The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [40]
‘Stick this,’ said Freda at last, when she had eaten her fill, and she rose to her feet and wandered away in the direction of the beech wood. She hoped Vittorio would follow. She was in a state of suspense as to his intentions. His declaration of true love, his betrayal moments later, had confused her. Still, she was not too distressed. The gradual turning of the October day from storm and cold to balm and mildness filled her with optimism.
Rossi wanted to play games, he tried to explain. He spoke in English to Brenda and in Italian to the respectful men.
‘In the woods … a little jump out … you will count and we will hide.’
They looked at him without enthusiasm. He pointed at the woods and at Freda slowly perambulating round the perimeter of the fencing and covered his eyes coyly with his hands.
‘We will hide and you will come to find.’
He jumped to his feet and urged Brenda to stand up.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to rest.’
‘Ah, never. We are here for a little jump out, yes?’ And he pulled her quite roughly to her feet and she cried, ‘No, no, later,’ and sank down again among the dandelions.
The men averted their faces. They had had enough of finding and seeking. They knew well who would be found and who would be lost.
Rejected, Rossi went slowly to his car and returned with the stained football. He kicked it high in the air and the men lumbered to their feet and brushed down their clothes and ran about, eyes dilated and legs stiff from lack of exercise. Vittorio did not follow Freda across the park. Instead he discarded his coat and, luminous in a red jumper and trousers of black velvet, joined in the game. In contrast to Rossi, who trundled, garments flapping, in a furious rush along the pitch, he ran elegantly with arms outstretched, placing the heel of one foot precisely against the toe of the other, as if balanced on a tight-rope. After a few moments several players stopped in mid-field and bent over, heads dangling, and fought for breath. If they felt the day lacked real splendour, they were too polite to declare it. It made no difference that the sky now drifted baby-blue above their heads – there were no village girls to dance with, no perspiring members of la banda blowing golden trumpets flashing in the sun; the wine balanced on the stump of the tree was contained in barrels of brown plastic. Digging their fists into their stomachs, the men jostled and stumbled together on the turf. They erupted into sly bursts of hysterical laughter as one or other of them, lunging too energetically at the flying ball, lost his balance and slipped on all fours upon the green grass. Patches of damp darkening their knees, and clumps of earth sticking to the soles of their winkle-picker shoes, they dashed back and forth between the oak trees.
Freda, lingering at the edge of the timber fence, watched Vittorio in his fiery jumper, flickering beneath the autumn leaves. She went very slowly round the curve of the fence and entered the beech wood. Singing in a slight acrid voice a song her aunt in Newcastle had taught her as a child, she started to march at a rapid pace, with swinging arms, along the path. After one verse, the bracken crackling beneath her boots, she stopped abruptly and listened. Faintly from across the park, now lost to view, she could hear the sporadic cries of the gambolling men, the drone of an aeroplane above her head and somewhere, deeper among the trees, the distinct noise of someone moving. She had the feeling she was being watched. She tried a few experimental paces further along the path and was sure she was being matched, step for step, by something invisible and level with her, screened by the stippled bark and the dying leaves of the beeches. She halted, and all was quiet. It was probably children playing Indians, stalking each other, unaware of