Miss Garnet's Angel
Page 21
What had really occurred the morning she had seen Carlo leave Sarah’s apartment? Toby’s account had convinced her that whatever it was she had drawn a false conclusion. It was her own mind which had woven the net she had become entangled in—which was only justice, when you thought about it—though it didn’t, to be sure, say much for her mind! When you point a finger, Harriet had said to her once during an argument, remember there are three fingers pointing back at you! (A remark which she had dismissed at the time as ‘Tosh!’) She couldn’t even remember what the row was about. Stella’s cat-litter, she thought. And now Harriet was dead and beyond apology. The book she had been reading suggested that the story of Tobit might include remnants of a legend called The Grateful Dead—which she half recalled as the name of a band the children at school had gone crazy over. How could the dead express gratitude? Harriet could not be grateful to her any more—only she could be grateful to Harriet.
They walked on in silence past the Papadopoli Gardens. Julia wanted to ask if she could take Toby’s arm; the ache in her hip had become more severe. But he walked on, always slightly ahead, with a remoteness she felt too diffident to breach. Why did old Tobit care so much about the dead bodies which lay about in Nineveh? Why not let the wild dogs strip the corpses’ bones? To have one’s body devoured by nature’s hunters didn’t seem such a bad thing.
They had come to the bridge which crosses the Rio Nuovo and Julia put out her hand to halt Toby. ‘Would you mind? I need to catch my breath.’
‘Sure.’ He stood against the bridge, rolling another cigarette.
I’m glad I do not have children, Julia thought, watching him. Impossible not to mind when they did themselves harm.
The sky was beginning to flush as they turned into a tiny calle which came out by the bridge across to the exotic Carmini—where Carlo had shown her the Cima altarpiece: another version of Tobias and Raphael, respectful attendants on the infant Christ who lies, tiny and naked, among admiring shepherds in the gold-leafed countryside of Cima’s Conegliano. The artist has painted Tobias as a mere child, an open-faced boy who carries the fish with him as a proud boast to his pals and not as a powerful remedy against devils. Julia’s mind wandered absurdly to Sarah’s fridge and the tin of anchovies. Maybe they should have brought it with them—as expedient against more modern forms of evil!
They walked on along the canal which becomes the Rio dell’Angelo Raffaele. The site of the Chapel-of-the-Plague lay across the water.
Halfway along the fondamenta Julia stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I seem to have a stitch now. I’m getting to be a hopeless walking companion.’
‘It’s OK.’
They were close to where the nobleman’s palazzo would have been. ‘Toby, do you know the story of the Chapel?’
‘Yeah. It was built for a woman who survived the plague.’
‘But did you know she was a Jewess? At least, that’s what a friend of mine told me.’ It was all right to call the Monsignore a friend.
‘Hey, that’s cool! Technically, me and Sarah’s Jewish ’cos our mums are. It’s Uncle Herb, their half-brother, who’s put up most of the money for the Chapel. Herbie the Wallet, Sarah calls him. That’s how we’re on the case. They only use Venetian restorers, usually.’
‘You should be flattered.’
Across the water, according to the Monsignore’s story, was where the young Levantine must have stood, patiently hoping for sight of his mortally sick beloved. Now, six and a half centuries later, she was there in the company of another lover. But the object of his love—where was she?
They had crossed the bridge and were passing now through the archway which led to the tiny hidden campo where the chapel, hedgehog-like, stood: a small dome with scaffolding spines. Toby stopped.
‘Do you have a key?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. We’ve one apiece.’
‘Do you want me to stay outside?’
In the gathering light she could see his pale eyes; the black encircling rings gave them a faintly demonic look. ‘No. You come too.’
Needles of panic attacked her stomach as he unlocked the padlock which secured the green bronze handles of the doors. What if Sarah were not there? But, then, what if she were? Perhaps it was better if she had, after all, spent the night with Carlo and was taking comfort in his paternal-seeming arms. The tale Toby had told of the maleficent therapist was unspeakable. And in the Devon barn the body of Sarah’s father—hanging in despair. She hoped he was safe now, buried deep in the fastness of the earth—if that was permitted these days to suicides? Old Tobit was right: kindness to the dead mattered; it was not better to be left to the scavenges of animals.
Toby had switched on a torch and was walking ahead into the dark. She could just make out the scaffolding which stood behind the altar.
Julia stood in the blackness in which he had left her. Her stitch had returned and she held her breath—whether for cure or superstition she did not know—counting to a hundred. One, two, three, four, five, six…
‘Sarah? Sarah, it’s me! Are you there?’ The tremulous torch beam roved round the chapel’s curving walls, weaving between the watery-grey pillars.
…thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
‘Sarah! It’s Tobes!’
…twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…
‘Sar! Answer me, if you’re there. It’s all right. No one’s angry with you.’
…thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…
Then it was she saw him again. On the upper reaches of the scaffolding, a sheerness of presence, no more. It was as if he took the space from the air about him and against the darkness was etched, like the brightness which seeps through a door ajar, hinting at nameless, fathomless brilliances beyond, the slightest margin of light. Impossible to look too closely, but some way below, beneath where the long feet might have rested, she made out the girl’s huddled shape, her arms folded over her head like some small, broken-winged, storm-tossed bird.
Then Toby’s voice. ‘Sar, I can see you. Stay where you are—I’m coming up.’
She sensed rather than observed the boy climb upward, for her being was wholly held by the extraordinary lucidity with which she suddenly saw the pathos hidden at the heart of the girl’s terror.
For a knife-edge moment the lighted air at the top of the scaffolding hovered. Julia, as she stood watching, half wondered if she saw it linger almost tenderly over the crouched form; then, just a fractional shift and it was gone, the doorway into the impenetrable brightness closed up, and she was left, gazing into the shuttered dark.
Toby was shepherding someone towards her. ‘Hey, Sar, it’s me and Julia. It’s OK. You’re safe now.’
But Julia Garnet, out of the extraordinary incandescence which suddenly lapped and enfolded her, cried voicelessly after the vanished presence, ‘Thank you, thank you.’
And now comes the strangest part of my story. At the top step I found Kish waiting for me, his ears pricked and the hair on his spine raised. In my hand I found I had the bag which contained the liver and heart of the great fish which Azarias had instructed me to preserve—and in my mind were the words with which he had instructed me what I was to do with them.
Sara lay on the bed naked. It was the first time I had seen a woman naked and I remember I looked at her with a kind of curious wonder. I saw a compact body, small-breasted and narrow-hipped, with an arrowhead of dark hair marking where I supposed I must enter her. Was ever man more afraid of making that entrance?
But in times since I have wondered: maybe that is what it is like for all men? Maybe it always feels like death whenever a man first enters a woman’s body and goes into the dark? (This, you may imagine, is not a thing I could ever ask my father!)
There had been a fire burning in the room. I took the heart and liver of the great fish and in a kind of trance I went over and laid them on the perfumed ashes of the fire. And at that Sara turned on the bed—but it was not me she looked at, it was Kish.
Then she cried out a long, awful, anguished scream and I cried out too and suddenly the room was full of a vile stench and smoke, I was coughing and retching and then I must have passed out; and when I came to the room was filled with the scent of myrrh and frankincense and spikenard, and Azarias was gone and Sara lay on the bed, her arms flung up and over her head, as I had seen her in my dream.
6
Cynthia, answering the phone, said at once, ‘Of course you must come and stay in our spare room. I don’t know why you ever involved yourself with that absurd child. She looked to me unstable. You should have asked us, Julia.’
Julia—waiting for Charles, who had insisted on ordering a water-taxi—looked at Sarah lying in the bed. Toby, beside her, held her hand. ‘Shouldn’t we get a doctor?’ She was remembering the leather-jacketed dottore.
But Toby had not wanted to disturb the girl. From time to time she made smothered, snuffling sounds, like a sleeping child or an animal, but mostly she lay, her hands flung back over her head, apparently unconscious.
Then Charles was there manhandling down the stairs her case and bag which, fortunately, she had left packed.
‘Hey, thanks,’ said Toby coming down the stairs to see her off. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of…you know, her being there. I don’t know why.’
‘I expect she went knowing you often slept there.’ Had remorse finally led Sarah to the chapel? ‘Will you let me know how you both are?’ Julia asked, not wanting to presume yet unwilling to be parted.
The taxi driver, with Venetian promptness, had begun to unfasten the boat’s painter. ‘I’ll ring you,’ Toby promised. ‘When she’s better you must come round.’
‘That was kind of a daft place for you to stay, Julia,’ Charles ventured. ‘I know you Brits are tough but the stairs would have killed me. And we are thrilled to have you stay with us. Cynthia says to be sure to tell you that your room has its own bathroom.’
Julia, thinking of the twins in their eyrie, felt how much she would prefer to have remained with them. But they needed no one but themselves for the time being.
Later that evening, as she sat with Charles and Cynthia on the balcony looking across the water to the iced-cake front of the Gesuati, a half-dormant resolution took shape. ‘Do you by chance have the number of your friend Aldo?’
‘He has a dragon-mother,’ said Charles.
‘If I were you I’d let Charles ring for you. He butters her up.’ Cynthia smiled, secure in her own place in her husband’s facility with women.
But Julia did not want assistance. ‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll brave the dragon-mother.’
Aldo himself answered the phone so any soft-soaping was uncalled for. Aldo was chatty. He explained to Julia he would be coming over soon to see the Chapel with the Soprintendente. The ugly one? Julia nearly asked but instead said, ‘Which?’ It seemed they were both coming to inspect the work—he, himself, was looking forward to seeing how it had turned out. He gave no sign of knowing anything of Sarah’s allegedly imminent departure.
‘Aldo, can you do me a favour?’
Immediate politeness. ‘Of course.’
‘Your friend, Carlo. I have mislaid his card.’ At the bottom of the lagoon, in fact; tied in his handkerchief with a stone and the dead marigold! ‘Could I trouble you for his number?’
Aldo was all obligingness, and the conversation ended both pleased with their mutual affability.
Now the real steel was required. Quickly, lest she lose the impulse, she dialled—part-praying there would be no answer.
But he was there. Deep breath. ‘Carlo, it’s Julia Garnet,’ and at the other end of the line a second’s silence.
‘Julia, how delightful to hear from you.’
Her voice wanting to shake, she forced herself to say, ‘It’s such a long time since we saw each other properly. I was wondering if, well, we might meet—for a meal or something.’
Another pause but when he spoke again she thought she detected relief. ‘That would be most agreeable. Where shall I take you?’
But about this she was clear. ‘No, please, this is my invitation. I owe you so much hospitality. It must be my turn.’
* * *
Toby rang the following morning. ‘Sarah’s much better. I’m keeping her in bed but she’s drinking brandy and eating like a horse.’ There was an indistinct shout from the background. ‘Sarah says to tell you we’re getting married.’
‘Toby, that’s great! How marvellous.’
‘When she’s up and about you must come over and celebrate.’
Julia pondered, waiting by the Redentore for the vaporetto to take her across the water. Did Sarah now understand the evil which had been perpetrated on her father? What was the name the Zoroastrians gave to the evil spirits which carry corruption? The Nasu. The wretched therapist (such an unappealing title!) who had wreaked havoc in that family’s life must be a latter-day Nasu.
The restaurant she had appointed for her meeting with Carlo was an osteria, hospitable enough, but unremarkable. She did not wish to be reminded of their previous relationship by one of their former, more glamorous haunts.
Carlo looked older, she thought. He declined prosecco and they both drank mineral water. Blandly, they discussed neutral topics, mostly his professional commitments which had taken him travelling since the spring. There was a van Dyck he had run down and he described his plans for disposing of it, perhaps to a banker in Los Angeles. The dialogue was hard work. Nothing could be less like the easy familiarity of their previous exchanges.
‘I was surprised to learn you were still here?’ She sensed question in his voice and his eyes looked timidly, almost beseechingly at her so that the words of the Monsignore came back to her with the scent of dark roses: I think it must also be the case that your friend liked you for yourself too.
Confused, she flung off, ‘So will you try London with your van Dyck?’
But at this he seemed to colour and, seizing the moment, she said, before she should stop herself, ‘Carlo, did Sarah show you a painting on a panel in the Plague Chapel? Of an angel?’
Even before he had flushed darker red she knew the idea which had been unleashed inside her had hit the mark. Her hunch was accurate: whatever Carlo’s proclivities it was not the lure of sex which had prompted his visit to Sarah under cover of darkness; it was the angel panel which had drawn him.
Mustering courage she pursued, ‘It’s a wonderful work, isn’t it? I’m so glad Aldo is bringing the Soprintendente of paintings along to see it next week. Sarah’s not been well but she’ll be better by then, I hope. She’ll want so much to be there when the painting is shown.’
She had worked it out during the long hours she had spent on the Cutforths’ terrace, watching the boats weave and ply the water. Sarah had distracted her attention with a play of a sexual entanglement. Two plays, in fact: Toby’s alleged girlfriend and her fake involvement with Carlo. How shrewd of the girl to have picked out her, Julia’s, blind spot! Doubtless Sarah had divined, too, the hidden feelings for Carlo (and that was how evil made its way into the world, she suddenly understood: through the cracks of our ignorance and weakness) and used it to draw the wool over her eyes. What deal had Sarah struck with Carlo over the painting that morning she had surprised them? That Sarah had intended to use her as a witness to lay a trail of the painting’s disappearance to Toby was something they both now had to deal with. But would the girl remember the labyrinthine duplicities by which she had planned to betray, not just her, Julia (who after all was no more than a casual acquaintance), but the boy, her twin, who had loved her so steadfastly? That some such dark compact had been forged was horribly apparent before he
r now.
Carlo was staring down at his coffee, endeavouring to compose his expression. But there was steel in him too; for he mastered his face to show polite expectation. ‘I am so pleased. Sarah, of course, as she has clearly told you, invited me to see the painting and to get my advice. I thought it was not safe to keep it in those conditions in the chapel. How it got to be there in the first place is a mystery, of course.’
So he was unaware he had been spotted taking the painting from Sarah’s apartment. Well, that truth was safe enough with her. And as to how the panel had been mislaid all these years, she thought she knew the answer to that too as, letting him off the hook, she turned the conversation to the Cutforths. ‘They have been so kind taking me in,’ she said. ‘And me a sojourner and a stranger.’
‘I am sorry?’ She was acutely aware how desperate he was to leave, how every further minute in her company was now a horror to him. But, just for a second, she forced him to stay looking into her face, uncertain of quite what it held for him.
‘It’s from the Bible. The Old Testament. It’s what Abraham said when he came first to the promised land. You will think this funny but my friend from England sent me a copy of the Bible and the Apocrypha and I have been reading them both.’ She had had her small revenge: he would never be sure how much really she knew. But she owed him something too. ‘Actually, it’s you I have to thank because I wanted them for the Book of Tobit. You introduced me to the story—do you remember?—all that time ago, as it seems now, in the Angelo Raffaele? It has become very dear and important to me: I shall be eternally grateful.’ And it was, after all, true: Carlo, who could never have given her love, had incidentally brought her something more abiding.
‘Ah, you English ladies, you are too deep for me,’ and he said it with an air of a dog being let off a leash. ‘Forgive me, it has been so good to see you and catch up. But I must go: I have a call I promised to be at home to receive.’
He did not stay to escort her to the water-bus stop. Instead she walked alone past the Monsignore’s calle. It was too late to bother him. She imagined the priest sitting up in bed, perhaps with his teeth in a glass, drinking brandy, the pug dog asleep. He would be glad the angel panel was secure.