Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth

trooping diagonally across the square towards them, in loose arrowhead formation, with their leader Barfield at the head. All were wearing navy-blue boiler suits.
    ‘Those things must be special issue,’ Steadman said. ‘Birmingham City Galleries, boiler suits navy, art restorers for the use of. They’ve had their sandwich in the sacristy, now they’re coming for their coffee.’
    There was a certain sourness in his tone. His efforts to detach Miss Greenaway from the tribal unit had not so far met with much success. None of the Tintoretto team was ever seen without the others, they conversed almost entirely among themselves and their days seemed to follow a pattern of ritual observances.
    Having reached the café enclosure they seemed to be about to make for a separate table, but Steadman called out a greeting and after slight hesitation they approached and began to commandeer chairs from the tables around. ‘How’s it going?’ Steadman said, when they were all seated.
    Miss Greenaway laughed briefly and mirthlessly, as if thereby hung a tale. She seemed, however, flushed, Raikes thought, and he wondered if she was more aware of Steadman’s interest, and more responsive, than her rather bluff and forthright style would indicate.
    For a while after this laugh there was silence among the group as if that might be thought sufficient response. Then Barfield, whose title was Scientific Officer, a neat, sallow man with a visionary way of widening his eyes, said, ‘You are not going to believe this.’
    ‘Try us,’ Steadman said.
    ‘It has taken us all this time just to get the paintings off the wall, I tell you no lie.’
    ‘It has been a rush,’ the other assistant said. She was older and grimmer than Miss Greenaway and had a perm and a wedding ring. ‘It has been a race against time,’ she said.
    ‘My God,’ Steadman compressed his lips and nodded slowly. ‘Racing to get them down,’ he said. ‘Who said the epic is defunct?’
    This sarcasm was so crude that Raikes immediately became hot with embarrassment, thinking how much it would wound the Tintoretto people; but to his surprise he saw that they all seemed to be taking the remarks at face value.
    ‘They started taking up the floor today,’ Owen, the fattish Art Consultant said, his glasses shining. ‘That didn’t help, I can tell you. It did not help, did it, Gerald?’
    The waiter, whose name was Angelo, came to take the order, and while this was going on Miss Greenaway, still looking flushed, began to undo the top buttons of her boiler suit. She was wearing a white T-shirt underneath.
    ‘Taking the floor up, were they?’ Steadman said. ‘My God. So your footing was threatened, was it?’ But his heart wasn’t in it now; he had been distracted by Miss Greenaway’s unbuttoning. Angelo too seemed interested, remaining at their table some time after the order had been given.
    ‘The workmen are in there now,’ Owen said. ‘The Soprintendenza alle Gallerie are doing it. Italian funds apparently.’
    ‘They are going to put in a completely new floor,’ Miss Greenaway said. ‘Christ, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ She slipped the upper part of her boiler suit off her shoulders and allowed it to fall over the back of her chair. Beneath the close-fitting T-shirt her breasts were outlined, beautifully large and round.
    ‘I hope the mains services won’t be affected,’ Raikes said. In the midst of these words, without warning and therefore without possibility of control, an intense and turgid interest in Miss Greenaway’s bosom invaded him – it seemed like an invasion, a quick-shooting spore of lechery, wafted on a resistless breeze from he knew not where, sprouting almost at once into speculation as to whether Miss Greenaway was wearing a bra and into the attendant impulse to slip a hand under the T-shirt to ascertain the matter. As before with his landlady it was not the thought so much that bothered him – such thoughts come and go – but the