The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [33]
‘Wait, wait,’ called Rossi, mouth trembling petulantly, as he tried to catch the tall young man now dribbling the ball selfishly ahead of him.
Trotting at Vittorio’s heels, pestering, he tried in vain to regain possession. The two men ran in a wide circle with the muddy ball bouncing and rolling across the glossy wind-swept grass.
‘Look here,’ said Freda after ten minutes of this activity. ‘I want to see the castle.’
She had been picking at the silver wrapping about the chickens, digging at the carcasses with her nails and licking her fingers. It was a quarter to eleven and there was no point eating yet – she would only be more hungry later on.
‘You want to go?’ said Rossi. He stopped running and stared at her in surprise, his cheeks rosy from his exercise with the ball, his suede shoes stained with mud. He spread out his hands expressively. ‘We have only just come.’
‘My dear man,’ Freda informed him, ‘the castle is redolent with History.’ She wanted Vittorio to know how educated she was, to make up for the scene in the car. Also, she felt the need to be near a cigarette shop in case she gained the courage to ask him to lend her some money. ‘Besides,’ she said, indicating Brenda at the far side of the road, obsessively studying the stream of traffic, ‘Madame won’t settle until we find the others.’
‘There is plenty of time,’ protested Rossi. ‘If they don’t come in a little moment, we go.’
Freda kept her temper with difficulty. She pointed out that she hadn’t intended to come here in the first place. She had planned to go to Hertfordshire. However, now they were here she was going to look at the castle.
With some spirit Rossi argued that it wasn’t his fault if the plans had gone wrong. ‘We take our chances,’ he said mysteriously.
Vittorio decided to take Freda’s part. He walked to the car and tossed the football at Rossi.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
How American he is, thought Freda, with his dashing moustaches and his baseball-type boots. The red laces trailed like ribbons in the grass.
She fitted herself into the back seat and allowed Vittorio to manoeuvre the basket through the door.
‘We are going?’ asked Aldo Gamberini, his hat securely anchored to his head by means of a striped muffler tied under his chin. ‘So soon?’
Rossi held the football to his chest. His mouth quivered. ‘I want to play the games,’ he said sulkily.
‘Brenda,’ shouted Freda. ‘Hurry up.’
They positioned themselves in the car.
‘There are little deer,’ murmured Rossi forlornly. ‘I think you like the little deer?’
‘I will later,’ assured Brenda. ‘Honestly, Rossi, I do want to see the little deer.’
They drove out of the Park and back along the road to the flowered roundabout.
Freda thought the castle was wonderful. It towered above the main street, its beige walls curving outwards, the green grass studded with spotlights. She was reminded of a play about a Spanish family of noble birth that she had been in years before. She would have liked to have mentioned it but she had only understudied a rather minor part.
‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ she breathed. ‘It’s so old.’
She couldn’t wait to get out of the car and look at the dungeons. If she couldn’t walk through the perfumed gardens with Vittorio, then maybe here where Henry VIII had danced with Anne Boleyn she could find an equally lyrical setting for the beginning of their romance. There were bound to be dark places and iron grills, worn steps leading to cramped stone towers overlooking the countryside. There, above the Thames valley and the blue swell of the Chiltern Hills, he would, looking down at the small fields laid in squares and the ribbon of hedges, see in perspective how puny was the world and how big their love for each other. Accordingly she bustled out of the Cortina and lingered only momentarily outside the tobacco-scented doorway of a sweet-shop. Brenda insisted on writing a note in case the occupants of the mini came upon the deserted car and searched for them.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘we have got the wine. I’ll never be able to look them in the face again if