The air is dragged out of Clare’s lungs. She can’t make a sound, can only stumble after Pip with her arms out wide for balance because the ground is no longer flat, no longer solid. She’s dimly aware that Leandro has sunk lopsidedly to one knee, with his head bowed like he’s praying and his hands clamped around his jaw. Boyd is off to one side, pale and mute. But all she can really see is Ettore on his back, his legs a jumble, a spatter of red droplets across his face and all around him. She collapses next to him and he looks up at her with that same mix of confusion and wonder as when they first met.
‘Ettore! It’s all right, you’ll be all right,’ she says, in a voice she doesn’t quite recognise. He reaches up and she grabs at his hand. ‘You’ll be all right.’ She peels back the lapel of his jacket. Pip’s aim was erratic, he was still raising the gun when he fired and the bullet has gone into Ettore’s right shoulder, just above his armpit. There’s blood spreading out beneath him, and blooming through his shirt, but Clare chokes up with relief. The wound is nowhere near his heart, or lungs; it ought not to kill him. She struggles out of her blouse, wads it up and presses it gently over the bloody entrance wound. ‘Lie still, my love,’ she says. ‘You’re going to be all right. We’ll get the doctor back… you’ll be fine.’
Her vision is blurred, her thoughts scattered. She glances up and sees the gun in Pip’s hand, still raised and trembling at the end of his arm, frozen at the point it went off. His face is bloodless, even his lips; his eyes have a look of such blank terror that she wonders if he even intended to fire.
‘Pip, what are you doing?’ she says raggedly. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Pip doesn’t even blink. Clare feels the heat of Ettore’s blood, soaking up through the thin fabric of her blouse and onto her hands. Behind Pip, Marcie comes into the room, her eyes huge in a drawn, stunned face. Clare looks to Leandro but he’s still on his knees, shaking his head, dazed. It’s Boyd who comes over to them, moving unhurriedly, like he’s on his way to fetch a book from the shelf. ‘Boyd – take the gun away from him. Take the gun away from him!’ says Clare. Boyd stares down at her for a second and then does as she says, prising the pistol from Pip’s clenched hand. Clare relaxes, turns back to Ettore and touches her fingers softly to his face. Boyd moves a step closer to them, and Clare knows she’s given herself away. But the baby in her womb had done that already – would have done it, sooner or later. She swallows, and looks up at her husband. His face has that melted look she’s seen before, slack with grief and fear. His mouth hangs open, his eyes are swimming. He looks just as he did in New York, drunk and drugged, right before he collapsed, and Clare goes cold. Boyd looks down at the gun in his hand; he’s holding it by the grip, his finger is curled around the trigger. Keeping his eyes on it he raises it slowly, turning its barrel upwards, towards his own chin.
‘Boyd,’ says Clare, as softly as she can. ‘Boyd, no. Don’t.’ He freezes for a moment, not even seeming to breathe; the pistol quivers in his hand, he sticks his chin out a little and the barrel touches his skin. He sucks in a breath, a ratcheting sob. ‘Boyd, no,’ says Clare.
‘No,’ he says, with a twitch of his head. He’s shaking all over and his eyes are fixed on her now, cutting into her. Then he straightens his arm, points the gun at Ettore and fires.
‘No!’
For a second Clare thinks she herself has shouted this out, but it can’t be her because her heart has stopped beating and her teeth are clenched, impossibly tight. It’s Marcie. ‘No, no, no!’ she screams. Her voice sounds weird and sluggish; the gunshot is ringing in Clare’s ears. She can’t move. She watches as Boyd repositions his feet for better balance, turns his torso and levels the gun at her face. She struggles to focus her eyes past the perfect black circle of the barrel. Boyd’s face, above it, is now so empty that he almost looks calm. But there’s a muscle ticking beneath the tears on one cheek, trapped in some mad dance of nervous trauma, and his eyes are furious. They stare at each other and while the moment lasts Clare has no sense of time passing. She looks up at this man and her death, and can’t recognise either one. Boyd jerks the trigger and the gun clicks, but doesn’t fire. He frowns at it, hesitates, then brings it in to check the cylinder. Then Leandro is on him, knocking him down, driving his fists into him, again and again. The gun clatters to the floor off to one side and Clare finds herself staring at nothing. Then she looks down at Ettore.
Boyd’s shot was clean. It has left a perfect dark circle above Ettore’s temple, an exact replica of the barrel Clare was just staring into, and his eyes are half-shut, and he’s too still, and even though she knows he’s gone she can’t let herself believe it. She picks up his right hand and puts it at the back of her neck, underneath her hair, as he liked to do. His hand is still warm; she imagines the fingers curling, imagines his grip, pulling her closer; imagines him taking a breath, still with her.
But these are imaginings, nothing more. She kneels there in silence, holding his limp hand; putting it to her face, her lips, the back of her neck again. The weight of his arm is surprising; the skin of his palm is hard and callused; he smells of earth and blood. She can’t believe he’s gone, and she doesn’t know or care what the others are doing – why Pip had a gun, why Marcie is next to her, sobbing brokenly over Ettore’s body; where Leandro has gone with her husband. She doesn’t care about any of it. She doesn’t care when Paola marches in, unarmed but ferocious, with a guard at her shoulder keeping a close eye on her; doesn’t care when the girl sees her brother lying there and her mouth drops open, and she emits such a terrifying howl of pain that it feels like a knife in Clare’s skull. Paola rushes over to them, grabs Marcie by her shoulders and tries to haul her away. Marcie fights her, snarling through her tears; they jostle Clare but she stays where she is. She holds Ettore’s hand, and lets go of everything else.
Sometime later Clare is lifted up and seated on one of the couches; a glass of brandy is held to her lips and tipped into her mouth when she shows no signs of drinking it.
‘Come on. All of it,’ says Leandro. Clare swallows and then gags, coughing. ‘Ah, Ettore! My poor boy. To survive the Great War and this fascist strife, only to be shot by a coward when he was down.’ He shakes his head; he’s leaden with sorrow. ‘I’m too old to expect justice in this world, but still. Some things are far too bad. Drink the brandy. We all need it.’ The pistol is tucked into his belt. He moves like an old man; his knuckles are bloody and his chin is bruised. Clare looks down at where Ettore lay but he’s not there any more, just the blackish stain of his blood. She can’t remember them taking him; far beneath her shock she senses grief and panic, scrabbling for the surface like a trapped animal.
‘Why are you crying like that? For him?’ says Pip. Clare looks at him but he’s sitting next to Marcie, and speaking to her. Marcie’s face is a ruin; her make-up is streaked and grotesque.