The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [18]
‘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 –