Mr Blottisham was writing with unusual determination.
After several minutes he placed his pen upon the table and regarded the page with satisfaction.
"There."
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
"Finished?"
"I've had an idea."
"Congratulations."
"I've written it down before it escaped."
Miss Stray smiled.
"An excellent precaution."
Blottisham tapped the notebook.
"Now it's safely mine."
Professor Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"'Mine'?"
"The idea."
"I see."
"You sound doubtful."
"I am merely curious."
"In what way?"
Quillibrace leaned back.
"Where did it come from?"
"My head."
"Entirely?"
Blottisham looked mildly offended.
"Where else?"
Miss Stray closed the novel she had been reading.
"I've never been completely certain."
"About what?"
"Where ideas begin."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"They begin when one thinks of them."
"Do they?"
"Obviously."
She considered this.
"When I write..."
"...yes?"
"...I usually begin with something rather vague."
"So?"
"Then one sentence suggests another."
"A sensible arrangement."
"But the second sentence often changes the meaning of the first."
"It refines it."
"Sometimes it completely overturns it."
Blottisham frowned.
"So you rewrite."
"Yes."
"And eventually I discover I'm writing about something I hadn't realised interested me."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"A familiar experience."
Blottisham looked from one to the other.
"You both make writing sound remarkably disorganised."
"It usually is."
"I assumed authors knew where they were going."
"Many do."
"And the rest?"
"They find out."
A brief silence settled over the room.
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
"The idea must still have existed beforehand."
"Must it?"
"Otherwise where did it come from?"
Quillibrace reached for the teapot.
"I once asked a physicist precisely that question."
"What did he say?"
"He thought for nearly a minute."
"And?"
"'I honestly don't know.'"
Blottisham laughed.
"Physicists aren't usually allowed to say that."
"They should be more often."
Miss Stray rested her chin lightly upon one hand.
"I've heard composers say similar things."
"They hear music?"
"They begin with a fragment."
"Go on."
"Then the fragment suggests a harmony."
"Naturally."
"The harmony changes the rhythm."
"I suppose."
"The rhythm changes the entire character of the piece."
"So the original idea disappears?"
"No."
"It grows."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Or perhaps..."
"...yes?"
"...it emerges."
Blottisham repeated the word quietly.
"Emerges."
No one spoke for a few moments.
Outside, somewhere across the quadrangle, a piano was being practised with more enthusiasm than precision.
Miss Stray listened for a moment.
"That student has just made exactly the same mistake three times."
"An admirable consistency."
"But each repetition is slightly different."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"So the music is teaching the pianist."
"I think so."
Blottisham looked doubtful.
"Music doesn't teach."
"No?"
"It merely..."
He stopped.
"...answers back."
The room became unexpectedly quiet.
Miss Stray looked at him with unmistakable amusement.
"You've just contradicted yourself."
"I have?"
"You've spent the last week insisting that conversations matter because they answer."
"I remember."
"And now you've noticed that writing does something similar."
Blottisham stared at his notebook.
"I think..."
"...yes?"
"...I've always imagined writing as recording thoughts."
"Most of us have."
"But when I cross something out..."
"...go on."
"...I'm actually responding to something the page has shown me."
Professor Quillibrace nodded approvingly.
"The page changes the landscape."
"It makes possibilities visible."
"Exactly."
Another silence settled over the room.
After a while Quillibrace asked,
"Have either of you ever left a conversation unable to remember whose idea something was?"
Miss Stray laughed immediately.
"Frequently."
"So have I."
"We remember arriving somewhere."
"Yes."
"But not precisely how."
"Nor who first suggested the crucial step."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"I've had that experience."
"And?"
"I never regarded it as philosophically significant."
"It may be."
"In what way?"
"Suppose the final idea belonged..."
Quillibrace paused.
"...not to either speaker individually..."
"...yes?"
"...but to the conversation."
Blottisham looked at the fire.
"Rather like the forest."
"Quite."
"Or chamber music."
"Indeed."
"Or science."
"Precisely."
Miss Stray smiled.
"We seem to be collecting metaphors."
"No."
Professor Quillibrace shook his head gently.
"I rather think they're collecting us."
That remark lingered.
Outside, the piano had progressed to something considerably more confident.
The earlier mistakes had not vanished.
They had become part of the performance.
Eventually Blottisham spoke.
"If ideas really emerge..."
"...yes?"
"...then perhaps asking who owns them is sometimes the wrong question."
"What would be the better one?"
He looked around the room.
The books.
The notebooks.
The piano music drifting faintly through the open window.
The conversation that had somehow carried them all further than any had intended.
"Perhaps..."
He smiled.
"...we should ask what kinds of conversations make them possible."
Professor Quillibrace reached quietly for his teacup.
"I cannot improve upon that."
No one attempted to.
For several minutes they simply sat together while the afternoon unfolded around them—three minds, a room full of books, and an idea that none of them could honestly claim to have produced alone.
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