“That’s very perceptive.”
Miss Prim laughed and said that her perceptiveness was merely the fruit of a little experience.
“You can fool children for a time, but we adults mostly don’t realize when the period of grace has expired.”
Her companion nodded thoughtfully.
“This evening I went with them as usual. I waited for them to settle in the family pew, but when I told them that Grandmama was going to sit at the back as she always did, they said something they’ve never said before.”
“Let me guess.”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to. ‘Wrap up well when you leave, Grandmama,’ they said. I’ve never been so astonished in my life. I didn’t know how to respond, and just mumbled something quite incoherent. And then what could I do? I rushed out.”
Miss Prim smiled kindly. She knew it was the old lady’s last evening at the house, just as she had known—or at least guessed—that she might find her at the tearoom. Following Eugenia Mott’s marital disaster, the librarian and the mother of the Man in the Wing Chair had barely spoken. Miss Prim’s days had been busy with presents, Christmas cards, small errands, and accumulating a backlog of work. She took a bite of lemon cake, observing her companion in silence. She’d come to appreciate the old lady, to appreciate and respect her. But since the day of their conversation beneath Eugenia Mott’s camellia, the fragile trust they had established seemed to have evaporated. Miss Prim wondered whether the exchange of confidences had been a dream. Would she see the old lady again after this evening? She shivered. They would probably—or rather, definitely—never meet again.
“Do you remember telling me that it was the children who were responsible for your son’s following the path you so disapprove of?”
“Of course I remember.”
Miss Prim paused to spread butter and jam onto a thick slice of toasted farmhouse bread.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
The mother of the Man in the Wing Chair did not reply, busy buttering her own piece of toast.
“What I mean is,” continued the librarian, “how was it possible? How could such young children bring about such an enormous and profound change?”
The old lady stopped eating and looked up.
“It was Teseris.”
“Teseris?”
“It was those amazing intuitions of hers. Has she told you about the Redemption being arealfairy tale? An exceptional insight for a little girl of ten, though she’s not the first to come up with it. Others—Tolkien, for instance—did so before her. Have you ever spoken at length with my granddaughter?”
“Yes, of course,” replied Miss Prim.
“She’s a strange child, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is. She’s not like any child I’ve ever met. Sometimes it seems as if she’s keeping some secret.”
Prudencia bit her lip. Despite her natural aversion to discussions of a metaphysical nature, she had to admit that the child gave the impression of inhabiting depths that were beyond anyone else’s reach.
“My granddaughter has always been different.”
The old lady concentrated on stirring a lump of sugar into her tea.
“She’s startlingly at ease with the supernatural. She has been since she was tiny. And what’s most interesting is that for a long time she couldn’t understand that the rest of us didn’t feel the same.”
“Do you mean...” Miss Prim swallowed. “Do you mean that Teseris is some sort of child mystic? Surely not.”
With careful deliberation, the Man in the Wing Chair’s mother cut a second sliver of cake and placed it on Prudencia’s plate, before helping herself.
“No, Prudencia, I’m not saying she’s a mystic. I don’t know what mystics are like but I’m sure they’re nothing like her. But the fact is, I never suspected to what extent the supernatural touches the natural until I saw it reflected in her.”
Miss Prim, cake forgotten, was now staring fixedly at the old lady and remembering the day she arrived at the house.
“The first time I met Teseris she mentioned a mirror. I thought she must be talking about Alice and the looking glass.”
