Miss Garnet's Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

liked the subject of Bellini’s painting and his love of Mary, and the
bambino
in her arms, was stronger than his love of money. How would Marx or even Lenin have explained that, she wondered as they arrived on the
fondamenta
alongside the Chiesa dell’Angelo Raffaele.
    The Archangel smiled down at her and she remembered she had questions about the boy with the fish and the hound.
    â€˜Nicco, who is the boy up there with the dog?’ She pointed to the stone effigies which were lodged two-thirds up the church’s façade.
    But Nicco had other appointments. His pride in his new role as translator and guide was now giving way to peer anxiety. There was a football fixture he could not afford to miss. He shrugged.
    â€˜Tobiolo?’ he said, uncertainly. ‘I see you again.
Ciao,
Giulia!’
    And,
‘Ciao!’
Julia Garnet called after him, watching his young shoulders as he ran across the bridge and disappeared behind the church.
    The sun was a pale gold disc in the sky. Some words filtered into memory.
    When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire, somewhat like a Guinea? O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy!’…I question not my Corporeal Eye any more than I would Question a Window…I look thro’ it and not with it.
    William Blake. Years ago she had been invited to contribute a chapter on Blake for a book on Radical Thinkers but somehow the project had never got off the ground. William Blake had been a revolutionary but had he not also been whipped by his father for seeing angels in the trees?
Oro pallido,
she thought to herself, crossing, in the lowering light, the bridge where Nicco had sped before her. This was not a morning sun on fire, like Blake’s, but pale wintery gold—
oro pallido.
    *    *    *
    The letters which had been delivered from England were from Brown & Noble, the estate agents who had let the flat and her friend, Vera Kessel. Vera, a fellow member of the Communist Party, had been at Cambridge with Julia Garnet. They had not been close as students but a few years later had recognised each other at a Party meeting and, thereafter, had occasionally gone on holidays to Dubrovnik or to the Black Sea together. The holidays had been bleak affairs, nothing like the trips Harriet had planned for their retirement.
    The letters had been, in fact, forgotten until looking for her left glove she found them stuffed into the pocket of her coat. She opened them while the kettle boiled for tea.
    Dear Miss Garnet,
    This letter confirms a tenancy of six months to Mr. A. D. Akbar at a rental of £1,200 p.c.m. We remind you of our terms of 12% to include insurance and collection fees. £1,006.00 (plus one month’s deposit) has been transferred to your account today and thereafter £1,006.00 until 3 June.
    Trusting in your continued satisfaction.
    Yours etc.
    â€˜To the eye of a miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun,’
murmured Miss Garnet, recalling some more of the words of the visionary poet which had come to her by the canal, and she opened the other envelope.
    Dear Julia,
    Just a brief card to wish you well in benighted Italy! How are you getting along with the RC God squad? Pretty oppressive I should imagine but I hope the history makes up for it.
    We had a disappointing meeting about the unions last week.
Ted spoke well as usual but much of the life has gone out of the comrades. All send greetings and solidarity.
    Best, Vera.
    For a moment Julia Garnet remembered the impoverished little ceremony with which she had bidden Harriet a final farewell, and the utilitarian stone with the severely practical information carved upon its stony face, with which she had chosen to mark the passing of her closest friend’s life. She wished now she had paid the funeral more attention. Harriet’s large, mild face hovered before her—somehow she could not quite get