Miss Garnet's Angel

by Salley Vickers

  Vera wrote back: It is fine about the London Library and there was no need for you to write—I have telephoned and they are reserving the book for me. (This prompting an exasperated sigh from Julia.) Our hotel is the Bellini. I am pleased to say my friend, Peggy, who lost her husband last June, is my roommate—I don’t think I should have liked to share with a stranger!

  Signora Mignelli had news of the fishmonger’s war—‘He leave fish outside the priest’s house. Big fish, big smell!’ Here the Signora held her nose. ‘Then’—amid laughter—‘he say the father go with prostitute! Because of smell!’ More laughter.

  She told Julia where the Hotel Bellini was situated—over near the Strada Nuova, near the gondoliers’ bar. Julia, who had gathered that the reference to fish was intended to be lewd, was flattered to be included in the bawdy. She amused herself as the Signora talked on—about her cousin’s son who had shocked the family by leaving his fiancée for a man, but was now making a success of his shoe shop on the Strada—imagining Vera’s reactions to the conversation. Vera, she felt sure, would treat the Signora with all the condescension of her democratic ‘principles’. As she no doubt would once have done herself.

  What a time it seemed since she had first entered the apartment, Nicco and his friends carrying her case. There had been dark pink anemones in a blue vase. Thinking of the flowers she remembered the Cutforths’ lilies. They had been kind. Suddenly she remembered she had never looked for Charles’s camel. Now there was a site she might ‘do’ with Vera, for it was exercising her how she was to keep Vera away from those places in Venice which had become associated in her mind with—well, with what she did not feel able to bear being treated to a dose of Vera’s ‘common sense’.

  * * *

  ‘Peggy is lying down. She gets tired since Bob died.’ Vera, Julia couldn’t help noticing, had a knack of making concern sound like disapproval.

  ‘Has he been dead long?’ Despite her resolutions to try to make the best of the visit, Julia was feeling desperate. Conversation was flagging already and Vera had only been in the apartment ten minutes.

  ‘Last June. I told you in my letter.’ Vera’s disapproval became visible. ‘It was very sudden. A stroke.’ She had a frown which Julia had not remembered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Julia meekly. She had met Peggy and wondered if maybe her husband had died to escape his wife’s constant talking.

  But Vera was rootling in her bag and hauling out a massive tome. ‘Your book,’ she said. ‘I must say it weighs a ton.’

  ‘Vera, you never carried it here? I had no idea!’ Guilt displaced speculation about the departed Bob. The book she had requested Vera bring over must have weighed half a stone.

  Unexpectedly, Vera gave a guffaw of laughter. ‘No one’s taken it out since 1952. I told them I thought you had gone a bit potty.’ For once she sounded almost cheerful.

  ‘And what did “they” say?’ Julia wasn’t really listening but had opened and was flicking through the pages of the book to the section on Tobit. Hungrily her eye lit upon tantalising terms and phrases: Magi—rites of death—consanguineous marriages. If only Vera would go away so that she could read it. And how ungrateful after her visitor had gone to such trouble! Reluctantly she put the volume down and said with what she hoped sounded like brightness, ‘Now lunch. Where shall I take you?’

  * * *

  ‘There’s Tintoretto’s parish church nearby. Would you like to see that?’

  They had lunched near the Fondamenta Nuova, across the water from the invisible cloud-shaped Dolomites. The meal had not been a success. Vera had argued with the waiter over the cost of a soft drink. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Julia had said. ‘Please don’t worry—I’m paying.’ But Vera had talked of the ‘principle of the thing’ in a manner which, for Julia, was too reminiscent of her own former self. Casually she had attempted, ‘Principles are not infallible guides…’ but the effort had fallen away. Why should she disturb Vera’s morality after all? Who could tell what else it bolstered up?

  Afterwards they had walked in search of Charles Cutforth’s camel. This had turned out more successful. Vera enjoyed the story which gave her something to take back to Peggy and the other WEA students. ‘My friend knows a historian from Princeton,’ Julia guessed she would have declared, with more than a tinge of the boastful. Here was proof of the historicism! A portrait of a Levantine camel offered the right degree of scholarship and political correctness. And Tintoretto—the Dyer—was sufficiently renowned as a painter to excuse a visit to his church.

  ‘I see no reason not to,’ Vera said when Julia proposed they visit, and again Julia had to suppress irritation. Why did Vera have to speak in that ridiculous, roundabout way?

  The church lay within its own sequestered courtyard. It stood, sculpted by shadows, its high brick façade overlooked by a domed campanile. The two women halted outside as bells rang. Even Vera seemed a little daunted by the magisterial peacefulness of the atmosphere.

  Inside, over the high altar, there was a vast canvas on which Ruskin had apparently lavished praise. Grim, twisted bodies writhed under the spell of infernal damnation. Vera who had been consulting her guide became energetic. ‘His wife couldn’t take it,’ she announced with relish. ‘It’s The Last Judgement, you know!’

  Julia discarded the impulse to ask Vera what she imagined a ‘last judgement’ might consist of. What did it mean to be weighed in a balance and found wanting? And was it your deeds or your thoughts which counted, because, if little else, her study of history had shown her that intentions counted for next to nothing when it came to improving things. Wasn’t the way to Hell paved with them, anyway? But intentions must, surely, count for something?

  ‘It says here she ran out screaming. She was virgin, you know, his wife.’

  Julia, wandered off to investigate the rest of the interior. Was Vera, then, not a virgin? Possibly not, judging by the note of superiority in her tone over the unfortunate Mrs Ruskin. Maybe the dig also constituted some slight revenge on Julia? She imagined Vera rolling robustly naked in a field,—or perhaps on a hillside?—with one of the comrades. At least Vera would know what sex was like.

  Turning from a pellucidly-coloured Cima Julia halted. Across the church, at an altar opposite, she recognised, like a friend spotted in an unexpected environ, Signora Mignelli’s Bellini with the almond eyes. But why ever was it on an easel? Then she saw. It was not the painting but a reproduction; a print of the original which had, so the inscription told as she came closer, been stolen. She remembered again the Cutforths had mentioned it the day she dined with them at the Gritti. Recalling her first response to the picture she experienced renewed remorse. How sad now the notice of its disappearance made her feel—like those police pictures of missing children. It made her think of Toby, of whom there was still no word.

  But now Vera had returned, stimulated by her encounter with damnation, and thankfully it was time for her to make her way back to meet her party. Apparently, they were to visit the Doge’s Palace. Julia, who had never ventured inside the great Palazzo Ducale which adjoins St Mark’s, found herself, by inference, lying. ‘Oh you mustn’t miss it. It’s quite superb. Let me come with you to the vaporetto.’

  But Vera wouldn’t hear of it. ‘No, no. I am absolutely fine. I can quite easily find the stop. I shall call you tomorrow and let you know our plans.’

  Julia walked back into the courtyard with her and watched her over the rail-less bridge beetle off up the narrow calle.

  And the blessed relief of being alone! Feeling she might now look less inhibitedly around the cool interior, Julia wandered back inside the church to inspect Tintoretto’s tomb. A notice beside described how the painter had flown into a rage over the execution of a portrait. The row which broke out had been so violent that Tintoretto had been obliged to hole up in the church as a consequence. How tremendous to have the courage of one’s emotions! But the Venetian nobleman, object of the painter’s displeasure, could no doubt take it. One couldn�
��t really howl and throw things about, like Tintoretto, at Vera, as she had wanted to do.

  The door to the right opened and a priest came out; another part of the church! Pushing against the heavy doors she entered a side chapel.

  Before rows of candles sat an effigy of a woman, a solid-looking baby on her capacious stone lap. Of course! The Madonna dell’Orto—the eponymous Madonna who was found in a local’s garden, of which Sarah had spoken.

  Julia approached the broad-beamed Virgin and as she did so a figure, crouched at the statue’s foot, started up from behind the row of burning candles and was by the door through which she had entered before she registered who it was.

  * * *

  ‘Sarah, where is your apartment? I’ve always been meaning to ask.’

  Julia, returning from the Madonna dell’Orto, had gone by the chapel and had found Sarah packing up her things.

  ‘In the Ghetto. Why?’

  The Ghetto, once the province of the Jewish settlement in Venice, was close by the area she had just come from. ‘I was up near you, then, today.’

  The girl’s fair hair made a halo of the early evening sun. With her androgynous shape and face she might be described as ‘angelic’. But something held Julia back from the revelation she had come to make. If it was Toby (and she did not seriously doubt that it was Sarah’s twin she had seen praying by the stone Madonna) evidently he did not want his presence in Venice to be known. Inexplicably, Julia felt she should protect his obvious desire for anonymity.

  ‘You must come and call.’ Sarah smiled and for a second Julia felt guilty that she had not divulged her impression of the figure she had watched hurrying from the side chapel. She had followed, as swiftly and discreetly as she could, through the body of the church. But when she had emerged into the courtyard there was no sign of him. For a while she had stood, shading her eyes from the sun, searching along the fondamenta after a hurrying shape. She was as certain as she could be that it was Toby; there was something in the way he held his neck.

  But if so, for whatever reason, it was information she found now she was reluctant to share. ‘How nice, I should be delighted. You can give me tea for a change!’

  ‘How was your friend?’

  ‘Tiresome.’ Julia stopped herself from grimacing. ‘She’s gone off to see the Doge’s Palace with her WEA party. But I took her to see The Last Judgement in the Madonna dell’Orto and she liked that!’

  ‘Oh yes. The scary Tintoretto. Tobes likes it too.’

  So it probably was him in the church. The coincidence was too great for error. But for some reason still Julia did not feel like imparting the news to Sarah that her brother was still about in Venice. Instead she said, ‘He’s in good company then. According to my friend, Ruskin thought it was the bee’s knees!’

  At home, sitting on her balcony, she wrote: Death draws the line under the account i.e. the ‘sum’ of one’s life when all that can be has been. This must be why it is the moment of ‘judgement’. What does my life really amount to?

  3

  We followed the barley-growing valleys of the Tigris down for many miles, Kish running before us, and then struck east along a tributary which ran through undulating hills. The valley was narrow and the hills dusty, quite unlike the fertile green country we had left behind. It was a comfort to have Azarias at my side. He told me stories along the way which helped lighten the journey. One in particular, he called ‘The Grateful Dead’, was about a man who buries a corpse he finds by the wayside and is later brought good fortune by the kind offices of the corpse-spirit, which reminded me of my father. I had never been from home before and the thought of my father and my mother often made me home-sick. But this I never let on to Azarias.

  After a while we left the tributary and struck upwards to a new terrain. Here on the high plains we passed caravans of travelling nomad people, with their strings of camels and donkeys. Sometimes they would stop and offer us dates or the soured asses’ milk they drank laced with honey. On such occasions Azarias left me to do the talking with the chief—stepping hack into his position of hired hand. Once, one of the mules in the caravan had developed fits and I heard from one of their muleteers that Azarias had run his hand along the creature’s hack and over his flanks. After a while the mule opened its mouth with a great ‘hee-haw’-ing and then stumbled to its feet cured.

  But mostly we saw no one. It was a peculiar time and often when we had walked many miles in silence I saw strange sights. At this date I do not know still whether they were phantasms, born of the harsh sun and lonely conditions. Once I thought I saw a bush burning in the distance. It was at a time when Azarias had gone ahead, seeking water. When he returned, the goatskins full to the neck, I could no longer see any trace of fire—so I had no witness of the sight. Another time a cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, hovered over us, seeming to follow us as we walked. But Azarias appeared unaware of anything unusual, and merely strode on with his long gait. Fearful of having him diagnose sickness and enforce a stop (as he had once before when I had visions of water and date palms) I kept the vision to myself.

  Once I woke in the night with a dream in which Azarias had left me. I cried out—as I cried when I woke as a child and found my mother missing—and getting up to look by the fire found Azarias gone and only Kish guarding it. Although I was ashamed of it at the time, I can say now that a desolation fell upon me then the like of which I have never felt before or since. I cried out again, this time in real fear—and in a lightning second, as if a hawk had dropped out of the sky, Azarias appeared out of the darkness and was with me again. That night he sang me to sleep—a sweet, high sound. I had heard from the herdsman that Azarias had sung such a song to the sick mule—like a bird’s song it was; but such a bird I have never heard in this mortal life.

  ‘There is really no need,’ Vera said.

  ‘But I would like to come,’ said Julia, on the whole meaning it.

  They were arguing over Vera’s departure. Julia had suggested she should see them off at Marco Polo. Now that her friend was leaving she felt compunction at her own unfriendliness.

  Peggy said, ‘It would be a help with the bags,’ which made Julia wish she had not volunteered to go at all. But still, she rather fancied the long water journey past the Cimitero, the burial island on which the bones of dead Venetians were permitted to rest for ten years before being transported to the more permanent ossuaries; out past the small, bobbing, diving birds which patrol the roped-off avenues of water leading to the airport.

  The WEA party were travelling in the hotel boat. ‘I am sure we can squeeze you in,’ Peggy had suggested; but Julia, preferring not to be ‘squeezed’, took the public service.

  At the airport she met Vera and Peggy, short-temperedly shunting baggage in a line for the check-in. Feeling rather useless she drifted off in search of coffee to bring back to them.

  There was a queue at the coffee bar as well. While waiting, she amused herself observing the reflections mirrored in the window-glass of the surrounding shops: a man with a shaved head and a plait down his neck; a woman with green hair in shorts and high-heeled sandals; a businessman with a silver case—and Toby!

  But where was he? Confused, she twisted around trying to locate his position in relation to the shaven-headed man. There was the green-haired girl and there, just ahead, was Toby, walking from her. Extricating herself from the queue Julia pursued his disappearing form across the hall and round a corner. He was walking rapidly and, half-running after, she saw, in her mind’s eye, his sister’s retreating back, walking away from her across the Campo Angelo Raffaele.

  Ahead of her Toby crossed the hall. To her horror she saw the sign ‘Departures’ and Toby placing—she was almost sure of it—a long flat package under the X-ray machine.

  ‘Toby!’ she called out, desperate at the prospect of losing him. And again ‘Toby!’ But her voice sounded thin in her own ears and he never looked back.

  For the second time in two days she was left st
aring in dismay after the retreating figure of the missing twin.

  4

  When you walk you have time for thinking. The journey was tough-going, the more so when we reached the spine of mountains which lies between Assyria and Media. But with each day climbing made me stronger, and perhaps it was because of this that a sense of something else also grew stronger within me.

  I have not spoken of the great God Yahweh for whose sake my father would anger my mother and bury the bodies of our dead. My father was strict: as a child he would teach me the Torah, the books of law, and tell how the tribes had offended our God by worshipping the bull-god Baal and that because of this we had been taken as punishment out of our own land, which had been promised us, to serve under the yoke of the Assyrians.

  I had taken this idea in with my mother’s milk and felt pity for the boys of other families whom my father said had forgotten the land of their fathers and were growing up godless heathens. And yet here, high on the mountain passes, climbing with Azarias and Kish, and the camels we had bought for the journey, I felt a new freedom: a relaxing of my spirits, as if away from my father and his austere God I had a chance to be someone else. My mother used to tell stories to me of the hills round Lake Galilee where she grew up; there was a light, she said, which dances on the waters there and she spoke of her grandmother Deborah, who had the gift of foresight and told how a day would come when a man would walk on that water and by that it would be known he was the Messiah. My mother spoke, too, of the high, green places and leafy sanctuaries which were shrines to the old country gods where our people had gone secretly to sacrifice. The old gods perhaps were kinder than our Only one, who (I dared to think as we walked further and further from home) was somewhat demanding. I had so often heard he was a jealous God and how his name was ‘Jealous’. It seemed to me that perhaps I understood why our God Yahweh had been forsaken: He was a hard taskmaster; maybe other gods asked less of their worshippers?