The Bottle Factory Outing (8 page)

He tugged at the handle of the door, the hen-speckled face beneath the peak of his cloth cap distorted with urgency. The door
swung open and he tried to squeeze inside. Freda struck him repeatedly in the face with the French loaf and he fell backwards
on to the pavement in a sprinkle of breadcrumbs. Brenda slumped as low in her seat as she could. She hadn’t the heart to wave.
She fixed her eyes on the silver ignition key, dangling from the lock, and the humble smile of the Virgin as she gazed at
her bright pink child.

The engine roared into life. The car jumped away from the kerb and gathered speed, passing the homewardbound men going in
twos and threes to the tube station, shoulders bowed in the best black suits worn for a special occasion.

Rossi drove as if any moment he was about to be overtaken and sent home. He hunched his shoulders in his casual jumper and
pressed his foot down hard upon the accelerator. He drove as if heading towards the Park and suddenly swung left into Monmouth
Street, moving at
speed past the barred windows of the army barracks and the rows of still-sleeping houses.

‘Ah well,’ he said, as if speaking to himself, ‘it is only a little upset.’

There were few people up at this hour – an old man leaning on a stick, a girl in a caftan, an oriental gentleman wearing
silver boots with high heels. Rossi took his attention briefly from the road to watch the girl and was forced to brake hard
as the lights changed from green to red. Freda was flung forwards in her seat and brought up sharp against the handle of the
shopping basket. She said nothing, but her intake of breath was audible.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Brenda, turning in her seat; but Freda, massive in her sheepskin coat, had closed her eyes.

Beyond the rear window the red mini, bursting with passengers, came into view.

Brenda said: ‘They must have been so disappointed – the others – going all the way home again.’

It haunted her: Maria in her silken frock, the prepared food lying unwanted in the black briefcases, the high hopes of the
early dawn and the disillusion of the morning.

‘They are used to disappointment,’ Rossi told her philosophically. ‘They have had their lives.’

He looked in the mirror and studied Vittorio and Freda huddled together. He spoke in Italian to Vittorio, but there was no
answer. After a pause Aldo Gamberini said something to Rossi, who replied at length with much beating of his hands on the
steering wheel. Brenda was glad she was wearing the enveloping cloak: at every gear
change he brushed her thigh with his little finger curled like a snail.

She was surprised when she recognised Marble Arch ahead of them. Existing as she did between the bedsitting room on the first
floor and the bottle factory down the road, she mostly imagined herself as still living somewhere in the vicinity of Ramsbottom
– ‘What am I doing,’ she thought, ‘in a car loaded with foreigners and barrels of wine?’ In spite of herself she began to
quiver with threatened laughter: sounds escaped from her in small strangulated squeals. Freda stabbed at her neck with her
middle finger.

‘What’s up with you then?’

‘I was just thinking about things.’

‘It’s nothing to laugh about.’ But she laughed all the same, a great bellow that engulfed the car and made Rossi feel everything
was fine.

‘We are having a good time, yes? All is all right now?’

‘Oh yes, we’re having a good time all right.’ And again Freda gave vent to a hoot of mocking laughter that caused Brenda uneasiness.

‘I wonder how many fitted into the mini,’ she said quickly to distract her, and Freda squirmed in her seat and peered out
of the rear window.

‘It’s not there,’ she said.

‘Rossi,’ cried Brenda, ‘the car’s not following.’

‘It is all right. Just a little delay. They will catch up with us.’

‘Those poor buggers,’ burst out Freda, ‘trotting off home.’

‘Every Sunday,’ said Vittorio, breaking his silence and lazily contemplating the great white houses of Park Lane
and the glass frontage of the Hilton Hotel, ‘my family go on an excursion to the sea-side.’

‘Oh yes,’ sneered Freda, ‘we all know about your Outings. I suppose the maids run on ahead carrying the garlic sausages.’

He smiled tolerantly and stretched his arm along the back of the seat to touch a strand of her hair.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she warned, though she was moved, and tossed her head in pretended annoyance. Brushing her coat with her
fingers, preening herself, she showered breadcrumbs on to the floor.

‘You and Patrick,’ said Brenda, ‘with that bread …’

‘He deserved it. Bloody fool.’

The glittering shops, closed for the day, flashed past the window. The blue dome of a Catholic church, emblazoned with a
golden cross, leant against the white cloudfilled sky. A row of well-dressed women, in fur coats and mantillas, linked arms
and pranced in a line down the flight of steps.

‘Where the hell are we?’ demanded Freda, outraged by their red lips and their slim high-kicking legs. ‘Where are we going?’

Rossi shrugged. ‘It is a little surprise.’

He himself had no idea where he was heading, the original plan to go to the Stately Home had evaporated with the ordered van.
He simply drove away from the city and followed his instincts. He only knew that Mr Paganotti lived somewhere near Windsor
on the river and it was the countryside.

‘I don’t want to be surprised,’ said Freda. ‘I’ll kill that Amelio when I see him.’

‘Amelio is a good man,’ defended Rossi, ‘a good worker and a good father …’

‘The bloody fool went to the wrong garage. It’s obvious …’

Vittorio and Aldo endeavoured to explain.

‘It is not Amelio’s fault …’

‘He tell me he went to the garage you tell him …’

‘Maybe you tell him the wrong day,’ said Vittorio.

‘You have been a little upset lately,’ Brenda said, and could have bitten her tongue.

‘You make me sick, you do.’ Freda hit her repeatedly between the shoulder blades. ‘You’re always so damn reasonable. A bit
upset am I? What about your mother-in-law? Don’t you think that’s enough to upset anybody?’

‘I meant your mother,’ whined Brenda, trying to edge forwards on her seat to be out of reach. ‘The funeral—’

She pushed her hands over her mouth, and laughter spilled from her splayed fingers.

‘I don’t blame your mother-in-law trying to do you in. Never saying a word out of place.’ Her voice rose as she mimicked Brenda:
‘She locked me in the barn but I didn’t like to say anything. I saw her going to kill the kittens but I didn’t like to interfere!’

She thumped Brenda on the head. ‘She was doing you a favour if you ask me. You’re sick.’

‘Now, now,’ said Vittorio holding her wrists in an effort to restrain her.

They wrestled together on the back seat, Freda with her lilac scarf crushed under one ear and Vittorio with his duffel coat
speckled with crumbs. Brenda felt sorry for Aldo. He was red in the face with distress and
bewilderment. She winked at him to show she didn’t mind, that it was only a joke.

‘Ah well,’ said Rossi, ‘we will have a little music.’

He turned the knob of the car radio, and instantly Tom Jones was singing about the Civil War. ‘I do remembbah … a litt-al
home-stead …’ She saw the farm again, and all her hysteria left her. She thought of Mrs Haddon dipping behind the hedge
outside the kitchen window, a litter of kittens in her apron, going to the stream to drown them. The cat ran from under the
rain barrel, its tail arched over its back, hating the wet grass, shaking its paws fastidiously and mewing in despair. When
Mrs Haddon ducked under the stile a kitten plopped to the ground, a black rat-like lump, and the cat leapt and caught it in
its jaws and streaked off across the field.

‘She’s so bloody reasonable,’ she heard Freda say. ‘You can’t get the truth out of her.’

‘Rossi,’ said Brenda, ‘how can the mini catch up with us if you don’t know where we’re going?’

At a garage near the approach of the M4 motorway, miraculously the red mini did find them. Salvatore left the driving wheel
and accosted Rossi at the petrol pump. He indicated the boot of the Cortina and the road behind them and waved his arms about.
Brenda couldn’t see who his passengers were. The windows were steamed up. She could only make out a hand, flattened against
the glass, and the brim of a hat. She wished Maria could be with them – all those men and just two women making for the wide
open spaces. Freda, limp after her outburst, dozed with her head on Vittorio’s shoulder. It amazed
Brenda. She couldn’t think why he hadn’t cracked Freda one over the ear and bundled her out of the car. She had called him
a bloody Wop; she hinted his mother had never been married. Shaken but civil, he pushed aside the strands of tousled hair
clinging to her moist lips and stroked her inflamed cheeks. Perhaps he liked it, thought Brenda. If she had reviled Stanley
more, perhaps he would have stayed in to listen.

Rossi was telling Salvatore his destination was Windsor. Fresh air … a little jump out … a little game of football.
He slapped Salvatore on the back and searched his face tenderly for traces of forgiveness. Salvatore hung his head and pointed
his toe in the gravel.

Beyond the brown hedge at the side of the road a solitary cow cropped the grass. Salvatore wore a large fedora on his small
head. Its brim stuck out above the padded shoulders of his coat and emphasised the elegance of his nipped-in waist. His hand
bulged in his pocket.

He’s making him an offer he cannot refuse, thought Brenda.

When Rossi came back to the car, he said, ‘They are annoyed at having to pay the money for the petrol. They say it is not
called for.’

‘Well, they did pay 50p each towards the cost of the van,’ reasoned Brenda and hoped Freda had not heard. She held her breath
as the car nosed out into the thin stream of traffic.

It took some time to find the road to Windsor Park. When they left the M4, they could see the beige-and-grey castle, lapped
by a pool of pale green turf, dwarfing the white houses of the town.

‘We must be near,’ said Brenda helpfully, as they crossed a bridge with a black swan perched on the water. The red mini had
once more disappeared from the road. They came to the bowl of a roundabout, heaped with dahlias, and circled it several times
trying to decipher which way the sign post pointed.

‘There—, said Vittorio.

‘No,’ contradicted Freda. And they swung yet again around the small island of flowers until Rossi made his own decision and
drove straight on. There were no ornamental gates as he had supposed. The pink-washed houses came to an end and the grey
road cut through a green landscape spotted with oak trees. He slowed the car almost immediately and swung on to the grass
verge. He bounded out into the fresh air leaving the car door swinging on its hinges.

‘It’s cold,’ complained Freda, as Brenda climbed stiffly out to join Rossi on the grass sprigged with dandelions.

‘This is the best place for a little jump out,’ he cried, pointing eagerly at the woods in the distance, and the flat slanting
top of a cut-down oak a few yards from the bonnet of the car.

‘Good God,’ Freda said. ‘You don’t believe in moving far from the main road, do you?’

She lumped her basket on to the verge and wrapped her sheepskin arms about herself for warmth, standing disdainfully in the
shadow of the car. It wasn’t as she had imagined. There were no lush valleys or rising hills saddled with yellow gorse. The
land stretched flat and monotonous to the edge of the horizon. To the right was a clump of rhododendron bushes, a blackened
oak splattered
with the nests of crows, and a timber fence encircling a wood of beech and sycamore. Above her an aeroplane hung low, nose
shaped like a bullet. Wings tipped with crimson, it shot in slow motion through an opening in the clouds. On the distant
boundary stood the blue haze of a fir plantation, blurred against the white stormtossed sky. Meanwhile the lorries, the private
cars, the containers of petroleum, roared continuously along the road, shaking the parked Cortina on the grass and filling
the air with noise.

‘Now what?’ she demanded. ‘Now that you’ve got us here.’

Aldo Gamberini, his hat hurled from his head by a gust of wind, scampered across the Park in pursuit. His black trilby bowled
to the foot of an oak and flattened itself against the trunk.

‘Did you tell the others we were going to the Park?’ asked Brenda anxiously. ‘There must be a lot of entrances.’

‘I say here, or maybe I say Windsor,’ said Rossi, and he took out of the car a large white ball and bounced it up and down
on the damp ground.

Vittorio caught it on the stub of his boot and kicked it high in the air. Hands deep in his pockets, he ran after it as it
soared towards the clump of bushes.

‘Wait, wait,’ called Rossi, mouth trembling petulantly, as he tried to catch the tall young man now dribbling the ball selfishly
ahead of him.

Trotting at Vittorio’s heels, pestering, he tried in vain to regain possession. The two men ran in a wide circle with the
muddy ball bouncing and rolling across the glossy wind-swept grass.

‘Look here,’ said Freda after ten minutes of this activity. ‘I want to see the castle.’

She had been picking at the silver wrapping about the chickens, digging at the carcasses with her nails and licking her fingers.
It was a quarter to eleven and there was no point eating yet – she would only be more hungry later on.

‘You want to go?’ said Rossi. He stopped running and stared at her in surprise, his cheeks rosy from his exercise with the
ball, his suede shoes stained with mud. He spread out his hands expressively. ‘We have only just come.’

‘My dear man,’ Freda informed him, ‘the castle is redolent with History.’ She wanted Vittorio to know how educated she was,
to make up for the scene in the car. Also, she felt the need to be near a cigarette shop in case she gained the courage to
ask him to lend her some money. ‘Besides,’ she said, indicating Brenda at the far side of the road, obsessively studying the
stream of traffic, ‘Madame won’t settle until we find the others.’