“Antonia, my dear . . .” He half expected her to close the door in his face, but she did not. In fact, she seemed neither surprised nor outraged to see him.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. I have been waiting for a parcel and I wondered if you were it.”
Angus shook his head. “I am empty-handed, as you see. Except for the apology that I bring with me.” He was rather pleased with the speed with which he had managed to bring up the subject, and he smiled broadly, largely with relief.
318 On the Doorstep
“Apology?” asked Antonia. “Why? What do you need to apologise for?”
Angus was taken aback. “The other evening,” he stuttered.
“My . . . er . . . my . . .”
Antonia cut him short. “Oh that! Heavens, you don’t have to apologise for that! In fact, I found the whole thing rather amusing. Dental anaesthetics can do all sorts of things to people.
It’s hardly your fault.”
Angus had to think quickly. He had no recollection of attributing his condition that evening to the fact of having had a dental anaesthetic, but the excuse sounded like him. Now, should he say anything else; should he confess to her that he had been drunk, or should he leave it at that? It was a difficult decision to make, but he rather inclined to the line of least resistance, which was dental.
But then Antonia said: “But of course you had drunk an awful lot of wine,” she said. “So that made it worse, no doubt.”
Angus gave a nervous laugh. “Brunello di Montalcino,” he said. “Such excellent wine! When the Queen had dinner with the President of Italy, that’s what they had.”
“In moderation, no doubt,” said Antonia drily.
“Hah!” said Angus. This was not as easy as he had hoped.
“Oh well! I always remember that great man, Sir Thomas Broun Smith, saying that what a man said after midnight should never be held against him. Such a generous sentiment, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Antonia. “Except in your case it would have to be after six p.m.”
Angus, in his embarrassment, looked down at Cyril, who looked back up at him. Cyril was uncertain what to do, but he sensed that things were not going well. Antonia’s ankles were directly in front of him, and he wondered if it would help if he bit them. But then there was The Scotsman to worry about, and he decided not to risk it.
“Anyway,” said Antonia briskly. “It’s very rude of me to keep you standing on the doorstep. Do come in and have a cup of tea or something . . .”
Antonia Expounds 319
“Weaker?” joked Angus. “Well, thank you very much, I shall. I must say, it’s always very nice to be back in this flat.
Domenica and I used to have such wonderful conversations together.”
“She’ll be back sooner rather than later,” said Antonia. “And then I shall move in over the way. As it happens, the flat opposite is coming up for rent and I’ve taken it.”
“But that’s wonderful news,” said Angus. He was not sure, though, whether it really was.
102. Antonia Expounds
Antonia was not one to harbour a grudge, and in spite of her acerbic comments about Angus Lordie’s unfortunate behaviour at the dinner to which he had invited her, she did not intend to raise the matter again. Domenica liked this rather peculiar man and Antonia felt that she should make an effort to do so too.
So, having invited Angus into the flat, she led him into the study and invited him to sit down while she fetched coffee and short-bread.
“How is your book . . . your novel going?” Angus inquired politely as he sipped at his coffee. “The one about the Scottish saints?”
Antonia sighed. “Not very well, I’m afraid. My saints, I regret to say, are misbehaving. I had hoped that they would show themselves to be, well, saintly, but they are not. They are distressingly full of human foibles. There’s a lot of jealousy and back-biting going on.”
Angus was puzzled. Antonia was talking of her characters as if they had independent lives of their own. But they were her creations, surely, and that meant that they should do their creator’s bidding. If she wanted saintly saints, she could have them. “But you’re the author,” he said. “You can dictate what the people in your book do, can you not?”
Antonia reached out for her cup of coffee. “Not at all,” she 320 Antonia Expounds
said. “People misunderstand how writers work. They think that they sit down and plan what is going to happen and then simply write it up. But it doesn’t work that way.”
Angus looked at Antonia with interest. Some of his paintings had turned out very differently from what he had had in mind at the beginning. Light became dark. And dark became light.
Was this the same process? He had thought it was simply mood, but was it possible that the work acquired its own momentum, its own view of things?
“Oh yes,” Antonia went on. “The author is not in control. Or, rather, the conscious mind of the author is not in control. And the reason for that is that when we use our imagination we get in touch with that part of the mind which is asking the ‘what if’
questions. And that is not part of the conscious mind.”
“What if?”
“Precisely,” said Antonia. “What if. All the time, every moment, your mind is going through possibilities. Any time you look at things. You’re busy recognising and classifying what you see.
Thousands and thousands – countless thousands of times a day.
Your brain is saying: that thing has four legs, ergo it’s a table; or that thing has four legs, but it’s got fur – it’s a dog. And so on.
That’s how we understand the world. We don’t think of it, and you don’t see yourself doing it, but it’s fairly obvious if you watch a baby. You can actually see them doing it. Watch a baby while it looks at things, and you can see the mental wheels turn round.
They sit and look at things intently, working out what they are.”
“I see all that,” said Angus. “But what’s that got to do with . . . ?”
“With writing? Well, a similar process is happening when you write a story. The unconscious mind is asking questions and then exploring possible outcomes. These then surface in the conscious mind, in the same way perhaps as speech surfaces, and become the words that tell the story. And exactly the same thing happens when somebody writes a piece of music or, I should imagine, paints a painting.”
“So art reveals the unconscious?” asked Angus. “Do I give myself away in what I paint?”
Antonia Expounds 321
“Of course you do,” said Antonia. “There’s nothing new in that. Unless a work of art obeys very strict rules of genre, then it’s often going to say: this is what the artist really wants. This is what he really wants to do.”
“Always?” asked Angus.
“Almost always. But there is more to it than that. The unconscious mind reveals itself in the story it creates. A writer who writes lurid descriptions of the sexual, for example, is simply revealing: this is what I want to do myself. Yes! That’s a thought, isn’t it? Some of us are charmingly naive and don’t realise that is what we are announcing to the world. We are acting out our own internal dramas. And that, I suppose, is inevitable and is just part of the business of being a writer. People are going to pick over what you write and say: ah, so that’s what you’re really about! You hate your father or your mother or both of them.
You had an overly strict toilet training. You’re trying to recreate your first love. And so on.”
“And your saints? What does that tell us about you?”
Antonia did not answer for a moment. She looked intently at Angus, and for a moment he thought that he had overstepped some unspoken limit in the conversation. Perhaps there would be more to apologise for; but then she spoke. “The problem with my saints is that I was consciously willing them to repre-322 Imaginary Friends