Mr Blottisham arrived at the Senior Common Room carrying three sheets of paper and an expression of considerable injury.
“I have been reading the latest story,” he announced. “The Shape That Changed When Inhabited.”
Professor Quillibrace folded his newspaper.
“I'm pleased to hear it.”
“I am not.”
Miss Stray looked up from her tea. “What troubles you?”
“Everything. The house is geometrically perfect, yet it contains a window that shows different things to different people. A woman appears who may not be there. The narrator sits down, stands up, sits down again, and apparently changes the world by doing so. And at the end, having learned nothing whatsoever, he brings home a third chair.”
“Perhaps,” said Quillibrace, “he has learned something about chairs.”
Blottisham ignored him.
“What I want to know is this: what shape is the house?”
“A square,” said Quillibrace.
“Precisely! Then why can't the story behave like one?”
Miss Stray put down her cup.
“Do you think the house changes shape?”
“The title says so.”
“The title says that the shape changes when inhabited. The story tells us repeatedly that the shape does not change.”
Blottisham examined his papers.
“That is the sort of contradiction I object to.”
“Then you must object to the story's title,” said Quillibrace, “rather than its geometry.”
“But surely a shape is a shape! If the walls remain equal and the corners remain right angles, the house remains what it is.”
“In one respect,” said Miss Stray.
Blottisham looked suspicious.
“What other respect can there be?”
“Consider a doorway. Its dimensions may remain unchanged, but whether someone can pass through it depends on the person, what they are carrying, and what lies on the other side.”
“That's a matter of practical inconvenience.”
“Indeed,” said Quillibrace. “The world is notoriously inconsiderate in that respect.”
Miss Stray continued. “The story may be asking whether the house is adequately described by its geometry. The narrator measures the walls, but the measurements tell him nothing about the woman at the window, or why the river appears when he sits down.”
“Then he should measure the window.”
“He does.”
“More carefully, perhaps.”
“Would that explain why his neighbour sees only the field?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“His neighbour may have poor eyesight.”
“An interesting hypothesis,” said Quillibrace. “Does it also explain the second chair?”
“No. The second chair is simply absurd.”
“Yet the narrator's neighbour brings one chair into the house, and the narrator later finds two.”
“An error of continuity,” Blottisham declared. “The author has lost track of the furniture.”
Miss Stray smiled. “And the umbrella?”
Blottisham shuffled his papers.
“The umbrella is an unnecessary complication.”
“Would you prefer the woman to stand in the rain without one?”
“I would prefer the woman to establish her existence.”
“Perhaps she has,” said Quillibrace. “But the story has not established the terms on which we are to understand her existence.”
Blottisham stared at him.
“That is an appalling defence of an author.”
“It was not intended as a defence.”
Miss Stray leaned forward.
“I wonder whether we are making the same mistake as the narrator's neighbour. He enters the house, sees the field, and concludes that there is nothing else to see. The narrator sees the lane and concludes that something extraordinary is happening. Neither knows why their experiences differ.”
“Then one of them must be wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because they cannot both be right about the window.”
“Can they not both be right about what they see?”
Blottisham opened his mouth, then closed it.
Professor Quillibrace resumed his newspaper, but Miss Stray was not finished.
“The narrator begins by treating the house as an object whose properties can be established through measurement. When the measurements fail to explain his experience, he tries to change his position in the room. Later he introduces another person. Finally, he brings another chair.”
“Yes,” said Blottisham. “And at no point does he conduct a proper experiment.”
“Perhaps he is no longer trying to discover what the house is,” she said. “Perhaps he is beginning to discover what happens when someone enters it.”
“Those are the same thing!”
“Are they?”
“Of course. What a thing is determines what it does.”
“And what it does,” asked Quillibrace, “has no bearing on what we can discover about it?”
Blottisham looked from one to the other.
“I have come here to discuss literature, not to be cross-examined by furniture.”
“A pity,” said Quillibrace. “The furniture appears to be central to the case.”
Blottisham gathered his papers.
“I shall write to the author. I shall demand a diagram of the house, a floor plan showing every room, and an explanation of the woman's whereabouts. I shall also request an inventory of all chairs before and after the narrator's visits.”
“An admirable beginning,” said Quillibrace.
“And I shall insist that the next story has a proper ending.”
Miss Stray glanced at the papers in his hand.
“What would you consider a proper ending?”
“A conclusion. The narrator discovers the explanation, the mystery is resolved, and the reader knows what has happened.”
“And if discovering the explanation changes what the narrator understands the house to be?”
Blottisham stopped at the door.
“Then,” he said firmly, “the author should explain that as well.”
He departed.
Miss Stray looked at Quillibrace.
“Do you think he will ever enter the house?”
“Certainly,” said Quillibrace. “He will arrive with a measuring tape.”
“And what will he find?”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
“That, Miss Stray, may depend on whether he sits down.”
She smiled and moved her chair slightly to the left.
Nothing else in the room changed.
At least, nothing that Professor Quillibrace could be persuaded to measure.
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