Coincidences
My ‘Desert Island’ book is John Buchan’s ‘The Three Hostages’ – the most sheerly enjoyable read I have ever had. Is it a novel? Or, in the terms the author used, a ‘shocker’? I used to argue that, along with its thriller elements, it gave as vivid an account of the Twenties as, say, ‘The Waste Land,’ but the fact remains – which I can’t avoid – that it begins with the most monumental coincidence, putting it out of bounds as a ‘serious’ novel. I’ve been attempting to write fiction lately, a story that ends with a coincidence, so coincidences are on my mind lately – in fiction as in life. I could motivate my own literary coincidence if I wished, the way Forster gets the families together at the tiny Surrey village of Windy Corner in ‘Room with a View,’ or hustles everyone to ‘Howards End’ at the climax of that book. But I’m inclined to let my encounter remain as unexplained. I’ll take the risk. It’s based on something that happened to me, a strange meeting in a bookshop thirty years ago. At the time, I’d been reading admiringly, a book called ‘Single Blessedness’ by Margaret Adams whose photograph had accompanied a Guardian article about her, and also featured on the back of her book, which was about the merits of living alone. And there she was, unmistakeable, standing as a customer among the shelves of the tiny bookshop in Bradford on Avon. How odd, I thought.
These coincidences happen all the time. In Durham, where I’ve been at St. Cuthbert’s Society (a college), spending two terms writing what I feel like doing - and being paid for it - I’ve got to know a fair few students, including one called Matt, and attended one of his concerts in the Cathedral – he’s a conductor. I’d assumed he was reading music but it’s Arabic he told me over breakfast. ‘What school did you go to?’ I asked. ‘Eton’ was the reply. I’d noted his surname ‘Asquith’ and wondered if he was any relation to the Edwardian Prime Minister. Indeed, he was – and what’s more, he said, the chap on your left (whom I didn’t know) is great great-grandson of his - Asquith’s - Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey (‘The lights are going out all over Europe’). Two of Asquith’s Wartime Cabinet (whom Buchan would have known) five or six generations on, next to me over the formica table. How ‘grand’ - and strange.
In the same dining room, a week later I’m talking to another student who introduces me to a tall rugby player, James, who’s come to sit beside me. James’ accent sounds familiar, and I say, ‘Are you from Lancaster?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you go to Lancaster Grammar School?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Are you about 19?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know my friend Harry Cole?’ ‘He’s my best friend.’ Harry is the son of my best friend, Peter Cole.
Victorian novelists relied on coincidences like that to advance the plot and keep the wheels turning, early Dickens the most obvious. Even the more measured and realistic George Eliot in ‘Daniel Deronda’ relies heavily on coincidence, to tie up knots and bring the elements of the story together. We (largely) accept this in such an ambitious novel, in a way we perhaps don’t with Thomas Hardy, whose fine novel ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ creaks with (lazy?) coincidence. One disbelieves what one already knows to be fiction.
That said, the complete absence of the improbable, of course, actually undermines realism. In the Eighties, I had been working with someone on a film at the BBC - got to know him as well as you do for the 6 weeks or so shooting the film - and then, the following year, turned from a picture I had been looking at in the Met in New York to find him looking at the same picture. That’s not unlike the fifth act chance encounters of Victorian fiction.
But let’s go ‘curious-er.’ In the Lower Sixth at school I read History (English and European), Geography and Economics. After my first trial exams in February (but before the announcement of the results) I dreamt of all four final marks, down to the last percentage: 72% for English History; 59 % for Economics and so on – OK results but no more, particularly with that last. I wrote these dream results down and showed them to a friend. The first three – official – results came in exactly as I had predicted. Excitement at this ‘coincidence’ had spread via my friend to the whole class now, and when our Economics teacher, ‘Spike’ Jones, announced that I had got 59% there was a whoop round the room, which Spike didn’t understand, explaining that it was a disappointing result because I had completely misunderstood the last exam question.
We have entered the world of prophecy. If I have a gift for it, it remained latent till some dozen years later. I’m a keen horse racing fan – the Flat. Life livens up for me in March, and that year, 1976, my first as a full time writer, I had plenty of time to read the racing pages. I had been to the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket where a fine colt called Wollow, trained by the young Henry Cecil, had won rather easily. Though I thought Henry Cecil, then, as a fly-by-night toff, with a silver spoon in his mouth (he was married to the daughter of Noel Murless, a great trainer) there was no question that Wollow, with stout breeding, was a justified favourite for the Derby, which takes place a month later than the Guineas and over an extra half a mile. Wollow looked nailed on. Lester Piggott was trying to get the ride - and failing – over Frankie Dettori’s dad, who remained on board.
Somewhere between the two races I had a dream: that a colt called Empery would win up the centre of the track (I saw the move in my mind’s eye) by five lengths with Lester Piggott in the saddle. Now Piggott hadn’t a ride at that point, but when he settled on Empery, a French horse, later that week, I confided my dream to a racing pal who thought I ought to get on quick. Too cautious, I put a modest amount on: to win and each way. I didn’t know how to approach a bookies’ so my friend did all that for me and we sat in front of the television and watched amazed as Piggott on Empery won by five lengths down the centre of the course. Wollow was well beaten.
I wish this second sight was available to me on a daily basis, but have to report that was the end of it. There is a rider (so to speak). A year after the dream and the bet I was called in by the local income tax people who were puzzled, as well they might, by a young man who had given up a very decent regular income for the pittance I earned (£305) my first year as a full time writer. I took in, as instructed, all bills – motor car and household bits and bobs. After twenty minutes running through my accounts the tax guy must have realised he had an honest (if foolish) man sitting opposite him. There was a hundred pound discrepancy to the accounts, however, which I couldn’t account for till I returned home. I telephoned him. ‘I’ve worked out where than extra hundred came from,’ I said. ‘I won it as a bet.’ ‘They all say that,’ he said.
I wouldn’t dare include this last prophecy in any fiction (D.H. Lawrence has a go with something like it in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’), and am encouraged to note it down only because of the uncertainties of modern day physicists peering into black holes and wondering what on earth infinity means in terms of the rules and ‘laws’ we struggle by. Chance and coincidence at that prophetic level seem to suggest the existence of a metaphysical order that is beyond our usual day to day ken. Prophetic dream play havoc with our usual notions of space and time – and I’m floundering outside my pay grade. Let me come down to earth instead with a recent monumental coincidence. Mathematically, what do you think the chances are of the following?
I had my portrait painted lately, partly because I was in London for two months, so could manage regular sessions, staying in Blackheath but going over to the painter, who lived in Balham, for the sittings. At a certain point I moved houses in Blackheath and started using a different railway station, so said to Annabel, the portraitist, that I would be arriving about a quarter of an hour later than I had been. ‘Oh, where are you staying?’ I told her: ‘It’s called Lee Park.’ ‘I know Lee Park. What number?’ I told her. ‘That’s where I used to live.’ And a week later she came round, revisiting her first London bedsit flat in the Eighties, my bedroom once her living room. Colette wrote a fine story, ‘The Rainy Moon,’ based on a similar premise, but I think I’ll stick in my own fiction to more ‘probable’ coincidences.
And I’m not sure this last recent coincidence from my own life isn’t even stranger than the enormous improbability from ‘The Three Hostages’ with which I began this piece. The protagonist, Richard Hannay, in retirement, has been approached by his former Secret Service superiors to trace a gang of conspirators aiming at destroying civilisation as we know it. All that’s known about the villains is a clue teasingly thrown the law officers’ way by their unknown leader in the form of some elegant verse. Hannay is reflecting on the impossibility of this mission when he is visited by his neighbour in the Cotswolds, Dr. Greenslade, who – in the course of their conversation – comes up with a couple of images similar to those verses. Hannay wants to know where Tom Greenslade might have heard those words. Tom takes the night to think about it and the eventual answer gives Hannay a vital lead to the possible chief conspirator, a great Buchan villain who happens to be a rising young Tory M.P. Buchan had tried something like this coincidental start before in ‘The Power House,’ his first essay at a ‘shocker,’ but had piled incident on incident – too many casual pointers - to bring us close to the bogey man. The author had learnt his lesson. And there it is: an improbability at the start of a novel that maybe isn’t so outlandish as those in my own real life. But coincidences so often don’t work in fiction because fiction need to be believable in the way life doesn’t. The cliché proves true. Life is a great deal odder than a Hardy plot or a Buchan opening. It’s a part of probability that many improbable things will happen - but what we marvel at in our day to day lives, sadly and perhaps unfairly, won’t do with our more serious fictional reading.
These coincidences happen all the time. In Durham, where I’ve been at St. Cuthbert’s Society (a college), spending two terms writing what I feel like doing - and being paid for it - I’ve got to know a fair few students, including one called Matt, and attended one of his concerts in the Cathedral – he’s a conductor. I’d assumed he was reading music but it’s Arabic he told me over breakfast. ‘What school did you go to?’ I asked. ‘Eton’ was the reply. I’d noted his surname ‘Asquith’ and wondered if he was any relation to the Edwardian Prime Minister. Indeed, he was – and what’s more, he said, the chap on your left (whom I didn’t know) is great great-grandson of his - Asquith’s - Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey (‘The lights are going out all over Europe’). Two of Asquith’s Wartime Cabinet (whom Buchan would have known) five or six generations on, next to me over the formica table. How ‘grand’ - and strange.
In the same dining room, a week later I’m talking to another student who introduces me to a tall rugby player, James, who’s come to sit beside me. James’ accent sounds familiar, and I say, ‘Are you from Lancaster?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you go to Lancaster Grammar School?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Are you about 19?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know my friend Harry Cole?’ ‘He’s my best friend.’ Harry is the son of my best friend, Peter Cole.
Victorian novelists relied on coincidences like that to advance the plot and keep the wheels turning, early Dickens the most obvious. Even the more measured and realistic George Eliot in ‘Daniel Deronda’ relies heavily on coincidence, to tie up knots and bring the elements of the story together. We (largely) accept this in such an ambitious novel, in a way we perhaps don’t with Thomas Hardy, whose fine novel ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ creaks with (lazy?) coincidence. One disbelieves what one already knows to be fiction.
That said, the complete absence of the improbable, of course, actually undermines realism. In the Eighties, I had been working with someone on a film at the BBC - got to know him as well as you do for the 6 weeks or so shooting the film - and then, the following year, turned from a picture I had been looking at in the Met in New York to find him looking at the same picture. That’s not unlike the fifth act chance encounters of Victorian fiction.
But let’s go ‘curious-er.’ In the Lower Sixth at school I read History (English and European), Geography and Economics. After my first trial exams in February (but before the announcement of the results) I dreamt of all four final marks, down to the last percentage: 72% for English History; 59 % for Economics and so on – OK results but no more, particularly with that last. I wrote these dream results down and showed them to a friend. The first three – official – results came in exactly as I had predicted. Excitement at this ‘coincidence’ had spread via my friend to the whole class now, and when our Economics teacher, ‘Spike’ Jones, announced that I had got 59% there was a whoop round the room, which Spike didn’t understand, explaining that it was a disappointing result because I had completely misunderstood the last exam question.
We have entered the world of prophecy. If I have a gift for it, it remained latent till some dozen years later. I’m a keen horse racing fan – the Flat. Life livens up for me in March, and that year, 1976, my first as a full time writer, I had plenty of time to read the racing pages. I had been to the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket where a fine colt called Wollow, trained by the young Henry Cecil, had won rather easily. Though I thought Henry Cecil, then, as a fly-by-night toff, with a silver spoon in his mouth (he was married to the daughter of Noel Murless, a great trainer) there was no question that Wollow, with stout breeding, was a justified favourite for the Derby, which takes place a month later than the Guineas and over an extra half a mile. Wollow looked nailed on. Lester Piggott was trying to get the ride - and failing – over Frankie Dettori’s dad, who remained on board.
Somewhere between the two races I had a dream: that a colt called Empery would win up the centre of the track (I saw the move in my mind’s eye) by five lengths with Lester Piggott in the saddle. Now Piggott hadn’t a ride at that point, but when he settled on Empery, a French horse, later that week, I confided my dream to a racing pal who thought I ought to get on quick. Too cautious, I put a modest amount on: to win and each way. I didn’t know how to approach a bookies’ so my friend did all that for me and we sat in front of the television and watched amazed as Piggott on Empery won by five lengths down the centre of the course. Wollow was well beaten.
I wish this second sight was available to me on a daily basis, but have to report that was the end of it. There is a rider (so to speak). A year after the dream and the bet I was called in by the local income tax people who were puzzled, as well they might, by a young man who had given up a very decent regular income for the pittance I earned (£305) my first year as a full time writer. I took in, as instructed, all bills – motor car and household bits and bobs. After twenty minutes running through my accounts the tax guy must have realised he had an honest (if foolish) man sitting opposite him. There was a hundred pound discrepancy to the accounts, however, which I couldn’t account for till I returned home. I telephoned him. ‘I’ve worked out where than extra hundred came from,’ I said. ‘I won it as a bet.’ ‘They all say that,’ he said.
I wouldn’t dare include this last prophecy in any fiction (D.H. Lawrence has a go with something like it in ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’), and am encouraged to note it down only because of the uncertainties of modern day physicists peering into black holes and wondering what on earth infinity means in terms of the rules and ‘laws’ we struggle by. Chance and coincidence at that prophetic level seem to suggest the existence of a metaphysical order that is beyond our usual day to day ken. Prophetic dream play havoc with our usual notions of space and time – and I’m floundering outside my pay grade. Let me come down to earth instead with a recent monumental coincidence. Mathematically, what do you think the chances are of the following?
I had my portrait painted lately, partly because I was in London for two months, so could manage regular sessions, staying in Blackheath but going over to the painter, who lived in Balham, for the sittings. At a certain point I moved houses in Blackheath and started using a different railway station, so said to Annabel, the portraitist, that I would be arriving about a quarter of an hour later than I had been. ‘Oh, where are you staying?’ I told her: ‘It’s called Lee Park.’ ‘I know Lee Park. What number?’ I told her. ‘That’s where I used to live.’ And a week later she came round, revisiting her first London bedsit flat in the Eighties, my bedroom once her living room. Colette wrote a fine story, ‘The Rainy Moon,’ based on a similar premise, but I think I’ll stick in my own fiction to more ‘probable’ coincidences.
And I’m not sure this last recent coincidence from my own life isn’t even stranger than the enormous improbability from ‘The Three Hostages’ with which I began this piece. The protagonist, Richard Hannay, in retirement, has been approached by his former Secret Service superiors to trace a gang of conspirators aiming at destroying civilisation as we know it. All that’s known about the villains is a clue teasingly thrown the law officers’ way by their unknown leader in the form of some elegant verse. Hannay is reflecting on the impossibility of this mission when he is visited by his neighbour in the Cotswolds, Dr. Greenslade, who – in the course of their conversation – comes up with a couple of images similar to those verses. Hannay wants to know where Tom Greenslade might have heard those words. Tom takes the night to think about it and the eventual answer gives Hannay a vital lead to the possible chief conspirator, a great Buchan villain who happens to be a rising young Tory M.P. Buchan had tried something like this coincidental start before in ‘The Power House,’ his first essay at a ‘shocker,’ but had piled incident on incident – too many casual pointers - to bring us close to the bogey man. The author had learnt his lesson. And there it is: an improbability at the start of a novel that maybe isn’t so outlandish as those in my own real life. But coincidences so often don’t work in fiction because fiction need to be believable in the way life doesn’t. The cliché proves true. Life is a great deal odder than a Hardy plot or a Buchan opening. It’s a part of probability that many improbable things will happen - but what we marvel at in our day to day lives, sadly and perhaps unfairly, won’t do with our more serious fictional reading.