“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?”
“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
sent something. I wanted them to stand for the triumph of the will to good. I take it that you know what that is. The sheer yearning that we have for the good – for light rather than darkness, for harmony rather than disharmony, for kindness rather than cruelty. That’s what I wanted. And instead of being these
. . . these symbols, they’ve turned out to be distressingly human.”
“But surely that’s better. Surely that makes them more realistic.”
Antonia smiled. “That’s assuming that realism is the only goal we should pursue. Would you say that about painting? Surely not. So why say it about literature? Why does everything have to be realistic? It doesn’t. Surely we can be more subtle than that. No, it’s not the realism issue with me. I’m reconciled to these flawed saints, as long as their human failings don’t obscure the ultimate point that I want to achieve.”
“Which is?”
“The achievement of a philosophically acceptable resolution.
I want their vision of justice and good to prevail.”
“And is that the only possible ending?” asked Angus.
“No,” said Antonia. “Things can end badly, as they sometimes do in life. But if they do, then we know that something is wrong, just as we know it when a piece of music doesn’t resolve itself properly at the end. We know that. We just do. And so we prefer harmony.”
“And everybody lives happily ever after?” asked Angus.
Antonia stared at him. “Do you really want it to be otherwise?” she asked.
“Now then, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn, “Mummy tells me you’ve been away for a little trip.” Bertie, seated on the couch to the side of Dr Fairbairn’s desk, glanced nervously at the psychotherapist. “Yes,” he said. “I went to Paris.”
“Ah,” said Dr Fairbairn. “That’s a beautiful city, isn’t it? Did you like it, Bertie?”
“It was very nice,” said Bertie.
“Are you sure?” asked Dr Fairbairn. It was very common for the object of dread to be described in positive terms.
“Yes,” said Bertie. He paused. Had Dr Fairbairn been to Paris himself? Perhaps he knew Jean-Francois Francois; they were quite alike in some ways. “Have you been to Paris, Dr Fairbairn?”
“I have, Bertie,” replied Dr Fairbairn. “And tell me, what did you notice about Paris? Did you notice that it has something sticking up in it?”
Bertie thought for a moment. “You mean the Eiffel Tower, Dr Fairbairn?”
