The Bottle Factory Outing

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘I could do with some tea,’ said Patrick, and Brenda had to nod her head as if it was quite all right and tiptoe down the stairs again.

  She was always amazed at how seemingly-shy people constantly asked for things without a trace of embarrassment. How could she boil a kettle with Vittorio and Freda only inches away? The gas made a funny whining sound before the water warmed up, and Freda was bound to rush out on to the landing and create a scene. Hardly breathing, she lifted the kettle from the stove and was grateful that it was already half-filled with water. When she struck a match to light the gas, the ignition and flare of the sulphur were like the launching of a rocket. She trembled and dropped the matchstick on to the lino. Suddenly from behind the shut door, Freda began to sing. Under strain as she was, Brenda couldn’t help smiling. Freda must have found the brandy bottle. She knew exactly how Freda must look at this moment, having seen her in the same state every Friday night after her visit to the theatrical pub. She would be standing poised like a Greek statue, head bent low so that her hair spilled about her face, one arm raised high in the air, one knee slightly flexed. Clicking her finger and thumb together, she would begin to glide in a small circle, round and round:

  MacArthur’s Park is lying in the rain …

  I don’t think that I can take it,

  For it took so long to bake it,

  And I’ll never find the recipe again.

  The kettle began its weird sighing.

  ‘Oh-o. No. Ohohoh,’ roared Freda behind the door. ‘Ohoho-oh-no-ohoh …’

  She’s always thinking about food, thought Brenda unfairly. She felt obliged to tell Patrick why the tea was lukewarm.

  ‘You see, Freda’s got a friend in and I’m not supposed to be here.’

  He looked at her over the rim of his cup and didn’t understand.

  ‘A man. She’s got a gentleman caller and she told me to go out.’

  ‘It’s your room,’ he said. ‘You’ve every right to occupy your own room.’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult. I quite see I’m in the way.’

  She felt a bit foolish. She was conscious she was clipping the ends of her words and mimicking the way he spoke, as if she too came from the bogs of Tipperary.

  ‘She expects you to leave your room if she has a fella in, then?’

  ‘It’s reasonable, I’m thinking,’ she said, and blushed.

  ‘You know,’ said Patrick, ‘I think a lot of you. No, honest to God I do. I don’t like to think of her making a monkey out of you. Why, if I thought that, I’d throttle her – I would so.’

  He had little freckles above the line of his upper lip so that the shape of his mouth was blurred. He put down his cup upon the side of the bath and wound a length of string tightly between his clenched fingers.

  Vittorio had sat on the edge of the bed now, because Freda, undulating her Amazonian hips and pointing one foot at him, was moving more and more wildly about the room. He felt threatened by her size and the volume of her voice, and there was a rim of dried blood along the cuticle of her big toe. He scuffed his suede boots beneath the iron frame of the double bed and kicked a book across the carpet.

  ‘I read a lot,’ said Freda, coming to rest beside him, the halo of her washed hair fanning out about her rosy cheeks. ‘Poetry, Philosophy, Politics. The three pee’s.’ And she gave a loud, moist giggle.

  ‘Such a lot of books,’ he said, moving his feet about and shuffling more volumes into view, and she found she was telling him about Brenda and the way she couldn’t bear they make contact in the night.

  ‘She puts them right down the middle of the bed. It’s frightfully inconvenient.’

  ‘The books down the bed …?’

  ‘Well, you know – she doesn’t want to run any risk.’

  ‘Risk?’ His eyes were wide with astonishment.

  ‘Oh, come on – you know.’ And she dug him quite painfully in the ribs with her elbow. ‘It’s like this,’ she said, speaking very slowly, remembering the way Brenda talked to Rossi. ‘She is afraid of life. She does not want to communicate. Know what I mean?’

  The way he sat there so obviously not knowing what she meant, his handsome face solemnly gazing at her, filled her with irritation. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you relax?’

  When he smiled she noticed there was a gap between his front teeth. It gave him the look of an urchin and minimised the sensitive modelling of his face.

  ‘You’ve got gaps in your teeth,’ she cried, and fell heavily against him.

  He did kiss her then. He put his arm round her, and they thrashed about on the double bed. She clung to him and fastened her teeth in the woolly shoulder of his polonecked jumper.

  ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ he said, struggling to his feet and striding to the door. She was left with a shred of wool stuck to her lip, alone on the rumpled bed. Another little drinky, she told herself, lurching sideways to the floor and going to the wardrobe to find the bottle of brandy. She didn’t want to be drunk. She didn’t like the way things were going; but going they were, and she unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a swig of the alcohol and wiped her mouth with her hand. The peach he had brought lay like a road casualty, squashed into the carpet.

  When he returned she was aware that he was uncomfortable. He tried to make love to her but it didn’t work.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked aggressively, pulling his hair quite viciously as he lay stranded upon her.

  ‘The toilet,’ he said. ‘There are peoples in the toilet. I could not gain entrance.’

  He was minus his shoes, but he still wore his trousers and his jumper that was a bit chewed at the collar.

  Brenda could hear knocking at the front door, growing louder and louder. She watched Patrick screwing a hook into the ceiling above the cistern.

  ‘It’s a bit Heath Robinson, isn’t it?’ she ventured, as he wound a length of string from the ballcock up to the hook in the plaster and down again to the metal eyelet of the lavatory chain.

  She unlocked the bathroom door and stood listening. Freda had stopped singing, and the nurses on the ground floor had let someone into the hall. There was a murmur of voices, then silence, until she heard the dialing of the telephone. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but quite soon the receiver was replaced and someone began to climb the stairs. Whoever it was halted outside Freda’s room and rapped repeatedly on the panel of the door. She won’t like that, thought Brenda, and then she heard the voice of her mother-in-law.

  ‘I have come to see Brenda.’

  ‘I’m afraid she is not at home.’

  ‘I’ll wait then.’

  There was a pause before Freda answered, her voice charged with hostility. ‘You can’t wait. It’s not convenient.’

  ‘I shall wait none the less.’

  Turning the curve of the stairs Brenda saw Mrs Haddon on the landing and Freda, hair dishevelled, straddling the threshold of the door.

  ‘It’s all right,’ called Brenda. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I want my photographs,’ said Mrs Haddon, turning to face her.

  ‘I want those pictures of my Stanley as a child.’

  Brenda hadn’t got them. She knew they were still in the kitchen drawer of the farmhouse, where they had always been, beneath the pre-war knitting patterns, but it was no use telling her so. Mrs Haddon was smiling firmly, nodding her head, the ends of her floral headscarf tied under the determined thrust of her chin.

  ‘Go downstairs,’ ordered Brenda. ‘I’ll get them.’

  She frowned meaningfully at Freda who stepped aside, overwhelmed by her air of authority, and allowed her to enter the front room. Vittorio was standing at the foot of the bed, flushed and untidy. He wore a jumper that was unravelling at the neckline and he clutched his shoes to his breast. Brenda ignored him. She stooped to pick a book at random from the floor and went out again on to the landing. Mrs Haddon, a large plastic handbag at her feet, had obediently retreated down the stairs and w
as grasping the bannister rail for support. Fancy her coming all that way from Ramsbottom, Brenda thought, all on her own on the coach in her nice camel coat.

  ‘Here,’ she said, holding out the book. ‘They’re all inside.’

  They looked at each other. For a moment it might have been Stanley pleading to be understood – the same round eyes filled with perplexity behind the rims of the lightbrown spectacles, the same wide mouth puckered at the corners. I can’t say anything, she thought – nothing that’s true.

  Mrs Haddon lowered her eyes and bent to pick up her handbag. Freda, looking down, was taken by surprise at her appearance – such a pretty woman, rouge on her cheeks, a little tilted nose. She was taking something out of her bag and showing it to her daughter-in-law with an expression of eager expectancy that was quite touching to watch. From the way Brenda spoke about her in the past Freda had imagined her with cow-dung on her gumboots and straw in her hair.

  ‘Why?’ she heard Brenda say in a flat voice, not at all grateful – and then there was a scream. The sound, shivering above the well of the stairs, caused Freda to tremble from head to foot. She saw Brenda strike Mrs Haddon somewhere about the chest. The spectacles balanced on the bridge of the tilted nose jerked forwards. A hand holding a gun swung upwards to save them. Brenda shouted: ‘Don’t—’ and ‘Why?’ This repetition of an earlier question was spoken on a whining note. She cringed in her tweed coat, her red hair hanging limply upon the checked collar.

  She’s bent on destroying herself, thought Freda, and at that moment there was a small plopping sound as Mrs Haddon squeezed the trigger.

  To see Vittorio hurtling down the stairs, his shoes falling to the carpet as if in pursuit, made Freda admire him all over again. A man was needed at this moment and he was there acting on her behalf, and it gave her a feeling of comfort and pride, for she was still trembling. At that moment Patrick the van driver, wearing a short-sleeved garment of powder-blue material, flung himself round the curve of the stairway and in two bounds leapt to join the struggling Vittorio below. How opportune, thought Freda, too shocked to question further. They held Mrs Haddon by the arms; they encircled her waist lovingly. Patrick reached for the gun raised high in the air and entwined his fingers in hers. They swayed, arms dipping up and down, as if energetically dancing. Brenda, standing apart in the recess of the illlit landing, put her hand to her mouth and bit the ends of her fingers. She was thin as a stick and behind her closed lids her eyes bulged, round as marbles.

  ‘Pet,’ cried Freda, launching herself down the stairs at last. ‘My poor pet.’

  The men, having manoeuvred Mrs Haddon into the front room, placed her in the best chair by the fire with such force that she lost her balance. As she tipped backwards, her feet in their neat court shoes flew upwards, and she uttered a tiny cry of outrage. Vittorio, refined by his experience, put the gun on top of the wardrobe out of harm’s way.

  ‘That’s my property,’ Mrs Haddon said. ‘I should be glad if you would give it to me.’

  Vittorio stroked his drooping moustache and looked at Freda for instructions. She was standing at the window with Brenda in her arms, observing the police car in the street below, its blue light flashing as it cruised at the kerb.

  ‘Look at that,’ she cried. ‘The police have come.’

  ‘I phoned them before I came upstairs,’ said Mrs Haddon. ‘In case they were needed.’ She half-rose to her feet and was thrust downwards again by the two men. They were not taking any chances.

  ‘Answer the door,’ commanded Freda, and Patrick did as he was told, running out of the room with the lapels of his dressing-gown falling open to expose his paper-white chest.

  ‘We ought to make a cup of tea,’ said Brenda, looking at Stanley’s mother. ‘She’s had a shock.’

  Mrs Haddon stared back without pity. ‘I was only aiming at your vocal chords. You always talked too much.’

  ‘Murderer,’ cried Freda, quivering with indignation as she held Brenda to her breast. ‘You should be put away.’ All the same, she couldn’t help being awed by the smart little woman on her chair, come all the way from the North by rail or coach, her handbag on her knee with her powder puff inside, her purse and her little black gun.

  Two plain-clothed men and two in uniform came pounding up the hall. They asked a lot of questions about the old lady’s relationship to Brenda and how she had come to be in possession of the pistol. Mrs Haddon said she only wanted to frighten Brenda to punish her for leaving Stanley and that she’d saved up her pension for three weeks to buy the weapon. She’d told the lady in the shop it was for her grandson and the lady had been very helpful. She gave her a card to go with it. She brought out of her handbag a paper target in red and black to show them.

  They looked at it in silence.

  After a time the uniformed policemen took her outside to the car, and the chief inspector and a sergeant made them all re-enact the drama on the stairs. Brenda felt silly holding out the book to the inspector, who was pretending to be Stanley’s mother. She had to hit him quite hard on the chest and bite her lip in case she smiled. They wanted to know how they could contact Stanley and where he would be at this moment.

  ‘At the Little Legion,’ she said. ‘But you better not ring there. He wouldn’t like it.’

  Freda shouted interferingly: ‘Good God, he ought to be told. It was a gun she carried, you know, not a bunch of flowers.’

  ‘It wasn’t a gun,’ muttered Brenda, ‘it was an air pistol,’ though she didn’t know if it made any difference.

  Freda told the sergeant that Brenda was separated from her husband. ‘He gave her a very rough time in my opinion.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the sergeant, looking at her and at Patrick still clad in the blue dressing-gown.

  There was a knock at the door. The two young nurses from the ground floor, little white caps pinned to the frizzed nests of their hair, wanted to know if they could be of assistance.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ Freda told them frostily. ‘It’s just a small family party.’ And down clumped the two girls in their crackling aprons and sensible shoes, desperate at being excluded from the excitement.

  The police inspector asked Brenda finally if she wanted to make a charge.

  ‘Definitely we do,’ asserted Freda, and Brenda shook her head and said No, she didn’t want to, thank you. Whatever would her mother say if she did and it got into the papers?

  Freda didn’t even bother to show Vittorio to the front door. She was tired now and grumpy. ‘Get to bed,’ she ordered Brenda, and she jumped between the sheets still in her negligée.

  Brenda lay in the darkness unprotected by the bolster and the row of books. She had tried to re-erect the barrier, but Freda cursed and told her to bloody well stop messing about.

  ‘He didn’t make it,’ said Freda, mouth crushed against the pillow. ‘He couldn’t get into the loo.’

  ‘Ah, well—’ began Brenda, and thought better of it.

  ‘I wonder if those were Maria’s men in uniform?’ mused Freda.

  ‘What men?’

  ‘You know – Maria’s men – in my cup.’

  ‘They weren’t on horseback.’

  ‘No,’ said Freda. ‘You’re right. What the hell was that Patrick doing running round the house dressed like that?’

  ‘He was just passing and I didn’t like to say I was going out.’

  ‘You’re barmy. What you see in him I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ protested Brenda. ‘He was just mending the toilet.’

  ‘Half-naked?’ said Freda. ‘You must be mad.’

  When she closed her eyes the bed whirled round and round. She had to force herself to concentrate on the outline of the window pane.

  Brenda said: ‘I don’t think she meant any harm. She was just trying it on.’

  ‘You need help,’ murmured Freda. ‘You’re a victim. I’ve told you before.’ In the light of the street lamp the room was glamorous and bathed in silver.
The wooden foot of the bed glowed like genuine mahogany. ‘Isn’t it nice?’ she said.

  ‘Stanley’s mother must be furious she missed me. She always hated being thwarted.’

  Brenda wore a small gratified smile. She understood perfectly why Mrs Haddon had wanted to do her damage. Inside her own brain she had on numerous occasions perpetrated acts of brutality against friends and enemies alike.

  ‘She needs putting away,’ said Freda, beginning to fall into sleep. ‘You all need putting away.’

  4

  For several days Freda was not herself. She suffered outbursts of rage followed by long periods of silence. The rages, which were habitual, did not disturb Brenda as much as the moments of moody reflection; she could not bear to witness her friend slumped on her beer crate or in the armchair by the gas fire, deaf to all overtures. It was unnerving to live with. Freda was so fond of verbalising her emotions. She never brooded. Pain felt, or insults endured, made her the more articulate. In adversity she saw the funny side. She would spit out words describing in precise detail just how badly she was wounded, until her shoulders began to shake with the burble of huge choking laughter that finally burst from her.

  She took to lying awake at night, counting the prison bars of the balcony palings reflected on the curve of the ceiling. She watched intently the plummeting bird of the hanging lamp, the bunch of dried leaves in the mantelshelf vase stencilled upon the gleaming paintwork of the door. When she looked out into the street it was bright as day. The lattices of windows, the lids of dustbins, the metal flanks of parked cars flashed in the moonlight and dazzled her. Brenda lay in darkness, the lower half of her face shot away – only the rim of her eyelids touched by light.