The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [50]
‘She must have had a fall. When I saw her she was lying on her back. Her heart’s stopped beating.’
Vittorio stared at the Irishman and then at the nape of Rossi’s neck bordered with damp curls. He waited, but no one spoke.
‘She is dead?’
‘She is.’
‘Her back? She is dead of her back?’
‘On her back,’ corrected Patrick; and Vittorio shook Brenda by the shoulder, and she said dully: ‘No, it wasn’t her back. You can’t die of a strained back.’
‘But we should—’
‘Mr Paganotti …’ whimpered Rossi. He continually rubbed the front of his shirt with the palm of his hand, as if fearing that his heart too might cease to beat.
‘But we must …’
Brenda said: ‘We can’t be sure that …’
‘How does he know?’ said Vittorio looking at Patrick.
‘He wasn’t there. He say he was in the town. How can …’
‘Rossi saw her. He went into …’
‘I was searching for the ball. I came …’
‘You have a bleeding eye,’ said Vittorio, as though he had not noticed it before, and he made as if to touch the cut on Patrick’s face. He had turned very pale. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he wiped it away with his sleeve.
‘Where you get that wound? How you …’
Brenda was folding and refolding the tablecloth, smoothing the petals of the pink flower in the right-hand corner. There was a smear of salad oil and a sweet smell of decaying apples.
‘You and Rossi were arguing,’ she said, ‘up by the fence, and I had words with Freda. She went into the bushes.’
‘I see her,’ confirmed Vittorio. ‘I think she go – you know – she need to—’
‘No,’ Brenda said. ‘She was angry. She said I wasn’t to follow.’
I can’t, can I, she thought, not now? She hadn’t dared to follow either when the soldiers had come to offer them a ride. How brave Freda had been, climbing aboard that monstrous funeral horse with its flaring nostrils and carved head. She hadn’t looked like a sack of potatoes or a mound of jelly: she was regal in purple and motionless beneath the sky. She did mean it – it wasn’t as if she thought Freda was listening.
‘She had a graze on her cheek,’ said Vittorio. ‘She show me.’
Brenda asked: ‘Did you really try to punch her on the jaw, Patrick?’
Vittorio suddenly recalled Freda’s return from the beech wood. ‘She tell me she saw you in the trees.’
They both looked at the Irishman in the peaked cap that shadowed his battered face.
‘I never,’ he said, ‘and she didn’t. It’s not me you’re wanting.’
Vittorio began to tremble. ‘I do not want to think it – you see her first. You came out from behind the bushes in the middle of the football.’
‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘He did—’ He tapped Rossi accusingly on the shoulder.
Through the tear-stained glass Brenda could see the red mini sluiced with rain. A faint sound of voices raised in song came from the interior of the car. Freda, she thought, must be getting awfully wet. What would the aunt in Newcastle say? Freda hadn’t been home for years. She wouldn’t tell her she’d been working in a bottle factory. If she was asked, she’d say she was a secretary, or doing quite well in commercials. Freda would like that. There were the theatrical set at the Friday-night pub in their second-hand clothes, but she didn’t think they would hear about it. There wasn’t anybody else. There wasn’t even a photograph of Freda in the bed-sitting room. She’d never written her a letter or been on holiday with her or shared an adventure – only today and that had gone wrong.
She watched Vittorio and Patrick, heads bent against the rain, walking away towards the rhododendrons. She wondered if the arrangements for the van had been deliberately sabotaged. Perhaps it had been more convenient for Freda’s plans that Rossi’s car alone had been available for the Outing. It made for a more intimate group. It’s a bit too intimate now, she thought, aware of Rossi beside her, still massaging his heart. There stole over her a regrettable feeling of satisfaction. She suspected it was normal in the circumstances. Superstitions were needed at a time like this. The wrong-doers had to be punished in some way. It was not to be wondered