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By Root 481 0

himself, on lengths of planking laid over the concrete floor to lessen the cold. He was muttering and pulling faces at the women. Freda, as she worked, talked incessantly and dramatically. She twisted and turned on her beer crate, she thumped the bottles down into the cardboard box at her side, she stamped her feet for emphasis. Each time that she got up to reach with her rubber-gloved fingers for another label, and sank backwards on to her upturned crate, the frail old man rose in the air and settled again. As the morning wore on and he trotted more and more frequently to refill his little plastic beaker at the wine barrel reserved for the men, so his muttering became wilder, his glances less discreet. He loathed the English women; he held them in scorn. He would not shake hands with them in the morning; he refused to contribute to the Outing. Alone of all the Italians in the factory, he neither admired nor took pleasure in the appearance of Freda; if he could, he would have burnt her beer crate in the market square.

Freda was saying to Maria: ‘You must support the Unions. It’s your duty. It’s no good burying your head in the sand. Know what I mean?’

‘Aye, aye,’ intoned Maria, wiping gently the neck of the bottle with her honey-coloured sponge.

‘We could do with a bloody Union man here – the cold, the conditions. Talk about A Day in the Life Of – don’t you know about the Factories Act?’

Above the hostile shoulder of Luigi, Brenda saw Rossi’s face at the window of the office. She tried to avert her eyes, but he was jumping up and down, jerking his curly head in the direction of the door and smiling with all his teeth showing.

‘Freda,’ she hissed, out of the corner of her mouth.

‘We shouldn’t be working in a temperature like this,’ said Freda. ‘It’s against the law.’

‘Freda – he’s at it again.’

‘Old Piggynotty could be prosecuted.’ Down slammed Freda’s boots on the planking. The smell of talcum powder, dry and sweet, rose from the armpits of her grey angora jumper as she jabbed with her sponge at a completed bottle of Rose Anjou. ‘Know what I mean?’

As if lassoed by an invisible rope, Brenda was dragged from her place at the bench. Unwillingly she passed the grimacing Luigi and walked between the avenue of shelves filled with brandy bottles, towards the office. Rossi stood in the doorway waiting for her. ‘I have something to show you,’ he confided in a feverish manner, and was off, trotting towards the pass door, peering over his plump shoulder at her to make certain she was following. She was convinced all the men were looking at her. They tittered and insinuated, anchored to the bottling plant shuddering in the centre of the floor. They knew, she was sure, about Rossi: his childless marriage to an elderly wife called Bruna, his frequent trips into the basement, his sudden disappearances into the groaning lift in the corner behind the boxes, and always, like the smoke from a cigarette, herself trailing in his wake. Looking very serious, as if the matter was both urgent and highly secret, she descended the steps into the cellar.

Rossi was running across the stone floor beneath the whitewashed arches hung with cobwebs. He made a small dandified skip into the air as he leapt the rubber hose that lolled like a snake between the barrels of wine. She always felt at a disadvantage in the cellar. Reverently she tip-toed deeper into the shadows cast by the little hanging lights. But for the sour smell of vinegar and the constant hum of machinery as the hose pumped wine to the floor above, she might have been in church. Rossi was bobbing about in the darkness, whispering ‘Missy Brenda, come over here. I have a little drink for you.’ He had a white overall, to show he was more important than the men, with PAGANOTTI embroidered on the pocket, and he wore suede shoes stained with wine.

‘How kind of you,’ said Brenda.

He took a medicine bottle from his pocket and poured the contents into two glasses that he kept on a shelf in one of the alcoves, ready for when he lured her down there. She had only been working in the factory