The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [27]
There were wine glasses too and a bowl of real butter, and stuffed olives on a saucer. God knows where they had come from, but two napkins, starched and folded, lay beside the blue-rimmed plates. She went to the window and stared out at the flats and the deserted balconies. At the foot of a tree a cat stretched and sharpened its claws on the bark. It shouldn’t do that, she thought, and she heard Freda telling her not to hang about. ‘We don’t want your Patrick dying of a broken heart.’
It was five minutes to eight when they let themselves out into the street. The basket tipped on the steps and a loaf pitched to the ground. As Brenda carefully closed the front door, a huge gust of wind tore at the purple cloak and engulfed her in its folds.
‘Christ,’ said Freda, reaching for her hair, which was blowing in all directions, and retrieving the long thin bread from beside the dustbins.
At the corner of the empty street Brenda said: ‘Honestly, Freda, I don’t want to go. It’s going to be awful. Couldn’t I be ill or something?’
‘Be quiet,’ snapped Freda, pushing the basket ahead of her, head bent against the gale.
A hundred yards from the factory the wind dropped and the sun came out quite strongly. Maria, a brown paper bag blown by the wind wrapped round her swollen ankles, ran to meet them with outstretched hands.
‘There is a delay. We have no van. Amelio is not come.’
From beneath the hem of her working coat Mr Paganotti’s frock, edged with daisies, hung a full two inches.
‘My God,’ said Freda. ‘I might have known.’
She brushed past Maria and looked about for Vittorio. He was nowhere to be seen. The men stood in a row against the wall holding briefcases and carrier bags. They nodded and smiled, raising their wide-brimmed hats in greeting. It looked like a gathering of the Mafia – the street deserted save for the line of men dressed all in black, shoulders hunched, standing in front of the great doors of the factory, and the blonde girl taller than all of them, marching up and down with a face of thunder and a roll of French bread held like a sten gun under her arm.
Brenda tried to pretend she wasn’t there, that she was alone at the top of a mountain. Just then Rossi, who had been poised in the middle of the road staring in the direction of the High Street, turned and saw her. Exuberantly he ran to her, his hostility to Freda forgotten in the joy of the occasion. How he had longed for this moment, this day to begin, driving into the countryside unaccompanied by his wife, as if he was an Englishman.
‘Bongiorno, ladies,’ he cried, ‘Bongiorno.’ Rubbing his hands together he positively jumped up and down on the pavement.
‘What’s going on here?’ asked Freda officiously, folding her arms and looking at him with deep suspicion. ‘I ordered the van for seven-thirty. Amelio should have been here a quarter an hour ago.’ She had to bother about the details – the arrival of the van she had organised – even though she was sick to her stomach at the street empty of Vittorio.
Rossi shrugged his shoulders. ‘The traffic, maybe. It is only a little waiting.’
‘Traffic, you fool? At this hour?’ She leant viciously on the wing of his Ford Cortina, and the car lurched slightly. ‘I knew it,’ she said to Brenda, as if the others didn’t exist. ‘I knew it would be a shambles.’
‘It is only a little hitch,’ reasoned Brenda, smiling at the row of workers ashen-faced with the cold.
Round the corner of the street came first Vittorio, then Patrick.
‘There’s no sign of it at all,’ called Patrick, striding ahead in a belted raincoat and a cloth cap over his outstanding ears.
Brenda was surprised how like Stanley he appeared, in his mackintosh and his dark blue tie in a strangle knot at his throat.
Vittorio said something in Italian to Rossi, who shrugged again and consulted his watch. The men murmured and dug their hands deeper into their pockets. At the kerb stood the four small barrels of wine donated by Mr Paganotti. How old and worn, thought Brenda, are the faces