The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [34]
‘You never look anybody in the face as it is,’ said Freda; and she drummed her fingers on the bonnet of the car, as Brenda drew an arrow on the back of an envelope, pointing towards the castle, and wrote: ‘This way. We have just left.’ She signed it ‘Mrs Brenda.’
‘You’re mad,’ Freda told her. ‘You’ve got terrible handwriting.’
All the same, Brenda felt more restful in her mind now that she had left some sign. She stood at various angles from the bumper of the Cortina to make sure her arrow was accurate in its direction.
Freda began to toil up the steep cobbled rise to the main gate, pushed from behind by Aldo and Vittorio.
‘We are happy, yes?’ said Rossi, and he attempted to put an arm about Brenda’s waist. At that moment Aldo chose to turn and see if they were following, and Rossi jumped away, anxious not to seem too intimate.
‘He is my cousin.’
‘He’s a nice man,’ said Brenda.
‘He is very inquisitive.’
‘Does he suffer from ear-ache?’ she asked, looking at Aldo with the scarf wrapped about his head.
‘It is a pity,’ Rossi said, panting from the climb, ‘that he fit in my car.’ He cheered up and dug her in the ribs. ‘Later,’ he promised, winking at her encouragingly, and she did her best to look enthusiastic. If his happiness depended on her, who was she to offend him? He wanted his Outing, his day of escape. If the missing mini caught up with them, disgorging its quota of fellow-countrymen, then she would not be to blame if he was thwarted. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she thought. ‘I can’t be expected to take any blame.’
‘I’ve told you about that,’ reminded Freda, turning to look at her.
‘You shouldn’t talk to yourself. It looks daft.’
Above them, carved on the gateway, mingling with the arms of Henry VIII, the Tudor rose blossomed in stone.
‘Oh I wish,’ cried Freda, ‘we had a camera.’
She tripped forwards in her purple trousers and gazed entranced at the toy soldier in his red tunic and rippling busby, motionless outside the guardhouse.
Salvatore spotted the Cortina with the envelope trapped on its windscreen at mid-day. There was a consultation as to what the arrow meant. Salvatore and his three passengers thought it peculiar that Rossi and the Englishwomen had entered the fortress, but the fifth occupant of the mini, not being Italian, said he understood. He borrowed a pencil from a traffic warden and wrote in English: ‘We have gone that way too,’ and signed it ‘Patrick’.
Murmuring, the four workmen followed him up the hill and stood bewildered on the parade ground. Set at the end of the courtyard was a kiosk, and there was a thin stream of visitors buying tickets. On a pole above the State Apartments, a yellow flag, stretched stiff as a board, pasted itself to the sky. The soberly dressed men, searching for the lost remnants of their party, wandered beneath arches and descended steps. The wind rose in fury and blew them, jackets flapping, along a stone terrace above a garden. Wearily they climbed back to the parade ground and, urged on by Patrick, joined the queue at the kiosk and paid 15p each to the attendant. Entering the doorway of a chapel, they removed their hats and shuffled past the alabaster font. They stared at the carved choir-stalls and the arched roof hung with flags, embroidered with strange beasts and symbols, heavy with tassels of gold. There were no candles burning, no crucifix, no saints bleeding and bedecked with jewels in the shadowy niches of the walls.
Bending their heads, they watched furtively the feet of Patrick as he trod the tiled floor.
Freda had enquired and been told that the dungeons had all been sealed off.
‘Off?’ she repeated, outraged. ‘Why?’
Rossi led her away, agreeing with her that it was preposterous.
‘These things,’ he said, ‘how do we know why? What is the purpose?’
And he spread his hands and looked at her with such intensity of feeling that she was quite impressed by him.
He dreaded lest she fight physically with the custodian of the castle and have them ejected. Somewhere, beyond the main portion of the town, stood the family home of Mr Paganotti,