The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [37]
‘I will never let you go,’ she breathed.
She clung to him and raised her lips to be kissed. An old man came out of a recess in the wall and passed them by. Clad in a long black gown bunched at the waist by a length of rope, he hurried deeper into the interior of the Chapel. Vittorio drew away from Freda and looked curiously at the open door.
‘It is his home?’ he inquired.
‘Never mind,’ she said. And she fondled his neck and twined her fingers in the tendrils of his soft brown hair.
It was easy now to be tranquil and happy and kind. She was sickened by her unkindness to Brenda; she wanted everything to be lovely and safe, like the warm clasp of Vittorio’s arms. She desired with sudden urgency to show him where she was born, where she had gone to school, a view from the top of a hill, the surface of a lake near her home, clay-brown and pitted under rain. She wanted him to tell her that he too had seen a film years ago that only she remembered, that he too could listen with closed eyes to a certain melody. These few and fragmented reasons for believing love existed and could be unique stayed alive and sweet for perhaps thirty seconds in her mind – and faded as she looked beyond his shoulder, and the pale outline of his ear, and saw a line of black-suited men walking in single file along the opposite side of the cloister. Patrick, his cloth cap and pleasant face glimpsed in profile, strode in their rear. Freda pulled Vittorio’s head down to her breast and closed her eyes. At that instant, Patrick, glancing casually across the square of smooth grass, saw them. He ran like a whippet beneath the pink arches and confronted her.
‘You,’ she said, stealing his thunder. ‘How the hell did you get here?’
‘Where is she?’ demanded Patrick, his cheeks glowing like apples from indignation and the biting wind.
Vittorio bent to tie his shoe lace. He was worried inside; he felt that something had not been clearly understood. He dwelt fleetingly on the curved dark profile of Rossi’s niece by marriage and wondered at Freda’s formidable instinct. Was it possible she knew him better than he knew himself? Did she think she could take him by force?
‘What have you done with her?’ Patrick was asking.
Vittorio was not clear what was at issue. The Irish van driver was an unknown quantity. Nobody had explained what he was doing in the bathroom the night he had visited Freda. Maybe she had allowed him too to take liberties with her Rubensesque body. The remembrance of her billowy flesh and her grasping little hands pulling his hair made him giddy. He strolled casually away from the bench and appeared to be studying the grass.
Freda, seeing how he deserted her, was filled with hatred for Patrick. She wished the loaf of bread had been a broken bottle. Spitting, they faced each other, and Patrick held her by the shoulders.
‘Help me,’ she cried and twisted round to appeal to Vittorio, but he was no longer there.
‘Swine,’ she shouted, ‘beater of women.’ And she struggled with the Irishman, pinning him with her knee in his groin against the surface of the wall.
Vittorio in the main chapel, waited for several minutes. He would have liked to have run for it, but Rossi had disappeared and he was next in order of seniority. Mr Paganotti would have expected him to do his duty. After an interval, Freda, quivering with anger, swept round the corner.
‘What sort of man are you?’ she raged.
‘Sssh,’ he said, fearful of the reverent tourists and the black-garbed priest climbing to kneel in prayer.
‘He hit me,’ she said. ‘Where were you?’ Her eyes blazed reproachfully.
‘I do not want a scene.’
He turned and made for the exit, conscious he was a coward but terrorised by her loud voice and the strength of her arm.
Salvatore and his party were hurrying forlornly down the hill towards the car. But for the wine in the boot of the Cortina, so generously bestowed by Mr Paganotti, and the money they had already contributed to the Outing, they might have headed for home. It was just possible that