The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [12]
Freda had planned it. She said she’d better stay at home for a few days seeing she was in mourning. They would think it callous otherwise, now that they knew of her loss. She bet anything old Piggynotty wouldn’t pay her for time off. It was sensible to take a sample of the firm’s products in lieu of wages.
‘I can’t do it,’ Brenda said desperately. ‘I’ll have a heart attack.’
‘You’ll have one if you don’t,’ warned Freda menacingly. What with the cost of living and the oil crisis they deserved something to make life more bearable. ‘Look at us,’ she said brutally, ‘the way we scrape along. Never a penny over at the end of the week. We can’t afford to breathe.’
‘We never could,’ said Brenda. ‘It’s never been any different.’
She bent down and adjusted a vest that had draped itself over the side of the shopping basket. It was perfectly clean. Freda had just thrown anything in, mainly clothing from Brenda’s drawer. The door opened behind her and the bog-roll man entered the washroom, his arms full of newspapers. He wasn’t supposed to go near the toilets until after four o’clock, when all the women had gone home. He was short and bulky with a little moustache thin as a pencil line along his lip.
‘I have come to place the toilet rolls,’ he said, looking at her in a bold way and lingering on the bolstered front of her tweed coat. ‘There are no rolls,’ he continued. ‘I have a shortage.’
‘This was awfully dirty,’ said Brenda, giving a last wipe with her sponge at the glistening bottle of brandy, and moving to the door. He put both arms out to capture her, hugging her to his green overalls. He smelt of wine and garlic and Jeyes fluid.
‘You want to give me a little kiss?’
‘No, not really,’ she said, smiling politely and shaking her head so that the bristles on his chin scraped her cheek.
Tearing herself free she stumbled from the washroom and ran back to her beer crate and her labels. She supposed it was the fumes from the wine that kept them all in a constant state of lust. It wasn’t as if she set out to be desirable.
Maria appeared from the direction of the loading bay, a beaker in her hand, walking very fast and taking tiny steps as if she was still in her mail bag.
‘You’re early,’ said Brenda. ‘You’ve another ten minutes till the hooter goes.’
‘I am to look in the box,’ Maria told her, waving her arm in the air and spilling Beaujolais on to the floor. ‘I am wanting shoes.’
In the corner, beneath the burglar alarm, were two large crates filled with old clothing of all descriptions. Mr Paganotti had a large number of elderly relatives living and dying in England, and hardly a month went by without his becoming the chief beneficiary of yet another will. A few choice articles of furniture he kept for his mansion near Windsor. Some things he sent to the salerooms; others he stored in the washroom, or upstairs on the first floor. The rest, the debris of a lifetime, he placed in boxes on the factory floor for the benefit of his workers. There were numerous pyjamas and nightgowns, golfing shoes in two tones, yellowing stays and white-flannel trousers and striped waistcoats mouldy with damp. There was a notice pinned to the wall, stating in Italian that Mr Paganotti was delighted if his employees found use for the contents – ‘Please put 2p in the tea-caddy placed for the purpose.’ Rossi emptied the caddy every two days in case Patrick the van driver was tempted to help himself to the proceeds.
Brenda was thirsty. She tried sipping Maria’s wine, but it gave her an ache at the back of her jaw.
‘Oooh,