‘Poor thing,’ she said, gazing with horror at the trail of slime oozing from its shell.
‘It is the nature,’ he assured her.
Impatiently he took her hand so that the leaf dropped to the undergrowth.
Anger revived, she asked snappily: ‘What do you want?’
‘We go for a little walk, yes?’
‘No we won’t.’
‘We go now – come.’ And he darted away as if he was a dog anticipating a flung stick and returned immediately. ‘You come for a little walk?’
‘I am not keen on a little walk.’
‘A little walk is good. We see the little deer.’
‘No.’ She began to blush. ‘I won’t.’
He stared at her as if she was not well, eyes round with concern.
‘Freda wouldn’t like it.’
‘Ah,’ he said expressively, relieved that the problem was so simple. ‘But she is not looking.’
‘She may not seem to be, but she is.’
He looked at the mound of the blonde woman lying like a ripe plum on her coat of wool. ‘She is having a little sleep.’
Brenda felt threatened. She had kept her eyes fixed on his in hopes of subduing the wild beast in him. Now, as he still advanced, she wavered. Her glance shifted to the trees beyond. She thought of the shadowy hollow to which he would lead her, the bugs in the grass, the spiders walking across her hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t push me about.’ Almost as soon as she had uttered the words she was sorry for them. She wouldn’t like anybody to feel she was nasty. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘I am thinking of you too. You see Freda said she would tell Mr Paganotti if you ever tried to interfere with me again. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
He couldn’t deny it. Expressions of misery and doubt wrinkled his flushed face. ‘She would tell things to Mr Paganotti?’
‘Yes, she would – I mean, if she sees us going off, she would tell.’
‘She would not dare—’
‘Freda? She’d dare to do anything. She doesn’t give a fig for Mr Paganotti.’
She had stabbed him twice, put in the knife and twisted it. The colour drained from his cheeks.
‘It is impossible,’ he said.
But she did not wait to hear any more. The longer she stayed with him the more likely was it that she would find herself in another awkward situation. She turned her back on him and called over her shoulder: ‘We should go back to the others. Freda will think there’s something funny going on.’
The men had resumed the game of football under the captainship of Vittorio. His beautiful velvet trousers were crumpled now, his backside grey with dust from the ride on the horse. Brenda weaved her way between the sporting players and flopped down on the grass beside Freda. She was smiling.
‘I did it,’ she said.
‘You what?’
‘I told Rossi where to get off.’
Freda’s eyes snapped open. ‘Good for you. What did you say?’
‘I said you were going to tell Mr Paganotti.’
‘Whatever did you say that for? Why did you involve me, you fool?’
‘But you said you’d tell Mr Paganotti. You said if ever—’
‘You didn’t have to tell him I would. You should bloody well have said you were going to.’
All the joy went out of Brenda’s victory. She hugged her knees and despaired of doing the right thing.
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Why the hell should I be pleased? It’s nothing to do with me what you get up to with Rossi.’
You never said that before,’ protested Brenda. ‘If you hadn’t been so nasty to Patrick he would have protected me.’
‘Me – nasty to Patrick? That lout tried to hit me.’ Freda was outraged at the recollection. She sat upright and combed her hair with agitated fingers.
‘He never. You hit him with the French loaf.’
‘Christ,’ bellowed Freda. She jumped to her feet, snatching up her coat and waving it wildly in the air. A shower of grass and the gnawed bone of chicken slid to the ground. ‘He attacked me, he did – in the Chapel, he tried to punch me on the jaw.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ whispered Brenda, though she did. She couldn’t think what Freda had done to make the Irishman so violent. ‘What did he say?’
Freda was staring across the field. Rossi and Vittorio, beyond the surging line of workers, seemed to be having an argument. Like dogs about to leap snarling into combat they padded in a small circle around each other. Vittorio’s voice carried, harsh with anger, on the still air.
‘What did he say when he tried to hit you?’ persisted Brenda.
‘Get off,’ Freda said. ‘What’s it about? What are they saying?’
‘It’s foreign,’ said Brenda sulkily.
Rossi had boldly asked Vittorio to take Mrs Freda into the woods. Though Vittorio was nephew to his beloved Mr Paganotti he would surely understand. Vittorio was appalled at the suggestion. His impending betrothal to Rossi’s niece made such a thing out of the question: he was not a boy burning with lust, he was a man of honour. Rossi said nervously he was in bad trouble with Mrs Freda, and if she too could be disgraced then she would not be able to go to Mr Paganotti and report him for his conduct towards Mrs Brenda. Vittorio retorted that if Rossi had behaved indiscreetly with Mrs Brenda then he must take his punishment. He had dishonoured his family by his demeanour. He could not expect that others should lower themselves in order to protect him. Besides, he pointed out, the English women were different. No matter how many times he took Mrs Freda into the woods she would not feel disgraced, she would be flattered. She would run wantonly from under the trees and tell the whole of Windsor Park how beautifully she had been dishonoured.
Though Vittorio was nephew to Mr Paganotti, Rossi was bold enough to lose his temper and speak his mind. He shouted and shook his fists in the air.
The workers turned their faces to the sky, the ground, the flying ball, and missed nothing. Gino, the brother of old Luigi, smote his forehead and murmured his disapproval.
‘Whatever’s going on?’ fretted Freda. Her plump cheeks, childish with dimples and tendrils of disordered hair, quivered as she tried to understand what the two men shouted.
‘Did Patrick do that to you?’ asked Brenda, looking at the graze on Freda’s face.
But she wouldn’t reply. She fidgeted with the sleeves of her coat and longed to join in the battle.
‘It’s probably something to do with us,’ said Brenda unwisely. ‘Maybe he’s telling Vittorio about you going to Mr Paganotti.’
‘You’re a bloody menace,’ hissed Freda, convinced that Brenda was right. ‘Why can’t you stand on your own two feet without dragging me into it?’
‘But you interfere all the time. You wouldn’t let that lady borrow our room to play her trumpet in … You wouldn’t let me talk to Stanley on the phone.’
‘What lady?’ asked Freda, bewildered.
‘If you hadn’t got rid of Patrick he would have stopped Rossi getting at me, and I wouldn’t have had to mention Mr Paganotti.’
‘Your teeth,’ said Freda, ‘are terribly yellow. You should try cleaning them some time.’
The workers, caught between two sets of protagonists, played all the more noisily. They wore themselves out kicking and shouting and running to the limits of the pitch.
Brenda saw Vittorio take hold of Rossi’s hand. They’re making friends, she thought, and she watched curiously as Rossi clutched his wrist. He seemed to be removing something from his arm.
After a time Vittorio stalked away from Rossi and left him alone at the fence.
‘What’s going on?’ called Freda. ‘What was that all about?’
He ignored her completely, running like a bull at the dribbling ball and giving it a tremendous kick in the air. It soared away and hit the branches of an oak tree and fell in a shower of leaves to the grass.
‘You’ll get nowhere talking
to him like that,’ said Brenda. ‘He can’t stand domineering women. You frighten him off.’
‘How the hell would you know?’ Pink with contempt, Freda put her hands on her hips and erupted into scornful laughter. ‘You wouldn’t know a real man if you saw one. Rossi and that bloody Irish van-driver—’
‘Stanley was a real man. Stanley wasn’t—’
‘Stanley?’ The way Freda pronounced his name conjured up visions of a monster with two heads. ‘You’re not claiming he was a real man? Dead drunk all the time and—’
‘Only some of the time,’ corrected Brenda, in spite of herself.
‘Good God! Any man that lets his mother run amok with a machine gun—’
‘Please,’ begged Brenda, ‘don’t shout.’
She didn’t want it to go on a moment longer. The hatred she felt frightened her; she tried at all costs to surpress it. As a child her mother had terrified her with moods of violence, had ranted and raved and thrown cups upon the tiled kitchen floor. ‘Come to Mummy,’ she would say when the pieces of crockery had been swept into the dustbin, holding her arms out to the shrinking Brenda as if nothing had happened. The depths of suffering Brenda experienced and the heights of elation when Mummy returned, with tinted hair combed and nose powdered, had caused her for years to feel confused.
‘Don’t you like me talking about your Stanley, then?’ said Freda. ‘Is your Stanley not to be talked about?’
Brenda said: ‘If you don’t stop shouting at me I’ll say something you won’t like.’
‘What?’ Freda was curious. She stared at Brenda and asked almost tenderly. ‘What do you want to say? Go on – get it out.’
Brenda had wanted to say that she looked like a long-distance lorry driver in the sheepskin coat, that she was a big fat cow, that she had wobbled like a jelly on the back of the funeral horse. She wanted to hurt her, watch her smooth round face crumple. But when it came to it, all she could murmur was, ‘Sometimes you’re very difficult to live with.’
‘That’s rich,’ retaliated Freda. ‘When I think what I have to put up with from you – you and your bloody bolster.’
‘Well, there’s things you do at night when you’re asleep.’
‘What things?’ Freda was stunned.
‘Well, you roll about and hold yourself –’
‘I what?’
‘You do. You cup your – your bosoms in your hands and jiggle them about.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You do – you do—’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that? I’m only dreaming. What’s wrong with me holding – me – me –’ but Freda couldn’t go on. It was too intimate to talk about. Why do I do that she thought. Is it cancer, or lust, or what? Absently she began to walk in the direction of the rhododendron bushes.
‘Where are you going?’ called Brenda helplessly. It wasn’t fair that Freda was walking away. It left her feeling wicked and burdened with remorse.
‘As far from you as possible. And don’t you dare try to follow.’
Freda’s voice was subdued. She lowered her head thoughtfully and trailed her coat in the grass.
‘They’ve been weeing all over those bushes,’ warned Brenda.
But Freda never looked back. She pushed her way through the thick stems, fragments of mauve jumper and yellow hair showing between the dusty leaves, and disappeared from sight.
Rossi, biting his cherry-coloured lip in agitation, hovered at the fence, hands dug in his pockets, suede shoes scuffing the turf. He ignored Brenda who, curled up in her purple cloak, with cheek laid against the grass, was festooned with ties and waistcoats thrown down by the perspiring workers and touched here and there by points of silver, as cigarette cases and sleeve garters of expanding metal flashed in the sunlight. Though drowsy, she kept her eyes fixed alternatively on the spiralling ball and the dense mass of the rhododendron bushes. Several times the ball thudded against the dark leaves and bounced backwards on to the pitch. Finally, after a spectacular kick by Salvatore, it hurtled over the bushes and dropped from view. Rossi, seizing his chance to re-enter the game, trotted forwards and thrust his way into the foliage. There was a beating of undergrowth and snapping of branches. A small bird fluttered upwards. Propelled by invisible hands, the ball was flung back to the waiting players. She won’t like that, thought Brenda. In the mood she’s in she may very well punch him on the nose. Her eyelids drooped, and she drifted into the beginnings of sleep. Now that Freda was no longer alone she felt she could rest. The cries of the footballers receded. She was having a long serious talk with Freda – it was so real that she felt the drag of the grass as her lips moved – the earth rustled and crawled in the cave of her ear. She half woke. Vittorio was again holding Rossi’s hand. He was attaching something to Rossi’s wrist … The clouds whirled above her head …
When she fully woke and became aware of her surroundings, it was to see Rossi stumbling past her towards the car. He looked sick, as if he had a stomach upset from all the wine and scraps of food. She watched him climb into the back seat of the Cortina and close the door. She thought maybe Freda had said dreadful things to him, had told him he was ugly and squat and that his trousers didn’t fit. She felt very tender. He was really a very nice little man. He loved Mr Paganotti. He worked from eight till six every day, and he’d never stolen anything.
She got up slowly and went to the car, ready to pretend she didn’t know he was there. When she came level with the window she thought for a moment he must have got straight out the other side. He wasn’t on the back seat. Puzzled, she stared over the roof of the car at the deserted field. On the edge of the horizon there was a machine with whirling blades stuttering across the grass. She watched it for several moments until a sound somewhat like the mewing of a cat came from the interior of the Cortina. It was Rossi, crouched on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms covering his head, moaning.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, opening the door. ‘What’s wrong, love? Whatever’s wrong?’
She had to pull his hands away from his face by force and was shocked at his expression of fear.
Scrambling into the car, she wrapped him within her arms, asking: ‘What did she say to you? You mustn’t take any notice. She never means what she says. She’s kind really – you mustn’t take it to heart.’
She examined his face anxiously for signs of assault. Though the skin under his watery eyes appeared bruised she couldn’t be sure it was inflicted by violence. He spoke in Italian, teeth chattering, pouring out a flood of words, and she laid her finger to his lips and said, ‘Don’t, little lamb,’ as if he were Stanley or someone she knew very well. ‘It’s no use,’ she told him, ‘getting yourself into a state. I’ve been through it myself – I know. Just try to forget what she said, try to block the words out.’ And again, but rather more self-consciously, she pressed his head to her purple cloak and rocked him back and forth. Oh God, she thought, whatever did she say?
After a time he became calmer. He leaned his head against the seat and asked her what hour it was.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and she took his wrist to examine his watch. The glass was shattered and the time stopped at twenty minutes past four.
‘Did she do that?’ asked Brenda, but he remained silent. Fine rain began to spatter the windows of the car.
‘Can’t you tell me what happened?’ she coaxed. ‘Did she mention Mr Paganotti?’
A spasm of distress flittered across his face. He struggled from the floor and half-knelt on the plastic seating, nose pressed to the streaked glass, staring out at the clump of bushes as if expecting to see Mr Paganotti in his camel-hair coat advancing through the rain.
‘Now that you’re more composed,’ said Brenda, ‘I’ll leave you alone, shall I? I’ll go and find Freda.’
‘No,’ he protested, gripping her by the arms, and she sank against him on the seat thinking he was his old self again and just as randy. She might even have submitted, if only to make him le
ss unhappy, though she did wonder how they could manage in the confined space of the car and what she would say if the men ran in to be out of the wet. I could pretend it was artificial respiration, she thought and looked over his shoulder to see how the game was progressing. Out on the grass, standing beside the wine barrels, was a figure in a peaked cap and mackintosh.
‘Patrick,’ she cried and she thrust Rossi from her and opened the door and ran over the field.
The workers crowded about Patrick, curious to know where he had been. He was smiling, one eye elongated at the edge by a jagged cut beaded with blood.
‘I don’t think there’s much left to eat,’ said Brenda. ‘Did you bring your sandwiches?’
She looked inside the shopping basket and disinterred pieces of bread and the cores of apples. She wished Freda would come and help. Even though she might be hostile to Patrick, she was awfully good at looking after people – in a jiffy she would have produced quite a substantial little meal.
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Patrick, looking towards the road.
Vittorio seemed uncomfortable in his presence. ‘You have been in the town?’ he asked, holding the ball to his red jumper and rubbing it up and down the flat curve of his stomach.
The Bottle Factory Outing Page 11