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By Root 514 0

at the side of the road. They had not thought it would be there; they expected to find it outside the house of the English girls. They stopped and walked back to the alleyway. The shutter was rolled up. It was unheard of; it was unauthorised. How could Rossi be so bold as to enter Mr Paganotti’s business premises after closing time? Never, except at Christmas when Mr Paganotti held a little party in his office and danced stiffly with his secretary, had they known such a thing. They stole up the alleyway and hovered outside the pass door. Gino removed his hat. Pushing the heavy door inwards, they crept down the passageway to the bottling floor. It was dark save for a single yellow bulb burning beneath the roof. The plant stood silent under its ragged cover; a rat rustled beneath the cardboard boxes. Mrs Brenda was slumped on a crate by the wall. Vittorio and Rossi, heaving and straining, were pushing Mrs Freda, stretched out upon a trolley, into the mouth of the lift.

They ran in their best clothes, slapping the concrete floor with their damp shoes. They bent over the sprawled figure, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Don’t look,’ began Vittorio.

‘Madre di Dio,’ cried out Aldo Gamberini, rocking and wailing, already in his black.

Brenda had scurried home along the familiar street. The scene in the factory, the weeping of the men, the wild exclamations of Rossi and Vittorio – all restraint gone now they were not alone in their predicament – had embarrassed her. She found it difficult not to smile. She turned her face to the wall and bared her teeth. When Rossi and Vittorio took Freda up to the first floor, the men ceased their lamentations. They turned their faces to the ceiling and listened to the rumble of the trolley across the boards. After an interval the lift descended. The men lined up inside, jostling for space, each with a hat held to his breast – they were like a family posing for a photograph. The dim bulb raked their oiled hair with auburn light. Creaking, the lift ascended – a line of shoes, caked with mud, merged into the darkness.

She waited a few minutes but nobody came down. Freda’s sheepskin coat, mingled with the purple cloak, lay abandoned on the dusty floor.

She decided they had forgotten her.

When she entered the bed-sitting room she saw the table set for two, the saucer of olives, the silver slab of the butter. The sight of the folded napkins beneath the blue-rimmed plates affected her far more than the lilac scarf trailing the edge of the funeral trolley. She could not bear to lie down on the bed. She dared not approach the chair at the side of the grate – the worn cushion bore the imprint of Freda’s weight. There was nothing of herself in the room: everywhere she saw Freda – the magazine beside the window, the lacy brassiére dangling above the gas-fire, pinned to the marble top of the mantelshelf by the ticking clock. She wilted under the continued presence of Freda. She would rather have stayed in the car, the factory. She had not realised how like a garden of remembrance the room would be. If she listened, all she could hear was the ticking of the clock and the minute crackling of the dried leaves on the dreadful table spread for a romantic supper. After a moment, trapped in the centre of the carpet, she heard a tap on the window. Someone was throwing gravel at the glass. She laid her cheek to the pane and peered down into the street. It was Patrick.

Rigidly he stared up at her, his legs tapering to a point on the paving stones. She ran to the landing wild with relief at not being on her own, and stopped. Freda had called her a victim, had said she was bent on destroying herself – it was possible Patrick had returned because she knew too much. When they had carried Freda into the factory the Irishman had supervised, held open the door, fumbled for the light switch. By the time they had laid her on the trolley he had gone.

She stroked the bannister rail. She remembered Patrick in the bathroom winding the length of string tightly about the hook in the ceiling. She clapped her hands to her cheeks and