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By Root 496 0

of stairs and a window on the landing bordered with little panes of stained glass. Freda thought it was beautiful. When she chose, the washing on the line, the fragments of tree and brick, were tinted pink and gold. Brenda, avoiding the coloured squares, saw only a back yard grey with soot and a stunted rambling rose that never bloomed sprawled against the crumbling surface of the wall. She felt it was unwise to see things as other than they were. For this reason she disliked the lampshade that hung in the centre of the room: when the wind blew through the gaps in the large double windows, the shade twisted in the draught, the fringing of brown silk spun round and shadows ran across the floor. She kept thinking it was mice.

‘Get up,’ said Freda curtly. ‘I want to smooth the bed.’

It was awkward with all those books sticking up under the blankets. Freda was very houseproud, always polishing and dusting and dragging the hoover up and down the carpet, and she made some terrible dents in the paintwork of the skirting board. She only bothered in case Vittorio suddenly asked to accompany her home. He wasted some part of every afternoon chatting to her at her bench, all about his castle in Italy and his wealthy connections. She told him he had a chip on his shoulder, forever going on about money and position – she called him a ‘Bloody Eyetie’. They had quite violent arguments and a lot of the time he spoke to her harshly, but she took it as a good sign, as love was very close to hate. She’d made Brenda promise to go straight out and walk round the streets if ever he looked like coming home with them. Only yesterday he had given her three plums in a paper bag as a present, and she’d kept the stones and put them in her jewel case in the wardrobe.

She told Brenda to carry the milk bottles downstairs. In the hall she paused and ran back upstairs to check the sheets were fairly clean, just in case.

2

Brenda broke into a run as soon as they left the house. A stream of traffic going very fast caused her to halt at the intersection of Park Road and Hope Street.

‘Fool,’ shouted Freda, walking leisurely behind her.

‘We’re late,’ wailed Brenda. ‘We’ve not been on time yet.’

‘Foreigners,’ Freda said carefully, ‘understand about the artistic temperament.’ She walked on in television serials very occasionally, either as a barmaid or a lady agitator.

‘I hate being conspicuous. You know how I hate it.’

‘You surprise me,’ said Freda.

Brenda was so cold she was dressed onion-fashion in layers – pullovers and scarves and a double sheet of newspaper under her vest. She wore no make-up. Sometimes, when she suffered from the toothache, she affected a woollen balaclava that her husband had worn on the farm.

Freda walked towards the sweet-shop to buy her cigarettes. ‘Calm yourself,’ she called, as the dithering Brenda ran up and down the pavement. ‘Nobody will say a word about the time. Not a bloody word.’

Brenda knew it was true. She also knew there was a reason for it, an explanation that Freda refused to credit. Freda hinted Brenda was trying to draw attention to herself.

‘I ask you,’ she had shouted quite loudly, ‘is it likely, the way you’re got up?’ And she had laughed.

Brenda begged her to keep her eyes open so that she would observe the precise moment she was plucked from the bench, but Freda never bothered. She was always turned to Maria, talking about politics or the theatre, and Brenda couldn’t very well tug at her arm with Rossi looking on so eagerly from behind the window of his office. Brenda disappeared for what seemed like hours, either down into the cloistered chill of the cellar or upstairs amidst the stored furniture. Freda had never noticed.

Majestically Freda came out of the sweet-shop and strolled up the street. She was like a ballroom dancer moving in time to some slow waltz, pointing her feet delicately as she advanced, swaying from side to side in her purple cloak, one hand raised slightly with wrist arched, as if she dangled a fan. She looked with interest into the basements of the Victorian houses and thought