The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [67]
‘My handkerchief—’ and he clapped his hand to the pocket of his overall, forgetting that he had worn his best trousers and a jumper on the Outing.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Brenda, and was only slightly shocked to see the purple cloak and the sheepskin coat hanging on the back of the door. ‘Have you blocked the stairs?’ she asked. ‘Have you stopped Mr Paganotti?’
‘He has gone out,’ said Rossi. ‘I think he has not remembered.’
‘What are you going to do tomorrow, then? He won’t be out every day.’
‘It was you,’ he said, rising from his desk in admiration. ‘You have given us the way.’
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘You tell us about Spain. You give us the idea.’ And he paced about the office, face illuminated with appreciation. ‘We will put her in a barrel – in a hogshead. It is simple. Gino is even now sawing the lid off for her entrance.’
‘You’re not going to put Freda in a barrel?’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We now bottle the sherry. We take the sherry from the hogshead. When the barrels are empty the man come and we load the empty barrels on to the lorry. They go to the docks, back to Santander.’
‘With Freda?’
‘Why yes,’ he said. ‘It is finished.’
She looked at him. Smudges of fatigue showed under her sceptical eyes. ‘And what happens when they open the barrels at the other end? Or take out the bung or whatever it’s called – at Santander?’ It was a lovely name; there were bound to be flamenco dancers.
‘We mark the barrel as no good – bad for the wine – tainted – it is leaking. They throw it in the sea.’
‘In the sea? Are you sure?’
‘But yes. I have seen it when I am training. I know about these things – the unworthy barrels go in the sea.’
She didn’t like to mention it, but she felt she must. ‘Rossi,’ she said, ‘what if there’s a strike at the docks? There’s always some kind of a strike going on some-where.’
He stared at her. ‘What for you worry about a strike?’
‘Well, she might begin to – to smell!’ His mouth fell open. ‘You ought to put something in the barrel with her – like brandy. To preserve her.’ She couldn’t look at him. She gazed at the floor.
‘But we cannot use Mr Paganotti’s brandy – it is very expensive – very good.’
Still, he was beginning to see what she meant. Perhaps just a little brandy. The lid would have to be clamped down very securely, so as to avoid leakage. The English girl was right. There was bound to be some kind of a strike.
‘We do it,’ he said. ‘We put a little brandy in the barrel – just a little.’
‘Well, that’s very satisfactory,’ Brenda said and wondered who was going to tell the aunt in Newcastle that Freda had fled to Spain.
Maria wanted flowers for Freda; she said it was no good without flowers. She came out of the lift all heated from her work, the sleeves of her frock pushed up to her elbows, her pinny streaked with damp. Vittorio said he would donate money and some should be bought from the shop on the High Street.
‘Lots of flowers,’ reiterated Maria, and she held her arms out to a certain width and rolled her eyes.
Brenda thought it would cost a fortune.
Rossi said in alarm: ‘No, we cannot go to the High Street shop. What for are we buying flowers? Mr Paganotti might see – Mr Cavaloni the accountant – the secretary from Rome.’
Maria drooped in disappointment. Never had she laid out anyone without flowers.
After some moments it occurred to Rossi that when his wife bought washing powder earlier in the week she had returned with a plastic rose. ‘A free offer,’ he said excitedly.
‘The washing powder isn’t free,’ said Brenda.
He waved his hands impatiently. ‘We all buy the powder – we all go one by one and purchase the powder with the little rose.’
Throughout the afternoon the men went to the super-market and returned with packets of powder and the free offer. Brenda paid for her packet with her own money. She felt it was a gesture. She was scandalised that the little rose turned out to be a sort of tulip on a long yellow stem.
The boyfriend of Mr Paganotti’s secretary from Rome came at six o