Miss Garnet's Angel (27 page)

‘There is an evil spirit possesses her.' He spoke in his sweet, severe tone. ‘Seven men who tried to enter her have died. But do not fear. Light for dark, I am his match.'

Lying there, helpless and uncomprehending, I felt my stomach grow cold and all other feeling drained away. All I could think of were my father, my mother and how all this was happening without their knowledge; and I their only child.

‘Azarias,' I said, and this time I did not protest or speak angrily. ‘I cannot in good conscience risk my life for this woman. For myself it is nothing but I fear lest I die and
bring my father and my mother, because of me, to the grave with sorrow; for they have no other son to bury them.'

(I hoped that what I said was true—I know I did at least have some part concern for my parents!)

Azarias looked at me again, and again I felt myself being pulled into those whirlpool eyes.

‘Hear me, brother,' he said. ‘Make no reckoning of the evil spirit for this same night Sara shall be given to you in marriage. Remember the great fish by the banks of the Tigris which threatened your life? And remember that I counselled you to save the heart and the liver and also the gall? Touching the heart and the liver, if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any man or woman and a smoke is made before them of the heart and liver of this same fish, then they shall no longer be vexed with the evil. When you come this night into your marriage chamber, take the ashes of the perfumed woods and resins which burn there and lay upon them the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke with it. And the evil spirit shall smell it and flee away and never come any more. Then when you have entered your wife for the first time, you must rise up, both of you, and pray to the Wise Lord who is merciful and will have pity on you and save you.'

Then he repeated the words he had said before to me but now instead of terror they inspired in me a longing and a wonder: ‘She was set apart for you before the world was; and you shall save her and she will go with you.'

J
ulia lay on Sarah's bed re-reading the book on the Apocrypha which Vera had brought (such a long time ago it seemed) from England. The cautious, scholarly prose was soothing. It appeared that the author of the Book of Tobit was a Jewish exile too. An exile writing about exile. Maybe that was why she was drawn to the book, drawn to old Tobit whose dedication to the dead lost him his sight? Poor Vera! How mean to her she had been. There were horrible depths of meanness in her character—no wonder she found herself on her own now. But unlike old Tobit, or his anonymous author, she had no Jerusalem to mourn—one would hardly yearn to return to the temple of Ealing!

It had grown dark outside. Conscious that she had not
eaten, nor yet located the sheets for the bed, she hauled herself up. Her hip was hurting again and on top of that she seemed to have pulled a muscle in her arm. Lack of food, lack of sleep and the recent trek across the city with Nicco and the luggage brought on further dizziness. She did not want to make a journey down the steep stairs to the shops.

There was some cereal in the cupboard and a carton of milk in the fridge. Not much else apart from an opened tin of anchovies and half a lemon. Wistfully, she remembered her arrival at Signora Mignelli's: the apartment spanking clean, the bed made up with crisp lace-topped linen, fruit and flowers to welcome her.

But this was babyish! She was a grown woman and not a child who needed her mother. The cereal and milk and a cup of tea, nursery foods to be sure, would have to do until the morning. And the night was warm—the coverlet would do without sheets.

Sitting up in bed with the bowl of cornflakes balanced on a magazine, she copied some words from the volume beside her into her notebook:
At a Parsi funeral a dog (with certain spots above the eye) is brought in to gaze at the body and so exorcise the Nasu.

There had been a Parsi girl at St Barnabas. The family came from Bombay and she remembered the parents had been thrilled when she had awarded their daughter a history prize. The family had invited her to tea and, unusually (for as a rule she did not socialise with her pupils—perhaps because the invitations were few and far between), she had paid a visit to
their home in Brentford—a modest, terraced house but cultivated she seemed to think. The father had explained to her how the Parsis were the living inheritors of the ancient Persian religion who had fled to India when the Muslims curtailed their ancient religious practices. They were exiles too, the Parsis. But unlike the Jews they melted into the communities they landed up in. Maybe that was the choice—join in or define your own? Parsi or Jew. Either you fought your god's corner, like old Tobit, or you took the local spirits as you found them, trusting to the universal recurrence of whatever it was that mattered to you in your own version of god.

But who or what were these ‘Nasu'—nasty-sounding name? Obviously some sort of evil spirits. Like the demon who inhabits Tobias's future wife. Poor Tobias. Whatever could it have been like, preparing to make love to a girl whom you knew to be filled with a murderous spirit? A spirit you knew, as you attempted intercourse for the first tremulous time, had killed seven lovers before you?

Resting the notebook on her knee she wrote:
Why does the dog have spots ‘above the eyes'? An extra pair to ‘see' better? Dog as ‘seer'?

Seven men gone to their death. Were there seven devils to match the seven angels? What were their names? Uriel, Michael, Raguel, Gabriel, Saraqûel, Remiel. And Raphael, of course.

*    *    *

She woke with her heart jumping. Someone was outside the room. Commanding herself not to move, she lay rigid. There
it was again. An awful, muffled fumbling sound and then the door was being opened. Horror of horrors! An interloper! She must not cry out. Stay calm. Don't say a word. Play asleep. Play dead. No, not dead, not yet, she wasn't ready for that!

A man's voice swore softly, ‘Shit!' Then the light came flooding on and she had sprung off the bed and was crouched beside it ready to do she knew not what to her assailant.

‘Who the fuck…?'

‘Toby!'

She had come close to hitting him. They glared at each other. Then, ‘Oh, Toby, I'm so glad it's you. I'm sorry. I must…sorry, the bathroom.' She had nearly wet herself. From the mirror her face stared at her under the greenish bulb. Going out she said again, ‘I'm so sorry. It was a shock.'

‘Why are
you
sorry? It should be me.'

He sounded belligerent but she didn't care. ‘It must have been a shock for you too. Shall I make us some tea?'

‘Yeah, thanks. D'you mind if I smoke?'

‘No, go on. Please.' How English they were being.

Toby took out a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco and some papers and rolled a spindly cigarette. She watched him, fascinated by his dexterity.

‘Do you mind me smoking because, look, I can go onto the balcony?'

‘Not a bit. I quite like the smell.' It reminded her of Carlo. Carlo who had perhaps slept here with Toby's sister. ‘Toby, does Sarah know you're back?'

‘Of course.'

‘Oh!' She felt forlorn that she was not to be the one to break the news: the return of the Prodigal Son. ‘Where is she, Toby?' That she had not meant to say.

‘Search me! I expected her to be here. What are you doing?'

So the twins hadn't spoken. ‘Sarah asked me to stay. She's been beside herself with worry.'

‘You're joking!'

‘No, Toby, it's true. She had no idea where you were.'

‘Sarah?' Now he was staring at her. A gap opened in her mind and she could see there was something she had misconstrued. ‘Sar knows exactly where I've been!'

‘I don't understand.' Panic began to threaten—her heart was fluttering like a bird—for a moment she struggled to breathe. Was she losing her mind—like her father? ‘Toby—have you got the painting?'

‘What painting?'

‘The angel panel.' She knew he hadn't. Only true sincerity manifests itself in a certain kind of stupidity.

‘The angel panel?'

She wanted to shout, ‘The angel painting! The one you showed me. The one you found the day I walked under your scaffolding and into your chapel and into the life of you and your bloody sister. The one wrapped like a portion of blue sky in a grey blanket which the two of you—damn your eyes!—played fast and loose with. The angel,
my
angel, the Archangel Raphael.' But instead she said, quite gently, ‘Yes, Toby. The angel with the blue wings.'

‘Isn't it in the chapel?' He sat down awkwardly on the bed.

‘Toby,' she said, for suddenly an idea was slipping in and out of the rapid gap in her mind and she needed to speak it before it became impossible to say. ‘Where do you sleep? When you are not in the chapel—when you are here, where do you sleep?'

He turned puzzled eyes and she saw how like his sister's they were: the palest aquamarine, ringed with black. ‘Here of course,' patting the unmade bed. ‘I won't tonight but normally…'

‘With Sarah?'

‘Yeah with Sarah. Hey, this is the late twentieth century, you know. We're over age—consenting adults. I mean, it's not illegal.'

‘But she's your sister!' Toby got up from the bed and felt in his pocket for his tobacco. ‘Toby, you have a cigarette already.'

‘Oh, sure.' He sat down again. Neither spoke. ‘Look, I'm sorry. I've forgotten your name.'

‘Julia.'

‘Yeah, of course. I'm sorry.'

‘That's all right, said Julia. ‘Why should you remember?'

‘She's not my sister.'

‘What?'

‘She's not my sister.'

‘But you're twins.' Toby got up, stubbed out his cigarette in the sink and sat down to roll another one. ‘You even look alike.'

‘Yeah, that's right. We
are
twins. We're cousins—not brother and sister.'

‘But Sarah said you were twins?' Now it was she who sounded stupid.

‘That's right. We are. Same birthdays. Both on the first of May. My mum and her mum's sisters. My mother came to visit my aunt in hospital and went into labour—two months early. I was born the same day, just before midnight. Sarah always says it was seeing her ugly face that did it! My aunt says it was my mum being competitive. Sibling rivalry.' She'd forgotten how when he smiled he became attractive.

‘Cousins?'

‘Yeah. And, you know, it's all right for cousins to do it.' Embarrassed, he looked at the floor.

‘So you do sleep together? I'm so sorry, Toby, this is absolutely not my business.'

‘It's all right. I don't mind. Sarah been telling you tales then?'

‘Well…'

‘Bet she has. Did she say she was abused as a child too? That's one of her favourite lines. Her dad worshipped the ground she trod on, but there was never any funny stuff.'

It was fantastic, what he was saying, and yet, dumbly, inexorably, she knew it was the truth. She was not a perceptive person, and yet even she had felt—what could you call it?—the ghost of an intimation of something not quite right in Sarah's story, something, well, out of
true,
was how best to describe it. Yes, Sarah's story of childhood abuse had not
touched or angered her—she had put it down to her own limitations of feeling, but now she knew the response was an accurate one—because of how differently this was making her feel.

Toby's voice was still speaking. ‘She couldn't do anything wrong so far as he was concerned. Auntie Daisy was a bit tougher—but there wasn't anything sinister in Sarah's childhood apart from the fact that they wouldn't let her learn tap.'

‘Tap?'

‘Yeah, tap dancing. She created a scene about it when she was six. I still remember her yelling and screaming like they were murdering her or something. I was impressed.' He laughed angrily. ‘I never got my way, not like her, anyway—but then my mum and dad were poor. We spent all our holidays together, right up to art school. They always called us “the twins”, the family did.'

‘But Toby, why has she said these things? Why would she want to make up something so appalling?'

Toby shrugged. ‘God knows. Look, she'd been having these headaches. “Migraines”, yeah? Then she started to not eat—lost about a stone. Some jerk told her it was psychological—pressure from home—which was bollocks. There was never any pressure put on Sarah. She wouldn't even wear braces to put pressure on her teeth when she was a kid! So, one day she goes to this therapist'—he made a movement with his mouth as if to spit—‘near where her folks live down in Devon—they have this big house, lovely garden, horses, all that.'

‘Did you mind?'

‘What?'

‘All that. If you were poor. The big house, the horses?'

Toby pulled at his cigarette. ‘Nah! Home was OK. And I could go to Sarah's any time. Uncle Bill and Auntie Daisy used to be my second mum and dad.'

‘So, the therapist?'

‘Well, you know the joke, don't you? Take
Therapist
apart and it spells
The Rapist.
And that's what this one was.'

‘No good?'

‘Evil! She got Sarah in her clutches and the next thing we knew Sarah was saying she couldn't stay home any more. She came to stay with my mum and dad for a bit. Uncle Bill and Auntie Daisy started out by saying that it was only fair because up till then I'd always gone down to Devon. They were like, “She's just balancing things up.” You could tell they were hurt though. I didn't like it because I missed the horses. And Sarah had gone weird. Funny diets, couldn't touch the things we ate, raw carrot, no alcohol—which was a laugh 'cos she'd always put it away—had to have her bed facing north—that kind of crap. Anyway, after a while she wrote to Uncle Bill saying she wanted a meeting with him at her therapist's place.' Toby grimaced. ‘Hey,' he said. ‘D'you want to hear all this? It's pretty shit!'