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  My mother came back alone and we moved into a pensione (there seems to have been a small cloud of money trouble looming), pending, she said, a suitable nunnery that would take in both of us. There followed a rather listless time. Shall I send you to school? Should I keep you with me? Either will entail complications. Oh, I’ve burnt my boats so! Perhaps not all my boats. Will you bear with me a little longer?

  * * *

  It had become winter, my mother spoke of going South. (At last!) She also spoke of the problems besetting Alessandro’s future – he wanted to be an architect but had to interrupt his studies, he was one of a large family, his mother the widow of an academic, and Italy facing hard times. One brother was trying to farm, several still at school, another about to marry money … You know how tight knit those families are, or rather you don’t, but I am beginning to. And how would I fit in? After more delays (my mother’s own movements were curbed by a couple of bogeymen, her trustees – always heard of, never met), we set off for Naples. At Verona we were joined on the train by Alessandro. It was the first time we had been travelling à trois and when we got to the hotel and I heard him ask for two rooms only my heart sank: so I was to have a room of my own no longer. When this turned out not to be the case I was as surprised as I was relieved; for all my standing by as it were when men and women fell in love, I was entirely ignorant and incurious.

  I can still see, smell, hear what was offered that first night at Naples: the Bay, Vesuvio, dinner on the waterfront – frittura, melanzane, mozzarella – the beggars, the songs; the tourist banalities of the Italian South were piercingly new to me; this, I told myself, is where I want to be: I was swept off my feet. (I had also had a round amount of wine.) Next day we went on to Sorrento where we stayed at a cold, clean, whitewashed pensione while my mother was looking for a house. There seemed to be some difficulty and it certainly had to do with money. I was never quite clear about my mother’s finances except that hers, too, were going downhill. From having been well-off she appeared to have reached a point where she had to be very careful (this was not in her nature). She had never owned any money, she had the use of money (in trust long before I was born and to come to me ultimately; in point of fact it never did: when the time came it had evaporated, but that is another story). The present stringencies – they increased over the years and, unlike my father, she tried to ignore them – may have had something to do with all those boats she said she had burnt and there was also the fact that she had been allowed to use a chunk of capital to buy the Feldkirch estate for my father at the time of their marriage, and had simply let him keep it after the divorce. Generosity? Fatalism? A sense of having done for good with that part of her life? Possibly all of these.

  It was during our stay at the Pensione Emilio that the news came of my father’s sudden death. My mother was much affected. She, who had been so full of ridicule, who had been dining out on my lessons and my wardrobe and the tales of rural life … She talked about him, torrents of talk: about the old times, the good times, when he was in pursuit, a winged pursuit, in Paris, not much longer ago, she said, think of it! than a dozen years. I listened, trying to blend what I was told with what I had known. Death, the disappearance of a being who had lived, I shut out from thought and feeling. What I did express to myself was that now I would never go back, would not have to go back, did not want to go back. That part of my life, that country, was over.

  My mother captivated by her looks alone, yet what drew most men and women into her orbit at first meeting was her talk. She was an extraordinary talker, a storyteller who could make the truth with all its ambiguities come whole: the moment, the connections, the perspectives. It was also never relentless, quite interruptible, full of self-mockery, and it was often very very funny. I saw that Alessandro loved to listen to it as much as I did – that was our education. We saw that acts had predictable ends and yet not, that there were always more than two sides to anything, and that what you did yesterday would be relevant to things to come. We were avid to learn, both he and I. The talk often began at breakfast, she in her bed, we sitting on it, and the hours went and little would get done. She paid no regard to my age or his feelings. With nonchalant openness she told about that great ‘previous attachment’, the man she had loved so much and had to leave, and how she had chosen my father – affected too by the magnetic field of his pursuit of her – as a retreat into a different world, and how wonderfully unconventional my father’s (he guessed about it all) attitude had been. (New light for me.) Unconventional too, one might say, was Alessandro’s attitude: he accepted these resurrections of her past; to him they were ingredients of her legend.

  * * *

  Something went wrong. Alessandro had to go North to see his family. Look after her, he said to me, try to cheer her up; I’ll be back soon. How soon? I would have liked to ask. He added on his own: As soon as I can.

  I was grateful to him for his trust, but I was unable to divert her. She hardly spoke; our meals had become silent. One winter afternoon we went for a walk along the beach. Her steps, she was walking ahead, were uncertain, she had slender ankles and was wearing the wrong shoes, she was not looking where she put her feet. Watching that walk I was gripped by an unaccustomed feeling: pity. My mother was not the kind of person one felt sorry for; she always seemed to be holding an advantage point. She sat down on a rock. I stood in front of her. How can he come back, she said, they want him at home, they need him at home – I can see how they see it: a foreigner, a divorcée and of course the proverbial woman old enough to be his mother; a dubious Catholic as well. They won’t let him come back and he’s not strong enough.

  He will come back, I said. He told me so.

  And how can it last? He’s too young. He’ll always be too young. We met at the wrong time. Come to think of it, there could never have been a right time, given the dates of our births. That is the inevitable factor. I’m a fool but not such a fool as not to know that we are headed for great unhappiness …

  ‘Billi – can you understand that one can miss one human being, one presence … in the whole of the universe … to the point of … well, extinction of all else? One day you will know too.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I was able then to love my mother. I wished her well. I saw that there might be things in store for which there was no help and no answer. For the first time I felt the sting of compassion; I never forgot that afternoon by a grey Mediterranean.

  * * *

  He did not come back. He sent for her instead. She had to leave me by myself again: it could not have been a trickier moment. As my father was dead, a German court was appointing a legal guardian; they would not accept my mother nor anyone she proposed, they required somebody resident in Germany. I said I would have my sister’s husband, the deputy mayor. Are you sure, my mother said, your sister is such a bad picker? I like him, I said. He’s on our side. I don’t think anyone is going to be on our side, she said. But all right, let’s have him, and meanwhile we’d better lie doggo for a bit – don’t open any buff envelopes with great German seals while I’m away.

  She stayed away for what seemed a long time. I was beset with the heavy feeling of afternoons, the sense of standing still, of belonging nowhere. It was warm in daytime, out on the terrazzo, on the sunny side of the street, indoors it was cold. I had not known that the South could be so cold. The pensione was empty; the owners, the hard-working owners, the Emilios, were kind to the bambina. Oh they were more than that. I was living with the open-armed emotions of Italian working people: their goodness, simplicity, affection reminded me of my father’s Lina, but in that village Lina had been a rare bird; here, lovingness splashed like the quick water from the fountains, and the current of shared humanity flowed through the most trivial of daily exchanges. All the same I did not weep in Signora Emilio’s arms, nice though it would have been, because of her criticism – unspoken – of my mother. Chivalry forbade. I still had an old racket and found a wall against which I could play
tennis solitaire. The ball kept going over garden fences which meant ringing doorbells and apologies; one man got furious and that put a damper on the game. When O was with us at Merano he had bought me something I had much coveted in the shops, a pair of those Tyrolese shorts made of beautifully soft chamois leather, complete with embroidered braces and white linen shirts. To boost my morale I put on these shorts and a nice clean shirt for la cena in the evening. I was soon aware that this was frowned upon – girls at Sorrento were no better off than girls at Feldkirch, in an obscure way I was causing scandal again. I hardened myself: I no longer took pleasure in my shorts but I went on wearing them. When at last they returned – this time they returned together, mummy and Alessandro – I was taken to Pompeii for a treat.

  * * *

  Life became settled unsettled. We went to Capri for a time (where someone gave me lessons), then back to the mainland, then over to Sicily, to Palermo, Taormina, Syracuse.

  ‘Are we on the run, mummy?’

  ‘You might call it that.’

  ‘Are you … Will you …?’

  ‘No, darling, we’re not going to get married. He wants to, I will not. I’m sure I’m right. Carpe diem. And don’t look so many questions.’

  She and Alessandro must have had troubles. I was one of them. (Fancy taking the child with them, they were saying; they seemed to be looming everywhere.) The buff envelopes were slow to catch up with the postes restantes, but they came. My sister’s husband had been accepted as my legal guardian. Then my sister left him, like that, out of the blue, running away with a young good-for-nothing (was there any stability in our family life?) and my brother-in-law, ex-brother-in-law, backed out. I became the ward of a court and the court wanted to know where I was. It was my mother now who was badgered about educating me. On principle she was all for it, being well educated herself, at home as it happened; she believed in tutors though at present this was awkward – local lights were engaged when they could be found but did not amount to much. Alessandro tried to teach me algebra which he knew but was not very good at making clear; besides, my mother, for whom time did not exist, would interrupt.

  Another source of awkwardness was my father’s will, an impossible will as the courts conceded in the fullness of time. He had left the château and contents to my half-sister and myself provided that the estate was never sold and the collection preserved in perpetuum. There was no money for upkeep, to keep the place in repair, the objects dusted and warmed, the taxes paid (there were horrendous arrears). My sister decided to contest the will but could not do so without my consent: I was a minor, my mother’s address (by then) was poste restante Agrigento, my official guardian a court. The court prevaricated; meanwhile money was required, considerable sums, and there was no money (just a bundle of old banknotes in my father’s safe made worthless by inflation). To raise something on the estate required my consent and there we began again. My mother’s trustees, expressing dismay and distaste by post, offered to maintain me temporarily if a suitable establishment were found. The German court expressed itself in similar terms. It was not put soothingly and the prospect frightened me. (The court sat in a market town in Baden, the sight of its postmark made me feel sick for many years to come.) At the time my mother just kept our heads in the sand.

  ‘Darling,’ (my mother one morning) ‘I don’t think I can spend the rest of my life at Agrigento, besides it’s not as warm – you’ve noticed? – as it’s cracked up to be. Alessandro and I are thinking of going to North Africa, we think we’d like to try Tunisia.’

  ‘Africa!’ I said. ‘Another continent!’

  ‘You have taken to travel … Perhaps not quite the moment. You see, we can’t have you on the run as well.’

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘So duck, I think you had better go to England.’

  ‘To an establishment?’

  ‘If that’s what you call a school.’

  ‘What school, mummy?’

  ‘Ah, there you have me. How can I choose a school from Sicily? Can you see the Italian post coping with all those prospectuses? So I thought I’d better send you to some friends and they’ll find one for you. I’ve written to Susan and Jack – you can’t just ask anyone to do that kind of thing for you, but they’re very easy-going. They have dozens of children so it shouldn’t be difficult. The trustees will pay your fare and the fees. They’re both painters; you admire artists, I’ve noticed. I didn’t like to ask any of my stuffier friends … Anyway you’ll find Susan and Jack charming.’

  ‘Where do they live in England?’

  ‘How precise you’re being. Actually they move about a good deal. I wrote to Susan’s people’s address.’

  ‘Mummy, when am I going?’

  ‘As soon as I hear from them.’

  PART THREE

  In Transit: England–Italy

  ALESSANDRO took me to the Italian mainland by ferry and train, an escort from some agency was to pick me up at the French border, Susan, Mrs Robbins, to meet me at Victoria Station. The middle stage, Naples to Ventimiglia, I was to travel on my own, connections looked up, ticket in hand. Before parting I asked Alessandro, having mustered courage for this along the way, How long will you and mummy be in Africa? He said he did not know, he did not know at all. You do like travel? I said. You see, he said, I’ve had so little before. What I remember of my own journey is that it was long, bedragglingly long. France did not register, maybe I slept through France. When it came to the Channel steamer I was drugged with tiredness but waked a little to the new smells. I endured the crossing. Dover and the sight of a waiting train – a small-looking train – and other new smells, soot, unfamiliar tobacco. In London it was evening once more – the third? – and Mrs Robbins met me, we were lolling in a wide taxi cab, startled by enormous red buses and then we were in the lobby of the Green Park Hotel (long since defunct), it was heated and plushy and more like the house in Voss Strasse, Berlin, to breathe in than anywhere I had been for years. Can that really be you? Mrs Robbins now said. She called me by my unabridged first name which no one ever did. ‘I got the impression you were much older … That you were supposed to go to finishing school …?’ ‘Oh, no,’ I said.

  She gave me another look and took me upstairs in a lift; to a large room with long windows on street-lamps and trees, and a bathroom with cascades of hot water. I was in bed almost at once, a tray came with biscuits and something milky and warm, and I felt I had reached comfort and safety.

  Next day, Susan – I was to call her that, and she was charming, just as my mother had said – took me to the National Gallery and to eat at the Chinese restaurant overlooking Piccadilly Circus. Altogether this was a high moment almost ranking with the night by the Bay of Naples – the hub of an Empire, I said to myself. In the afternoon we took a train to the Midlands.

  * * *

  And that was the beginning of a life that was to me intensely exotic and of course to real English people not exotic at all. On the train Susan did a bit of explaining – I knew from the tone that something was up – we were going to her father and mother’s house (only for a little while of course), she and Jack had had to give up their cottage, Jack had started doing frescos, frescos didn’t seem to catch on awfully well – actually, you see, we’re broke. I did see.

  The house was on the edge of the town and quite large, and the household too was large. Granny, maiden aunts, unmarried sisters, a line of female servants: housemaids, parlourmaid, cook, and of course the masters, the old people, Susan’s mother and father. There weren’t dozens of children, just two girls at home between schools, Marjory and Joan, big girls in their teens, older than I, younger than Doris. You’re a foreigner, they said. I don’t know, I answered. They lost interest. (Hadn’t much to begin with.) Meals were worlds apart from any I’d known, twice as many meals as there were in Italy. They were what they were sixty years ago before quiche, kebab and pasta had become ubiquitous in the land – breakfast off the sideboard (this I found splendid), another big s
pread at four p.m., main meals a steady rotation; after wishy-washy soup and a bit of fish, beef and mutton, hot joint, cold joint, mince, cutlets, hot joint, cold joint – pickles, bottled sauces, dispirited salads, custards, vegetables that were about par with Feldkirch cookery and puddings that were much better. Drink was water, soda water or barley water. Tea was offered again at bedtime. There were morning prayers and these made me feel odd. Was the family Church of England? Now I think they may well have been something more strict and narrow, then it didn’t occur to me that there were niceties in heresy; if I had lapsed from my religion, its teachings still told me to recognise no other. No one asked me questions. This may have been a way to make me feel at home. Jack’s mother-in-law had given him the use of the garden-room as a studio (this was regarded as indulgence), and he asked me to sit for him; he needed a child for a large composition. When I wasn’t sitting I was encouraged to work the pianola – much more enjoyable – as Jack liked music while he worked. For the rest of the time I seem to have been trotting after Marjory and Joan on their not unpleasant round of following an aunt leaving orders at the grocer’s and the greengrocer’s, changing library books at Boots, taking turns for fetching grandad from the works in the pony trap. Did it really happen? Did people ever live as they do in an E. F. Benson or an Agatha Christie novel? On Wednesday afternoons we went to the cinema, and, casually, miraculously, there was tennis! Tennis with a live opponent on an actual court. Contrary to my early aspirations I never got any good at it at all.

  What did I learn, what did I unlearn from that first piece of England? It was all such a far cry from my mother, from the village school, from the Pensione Emilio. I caught on that people did not shake hands every time they met in the morning or parted for the night, that they kept reading newspapers when they were sitting in a room together; I learned of another kind of cold, in bedrooms that were never heated, in stark bathrooms where there was yellow soap and tooth mugs slopping with disinfectant; of a new kind of warmth when you toasted yourself piecemeal before a fire. I learned that servants were not quite so easily people you threw your arms about and laughed and cried with, and yet they were kind enough – it was all quicksand. Jack and Susan, too, were not consistent, they were different on their own away from the family table. There was a brother who did not live in the house, who helped run the works (tractors, I think, agricultural engines) and from his visits one somehow gathered that Susan and Jack were not all that was expected of them. One day Jack said that he and Susan wanted to speak to me, we had a conference, they called it, sitting the three of us in the makeshift studio.