There was a disturbance now at the door and three nuns dressed in white robes entered. They looked like an African order with their smooth brown skins–but so young! The nuns, and really they were no more than children, heavily crossing themselves knelt, so that Julia Garnet could see their thick-soled boots. Now one of them was elaborately prostrating herself and kissing the ground while the grave fur-clad ladies sat decorously in impeccable silence. How irritating the young nuns were, and how out of place the kissing and the boots amid the unspeaking elegance. She was relieved to see them depart, noisily snatching at the water in a carved high stoup by the door. Around the bowl more angels.
One of the silent furred ones was wearing a wide-brimmed emerald hat. The woman was no younger than herself and Julia Garnet found she wanted just such a hat too. But surely this was not what the silence was for? Designing a wardrobe! Gently, like dripping honey, the quiet filled her pores, comforting as the dreamless sleeps she had fallen prey to. The angel over the inclining man gestured at the heavens; beneath him, another angel on the tomb looked with all-seeing, sightless eyes towards the angels on the holy-water stoup…I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy!’…The silence was holy. What did ‘holy’ mean? Did it mean the chance to be whole again? But when had one ever been whole? Silently, silently the priest sat and in the nameless peace Julia Garnet sat too, thinking no thoughts.
A slight stir on her right and someone had entered and was wanting to take the place beside her. A man crossing himself, but discreetly, thank God. Removing the Rev. Crystal from the seat she smelled tobacco and instantly her father was there, not in the days when he would remind her that cleanliness was next to godliness but in those last days when he was losing his mind and could smoke only under supervision. She had had to apologise to the nurses. ‘I am so sorry, he doesn’t know what he is saying,’ she had said, hearing with shame her self-righteous father’s demonic curses. And they would smile and tell her not to worry, it was all in a day’s work. But he did know what he was saying, Julia Garnet thought. And the nurses knew he knew.
And now the priest had risen to his feet and they were all on their feet a little after him and a man with a bell had arrived and incense. Fervently, praise was given to ‘Signore’, (how nice that God should be a humble mister!) and there was singing and the amen. And then the furs were chatting to each other while she stood and drank in the blue Madonna and her stiff, truthful baby.
‘You like our treasures?’
It was the man who had sat beside her.
‘How did you know I was English?’
As if it were a reply the man said, ‘I have friends in England.’ Then, nodding at the mosaics, ‘Do you know the story?’ and enlivened for her the story of the removal of the saint’s remains. ‘We Venetians always take what we want,’ he laughed, and his eyes crinkled; a tall man, with white hair and a moustache.
Coming down the steps beside her into 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;