The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [23]
‘I must be ill,’ she thought, ‘bothering about such trifles.’
She went to the theatrical pub to be among people who understood, and was unwise enough to tell her version of Mrs Haddon on the stairs. She performed modestly and with seriousness, rolling a cigarette nervously between finger and thumb, and was distressed at the wild hoots of mirth that interrupted her narrative. She joined in the laughter – tears squeezed from the crinkled corners of her eyes – but she was hollow inside.
Brenda tried to expiate the trouble she had caused. She said how well Freda looked, how revolting Patrick appeared in his overalls – that hair, those badly bitten nails …
‘You’re no oil painting yourself,’ said Freda, cutting her short. She was grateful to Patrick. After all, the lavatory was mended, even if every time the chain was pulled the hook tore plaster from the ceiling. Brenda carried her coffee to the bench and lifted bottles whenever they were needed.
‘Leave off,’ cried Freda sharply. ‘I’m not an invalid.’
Stanley telephoned later in the week. Rossi called Brenda into the office, Freda marching behind with a slender bottle of Spumanti still in her hand, and he fled from his desk like a rabbit and busied himself at the brandy shelves.
‘I can’t come down, Brenda,’ said Stanley. ‘I can’t leave the hens.’
‘I don’t want to see you,’ mouthed Freda.
‘That’s all right,’ said Brenda. ‘I don’t think there’s much point.’ She was already flattening her vowels to accommodate him.
‘What’s that you say, Brenda?’ he shouted at the end of the wire.
‘There’s no point you coming down.’
‘I can’t come down, Brenda – not with mother in hospital. They’re sending her home in a day or two, Brenda.’ He would keep naming her, as if there was some confusion in his mind as to who she was.
‘What’s he say?’ asked Freda, tweaking her severely on the arm, and she said: ‘They’ve put his mother in hospital.’
‘Who’s there, Brenda?’ he said. ‘Who’s that with you, Brenda?’
‘No one. What’s the weather like your end?’
‘You what, Brenda?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to rush now.’
She replaced the receiver quickly and tried not to think about him. She knew he would continue to stand by the windowsill for several seconds, calling her name down the dead wire, scratching his head when he finally realised she was no longer there. He would go out into the yard, the doves with pouting breasts asleep on the guttering of the barn roof, and stand with mackintosh bunched about his waist and relieve himself on the nettles by the ruined pig-sty. At the splattering of water on the leaves, the doves would rise with a flutter of wings and scatter the bantam hens pecking in the dirt.
‘You’re not firm enough with him,’ reprimanded Freda. ‘You’re too soft with him.’
‘I was always waiting for him to come in or waiting for him to go out,’ said Brenda, as if to excuse herself. She was curious to know why Freda had defended Patrick earlier in the day. ‘You never used to have a good word to say about him,’ she reminded.
‘I don’t see the point,’ Freda informed her, ‘of denigrating anyone for the way they look. Certainly he’s not of your class – that’s one thing. But the state of his finger nails has nothing to do with it.’
She looked at Brenda so contemptuously, at the neglected growth of hair and the parched texture of her skin, that Brenda brought her hand to her mouth to cover the front tooth which was chipped since childhood.
Nevertheless Freda sought out Patrick before she left the factory and told him to leave Brenda alone.
‘There are things,’ she said, finding him in the loading bay, the chill air empurpling his face, ‘that you can’t know about. Far be it from me to tell anybody how to live their life, but—’ and she waggled a rigid finger at him, ‘you should look for someone of your own age.’
‘I like her,’ he said stubbornly, ignoring his fellow workers