The Bottle Factory Outing (19 page)

Vittorio said slowly: ‘Rossi is wanting to tell you what happened to Mrs Freda.’ In his desperation he hit the blotter with
his fist and the glass tubes rolled together and jingled. The Irishman concentrated on Rossi.

‘It is very bad,’ began Rossi, ‘but it is the truth.’ He looked briefly at Vittorio who nodded encouragingly. ‘I swear it.’
He brought his hands passionately to his breast. ‘I am at the fence watching everyone play football. I see Mrs Freda go into
the bushes. I see Vittorio go into the bushes. When Vittorio go out I go back in again.’ He flapped his wrist back and forth
indicating the to-and-fro among the bushes. ‘She is hot and she is pushing her jumpers from her stomach.’

He was standing now with his feet wide apart, bracing himself for some shock or blow about to be administered. Curiously they
watched as he rolled his jersey above the waistband of his trousers. There was a button missing, a glimpse of vest.

‘I am a man,’ he said. ‘I am drinking. I see her skin as she breathe in and out with the hotness, the little bits wobbling.
I make to put my arms round her but she is too tall. I only reach her here.’ He was miming the incident now. He leaned forwards
from the waist and circled the air with his arms. His curls bounced upon his brow. ‘She say to me – she say—’ Evidently it
was too painful for him to repeat.

Vittorio frowned and tapped the desk lightly with his finger-tips.

Rossi continued: ‘She take one little step backwards, like so. She falls away from me. Her neck goes like this—’ He was staggering
in a ridiculous fashion away
from them, jumper ruched about his chest; he was raising an arm in the air. Suddenly he reached up and yanked his head violently
backwards by the hair. His mouth fell open; his tongue flickered horribly; he made a small clicking noise. He straightened,
and sneaked a glance at his audience, who were sitting bolt upright watching him. Vittorio was white-faced and dismal. His
brown eyes seemed to have grown larger as if to be ready for all the things he still had to see, feel. His fingers, playing
with the edge of his collar, brushed his throat. Rossi pointed at the dusty floor of the office. ‘She fall down. Bang. I am
falling on top of her.’ He landed absurdly on his knees in front of them, scrambling on all fours before the desk. ‘My head
bump in her stomach.’ And he jerked his chin upwards as if heading a ball. His eyes closed as he butted the warm swell of
Freda’s belly.

There was a long pause. Nobody said anything. After a moment Rossi remarked: ‘There is a stone under my wrist. When I get
up, my watch is no good. It is done for.’

He fell silent. He got to his feet and, red-faced, brushed the dust from his knees. Again he looked at Vittorio.

‘I have forgotten nothing,’ he muttered, ‘nothing.’ He took out the comb and raked his hair once more with a tragic expression.

It sounds reasonable, thought Brenda. She had wanted to know the exact details. It was the sort of thing that could happen
to anyone, if they were tall and they were grabbed in the bushes by a small man. It certainly wasn’t anything you could hang
someone for.

‘Well,’ said Patrick grudgingly, ‘just as long as we
know.’ He sounded as if he had been cheated out of something.

Outside the office window Brenda saw Salvatore and Aldo Gamberini rolling an enormous barrel out of the lift.

Brenda wanted Patrick to come home with her and have a cup of tea: the butter and olives were still on the table. He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t even walk up the street with her. He strode off without a word and turned the corner. Maria said her sister was
waiting. She had cried so much in the washroom when the men were battening down the barrel that her face was lop-sided. She
had leant against the wall holding Freda’s flannel to her eyes and moaned.

‘Stop it,’ Brenda had advised. ‘You will make yourself ill.’

The men had swept up the crumbs and blown out the candles. Trembling at the waste they had pumped a quantity of brandy up
from the basement. They had glued the lid of the barrel into place and driven nails. They had marked it as unworthy.

Vittorio jumped in the Cortina with Rossi and an unsteady Aldo Gamberini. The green shutter was rolled down in the alleyway.
Anselmo adjusted the padlock and went to the car to give Rossi the key. Those who were going in the opposite direction shook
hands. ‘Ciao,’ they murmured, clutching their briefcases and their carrier bags.

Brenda didn’t want to seem pathetic, so she gave a little cheery wave and walked off under the street lamps.

She was very lonely, she would have done anything rather than walk up the darkening street alone. She couldn’t eat anything,
she couldn’t settle in the bed-sitting room. The clock had stopped above the hanging brassiere, a mouse had nibbled the corner
of the butter. She remembered the rest of the doggerel that Freda had known:

Turned to woman, sitting there,
See that mouse beneath that chair,
Little woman, great big hat,
Couldn’t stand the thought
of that.
Up she got and left the house
Man made happy, saw no mouse.

‘Ah,’ she said out loud, ‘what a cunning man.’ She slid the folded serviettes from beneath the blue plates and went downstairs
to knock at the nurse’s door. Nobody answered. She shook a finger in the dark and sat down on the stairs. Her neck was terribly
stiff. She rubbed at it under her hair and screwed up her eyes – and saw Freda falling backwards. Now then, she told herself,
just stop it. There was no one to talk with: even the cat had been let in, safe downstairs on the landlady’s hearth rug. She
was like one of those old ladies in the flats, roaming the balconies for someone to call to. Resolutely she started up the
stairs with the serviettes in her hand to clear the awful table. Things should be put in their place. When she went into the
room the lamp-shade with the fringeing spun round: Freda was falling – falling. Oh God, she thought, will I always see her
like that? She tried to think of her running after the ball, riding the
horse. She saw instead Freda trailing her coat across the grass towards the bushes. She saw Vittorio shouting at Rossi against
the timber fence. She saw him take some-thing from Rossi’s wrist. He shook it; he held it to his ear. She saw Rossi coming
out of the bushes. She felt the grass prickling her cheek. Vittorio was running up to Rossi; he was trying to thrust something
into his hand. Rossi was standing like a man in a dream, dazed. Vittorio was buckling a watch about Rossi’s wrist. Freda
was falling backwards. ‘I have forgotten nothing,’ muttered Rossi looking at Vittorio, ‘nothing.’ She shook her head and wished
she could stop thinking about it. Rossi was such a loyal little man. He would do anything to protect the name of Paganotti.
It doesn’t matter, she thought, it is no longer of the slightest importance.

She took money out of her purse and went downstairs to ring Stanley. The code number was very long: the telegraph wires ran
right across the country, through Rams-bottom and down the slope to the farm-house. Mrs Haddon answered the phone. ‘Hallo.’

‘Hallo,’ said Brenda. ‘It’s me, Brenda. Can I speak to Stanley please?’

‘Mr Haddon is out at present. Would you care to leave a message?’

‘I want to come home,’ said Brenda at last.

‘I’m afraid it’s not convenient. Mr Haddon has made other arrangements. A woman from the village—’

The receiver was replaced.

Brenda went to work at the usual time. She had packed her suitcase in the night. She hadn’t known what to do
with Freda’s things: her theatrical programmes and her jewel case with the plum stones. Her father said he would meet her
at the station if she was sure what train she was arriving on.

‘Need a spot of home comfort, do you?’ he shouted down the phone in a jolly manner.

‘Something like that,’ Brenda had replied.

‘Okey dokey, chickie,’ he said. ‘Mummy will be waiting.’

The lorry stood outside the bottle factory waiting for the loading to be finished. Maria was crying. Some men and a woman
in a shabby coat lined the pavement.

‘Stop crying,’ said Vittorio, ‘it is looking strange.’

Four men in green overalls, pushing a hogshead of sherry, appeared at the slant of the loading bay. Below in the street, a
row of workers in mufflers and trilby hats stood waiting for the work to be finished.

‘It’s dreadful,’ said Brenda. ‘I think I shall faint.’

Mournful at the kerb, she put her hands to her face and watched the wooden barrel begin to roll down the slope. A dozen men
with lowered heads lifted the hogshead on to the lorry. A plastic flower was laid on the lid. Papers were signed. Brenda,
who was easily embarrassed, didn’t want to be seen gawping in the road. She declined to look at the back of the lorry, grey
with dust, as the last barrel was shoved into place.

‘She’s going,’ cried Maria, and the engine started and the vehicle slid away from the bay, the plastic tulip lolling in the
wind.

Winner of the 1996 Whitbread Novel Award Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Beryl Bainbridge

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the
Titanic
sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways
are played out the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty,
as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

‘Darkly brilliant … a rare and remarkable novel’
Observer

‘Brilliant … do not miss this novel’

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Daily Telegraph

‘Extraordinary … both psychologically convincing recreation and a wholly new and highly individual work of art … beautifully
written’
Independent

‘A moving, microcosmic portrait of an era’s bitter end’

Eric Wagner,
The Times

‘Marvellous … exquisite pacing … stunning descriptions’

Independent on Sunday

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