Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

the middle-class even when badly off. Susan did the cooking, the rest of us took turns in giving or avoiding to give a hand serving and cleaning up. Nobody could say that Susan cooked well or much (though we were fed generously), sausages and rice pudding were about her mark; the bulk of our daily sustenance was convenience food, hideous term, and certainly not as varied or as pseudo-grand as it has since become. No deep-frozen coquilles Saint-Jacques : baked beans we had and bloater paste in little glass jars off the corner grocer’s shelf, Jello, jam roll, bread and Marmite for tea, fish and chips for supper, with tinned salmon and pineapple cubes as stand-bys. I devoured it all cheerfully enough; what I missed was wine. I had no idea for a long time, that the very best claret, let alone port, was shipped to and drunk by (a few of) the English; I only knew what I saw and that was that wine with meals was an exception not the rule, which happened to be true then for most people. How we have changed all that now that England has entered a golden age of wine! (With quality and variety on offer greater than in any other country in the world.) Let us count our blessings.
    In Italy we had wine; everyone drank it naturally, liberally, every day, young wine, local and cheap. Ours was chosen by Alessandro or the cook with the same care, no more, as the vegetables and the fish. It was not discussed at table. My claret evenings with my father were part of the world that was behind. Someone sometimes was offered a small glass of vermouth; brandy was kept on hand, Alessandro might be called upon to seal some masculine deal with grappa, besides these there were no spirits in the house nor was there talk about drink or getting drunk although there must have been the odd bucolic soak. Expressions such as having a drink problem had not entered civilised vocabulary. In America Prohibition was already in full swing; in Italy the excesses of alcohol were not yet a ‘socially’ expected topic.
    Our life then during those Italian years was stable and domestic. Though perhaps not that domestic if seen through other people’s eyes. Domestic in spirit, say, rather than tangible fact. We never had the same address for long and we can’t have had anything near a usual complement of household goods. We certainly never lived, as the French were to remark about us later on, dans nos meubles. Why not? Some cautionary instinct to remain in transit? Reluctance to stake upon a future better left undefined? Was it the times? – less than a decade from one war, more than a decade still from another – I do not know. Our attitudes to possessions were not consistent. Alessandro’s material belongings were sparse and neat, he dressed with unmistakable if unflaunted elegance on very little; my mother’s were profuse, not often utilitarian, seldom to hand and prone to disrepair. While she thought nothing of our living year in year out in other people’s sheets and chairs, she seldom travelled without voluminous and unusual luggage. (Never shall I forget the horror, compounded by missed train connections, of her taking a goldfish bowl in live working order.) Still, in those days people did take trunks on railway journeys; my mother’s encumbrances shrink in retrospect when I consider that they must have comprised a very fair share of her entire worldly goods. As for myself I had already gone a fairish cycle of from rags to riches, or rather riches to rags because when I was an infant and dwelt in a nursery – the real thing: day nursery, night nursery, an English nanny – in the ugly opulent house of my father’s Berlin connections, the cupboards were choked with objects which could be said to have been mine. Doll’s house and stable, toy cook stove, toy grocery shop, toy village, clockwork toys, soldiers, puzzles, picture books, plush animals … The body of these treasures had been handed down, a few were lavish new personal offerings; I used the