Miss Garnet's Angel (9 page)

Lying in the small bathroom the peeling yellow walls suddenly appeared drab and ugly. The book—she had made such slow progress with it, a book on Garibaldi about whom she found she did not much care—which she had taken to read while bathing, had got wet and she laid it down and began to think about her pupil, Michael Morrell. Where was he now? Had he become a crook or a bank manager? (Either seemed equally possible.) If he had not prospered no doubt it was in part due to her: she had been an indifferent teacher. It was evident that Nicco, polite as he was, found her so. And she had been so cocky about teaching him. After a while she nodded off and woke, knees bent, to feel her mouth beneath cold water.

Now that was unwise, she said to herself as, half covered in a towel, she poured some of the brandy from the square bottle which she had purchased after her lunch at Nicco's cousin's. The experience of sliding so easily towards death frightened her. Somehow she associated it with Carlo and her unclear sense of his possible displeasure with her.

L
et us speak of exile. There are two ways with exile: you can fit in, lie low, ‘do as the Chaldeans do', as we say—or
you can stick out like a lone crow. No prizes for guessing which my renegade kinsfolk chose!

But I must own in the early days of exile I was glad enough to be in Nineveh once the shame of conquest was over. I missed the rolling hills and the pleasant pastures of Galilee. But I had a piece of luck early on in my time in Nineveh: the king took a fancy to me and made me his Purveyor of Goods, so that in those first years of exile I got to travel far over the mountains to the country of Media, bartering and purchasing for the king of Assyria, and often I met the children of Israel there. We are a shrewd people and our swift reasoning and inventive minds proved useful to our captors. Therefore, many found themselves, as I did, well settled in the new life into positions which commanded respect.

But the king of Assyria died, as kings do, and not long after I lost my place at the old court. The old king had had a great new palace built by many slaves with gardens of sweet herbs and tulip trees and broad, high walls built around the city by the River Tigris. In the old days I had lived within these walls with my wife and had walked in the gardens with my son among the monkeys and the peacocks. When the old king died the tribes of Judah made wars against the new king so that when he returned from battle, defeated, he took his rage out on those of us who had been settled in Nineveh. One day, in his chariot, he drove past me walking in the gardens and lashed at me with his whip. It had become dangerous to be one of the chosen people.

Brutal purges began, with the bodies of our people left unburied to stink on the city walls for scavenging dogs to devour. I hated those dogs. I still recall a certain yellow brute; head of a pack he was and I called him Khan after one of the devils in these regions who is reputed to relish dead flesh. This yellow canine devil got scent of what I did and would follow me around snuffing out corpses. Then it was often a struggle between him and me—whether I would get to bury the body or he would grab it for his pack. He hit me once and the Rib had me bound up with flax and crocodile dung for a month against the foaming sickness. She was a follower of the local medicine man's magic—I couldn't have stopped her consulting him even if I'd wanted to. But I didn't want to; she needed every prop she could find.

With the death of the old king my heart began to dwell on Jerusalem and the days I had travelled there to offer tithes. It came to my mind then that we had been punished by the Lord God for our failure to do as He had commanded: we had not kept faith with the law, the rituals and the rites—therefore we had been taken into exile. Yet all around me I watched our people forgetting the law of the book, the prayers, the observances, the dietary requirements, alms-giving, the warning words of the prophets. And for us the observances of death are strict; it is sacrilegious that one of our own should lie breeding maggot-flies in the sun. Therefore, when I came across one of my kin murdered by the king or his officers, I would make it my business to take the corpse into our own house until sundown,
away from the mouths of the yellow dog pack. When the sun dropped, lone-handed I would bury the body.

It is a business, digging the ground in these parts. The dragging and the heaving are enough to tire you out. And then the flies, and the vile stink if the corpse has been exposed long. No, it was not a task to take on lightly, especially since the royal guard were on alert to catch the corpse-snatcher. And in the end a certain one of our tribe in Nineveh, doubtless seeking advancement or immunity for his own family, went and informed on me. With the news that I was a wanted man and that I would he hunted to be put to death I left the city in haste and went into hiding. My house was entered, my possessions stripped from me, all that we had worked to acquire, the chased silverware I had bought from the Aramaean traders, the linen from Egypt, the bolts of dyed cloth from Tyre, the carved boxes and furniture of sandal- and cedar-wood from the caravan traders, even the worked crimson slippers my wife wore on feast days, were all seized; there was nothing which was not taken off to the Royal Treasury; only the lives of my wife, Anna, and my son were spared.

But before long this king got himself killed by two of his sons—I praise the Lord for my own son, Tobias, for surely there can be no worse sorrow than to have a son turn against his father, as Absalom did against his father David. There came a time when I recalled the words of King David as he wept for his son. ‘O my son Absalom, O Absalom my son, my son!'

T
he Wednesday after her alarming slide into the bath Julia met Nicco on his way home from school. He smiled appeasingly and the thought came to her: He has been trying to find some excuse for not visiting me.

‘I go for my cousin to glass…' he flapped his hands, ‘to make the glass fit.'

After the disaster Julia Garnet had replaced the red-robed Virgin Mary back on the bedroom wall. ‘The glass-cutters, Nicco?' Julia made the consonants explicit for him. ‘Cutters.'

‘I see you later?' Nicco was looking anxious.

Thinking of her words about him to Carlo, Julia felt remorse. She should reassure the boy—she did not want him
to feel that to study English with her was so horrible. Their visit to the man with the red hat and the lunch afterwards rested warmly in her thoughts. Nicco had helped her then. ‘May I come with you?' she volunteered.

‘Please,' Nicco gave one of his smiles. Not for the first time it reminded her of Carlo and her heart jumped. And there, as if on cue, was Carlo, all smiles too and waving at her.

‘Ciao!'
she called across the
rio,
relief flooding through her that she had not, after all, alienated him. And what if Nicco were there? She was not ashamed of her friendship with the boy. ‘We're off for a walk, come and join us!' And he came across the bridge with his long stride.

Gravely, Carlo bowed at the pair of them, the slight grey-haired woman and the gold-skinned youth at her side.

‘This is my friend Nicco,' Julia Garnet explained, proud that she was the one whose position demanded introductions, ‘and this,' she turned towards the tall, silver-haired man, ‘is my friend Carlo.'

Julia Garnet's natural diffidence had not fostered in her habits of perspicacity but now, looking at Nicco, she saw that he had an awkward look on his face. And looking back at Carlo she observed that he also looked different.

‘The glass-cutters,' she explained brightly, ‘we are off to the glass-cutters, Nicco and I,' and not knowing why she flushed.

But Nicco surprised her. ‘No,' he said firmly, ‘I go later,' and pushing behind her, rather rudely she couldn't help feeling, he ran off along the water-side.

‘Well, whatever was that about?' Julia Garnet turned to her friend, ready to share an adult's humorous incomprehension at the doings of a quixotic child; but Carlo was watching the boy intently as he ran over the bridge.

When intuition finally strikes the unintuitive it can be blinding: Julia Garnet had been taken, during one of her visits to the Accademia, by a painting from one of the many minor masters whose works fill the art collections of Italy. The painting was of St Paul on the road to Damascus and what had forced itself onto her newly awakened sensibilities was the look of puzzlement and fear on the savagely enlightened face of the tentmaker. Had she been in a position to observe herself, she might have seen just such a look on her own face now. But only the Angel Raphael, looking down from his position on the
chiesa,
could have seen the corresponding flash of terror across her heart.

Intuition is also a prompt of memory. Out of her memory, clear and unprocessed, came the recollection of the day she had gone with Nicco to the glass-cutters. A man. A man had come out as she had been worrying about paying for the picture, fussing with the Italian currency. The man and Nicco had collided and there had been a moment when Nicco had spoken with agitation, as she heard it now in memory, before the man had walked away. The man, tall and silver-haired, she suddenly perceived was Carlo, and in a moment of painful understanding she saw, watching his hungry, yearning look after the retreating Nicco, that she had been the unwitting dupe of his wish to find the boy who had accompanied
her that day. It was not her whom Carlo had wanted to befriend—it was Nicco.

She stood, dumbly unprepared by anything in her previous life for the awful moment of negative intimacy which the recognition brought. And Carlo stood too, aware, as the high red spots on his cheekbones signalled, that something momentous had occurred to his companion. But they were civilised people, Carlo and Julia Garnet, and the sharp rent which had appeared in the fabric of their acquaintance was left unremarked between them.

Carlo spoke first. ‘A concert tonight…they are playing Albinoni?' His eyes did not look at her directly.

‘Thanks, I think I'll stay in. I'm a bit tired.' So lame the words came out; it was all she could do to refrain from crying aloud.

He walked back with her to the apartment, full of the usual courtesies. But his smile was strained. At the door of the apartment he dropped her with a pleasantry—his eyes cold and repelling; she had to stop herself from calling after him.

She did not, however, call after him. Instead she sat at the kitchen table until it grew dark.

*    *    *

Many years ago Julia Garnet, who was blessed with a retentive memory, read somewhere these lines.

Remember this: those who give you life may take it back, and in the taking take from you more than they gave.

She did not recall the source but she recalled, quite distinctly,
the sensation with which she read the words. She had known that she did not understand them but, obscurely, they had frightened her.

During the days after what she termed to herself ‘the discovery' the forgotten author's words came back to her, relentlessly keeping pace with her steps as she walked the streets of Venice.

She had lived most of her life alone. Her mother had borne her late in life and Julia believed that that, and the strain of trying to please her tyrannical father, had probably contributed to her mother's early death. When her mother died, a few weeks after her sixtieth birthday, Julia was not quite fifteen.

She had escaped from her father as soon as she could, going to Girton College, Cambridge on a scholarship. Although he had tried to make her departure from the family home as unpleasant as possible, there was not much he could do to prevent it and once away from him a part of her had felt she could never again face living with another man. There had been female friends, such as Vera, and there had been Harriet whom, she now concluded, pounding the streets, she had not treated as well as she could have done. Harriet had been more than a friend; but, blindly, she had taken Harriet for granted. Yet she had loved Harriet, she now knew, and she knew it because she had learned to love someone else.

If you spend most of your life alone often you do not know that you are lonely. It was not until ‘the discovery'
that Julia Garnet knew that she was lonely and that she had been so for most of her life. She had known Carlo for less than five weeks and yet it was as if he acted as a major artery to her heart.

It was the mystery of this which partly forced her out onto the streets as if the puzzle of her swift and intense involvement with this man might be solved by the most thoroughgoing of external explorations. She woke early and walked, avoiding any area where she might encounter anyone she knew, until she found some anonymous-seeming bar, where she drank coffee amid men in woollen hats who reminded her of the glass-cutter, the man with the red hat who, like a figure in some child's tale, seemed to be gate-keeper to new experience.

The reminder of the first meeting with Carlo did not bother her; even, she found, she began to hanker after it. She strained to recover what he had been wearing. Was it his dark grey coat? (She could almost swear to his red scarf—or had the red of the glass-cutter's hat become transposed in her mind?) Driven by a hungry desire to garner every scrap of time spent with him, she combed her memory for forgotten moments: the time he bought her an ice cream; the aspirin he had offered her when she had complained of a mild headache; the water-taxi home when she was tired. Had all the trouble then been merely towards establishing a connection with Nicco? For the discovery that her friend's proclivities were not for women had not detracted one jot from her own feelings.