Miss Garnet's Angel (20 page)

And it was the case that here in Ecbatana were many buildings which zigzagged to the skies.

When we reached a house with such a tower Azarias insisted I go forward to meet my relatives though they had no foreknowledge of our arriving.

I went in and found a man sitting by the door of the
courtyard and my heart gave a lurch when I saw him, a broad-shouldered man with just that same squint along his nose, which resembled my father's look before he lost the use of his eyes.

The man gave a greeting—‘Much cheer to you, stranger!'—and he brought me into his house. He introduced me to Edna, the woman of the household who greeted me courteously, a woman with a flat friendly face, not at all like the face of my mother, Anna. My mother's face, my father always said, was like the face of a roe deer.

But it was Edna who recognised me, so that I had no need to say who I was, for the moment she clapped eyes on me she said, ‘Raguel, how like he is to your kinsman of Nineveh, Tobit!'

‘That is very fit,' I answered, ‘for Tobit of Nineveh is my father.'

Then Raguel sprang up and embraced me saying, ‘Blessings to you, lad, for you are the son of a good and noble father.' And he ordered a ram of his flock to be killed to receive us.

I was pondering how to broach the question of their daughter but I need not have worried because at that moment a maidservant came down the stairs, wailing and wringing her hands. The girl Azarias had chosen for me to marry was threatening, it seemed, to throw herself from the window of the topmost tower.

S
ignora Mignelli had referred from time to time to the date when the tenancy came to an end. ‘I miss you,' she explained to Julia, regretful. ‘But I must let to tourist to make money.'

Julia, who had not yet decided what she was going to do after she had left the Campo Angelo Raffaele, mentioned to Sarah that she might need to find another apartment. She was not at all sure she was ready to return to Ealing. The small flat where she had lived so many years had, in her imagination, become dreary and confined.

Unexpectedly, Sarah had offered a solution. ‘I'm going to have to go home myself in early July,' she explained. ‘I'll be back but you're welcome to use my apartment while I'm away. In fact it would be great to have someone there to keep an eye on things. D'you want to come by and see?'

The Ghetto was near the Madonna dell'Orto, where Julia had had the oblique encounter with Toby; where the young Levantine might have found quarters, while awaiting the visitation of the Archangel Raphael. Julia found the top bell, above the rows of brass nameplates (one name, Melchiori, made her think of the myrrh-bearing magi) on the side of a tall house near the synagogue.

‘They're tall—the houses here—because the only way the Jews could spread in the Ghetto was upwards,' Sarah explained. She had come down to meet Julia and they were climbing the stone stairs to the top of the house. ‘Hey, I've just thought, is it going to be too much for you? Walking up all these steps?'

Julia was affronted. ‘Certainly not—I'm fit as a fiddle, thank you.'

‘Sorry. I didn't mean to be patronising.'

They had reached the upper storey and, entering, Julia found herself in a large wooden-floored room with kitchen facilities in one corner and a double bed in the other. A roll of green baize into which Sarah's long chisels were slotted lay on a pile of magazines by the bed.

‘It's a bit primitive, I'm afraid.'

‘Is this the only room?' Julia, looking at the bed, couldn't help thinking of Toby. Where had he slept?

Sarah walking to the corner of the room said, ‘There's a bathroom—it's a tad poky.' She opened a door in the corner to show a truncated bath with a shower attachment. ‘That's a hip-bath. Neat, isn't it?'

Julia, looking, saw bottles and pots. The gold-topped potions and creams reminded her of how Sarah had borrowed her hand-cream. Looking at the girl's features she observed her skin, the kind which is called ‘porcelain'. Her own felt papery and old. It's all right for her, Julia thought, following Sarah, with seeming meekness, out of the bathroom.

There was no sign of Toby in either room. Had he slept on the floor? Though, of course, more often, no doubt, he had spent the nights on the floor of the chapel. With the bats.

The apartment was smaller than Signora Mignelli's. Julia tried to envisage herself there. She liked the effect of light from windows on three sides. A balcony led off one of the windows and stepping out she saw the faint grey margin of sea.

‘You can see the Dolomites in the winter.' Sarah joined her. ‘But not in the summer. I don't know why not.'

Julia, her lunch by the Fondamenta Nuove with Vera in mind, said, ‘A friend who was here told me it has to do with refraction of the light.' Her last sight, almost, of Toby. Where was he now? she wondered.

Sarah, as if reading her thoughts, now said, ‘I have to go back to see if I can find Tobes.' Frowning she looked older. ‘It would be a relief, actually, to have you here.'

‘Well, it would suit me.' Definitely she did not wish to return to England. She would telephone Mr Akbar at the first opportunity and see if he would like to continue his tenancy. ‘When do you want to leave, Sarah?'

Sarah suggested the first week of July. She offered to lend a hand with moving Julia's things from Signora Mignelli's when the time came. ‘I have very little,' Julia said, grateful that she had not had to ask. ‘Just a few books and papers; almost no clothes.'

But there was the Cutforths' party, and really she must give some thought to her clothes, she decided as she made her way back to the Fondamenta Nuove where the Dolomites rose invisibly behind the clouds across the water. Ruskin, Vera had informed her, had liked to promenade there when the mountains were not in hiding. Probably he had walked up and down, lecturing the virginal Effie who had run in horror from Tintoretto's
Last Judgement.
But ‘virginity'—what did it mean? There was the Virgin Mary (the Bellini with the almond eyes) but Ruskin's virgin wife
wasn't, to be sure, like her! What about the beautiful Jewess who nearly died of the plague?—until the fortuitous arrival of the silk-merchant all her ‘marriages' remained unconsummated. And there was the girl in the Tobit story whose resident demon strangled her lovers before they could enter her body. Maybe virginity was an unwillingness to allow yourself to be altered? Is it true that we would rather be ruined than changed? she meditated. Perhaps it was not so much a matter of what you did with your body but what you allowed into your mind—a reluctance to admit mortality?

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.'