The Bottle Factory Outing (11 page)

‘It’s them,’ cried Freda, getting to her feet and tugging Brenda by the arm. ‘The other morning in the street – there were
hundreds of them.’

She stared in recognition at the riders, red-cheeked and bright-eyed as if risen from Flanders field, the dead young ones
come back to ride again.

‘It can’t be them,’ said Brenda ‘We’re miles away.’

Rossi, cherubic face beaming with hospitality, ran to the horses. The men reined in and slowed their mounts to a walk. Circling
the oak, Rossi at their rumps, the animals snorted, flared nostrils lined with purple.

The soldiers looked down at the ill-assorted group, at the blonde girl in her sheepskin coat, the dishevelled black-suited
workers, the paper cups strewn on the ground. Brenda, with her formidable nose in the air and an utterly misleading expression
of haughtiness in her somewhat hooded eyes, spun on the grass like a bird caught in a net. She was terrified of the prancing
beasts.

‘You will have a little wine?’ said Rossi, and he twinkled back to the barrel and turned the tap and rinsed
out grass stalks from the cups, pouring the red wine on to the ground and refilling the beakers to the brim. Like a woman
holding up refreshments to the liberating troops he smiled coyly and held out his arms. The three young soldiers dismounted.
The horses pawed the turf and bent their necks, the clipped manes standing like a pelt of fur along the curve of their necks,
the tails, dense as soot, swishing flies from their dark and steaming haunches.

The riders were on a training course from Aldershot. They were exercising the Queen’s funeral horses.

‘Funeral horses?’ said Freda, eying the satiny flanks of the wicked-looking animals.

On great occasions, the soldiers explained, the death of military leaders, the laying to rest of Dukes and Princes, the Queen’s
horses, glossy black, pulled the gun carriage with the coffin on top.

‘Of course,’ said Brenda, remembering the death of Churchill. She looked discreetly at the rounded bellies, trying to ascertain
what sex they were.

‘Are they ladies or gentlemen?’ she whispered to Freda. ‘I can’t see.’

‘Geldings,’ pronounced Freda, though Brenda was no wiser. ‘You can’t have stallions at a state funeral …’

‘Why ever not?’ asked Brenda.

‘They’re too fruity – it stands to reason. They might go wild and stampede down the Mall dragging the coffin at breakneck
speed.’

‘How awful,’ said Brenda.

‘They’re very carefully trained. In Vienna it was an art in itself.’

Freda spoke as if she knew all about it, though in truth
she had only ridden once, and that on a donkey at Whitby Bay when she was six years old.

The soldiers, young boys from country districts with soft burring accents, ate pieces of salami and crusts of bread washed
down by the wine. In return, unasked, they offered the two women and one of the men a ride on the horses.

‘Oh, no,’ said Brenda instantly, ‘I couldn’t possibly – honestly. Thank you very much all the same.’

She stepped backwards, as if fearing they would fling her into the air by force and strap her in the saddle like some sacrifice
to the gods of war. The workers, having been picked once in their lives by Mr Paganotti, hung back, not expecting to be chosen
again. Vittorio made a token attempt to stand back for Salvatore, but it was not serious, and he and Rossi mounted. Freda,
her delicate back forgotten, flung down her sheepskin coat and was hauled by two soldiers on to the large gelding, the plump
curves of her purple calves echoing the rounded swell of the horses. Admiringly the men watched her swaying under the sky,
her peach face shimmering amidst the golden strands of her blown hair. Vittorio, the red jumper giving him a military air,
rode at her side. The soldiers mounted their own beasts, the long guiding reins streaming out behind them, and began to canter
slowly away from the pitch. Last went Rossi, hair clustered in damp ringlets upon his brow, bumping like a schoolboy across
the neck of his horse. They rode through the air, level with the distant hills and the black fingers of the thorn trees, and
Freda held an imaginary crop in her hand and tilted her chin imperiously at the sun. She was
Catherine of Russia at the head of her regiment; she was Lady Barbara riding beside the young squire. Vittorio could not
take his eyes from her: she was so majestic, so splendidly rooted to the black horse. She knew he was looking at her. She
parted her lips, and a dimple appeared in her left cheek, and she thought, just at this moment we are one, you and I, only
a little lower than the angels. They swept in a wide arc around the park, the scent of the firs mingling with the sweat of
the horses, and turned at the curve of the timber fence, bending low to avoid the branches dipping in their path.

As they flashed past the beginning of the beech wood, Vittorio thought he saw someone in a peaked cap and a mackintosh running
along an avenue of trees. For a second he imagined it was the Irish van-driver, but he remembered that Freda had said he had
long since made for home.

‘Thank you so much,’ said Freda graciously, as the horses stopped once more at the oak tree. ‘It was so nice.’ And she slid,
light as a feather, it seemed, to the green grass and stood patting the nose of her horse.

Her knees began to tremble, her thighs ached; she had not realised how tightly she had gripped the belly of the saddleless
animal. Exhilarated and unsteady on her feet, she smiled with childish satisfaction at Vittorio and said gaily to Brenda:
‘Oh, you should have come. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful.’

They sat on the ground and lay in the sunshine. They drank thirstily from the barrels of wine. The soldiers, standing in their
stirrups like jockeys, rode in a circle about the tree stump and made for the verge. Stepping
delicately on to the gravel, the black horses swayed sedately towards the town, hooves clattering on the surface of the road.

‘What did it really feel like?’ asked Brenda.

‘It was a bit like being on a swing,’ Freda told her. ‘Something gliding and rushing through the air. It was—’

‘It didn’t look like gliding. You were all jogging up and down like bags of potatoes.’

‘Rubbish. I was—’

‘You have ridden before?’ asked Rossi.

He made it sound like an accusation. He was aware that he himself had cut a poor figure in front of the cellar workers and
was grateful that Mr Paganotti had not been present.

‘Several times,’ lied Freda, and she lay on top of her sheepskin coat, the wool curling in little fleecy knots about her purple
limbs, satisfied, in spite of what Brenda had said, that she had been stunning in her deportment. She no longer needed to
talk to Vittorio. For the moment she was sure of his admiration; she could afford to relax. She lay dreaming on her back,
still experiencing the motion of the horse, the muscles in her legs trembling with fatigue. Behind her closed lids she indulged
in fantasies: brandishing a riding whip, she leapt fences of impossible height and reached Vittorio, motionless in a meadow
ringed with poplars.

The men went for little walks into the bushes or sat in the shade of the several oak trees and dozed. The parked cars had
long since departed. The children, whining for sweeties, had gone from the grass. Brenda, not liking to lie down, in case
she inflamed Rossi, propped
herself on her side with her back to him and, leaning for protection as close to Freda as she dared, dug small holes in the
soil with the tips of her grubby fingers.

After a time Rossi rose to his feet and wandered away in the direction of the fence. She watched his low-slung body amble
across the park. He turned and waved, and she lowered her eyes and pretended she hadn’t seen. Even at such a distance, his
very presence in the landscape chafed her sensibilities. He was like some persistently hovering insect buzzing about her
ears. She longed to swat him and have done with it. I ought, she told herself severely, to be able to speak my mind: I can’t
spend the next year or so running away from him. The thought of time lived as it was, spreading ahead of her – a long procession
of days in the factory and evenings with Freda – filled her with gloom. She dwelt on the possibility of renting a room of
her own: she would sit all day at the window without being disturbed, without having to respond. It occurred to her that she
had escaped Stanley only to be dominated by Freda. Why do I do it, she thought, looking up abstractedly? And there was Rossi
at the fence, fingers still fluttering in an absurd gesture of beckoning friendliness. Once and for all she would put him
in his place. She jumped to her feet and strode purposefully over the grass. If he had been nearer it would have been easier.
She had to walk quite a long way, and by the time she reached him she had been forced to smile once or twice and return his
hand-waving. She trod on a snail and gathered it up on a leaf and brought it to him, cupped in her hands, to where he stood
in tall grass and flowering weeds of red and purple.

‘Poor thing,’ she said, gazing with horror at the trail of slime oozing from its shell.

‘It is the nature,’ he assured her.

Impatiently he took her hand so that the leaf dropped to the undergrowth.

Anger revived, she asked snappily: ‘What do you want?’

‘We go for a little walk, yes?’

‘No we won’t.’

‘We go now – come.’ And he darted away as if he was a dog anticipating a flung stick and returned immediately. ‘You come
for a little walk?’

‘I am not keen on a little walk.’

‘A little walk is good. We see the little deer.’

‘No.’ She began to blush. ‘I won’t.’

He stared at her as if she was not well, eyes round with concern.

‘Freda wouldn’t like it.’

‘Ah,’ he said expressively, relieved that the problem was so simple. ‘But she is not looking.’

‘She may not seem to be, but she is.’

He looked at the mound of the blonde woman lying like a ripe plum on her coat of wool. ‘She is having a little sleep.’

Brenda felt threatened. She had kept her eyes fixed on his in hopes of subduing the wild beast in him. Now, as he still advanced,
she wavered. Her glance shifted to the trees beyond. She thought of the shadowy hollow to which he would lead her, the bugs
in the grass, the spiders walking across her hair.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t push me about.’ Almost
as soon as she had uttered the words she was sorry for them. She wouldn’t like anybody to feel she was nasty. ‘It’s not my
fault,’ she said. ‘I am thinking of you too. You see Freda said she would tell Mr Paganotti if you ever tried to interfere
with me again. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’

He couldn’t deny it. Expressions of misery and doubt wrinkled his flushed face. ‘She would tell things to Mr Paganotti?’

‘Yes, she would – I mean, if she sees us going off, she would tell.’

‘She would not dare—’

‘Freda? She’d dare to do anything. She doesn’t give a fig for Mr Paganotti.’

She had stabbed him twice, put in the knife and twisted it. The colour drained from his cheeks.

‘It is impossible,’ he said.

But she did not wait to hear any more. The longer she stayed with him the more likely was it that she would find herself in
another awkward situation. She turned her back on him and called over her shoulder: ‘We should go back to the others. Freda
will think there’s something funny going on.’

The men had resumed the game of football under the captainship of Vittorio. His beautiful velvet trousers were crumpled now,
his backside grey with dust from the ride on the horse. Brenda weaved her way between the sporting players and flopped down
on the grass beside Freda. She was smiling.

‘I did it,’ she said.

‘You what?’

‘I told Rossi where to get off.’

Freda’s eyes snapped open. ‘Good for you. What did you say?’

‘I said you were going to tell Mr Paganotti.’

‘Whatever did you say that for? Why did you involve me, you fool?’

‘But you said you’d tell Mr Paganotti. You said if ever—’

‘You didn’t have to tell him I would. You should bloody well have said
you
were going to.’

All the joy went out of Brenda’s victory. She hugged her knees and despaired of doing the right thing.

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Why the hell should I be pleased? It’s nothing to do with me what you get up to with Rossi.’

You never said that before,’ protested Brenda. ‘If you hadn’t been so nasty to Patrick he would have protected me.’

‘Me – nasty to Patrick? That lout tried to hit me.’ Freda was outraged at the recollection. She sat upright and combed her
hair with agitated fingers.

‘He never. You hit him with the French loaf.’

‘Christ,’ bellowed Freda. She jumped to her feet, snatching up her coat and waving it wildly in the air. A shower of grass
and the gnawed bone of chicken slid to the ground. ‘He attacked me, he did – in the Chapel, he tried to punch me on the jaw.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ whispered Brenda, though she did. She couldn’t think what Freda had done to make the Irishman so violent.
‘What did he say?’

Freda was staring across the field. Rossi and Vittorio,
beyond the surging line of workers, seemed to be having an argument. Like dogs about to leap snarling into combat they padded
in a small circle around each other. Vittorio’s voice carried, harsh with anger, on the still air.

‘What did he say when he tried to hit you?’ persisted Brenda.

‘Get off,’ Freda said. ‘What’s it about? What are they saying?’

‘It’s foreign,’ said Brenda sulkily.

Rossi had boldly asked Vittorio to take Mrs Freda into the woods. Though Vittorio was nephew to his beloved Mr Paganotti he
would surely understand. Vittorio was appalled at the suggestion. His impending betrothal to Rossi’s niece made such a thing
out of the question: he was not a boy burning with lust, he was a man of honour. Rossi said nervously he was in bad trouble
with Mrs Freda, and if she too could be disgraced then she would not be able to go to Mr Paganotti and report him for his
conduct towards Mrs Brenda. Vittorio retorted that if Rossi had behaved indiscreetly with Mrs Brenda then he must take his
punishment. He had dishonoured his family by his demeanour. He could not expect that others should lower themselves in order
to protect him. Besides, he pointed out, the English women were different. No matter how many times he took Mrs Freda into
the woods she would not feel disgraced, she would be flattered. She would run wantonly from under the trees and tell the whole
of Windsor Park how beautifully she had been dishonoured.