"When the boy left home, accompanied by the angel, the dog followed Tobiah out of the house and went with them."
There are incidents, or episodes, which can only be told as they happen, and this is one of them. I am with Ken Thompson the sculptor and stone-carver, and his wife Rachel, in their kitchen above the sea in Co Cork. I have come too late to see the stone which Ken has inscribed in memory of the late Cardinal Basil Hume and which is to be laid over the Cardinal's tomb in Westminister Cathedral. This impressive piece has already been sent off, so I examine the photographs and designs as we talk of the difficulties of getting the big, pale slab of Carrara marble from Italy to Ballycotton and thence to London.
The marble is thin, though more than eight feet long and four feet wide; it has to be, because of the sub-floor on which it will be laid in the Chapel of St Gregory. The inscription is very simple: "George Basil Hume OSB, 2 March 1923 - 17 June 1999, Cardinal Priest of San Silvestre in Capite." The subtly stained letters are centred on the stone under a circular pax in spinus - the word "pax" circled by a design of thorns. The two long sides carry the legend: "Fourth Abbot of Ampleforth 1963-1976, Ninth Archbishop of Westminister 1976-1999."
Several years ago, Ken Thompson was commissioned by Westminister Abbey to produce the Innocent Victims Memorial which lies now at the abbey's Great West Door, where it was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth in 1996. The Dean of the abbey is a friend of Mgr George Stack, administrator of Westminister Cathedral, so the Cork sculptor (who is also an old Downside boy) was among those invited to submit his designs for the Cardinal Hume memorial.
Prodigal's return
In Ken's office I examine the drawings for the stone, and see also the photographs of the two-figure piece commissioned by the Athenry Millennium Committee for the town park: a man (soldier, traveller, son or lover) kneeling before a woman (queen, wife, mother, deity), the attitudes of supplication and of blessing tenderly evocative of the prodigal's return.
The figures in Kilkenny limestone are more than lifesize. "You can understand Pygmalion," says Ken. "When I was working on this, I used to feel I was disturbing them. I almost felt like knocking on the door before I came in." And then, with Rachel at the kitchen table, the sea blossoming beneath the fall of the land outside the window, we talk of angels. There is a piece I haven't seen - but, I interject, if we're talking about angels, there's a book they must read. Have they read Miss Garnet's Angel?
Voyage of discovery
But someone, Lana Pringle, was before me at this table today, talking with the same enthusiasm of Sally Vickers's novel about Miss Garnet and her angel, and her voyage of discovery among the ancient churches of Venice. We move on to discuss old blind Tobit, whose practice it was to bury the bodies of the poor which would otherwise be left to the wild dogs outside the walls of Nineveh. We remember Tobit's son Tobiah and his companion, the angel he does not recognise, who go out from Nineveh to Media to retrieve money left there with a kinsman and now sorely needed. And the dog followed Tobiah out of the house and went with them.
We consider how Miss Garnet retrieves the Book of Tobit, banned as Apocrypha from the Authorised Version but available in the Catholic bible. Talking, not listening, at last I heed Ken's reminder that there is a piece I haven't seen. We go out to the workshop where the great blocks of stone are lowered by crane through the skylight - and there they are, the angel Raphael with his wings discreetly furled, Tobiah looking up at him but with one hand stretched down as if to pat the head of the leaping, excited dog. "The dog is so important in the story," says Ken, "but I don't know why. I know that the fish was used first to drive the devil out of Sarah, who married Tobiah, and then to cure Tobit's blindness, so the fish goes on the base of the pedestal."
The angel represents, to Ken, a figure of inspiration, a muse - which is what Raphael becomes for Miss Garnet too. But why is the dog so important, we wonder, as Ken explains that in this case anyway he's being used as a kind of flying buttress for the whole composition. The little frolicking creature is modelled on Bessie, who barked at my arrival an hour ago; Ken thinks he may polish the head: it's at just the angle and height to invite stroking.
Later I go back to Miss Garnet's Angel and find out more about the dog which, for this novel of an elderly maiden lady having the time of her life among the churches of Venice, is called Kish. Tobiah's destination is the city of Raghes; this is the holy city of the prophet Zoroaster, and the Zoroastrian priests of Media (or Persia) believed that the dog, usually offered a piece of bread by the dying, would lead the soul across the bridge from this world to the next (in the tougher Greek mythology this is the sop to Cerberus). Miss Garnet's author unravels the biblical history which explains why Tobit and his son and the angel and the dog are excluded from the Anglican bible, although they are among the literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Happy ending
The Book of Tobit has some spectacular verses and a happy ending where the homecoming includes the fact that "the dog ran along behind them". Here in the kitchen we fantasise about a Miss Garnet gathering, where all of us who have read the book would wish Godspeed to Tobias and his angel on their way not to Persia but home to Wales. The piece has been commissioned by James Roose-Evans as a Millennium sculpture for the Bleddfa Centre for Caring and the Arts in the Welsh Marches. It will be unveiled by Archbishop Rowan Williamson next Sunday. This, sadly, is the anniversary of the death two years ago of Rachel and Ken's 12-year old daughter Katy.
We care about angels, here in the kitchen, where the sea shines through the windowsill geraniums and Rachel decides to walk down the cliff for a swim and the dog Bessie runs along behind her.
Miss Garnet's Angel, by Sally Vickers, is published by HarperCollins at £16.