Ninety-Four Instalments and No Decent Conclusion

A discussion at the Senior Common Room, St Anselm's College

Mr Blottisham arrived at the Senior Common Room carrying a substantial folder.

He placed it on the table with an expression of considerable injury.

"Well," he announced, "I have read all ninety-four instalments."

Professor Quillibrace, who was examining the contents of a small teapot, looked up.

"All of them?"

"Every one. I have made notes, identified recurring motifs, constructed a provisional chronology, and attempted to establish the underlying allegorical scheme."

Miss Stray looked at the folder.

"That sounds rather a lot of work."

"It was. And I regret to report that the collection has proved extraordinarily resistant to proper analysis."

Quillibrace poured his tea.

"How unfortunate."

"Don't be flippant, Professor. We have an inn, a valley, a river, an orchard, several gardens, a number of houses, a road that goes somewhere and comes back again, and a succession of people who seem to spend most of their time eating, drinking tea, repairing things and being kind to one another."

Miss Stray smiled.

"That does sound like quite a pleasant place."

"Pleasant!" Blottisham exclaimed. "That is not the point. The inn must represent something. The road must signify something. The gardens, the birds, the bells, the water, the windows—there are repeated patterns everywhere. Yet whenever I think I have established what something means, it appears in another context and behaves quite differently."

He opened his folder.

"Take the wooden birds. They are made, lost, found, remembered, given away, and occasionally appear in places where nobody seems particularly surprised to find them. What are they?"

"Wooden birds," said Quillibrace.

Blottisham stared at him.

"That is not an interpretation."

"No. It is an observation."

Miss Stray leaned forward.

"I think the birds are interesting precisely because they don't have one fixed function. Sometimes they connect people. Sometimes they bring back a memory. Sometimes they simply belong to a garden. Their significance seems to emerge from what happens between the people and the objects."

"Then they are symbols of relationships," Blottisham said, reaching for his pencil.

"Not necessarily symbols of relationships," Miss Stray replied. "Perhaps they participate in them."

Blottisham put down his pencil.

"I don't see how that helps."

"It may help us see why your search for a single meaning keeps running into difficulties."

He turned several pages.

"And the roads! There are old roads, roads through orchards, roads beyond hills, roads that remember people, roads that lead home. Surely we can agree that these constitute a coherent symbolic system."

"They do recur," Miss Stray said. "But notice how differently they function. A road can take someone away, bring someone home, lead to a stranger's cottage, or simply provide a pleasant walk. The meaning depends on the journey, the traveller, and the place to which the road relates."

"Then what is the road supposed to mean?"

Miss Stray considered this.

"Perhaps we should ask what it makes possible."

Blottisham closed his eyes.

"That phrase again."

Quillibrace looked up.

"Which phrase?"

"Possibility. Everything seems to become a possibility. A house becomes a possibility, a garden becomes a possibility, a window becomes a possibility. Even the ending is not an ending. The final instalment leaves a window open. I ask you, Professor, where is the conclusion?"

Quillibrace placed his cup on its saucer.

"Perhaps you have mistaken the absence of closure for the absence of form."

Blottisham frowned.

"Explain."

"The collection has a structure. Places recur. Characters meet, separate, return. Objects acquire histories. Relationships develop. The valley becomes familiar, but never entirely exhausted. The sequence has a beginning, a middle, and a point at which the reader is invited to pause."

"An invitation to pause is not a conclusion."

"Nor is a conclusion necessarily an invitation to stop."

Miss Stray looked towards the window.

"I noticed something else. The stories rarely tell us what to think about the places or the people. They allow us to spend time with them. We learn about the world through ordinary activities: preparing food, tending gardens, mending baskets, welcoming visitors. The relationships are not explained to us. We come to recognise them."

"Yes," said Blottisham impatiently. "But what is the central proposition?"

"Perhaps there isn't one."

"Then what holds the collection together?"

Miss Stray paused.

"I think the relationships do. Not just the relationships between the characters, but between the characters and the places, the objects, the paths, the memories. Nothing seems to exist entirely by itself. The significance of one thing often emerges through its relation to something else."

Quillibrace regarded her with mild approval.

"An interesting observation."

Blottisham looked from one to the other.

"So the whole thing is about relationality?"

"That would be one way of describing it," said Miss Stray. "But I wouldn't want to turn it into another key that unlocks everything."

"Why not?"

"Because then we would have exchanged one reduction for another."

Blottisham looked down at his notes.

He appeared to be searching for a suitable objection.

"Let us consider the inhabitants. They are almost uniformly kind. They help one another, offer food, repair things, welcome strangers. There is very little conflict. Surely this is unrealistic."

Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.

"Is kindness unrealistic?"

"Don't be deliberately difficult. People are not invariably so considerate."

"No," said Miss Stray. "But the stories aren't attempting to provide a statistical account of human behaviour. They are exploring what becomes possible when people treat one another well."

Blottisham sighed.

"And what becomes possible?"

"Trust, perhaps. Hospitality. A sense of belonging. The willingness to remain uncertain without becoming anxious about it."

"Good heavens. You make it sound almost like a moral philosophy."

"I don't think the stories instruct us to be good," Miss Stray said. "They simply allow us to inhabit a world in which people are generally good to one another."

Quillibrace stirred his tea.

"That may be more effective than instruction."

Blottisham turned another page.

"Then there is the matter of food. I have counted bread, cheese, pears, apples, honey, stew, tea, wine—"

"Did you count the biscuits?" Miss Stray asked.

"I did. And I have been unable to determine why the characters are continually eating."

"Perhaps they are hungry," said Quillibrace.

Blottisham ignored him.

"The food must have a symbolic function."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Perhaps it does. But it also has a practical one. People need to eat. And sharing food is one of the ways they welcome one another. I rather liked that the stories never seemed embarrassed by ordinary life."

Blottisham looked at the folder.

"I confess that, by the time I reached the final instalment, I had become rather fond of the White Heron."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Then the stories have succeeded in something."

"That is precisely what troubles me. I have become attached to a fictional inn without being able to explain why."

Quillibrace leaned back.

"Perhaps you needn't explain it."

Blottisham looked appalled.

"Surely you cannot be suggesting that we abandon interpretation?"

"Not at all. I suggest that interpretation need not take the form of reducing everything to a single answer."

He paused.

"Consider the difference between understanding a place and exhausting it. You may know the inn very well. You may recognise its rooms, its courtyard, its garden, its inhabitants. You may even know which chair Rowan will complain about. Yet none of that means you have discovered everything the inn can become."

Miss Stray laughed.

"Especially if Rowan is still repairing it."

Blottisham looked down at the folder again.

"I suppose I have been trying to discover what the collection means, when perhaps I should have been asking how it works."

"That would be a promising beginning," said Quillibrace.

"And how does it work?"

Quillibrace picked up his cup.

"Apparently, by making people feel at home in a world that has no intention of remaining entirely familiar."

There was a brief silence.

Miss Stray looked at the folder.

"Will you read it again?"

Blottisham appeared to consider this possibility with some alarm.

"All ninety-four instalments?"

"Perhaps not immediately."

He closed the folder.

"I think I shall begin with the White Heron."

Quillibrace nodded.

"A sensible choice."

Blottisham stood, gathering his papers.

"But I still maintain that the collection ought to have a proper conclusion."

"Of course," said Quillibrace.

Blottisham looked relieved.

"Then you agree?"

"Not at all. I merely think you should be allowed to maintain your position."

Miss Stray laughed.

Blottisham departed, muttering something about the deplorable state of contemporary narrative.

Quillibrace watched him go.

"Do you think he will return to it?"

"I think he already has," said Miss Stray.

Quillibrace poured the remaining tea.

"Then perhaps we should leave him to it."

Outside, the afternoon was bright. Somewhere beyond the College walls, the world continued without waiting to be interpreted.

And in the Senior Common Room, on the table beside the teapot, lay a folder containing ninety-four instalments and no decent conclusion.