Miss Garnet's Angel

by Salley Vickers

  Certainly, until Harriet died, her own mind had remained in much the same state for thirty-five years. It was Harriet’s death which had thrust her into new ways, ways in which she had sometimes swum, sometimes floundered, like the fish young Tobias had landed on the banks of the Tigris.

  And now the number 52 vaporetto was approaching, and joining the queue of people waiting to travel she found herself next to Cynthia Cutforth.

  ‘My dear,’ said, Cynthia, smelling of something dry and expensive, ‘I have been out to Burano. Charles refuses to go—too touristy he says—but I wanted a lace tablecloth for the party. And it’s fun, once in a while, playing hooky from one’s husband. I got a beauty, too.’ She indicated an elaborately wrapped blue-tissue parcel.

  ‘I was just thinking about your party,’ Julia said—which was almost the case, for she had been worrying what she should wear to it. The cream blouse and black skirt were more appropriate for winter. And then she associated them with Carlo. ‘What shall I wear?’

  Cynthia, who had not forgotten her first impression of Julia at Marco Polo airport said, ‘My dear, it’s not grand. Wear whatever you feel like.’ Which was not helpful, Julia thought.

  They disembarked near the Pietà. ‘Do you think Vivaldi went in for little girls?’ Cynthia asked. ‘I mean, what was he doing teaching those young orphans? My guess is he was a pederast!’

  Julia, who had been debating whether to tell Cynthia she thought she had seen a kingfisher flash across the bows of the boat as they passed through the deserted boatyards of the Arsenale, found herself saying instead, ‘“Pederast” is boys, isn’t it? And so what if he was? Isn’t it his music that counts?’

  Cynthia was not a person who took offence. Perhaps she detected, in her acquaintance’s reply, a hint of something personal. In any case she made no rejoinder to the fierce little riposte and they walked without further conversation along the Riva Schiavoni. Soon they would pass the calle where Charles had taken her to meet the Monsignore. Julia, conscious of the silence her retort had induced, considered remarking that she had enjoyed meeting the Monsignore; but the comment seemed too banal to describe the curious encounter and besides she remembered that Charles had mentioned Cynthia did not entirely like the priest.

  They were approaching the area of the city where fashionable shops cluster and, her mind still on the forthcoming party, Julia made an excuse to part company. Cynthia, she decided, away from her husband, was annoying.

  * * *

  The concert-going blouse and skirt aside, it was many years since Julia had purchased any item of clothing other than for wholly utilitarian purposes. Harriet’s death had endowed her with blouses, but Harriet had been wider-hipped and fuller-figured than Julia, and the skirts and dresses had been dispatched to Oxfam. It was a dress—or ‘frock’, as Julia phrased it to herself—which she felt was wanted. Something ‘light and informal’, her mother might have said.

  The first shop she entered had, as assistant, a young woman wearing a skirt so short and make-up so pronounced that Julia felt herself literally back away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pretending that it was all an error that she was on the premises at all, ‘please excuse me,’ and she turned and walked away. But in one of the smaller calli she found a dimmer, less self-announcing store, and the woman who came to greet her wore skirts of reassuring length, and was plumply middle-aged.

  ‘Signora,’ the woman said. ‘Please?’

  Long ago Julia had given up trying to divine how it was that the Venetians could recognise her Englishness so unerringly. ‘I am looking for a dress,’ she simply said.

  ‘Good,’ the assistant clapped her hands together. ‘For a formal occasion?’ She indicated a rail of splendidly metallic costumes.

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ The metallics glinted alarmingly. She had had thoughts of fine cotton, muslin even.

  ‘Something a little casual perhaps?’ A rail of formidable trouser-suits was indicated.

  ‘Not trousers,’ said Julia firmly. ‘A dress.’

  The woman frowned as if attempting to compute a problem of ferocious complexity. Julia, looking through the door, saw another dress shop across the street. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and made as if to leave but the woman leaped before her, almost barring her exit. ‘I have very beautiful dress for you,’ she announced. ‘Wait!’

  She disappeared into an interior area and after a few moments emerged with three garments over her arm.

  ‘That one,’ cried Julia, pointing at a dress of lilac-coloured material.

  Trying it on in the small mirrored dressing room she became ashamed. Her underwear looked incongruous and dingy. Certainly it did not match up to the elegance of the dress she was contemplating. And she had to admit the frock was pretty, with its swathes of material and flowing line. Looking at the reflection in the mirror she heard a cough.

  ‘Signora, perhaps you like try these?’

  Discreetly, over the door of the changing room, were placed some silk items—a camisole and a pair of French knickers edged in lace. They were of a kind Julia had occasionally eyed in embarrassment as she passed the exotic underwear shops which were commonplace in Venice. Her first thought on seeing the cobwebby lace and sheen of the material was: How utterly ridiculous! But then, after holding first the cream-coloured camisole and then the knickers up against her, and looking intently at the reflection in the looking-glass, she stepped out of the lilac dress again.

  The assistant, wrapping the lace and satin in elaborate tissue, was triumphant. ‘They are so pretty,’ she said. ‘My husband likes me to wear them very much!’ She laughed, indulgent of the easy susceptibility of men.

  ‘I regret I have no husband.’ Julia, not knowing why she volunteered this, felt that politeness required from her some equivalent contribution to the assistant’s confidences. She felt also rather apprehensive. Whatever next? She hoped she was not going to become one of those unseemly old ladies who expose themselves. A vision of her father in the nursing-home bed, masturbating for all to see, flashed disturbingly across her memory.

  But the assistant only beamed the more. ‘Your lover will adore you in them.’ Competently, she pressed black and gold stickers to the tissue parcel. ‘And the dress too? This you must have. It is charming on you.’

  Leaving the shop with a wide, stiff black and gold bag Julia felt faintly criminal. She had never indulged herself so lavishly. Or so pointlessly, sneered an insidious inner voice. A story—was it about Rita Hayworth?—came back to her. Rita Hayworth’s dresser neglected to provide for a shoot the silk underwear which the film star liked to wear. ‘No one will know,’ the dresser had said, seeking to pacify the disgruntled starlet. ‘I will!’ was the regal reply. It was a story Harriet had told her. It didn’t matter that she had neither husband nor lover to enjoy her new purchase. She would know that, secret and inviting, cream silk lay next to her skin. Thinking of Harriet cheered her up. Harriet, she now knew, would have approved of the frivolous underwear.

  But wasn’t it queer that you could get to know a person better when they were dead than when they were alive? Perhaps it was because the dead could not reprove you? It was fear that made one hold back from knowing people. She thought of the girl of the Chapel-of-the-Plague, trapped in her high rooms, clinging to her virginity, unaware that passion awaited her in the person of the young merchant who had sailed across the seas from the Levant.

  We are closed in and the key is turned on our uncertainty, tolled a voice in her mind, as she threaded her way down the Calle Lunga.

  6

  I admit I wanted to run, run for my life! A girl I had never before that day heard of, from a strange and, for all I knew, barbaric land was bad enough. One who threatened to kill herself was not, you may be sure, the dream-wife of my fantasies. It made matters worse that these were kinspeople, for if nothing else courtesy demanded I stay there, at least for a night. And I had the added worry that my poor father would be counting the days fretting about his debt, and my m
other counting them for my safe return. I could have knocked Azarias’s teeth out for landing me in this.

  It was obvious that the parents wanted the maid to hold her peace. But she came bursting out with how her young mistress was upstairs and refusing to come down. ‘Seven of them, seven,’ the maid kept bleating and when I asked what was the meaning of this everyone went very quiet.

  Azarias, who had been feeding Kish, appeared suddenly and took the girl by the elbow and steered her from the room. I was concerned that the parents would see this as a grave piece of interference but they sat there, looking solemn, their gaze fixed to the floor, so I followed Azarias outside.

  The maid was sitting on a wall by the well, shaking out her hands as I have seen my mother do when in her eyes my father has gone too far, and Azarias was listening, one foot up on the wall as he had stood that first time I met him in the marketplace. I remember it still, that posture of his—the foot had a sureness in it.

  ‘All dead, all dead,’ the maid was crying, ‘and now my mistress says she wants to die too!’

  Right away I knew I was in for it because Azarias didn’t take his foot from the wall but he left off looking at the maid and looked at me instead. I realised then that I had never really looked into his eyes before. They were like the ‘eyes’ on the tail of the great birds that the King in Nineveh had in his palace gardens when I was a child; you couldn’t say if they were blue or green for they appeared to shift into many colours as he looked at you.

  Azarias looked at me now with his peacock-tail eyes and a kind of terror spread through me and I spoke without thought. ‘Azarias, I am afraid.’

  This is what Azarias said. ‘This is your wife who awaits you. Go now and tell her father that you came here to marry her.’ Then he said again, ‘Do not fear—she was set apart for you from the beginning.’

  At this I felt a violent rage well up in me, which was as well, as otherwise I might have begun to howl. Instead Kish began to howl for me but Azarias just touched him on the head between the spots above his eyes and he piped down. ‘And what if that is not what I want?’ I all but yelled at Azarias but he simply went on looking and said not a word in reply.

  The next thing I knew I was back in the house and speaking to the parents. ‘I have come to marry your daughter,’ I said, and I still don’t know what brought me to say it. At that the flat-faced mother started to weep and cry out, ‘No, no, you can’t, we can’t.’

  For some reason this seemed to bring out a resolve in me and I said, quite easily, ‘The law says she is mine if I want her.’ (From what I had learned Sara and I were cousins and by the law of Moses I had first refusal of her hand. My parents were also each other’s cousins and my father was a great advocate for this law though to tell you the truth until that day I had not given it much thought.)

  Raguel, who had so far said nothing said quickly, ‘Sister, hold your peace! He is cousin to our daughter. It is lawful that they marry. Go up and fetch our daughter and see she washes her face and tidies herself before she meets her suitor.’

  Azarias meantime had entered and was standing behind me. He never shamed me by showing me up in front of others. Although I was angry with him I was still afraid and it was a comfort to feel him there.

  After a while Edna came downstairs and behind her was a slight figure wearing a veil. I could not look at her at first and I felt the blood leave my face and my whole body begin to tremble. But Azarias stepped forward and took her hand and led her to me. And then Azarias parted her veil and I saw her face and I thought I might die, so immediate and unavoidable was my desire for her.

  The day of the Cutforths’ party was one of those days which are lowering even in late June—with a sultriness which gave off little sense of warmth. A spiteful day, Julia decided, taking off her dressing gown.

  The lilac frock looked somehow wrong and having put it on she took it off again—hurting her ears by dragging the thing over her head and messing her hair. But the silk underwear she kept on—she had promised herself she would wear it.

  The change into black skirt and a white cotton blouse she had bought from the man who sold the tablecloths made a delay, so that she almost ignored the phone when it rang. Hurrying back up the stairs to catch it she slipped, wrenching her knee, and had to keep irritation from her voice as she answered.

  It was Sarah calling about the proposed move. ‘I’m free tomorrow, if you like?—only I’m off the day after next.’

  Julia, who was aware that her tenancy expired at the end of the weekend, had nevertheless put off thinking about it. To be reminded of it just now seemed part and parcel of a day which was turning out unsatisfactorily. ‘I suppose that’s all right…’

  ‘Well, not if it’s a nuisance, I just—’

  ‘No, no.’ Julia pulled herself together. ‘I’m sorry, I was trying to organise my thoughts. I’m on my way out.’

  ‘Oh, where to?’

  ‘To my friends the Cutforths’ party,’ said Julia, not much liking to be asked her movements.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Sarah sounded knowing. ‘Our architect, Aldo, is going to that. I may tag along with him.’

  Julia found she did not welcome this possibility. The Cutforths were her discovery. Technically, they were her oldest friends in Venice and Sarah’s suggestion impinged on a sense of what was hers. Tentatively, she said, ‘But wouldn’t they mind? They’re quite grand: it was RSVP on the invitation.’

  There was a snort of laughter from Sarah who said, ‘Aldo and Charles have known each other yonks! I shouldn’t think they’ll mind me. But I’ll ring and ask, if you like!’

  ‘No, no, please don’t if you think it is all right.’ Julia, thwarted, back-tracked but Sarah had rung off already and when Julia rang her number back it was engaged.

  The small exchange set her on edge. It was muggy walking to the water-bus stop and she had gone no further than Veronese’s church with the gaudy ceiling—she could never quite get to like Veronese—before realising that it had been a mistake to shed the lilac dress. Its cool folds would have been a protection in the clammy heat. Too late to go back now—she walked on, sweat running down her spine.

  The Cutforths’ apartment boasted a roof-terrace. Cynthia, smelling of her expensive scent and glorious in white linen, kissed Julia and directed her up the wrought-iron stairway. ‘I’m not sure if it’s better out or in, but Charles is up there doing the honours.’

  Julia, climbing the stairs, caught a glimpse of herself in the hall glass. I am old, she thought.

  There was already quite a crowd on the roof but Charles, seeing her emerge, came over with a bottle and a glass in his hand. ‘Welcome, Julia!’ He spoke loudly so that she wondered if he was slightly drunk. ‘Would you like a drink or would you prefer a joke? When the Freuds entertained in Vienna they always met people with a joke.’

  ‘Both for choice,’ said Julia. ‘Who are the Freuds?’

  ‘Sigmund Freud,’ said Charles pouring a glass of prosecco, ‘the Herr Doktor Freud, discoverer of the unconscious. This OK for you?’

  This was better; Julia took a sip of prosecco. ‘I don’t somehow associate him with jokes.’

  ‘Oh sure, he was mad about them. Wrote a book: Jokes and the Unconscious.’

  ‘Is it funny?’

  ‘Dire,’ said Charles. He was definitely tipsy. ‘Anyway, what shall I tell you to make you laugh?’

  Julia felt it was not her place to supply her host with the material for her own welcome. ‘I never remember jokes myself so I can scarcely expect you to.’

  Charles laughed uproariously as if she had said something hugely funny and she remembered how confident she had been when she had dined with him and Cynthia at the Gritti Palace. Under the false colours of her relationship with Carlo she had managed to be expansive, almost witty. You gave people an impression of yourself and they held on to it however you may be at other times, like a dog with a bone, she grimly thought and, turning a little aside to stand out of the way of another guest,
she saw that it was Carlo. And behind him Sarah.

  Sarah was wearing a long, narrow dress of a pale blue material which matched the blue of her eyes. She had done her fair hair up on her head where it was caught, with seeming carelessness, by a silver clip in the shape of a fish. Two more silver fishes hung drolly from her ears, like some portrait of a sea-nymph. Julia, staring at her, thought, I am ludicrous, an old woman in silk underwear.

  There was a heartbeat’s pause and then Sarah and Carlo both started to speak at once, halted, and Sarah, alone, resumed. ‘Julia! You know Carlo, don’t you? He is our architect’s oldest friend.’

  ‘Our fathers were at school together,’ Carlo said. His smile was rigid. ‘Aldo and I. And, Julia, how are you? I was going to call you tomorrow and—here you are!’

  The sun had emerged and across the water from the Cut-forths’ balcony the sudden sea-light shone on the forbidding white frontage of the church of the Gesuati. They both knew he was lying.

  But the shock was over and Julia found a way to meeting him. ‘You might not have found me. Tomorrow I am moving my things.’ Sarah had drifted away and was by the railings talking to Charles Cutforth. ‘To Sarah’s as it happens.’ How stuffy she sounded. He raised his eyebrows, and she added, struggling not to be stilted, ‘She has to return to England on business. Didn’t she say?’

  ‘I hardly know Sarah. We met before, I think when I was in Venice after Christmas.’ He did not say that it was when they too had met, but stood gallantly (she couldn’t help admiring it) bearing the embarrassment they both were experiencing. After a while Charles drifted back towards her and Carlo made an excuse to get away.

  ‘Pretty thing you’ve brought with you,’ Charles said, nodding towards Sarah. He appeared to have recovered his sobriety. ‘Our boys should be here. They’d eat her for breakfast!’

  ‘I didn’t bring her. She came with a friend of yours.’ Julia hoped she didn’t sound defensive. Wanting to change the subject and seeing the Monsignore across the terrace she said, ‘You never told me about the Monsignore’s sons.’ She hoped Charles wouldn’t refer to Carlo.