He knows that he should spend the next days and weeks with his children, because that is what a grieving parent does. Kingsley is thirteen and Mary seventeen: ages which now surprise him. Part of him has frozen time at the day and the year when he met Jean – the day his heart was utterly brought to life, and also placed in a state of suspended animation. He must accustom himself to the notion that his children will soon be adults.
If he needs any confirmation of this, Mary soon provides it. Over tea one afternoon a few days after the funeral, she says to him, in an alarmingly grown-up voice, 'Father, when Mother was dying, she said that you would remarry.'
Arthur almost chokes on his cake. He feels his colour rising, his chest tightening; perhaps this is the seizure he has been half-expecting. 'Did she, by God?' Touie certainly never mentioned the subject to him.
'Yes. No, not exactly. What she said was…' and Mary pauses while her father feels cacophony in his head, turmoil in his guts '… what she said was that I was not to be shocked if you were to remarry, because that is what she would want for you.'
Arthur does not know what to think. Has some trap been laid for him, or does no trap exist? Did Touie after all suspect? Did she confide in their daughter? Was it a general remark, or a specific one? He has lived with so much damned uncertainty over the last nine years that he doubts he can bear any more.
'And did she…' Arthur tries to sound jocular, while realizing that this is not the right tone – but then there is no right tone – 'And did she have any particular candidate in mind?'
'Father!' Mary is evidently shocked by the very notion, as well as by his tone.
The conversation passes to safer ground. But it stays with Arthur through the following days, as he takes flowers to Touie's grave, as he stands, distracted, in her empty room, as he avoids his desk, and finds he cannot face the letters of condolence, the letters of true feeling, which continue to arrive. He has spent nine years protecting Touie from the knowledge of Jean's existence; nine years trying never to give her a moment's unhappiness. But perhaps these two desires are – always were – incompatible. He readily admits that women are not his area of expertise. Does a woman know when you are in love with her? He thinks so, he believes so, he knows so, because that is what Jean recognized, in that sunlit garden, even before he himself was aware of it. And if so, then does a woman know when you are no longer in love with her? And does a woman also know when you are in love with someone else? Nine years ago he devised an elaborate plot to protect Touie, involving all those around her; but perhaps in the end it was only a scheme to protect himself and Jean. Perhaps it was entirely selfish, and Touie saw through its fraudulence; perhaps she knew all along. Mary cannot suspect the full burden of Touie's message about remarrying, but it gets through to Arthur now. Maybe she knew from the start, watched Arthur's squalid rearrangements of the truth from her sickbed, understood and smiled at every mean little lie her husband told her, imagined him downstairs busy at the adulterer's telephone. She would have felt helpless to protest, because she could no longer be a wife to him in the fullest sense. And what if – now his suspicions become darker still – what if she knew about Jean's importance from the start, and went on guessing? What if she found herself obliged to welcome Jean to Undershaw while imagining her Arthur's mistress?
Arthur's mind, being both powerful and intransigent, pursues the matter further. His conversation with Mary has further ramifications than those he first saw. Touie's death, he now realizes, will not put an end to his deceits. For Mary must never be allowed to know that he has been in love with Jean for these past nine long years. Nor must Kingsley. Boys, it is said, often take the betrayal of their mother even harder than girls do.
He imagines finding the right moment, practising the words, then clearing his throat and trying to sound – what? – as if he is barely able himself to credit what he is about to say.
'Mary dear, you know what your mother said before she died? About it being possible that I might one day remarry. Well, I must inform you that, to my own considerable surprise, she is going to be proved right.'
Will he find himself saying words like these? And if so, when? Before the year is out? No, of course not. But next year, the year after? How quickly is the grieving widower allowed to fall in love again? He knows how society feels on the matter, but what do children feel – his children in particular?
And then he imagines Mary's questions. Who is she, Father? Oh, Miss Leckie. I met her when I was quite little, didn't I? And then we kept running into her. And then she started coming to Undershaw. I always thought she would have been married by now. Lucky for you she's still free. How old is she? Thirty-one? So was she on the shelf, Papa? I'm surprised no one would have her. And when did you realize you loved her, Father?
Mary is not a child any more. She may not expect her father to lie, but she will notice the slightest incongruity in his story. What if he blunders? Arthur despises those fellows who are good liars, who organize their emotional lives – their marriages, even – on the basis of what they can get away with, who tell a half-truth here, a full lie there. Arthur has always thundered the importance of truth-telling at his children; now he must play the fullest hypocrite. He must smile, and look shyly pleased, and act surprised, and concoct a mendacious romance about how he came to love Jean Leckie, and tell that lie to his own children, and then maintain it for the rest of his life. And he must ask others to do the same on his behalf.
Jean. Quite properly, she did not come to the funeral; she sent a letter of condolence, and a week or so later Malcolm drove her over from Crowborough. It was not the easiest of meetings. When they arrived, Arthur found he could not embrace her in front of her brother and so, on an instinct, he kissed her hand. It was the wrong gesture – there was something almost facetious about it – and it set a tone of awkwardness that would not go away. She behaved impeccably, as he knew she would; but he was at a loss. When Malcolm tactfully decided to inspect the garden, Arthur found himself casting around hopelessly, expecting guidance. But from whom? From Touie installed behind her tea service? He did not know what to say, and so he used his grief as a disguise for his maladroitness, for his lack of joy at seeing Jean's face. He was glad when Malcolm returned from his bogus horticultural expedition. They left soon afterwards, and Arthur felt wretched.
The triangle within which he has lived – frettingly but safely – for so long is now broken, and the new geometry frightens him. His grieving exaltation fades, and lethargy overtakes him. He wanders the grounds of Undershaw as if they had been laid out by a stranger long ago. He visits his horses, but does not want them saddled. He goes daily to Touie's grave, and returns exhausted. He imagines her comforting him, reassuring him that wherever the truth lies, she has always loved him and now forgives him; but this seems a vain and selfish thing to demand of a dead woman. He sits in his study for long hours, smoking and looking at the glittering, hollow trophies acquired by a sportsman and successful writer. All his baubles seem meaningless beside the fact of Touie's death.