Free I'm on the train! by Wendy Perriam Page A

second-rate.’
    ‘Yes, but that wasn’t quite so shocking in his time. Women were often regarded, then, as essentially unequal and definitely the second sex. Besides, he had such a bad experience with his mother, that probably coloured all his views.’
    ‘Come off it! If you’re meant to be a philosopher, you can’t base a whole system of thought on what happened to you personally.’ She broke off, as a doddery old lady made her halting way towards them and handed over her ticket.
    ‘Your film’s in Screen Two, over there’ – the guy pointed to the right – ‘but I’m afraid you’ve missed the first half-hour.’
    ‘That’s OK, I’ve seen it twice before. I just want to see the end again.’
    Barely waiting for the customer to shamble off across the foyer, he returned to his defence of Schopenhauer. ‘Look, forget about his mother and concentrate on his good points – his interest in Buddhism, for instance. He believed the best way of dealing with life’s traumas was to cultivate an attitude of acceptance, even resignation, combined with deep compassion for suffering humanity, and I don’t see how you can argue with that. He was also fervently anti-slavery and cared passionately about the rights of animals, which was quite unusual in his day. And I really like the way he said we should address each other not as “ Herr ” or “sir” or “ monsieur ” or whatever, but as “ Leidensgefährte ” – “my fellow sufferer”.’
    ‘That’s typical!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s such a fearful pessimist. In fact, the only two things I remember about him was his dismissal of the entire female sex and his view that we live in the worst of all possible worlds.’
    ‘We probably do.’
    ‘Speak for yourself. My life’s pretty good.’
    ‘We can’t just speak for ourselves. That’s no basis for morality. We need to consider all our fellow humans, especially those who find life intolerable – you know, people living in war-zones, or in crippling poverty, or those imprisoned for their political beliefs, or tortured by—’
    She fought a surge of irritation. So immature a guy had no right to adopt this moralizing air of superiority. Had he attained a ripe old age, he could at least claim the wisdom of experience, but hardly at his early stage of life. Nonetheless, she did feel abashed by his mention of ‘crippling poverty’ and just hoped he hadn’t noticed her watch: a Rolex, worth a good three grand; made of eighteen-carat gold and set with diamonds. Her punishingly long hours of work surely justified a few rewards, although he would disagree, of course.
    ‘I think I’d better go back in,’ she said, unwilling to prolong the conversation, ‘or Josh will be wondering where I’ve got to.’
    ‘Please yourself.’ With a shrug, he returned to his book.
    She stole back into the fuggy darkness. Josh had moved over, leaving his aisle seat free for her. ‘All right, darling?’ he whispered.
    She squeezed his hand. ‘Fine. Have I missed anything important?’
    ‘Only another bloodbath!’
    ‘Sssh!’ reproved a man in front, turning round to glare.
    They both subsided into silence and she tried her best to concentrate . The plot was so convoluted, however, she had long since lost all track of it. And the young dropout in the foyer had triggered emotive memories of Bristol University: the intense, in-depth discussions ; the burning concern for global justice, which she had shared, once, long ago; the lack of any real pressures beyond handing in one’s essays on time. Her present job allowed little scope for reading or philosophizing. In fact, the only things she’d read in the last twelve months had been client profiles and company reports – or women’s magazines when she was too exhausted by her ten-hour days to tackle any book at all, let alone Schopenhauer or Beckett. Yet she could still recall her excitement at discovering both writers, and encountering new philosophies of life. In