her, let alone this tall, cultivated man who–though nearing seventy, he assured her–was, in the old-fashioned style, undeniably handsome. Sometimes they would go to a concert and afterwards they would dine at one of many out-of-the-way restaurants where he was greeted like a long-lost son; or he would suggest a visit to a church where in rich glooms he pointed out altarpieces with obscure stories from the Catholic scriptures, unknown to Protestant histories; or he steered her, always charmingly holding the crook of her arm, through rooms of the Accademia, where she learned to look at painters whose names were formerly not even names to her, Bassano, Longhi, Vivarini. Their reds and golds and blues, in tones she had been used to deriding as ‘showy’ (for the paintings of Lowry had formerly been her highest notion of art), somewhat dazed her eyes. In one room she stopped, overcome by the eight great canvases which lined the four walls. ‘Carpaccio,’ he said, amused at her evident delight. ‘Carpaccio, I always say, is the prosecco among painters–he is another of our Venetian secrets!’
One of the canvases in particular held her attention: a high, square room infiltrated with a quiet dawn light; on one side of the painting a simple bed, with a woman tranquilly asleep–opposite, at the threshold of a lighted door, an angel in blue with dusky wings, just standing. Looking at the angel waiting with such stillness, Julia Garnet felt something like a small shudder pass through her.
On another occasion, at the Peggy Guggenheim museum, he had made her blush horribly by pointing out the tumescent angel who exposes his proud member in all its glory to the passing watercraft. (‘Oh, I assure you, it unscrews when visitors from the church come!’) Afterwards he had bought her marigolds from a narrow shop crammed with flowers, and she knew it was by way of apology for having embarrassed her. That night she lay awake, hating herself for her damnable strait-laced upbringing, so that by morning she had schooled herself not to expect him (for how could so urbane a man put up with such unsophistication in a grown woman?). But he had appeared, as usual, across the campo, smiling as if nothing had happened, and her heart had turned over and over in joy as she stood waving from the balcony.
Once she had succumbed to a fit of sneezing and he had pressed his handkerchief upon her, warm from his trouser pocket. She had tried not to use it, trusting to his impeccable manners not to ask for its return, aware already that later she would put it away unwashed in her drawer beside the book which pressed one of the embarrassing marigolds.
Although she kept his card in her handbag, she held back, unwilling to put his desire to see her to the test, from ever initiating their meetings. And yet he gave ample proofs of seeking out the friendship.
Usually it was the afternoons when Carlo would come by looking for her. Signora Mignelli, made familiar by the leveller of sex, got to teasing her about her ‘friend’.
In Carlo’s company Julia Garnet felt herself become more feminine: she bought a black skirt and a daringly wide-lapelled cream silk blouse–to wear at the concerts. She even patrolled the back streets, half-looking for an emerald hat such as she had seen on the woman in the little chapel in St Mark’s, but found nothing she liked well enough to fuel the courage necessary for the purchase.
One day, returning home after such a search (she had hovered over a red hat but prudence finally had overruled her) Julia Garnet paused outside a shop which sold linen and embroidered tablecloths. The tablecloths reminded her of her mother, whose only acts of rebellion against her husband had been expressed in an obsessive purchase of linen. Julia Garnet had stood, rather yearningly, gazing at the flowers picked out in coloured silks, until the proprietor, sensing a sale, had come out and pestered her and she had hurried on down a small alley which ran beside the shop.
It was many years since Julia Garnet had risked taking a short cut (short cuts she associated with laziness) and she felt a slight agitation at having left her familiar route. And yet there was that sense of exploration too, which had been developing since her arrival in Venice.
The first month had almost passed, accelerated by the novelty of her new companion. And he had aided that adventurousness which the loss of Harriet had first sparked. Almost, Julia Garnet thought as she hurried down the dark alley (as if the tablecloths had taken off and were in ghostly pursuit), almost it was as if Harriet’s soul had poured down Harriet’s own meagre stock of boldness upon her, a last gift to the friend she was leaving for ever.
Goodness, how fanciful she was getting! And yet the idea of possessing a soul no longer seemed quaint. And, to be sure, if one had a soul how much nicer to let it wander here in Venice. As she ruminated upon the desirability of a good environment for one’s afterlife, the alley turned into a narrow campo, one which she had never penetrated before.
One of the old stone-carved wellheads with which Venice is endowed was situated slightly off the centre of the area and to its left stood a small, rounded Romanesque building half-covered in scaffolding.
Miss Garnet, moved by her new spirit of adventure, walked slowly round seeking some clue to the building’s function. It was unclear whether it was a church, although the general shape of the architecture indicated that it was built for some devotional purpose.
Moving closer to determine the purpose of the building better, Julia Garnet was startled by a shout.
‘Hey, watch it! Mind out!’
The voice came from above her head and for a second it flashed across her startled mind that the archangel himself had addressed her, before a blue-clad pair of legs brought a distinctly human shape into sight.
‘Didn’t you see the notice?’
‘Notice?’ Julia Garnet’s first reaction was one of annoyance. For the second time she had been ‘found out’ as English: the stranger who had descended in so surprising a way from the scaffold above had instinctively addressed her in her own tongue–but with none of the courtly civility of Carlo. Who was this person in the dirty overalls? It was not even possible to discern their sex, for whoever it was wore goggles and the woolly hat beloved of Venetian workmen.
‘Look! See!’ The blue-clad person pointed at a yellow sign indicating falling stones hanging on the scaffolding which Julia Garnet had failed to take in. ‘If you get hurt there’s hell to pay. We’re working here.’ The person pulled down the goggles to reveal indignant pale blue eyes.
‘I’m sorry.’ Though in truth she wasn’t. ‘I didn’t see the notice.’
‘What’s the trouble?’ A second voice, lighter than the first. A figure also wearing goggles swung down. Pulling off an almost identical hat and pushing down the goggles it revealed itself as a fair-haired young woman. ‘What’s up, Tobes?’
‘I fear I am trespassing.’ Julia spoke coldly.
‘Don’t worry,’ the girl spoke soothingly. ‘He was just worried we might drop something on your head. We were breaking for lunch anyway. I’m Sarah, by the way. This is Toby.’ She gestured at the other figure and then as Julia Garnet made no remark, ‘We work together.’
The tone was propitiating and Julia unbent. ‘It was silly of me. I didn’t think.’ Really she wanted to scuttle away from the aggressive young man but the girl seemed pleasant enough. She struggled to find an answering politeness. ‘What is your work?’ She found, as she asked the question, she indeed wished to know.
‘We’re restorers. This is one of the English restorations.’
‘And do you work always together?’ How exhilarating it might be to work high up. One could look out over the city, like a bird–or an angel.
‘We’re twins,’ said the girl as if in explanation
