Free Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford Page B

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
    A LESSANDRO 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