‘Isn’t it peaceful,’ she murmured, though nobody heard.
On the rare occasions when she and Stanley had gone out together, walking the three miles to the village, she had always complained
of a stitch in her side. More than once she had sneered at the type of entertainment offered in the Legion – the smart alec
in the teddy-boy suit clutching a microphone and singing ‘Delilah’ at the top of his lungs. They thought her stuck-up in
the Legion, even though she broadened her vowels when she spoke to them, even though she tried to play billiards. It wasn’t
as if she was too different from the others, there were plenty of Polish labourers left over from the war, and Pakistani immigrants
who worked in the mills. She was always very polite to everyone. She never made a scene, not even when Stanley fell down the
step into the Gents and cut his fore-head, but he seemed constantly uneasy in her presence. He struck her repeatedly and painfully
on the thigh and told her to sup up. When they were given a lift home in a car the farmhouse sat in the valley like an orange
square, tiny – his mother’s window was lit by a lamp that was never extinguished, not even in sleep. The white gate at the
roadside shone in the headlamps. The path down to the house was worn with rivulets of rain. Stones littered the way. Sheep
floundered to their feet as Stanley ran zigzag
down the slope, urinating as he went. The whole earth swelled upwards like a vast warm bosom.
‘It was my fault,’ she suddenly said. She was unaware that Rossi had cried out a moment previously the name of Mr Paganotti.
‘I shouldn’t have been nasty to her. I shouldn’t have upset her. Then she wouldn’t have gone to the bushes in the first place.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ shouted Patrick. He leaned forwards in his seat and attempted to put an arm about her shoulder in an
awkward gesture of sympathy, and Freda slithered slowly downwards along the plastic seating. They got out of the car in a
panic, slamming the doors and running to the tree stump as if it was a place of refuge. Rossi was moaning. He ran in a circle
round and round the oak and the empty barrel of wine. All at once he darted away into the darkness. They could hear for a
moment the rush of his body and the low keening he made; then he had gone. They strained their eyes trying to see into the
blackness.
‘Where’s he gone?’ whispered Patrick.
‘He will come back,’ said Vittorio. ‘He is very highly strung. Very sensitive. He will come back.’ He had a nice voice, caressing;
he sounded full of compassion.
Brenda was shivering without her cloak. The men went back to the car and called her when they had propped Freda upright. She
hurled herself into the front seat and curled up with her arms about her knees and pressed her chattering teeth against her
wrists.
Patrick was giving up the idea of trying to make the Italians confess. They were too foreign – Vittorio clammed up like a
shell and Rossi somewhere out there in the darkness
blubbing like a baby. They must get back to London quick and put Freda somewhere for the night. He regretted that he had
wasted so much time rushing about the countryside. In the morning he would either have thought of something or would get on
the boat home and leave them to sort it out. He had a radio he could pawn, and a fellow he knew at the bar of the Waterford
Castle owed him a few quid. Brenda was no use to him. She never said what she meant. She would hide him one moment if she
was asked, and betray him the next.
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 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 her mouth flew open. She must at all costs preserve herself. She went
back into the room and struggled to lift up the window. Propping the tennis racket into place, she crawled out on to the
balcony.
‘What do you want?’ she called. She saw he was holding a bottle of wine.
‘Let me in.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Let me in.’
‘The landlady won’t let us have people in after midnight.’
‘For God’s sake, it’s only after ten.’
She couldn’t believe it. She thought it was the middle of the night – they had got up so early, the day had gone on and on.
‘I’m tired.’
He made to climb the steps. He lifted his hand to pound the brass knocker.
‘Wait,’ she called in desperation, fearful the two nurses
would let him in. ‘I’ll come down.’ If he attacked her on the step she would scream or run towards a passing car.
‘What did they do with her?’ he asked, when she had opened the door.
‘They’ve put her upstairs among the furniture.’
‘Let me in. I’m parched for a cup of tea.’
‘I can’t.’ She sat down on the step and shivered.
‘I pinched a bottle of wine. Do you not want a drop of wine?’
‘I’d be sick,’ she said.
He put the bottle on the step beside a withered wall-flower. He removed his cap and sat down. He looked like a grocer’s boy
– he ought to be riding a bicycle, she thought, delivering butter and eggs, and whistling.
‘What will they say?’ she moaned. ‘Whatever will happen?’
He tried to smile at her but his mouth quivered.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he admitted. ‘I’m wore out.’
‘It’s awful up there,’ she told him. ‘Her things – her clothes – everywhere.’
‘I’m wore out,’ he repeated sullenly, as if she had no right to burden him. A door opened in the flats opposite.
An old lady leaned over her balcony and called quaveringly: ‘Tommy! Tommy! I’ve got your dinner, Tommy.’
‘Upstairs,’ said Brenda, ‘the table’s laid.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘No. I mean for her and Vittorio.’
‘Not for you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just for them.’
The leaves of the privet hedge fragmented in the light of the street lamp. Shadows shifted across his face. He
drew a handkerchief from the pocket of his mackintosh and laid it between them on the step. He unfolded it. There were a
few pieces of glass.
She said: ‘That’s Rossi’s hankie.’
‘I know. The glass is from his broken watch. They were in the bushes.’
‘What did you bring them back for?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Rossi did. When we stopped on the way home didn’t he go off into the night? I pinched it from his jacket
when we went into the factory.’