The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [57]
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I want to tell you something,’ and he scrambled awkwardly over the cut in the ground, dipping one foot into muddy water and shaking it like a dog, one suede shoe turned black and the turn-up of his trouser soaked.
‘Never mind,’ she said impatiently, and she ducked down behind a hillock of damp grass and smoothed her purple cloak. ‘You must know,’ she said, when he had sat down beside her, fussing about his saturated shoe and sulkily wiping at it with a handkerchief, ‘that what we’ve done is very wrong.’
He was like a child being scolded. He tossed his head at the injustice of it and refused to speak.
‘Police,’ she said, thinking of the night they had taken Mrs Haddon away, ‘ask an awful lot of questions – all sorts of things that don’t seem to have anything to do with what actually happened. They’ll want to know what she said to you when you went into the bushes. Patrick’s hinting something funny went on.’
He said: ‘It is all happening too quick. I cannot think.’ But he was once again the cellar manager whose eye was anxious, almost calculating.
‘Well, you’d better. I’m warning you. Patrick thinks you hurt Freda.’ She was speaking too quickly for him. ‘Don’t you see? He’s got that cut on the eye and he had a fight with her in the church.’
‘He never like Mrs Freda—’
‘He threw stones at her when she was in the woods—’
‘He knock Aldo to the ground. He is a violent man.’
‘Yes,’ she said. They were piling blame upon the Irish-man, brick by brick; they sat there silently remembering.
After a while she said: ‘You’ve got nothing to be worried about. We ought to go to the police now.’
‘No.’
‘It’s your car she’s sitting in. You’ve got the licence.’
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘Well, they’ll want to know why you let them put her in your car.’
He did see what she meant but he shook his head. ‘No police.’
‘Why on earth not?’ She was getting quite irritated by him. She wanted it all settled and the landlady told and the aunt in Newcastle informed – she might even ring Stanley. ‘Patrick,’ she said loudly, speaking very slowly and pronouncing every word clearly, ‘is trying to blame you. He says there was glass under her jumper. And I saw you go into the bushes. I’ll have to tell the police. If you tell lies they always find out and it looks worse.’
‘What glass is this?’ he asked. ‘What glass under her jumper?’
‘Not under it. Stuck in the fluff in the back. And he wanted to know about your watch.’
‘My watch,’ he repeated in a low voice and stared blankly at the smashed time-piece on his wrist.
A long sigh escaped him. He played idly with his mud-stained handkerchief.
‘It’s all for the best,’ she said.
Haltingly he began to tell her a story.
‘When Mrs Freda come into the office and say she tell me to leave you alone, I am very angry. She mention Mr Paganotti . . .’
As he remembered the incident he flushed with renewed rage. She had been so bullying and unladylike, thumping her fist on his desk like a man. He had not known how to deal with her. When his wife had come to the factory with her niece from Casalecchio di Reno he could hardly breathe for fear Freda would march in and denounce him. When she did come, and asked him if she could use the telephone, his heart had nearly stopped beating. How could he let her use the phone with his wife sitting on her chair, listening? Hadn’t he told his wife that Mr Paganotti had arranged the Outing long ago and no women were going? Freda had stood there smiling, shuffling his beautifully ordered labels on their shelves. He did not dare tell her to go away. Her pink lips had glistened; she had been so confident. And later Vittorio had seemed upset and anxious. Twice he went to the main door of the factory and looked up and down the road …
‘But I didn’t believe her. I think she just say