The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge Read Free Book Online Page B

knees
     to drag out the cork. He wore a black polonecked jumper and a coat of real leather with two stylish vents at the back.
    ‘It’s strange,’ she said, sipping her wine. ‘I loved her, but we were not close.’
    ‘Yes,’ he replied, averting his eyes from her black nylon negligée, looking instead at the cheap utility furniture and the
     curved railings of the balcony reflecting the light of the street lamp.
    ‘Are you close to your mother?’ she asked him, not quite at ease, wishing almost he hadn’t come. He said No, she lived in
     Italy.
    ‘To your heart,’ she persisted, touching her breast and looking at him earnestly. She was dreadfully hungry. The hairdresser
     had made her wait a long time and she hadn’t had any lunch.
    ‘Brenda has gone to the pictures to see
Super Dick
, she told him, thinking it was a provocative title. She walked back and forth from the table to the window.
    ‘I would have thought …’ he began, but she lowered her head and he fell silent.
    ‘Brenda’s different from me,’ she murmured. ‘When I found her on the Finchley Road I did think …’ and she too trailed
     into silence and left the sentence unfinished.
    He had brought her a peach in a skein of tissue paper and she rolled the fruit between her palms.
    ‘How kind of you,’ she said, lifting his beautiful coat from the bed and taking it to the wardrobe in case she spilled wine
     upon it. When she opened the door a bottle of brandy rolled from the hem of her cloak and fell on to the nail of her big bare
     toe.
    ‘Christ,’ she cried, bringing her hand to her mouth and contracting her foot with the pain. ‘Brenda,’ she toldhim, voice husky with suppressed violence, ‘never puts anything away.’
    She stuffed the bottle behind the hanging dresses and prayed he hadn’t noticed. She didn’t know how to broach the subject
     of food: if she mentioned the steak it might seem as if she were forcing him to stay – as if it were all planned. She poured
     herself out another glass of wine and gulped it down. He wasn’t very talkative; he was making her do all the work. If he went
     quite soon she could eat the steak herself and the salad. She hadn’t had time to make the garlic dressing, and how could she
     go out now on to the landing and start messing about with lemons. She was sweating from the pain of her crushed foot and the
     low rumblings of her empty stomach. Unable to contain herself, she nibbled a chocolate biscuit that Brenda had left on the
     mantelpiece and listened to the sound of hammering one floor above.
    ‘I could do with some tea,’ said Patrick, and Brenda had to nod her head as if it was quite all right and tiptoe down the
     stairs again.
    She was always amazed at how seemingly-shy people constantly asked for things without a trace of embarrassment. How could
     she boil a kettle with Vittorio and Freda only inches away? The gas made a funny whining sound before the water warmed up,
     and Freda was bound to rush out on to the landing and create a scene. Hardly breathing, she lifted the kettle from the stove
     and was grateful that it was already half-filled with water. When she struck a match to light the gas, the ignition and flare
     of the sulphur were like the launching of a rocket. Shetrembled and dropped the matchstick on to the lino. Suddenly from behind the shut door, Freda began to sing. Under strain
     as she was, Brenda couldn’t help smiling. Freda must have found the brandy bottle. She knew exactly how Freda must look at
     this moment, having seen her in the same state every Friday night after her visit to the theatrical pub. She would be standing
     poised like a Greek statue, head bent low so that her hair spilled about her face, one arm raised high in the air, one knee
     slightly flexed. Clicking her finger and thumb together, she would begin to glide in a small circle, round and round:
MacArthur’s Park is lying in the rain …
    I don’t think that I can take it,
    For it took