Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers Page A

She remembered from the leaflet in the church his name in Greek meant ‘God’s healing’.
    â€˜I guess so—he is around Venice.’
    â€˜I like him.’ How odd that she was already so sure of this.
    â€˜Oh, yes—he is nicer, with the smile, than the fierce Michael or the virtuous Gabriel!’ He pulled a long face, then laughed. Julia who could not quite rid herself of the belief that it was bad form to laugh at one’s own utterances, laughed too, a trifle uneasily. ‘But you know, they must be exceptional at their craft, your twins, to be employed on this project. It is unusual for the
Soprintendenti
to employ foreigners. I must visit—poke my nose in! Now, there are crayfish or there is lobster. Which shall we try?’
    *    *    *
    A few days later Julia Garnet, walking her habitual route down the Calle Lunga, remembered the short cut. She felt, in making a detour past the little brick edifice which bristled with scaffold poles, she was doing something slightly eccentric, if not intrusive, but in fact there was no sign of the twins.
    That the twins were not there made Julia Garnet aware that she was disappointed. Without acknowledging it she had been looking forward to renewing acquaintance with the androgynous pair. There was something about the way they swung with easy confidence among the scaffolding (rather like the gibbons she had once seen in a tree at Whipsnade Zoo) which stirred her. And they had trounced her experience with the Stevens twins by being unexpectedly friendly—letting her up there to see the face of the Archangel. Perhaps, she thought, becoming fanciful, it was some form of ‘angelic’ communication that had prompted Toby’s suggestion? For it was he and not the more approachable girl who had made the offer which had led to her meeting with the smiling Raphael.
    On the way home she passed two small girls taking something from a basket which hung suspended by a rope from an upper storey.
‘Grazie, Nana!’
the girls called, and looking up Julia Garnet saw the face of an elderly woman at an open window. The woman blew a kiss at the girls and, with elaborate pantomime, they returned the blessing.
    The episode left Julia Garnet rather low. The elderly woman had grandchildren—to whom she could send down sweets or pocket money in a basket—who loved her. Whatever other drawbacks age had brought the old Venetian lady, she had a family to be attached to—a reflection which contributed, back at the apartment, to a general feeling of being at a loose end. There were letters to write and books she had brought to read but these activities felt uninviting: it wascompany she wanted and she was grateful when Signora Mignelli called by with an enamel teapot.
    â€˜For to make tea in!’ said the Signora, pointing at the teapot. ‘Sorry, I forget it.’
    Julia herself had forgotten that she had ever felt the lack of such a thing. Signora Mignelli stayed and talked, resting her behind on the arm of the sofa. Her husband had had an operation for a ruptured hernia and dramatically the Signora enacted how he had been carried off in the ambulance boat in the dead of night to the hospital. She refused tea but stayed to recount a war between the fishmonger and the local priest. The fishmonger, Julia inferred, had a reputation for favouring other men’s wives and the priest had attempted to discuss the matter with him. ‘He is a Communist—so he not like,’ the Signora explained. ‘He say he go to another church.’
    â€˜But if he is a Communist why is he going to church at all?’
    â€˜Of course he go to church,’ the Signora said, dismissive at the suggestion of other possibilities.
    Concerned lest she had affronted her landlady Julia diverted the conversation. ‘Do you know the Chapel-of-the-Plague?’
    Signora Mignelli nodded approvingly. ‘Very old,’ she