The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [44]
‘What did it really feel like?’ asked Brenda.
‘It was a bit like being on a swing,’ Freda told her. ‘Something gliding and rushing through the air. It was—’
‘It didn’t look like gliding. You were all jogging up and down like bags of potatoes.’
‘Rubbish. I was—’
‘You have ridden before?’ asked Rossi.
He made it sound like an accusation. He was aware that he himself had cut a poor figure in front of the cellar workers and was grateful that Mr Paganotti had not been present.
‘Several times,’ lied Freda, and she lay on top of her sheepskin coat, the wool curling in little fleecy knots about her purple limbs, satisfied, in spite of what Brenda had said, that she had been stunning in her deportment. She no longer needed to talk to Vittorio. For the moment she was sure of his admiration; she could afford to relax. She lay dreaming on her back, still experiencing the motion of the horse, the muscles in her legs trembling with fatigue. Behind her closed lids she indulged in fantasies: brandishing a riding whip, she leapt fences of impossible height and reached Vittorio, motionless in a meadow ringed with poplars.
The men went for little walks into the bushes or sat in the shade of the several oak trees and dozed. The parked cars had long since departed. The children, whining for sweeties, had gone from the grass. Brenda, not liking to lie down, in case she inflamed Rossi, propped herself on her side with her back to him and, leaning for protection as close to Freda as she dared, dug small holes in the soil with the tips of her grubby fingers.
After a time Rossi rose to his feet and wandered away in the direction of the fence. She watched his low-slung body amble across the park. He turned and waved, and she lowered her eyes and pretended she hadn’t seen. Even at such a distance, his very presence in the landscape chafed her sensibilities. He was like some persistently hovering insect buzzing about her ears. She longed to swat him and have done with it. I ought, she told herself severely, to be able to speak my mind: I can’t spend the next year or so running away from him. The thought of time lived as it was, spreading ahead of her – a long procession of days in the factory and evenings with Freda – filled her with gloom. She dwelt on the possibility of renting a room of her own: she would sit all day at the window without being disturbed, without having to respond. It occurred to her that she had escaped Stanley only to be dominated by Freda. Why do I do it, she thought, looking up abstractedly? And there was Rossi at the fence, fingers still fluttering in an absurd gesture of beckoning friendliness. Once and for all she would put him in his place. She jumped to her feet and strode purposefully over the grass. If he had been nearer it would have been easier. She had to walk quite a long way, and by the time she reached him she had been forced to smile once or twice and return his hand-waving. She trod on a snail and gathered it up on a leaf and brought it to him, cupped in her hands, to where he stood in tall grass and flowering weeds of red and purple.
‘Poor thing,’ she said, gazing with horror at the trail of slime oozing from its shell.
‘It is the nature,’ he assured her.
Impatiently he took her hand so that the leaf dropped to the undergrowth.
Anger revived, she asked snappily: ‘What do you want?’
‘We go for a little walk, yes?’
‘No we won’t.’
‘We go now – come.’ And he darted away as if he was a dog anticipating a flung stick and returned immediately. ‘You come for a little walk?’
‘I am not keen on a little walk.’
‘A little walk is good. We see the little deer.’
‘No.’ She began to blush. ‘I won’t.’
He stared at her as if she was not well, eyes round with concern.
‘Freda wouldn’t like it.