The Bottle Factory Outing (3 page)

‘How kind of you,’ said Brenda.

He took a medicine bottle from his pocket and poured the contents into two glasses that he kept on a shelf in one of the alcoves,
ready for when he lured her down there. She had only been working in the factory for four weeks and it had started on her
third day. He’d said then she ought to learn more about the cooling process.

‘You like?’

‘Yes, thank you very much.’

‘You like me?’

‘Oh yes, you’re very nice.’

He was holding her wrist, tipping the glass backwards, trying to make her drink more rapidly. It was a kind of liqueur brandy,
very hot and thick like syrup of figs, and it always made her feel silly. She could feel him trembling.

‘What’s it called?’ she asked him, though she knew.

‘Marsalla. You are a nice girl – very nice.’

She couldn’t think how to discourage him – she didn’t want to lose her job and she hated giving offence. He had a funny way
of pinching her all over, as if she was a mattress whose stuffing needed distributing more evenly. She stood there wriggling,
saying breathlessly ‘Please don’t, Rossi,’ but he tickled and she gave little smothered laughs and gasps that he took for
encouragement.

‘You are a nice clean girl.’

‘Oh, thank you.’

He was interfering with her clothes, pushing his hands beneath her tweed coat and plucking away at her jumpers
and vest, shredding little pieces of newspaper with his nails. She tried to have a chat with him to calm him down.

‘I’m so excited about the election, Rossi.’

‘So many clothes.’

‘Please don’t. Are
you?
Oh stop it.’

‘Why you have so much clothes?’

‘Freda says she’s going to vote Communist.’

‘You like me?’ he pleaded, pinching the skin of her back as much as he was able.

‘Don’t do that. Consider—’

‘Why don’t you like me?’

‘Your wife. I do like you, I do really. We saw a funeral today. It was a nice funeral.’

He didn’t know what she meant. He was trying to kiss her. He had a mouth like a baby’s, sulky, with the underlip drooping,
set in a round dimpled face. Suck, suck, suck, went his moist little lips at her neck.

‘There were lots of flowers. Freda cried when she saw the coffin.’

He paused, startled. In the gloom his eyebrows rose in bewilderment. ‘A funeral? Your mammy has died?’ Shocked, he left off
trying to unravel her defences of wool and tweed and paper. She didn’t know what to say. She was very tempted to assent.

‘Well, in a manner of speaking – more Freda’s than mine.’

‘Freda’s mammy is dead?’

She hung her head as if overcome, thinking of Al Jolson down on one knee with one hand in its white glove, upraised. Her own
hand, unnaturally pink in its
rubber covering, hovered above his shoulder. She was still clutching her sponge.

In the Ladies’ washroom Freda was mystified. She combed her hair at the blotched mirror and asked suspiciously: ‘What have
we got the day off for? Why have I got to take you home?’

Brenda didn’t reply. She was adjusting her clothing, shaking free the fragments of paper that fell from her vest.

‘Have you got your toothache again?’ Freda was annoyed at having to leave early. It didn’t suit her; she hadn’t had her talk
with Vittorio. ‘Look at the state of you. You’ve got cobwebs in your hair.’

‘I’m taking you home,’ said Brenda. ‘On account of your mammy.’

‘Me what?’

‘I had to say she wasn’t well.’ She looked at Freda, who for once was speechless. Her mother had died when she was twelve
and she had been brought up by an aunt in Newcastle. ‘Actually I said we went to her funeral. I couldn’t help it, Freda. You
never take any notice of me.’

She was whispering in case Rossi was outside the door listening. Freda started to laugh – she never did anything quietly.

‘Sssh,’ said Brenda desperately, jumping up and down in embarrassment, releasing a fresh fall of newsprint on to the washroom
floor.

In the alleyway, Patrick, the Irish van driver, was inhaling a cigarette. Elbow at an angle and shoulders hunched, he stared
at them curiously through a cloud of smoke.

‘She’s hysterical,’ explained Brenda, gripping the giggling Freda fiercely by the arm and steering her out into the street.

Later, in the security of the sparsely furnished room, Freda was inclined to get at the truth. ‘In the cellar?’ she queried.
‘But what does he do?’

‘Nothing really. He sort of fumbles.’

‘Fumbles?’ repeated Freda and snorted to suppress laughter. ‘Does he feel your chests?’

‘All over, really,’ admitted Brenda, not liking to go into details – Freda could be very crude in her humour if given the
facts. ‘Sometimes we go upstairs among all that old furniture.’

‘Upstairs? When?’

‘Often. I told you, but you wouldn’t listen.’

‘You must have encouraged him. You must have egged him on.’

‘I never. I never did any such thing.’

Freda couldn’t get over it. She stared at Brenda lying full length upon the bed like a neglected doll – cobwebs stuck in her
hair, her mouth slightly open and two little pegs of teeth protruding.

‘I don’t understand you at all. You must be mad. You’re not telling me he rushes out while we’re all bottling away and ties
you up with his bootlaces and rushes off into the cellar? You’re not telling me I wouldn’t have noticed something?’

Brenda had no reply to that.

‘You shouldn’t have talked to him so much. You’re always talking to him, mouthing away at him as if he’s stone deaf.’

Brenda gazed up at the ceiling defensively, the padded shoulders of her coat grotesquely lifted about her ears.

‘I’m only saying my words clearly. His English is poor.’

‘You look like Edward G. Robinson lying there.’

‘You talk to Vittorio,’ cried Brenda, stung by Freda’s unkindness. She wanted sympathy and understanding, not criticism.

‘That’s different,’ Freda said, and was forlornly aware it was the truth. Vittorio wasn’t rushing her down into the cellar
to fumble at her chests. She knew Brenda wasn’t making it up. Though she lacked imagination, Brenda would go to any lengths
rather than cause herself embarrassment. It was her upbringing. As a child she had been taught it was rude to say no, unless
she didn’t mean it. If she was offered another piece of cake and she wanted it she was obliged to refuse out of politeness.
And if she didn’t want it she had to say yes, even if it choked her. It was involved but understandable. There had been other
small incidents that illustrated her extraordinary capacity for remaining passive while put upon. There had been the man
on the bus who felt her leg almost to her knickers without her saying anything, until she had to move because it was her stop
and then she’d said, ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry.’ And the woman with the trumpet who had stopped her in the street and asked her
if she could borrow a room to practice in. Brenda loathed music. When Freda opened the door to the trumpet player and told
her what to do with her instrument, Brenda hid behind the wardrobe.

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ asked Freda more gently – she looked so dusty and pathetic lying there – ‘I would have put
him in his place.’

‘I did,’ protested Brenda, ‘Often.’

Freda started to laugh again. ‘How on earth did you say my mother had died.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Brenda. ‘He did. I was trying to stop him fiddling with me and I mentioned the funeral we saw this morning.’

‘You driva me wilda,’ mimicked Freda. ‘Justa when I thinka I have you in my graspa you talka abouta da funerelo—’

‘Stop it,’ Brenda said.

‘You putta me offa ma spaghetti …’ And Freda shook with laughter.

Sulkily Brenda closed her eyes.

After a moment Freda remembered Vittorio and decided she would go downstairs and ring up Maria to ask her to pop in for a
cup of tea. If Rossi had told everyone about her loss it was quite possible Vittorio felt sad for her. Perhaps he had said
something tender when he heard the news – like ‘Poor child – poor grieving child’– maybe he was only waiting for an excuse
to come round and offer his condolences. She had to know. ‘

Does Rossi ever get his thingy out?’ she asked, looking in her purse for money.

Brenda pretended to be asleep; she stirred on the bed and sighed as if she were dreaming. It took some time to bring Maria
to the telephone. Such a thing had never happened to her before at work and Freda was worried the pips would go before her
message was understood. She had to bellow down the phone to explain who she was. Brenda could hear her quite plainly.

‘Maria, Maria. It’s me, Freda. You know – Freda –
Maria –’ She sounded as if she was going to burst into the love song from
West Side Story.
‘Maria … I want you to come to tea … this afternoon … after work … Can you hear me, Maria? … to tea.
Here at my house. You come here. No, today … to Freda. No I don’t want any tea … I want to give you some …’

‘Is she coming?’ asked Brenda.

‘God knows,’ said Freda, and she went upstairs to the bathroom, taking a pan of water with her to flush down the lavatory.
The cistern had been broken for ten days and the landlady said she couldn’t find a plumber to mend it. Only Freda was inconvenienced.
Brenda, who would have died rather than let the other occupants of the house know she used the toilet, usually went round
the corner to the tube station.

Maria came at half-past two carrying a packet of tea and a bag of sugar. She entered the room timidly, her hands in their
darned mittens, outstretched.

‘
La povera orfanella
,’ she murmured with emotion, embracing Freda, burying her head in the girl’s ample shoulder. Awkwardly she patted her back
and made little mewing sounds, and when she emerged again her face held such an expression of genuine perplexity and pain
that it awakened feelings of remorse in Brenda.

Brenda sat Maria in the armchair by the hearth, to warm herself at the gas fire. Freda moved about the room slowly and with
dignity, emptying tea-leaves into the china pot, putting the blue cups on the table, ready for the kettle to boil. Now and
then she would stare out of the window with a far-away look in her eyes, as if she was remembering lost faces and lost laughter
and the
joy of a mother’s love. After a decent interval, when the tea was poured and the biscuit tin handed round, she asked:

‘And what did Vittorio say? Did he say anything?’

‘Pah,’ exclaimed Maria contemptuously, slapping the air with the flat of her hand. ‘What could he say? Nobody work the day
of their mammy’s funeral.’

‘I mean, was he sorry?’

When she understood, Maria said Vittorio had looked very sad. They were all sad, but not so sad as Mr Rossi; he was the saddest
of them all, pale and dejected-looking as if it was a personal loss.

‘She’s in love with Vittorio,’ Brenda said quickly, in case Freda flew into a paddy on the spot and explained the exact reason
for Mr Rossi’s dejection. Maria, after an initial moment of surprise, her mouth open, her eyes bewildered, stamped her feet
approvingly on the threadbare carpet. Such a match – the tall young landowner and the blonde English girl built like a tree.
She recalled she could read the future in the tea-cups; a cook had taught her when she was in service in a house in Holland
Park. She sat well forwards in the armchair, black-clad knees wide apart, and stared into the depths of Freda’s cup.

‘There is a tall man,’ she began, ‘and a journey.’

Brenda withdrew into a corner of the room, seating herself at the table beside the window. Across the road on the balcony
of the third floor an elderly woman in a blue dressing-gown and a hat with a rose pinned to the brim waved and gesticulated
for help. Brenda knew her gas fire had blown up or she was out of paraffin or the
cat had gone missing. It was unfortunate that Freda had rented a room opposite a building devoted to the old and infirm –
there was always someone in need of assistance. Once Freda had become involved with a Miss Deansgate on the second floor,
who had been a milliner for royalty; and every day for three weeks she took her bowls of soup and cups of tea, feeding her
drop by drop from a tin spoon with a long handle that Miss Deansgate claimed had belonged to Queen Victoria’s butler. Freda
took Brenda to visit her, but she didn’t enjoy it – the old woman had no stockings and her ankles were dirty and she sat on
the lavatory and had to be helped back to bed. There was a funny smell in the living room. The sheets were yellow and the
frill of the pillow-case stained, as if she dribbled as she slept. Miss Deansgate begged Freda not to let the ambulance take
her away; but she was dying, and in the end they laid her on the stretcher under a red blanket, looking very cheerful and
Christmassy, and off she went, sliding a little on her canvas bed, as they bore her at a slant down the flight of stairs.
She didn’t come back, and Freda used the butler’s spoon with the long handle to eat her porridge with in the morning.

Resolutely Brenda turned her eyes away from the woman with the rose in her hat. She looked at Freda and Maria by the fire,
crouched over the drained cup as if the future lay there like a photograph. The murmurings of their voices and the hiss of
the gas fire merged. A memory came to her. She was walking down a lane between green fields, bending her head to watch her
own two feet in shiny shoes pacing the grey road. Behind her
someone urged her to hurry; she could feel in the small of her back the round insistent tip of an umbrella propelling her
forwards. She stumbled on the rough road, and as she fell she saw out of the corner of her eye a single scarlet poppy blowing
in the brown ditch. She opened her eyes quickly, thinking ‘Why can’t they leave me alone?’ and she was still there on the
balcony, the woman demanding attention. Brenda wanted to bang on the window and tell her to go away. She hated the implied
need, the intrusion on her privacy. Life was absurd, she thought, bouncing her up and down as if she were a rubber ball. She
longed to lose height and roll away into a corner and be forgotten. Distress at her own conciliatory nature rose in her throat
and lodged there like a stone. She swallowed and pouted her lips.