It used to give Jean a pang when she passed a shop window and saw some toy or trinket that would have delighted her nephew or niece, and for a while she had ignored Dorrie’s injunction and sent gifts anyway. But no word ever came back to say that they had been received and Jean couldn’t bring herself to ask, so she had let the habit lapse. Recalling all this now, she felt ashamed of herself.
Beside her Margaret was jabbering away. Jean caught up as she said, “Have you ever seen one?”
“One what?”
“Angel.”
“No,” Jean replied, firmly, and then relented a little. “But then I’ve never seen gravity either, but it’s there all the same.”
Margaret seemed quietly impressed by this. “I’ve never seen one,” she said. “But I’ve heard them.”
This was such an unexpected remark, delivered in such a matter-of-fact way that Jean felt her scalp prickle. “What do they say?” she asked with a sense of unease.
“They don’t say. They sing. That’s how I know they are angel voices.”
“Oh. Do they sing hymns?”
“No. Just funny words, over and over. Like gabardine.”
Jean gave a burst of laughter. What sort of practical-minded angel concerned itself with raincoat fabric? An angel whose mother was a dressmaker, perhaps?
Margaret laughed too, revealing a half-built smile of milk teeth, gaps and new serrated incisors. “Don’t you ever hear voices?” she asked.
“Sort of,” said Jean, treading carefully. She had no intention of encouraging any supernatural claptrap, but there was no need to lay about her with common sense like a great fly whisk. “But my voices tend to say things like, ‘That’s probably enough cake for you,’ or ‘Isn’t it about time you wrote to your sister?’”
Margaret was not to be so easily fobbed off. “Oh, I have those too, but that’s not the same. That’s just me thinking things. Angel voices are different.”
“I’m sure they’re nothing to worry about,” said Jean, though Margaret herself already seemed quite untroubled.
“I’m not worried,” came the reply. “I like them. Except when they say a word I don’t know—then it’s annoying.”
“When you say ‘a word you don’t know,’ do you mean a word you have heard before but don’t know the meaning of?”
“No. I mean a word I’ve never ever heard. Like Lindenbaum. Or phalanx.”
With this conversation, Jean felt herself being tugged, as if by a muddy tide, far out of her depth. How was it possible to hear a voice in your head saying a word that didn’t already exist in your head?
“You are much too clever for me,” she said, finding herself repeating, to her horror, a phrase her mother used to say to her and Dorrie to terminate any discussion that threatened to take an unconventional path. It had seemed like a compliment at the time, but it was a door flung shut in their faces, and now she was doing it herself. “I do like talking to you, Margaret,” she said. “You are much more interesting than most of the adults I know.”
“Mummy says I ask too many questions.”
“Asking questions is all right. It’s a sign of intelligence. How else can you find things out?”
Perhaps it’s just loneliness, Jean thought. She needs that rabbit or kitten. She considered other only children she had known; too much in the company of adults and sheltered from the weathering effects of siblings, they often seemed precocious or strange.
Margaret squinted up at her through sweeping eyelashes. “You’re nice,” she said with an air of finality, and Jean, unpracticed at receiving compliments, felt herself blushing with pleasure and surprise.
They had reached the foyer of the clinic now and there was Mrs. Tilbury emerging from the ladies’ cloakroom looking flustered and a little red around the eyes. She had reapplied powder to her nose but the skin beneath was taut and shiny. For an awful moment it occurred to Jean that she may have been worrying where Margaret had gone and fretting herself into a state of anxiety.
“I’m sorry—you must have been wondering where we’d got to.”
“No—I’ve only just come out.”
“Look, Miss Svinny bought me a magazine.” Margaret held up her copy of Girl for inspection.
“That was very kind of her.”
“Has something upset you?” Jean said, lowering her voice. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, it’s nothing.” Mrs. Tilbury’s voice was bright with self-control. “I’m fine.”