Hector groans in frustration, then erupts into rage when Wilf actually points the wheelchair back homeward and starts pushing.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, b’y —” says Wilf. But Hector flails at the armrests and wrenches his head around in an effort to see Wilf.
“Did you want to go visit Leo and Adelaide, is that it, Heck?”
And Hector can only bob his head and beam joylessly to get the message across loud and clear, YES! JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY, YES!
“Oh, well, I don’t mind taking you there.”
And Wilf turns the chair around again and pushes Hector along, if more slowly than Hector was travelling under his own steam, at least in a much straighter line.
“Where’s Teresa at, eh Hector?”
Hector ignores the question but Wilf doesn’t notice.
Teresa is in a state of disbelief. Minutes ago she was gliding along the Shore Road on the bike, having got the hang of it in the course of eight or so miles. She caught sight of the figure on the beach below because of the bright colours it wore, kindled by the full light of the setting sun. The dress looked familiar. Teresa laid down the bike and walked to the edge of the cliff for a better look. The sight of the dress awoke an emotion detached from context. Sympathy — and… pity. Yes. She felt sorry for her. The woman who answered the door in that dress, oh, long ago, a blonde child at her feet, she was married to — it’s Materia Piper’s dress. A strip of goose-flesh streaked down Teresa’s left arm at the recognition of the dress and of the wearer, whose aimless rhythm and bearing also said Materia. There was a small black dog down there too, trotting at the woman’s heels. Did the Pipers have a dog back then, Teresa tried to recall as she slowly parallelled them along the cliff, the rifle threaded through her folded arms.
That poor woman…. Teresa always wished she had done some nice little thing for Materia, since she was the only person Teresa had ever met who truly seemed worse off than herself.
Teresa doesn’t believe in ghosts, nevertheless she expected any moment the figure to shimmer and disappear into ocean light.
“Perhaps it is a sign,” she thought, “asking me not to harm her daughter.”
And Teresa took pity on the woman who was not strong enough to live, but was strong enough to pierce through death to protect her child.
Teresa had resolved to go in peace when the figure ceased walking, turned and looked up at her. The Devil’s face housed in a shape of pity. Teresa watched Frances raise her arms in triumph, a mocking smile twisting her lips, and hiss the name “Teresa”. Teresa swung the rifle through a hundred and eighty degrees, caught it with her shoulder, aimed and fired. The demon jerked back and flopped like a rag doll.
Now Teresa is suspended with the smoking rifle floating out in front of her, trying to get ahold of what she’s done.
Hector is exhausted by the time he’s in Adelaide and Ginger’s kitchen.
“Hector, honey, just settle down now, we’re going to go find Teresa, okay?”
Ginger has already headed over to check Teresa’s house. It’s alarming. Hector does not go places unattended. But he won’t settle down.
“Hector, did something happen to Teresa?”
He shakes his head “no” in a way that’s understood only to those who know him. Then he nods his head “yes” twice as urgently till finally it dawns on him. He points. Up to the top of Adelaide’s kitchen cupboard.
“What is it, Hector? You want something? There’s nothin up there, b’y, what d’you want?”
He gives a series of frustrated groans but does not lower his pointing arm, though it begins to waver. Adelaide shrugs, moves to the counter and is halfway climbed onto it when she freezes in recognition.
“Oh Jesus, Hector.”
She turns and he nods solemnly, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Good boy, Hector,” she says as she grabs her sweater, “stay here with the kids,” and she’s out the door.
Teresa starts breathing again and the rifle regains its weight against her shoulder and in her hands. It’s done. Her heart starts making a racket in an effort to wake up her mind. She reaches out, grasps the barrel in both hands and hurls the rifle end over end onto the beach below, where it discharges again in a hail of pebbles. This second shot is the one she hears, and it sets her running like a starting pistol in the ears of a sprinter. She pounds along the cliff, running and running, she doesn’t think where until she swings with the rail tracks towards New Waterford, and still all she knows is what she sees flashing by, not what she intends. Number 12 Colliery, colossally idle to her right, the little company houses, whipping by like telephone polls past a steamed-up train. She’s not running like a lady, she’s running like a champion. The next thing she notices is that she’s bounding up the steps of New Waterford General Hospital, and from this she surmises that she has come to get help for the girl she has killed.
Thundering towards New Waterford beside Ginger in his truck, Adelaide shouts, “Stop!”
It’s Hector’s bike lying near the tracks on the ocean side of the road. Adelaide hops down from the truck before it has rolled to a stop and dashes across. Ginger follows and joins her where she’s standing at the edge of the cliff staring down.
“Oh my Lord.”
Trixie is curled around Frances’s head. She has spent the ten minutes since the shooting painfully kneading Frances’s scalp with her never-trimmed claws. Two people have come sliding down the hill and now they’re crunching towards her and Frances.
At their approach, Frances repeats the words she has been mumbling, “Ow. Trixie, stop it.”
Frances’s eyes have gone to slits, the only colour on her face is her tiny nose mole, she has become scrawny once more, a little woman in a big dress.
In each hand there is a stone of equal weight. It is time for sleep.
“Should we move her?”
“We ain’t got much of a choice,” Adelaide replies.
It’s hard to know where the wound is and therefore where to take hold and lift her up because there’s so much blood. Trixie keeps kneading and for once she can’t stop talking. Ginger slips his arms under Frances and lifts her carefully. She’s so clearly not faking this time that he wonders again how he could possibly have bought her earlier performances. He decides to give himself a break and admit that she is a great actress. Adelaide picks up the rifle and they start back up the slope. Trixie follows, her eyes full of mendicant pleading. She watches the truck pull away, then streaks across the field for home.
Frances bleeds into Adelaide’s dress with her feet resting across Ginger’s knees. He tries for a compromise between speed and smoothness.
Teresa has been given a cup of tea in the front hall of New Waterford General Hospital. The head nursing sister was the first to come across her. If it had been that nice young intern from away, the hysterical woman would have been given a shot in the vein instead of a cup of tea. The head nurse, however, has noticed that, whether they drink the tea or not, the mere act of reaching out to receive something that must not be spilled seems to have a profoundly calming effect on all but the downright insane.
“Now dear, if the girl is dead, why does she need an ambulance?”
Teresa balances the teacup in both hands and puts her first real sentence together since the shooting, “There’s a chance she may still be alive. She’s down by the shore. She’s been shot.”
This is an example of how tea can work better than narcotic oblivion.
The head nurse rises immediately and swishes away to get the ball rolling. Teresa adds, “I shot her.”
Nurse hears her, thinks, “First things first,” and keeps walking towards Emergency.