The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [21]
Two plain-clothed men and two in uniform came pounding up the hall. They asked a lot of questions about the old lady’s relationship to Brenda and how she had come to be in possession of the pistol. Mrs Haddon said she only wanted to frighten Brenda to punish her for leaving Stanley and that she’d saved up her pension for three weeks to buy the weapon. She’d told the lady in the shop it was for her grandson and the lady had been very helpful. She gave her a card to go with it. She brought out of her handbag a paper target in red and black to show them.
They looked at it in silence.
After a time the uniformed policemen took her outside to the car, and the chief inspector and a sergeant made them all re-enact the drama on the stairs. Brenda felt silly holding out the book to the inspector, who was pretending to be Stanley’s mother. She had to hit him quite hard on the chest and bite her lip in case she smiled. They wanted to know how they could contact Stanley and where he would be at this moment.
‘At the Little Legion,’ she said. ‘But you better not ring there. He wouldn’t like it.’
Freda shouted interferingly: ‘Good God, he ought to be told. It was a gun she carried, you know, not a bunch of flowers.’
‘It wasn’t a gun,’ muttered Brenda, ‘it was an air pistol,’ though she didn’t know if it made any difference.
Freda told the sergeant that Brenda was separated from her husband. ‘He gave her a very rough time in my opinion.’
‘Quite so,’ said the sergeant, looking at her and at Patrick still clad in the blue dressing-gown.
There was a knock at the door. The two young nurses from the ground floor, little white caps pinned to the frizzed nests of their hair, wanted to know if they could be of assistance.
‘It’s quite all right,’ Freda told them frostily. ‘It’s just a small family party.’ And down clumped the two girls in their crackling aprons and sensible shoes, desperate at being excluded from the excitement.
The police inspector asked Brenda finally if she wanted to make a charge.
‘Definitely we do,’ asserted Freda, and Brenda shook her head and said No, she didn’t want to, thank you. Whatever would her mother say if she did and it got into the papers?
Freda didn’t even bother to show Vittorio to the front door. She was tired now and grumpy. ‘Get to bed,’ she ordered Brenda, and she jumped between the sheets still in her negligée.
Brenda lay in the darkness unprotected by the bolster and the row of books. She had tried to re-erect the barrier, but Freda cursed and told her to bloody well stop messing about.
‘He didn’t make it,’ said Freda, mouth crushed against the pillow. ‘He couldn’t get into the loo.’
‘Ah, well—’ began Brenda, and thought better of it.
‘I wonder if those were Maria’s men in uniform?’ mused Freda.
‘What men?’
‘You know – Maria’s men – in my cup.’
‘They weren’t on horseback.’
‘No,’ said Freda. ‘You’re right. What the hell was that Patrick doing running round the house dressed like that?’
‘He was just passing and I didn’t like to say I was going out.’
‘You’re barmy. What you see in him I don’t know.’
‘I don’t see anything,’ protested Brenda. ‘He was just mending the toilet.’
‘Half-naked?’ said Freda. ‘You must be mad.’
When she closed her eyes the bed whirled round and round. She had to force herself to concentrate on the outline of the window pane.
Brenda said: ‘I don’t think she meant any harm. She was just trying it on.’
‘You need help,’ murmured Freda. ‘You’re a victim. I’ve told you before.’ In the light of the street lamp the room was glamorous and bathed in silver. The wooden foot of the bed glowed like genuine mahogany. ‘Isn’t it nice?’ she said.
‘Stanley’s mother must be furious she missed me. She always hated being thwarted.’
Brenda wore a small gratified smile. She understood perfectly why Mrs Haddon had wanted to do