Miss Garnet's Angel (2 page)

Harriet had been, in fact, the only person to respond to the advertisement, which had not prevented Julia from giving her what her friend later described as ‘a toughish interview'. ‘Honestly,' Harriet had used to say, on the few occasions when together they had entertained friends, ‘it was worse than the time I tried to get into the Civil Service!'

Generally Harriet had laughed loudly at this point in a way her flat-mate had found irritating. Now Miss Garnet found she missed the laugh just as she missed Stella, Harriet's cat. The prohibition against pets had been relaxed seven years earlier when late one night after choir-practice Harriet had been followed from the station by Stella. Stella, then an anonymous black kitten with a white-starred throat, had waited all night on the stairs outside the front door of their fourth-floor flat, whereupon, on finding her, the soft-hearted Harriet had fed the kitten milk. After that, as Julia had observed, there was ‘no getting rid of the animal'.

Alongside the two school teachers Stella had grown into an elderly and affectionate creature but it was Harriet to whom the cat had remained attached. Two days after they had both retired (they had arranged the events to coincide in order, Harriet had suggested, that the New Year could see them setting off on ‘new feet') Julia returned from the shops to find her companion, apparently asleep, stretched out upon
the sofa, her romantic novel face down on the carpet. Later, after the doctor and then the undertaker had been, Stella disappeared. Julia had placed milk outside first the flat door and then, worry making her brave the neighbours' ridicule, downstairs by the main entrance to the block. The milk she left outside was certainly drunk but after a few days she was forced to accept that it was not Stella drinking the milk but, more likely, the urban fox who had been seen rootling in the communal dustbins.

Perhaps it was not just the loss of Stella, but also her incompetence in the face of it—so soon after losing Harriet—which finally determined Miss Garnet's abrupt decision. She and Harriet had made plans—or rather Harriet had—for it must be said that, of the two, she was the more given to planning. (‘Flighty' was sometimes her companion's name for Harriet's tendency to cut out advertisements from the
Observer
for trips to faraway and exotic places.) Harriet's (now permanent) flight had rendered the plans pointless; a kind of numbness had dulled Miss Garnet's usual caution and she found herself, before she was quite aware what was happening, calling in on one of the numerous local estate agents which had sprung up in her locality.

‘No worries, Mrs Garnet, we'll be able to rent this, easy,' the young man with the too-short haircut and the fluorescent mobile phone had said.

‘Miss
Garnet, it's Miss,' she had explained, anxious not to accept a title to which she felt she had never managed to rise. (There had never been any question of Miss Garnet being a
Ms: her great-aunt had had some association with Christabel Pankhurst and the connection, however loose, with the famous suffragette had strengthened Miss Garnet's views on the misplaced priorities of modern feminism.)

‘
Miss,
I'm sorry,' the young man had said, trying not to laugh at the poor old bird. He'd heard from Mrs Barry, the caretaker, that there had been another old girl living with her who had just died. Probably lezzies, he thought.

Miss Garnet was not a lesbian, any more than Harriet Josephs had been, although both women had grown aware that that is what people sometimes assumed of them.

‘It is very vexing,' Harriet had said once, when a widowed friend had opined that Jane Austen might have been gay, ‘to be considered homosexual just because one hasn't been lucky enough to marry.'

‘Or foolish enough,' Julia had added. But privately she believed Harriet was right. It would have been a piece of luck to have been loved by a man enough to have been his wife. She had been asked once for a kiss, at the end-of-term party at the school where she had taught History for thirty-five years. The request had come from a man who, late in life, had felt it was his vocation to teach and had come, for his probationary year, to St Barnabas and St James, where Miss Garnet had risen to the position of Head of the History Department. But he had been asked to leave after he had been observed hanging around the fifth-form girls' lockers after Games. Julia, who had regretted not obliging with the kiss, wept secretly into her handkerchief on hearing of Mr Kenton's
departure. Later she plucked up courage to write to him, with news about the radical modern play he had been directing. Mr Maguire, Head of English, had had to take over—and in Miss Garnet's view the play had suffered as a consequence. Timidly, she had communicated this thought to the departed Mr Kenton but the letter had been returned with ‘NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS' printed on the outside. Miss Garnet had found herself rather relieved and had silently shredded her single attempt at seduction into the rubbish bin.

‘Where you off to then?' the young estate agent had asked, after they had agreed the terms on which the flat was to be let (no smoking, and no pets—out of respect to Stella).

Perhaps it was the young man's obvious indifference which acted as a catalyst to the surprising form she found her answer taking—for she had not, in fact, yet formulated in her mind where she might go, should the flat prove acceptable for letting to Messrs Brown & Noble.

Across Miss Garnet's memory paraded the several coloured advertisements for far-flung places which, along with some magazine cuttings concerning unsuitable hair dye, she had cleared from Harriet's oak bureau and which (steeling herself a little) she had recently placed in the dustbin. One advertisement had been for a cruise around the Adriatic Sea, visiting cities of historical interest. The most famous of these now flashed savingly into her mind.

‘Venice,' she announced firmly. ‘I shall be taking six months in Venice.' And then, because it is rarely possible, at
a stroke, to throw off the habits of a lifetime, ‘I believe it is cheaper at this time of year.'

*    *    *

It was cold when Miss Garnet landed at Marco Polo airport. Uncertain of all that she was likely to encounter on her exotic adventure she had at least had the foresight to equip herself with good boots. The well-soled boots provided a small counter to her sense of being somewhat insubstantial when, having collected her single suitcase with the stout leather strap which had been her mother's, she followed the other arrivals outside to where a man with a clipboard shouted and gestured.

Before her spread a pearl-grey, shimmering, quite alien waste of water.

‘Zattere,' Miss Garnet enunciated. She had, through an agency found in the
Guardian
's Holiday Section, taken an
appartamento
in one of the cheaper areas of Venice. And then, more distinctly, because the man with the clipboard appeared to pay no attention, ‘Zattere!'

‘Si, si, Signora, momento, momento.'
He gestured at a water-taxi and then at a well-dressed couple who had pushed ahead of Miss Garnet in the shambling queue.
‘Prego?'

‘Hotel Gritti Palace?' The man, a tall American with a spade-cut beard, spoke with the authority of money. Even Miss Garnet knew that the Gritti was one of the more exclusive of Venice's many expensive hotels. She had been disappointed to learn that a Socialist playwright, one whom she admired, was in the habit of taking rooms there each
spring. Years ago, as a student teacher, Miss Garnet had, rather diffidently, joined the Labour Party. Over the years she had found the policies of succeeding leaders inadequately representative of her idea of socialism. Readings of first Marx and then Lenin had led her, less diffidently, to leave the Labour Party to join the Communists instead. Despite all that had happened in Europe over the years she saw no reason now to alter her allegiance to the ideology which had sustained her for so long. Indeed, it was partly Venice's reputation for left-wing activity which had underpinned her novel notion to reside there for six months. Now the long plane flight, the extreme cold rising off the grey-green lagoon waters and the extremer fear, rising from what seemed more and more like her own foolhardiness, joined force with political prejudice.

‘Excuse me,' Miss Garnet raised her voice towards the polished couple, ‘but I was first.' As she spoke she lost her footing, grazing her leg against a bollard.

The woman of the couple turned to examine the person from whom these commanding words had issued. She saw a thin woman of medium height wearing a long tweed coat and a hat with a veil caught back against the crown. The hat had belonged to Harriet and although Miss Garnet, when she had seen it on Harriet, had considered it overdramatic, she had found herself reluctant to relegate it to the Oxfam box. The hat represented, she recognised, a side to Harriet which she had disregarded when her friend was alive. As a kind of impulsive late gesture to her friend's sense of the
theatrical, she had placed the hat onto her head in the last minutes before leaving for the airport.

Perhaps it was the hat or perhaps it was the tone of voice but the couple responded as if Miss Garnet was a ‘somebody'. Maybe, they thought, she is one of the English aristocracy who consider it bad form to dress showily. Certainly the little woman with the delicately angular features spoke with the diction of a duchess.

‘Excuse us,' the man spoke in a deep New England accent, ‘we would be honoured if you would share our taxi.'

Miss Garnet paused. She was unaccustomed to accepting favours, especially from tall, urbane-mannered men. But she was tired and, she had to own, rather scared. Her knee hurt where she had stupidly bashed it. And there remained the fact that they had, after all, pushed in front of her.

‘Thank you,' she spoke more loudly than usual so as to distract attention from the blood she feared was now seeping observably through her thick stocking, ‘I should be glad to share with you.'

*    *    *

The American couple, concerned to undo any unintentional impoliteness, insisted the water-taxi take Miss Garnet to the Campo Angelo Raffaele, where the apartment she had rented was located. Miss Garnet had chosen the address, out of many similar possibilities, on account of the name. Devout Communist as she was, there was something reassuring about the Angel Raphael. She found the numerous other saintly figures, whose names attach to Venice's streets and
monuments, unfamiliar and off-putting. The Angel Raphael she knew about. Of the Archangels of her Baptist childhood, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, the latter had the most appeal.

The water-taxi drew up at shallow, broad stone steps, covered in a dangerous-looking green slime. Miss Garnet, holding back the long skirts of her coat, carefully stepped out of the boat.

‘Oh, but you have hurt yourself!' cried the American woman, whose name, Miss Garnet had learned, was Cynthia.

But Miss Garnet, who was looking up, had caught the benevolent gaze of an angel. He was standing with a protective arm around what appeared to be a small boy carrying a large fish. On the other side of the angel was a hound.

‘Thank you,' she said, slightly dazed, ‘I shall be fine.' Then, ‘Oh, but I must pay you,' she shouted as the boat moved off down the
rio.
But the Americans only waved smiling and shouted back that it could wait and she could pay what she owed when they all met again. ‘Look after that leg, now,' urged the woman, and, ‘Come to our hotel,' boomed the man, so loudly that three small boys on the other side of the canal called out and waved too at the departing boat.

Miss Garnet found that the departure of the newly met Americans left her feeling forlorn. Impatient with what seemed a silly show of sentimentality in herself, she caught up her suitcase and her hand luggage and looked about to get her bearings. Above her the angel winked down again and she now took in that this was the frontage of the Chiesa
dell'Angelo Raffaele itself, which lent its name not only to the
campo
but also, most graciously, to the waterfront before it.

‘Scusi,'
said Miss Garnet to the boys who had crossed the brick bridge to inspect the new visitor, ‘Campo Angelo Raffaele?' She was rather proud and at the same time shy of the
‘Scusi'.

‘Si, si,'
cried the boys grabbing at her luggage. Just in time Miss Garnet managed to discern that their intentions were not sinister but they wished merely to earn a few lire by carrying her bags to her destination. She produced the paper on which she had written the address and proffered it to the tallest and most intelligent-looking boy.

‘Si, si!'
he exclaimed pointing across the square and a smaller boy, who had commandeered the suitcase, almost ran with it towards a flaking rose-red house with green shutters and washing hanging from a balcony.

The journey was no more than thirty metres and Miss Garnet, concerned not to seem stingy, became confused as to what she should tip the boys for their ‘help'. She hardly needed help: the suitcase was packed with a deliberate economy and the years of independence had made her physically strong. Nevertheless it seemed churlish not to reward such a welcome from these attractive boys. Despite her thirty-five years of school teaching Miss Garnet was unused to receiving attentions from youth.

‘Thank you,' she said as they clustered around the front door but before she had settled the problem of how to register
her thanks properly the door opened and a middle-aged, dark-haired woman was there greeting her and apparently sending the boys packing.

‘They were kind.' Miss Garnet spoke regretfully watching them running and caterwauling across the
campo.

‘Si,
si, Signora,
they are the boys of my cousin. They must help you, of course. Come in, please, I wait here for you to show you the apartment.'

Signora Mignelli had acquired her English from her years of letting to visitors. Her command of Miss Garnet's mother tongue made Miss Garnet rather ashamed of her own inadequacies in Signora Mignelli's. The Signora showed Miss Garnet to a small apartment with a bedroom, a kitchen-living room, a bathroom and a green wrought-iron balcony.
‘No sole,'
Signora Mignelli waved at the white sky, ‘but when there is…ah!' she unfolded her hands to indicate the blessings of warmth awaiting her tenant.