#penelope lively

The voice of history, of course, is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled with the stories of others – Mother, Gordon, Jasper, Lisa, and one other person above all; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history. I shall respect the laws of evidence. Of truth, whatever that may be. But truth is tied to words, to print, to the testimony of the page. Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality. Pierre on the field of battle, the Bennet girls at their sewing, Tess on the threshing machine – all these are nailed down for ever, on the page and in a million heads. What happened to me on Charmouth beach in 1920, on the other hand, is thistledown. And when you and I talk about history we don’t mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled. So, since my story is also theirs, they too must speak –Mother, Gordon, Jasper… Except that of course I have the last word. The historian’s privilege.

A summer. Two summers, perhaps, and a winter. Time out of mind ago – at least not out of mind but shrunk to a necklace of moments when [my brother and I] did this or that, when we said this or that, were here or there. When we were at home, sprawled side by side in the schoolroom, absorbed in one another while downstairs Mother sings to herself as she does the flowers. Or in Gordon’s rooms at Cambridge, or at a theatre in London or roaming the Dorset landscape, arrogantly bored. I don’t wonder people looked at us with dislike. A year, perhaps two… And then we both began to look beyond each other, to wander away, to take an interest in the despised proletariat beyond. That time went; it is also forever there, conditioning how we are with one another. Because of it, other people are still excluded. Most of them never knew this; only Sylvia, poor stupid Sylvia, who got a whiff of it but never knew what it was she smelled. Later, much later.

Penelope Lively, Metamorphosis