’re just starting out. I suppose he thought he could get away with it.’
Eve took a sip of cider. ‘It sounds like he has.’
‘That’s the sad thing. He’s, like, brilliant and good-looking, so he’s probably just super entitled. Which makes him dangerous.’
‘Do you think he’s good-looking? Michaela does too.’
Violet looked at me, as if expecting some comment on Paul’s appearance. Feeling suddenly jittery, and conscious of my heart rate, I announced: ‘I need to pee.’ A fact I had been sitting on since we arrived.
As always, it was the tiled loneliness of the cubicle that confirmed what I had been sensing for a while. I was drunk. Sitting on the toilet, I pored over my phone until I became aware of the queue forming outside.
As I headed back to the table, Professor Rosen, still waiting in line for his drink, called out to me from the bar.
‘Michaela.’ His smile, big and toothy, made him look much younger. ‘I’m going outside for a smoke.’
‘Fair,’ I said.
‘Do you want to come?’
I looked back towards the table, where Eve’s hands were coming down firmly, emphasising a point I could only imagine she was making very articulately. Violet was nodding vigorously.
‘It looks like my best offer.’
He laughed, and stood to the side so I could pass in front of him. He followed close behind me and, as we approached the door, he leaned around me to hold it open, one hand on the door, the other resting, ever so lightly—perhaps just the brush of three or four finger pads—on the base of my spine.
Out on the street, the rumble of the pub like white noise behind us, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook it in my direction. ‘Want one?’
‘My dad died of lung cancer.’
‘Jesus.’ He put the pack back in his pocket. ‘That’s good, because I don’t smoke.’
‘I never said I don’t smoke.’
‘Jesus.’ He laughed and pulled the pack out again, drawing two cigarettes from it. He looked at me, shaking his head a little, and laughed. ‘Fuck you.’ His laugh flowed out of him, loud and relaxed, unlike in his lectures, when it was a huffy, breathy burst, punctuating a joke, signalling permission for the rest of us to join.
‘I wasn’t saying that just to fuck with you,’ I said. ‘He did. Die, I mean.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
People my age never assaulted me with sympathy. At this point they would get uncomfortable and mumble or look around, as if searching for an exit. The way Paul looked at me felt like I was being hugged.
‘But I still smoke.’
He laughed again, a sardonic, dark-hearted little laugh. ‘And you still said it to fuck with me.’
‘A little bit.’
I accepted the cigarette, and leaned forward as he held out the lighter.
‘So, what’s the plan then?’
‘What plan?’ I took a drag. My limbs felt light. I leaned against the brick wall at my back, one hand pressed against its cold surface.
‘The life plan.’ He exhaled to the side, careful not to get smoke in my face. ‘Do you think you’ll stick with philosophy? I’m sure you could do very well.’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t really know what I’m doing.’
‘Just take the compliment.’
Feeling chastised, I looked at the ground, exhaling and watching the smoke fade.
‘Well, I really like it,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know what I want to do yet, though.’
‘That’s fair enough. You’re only, what? Twenty? Twenty-one?’
‘Eighteen.’
He coughed a bit on the drag he was taking. ‘Wow. You’re very . . .’
‘I’ve been told I’m mature.’ I tilted my chin up as I said this. A proud little inflection.
‘Yeah, I would not have guessed eighteen. I think it’s the haircut.’
My hand shot up to my hair, close cropped, pixie-like, and shaved across the base of my neck.
‘I stopped getting ID’d the day I cut it all off.’
‘ID’d. Haven’t thought about that in a long time.’ He paused for a drag of his cigarette. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘I have really thick hair. It was annoying.’
‘And you were sick of looking like other girls.’ This was a statement.
Resenting his perceptiveness, I pushed the conversation back onto him. ‘And you?’
‘Yeah, I was also sick of looking like a girl.’
‘No, how old are you?’
He looked up, like he was counting in his head. ‘Double you, actually. Thirty-six.’
‘Right.’ I exhaled in a long, steady sigh. ‘How long have you worked here?’
‘Ages. I was at Oxford for a while.’
‘Oxford. What was that like?’
‘Very grand. But very grey. I got seasonal depression.’
I laughed, exhilarated by this personal detail. ‘At least that’s easy to cure. Like, did you buy a sun lamp?’
‘No. I just came home.’
‘See? What a quick fix.’
Paul dropped his cigarette on the ground. There was a thin film of rain, and the ground sounded sleek crunching under his boot. As he crushed the stub his weight shifted slightly, halving the already small space between us.
‘We should go back inside,’ he said.
He was standing very close. Slowly, gently, he put one hand on the brick wall just behind my head.
The bubbling fullness inside my stomach from all the cider, the humming of the pub behind us, the pounding of my heart—all were silenced when I grabbed Paul’s face with two hands and pulled it towards mine. I did not think about the action, except, I suppose, I had been thinking about it for months. At the time, with one of his hands behind my head, the heat of his body flush against mine, his bearded soft smile so close to my face, I wasn’t conscious of doing anything at all.
He responded slowly, first with one hand still on the wall, the other limp at his side, his mouth wet on mine. Then he eased his free hand behind my back and bit gently on my bottom lip as he pulled me closer.
When we broke away we both smiled. Every pore was tingling, but at the same time I felt relaxed, like I could put my head on his chest and sleep.
‘Okay,’ he said, his hands cupping my face. I don’t think he meant anything by it—he sort of breathed the word, just for something to say.
Before I could respond, he dropped his hands, picked up one of mine, gently squeezed it, and then turned to walk back inside.
I followed him. The inside of the pub felt hot and musty, and I drew breaths of sticky air. My jumper prickled, and my limbs were light and empty.
Back at the table with Eve and Violet, Professor Rosen did not look at me, except in passing. His leg did not touch mine under the table. His hand, when it reached across for a chip, did not brush mine in the bowl. Nothing—not a look or a touch, or even a whispered aside—passed between us.
When he stood to leave, he said goodbye to the table as a collective, not making eye contact with anyone. As he passed my side of the table, which was closer to the door, he clapped me on the shoulder.
So convincing was his performance that, when I was walking home with Eve, she did not ask about Professor Rosen. I had imagined for a long time what it would be like to tell her about this moment, how I might relish the look on her face, how the mood between us would twist and contort. Now, however, the kiss seemed fragile: a crystalline moment which would shatter upon retelling.
