'What on earth is going on here?' said Mary Clothier, who was standing in the doorway. Pierce turned slowly and without looking at his mother walked past her out of the door, away down the corridor and into his own bedroom. Mary hesitated. Then she moved into Barbara's room. She found she was having to use a lot of strength to deal with the considerable shock of seeing Ducane strike her son. She did not know what she felt. A confusion of feelings silenced her. 'I'm sorry,' said Ducane, obviously confused too. 'I'm sorry., 'Why there's Montrose ' 'Shut the door, Mary.' 'What happened?» 'You see – shut the door. You see, Pierce has been keeping Montrose prisoner all the time we all thought he was lost.' 'Oh – how very dreadful – I ' 'Yes. I'm afraid I lost my temper with him. I shouldn't have done.' 'I don't blame you. It was very wrong of him. I'll go and look for Barbara.' 'Wait a minute, Mary. Just let Montrose out, will you. That's right. Sit down. Sorry. Just wait a minute.' Mary sat down on the bed and looked at Ducane who was standing by the window frowning and still holding the whip. He shrugged his shoulders suddenly and tossed it on to the table and then crossed his two hands over his forehead covering his eyes. 'You're upset,' said Mary. 'Oh don't be! Do you imagine I'm going to be cross with you?' 'No, no. I'm upset about something, I'm not even sure what. I suppose Pierce will hate me for this.' 'He's just as likely to love you for it. Young people have a strange psychology.' 'All people have a strange psychology,' said Ducane. He sat down at the table and regarded Mary. His rather round blue eyes, so markedly blue now in his bony sunburnt face, stared at Mary with a sort of puzzlement and he thrust back the limp locks of dark brown hair with a quick rhythmical movement. Mary studied him. What was the matter? 'I'm sorry,' said Ducane after a moment. 'I'm just having a risis of dissatisfaction with myself and I want sympathy. One ways asks for sympathy when one least deserves it.' He's missing Kate, Mary thought. She said, 'I'm sure you have little reason to be dissatisfied with yourself, John. But let me sympathize. Tell me what's the matter.' Ducane's blue eyes became yet rounder with what looked like alarm. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, 'How Id is Pierce?' 'Fifteen.' 'I ought to have got to know him better.' 'I hope you will. But you can't look after everyone, John , You see me as always looking after people?' 'Well, yes – ' 'God!' 'Sorry, I didn't mean – ' 'It's all right. He's a very reserved child.' 'He's been a long time without a father, too many years just with me.' 'How old was he when his father died?' 'Two.' 'So he scarcely remembers him.' 'Scarcely.' 'What was your husband's name, Mary?' Oh God, thought Mary, I can't talk to him about Alistair, She recognized that particular coaxing intentness in Ducane's manner, his way of questioning people with close attention so as to make them tell him everything about themselves, which they usually turned out to be all too ready to do. She had seen him doing this to other people, even at dinner parties. He had never done it to her. She thought, I won't tell him anything, I've never talked to anyone about this, I won't talk to him. She said, 'Alistair.' The name came out into the room, an alien gobbet floating away into the air, drifting back again, hovering just above the level of her eyes. 'What did he do? I don't think I ever knew his profession.' 'He was a chartered accountant.' 'Does Pierce resemble him?' 'To look at, yes, though Alistair was taller. Not in temper.' 'What sort of person was he?' I can't go on with this, thought Mary. How could she say, he was a funny man, always making puns. He was gay. He sang so beautifully. He was a universal artist. He was a failure. She said. 'He wrote a novel.' 'Was it published? T 'No. It was no good.' Mary had spent part of yesterday read. ing Alistair's novel. She had taken out the huge typescript with the intention of destroying it but had found herself unable to. It was so bad, so childish, so like Alistair. 'He died young,' said Ducane softly. 'He might have done better, he might have done much better.' Mary supposed this was true. It was not a thing that she felt. Perhaps it was unfair to dub him a failure. Yet somehow the judgement was absolute. 'What did he die of?' said Ducane in the soft coaxing voice. Mary was silent. A black wall rose up in front of her. She was coming nearer and nearer and looking into the blackness, She stared into it, she entered it. She said in an almost dreamy voice, 'He was run over by a car one evening just outside our house. I saw it happen.' 'Oh – I'm sorry – was he – killed at once?' 'No: She recalled his cries, the long wait for the ambulance, the crowd, the long wait in the hospital. 'I'm sorry, Mary,' said Ducane. 'I'm being ' 'It was the accidentalness of it,' she said. 'Sometimes I've nearly gone mad just thinking of it. That it should be so accidental. If I'd just said another sentence to him before he went out of the room, if he'd just stopped to tie his shoe lace, anything, and oh God, we'd just been quarrelling, and I let him go away without a word, if I'd only called him back, but he went straight out all upset and the car went over him. If he'd died of an illness or even been killed in the war somewhere far away where I couldn't know I could have felt it was inevitable, but to have him killed there accidentally in front of my eyes, I couldn't bear it, I've never told anyone how he died, I told Kate and Paula he died of pneumonia and I told Pierce that too. Pierce slept through it all in an upstairs room: I loved him, of course I loved him, but never quite enough or in the right way, and I haven't been able to think of him properly since, and it's somehow because of that awful accident, be cause things were cut off in that particular way, it made all our life together seem meaningless, and I haven't been able to feel properly about him, it's as if he were changed into some awful ghost with which I can't make any peace. I remember an awful feeling I had when I was going through his clothes afterwards as if he were watching me, all sad and deprived and unappeased, and I've had that feeling since, it comes at odd times in the evening, and I feel as if he still wants my love and I can't give it to him. I see his faults and his weaknesses now and what made me love him has faded utterly. It's terrible that one doesn't love people forever. I should have gone on loving him, it's the only thing I can do for him any more, and I have tried, but one can't love in a void, one can't love a sort of nothing for which one can't do anything else, and there's nothing left any more except the novel and that's so terribly silly and yet it's him in a way. If only it hadn't happened like that, so suddenly and all by chance, he walked straight out and under the car. You see, so few cars came down our road – ' 'Don't cry so, Mary,' said Ducane. He moved beside her on to the bed and put an arm round her shoulder. 'Chance is really harder to bear than mortality, and it's all chance my dear, even what seems most inevitable. It's not easy to do, but one must accept it as one accepts one's losses and one's past. Don't try to see him. Just love him. Perhaps you never altogether knew him. Now his mystery is free of you. Respect it, and don't try to see any more. Love can't always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness. Keep looking and don't be afraid. There are no demons there.' 'Words, John,' said Mary. 'Words, words, words.' But she let herself be comforted by them, and felt that the tears were really for Alistair which she was weeping now. 'Mind the steps, Sir. This bit's rather slimy. Better take my hand.'
