‘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.’
‘There is plenty of time,’ protested Rossi. ‘If they don’t come in a little moment, we go.’
Freda kept her temper with difficulty. She pointed out that she hadn’t intended to come here in the first place. She had planned to go to Hertfordshire. However, now they were here she was going to look at the castle.
With some spirit Rossi argued that it wasn’t his fault if the plans had gone wrong. ‘We take our chances,’ he said mysteriously.
Vittorio decided to take Freda’s part. He walked to the car and tossed the football at Rossi.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
How American he is, thought Freda, with his dashing moustaches and his baseball-type boots. The red laces trailed like ribbons in the grass.
She fitted herself into the back seat and allowed Vittorio to manoeuvre the basket through the door.
‘We are going?’ asked Aldo Gamberini, his hat securely anchored to his head by means of a striped muffler tied under his chin. ‘So soon?’
Rossi held the football to his chest. His mouth quivered. ‘I want to play the games,’ he said sulkily.
‘Brenda,’ shouted Freda. ‘Hurry up.’
They positioned themselves in the car.
‘There are little deer,’ murmured Rossi forlornly. ‘I think you like the little deer?’
‘I will later,’ assured Brenda. ‘Honestly, Rossi, I do want to see the little deer.’
They drove out of the Park and back along the road to the flowered roundabout.
Freda thought the castle was wonderful. It towered above the main street, its beige walls curving outwards, the green grass studded with spotlights. She was reminded of a play about a Spanish family of noble birth that she had been in years before. She would have liked to have mentioned it but she had only understudied a rather minor part.
‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ she breathed. ‘It’s so old.’
She couldn’t wait to get out of the car and look at the dungeons. If she couldn’t walk through the perfumed gardens with Vittorio, then maybe here where Henry VIII had danced with Anne Boleyn she could find an equally lyrical setting for the beginning of their romance. There were bound to be dark places and iron grills, worn steps leading to cramped stone towers overlooking the countryside. There, above the Thames valley and the blue swell of the Chiltern Hills, he would, looking down at the small fields laid in squares and the ribbon of hedges, see in perspective how puny was the world and how big their love for each other. Accordingly she bustled out of the Cortina and lingered only momentarily outside the tobacco-scented doorway of a sweet-shop. Brenda insisted on writing a note in case the occupants of the mini came upon the deserted car and searched for them.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘we have got the wine. I’ll never be able to look them in the face again if they don’t find us.’
‘You never look anybody in the face as it is,’ said Freda; and she drummed her fingers on the bonnet of the car, as Brenda drew an arrow on the back of an envelope, pointing towards the castle, and wrote: ‘This way. We have just left.’ She signed it ‘Mrs Brenda.’
‘You’re mad,’ Freda told her. ‘You’ve got terrible handwriting.’
All the same, Brenda felt more restful in her mind now that she had left some sign. She stood at various angles from the bumper of the Cortina to make sure her arrow was accurate in its direction.
Freda began to toil up the steep cobbled rise to the main gate, pushed from behind by Aldo and Vittorio.
‘We are happy, yes?’ said Rossi, and he attempted to put an arm about Brenda’s waist. At that moment Aldo chose to turn and see if they were following, and Rossi jumped away, anxious not to seem too intimate.
‘He is my cousin.’
‘He’s a nice man,’ said Brenda.
‘He is very inquisitive.’
‘Does he suffer from ear-ache?’ she asked, looking at Aldo with the scarf wrapped about his head.
‘It is a pity,’ Rossi said, panting from the climb, ‘that he fit in my car.’ He cheered up and dug her in the ribs. ‘Later,’ he promised, winking at her encouragingly, and she did her best to look enthusiastic. If his happiness depended on her, who was she to offend him? He wanted his Outing, his day of escape. If the missing mini caught up with them, disgorging its quota of fellow-countrymen, then she would not be to blame if he was thwarted. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she thought. ‘I can’t be expected to take any blame.’
‘I’ve told you about that,’ reminded Freda, turning to look at her.
‘You shouldn’t talk to yourself. It looks daft.’
Above them, carved on the gateway, mingling with the arms of Henry VIII, the Tudor rose blossomed in stone.
‘Oh I wish,’ cried Freda, ‘we had a camera.’
She tripped forwards in her purple trousers and gazed entranced at the toy soldier in his red tunic and rippling busby, motionless outside the guardhouse.
Salvatore spotted the Cortina with the envelope trapped on its windscreen at mid-day. There was a consultation as to what the arrow meant. Salvatore and his three passengers thought it peculiar that Rossi and the Englishwomen had entered the fortress, but the fifth occupant of the mini, not being Italian, said he understood. He borrowed a pencil from a traffic warden and wrote in English: ‘We have gone that way too,’ and signed it ‘Patrick’.
Murmuring, the four workmen followed him up the hill and stood bewildered on the parade ground. Set at the end of the courtyard was a kiosk, and there was a thin stream of visitors buying tickets. On a pole above the State Apartments, a yellow flag, stretched stiff as a board, pasted itself to the sky. The soberly dressed men, searching for the lost remnants of their party, wandered beneath arches and descended steps. The wind rose in fury and blew them, jackets flapping, along a stone terrace above a garden. Wearily they climbed back to the parade ground and, urged on by Patrick, joined the queue at the kiosk and paid 15p each to the attendant. Entering the doorway of a chapel, they removed their hats and shuffled past the alabaster font. They stared at the carved choir-stalls and the arched roof hung with flags, embroidered with strange beasts and symbols, heavy with tassels of gold. There were no candles burning, no crucifix, no saints bleeding and bedecked with jewels in the shadowy niches of the walls.
Bending their heads, they watched furtively the feet of Patrick as he trod the tiled floor.
Freda had enquired and been told that the dungeons had all been sealed off.
‘Off?’ she repeated, outraged. ‘Why?’
Rossi led her away, agreeing with her that it was preposterous.
‘These things,’ he said, ‘how do we know why? What is the purpose?’
And he spread his hands and looked at her with such intensity of feeling that she was quite impressed by him.
He dreaded lest she fight physically with the custodian of the castle and have them ejected. Somewhere, beyond the main portion of the town, stood the family home of Mr Paganotti, set in gardens fragrant with falling leaves and dying roses. From every parapet Rossi leaned and searched the landscape for some sign of Mr Paganotti’s existence. Once he had been promised he would be taken to the mansion – he had come to work in his best suit – but something had occurred to postpone his visit. He had waited in the outer office for Mr Paganotti to appear, until the secretary had come
out shrugging her arms in her modish coat, and told him that Mr Paganotti had already gone. He did not allow himself to think that Mr Paganotti had forgotten – that was not possible. It was simply that he had so many responsibilities, so many cares – he had been summoned away with no time to explain. He had rehearsed how he would behave the following day when Mr Paganotti sought him out and apologised. He would raise his hand like a drawbridge and tell him no explanation was needed. Between men of business, excuses were unnecessary. He waited a long time at his desk, his hand flat against his breast, but even on the Friday when he went to receive his wages Mr Paganotti said nothing.
Freda was irritated when Vittorio corrected every item of information she gave him about the history of the castle. She understood, but she hated him for it. He was like her in temperament, conscious that he was mortal and determined to have the last word. She fell silent and was genuinely upset that the State Apartments were closed.
‘It’s obvious,’ said Brenda. ‘If the flag’s flying, she’s here.’
A group of Americans, pork-pie hats jammed securely on their cropped heads, pulled out identical cameras from leather containers, and focussed as one man on the statue of King Charles on his horse.
‘She’s in London,’ said Freda.
‘No here,’ Vittorio said firmly, striding ahead of her like some monk of ancient times, the hood of his duffel coat about his head.
‘If she wasn’t here,’ said Brenda persistently, ‘we could look round her rooms and things. That’s why it’s closed.’
‘Shut up,’ Freda said. She didn’t see it made any difference whether the Queen was in or out. Nobody actually saw her rooms. It stood to reason that State Apartments were separate. It wasn’t as if they were going to catch her doing a bit of dusting.
The Gallery was closed too and the Dolls’ House. ‘Every bloody thing is closed,’ she thought. ‘I might as well give up.’ The antiquity of her surroundings began to have a depressing effect upon her. What did it matter if Henry VIII had fallen in love all those times and lusted and eaten enormous meals? He was dead now and mouldered. She was further annoyed that she had to let Vittorio pay 15p for her to go into the Chapel. It was degrading, and it made it more difficult to ask him to pay for her ciggies. She stared gloomily at the carved gargoyles above the doorway, the swan and the hart and the dragon, and followed him inside.
The Bottle Factory Outing Page 8