Teresa has a bicycle too. It’s Hector’s old one. It’s got a crossbar, of course, and Teresa is none too pleased to have her dress draped astride it but that can’t be helped. At least she’s tall enough not to look completely ridiculous. She used to ride this bike in the old days, but as a passenger on the handlebars in front of Hector, who pedalled and swerved to make her squeal and giggle. As she wobbles along now she marvels, was I ever that girly? She was a real girly girl. A princess. Everything had to be ladylike, the table set just so when he came to her mother’s house for supper. It was perfect because Hector was a gentleman too, or at least was growing up into one, because at that time he was still a waggy boy. They were not too young, though, to plan for the future. His education and ordination as an Anglican minister. Moving south of the border. They wanted lots of children. People like us are the ones who should have children, they agreed. Teresa had a dream of founding a dynasty of people who would be a high example not only to their own race, but to all who knew them.
Way down beneath this noble aim, at the bottom of the well, was a voice stranded without a rope or a ladder, howling up, “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!” Exultant, exuberant; its ferocity was the strength behind her ladylike dignity and determination, though she could barely hear it. She had no awareness of the power of the hopeful rage within, which could move mountains, climb out of wells in triumph. She did not know her own strength. With Hector’s accident the voice got louder but it was still muffled by her determination to bear all patiently with the help of the Lord. At the unjust loss of her job there ceased to be any competition for the voice at all, and she could hear it plainly. It no longer said, “I’ll show them,” it was saying, “I’ll get them.” It had changed to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus to take away. But it was also part of what had kept her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of hate is a species of animated scrap metal. Rusting, corroding inside, leaching into the vital organs. Teresa is sick with it. It can kill.
Adelaide pulls up in front of MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery. Mr MacIsaac is closing up for the evening, she catches him on the way out.
“Mr MacIsaac, I’m Addy Taylor from the Pier.”
“Hello, Mrs Taylor.”
He extends his old red hand and she shakes it. His eyes are clear these days but still kind.
Adelaide reaches deep into her wicker basket. “Have a swig of this, Mister Mac.”
She uncorks a brown bottle. MacIsaac shakes his head, being two years on the wagon.
“It’s the best ginger beer you ever tasted,” says Adelaide.
He smiles. Takes it and drinks. It is. Sweet up front, then sears the back of your throat till your earwax tinkles.
“What do you call it?”
“‘Clarisse’s Island Brew.’”
“Are you from the islands, Mrs Taylor?”
Adelaide laughs, “I’m from Halifax for a hundred and fifty-six years, mister, where’re you from?”
“From here for eighty or ninety years, and as far as I know before that it was the Isle of Skye, the Isle of Man and, let’s see now, the Isle of Wight.”
“Your people had a taste for islands.”
“You’d think we’d’ve learned by now, eh?”
He wheezes and she laughs. He orders three cases for the store to see how it goes.
Frances is risen from the baby carriage now that Adelaide has ridden off on her bike. “Like a witch on her broom,” thinks Frances with a shudder. She has sent Lily home, claiming the need to “commune with nature”.
Part of Frances’s new health regime is moderate exercise. It’s hard to know what to believe about pregnancy when, in movies, miscarriages are a narrative convenience as close as the nearest flight of stairs, while in books like Great Pioneer Women the broads all fight bears and harvest corn right up to their accouchement. Frances has decided upon the happy medium of regular oceanside walks. Romantic heroines are always being ordered to take the sea air. Unless they are tubercular, in which case they are banished to the land where the blood oranges grow. Frances hasn’t noticed any tubercular tendencies in herself. In fact, with the conviction of her pregnancy her self-image has evolved into that of a much larger woman. Slow and curvaceous, with a bosom instead of a chest.
Trixie has come along for the walk. Something about her attentive behaviour, as well as the trotting gait necessitated by her missing paw, makes Trixie seem more canine than feline. And she is in the habit of casting quick glances up at Frances, checking in the way a dog does. They arrive at the edge of the cliff. Trixie follows as Frances traverses the stony slope, eschewing her former habit of skidding headlong on her hands and heels. At the bottom, Frances pauses and takes a deep salty breath.
She turns north and begins to stroll as though through warm water, or as though rhythmically across the endless wet sand of a beach she has never visited but would know instinctively how to tread. This kind of walking goes with her new hips, which have become what is commonly described as “child-bearing”.
They walk on. This is the best of the summer. Not yet eight in the evening, the sun has brought out the green of the ocean and bathed the sky in a soothing balm of fire. Days like this are so precious. Frances stops and looks out at the sea, which trembles at the caress of the sun. Mumma feels near … as though she had never gone away. Frances is feeling a familiar yet unnameably old feeling. One she hadn’t known was ever hers to forget. Happiness. Unlike her imaginary new body, this feeling is genuine.
Trixie looks up and sees Teresa standing on the ridge above. Backlit, Teresa is magnificently darker and brighter than ever. Seen from far below like this, her great height is higher still. In this light, at that height, everything becomes a precise charcoal line. Teresa’s body is a bold vertical stroke. Bisecting her middle is a horizontal line half as long as she is tall. Against the red-gold blaze of evening. Frances looks up and experiences an arrow through her heart at the crucivision. The arrow is love, its pain spreads outward and the pain is faith, the source that launched the arrow was sorrow. “Teresa,” thinks Frances, and her lips move around the name as she stretches her arms up and holds them out to the woman standing far above.
The horizontal line across Teresa revolves like the needle of a compass till it disappears into the vertical stroke of her body, and the next instant a shot rings out. Frances jolts through the air and onto her back against the gravel shore.
Precious Blood
No one knows just how much Hector understands, not even Teresa. She long ago ceased to look for signs of dear Hector, it being the only way she could come to terms with his loss. And besides, the doctor said Hector was brain-damaged into a cheerful vegetable. Although his only memories from before the accident are smell feelings, Hector has learned to understand English again the way a child learns, in nouns and verbs and concepts. He could learn to read again too if someone thought of teaching him. Unlike a child, however, he will never be able to speak the words himself. What’s left to him is the speech of dogs.
“Hey, hey, Hector, what’s the matter b’y?”
Old Wilf Beel has caught up to Hector’s wheelchair and pulled him to the side of the road. Hector makes his sounds and paws at Wilf’s jacket, his mouth foaming with panic, and Wilf asks, “Are you lost, Hector?”