Miss Garnet's Angel (5 page)

All were women and one, two, three, four, five, six—no seven of them in furs. Now there was a thing! Feeling in the pocket of her own tweed she remembered Vera's letter and almost she started to laugh. What would Vera make of her sitting here in church among seven furs? And which would Vera abhor most? The chapel or the wealth? All the furs were elderly save one: a woman with a long daffodil pony-tail and high gold heels. ‘Tarty,' Harriet would have called her. (Vera very likely would not have known how to use the word.) But Mary Magdalene had been a tart, hadn't she? It was surprising how much you remembered of your school scriptures, thought Julia Garnet.

There was a disturbance now at the door and three nuns dressed in white robes entered. They looked like an African order with their smooth brown skins—but so young! The nuns, and really they were no more than children, heavily crossing themselves knelt, so that Julia Garnet could see their thick-soled boots. Now one of them was elaborately prostrating herself and kissing the ground while the grave fur-clad ladies sat decorously in impeccable silence. How irritating the young nuns were, and how out of place the kissing and the boots amid the unspeaking elegance. She was relieved to see them depart, noisily snatching at the water in a carved high stoup by the door. Around the bowl more angels.

One of the silent furred ones was wearing a wide-brimmed emerald hat. The woman was no younger than herself and Julia Garnet found she wanted just such a hat too. But surely this was not what the silence was for? Designing a wardrobe! Gently, like dripping honey, the quiet filled her pores, comforting as the dreamless sleeps she had fallen prey to. The angel over the inclining man gestured at the heavens; beneath him, another angel on the tomb looked with all-seeing, sightless eyes towards the angels on the holy-water stoup…
I
see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy!
…' The silence was holy. What did ‘holy' mean? Did it mean the chance to be whole again? But when had one ever been whole? Silently, silently the priest sat and in the nameless peace Julia Garnet sat too, thinking no thoughts.

A slight stir on her right and someone had entered and was
wanting to take the place beside her. A man crossing himself, but discreetly, thank God. Removing the Reverend Crystal from the seat she smelled tobacco and instantly her father was there, not in the days when he would remind her that cleanliness was next to godliness but in those last days when he was losing his mind and could smoke only under supervision. She had had to apologise to the nurses. ‘I am so sorry, he doesn't know what he is saying,' she had said, hearing with shame her self-righteous father's demonic curses. And they would smile and tell her not to worry, it was all in a day's work. But he did know what he was saying, Julia Garnet thought. And the nurses knew he knew.

And now the priest had risen to his feet and they were all on their feet a little after him and a man with a bell had arrived and incense. Fervently, praise was given to ‘Signore', (how nice that God should be a humble mister!) and there was singing and the amen. And then the furs were chatting to each other while she stood and drank in the blue Madonna and her stiff, truthful baby.

‘You like our treasures?'

It was the man who had sat beside her.

‘How did you know I was English?'

As if it were a reply the man said, ‘I have friends in England.' Then, nodding at the mosaics, ‘Do you know the story?' and enlivened for her the story of the removal of the saint's remains. ‘We Venetians always take what we want,' he laughed, and his eyes crinkled; a tall man, with white hair and a moustache.

Coming down the steps beside her into the darkening Piazzetta he said, ‘Look, another example of our looting,' pointing to the two high columns. ‘St Theodore with his crocodile was once our patron saint. But in fact this is not St Theodore at all—it is a Hellenistic statue which we have taken for our own. And opposite, you see, the lion of St Mark is not a lion at all—a chimera from the Levant we stuck wings on. All stolen! The columns too. Would you honour me by taking a glass of prosecco, perhaps?' And he smiled, so that she omitted to say she had suddenly remembered she had left the Reverend Crystal behind on the chapel floor.

Instead, why not? she decided, for no one waited for her return but aloud she said merely, ‘Thank you very much. That would be delightful,' and felt proud of herself that she had added no objection.

‘Good. I take you to Florian's.'

*    *    *

‘But is this not very expensive?' she could not prevent herself saying ten minutes later, as they sat, all gilt fruit and mirrored warmth, under the wreathed colonnades surrounding the Piazza.

‘But of course!' The man who had introduced himself as Carlo crinkled his eyes again. ‘Next time I shall take you to the bar where the gondoliers meet. But for a first meeting it must be Florian's.'

Julia Garnet felt something she had felt previously only under pressure or fear. It was as if the bubbles in the pale
gold glass had passed through her stomach up into her heart.
‘Oro pallido,'
she said, speaking the words aloud.

Her companion frowned. ‘Excuse me?'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry. I was trying to say the words for pale gold—the drink. It is delicious.'

‘Ah!
Oro pallido,
I did not understand. Prosecco is our Italian secret. I think it is nicer than champagne but my French friends will kill me if they hear this!'

‘Your English is very good.'

He was, he explained, an art historian, who had worked at the Courtauld Institute in London for several years. Now he was a private art dealer, buying and selling mainly in Rome, a little in London, sometimes Amsterdam. But Venice was his home. His mother was dead but he had kept on her old
appartamento—
he returned when he could—he had cousins, an aunt.

‘And you?' he asked. ‘You have a husband, children?' And she was grateful for she felt sure he could see that she did not. ‘But what a shame!' He spoke lightly. ‘You are such a pretty woman.'

She hardly blushed at all but said, ‘Thank you very much,' gravely, as if he had opened a door for her, or gathered up a dropped parcel. And she did not ask if he were married.

Carlo asked where she was staying and she explained about Signora Mignelli and the Campo Angelo Raffaele. Perhaps it was his enquiry about the husband and children she did not have which found her telling him also about Nicco. ‘I seem to have acquired a young pupil here,' unaware of the
covert pride in her voice. And when he nodded and smiled encouragingly, ‘I am teaching him English,' she explained, conscious of some exaggeration in this claim, for Nicco so far showed little enthusiasm for learning her language.

Carlo, however, listened with polite attention. He gave her his card and insisted on escorting her home by the
vaporetto
which dropped them at S. Basilio, the stop nearest to her new home.

‘I won't ask you in.' Julia Garnet spoke carefully. The combination of the water-journey and the prosecco had gone to her head (that was twice in two days she had been tipsy). ‘I have nothing to offer you but tea and I am sure you have a supper to go to.'

‘Another day I should be charmed. You stay in one of the most beautiful
campi
in Venezia!'

Easy, murmured Julia Garnet inwardly, and she thanked her handsome host and hurried across the bridge past Veronese's church where they were too poor to have a sacristan. ‘Easy, girl,' she said aloud later, taking off her stockings. It was a manner of address the rag-and-bone man, who had driven about Ealing when she was still a young teacher, had used to his horse. A white horse, called Lily, she seemed to think, as she stood, barefoot on the cold floor, running a bath.

*    *    *

The following morning, passing the side-door of the
chiesa,
she saw a man with an oversized key unlocking the church.

In reply to her finger pointing questioningly at the interior,
he indicated that she should enter.
‘Prego!'
He shuffled ahead of her, attending to duties in the dimness of the interior.

One by one small pools of illumination flicked on and Julia Garnet stood amid the gathered half-light. She turned around. It was the first time she had been in a proper church (you couldn't really count St Mark's) since she didn't know when. The funeral of a colleague at school in an ugly C. of E. church in Acton; that must have been the last time. And how cold it had been then, and how she had resented the Actonish odour of bourgeois sanctity. But why was this different? For a second her mind flickered guiltily to the Reverend Crystal. He, to be sure, would have had safe and solid information to convey on such points.

She sniffed the hazy air. The odour here was dry and musty too but there was a fragrance about it. How sensible to scent your place of worship. The incense, of course, it was the incense, like the frankincense brought by one of the kings. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. Were there reasons for the gifts? She couldn't remember.

The sacristan came forward now, pointing to an organ above the door which opened on to the water-front and then at an assortment of leaflets on a small table. To please him she picked one up from the pile marked ‘English'. ‘Tobiolo and the Angel Raffael.' Looking up, painted on the organ loft, she saw an angel with azure wings.

Despite his wings the angel seemed to be marching forward, grasping the hand of a young man who, in turn, was
looking back, his hand stretched beseechingly after an old man who stood staring after the departing pair. Beside him, her head averted, a woman—perhaps his wife? And look! Before them all a small black and white spotted dog. She followed the story round.

Now the boy Tobiolo appeared to have caught a giant fish in his handkerchief while the dog looks on admiringly. And the angel, this time wearing a handsome and surely anachronistic blue waistcoat, stands rather like a proud parent at speech day in the background.

Here was another scene: the young man kneeling with a young woman now, she dressed in gauzy clothes. And now the young pair are kneeling before the angel by a bed, a mysterious fire burning in a pan while the dog huddles as if scared in a far corner.

In the next scene the young man is back with the older man, who lies back as if in astonishment, and now the young woman is there too. Over them the angel broods with azure wings.

In the final scene the angel seems to be taking his leave: unfurled and aloft, a cloud of pink and blue; his lovely limbs and sturdy feet are displayed in glory, as the young and the old man marvel and the dog looks longingly after him.

Something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet as she stood absorbing the vivid, dewy painting, the joyfulness of the conception and the unmistakable, compassion in the angel's bright glance. Her eyes filled. The door of the church opened and light streamed into the interior, bringing
with it a tall figure. To her horror she saw that it was the man she had met the previous day at St Mark's and hastily she pushed away tears.

‘My friend!' He was smiling again and for a second she was irked: it wasn't, well,
manly
to smile quite so often. Then, ashamed of her xenophobic instincts, she tried to smile back herself.

‘I was looking at these.' Such feeble language to describe the treasures she had stumbled on.

‘Ah! The Guardis!'

‘You know them?' But why should she be surprised? He was an art historian and probably everyone in Venice knew of the paintings. Julia Garnet was annoyed to find herself possessive of her new discovery.

‘Oh, indeed. They are famous. There exists a famous quarrel, also, about their authorship. There are two Guardis, you see, an elder by many years, Giannantonio, and a younger, Francesco, who never did any known painting of a religious nature. Some authorities, because of the superb style, ascribe it to the younger, better-known brother. But others, of whom I am one, are passionate for the elder. It is a great dispute!'

‘And the story?' She did not so much care who painted the angel—it was the fact that he had been painted that was so miraculous.

‘It is from the Jewish Scriptures—you call it, I think, Tobias and the Angel?'

He took the crook of her arm and they walked about the
tall, theatrical, shabby church while he recounted the story of the young Tobias who travels, unaware he is accompanied by the Archangel Raphael, seeking a cure for his father's blindness.

‘The cure is found in a great fish but before this Tobiolo has married and saved a young woman, cursed by a demon. The demon rests inside her, killing, on their wedding night, the young men who try her virginity. Seven men have died before Tobiolo arrives but, of course, he has the Angel Raphael to help him.'

‘And does he help?'

‘Certainly. He instructs Tobiolo how he must burn the heart and the liver of the fish and so'—like a conjuror, Carlo waved a hand—‘the demon is driven out,
cursing
.' He grimaced, imitating the departing spirit.

‘And this is in the Old Testament?' Surely this was some racy Catholic version of the Bible. His sudden impersonation of the demon slightly disconcerted her.

‘Oh, indeed, I assure you. It is a tale of wonder, is it not?' ‘More like magic, I should think. Why does the angel help?'

But Carlo gave a little shrug as if he had become bored with the topic. He had called, he explained, to find out how she was and to invite her, if it would amuse her, to a concert that evening. Julia Garnet could think of no reason why she should not accept the invitation. The Reverend Crystal could never have instructed her so entertainingly—nor, perhaps, with such authority. Later, as she stood before the sparse collection which made up her wardrobe, exercised by what
to wear for the evening's entertainment, she allowed herself to wonder what so personable a man wanted with so dowdy a companion as herself?