The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [32]
Rossi was telling Salvatore his destination was Windsor. Fresh air … a little jump out … a little game of football. He slapped Salvatore on the back and searched his face tenderly for traces of forgiveness. Salvatore hung his head and pointed his toe in the gravel.
Beyond the brown hedge at the side of the road a solitary cow cropped the grass. Salvatore wore a large fedora on his small head. Its brim stuck out above the padded shoulders of his coat and emphasised the elegance of his nipped-in waist. His hand bulged in his pocket.
He’s making him an offer he cannot refuse, thought Brenda.
When Rossi came back to the car, he said, ‘They are annoyed at having to pay the money for the petrol. They say it is not called for.’
‘Well, they did pay 50p each towards the cost of the van,’ reasoned Brenda and hoped Freda had not heard. She held her breath as the car nosed out into the thin stream of traffic.
It took some time to find the road to Windsor Park. When they left the M4, they could see the beige-and-grey castle, lapped by a pool of pale green turf, dwarfing the white houses of the town.
‘We must be near,’ said Brenda helpfully, as they crossed a bridge with a black swan perched on the water. The red mini had once more disappeared from the road. They came to the bowl of a roundabout, heaped with dahlias, and circled it several times trying to decipher which way the sign post pointed.
‘There—, said Vittorio.
‘No,’ contradicted Freda. And they swung yet again around the small island of flowers until Rossi made his own decision and drove straight on. There were no ornamental gates as he had supposed. The pink-washed houses came to an end and the grey road cut through a green landscape spotted with oak trees. He slowed the car almost immediately and swung on to the grass verge. He bounded out into the fresh air leaving the car door swinging on its hinges.
‘It’s cold,’ complained Freda, as Brenda climbed stiffly out to join Rossi on the grass sprigged with dandelions.
‘This is the best place for a little jump out,’ he cried, pointing eagerly at the woods in the distance, and the flat slanting top of a cut-down oak a few yards from the bonnet of the car.
‘Good God,’ Freda said. ‘You don’t believe in moving far from the main road, do you?’
She lumped her basket on to the verge and wrapped her sheepskin arms about herself for warmth, standing disdainfully in the shadow of the car. It wasn’t as she had imagined. There were no lush valleys or rising hills saddled with yellow gorse. The land stretched flat and monotonous to the edge of the horizon. To the right was a clump of rhododendron bushes, a blackened oak splattered with the nests of crows, and a timber fence encircling a wood of beech and sycamore. Above her an aeroplane hung low, nose shaped like a bullet. Wings tipped with crimson, it shot in slow motion through an opening in the clouds. On the distant boundary stood the blue haze of a fir plantation, blurred against the white stormtossed sky. Meanwhile the lorries, the private cars, the containers of petroleum, roared continuously along the road, shaking the parked Cortina on the grass and filling the air with noise.
‘Now what?’ she demanded. ‘Now that you’ve got us here.’
Aldo Gamberini, his hat hurled from his head by a gust of wind, scampered across the Park in pursuit. His black trilby bowled to the foot of an oak and flattened itself against the trunk.
‘Did you tell the others we were going to the Park?’ asked Brenda anxiously. ‘There must be a lot of entrances.’
‘I say here, or maybe I say Windsor,’ said Rossi, and he took out of the car a large white ball and bounced it up and down on the damp ground.
Vittorio caught it on the stub of his boot and kicked it high in the air. Hands deep in his pockets, he ran after it as it soared towards