Arthur & George

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