Miss Garnet's Angel

by Salley Vickers

  ‘Ah! A girl in the picture now.’

  ‘Yes. She was with him at the party. She is someone I had met here too—a restorer in fact at the Chapel-of-the-Plague.’

  ‘Of course, we spoke of it. It is part of your English “Venice in Peril” work.’

  ‘She is going back to England and I have to leave my apartment so we both thought it was a good idea if I took over hers while she was away.’

  The Monsignore poured himself more prosecco. ‘A hair of the dog!’ he said. ‘I am sorry. Please, go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep well so I got up early. It seemed a good idea to walk over to her house. To look at it. God knows why I thought that! Sorry.’

  ‘Please.’ The Monsignore waved his hand. ‘God is not so fussy about His name.’

  ‘I was outside the house where her apartment is very early in the morning and I saw them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Him and her. He was leaving. She was in her dressing gown.’ That supple young back. She clasped her face in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do this.’

  He waited, making, to her relief, no move to console her. After a while he said, ‘I am not sure that I understand but if it is that you have become resigned to this man being homosexual—and you are certain that your original impression is the right one—but it is difficult for you if now it turns out he sleeps also with this young girl, then I would say to you that I doubt that both things can be true. Sometimes, yes, but it is quite unusual. Mostly if a man likes boys he will prefer more maternal women—if he likes women at all in that way.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  The Monsignore grinned. ‘Oh, my dear! The confessional is a marvellous teacher of life. There are not so many sexual realities that I have not heard of in my little box. And, at times, out of it!’

  ‘But she told me. Sarah told me she had slept with him.’ She thought of Sarah’s boyish shape. That might have appealed to Carlo. How could a Catholic priest possibly know about such things?

  The Monsignore placed a hand on either side of his face as if trying to ward off toothache. After a while he said, ‘You see, a statement is like a cheque. Its value depends upon the resources with which it can be met by the person who issues it. If your Richard Branson writes a cheque for a million pounds it is one thing—if I write it’—he raised his hands dramatically—‘it is another! The statement takes the account into overdraft.’

  ‘But I saw them,’ Julia said unhappily. ‘She asked me not to tell anyone.’ She was not much comforted by these financial similes.

  ‘Listen, my friend,’ said the Monsignore. ‘I will tell you a story about myself. It is a story I have told no one, not even in confession.’

  ‘Oh,’ Julia protested, ‘then you mustn’t tell me.’

  ‘But why not?’ The blackbird eyes looked opaquely at her. ‘It is a true story and as it happens it contains nothing which is the business of my confessor. And I am old and soon I must die. You have entrusted your tale to me—it is good I entrust this tale to you. But first we must take some more prosecco.’ He hailed someone inside the house.

  While they were waiting Julia walked across to the dark carmine roses by the gate. ‘They are lovely.’

  ‘Unhappily they have blight,’ said the Monsignore. ‘But I am lazy and I tell myself nature is better than I at sorting these things out. Of course it is a lie to excuse myself—but not a serious one!’ A young woman arrived with the tray. ‘Will you have some more?’

  He chinked her glass, like a crystal tulip. ‘So, now I tell you. It is the war. I am a young man, not yet ordained, still at the seminary in Rome. My home is Venice and when I have leave from my studies (which are pretty tough—we must not only write but speak always in Latin!) I return here. All my life when I am away I miss Venice!’

  ‘I have been thinking I would miss it too and I’ve only been here six months,’ Julia said.

  ‘It is rumoured that Hitler plans to make Venice his headquarters and a few of us work to ensure that if this comes unhappily to pass the little corporal does not get his greedy hands upon all our Venetian treasures. This, of course, I do not tell my bosses in Rome. Not all of them share my view of Hitler!’

  The Monsignore giggled. Julia, who felt some response required of her, gave a rather awkward laugh. She was nervous of the honour being done her.

  ‘There are ways, forgotten passes, through Venice known to some of us who come from the old families. Now it turns out these are useful for our treasures and also to help our Jewish friends. You understand?’

  ‘Charles told me you used secret passages to help the Jews escape.’

  ‘Exactly. My family knows these places but my elder brother is not so reliable. He is not too sure that he does not quite admire the little corporal and his plans. One night it is proposed that I take a Jewish family to hide, I get a feeling.’ The Monsignore tapped his stomach. ‘I get this feeling in my insides: a voice says to me, “Giuseppe, don’t go!”’

  ‘Did you think your brother might give you away?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Maybe I am quite wrong and my “feeling” here is because I dislike my brother. I never know the truth because my brother has died before I can ask him.’

  Not knowing how to take this Julia said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  The Monsignore blew his lips. ‘It is only death! And I did not like him, God rest his soul. So, I tell this family “not tonight”. You will have some more prosecco?’

  ‘Thank you. It’s very good.’

  He drank with little, rapid gulps. ‘You know it is quite peculiar telling this now. Every day of my life it is inside me. To speak it is strange.’

  ‘Please don’t, if you don’t want to.’

  He patted her arm. ‘No, no. I want to tell you and, you know, the greatest wisdoms are not those which are written down but those which are passed between human beings who understand each other. There is a girl in the family—very beautiful. She has a figure like Sophia Loren—did I tell you my story about Pope John?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘OK, I tell you later. Remind me, please, or I will forget. Her mother says to me, “Please take her now. There is a boat. She can get to America but she must go first thing tomorrow.” I do not think it is safe but the mother is very insistent and the girl is very beautiful.’ He sighed. ‘And I am a young man—not yet a priest!’ Laughing. ‘So I take the girl but I think to myself: Where can we hide that is safe until I know I can get her to the boat?” And then I think: OK. The little chapel.’

  ‘The Chapel-of-the-Plague?’

  ‘Just so! By the way I like your Rudyard Kipling of the Just So Stories. “If you can keep your head when all about you, Are losing theirs…” It is a fine poem.’

  ‘I like it too!’

  ‘It is to the point, because in fact I used to say it to myself very often in these times. Maybe I said it this particular night? I do not remember!’

  Julia, who supposed he had been going to ‘remember’, felt pleased: the Monsignore was not a man who painted the lily.

  ‘At that time the chapel was used only for certain festivals—baptisms or weddings. But I knew where the key was kept—under the wellhead in the campo. And I knew it had a secret.’

  ‘A secret?’

  ‘Indeed. There is a passageway into the wall which once led to an adjoining palazzo. I knew this from the story I told you, when you were kind enough to call on me with Charles. Charles, by the way, does not believe these old stories because he is a rational man. It is one of the better things about the Catholic Church that it is not at all rational.’

  Julia did not say that surely all Christianity was irrational. She did not want to interrupt the story.

  ‘But I know for sure, empirically, as Charles would say, that there is a passage because I have spent the night there!’

  The Monsignore brought this out with a certain pride. Julia, sensing something, asked, ‘With the beautiful
girl?’

  ‘With the beautiful girl.’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Isabella, she was called. A wonderful figure!’ He carved a fulsome shape near his chest with his hands.

  ‘Goodness!’ Julia decided to be impressed. It was apparent that this was what was required of her.

  ‘But here is the point of the tale. We spend the night together in the chapel and maybe I put my arm around her because she is afraid. And I too, I am afraid also. But there is nothing more.’ The blackbird eyes were tightly earnest.

  ‘I’m sure there wasn’t.’

  ‘I know there was not for I am in fact virgin. I was not yet ordained but I was serious about my vocation and it would not have appeared right to me, in any case, to take advantage of this young woman’s terrible experience. This is not to say I did not want it, you understand.’

  ‘I am a virgin too.’

  She did not know why she had said this and began to flush but the Monsignore reached across and patted her hand again. ‘Good, good, you keep me company. I do not think any longer there are too many of us intact! But you know, I think it is a pity if this is matter of shame to you. For me I am proud that I keep my virginity in spite of all the temptations I am sent! Of course, no one believes me.’

  Julia, who was thinking that ‘temptations’ might make virginity less shameful, only said, rather weakly, ‘Oh, I’m sure they do.’

  The Monsignore gave one of his high little giggles. ‘Let me finish and you will see. After I get this girl to her boat I do not hear again from her, oh, for some time, until one day after the war is ended I receive a letter from America. It is from Isabella. She tells me how she made it to America and now is married to an American GI and I am happy for her. Also she has twins. I am happier still. Then the bombshell. I have told no one, she writes, that the twins are yours.’ The Monsignore sat back like a conjurer who had produced an astonishing rabbit.

  ‘But,’ Julia was puzzled, ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said the Monsignore cheerfully. ‘Hey, we are out of prosecco. They are so lazy when Constanze is not here. Oi! Prosecco, per favore!’

  ‘Really,’ said Julia, confused. ‘It’s fine. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘But I have not. Oi!’

  When the replenished tray had been brought the Monsignore resumed. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather from the wing of the Holy Ghost! Here I was, a young priest working in the Vatican, on my way to great things, concerned to make my mark, and—presto!—I learn I am a father.’

  ‘But you said…’ she didn’t like to be explicit.

  ‘That I am virgin and so I am. I knew that, and now you know it too. The blessed Signore Himself, I am happy to say, knows it—but the lovely Isabella it seems did not. I have thought about it many, many times,’ said the Monsignore pouring himself another glass.

  ‘And…?’ It seemed almost impertinent to ask.

  ‘And in the end this is the conclusion I reach. I believe that she herself did not know. Who knows what that night of extreme fear did to her? At any time she might have been handed over to the fascisti and for all we knew the concentration camps. She may never see again the family who have chosen her to take the passage of safety to America. In such circumstances the mind plays tricks. And after all, I am flattered she believes she and I had intercourse.’

  ‘But who was the father? The GI?’

  ‘I think no. Maybe an encounter on the boat to America when she is confused? Who knows? Like so many things this is known only to the mind of God.’

  ‘What happened to the children. The twins?’

  ‘Well, this is the point. They grow up. Their mother and her husband get a divorce, as is so unfortunately common nowadays. I never knew what she had told her husband but one day I receive a call. It is during the period I am working for the Secretary of State and we are in some pretty delicate negotiations with the USA about the troubles in Ireland. So, one day a man telephones to say he comes from America and asks if he may visit. When he turns up it is the son of Isabella.’

  ‘And he believed you were his father?’

  ‘Apparently yes. It seems his mother told him and his brother this after her divorce. I think they do not get on so well with her husband and maybe she thinks to help them.’

  Julia frowned. ‘Tough on you, though, surely?’

  The Monsignore gave another squeal of delight. ‘Oh yes. Another feather of the Holy Ghost and I am knocked flat! And this, you see, is quite serious. I am in a sensitive position within the Vatican. Any scandal’—he puffed his cheeks—‘and I am out on my backside.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I think about it very hard. Day and night. Shall I tell my boss, Ottaviani? He is a pretty hard taskmaster and would not tolerate anything improper. Maybe I go to the top and tell the Pope—who, in fact, would not be so unsympathetic. In the end I decide to do nothing. The young man’s mother has warned him it is a deadly secret. Also, I suspect she had told him that she is the love of my life—a romance which is not entirely untrue because certainly I have no greater experience of human love than the night I have spent with his mother. Maybe even he believes that it is out of this love for his mother that I have become a Catholic priest.’

  ‘Disappointment, you mean?’

  ‘Who knows? I never saw her again after that night and in any case it does not matter. I guessed he was not going to give me away. Of course, I had not met his brother but twins are alike, and so I felt in my bones I could trust the other brother too.’

  Are twins always so alike? wondered Julia, thinking of Sarah and Toby.

  ‘I was wrong, as it happens,’ the Monsignore beamed. ‘Someone spoke. Maybe Isabella repeated her delusion. In any case there grew up a rumour that I have sons in America whom I refer to as my “nephews” although it is kept always hush-hush. One of them is an academic and that is how Charles comes to know of the story. I heard him tell it to you at his party.’

  Julia blushed. ‘I thought you had heard! Charles said you couldn’t have.’

  One blackbird eye winked at her. ‘It is sensible sometimes to be deaf. But now, enough of me. I tell you this story for two reasons. One, because I like you and it is good to confess even if one has not, in fact, sinned. Two, because I wish to show you something. Sometimes a woman may say she has slept with a man—even believe she has done so—and still it may not be so. I think you are a person with a brave spirit. If it is the case that your friend sleeps with this girl you will not lie to yourself. You will know. But do not make the mistake of believing bad news just for the reason that it is bad. We live in an age, God forgive us, where bad news is preferred to good. “Vatican Priest Did Not Sleep With Beautiful Jewess” does not make a headline! Also, you know, now that I have met you I think it must also be the case that your friend liked you for yourself too. It is not reason enough that he hangs around only for the young boy—there are other ways…’

  Julia made a face. ‘Yes, but I was giving Nicco lessons. It was a perfect excuse to meet him—with me as chaperone, you see!’ And she knew for herself about that ravaging, feverish longing which got into your blood and raced through every mental process. Wise in the ways of humankind as this man was, was he likely to understand that?

  The priest gave what might have been a sigh. ‘You do not like my suggestion that your friend also liked you because, forgive me, you are intoxicated at present by the prospect of the worst. Believe me, I know that feeling. Luckily nowadays,’ he raised a glass at her, ‘I am intoxicated only by this!’

  They sat again in silence. Julia, who had been annoyed by his words, found herself trying to imagine the ugly little priest as a young, frightened man. What must it have been like hiding there with the distraught girl? ‘What was it like then, the chapel?’

  ‘It was place full of sweetness,’ said the Monsignore. ‘I remember that I thought it was not surprising that the Angel Raphael had visited there.’

  ‘You believe he did?�
�

  ‘Certainly the artist believed so.’

  ‘The artist?’ she said, not knowing why she was near tears.

  ‘Did I not say? There is a diptych painted by an anonymous master which stood always in the chapel: the story of Tobias and Raphael.’

  ‘I know the story.’

  ‘A very old and holy painting which performed many miracles.’

  ‘Yes?’ Her breath hurt in her throat.

  ‘The night Isabella and I hid in the crypt, I hid the diptych there too. To hide it from the little corporal.’

  ‘Was there a dog?’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘Yes. A dog in the painting of the angel.’

  In her notebook she had written: The dog and the angel arrive in the story simultaneously, just at the moment we are told Tobit and Sara are each contemplating death. Perhaps Tobit and Sara are different sides of the same coin—so the dog and the angel could be aspects each lacks, and needs in order to be cured?

  The Monsignore appeared to be concentrating. ‘Of course,’ he spoke slowly. ‘You are right. I had forgotten there was a dog with him—the dog is usually with the boy but in this case Tobiolo was on the other side, with his father.’

  So it was the same panel. ‘What did the angel look like?’

  Again the Monsignore paused. His eyes, hooded over, looked more like a dormant reptile’s than a bird’s. He stayed mute so long that Julia, thinking he had dropped off, had risen from her chair and was about to tiptoe away when he opened his eyes suddenly and said, ‘I can see why this artist painted him the colour blue—the colour of heaven. But when I saw him with my own eyes, it was impossible to say what he looked like.’

  There was a silence and into it Julia felt pour out of her, unstoppered, an indescribable emotion. The Monsignore had closed his eyes again and one was twitching slightly as though trying half-heartedly to wink. Like an ineffable stream the feeling flowed from her, into the leafy courtyard, up over the high walls and into the multiple, timeless luminosity, of which Venice is but a version. After a while she sensed the Monsignore had truly fallen sleep and when he began to snore with his dog she got up quietly and left the courtyard.