The Bottle Factory Outing Read Free Page A

them from the arid slopes of their mountain region and set them down in a land of milk and honey. What did
     she know of their lives before the coming of Mr Paganotti? They were
contadini
who had grown wheat and corn and grapes, but only with tremendous labour, such as made their work in the factory seem like
     one long afternoon of play. Sometimes they had managed a harvest of plums and apples. They had kept chickensand a cow or two. In every way they were peasants, dulled by poverty. But then there had been a miracle. Mr Paganotti in
     his infinite wisdom had picked four men from the village of Caprara and brought them to Hope Street, and when they had settled
     they sent for their wives and their sons and their cousins and they saved their wages and together bought one house, then
     two, until in time each owned a little brick house in the suburbs with hot water running from a tap and a lavatory that flushed.
     Gone were the terracotta roofs of the farm-houses they had known, the stone sinks, the primitive wood-burning stoves. Only
     the religious pictures remained and the statues of Christ on the cross. As the children of the first generation of workers
     grew up, their parents were diligent in conveying just how munificent was the generosity of Mr Paganotti. They remained a
     close and isolated community. No one ever left the factory to take other employment; the sons were encouraged to go on to
     University and become doctors and accountants. Those who did not have the ability joined their fathers on the factory floor.
     They had changed little in thirty years – even Mr Paganotti could not understand the language they spoke, the
dialetto bolognese
that was older than Italian and closer to French. If there was a confrontation between himself and one of the cellar-men,
     Rossi the manager, who alone had adapted himself to the English way of life, was called in to act as interpreter. In spite
     of their good fortune they still stood like beasts of the field, tending Mr Paganotti’s machines.
    It was Brenda’s job to rinse out the sponges in the morning and to tip the glue from the pot into the shallowtrays on the benches. She didn’t mind fetching the glue pot from beneath old Luigi’s place, but she had to go to the Ladies’
     washroom to wet the sponges. She always ran straight across the factory floor without looking to right or left, in case Rossi
     caught sight of her, flying through the door of the washroom and out again with her sponges dripping, as if she was the last
     runner in a relay race. It looked as if she was really zealous and interested in what she was doing.
    ‘You overdo it,’ said Freda. She had slapped the little glittering labels into the glue and stacked a dozen bottles of wine
     in a neat triangle on the bench top. She maintained it was all the same wine – it was just the labels that were different.
     Today it was Rose Anjou and it was fractionally pinker than the Beaujolais – it could have been the tint of the glass bottles
     or dilution with water.
    Brenda had only used one tray of labels when she was distracted by old Luigi at the far end of the line of benches. He stood
     with his feet wide apart to balance himself, on lengths of planking laid over the concrete floor to lessen the cold. He was
     muttering and pulling faces at the women. Freda, as she worked, talked incessantly and dramatically. She twisted and turned
     on her beer crate, she thumped the bottles down into the cardboard box at her side, she stamped her feet for emphasis. Each
     time that she got up to reach with her rubber-gloved fingers for another label, and sank backwards on to her upturned crate,
     the frail old man rose in the air and settled again. As the morning wore on and he trotted more and more frequently to refill
     his little plastic beaker at the wine barrel reserved for the men, so his muttering becamewilder, his glances less discreet. He loathed the English women; he held them in scorn. He would not