The Bottle Factory Outing (12 page)

Though Vittorio was nephew to Mr Paganotti, Rossi
was bold enough to lose his temper and speak his mind. He shouted and shook his fists in the air.

The workers turned their faces to the sky, the ground, the flying ball, and missed nothing. Gino, the brother of old Luigi,
smote his forehead and murmured his disapproval.

‘Whatever’s going on?’ fretted Freda. Her plump cheeks, childish with dimples and tendrils of disordered hair, quivered as
she tried to understand what the two men shouted.

‘Did Patrick do that to you?’ asked Brenda, looking at the graze on Freda’s face.

But she wouldn’t reply. She fidgeted with the sleeves of her coat and longed to join in the battle.

‘It’s probably something to do with us,’ said Brenda unwisely. ‘Maybe he’s telling Vittorio about you going to Mr Paganotti.’

‘You’re a bloody menace,’ hissed Freda, convinced that Brenda was right. ‘Why can’t you stand on your own two feet without
dragging me into it?’

‘But you interfere all the time. You wouldn’t let that lady borrow our room to play her trumpet in … You wouldn’t let
me talk to Stanley on the phone.’

‘What lady?’ asked Freda, bewildered.

‘If you hadn’t got rid of Patrick he would have stopped Rossi getting at me, and I wouldn’t have had to mention Mr Paganotti.’

‘Your teeth,’ said Freda, ‘are terribly yellow. You should try cleaning them some time.’

The workers, caught between two sets of protagonists, played all the more noisily. They wore themselves out
kicking and shouting and running to the limits of the pitch.

Brenda saw Vittorio take hold of Rossi’s hand. They’re making friends, she thought, and she watched curiously as Rossi clutched
his wrist. He seemed to be removing something from his arm.

After a time Vittorio stalked away from Rossi and left him alone at the fence.

‘What’s going on?’ called Freda. ‘What was that all about?’

He ignored her completely, running like a bull at the dribbling ball and giving it a tremendous kick in the air. It soared
away and hit the branches of an oak tree and fell in a shower of leaves to the grass.

‘You’ll get nowhere talking to him like that,’ said Brenda. ‘He can’t stand domineering women. You frighten him off.’

‘How the hell would you know?’ Pink with contempt, Freda put her hands on her hips and erupted into scornful laughter. ‘You
wouldn’t know a real man if you saw one. Rossi and that bloody Irish van-driver—’

‘Stanley was a real man. Stanley wasn’t—’

‘Stanley?’ The way Freda pronounced his name conjured up visions of a monster with two heads. ‘You’re not claiming he was
a real man? Dead drunk all the time and—’

‘Only some of the time,’ corrected Brenda, in spite of herself.

‘Good God! Any man that lets his mother run amok with a machine gun—’

‘Please,’ begged Brenda, ‘don’t shout.’

She didn’t want it to go on a moment longer. The hatred she felt frightened her; she tried at all costs to surpress it. As
a child her mother had terrified her with moods of violence, had ranted and raved and thrown cups upon the tiled kitchen floor.
‘Come to Mummy,’ she would say when the pieces of crockery had been swept into the dustbin, holding her arms out to the shrinking
Brenda as if nothing had happened. The depths of suffering Brenda experienced and the heights of elation when Mummy returned,
with tinted hair combed and nose powdered, had caused her for years to feel confused.

‘Don’t you like me talking about your Stanley, then?’ said Freda. ‘Is your Stanley not to be talked about?’

Brenda said: ‘If you don’t stop shouting at me I’ll say something you won’t like.’

‘What?’ Freda was curious. She stared at Brenda and asked almost tenderly. ‘What do you want to say? Go on – get it out.’

Brenda had wanted to say that she looked like a long-distance lorry driver in the sheepskin coat, that she was a big fat cow,
that she had wobbled like a jelly on the back of the funeral horse. She wanted to hurt her, watch her smooth round face crumple.
But when it came to it, all she could murmur was, ‘Sometimes you’re very difficult to live with.’

‘That’s rich,’ retaliated Freda. ‘When I think what I have to put up with from you – you and your bloody bolster.’

‘Well, there’s things you do at night when you’re asleep.’

‘What things?’ Freda was stunned.

‘Well, you roll about and hold yourself –’

‘I what?’

‘You do. You cup your – your bosoms in your hands and jiggle them about.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘You do – you do—’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that? I’m only dreaming. What’s wrong with me holding – me – me –’ but Freda couldn’t go on. It was
too intimate to talk about. Why do I do that she thought. Is it cancer, or lust, or what? Absently she began to walk in the
direction of the rhododendron bushes.

‘Where are you going?’ called Brenda helplessly. It wasn’t fair that Freda was walking away. It left her feeling wicked and
burdened with remorse.

‘As far from you as possible. And don’t you dare try to follow.’

Freda’s voice was subdued. She lowered her head thoughtfully and trailed her coat in the grass.

‘They’ve been weeing all over those bushes,’ warned Brenda.

But Freda never looked back. She pushed her way through the thick stems, fragments of mauve jumper and yellow hair showing
between the dusty leaves, and disappeared from sight.

Rossi, biting his cherry-coloured lip in agitation, hovered at the fence, hands dug in his pockets, suede shoes scuffing
the turf. He ignored Brenda who, curled up in her purple cloak, with cheek laid against the grass, was
festooned with ties and waistcoats thrown down by the perspiring workers and touched here and there by points of silver,
as cigarette cases and sleeve garters of expanding metal flashed in the sunlight. Though drowsy, she kept her eyes fixed
alternatively on the spiralling ball and the dense mass of the rhododendron bushes. Several times the ball thudded against
the dark leaves and bounced backwards on to the pitch. Finally, after a spectacular kick by Salvatore, it hurtled over the
bushes and dropped from view. Rossi, seizing his chance to re-enter the game, trotted forwards and thrust his way into the
foliage. There was a beating of undergrowth and snapping of branches. A small bird fluttered upwards. Propelled by invisible
hands, the ball was flung back to the waiting players. She won’t like that, thought Brenda. In the mood she’s in she may very
well punch him on the nose. Her eyelids drooped, and she drifted into the beginnings of sleep. Now that Freda was no longer
alone she felt she could rest. The cries of the footballers receded. She was having a long serious talk with Freda – it was
so real that she felt the drag of the grass as her lips moved – the earth rustled and crawled in the cave of her ear. She
half woke. Vittorio was again holding Rossi’s hand. He was attaching something to Rossi’s wrist … The clouds whirled above
her head …

When she fully woke and became aware of her surroundings, it was to see Rossi stumbling past her towards the car. He looked
sick, as if he had a stomach upset from all the wine and scraps of food. She watched him climb into the back seat of the Cortina
and close the door. She thought maybe Freda had said dreadful things
to him, had told him he was ugly and squat and that his trousers didn’t fit. She felt very tender. He was really a very nice
little man. He loved Mr Paganotti. He worked from eight till six every day, and he’d never stolen anything.

She got up slowly and went to the car, ready to pretend she didn’t know he was there. When she came level with the window
she thought for a moment he must have got straight out the other side. He wasn’t on the back seat. Puzzled, she stared over
the roof of the car at the deserted field. On the edge of the horizon there was a machine with whirling blades stuttering
across the grass. She watched it for several moments until a sound somewhat like the mewing of a cat came from the interior
of the Cortina. It was Rossi, crouched on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms covering his head, moaning.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, opening the door. ‘What’s wrong, love? Whatever’s wrong?’

She had to pull his hands away from his face by force and was shocked at his expression of fear.

Scrambling into the car, she wrapped him within her arms, asking: ‘What did she say to you? You mustn’t take any notice. She
never means what she says. She’s kind really – you mustn’t take it to heart.’

She examined his face anxiously for signs of assault. Though the skin under his watery eyes appeared bruised she couldn’t
be sure it was inflicted by violence. He spoke in Italian, teeth chattering, pouring out a flood of words, and she laid her
finger to his lips and said, ‘Don’t, little lamb,’ as if he were Stanley or someone she knew very
well. ‘It’s no use,’ she told him, ‘getting yourself into a state. I’ve been through it myself – I know. Just try to forget
what she said, try to block the words out.’ And again, but rather more self-consciously, she pressed his head to her purple
cloak and rocked him back and forth. Oh God, she thought, whatever did she say?

After a time he became calmer. He leaned his head against the seat and asked her what hour it was.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and she took his wrist to examine his watch. The glass was shattered and the time stopped at twenty
minutes past four.

‘Did she do that?’ asked Brenda, but he remained silent. Fine rain began to spatter the windows of the car.

‘Can’t you tell me what happened?’ she coaxed. ‘Did she mention Mr Paganotti?’

A spasm of distress flittered across his face. He struggled from the floor and half-knelt on the plastic seating, nose pressed
to the streaked glass, staring out at the clump of bushes as if expecting to see Mr Paganotti in his camel-hair coat advancing
through the rain.

‘Now that you’re more composed,’ said Brenda, ‘I’ll leave you alone, shall I? I’ll go and find Freda.’

‘No,’ he protested, gripping her by the arms, and she sank against him on the seat thinking he was his old self again and
just as randy. She might even have submitted, if only to make him less unhappy, though she did wonder how they could manage
in the confined space of the car and what she would say if the men ran in to be out of the wet. I could pretend it was artificial
respiration, she thought and looked over his shoulder to see how the game was progressing. Out on the grass, standing beside
the wine barrels, was a figure in a peaked cap and mackintosh.

‘Patrick,’ she cried and she thrust Rossi from her and opened the door and ran over the field.

The workers crowded about Patrick, curious to know where he had been. He was smiling, one eye elongated at the edge by a jagged
cut beaded with blood.

‘I don’t think there’s much left to eat,’ said Brenda. ‘Did you bring your sandwiches?’

She looked inside the shopping basket and disinterred pieces of bread and the cores of apples. She wished Freda would come
and help. Even though she might be hostile to Patrick, she was awfully good at looking after people – in a jiffy she would
have produced quite a substantial little meal.

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Patrick, looking towards the road.

Vittorio seemed uncomfortable in his presence. ‘You have been in the town?’ he asked, holding the ball to his red jumper and
rubbing it up and down the flat curve of his stomach.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Patrick replied, and stared at him without blinking for several seconds.

The men began to dress, knotting their ties at the throat, adjusting suspenders to concertinaed socks, taking out pocket combs
and tidying their damp hair.

‘Freda’s gone to sleep in the bushes,’ said Brenda, and looked about for her green shoes.

‘I wouldn’t disturb her,’ advised Patrick.

‘But we are all going to the safari park. It was Freda’s idea.’ She pulled down the foot of her black stocking to cover her naked toe and struggled to keep her balance.
‘Rossi’s in an awful state,’ she whispered, hanging on to Patrick’s arm and wriggling into her shoes. ‘Freda’s had words with
him. He’s crying.’ She looked briefly at the parked car.

‘That’s bad,’ said Patrick. ‘That’s very bad.’

‘I don’t know what she said to upset him so much. I know she doesn’t mean to be cruel. Honestly, Patrick, she’d give you the
coat off her back if you needed it. It’s just that she gets carried away.’ She felt compelled to defend Freda. She herself
had been sufficiently carried away to utter words that she now regretted. She should never have told Freda that she jiggled
in her sleep. It was unforgivable. If you hadn’t gone on about Stanley, she thought, I would never have mentioned it. She
brushed down her cloak and walked towards the rhododendrons. I’m sorry, she said in her head. Don’t be cross Freda. It wasn’t
true.

‘I wouldn’t wake her just now,’ said Patrick. He laid his hand on her arm to detain her.

‘Your eye,’ she said. ‘It’s bleeding.’

She sought a way into the bushes, using her shoulder to prise apart the leathery leaves.

‘Don’t,’ said Patrick, more firmly, and she looked back at him and thought he looked quite old, his face shadowy under the
peak of his cloth cap.

‘Freda,’ she called, ‘Freda, it’s me.’

She struggled through the bushes, hands raised to ward off the bouncing leaves, and entered a clearing floored with tangled
grass on which lay Freda, flat on her back with ankles crossed.

‘Freda – we’re going to the safari park.’

Freda looked disgruntled, her mouth sucked inwards. The blue eyes stared fixedly at the sky. Under the dark leaves her skin
assumed a greenish tinge, the cheeks brindled with crimson and spotted with raindrops. For a moment Brenda thought she was
weeping. Her painted nails, black in the shaded light, rested on the woollen swell of her stomach.

‘Freda,’ said Brenda again, and stopped.

Freda’s eyes stayed open. A grey insect, sensitively quivering, dawdled on the slope of her thumb. Brenda knelt on the ground
and touched the curled edges of hair turning brass-coloured in the rain. She couldn’t understand why Freda’s face, normally
so pale and luminous, now burned with eternal anger, mottled and pitted with irregular patches of brown as if the leaves had
stencilled rusty shadows on her cheeks. Only the nose was right, moulded in wax, the nostrils etched with pink. Where are
you, she thought, where have you gone? She peered at her, trying to see what was different. It was as if somebody had disconnected
the current, switched off the light … she’d gone out. Oh, she did feel sad then. Lonely. The terrible pious curve of her
hands on the purple jumper – never again to jiggle her bosoms in the dark.