The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [61]
Vittorio had a pain in his chest. His head ached. Had she been alive, Freda would have been stroking his thigh in the dark. Perhaps she was the lucky one, to go quickly and so young. For himself, years hence, there might be disease – pain: like an olive left on the ground he would wither and turn black. Gloomily he shifted his knee and imagined Freda had grown very cold: the chill of her shoulder as it pressed against him, struck him like a blow. The rim of her ear, dimly seen through the fronds of hair, burned like ice.
Now and then a car came swishing up the road; light splashed over the windows like a deluge of water and drained away instantly. After a quarter of an hour had passed Rossi came back to the car and lowered himself into the driving seat. He was breathing heavily as if he had run for miles. Vittorio said something to him and he nodded his head. When he switched on the engine, his fingers in the tiny illumination were soiled, the nails rimmed with dirt.
On the motorway the Cortina kept to the slow lane and was constantly overtaken.
‘Faster,’ urged Patrick, but Rossi took no heed.
Brenda hated going fast: it was dreadful having to trust her life to someone else. At any moment Rossi could lose control of the wheel and spin them all to pieces. Danger was all around her: the people hurtling along the road, the aeroplanes overhead coming in to land, sailing like railway carriages above the fragile fences – an aircraft, leaving the landing strip of the nearby airport, zoomed upwards on a collision course. She kept one hand on the button of the door, ready to jump out should the car swerve or the planes begin to fall.
‘Step on it,’ said Patrick, like a gangster in a movie.
‘We’ve got to dump her somewhere for the night.’ And they rocked together as they drove.
Brenda was searching the outskirts of the town for resting places for Freda. She recoiled from the word ‘dump’ – surely he couldn’t be serious? So many discoveries about him in so short a time made her tremble all over with misgivings. She saw the doorway of a church, a partially demolished house. At Shepherds Bush a black angel flew on a plinth amidst the poplar trees. They passed the green dome of the Music Hall. They spun through the park – a dog stood frozen in the yellow wedge of the headlamps – and into the glare of the High Street. The clock outside the launderette stood at five minutes to nine as they turned the corner and drew up outside the shuttered factory.
The mini took a wrong turning just off the M1. The men were philosophical. They had the remains of the wine to sustain them.
‘Such a way to behave,’ said Salvatore, thinking of the wanton figure in the back of the Cortina.
‘But splendid on a horse,’ Gino observed grudgingly. He preferred thinner women; he was himself puny in stature, brittle in the leg and cavernous in the cheek.
Aldo seemed disconcerted that once again his cousin had disappeared. He had come to the factory in Rossi’s car and dreaded lest he have to return by tube. He was fuddled by the Beaujolais and weary from his game of football. Salvatore was willing to go out of his way and take him to his door, but Aldo wouldn’t hear of it.
‘I came with him,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I will return with him.’
It seemed obvious that Rossi would take the English women to their house. Possibly she would have to be lifted in some way up the stairs. They agreed they would have a lot to tell their fellow workers when they met in the morning – the coming and going in the fortress … the argument between Vittorio and Rossi … the rowing between the two English ladies … the return of the Irishman with his face torn … the sight of Mrs Freda being supported from the bushes … If only Amelio and Stefano had been there to see how it was.
There followed a time of silence while they thought of the less fortunate members of the party who had never journeyed beyond the wall of the factory.
‘Surely,’ said Aldo, ‘they will have their money back.’
They almost missed Rossi’s car parked