Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [36]
‘Perhaps it was the efficiency Jimmy Stripling liked?’
‘I hope you’re right, Nicholas. I hadn’t thought of that. Jimmy just needed somebody to look after him in his old age. I expect that was it. We all need that. I see I’ve been uncharitable. I’m glad I went to the funeral, all the same. I make a point of going to funerals and memorial services, sad as they are, because you always meet a lot of people at them you haven’t seen for years, and that often comes in useful later. Jimmy’s was the exception. I never expect to set eyes on mourners like his again, Kensal Green, or anywhere else.’
The train was approaching my station.
‘How are you yourself, Sunny?’
‘Top-hole form, top-hole. Saw my vet last week. Said he’d never inspected a fitter man of my age. As you probably know, Nicholas, I’m a widower now.’
‘I didn’t. I’m sorry to hear —’
‘Three years ago. A wonderful woman, Geraldine. Marvellous manager. Knew just where to save. Never had any money of her own, left a sum small but by no means to be disregarded. A wonderful woman. Happy years together. Fragrant memories. Yes, I’m in the same little place in the country. I get along somehow. Everyone round about is very kind and helpful. You and your wife must come and see my roses. I can always manage a cup of tea. Bless you, Nicholas, bless you …’
As I walked along the platform towards the Exit staircase the train moved on past me. I saw Farebrother once more through the window as the pace increased. He was still sitting bolt upright, and had begun to smile again. On the visit to which he had himself referred, the time when Stripling’s practical joke had fallen so flat, Peter Templer had pronounced a judgment on Farebrother. It remained a valid one.
‘He’s a downy old bird.’
3
IRRITATED BY WHAT HE JUDGED the ‘impacted clichés’ of some review, Trapnel had once spoken his own opinions on the art of biography.
‘People think because a novel’s invented, it isn’t true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel’s invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can’t include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding. The biographer, even at his highest and best, can be only tentative, empirical. The autobiographer, for his part, is imprisoned in his own egotism. He must always be suspect. In contrast with the other two, the novelist is a god, creating his man, making him breathe and walk. The man, created in his own image, provides information about the god. In a sense you know more about Balzac and Dickens from their novels, than Rousseau and Casanova from their Confessions.’
‘But novelists can be as egotistical as any other sort of writer. Their sheer narcissism often makes them altogether unreadable. A novelist may inescapably create all his characters in his own image, but the reader can believe in them, without necessarily accepting their creator’s judgment on them. You might see a sinister strain in Bob Cratchit, conventionality in Stavrogin, delicacy in Molly Bloom. Besides, the very concept of a character in a novel – in real life too – is under attack.’
‘What you say, Nick, strengthens my contention that only a novel can imply certain truths impossible to state by exact definition. Biography and autobiography are forced to attempt exact definition. In doing so truth goes astray. The novelist is more serious – if that is the word.’
‘Surely biographers and memoir-writers often do no more than imply things they chronicle, or put them forward as uncertain. A novelist is subjective, and selective, all the time. The others have certain facts forced on them, whether they like it or not. Besides, some of the very worst novelists are the most consciously serious ones.’