The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [19]
The way he sat there so obviously not knowing what she meant, his handsome face solemnly gazing at her, filled her with irritation. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you relax?’
When he smiled she noticed there was a gap between his front teeth. It gave him the look of an urchin and minimised the sensitive modelling of his face.
‘You’ve got gaps in your teeth,’ she cried, and fell heavily against him.
He did kiss her then. He put his arm round her, and they thrashed about on the double bed. She clung to him and fastened her teeth in the woolly shoulder of his polonecked jumper.
‘I have to go to the toilet,’ he said, struggling to his feet and striding to the door. She was left with a shred of wool stuck to her lip, alone on the rumpled bed. Another little drinky, she told herself, lurching sideways to the floor and going to the wardrobe to find the bottle of brandy. She didn’t want to be drunk. She didn’t like the way things were going; but going they were, and she unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a swig of the alcohol and wiped her mouth with her hand. The peach he had brought lay like a road casualty, squashed into the carpet.
When he returned she was aware that he was uncomfortable. He tried to make love to her but it didn’t work.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked aggressively, pulling his hair quite viciously as he lay stranded upon her.
‘The toilet,’ he said. ‘There are peoples in the toilet. I could not gain entrance.’
He was minus his shoes, but he still wore his trousers and his jumper that was a bit chewed at the collar.
Brenda could hear knocking at the front door, growing louder and louder. She watched Patrick screwing a hook into the ceiling above the cistern.
‘It’s a bit Heath Robinson, isn’t it?’ she ventured, as he wound a length of string from the ballcock up to the hook in the plaster and down again to the metal eyelet of the lavatory chain.
She unlocked the bathroom door and stood listening. Freda had stopped singing, and the nurses on the ground floor had let someone into the hall. There was a murmur of voices, then silence, until she heard the dialing of the telephone. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but quite soon the receiver was replaced and someone began to climb the stairs. Whoever it was halted outside Freda’s room and rapped repeatedly on the panel of the door. She won’t like that, thought Brenda, and then she heard the voice of her mother-in-law.
‘I have come to see Brenda.’
‘I’m afraid she is not at home.’
‘I’ll wait then.’
There was a pause before Freda answered, her voice charged with hostility. ‘You can’t wait. It’s not convenient.’
‘I shall wait none the less.’
Turning the curve of the stairs Brenda saw Mrs Haddon on the landing and Freda, hair dishevelled, straddling the threshold of the door.
‘It’s all right,’ called Brenda. ‘I’m here.’
‘I want my photographs,’ said Mrs Haddon, turning to face her.
‘I want those pictures of my Stanley as a child.’
Brenda hadn’t got them. She knew they were still in the kitchen drawer of the farmhouse, where they had always been, beneath the pre-war knitting patterns, but it was no use telling her so. Mrs Haddon was smiling firmly, nodding her head, the ends of her floral headscarf tied under the determined thrust of her chin.
‘Go downstairs,’ ordered Brenda. ‘I’ll get them.’
She frowned meaningfully at Freda who stepped aside, overwhelmed by her air of authority, and allowed her to enter the front room. Vittorio was standing at the foot of the bed, flushed and untidy. He wore a jumper that was unravelling at the neckline and he clutched his shoes to his breast. Brenda ignored him. She stooped to pick a book at random from the floor and went out again on to the landing. Mrs Haddon, a large plastic handbag at her feet, had obediently retreated down the stairs and was