The Bottle Factory Outing

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’ asked Brenda over and over.

  But Freda, eyes glittering with fatigue, refused to tell.

  She did go to see Rossi. She told him that if there was any more nonsense with Brenda in the cellar she would go to Mr Paganotti and have him dismissed.

  ‘Just because you’re the manager,’ she told him spitefully, ‘it doesn’t mean you can wreak your vile will on Brenda.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Rossi, shrinking behind his desk littered with test tubes and sheets of litmus paper. ‘What is this wreaking? We only do a little fun.’

  ‘Fun,’ she thundered. ‘Man, I don’t think Mr Paganotti would call it that.’

  He hated her. He clenched his chubby fists and scraped his wedding ring across the desk, stuttering his denials. He made the mistake of trying to humour her.

  ‘You are a woman of the world,’ he said. But she quelled him with a glance. ‘Watch it,’ she warned, her arms folded, her nostrils flaring, her silken face poised and tinted like an angel above the powerful wedge of her body.

  He lowered his eyes, and back she strode to her bench and the quota of Nuits St Georges.

  Maria was curious to know what was wrong, but Freda shook her head with an air of martyrdom, as if her burdens were beyond comprehension. She had thought Vittorio would never wish to speak to her again after that deplorable evening when she had drunk too much; but surprisingly he asked her several times if she was feeling better, if she was recovering, as if it had been she who had been shot at, for she had forgotten she was in mourning for her mother. He even wanted to take her out to dinner, but she refused. ‘Later,’ she told him, not caring to shut the door entirely. The thought of a visit to a restaurant, the clatter of knives and forks, the blaze of lights in gilt mirrors as they drank at the bar, filled her with panic. The effort of keeping her elbows off the table, her knees together, her voice down and delicately modulated, was beyond her. The scene on the stairs was imprinted upon her imagination; the inspector’s request to know the particular relationship between the old lady and Brenda rang in her ears. Brenda was surrounded by people who claimed her as their own. Her father sent postal orders, her mother wielded power by the head-ings of her letters – ‘Darling’ meant Brenda was in favour; ‘My Dear Brenda’ spelled disapproval, as did the absence of those inked kisses penned at the bottom of the page. Stanley’s balaclava hung on a hook behind the door. Under the bed, face down in the dust, lay a wedding photograph of Stanley arm in arm with Brenda, her dress smudged with flowers. His mother had ridden across the country with a gun to prove she was related by marriage. And Freda had no one to call her own except the distant aunt in Newcastle.

  ‘I must be ill,’ she thought, ‘bothering about such trifles.’

  She went to the theatrical pub to be among people who understood, and was unwise enough to tell her version of Mrs Haddon on the stairs. She performed modestly and with seriousness, rolling a cigarette nervously between finger and thumb, and was distressed at the wild hoots of mirth that interrupted her narrative. She joined in the laughter – tears squeezed from the crinkled corners of her eyes – but she was hollow inside.

  Brenda tried to expiate the trouble she had caused. She said how well Freda looked, how revolting Patrick appeared in his overalls – that hair, those badly bitten nails …

  ‘You’re no oil painting yourself,’ said Freda, cutting her short. She was grateful to Patrick. After all, the lavatory was mended, even if every time the chain was pulled the hook tore plaster from the ceiling. Brenda carried her coffee to the bench and lifted bottles whenever they were needed.

  ‘Leave off,’ cried Freda sharply. ‘I’m not an invalid.’

  Stanley telephoned later in the week. Rossi called Brenda into the office, Freda marching behind with a slender bottle of Spumanti still in her hand, and he fled from his desk like a rabbit and busied himself at the brandy shelves.

  ‘I can’t come down, Brenda,’ said Stanley. ‘I can’t leave the hens.’

  ‘I don’t want to see you,’ mouthed Freda.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Brenda. ‘I don’t think there’s much point.’ She was already flattening her vowels to accommodate him.

  ‘What’s that you say, Brenda?’ he shouted at the end of the wire.

  ‘There’s no point you coming down.’

  ‘I can’t come down, Brenda – not with mother in hospital. They’re sending her home in a day or two, Brenda.’ He would keep naming her, as if there was some confusion in his mind as to who she was.

  ‘What’s he say?’ asked Freda, tweaking her severely on the arm, and she said: ‘They’ve put his mother in hospital.’

  ‘Who’s there, Brenda?’ he said. ‘Who’s that with you, Brenda?’

  ‘No one. What’s the weather like your end?’

  ‘You what, Brenda?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to rush now.’

  She replaced the receiver quickly and tried not to think about him. She knew he would continue to stand by the windowsill for several seconds, calling her name down the dead wire, scratching his head when he finally realised she was no longer there. He would go out into the yard, the doves with pouting breasts asleep on the guttering of the barn roof, and stand with mackintosh bunched about his waist and relieve himself on the nettles by the ruined pig-sty. At the splattering of water on the leaves, the doves would rise with a flutter of wings and scatter the bantam hens pecking in the dirt.

  ‘You’re not firm enough with him,’ reprimanded Freda. ‘You’re too soft with him.’

  ‘I was always waiting for him to come in or waiting for him to go out,’ said Brenda, as if to excuse herself. She was curious to know why Freda had defended Patrick earlier in the day. ‘You never used to have a good word to say about him,’ she reminded.

  ‘I don’t see the point,’ Freda informed her, ‘of denigrating anyone for the way they look. Certainly he’s not of your class – that’s one thing. But the state of his finger nails has nothing to do with it.’

  She looked at Brenda so contemptuously, at the neglected growth of hair and the parched texture of her skin, that Brenda brought her hand to her mouth to cover the front tooth which was chipped since childhood.

  Nevertheless Freda sought out Patrick before she left the factory and told him to leave Brenda alone.

  ‘There are things,’ she said, finding him in the loading bay, the chill air empurpling his face, ‘that you can’t know about. Far be it from me to tell anybody how to live their life, but—’ and she waggled a rigid finger at him, ‘you should look for someone of your own age.’

  ‘I like her,’ he said stubbornly, ignoring his fellow workers shifting crates of wine on to a lorry. ‘I’d swing for her, that I would.’

  ‘I hope,’ said Freda, bewildered by his headstrong declaration, ‘it won’t come to that.’ And she turned on her heel and went to collect Brenda who was in the washroom rinsing out the sponges for the morning.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Whatever did you do to that Patrick?’

  ‘I only let him mend the lavatory,’ exclaimed Brenda.

  She looked so plain and dowdy in her shabby coat and worn shoes that Freda smiled. It was ridiculous to think of her as a femme fatale. Neither Rossi nor Patrick would be described as the catch of the year – unlike Vittorio with his noble birth, his beautiful moustaches and his expressive brown eyes. In only two days time, on Sunday – for Mr Paganotti was too stingy to allow them a day off work – they would go on the Outing and picnic together under the trees, discussing where he might take her for dinner. She would tell him how depressed she had been, how lonely. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, her face appeared fragile and tinged with silver. She felt the beginnings of restoration.

  That night Freda slept more peacefully. At dawn she was awakened by the sound of rain pattering thickly upon the roof. The noise increased in volume and she sat up to look out of the window, the hem of the white
sheet sliding to the folds of her belly, and saw a troop of horsemen flowing along the river of the street. Drowsily she admired, as if in a dream, the elegant khaki riders, the swelling calves of their legs bound in puttees, the rows of mustard-coloured hats bobbing up and down as they cantered toward the crossroads. She didn’t move, she didn’t blink an eyelid – afterwards she thought she might have cried ‘Hurrah’ or tossed a rose from the balcony – and they were gone, the stylish riders and the taffetabrown horses beating a tattoo on the crest of the road.

  It was all going to come true – she knew that now: the journey by land and sea, the uniformed men, the white dress with flowers at the waist. Perhaps they would live in a flat in Hampstead and have drink on the sideboard, meat in the fridge and Mr Paganotti to dinner once a month. After they were married she and Vittorio would visit the house-proud aunt in Newcastle and litter the hall-way with their pig-skin luggage. She would drop her engagement ring into the glass bowl on the dresser for fear she tore the skin of his back when she held him in her arms. She would smoke in bed and spill talcum powder upon the rug. What disorder she could create with her paper hankies, the cellophane wrappings of her cigarette packets, the pointilistic pieces of confetti still trapped within her garments! Auntie would have to lump it. In the summer, staying at his parents’ castle outside Bologna, she would open the shutters in the morning to let in the sun and shield her eyes from the blue surge of the sea sparkling beyond the dusty line of the olive trees that his father owned. Brenda could come too, if his mother had no objection – and why should she, surrounded by her grandchildren, her lovely bouncing bambinos gurgling beneath the lemon trees?

  ‘You do look well,’ said Brenda, propped up on the pillows, a plate of porridge balanced on her stomach.

  ‘I am well,’ cried Freda, already dressed, sweeping about the room with the transistor radio held to her ear.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Maria about the soldiers on horseback.

  ‘You were right,’ she said, clasping Maria’s hands in her own and dancing her round the cardboard boxes.

  The sky was so overcast it was almost dark. The little naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling glowed like small red stars. Outside the row of windows the rain fell heavily and began to stain the concrete wall of the chip-shop.

  Brenda thought Freda must have been dreaming. She hadn’t heard anything, and what was a troop of horsemen doing at that hour of the morning in the middle of the city?

  ‘Exercising the animals,’ explained Freda jubilantly, ‘before the traffic got going.’

  ‘But we’ve never seen them before.’

  ‘We’ve never been awake at that time.’

  ‘I have,’ said Brenda gloomily, thinking of the times she had watched the first streaks of the dawn appearing above the rooftops of the grey houses.

  Now that Sunday was so near, Maria had begun to wonder what she might wear on the Outing. She had found a frock in Mr Paganotti’s boxes. She pulled it out from under the bench and draped it across her portly body, waiting for Freda’s opinion. It was made of silk, with a pattern of miniature daisies on a band round the hem of the skirt.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything of your own?’ asked Freda dubiously, looking at the plunging neckline and the absence of sleeves. ‘It’s winter, you know.’

  ‘Certainly I have nothing,’ Maria said, and she whirled about with the hem of daisies flaring above the folds of her grey football socks, whooping with laughter and growing red in the face at her exhibitionism.

  ‘I think it’s very nice,’ said Brenda.

  ‘By all means wear it,’ cried Freda, too happy to bring Maria down. And she looked about for Vittorio, anxious for him to know that her period of mourning was over. After all, she knew now that there was something in store for them both. The premonition of it was becoming stronger by the moment. She felt giddy at the thought of the future, and she longed to experience that shudder of excitement the sight of him might bring. She plunged down the steps into the basement, her large buttocks quivering in the brown trousers she had made herself, searching about among the barrels and the yellow containers, and calling his name for the pleasure it gave her. He wasn’t there.

  ‘He’s in the office,’ said Brenda, when she returned disconcerted to her bench. ‘Him and Rossi.’

  There were clients tasting the wine when she entered. A middle-aged woman dressed in black and a young girl in a grey coat with a velvet collar.

  ‘Oh,’ said Freda, ‘I am sorry. I thought Vittorio was alone.’ She looked at him tenderly, flashing messages with her eyes, and he hung his head as if suddenly shy in her presence. ‘I wonder if I might use the telephone – to confirm the van booking for the Outing.’

  She was all sweetness and light, her gestures theatrical and charming, her blue eyes wide with candour. The girl in the grey coat bent her head and studied the kid gloves on her lap.

  ‘Later,’ said Rossi. ‘I am busy just now.’

  He spread his fingers expressively and spoke in Italian to the middle-aged woman, who was staring at Freda with polite bleak eyes.

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Freda, ‘how stupid of me. Do forgive me.’

  It was fortunate for Rossi that she was in such a good mood. She seemed not to notice how eager he was to be rid of her. She lingered and postured, leaning against the shelves packed with pretty coloured labels. Finally she asked Vittorio if she might have a word in private. He went unwillingly to stand in the open doorway, and she laid her hand on his sleeve and said she was able to have dinner with him – that very evening if he wished. She smiled at him.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he said rapidly, trying to cover the sound of her voice by the breadth of his shoulders. ‘I have made other arrangements.’ And in spite of himself he gave a brief nervous glance over his shoulder at the group sitting about Rossi’s desk sipping their wine in silence.

  Freda made a gesture as if to touch his cheek, and he stepped backwards.

  ‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘till Sunday, then. Tomorrow I will be preparing food for the picnic and washing my hair. I do want to look my best.’

  As tall as he, she fanned his face with her breath and ruffled the fine hairs of his drooping moustaches. She fought to keep calm at this unexpected set-back. It hurt that he wasn’t in the same frame of mind as herself. She was helped, however, by the sound of her heart palpitating in her breast, for all the world like the beat of horses’ hooves.

  ‘It is Madame Rossi,’ informed Maria, when told of the women in the office, ‘and her niece from Casalecchio di Reno.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ murmured Freda, and she fixed her eyes on the office window and waited for the visitors to depart.

  After a time a row of faces appeared at the glass and stared out at the factory floor, watching the workers at their labours. Deliberately Freda touched her lips with the tips of her fingers and blew Vittorio a kiss.

  ‘You are awful,’ complained Brenda. ‘Rossi must be wetting himself, with his wife watching everything.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Freda. ‘It should be obvious that Vittorio and I are close.’

  There was an air of festivity in the factory. The men drank copiously from the barrel of wine and fooled with the women. They had never known Freda so animated.

  At two o’clock, Salvatore, splendid in golfing shoes and a muffler of green silk, embraced Maria on her beer crate and received a blow on the cheek.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ she wailed, drumming her heels on the planking. ‘They are mad for the Outing.’

  She scrubbed at her face violently with her fist, to be rid of the moist imprint of his mouth. Salvatore, half-understanding her words, nodded eagerly at Freda and rolled his eyes with mock excitement.

  Freda waited in vain for Vittorio to come and speak to her. She clung to the belief that she must not let go of him, that he was destined to be her true love, that he knew it too, only he had not begun to accept it. And yet, remembering the way he had recoiled from her outside the office door, she could no
t help but wonder. Was it the same for him? She shivered with the cold and drooped at the bench. She was dreaming now, rather than thinking clearly. She wandered among the ginestra bushes and the olive trees, and the cool white rooms of the flat in Hampstead. She rose in a giant jet above the toy blocks of the airport buildings and began her long journey over land and sea. Now and then she was aware of the dismal factory, the hum of machinery in her ears, the tenderly smiling face of the Virgin Mary high on the green-painted wall. Had she been alone she would have swung her head and crooned her love aloud.

  Finally she was empty of images: no more pictures left in her head. There remained only an insatiable thirst for all the joy and glory of the good times to come, the life she was soon to know.

  5

  Mercifully it was not raining. There was even a faint gleam of wintry sunlight. Brenda wore a black woollen dress, black stockings and green court shoes. Freda had hidden the tweed coat the night before; she insisted she borrow her purple cloak. Brenda didn’t want to wear the cloak, but neither did she wish to annoy Freda. Protesting that it was too long, she draped it about her shoul-ders and looked down at the green shoes and an inch of stocking. Freda, in a mauve trouser suit, a sheepskin coat gaily worked in blue thread down the front, and a lilac scarf casually knotted at the throat, wrapped two cooked chickens in silver foil and placed them in the basket. There was a tablecloth embroidered in one corner with pink petals, a lettuce in a polythene bag, some French bread and two pounds of apples. In a small jar, previously containing cocktail onions, she had poured a mixture of oil and lemon and crushed garlic.

  Having packed everything, she looked in her handbag and was dismayed to find she only had five cigar ettes. She asked Brenda to lend her some money.