Miss Garnet's Angel

A PLUME BOOK

MISS GARNET'S ANGEL

SALLEY VICKERS
is a former university professor of literature and a Jungian psychotherapist.
Miss Garnet's Angel
, her first novel, was a book club favorite and an international bestseller. She lives in London and is currently a Royal Literary Fund fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, UK. Her latest novel is
The Cleaner of Chartres
.

Praise for
Miss Garnet's Angel

“
Miss Garnet's Angel
is a most impressive debut, and one eagerly looks forward to Vickers's next book.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Charming…subtle and discerning…This beguiling redemptive novel has a touch of the miraculous.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

“A lovely book, an affecting story of loss, personal exploration, and redemption.”

—
The Denver Post

“Vickers has taken myth, religion, and secular humanism and turned them into substantial life-affirming fiction.”

—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The novel alights in the heart softly, with rustling wings, and a reader cannot help but be enchanted by Miss Garnet's beautifully decaying Venice.”

—
The Baltimore Sun

“A beautifully crafted, enjoyable novel in which the flutter of angel wings is never saccharine or sentimental.”

—
Providence Journal

“Decorous, very kind, very funny. I knew as I read it that I would want to read it again…. Barbara Pym fans please note.”

—John Bayley, author of
Elegy for Iris

“A finely spun tale.”

—
The Seattle Times

“In quiet, careful prose this first novel gives old-fashioned satisfactions.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

For Grace Fredericks, with love and gratitude

‘If some people really see angels, where others see

empty space, let them paint the angels…'

J
OHN
R
USKIN

The peculiar charm and poetry of The Book of Tobit has endeared it to artists through the ages; many people will have seen paintings of the boy carrying a fish, accompanied by a dog and an angel, without recognising the source of these images.

In my retelling of the tale I have retained certain anachronistic features of the original, but the variations—imaginative reconstructions of the story's sources—are my own, and for those I must take responsibility. To the anonymous author, or authors, however, I most gratefully acknowledge my debt.

I Epiphany

1

2

3

4

II Passover

1

2

3

4

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6

III Visitation

1

2

3

4

5

6

IV The Feast of Raphael

1

2

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4

5

Excerpt from
The Cleaner of Chartres

D
eath is outside life but it alters it. It leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair. Perhaps it is because of this we are minded to feast at funerals and it is said that certain children are conceived on the eve of a departure, lest the separation of the partners be permanent. When in ancient stories heroes die, the first thing their comrades do, having made due observances to the gods, is sit and eat. Then they travel on, challenging, with their frail vitality, the large enigma of non-being.

When Miss Garnet's friend Harriet died, Miss Garnet decided to spend six months abroad. For Miss Garnet, who was certainly past child-bearing years and had lost the only person
she ever ate with, the decision to travel was a bold one. Her expeditions abroad had been few and for the most part tinged with apprehension. As a young woman straight from college she had volunteered, while teaching the Hundred Years' War, to take a school party to Crécy. On that occasion she had become flustered when, behind her back but audibly, the boys had mocked her accent and had intimated (none too subtly) that she had brought them to France in order to forge a liaison with the large, sweating, white-faced coach driver.

‘Mademoiselle from Armentières,'
they had sung hilariously in the back of the coach.
‘Mademoiselle from Armentières. Hasn't had sex for forty years!'
And as she had attempted to convey to the coach driver the time she considered it prudent to start back for Calais, wildly and suggestively they had chorused,
‘Inky pinky parley vous!'

The experience had left its mark on Miss Garnet's teaching as well as on her memory. Essentially a shy person, her impulses towards cordiality with her pupils, never strong in the first place, were dealt a blow. She withdrew, acquired a reputation for strictness, even severity, and in time became the kind of teacher who, if not loved, was at least respected. Even latterly, when in terms of pupils' taunts
Mademoiselle from Armentières
would be considered very small beer, no member of Miss Garnet's classes ever thought publicly to express a view about her intimate life.

Julia Garnet and Harriet Josephs had lived together for more than thirty years. Harriet had answered Julia's advertisement
in the National Union of Teachers' monthly journal. ‘Quiet, professional female sought to share small West London flat. No smokers. No pets.'