The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge [9]
‘Is she coming?’ asked Brenda.
‘God knows,’ said Freda, and she went upstairs to the bathroom, taking a pan of water with her to flush down the lavatory. The cistern had been broken for ten days and the landlady said she couldn’t find a plumber to mend it. Only Freda was inconvenienced. Brenda, who would have died rather than let the other occupants of the house know she used the toilet, usually went round the corner to the tube station.
Maria came at half-past two carrying a packet of tea and a bag of sugar. She entered the room timidly, her hands in their darned mittens, outstretched.
‘La povera orfanella,’ she murmured with emotion, embracing Freda, burying her head in the girl’s ample shoulder. Awkwardly she patted her back and made little mewing sounds, and when she emerged again her face held such an expression of genuine perplexity and pain that it awakened feelings of remorse in Brenda.
Brenda sat Maria in the armchair by the hearth, to warm herself at the gas fire. Freda moved about the room slowly and with dignity, emptying tea-leaves into the china pot, putting the blue cups on the table, ready for the kettle to boil. Now and then she would stare out of the window with a far-away look in her eyes, as if she was remembering lost faces and lost laughter and the joy of a mother’s love. After a decent interval, when the tea was poured and the biscuit tin handed round, she asked:
‘And what did Vittorio say? Did he say anything?’
‘Pah,’ exclaimed Maria contemptuously, slapping the air with the flat of her hand. ‘What could he say? Nobody work the day of their mammy’s funeral.’
‘I mean, was he sorry?’
When she understood, Maria said Vittorio had looked very sad. They were all sad, but not so sad as Mr Rossi; he was the saddest of them all, pale and dejected-looking as if it was a personal loss.
‘She’s in love with Vittorio,’ Brenda said quickly, in case Freda flew into a paddy on the spot and explained the exact reason for Mr Rossi’s dejection. Maria, after an initial moment of surprise, her mouth open, her eyes bewildered, stamped her feet approvingly on the threadbare carpet. Such a match – the tall young landowner and the blonde English girl built like a tree. She recalled she could read the future in the tea-cups; a cook had taught her when she was in service in a house in Holland Park. She sat well forwards in the armchair, black-clad knees wide apart, and stared into the depths of Freda’s cup.
‘There is a tall man,’ she began, ‘and a journey.’
Brenda withdrew into a corner of the room, seating herself at the table beside the window. Across the road on the balcony of the third floor an elderly woman in a blue dressing-gown and a hat with a rose pinned to the brim waved and gesticulated for help. Brenda knew her gas fire had blown up or she was out of paraffin or the cat had gone missing. It was unfortunate that Freda had rented a room opposite a building devoted to the old and infirm – there was always someone in need of assistance. Once Freda had become involved with a Miss Deansgate on the second floor, who had been a milliner for royalty; and every day for three weeks she took her bowls of soup and cups of tea, feeding her drop by drop from a tin spoon with a long handle that Miss Deansgate claimed had belonged to Queen Victoria’s butler. Freda took Brenda to visit her, but she didn’t enjoy it – the old woman had no stockings and her ankles were dirty and she sat on the lavatory and had to be helped back to bed. There was a funny smell in the living room. The sheets were yellow and the frill of the pillow-case stained, as if she dribbled as she slept. Miss Deansgate begged Freda not to let the ambulance take her away; but she was dying, and in the end they laid her on the stretcher under a red blanket, looking very cheerful and Christmassy, and