the darkening Piazzetta he said, ‘Look, another example of our looting,’ pointing to the two high columns. ‘St Theodore with his crocodile was once our patron saint. But in fact this is not St Theodore at all–it is a Hellenistic statue which we have taken for our own. And opposite, you see, the lion of St Mark is not a lion at all–a chimera from the Levant we stuck wings on. All stolen! The columns too. Would you honour me by taking a glass of prosecco, perhaps?’ and he smiled, so that she omitted to say she had suddenly remembered she had left the Rev. Crystal behind on the chapel floor.
Instead, why not? she decided, for no one waited for her return but aloud she said merely, ‘Thank you very much. That would be delightful.’ and felt proud of herself that she had added no objection.
‘Good. I take you to Florian’s.’
‘But is this not very expensive?’ she could not prevent herself saying ten minutes later, as they sat, all gilt fruit and mirrored warmth, under the wreathed colonnades surrounding the Piazza.
‘But of course!’ The man who had introduced himself as Carlo crinkled his eyes again. ‘Next time I shall take you to the bar where the gondoliers meet. But for a first meeting it must be Florian’s.’
Julia Garnet felt something she had felt previously only under pressure or fear. It was as if the bubbles in the pale gold glass had passed through her stomach up into her heart. ‘Oro pallido,’ she said speaking the words aloud.
Her companion frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I was trying to say the words for pale gold–the drink. It is delicious.’
‘Ah! Oro pallido, I did not understand. Prosecco is our Italian secret. I think it is nicer than champagne but my French friends will kill me if they hear this!’
‘Your English is very good.’
He was, he explained, an art historian, who had worked at the Courtauld Institute in London for several years. Now he was a private art dealer, buying and selling mainly in Rome, a little in London, sometimes Amsterdam. But Venice was his home. His mother was dead but he had kept on her old appartamento–he returned when he could–he had cousins, an aunt.
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘You have a husband, children?’ and she was grateful for she felt sure he could see that she did not. ‘But what a shame!’ He spoke lightly. ‘You are such a pretty woman,’ and she hardly blushed at all but said, ‘Thank you very much,’ gravely, as if he had opened a door for her, or gathered up a dropped parcel. And she did not ask if he were married.
Carlo asked where she was staying and she explained about Signora Mignelli and the Campo Angelo Raffaele. Perhaps it was his enquiry about the husband and children she did not have which found her telling him also about Nicco. ‘I seem to have acquired a young pupil here,’ unaware of the covert pride in her voice. And when he nodded and smiled encouragingly, ‘I am teaching him English,’ she explained, conscious of some exaggeration in this claim, for Nicco so far showed little enthusiasm for learning her language.
Carlo, however, listened with polite attention. He gave her his card, and insisted on escorting her home by the vaporetto which dropped them at S. Basilio, the stop nearest to her new home.
‘I won’t ask you in.’ Julia Garnet spoke carefully. The combination of the water-journey and the prosecco had gone to her head (that was twice in two days she had been tipsy). ‘I have nothing to offer you but tea and I am sure you have a supper to go to.’
‘Another day I should be charmed. You stay in one of the most beautiful campi in Venezia!’
Easy, murmured Julia Garnet inwardly, and she thanked her handsome host and hurried across the bridge past Veronese’s church where they were too poor to have a sacristan. ‘Easy, girl,’ she said aloud later, taking off her stockings. It was a manner of address the rag-and-bone man, who had driven about Ealing when she was still a young teacher, had used to his horse. A white horse, called Lily, she seemed to think, as she stood, barefoot on the cold floor, running a bath.
The following morning, passing the side-door of the chiesa, she saw a man with an oversized key unlocking the church.
In reply to her finger pointing questioningly at the interior, he indicated that she should enter. ‘Prego!’ He shuffled ahead of her, attending to duties in the dimness of the interior.
One by one small pools of illumination flicked on and Julia Garnet stood amid the gathered half-light. She turned around. It was the first time she had been in a proper church (you couldn’t really count St Mark’s) since she didn’t know when. The funeral of a colleague at school in an ugly C. of E. church in Acton; that must have been the last time. And how cold it had been then, and how she had resented the Actonish odour of bourgeois sanctity. But why was this different? For a second her mind flickered guiltily to the Reverend Crystal. He, to be sure, would have had safe and solid information to convey on such points.
She sniffed the hazy air. The odour here was dry and musty too but there was a fragrance about it. How sensible to scent your place of worship. The incense, of course, it was the incense, like the frankincense brought by one of the kings. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. Were there reasons for the gifts? She couldn’t remember.
The sacristan came forward now, pointing to an organ above the door which opened on to the water-front and then at an assortment of leaflets on a small table. To please him she picked one up from the pile marked ‘English’. ‘Tobiolo and the Angel Raffael.’ Looking up, painted on the organ loft, she saw an angel with azure wings.
Despite his wings the angel seemed to be marching forward, grasping the hand of a young man who, in turn, was looking back, his hand stretched beseechingly after an old man who stood staring after the departing pair. Beside him, her head averted, a woman–perhaps his wife? And look! Before them all a small black and white spotted dog. She followed the story round.
Now the boy Tobiolo appeared to have caught a giant fish in his handkerchief while the dog looks on admiringly. And the angel, this time wearing a handsome and surely anachronistic blue waistcoat, stands rather like a proud parent at speech day in the background.
Here was another scene: the young man kneeling with a young woman now, she dressed in gauzy clothes. And now the young pair are kneeling before the angel by a bed, a mysterious fire burning in a pan while the dog huddles as if scared in a far corner.
In the next scene the young man is back with the older man, who lies back as if in astonishment, and now the young woman is there too. Over them the angel broods with azure wings.
In the final scene the angel seems to be taking his leave: unfurled and aloft, a cloud of pink and blue; his lovely limbs and sturdy feet are displayed in glory, as the young and the old man marvel and the dog looks longingly after him.
Something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet as she stood absorbing the vivid, dewy painting, the joyfulness of the conception and the unmistakable compassion in the angel’s bright glance. Her eyes filled. The door of the church opened and light streamed into the interior, bringing with it a tall figure. To her horror she saw that it was the man she had met the previous day at St Mark’s and hastily she pushed away tears.
‘My friend!’ He was smiling again and for a second she was irked: it wasn’t, well, manly to smile quite so often. Then, ashamed of her xenophobic instincts, she tried to smile back herself.
‘I was looking at these.’ Such feeble
