The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [72]
Brenda didn’t want to seem pathetic, so she gave a little cheery wave and walked off under the street lamps.
She was very lonely, she would have done anything rather than walk up the darkening street alone. She couldn’t eat anything, she couldn’t settle in the bed-sitting room. The clock had stopped above the hanging brassiere, a mouse had nibbled the corner of the butter. She remembered the rest of the doggerel that Freda had known:
Turned to woman, sitting there,
See that mouse beneath that chair,
Little woman, great big hat,
Couldn’t stand the thought of that.
Up she got and left the house
Man made happy, saw no mouse.
‘Ah,’ she said out loud, ‘what a cunning man.’ She slid the folded serviettes from beneath the blue plates and went downstairs to knock at the nurse’s door. Nobody answered. She shook a finger in the dark and sat down on the stairs. Her neck was terribly stiff. She rubbed at it under her hair and screwed up her eyes – and saw Freda falling backwards. Now then, she told herself, just stop it. There was no one to talk with: even the cat had been let in, safe downstairs on the landlady’s hearth rug. She was like one of those old ladies in the flats, roaming the balconies for someone to call to. Resolutely she started up the stairs with the serviettes in her hand to clear the awful table. Things should be put in their place. When she went into the room the lamp-shade with the fringeing spun round: Freda was falling – falling. Oh God, she thought, will I always see her like that? She tried to think of her running after the ball, riding the horse. She saw instead Freda trailing her coat across the grass towards the bushes. She saw Vittorio shouting at Rossi against the timber fence. She saw him take some-thing from Rossi’s wrist. He shook it; he held it to his ear. She saw Rossi coming out of the bushes. She felt the grass prickling her cheek. Vittorio was running up to Rossi; he was trying to thrust something into his hand. Rossi was standing like a man in a dream, dazed. Vittorio was buckling a watch about Rossi’s wrist. Freda was falling backwards. ‘I have forgotten nothing,’ muttered Rossi looking at Vittorio, ‘nothing.’ She shook her head and wished she could stop thinking about it. Rossi was such a loyal little man. He would do anything to protect the name of Paganotti. It doesn’t matter, she thought, it is no longer of the slightest importance.
She took money out of her purse and went downstairs to ring Stanley. The code number was very long: the telegraph wires ran right across the country, through Rams-bottom and down the slope to the farm-house. Mrs Haddon answered the phone. ‘Hallo.’
‘Hallo,’ said Brenda. ‘It’s me, Brenda. Can I speak to Stanley please?’
‘Mr Haddon is out at present. Would you care to leave a message?’
‘I want to come home,’ said Brenda at last.
‘I’m afraid it’s not convenient. Mr Haddon has made other arrangements. A woman from the village—’
The receiver was replaced.
Brenda went to work at the usual time. She had packed her suitcase in the night. She hadn’t known what to do with Freda’s things: her theatrical programmes and her jewel case with the plum stones. Her father said he would meet her at the station if she was sure what train she was arriving on.
‘Need a spot of home comfort, do you?’ he shouted down the phone in a jolly manner.
‘Something like that,’ Brenda had replied.
‘Okey dokey, chickie,’ he said. ‘Mummy will be waiting.’
The lorry stood outside the bottle factory waiting for the loading to be finished. Maria was crying. Some men and a woman in a shabby coat lined the pavement.
‘Stop crying,’ said Vittorio, ‘it is looking strange.’
Four men in green overalls, pushing a hogshead of sherry, appeared at the slant of the loading bay. Below in the street, a row of workers in mufflers and trilby hats stood waiting for the work to be finished.
‘It’s dreadful,’ said Brenda. ‘I think I shall faint.’
Mournful at the kerb, she put her hands to her face and watched the wooden barrel begin to roll down the slope. A