The Beauty Read online

Music. I have missed it. There is more than one way to make a long tale in mind and memory; Landers is playing the guitar and singing while Keith D fiddles. They sing of soul cakes, a winter song, and I realise I have been under the ground for too long. My famous sense of time and place has left me; this is the wrong song for late autumn but it is a good song, one of my favourites. The humanity in me jumps up and begs to draw closer.

  But I keep my distance, just out of the light of the flames, and let my eyes play over the familiar faces: William, Eamon, the lads, even Uncle Ted, who looks unchanged except for the sadness that sits on his shoulders.

  Why is he here, by the fire? To mourn me? Is that why they play my favourite song and yet nobody dances? I am dead to them. If I do not act now somebody will get up at the end of the song and tell stories of me; I remember when and Wasn’t he and I’ll miss his and other things that a living person should never hear about themselves in case it changes the way they choose to carry on living.

  So I come into the circle.

  The music stops. Fingers and mouths are frozen. Even William is without comment. His face is a picture of surprise. Uncle Ted is the first to move. He gets up, takes long strides until he is putting his arms around me so I am pressed to his leather coat.

  He is saying, ‘Where have you been? Where have you been?’ over and over with no pause, no drawing of breath. It brings the Group to life. They rush to me and surround me, talking to themselves, to each other, Who would have believed, We thought he was, How can he be. I let their words be a blanket for me, wrapping me in their joy and concern.

  Then William is there, pushing his way through to stand toe to toe with me. Uncle Ted lets me go. The others step back.

  ‘Ted said you disappeared. We searched. No signs, no trail. Nothing. Ben and Thomas are gone too.’

  ‘I was kept safe,’ I tell him.

  William assesses me with his straight gaze, the one he keeps only for important judgements. ‘You were kept?’

  ‘Unharmed. All is well. All is good.’

  ‘There are… people in the wood? Another Group? Will they have Ben and Thomas?’

  ‘Not a Group.’

  Uncle Ted says, ‘Let him get warm, for Heaven’s sake,’ and pushes William out of the way. He leads me forward to the glow of the fire which is bright against my face. It is an unpleasant sensation after so long in the dampness of the earth; I feel my skin tightening, the hairs on my body lying flat and sleek in response and my pupils contracting.

  ‘I have a story,’ I say. ‘The story of what happened to me out there.’

  ‘Time for that later,’ says Uncle Ted, but the younger ones are already buzzing, settling themselves down, and I know they have missed this. Nobody could take my place. I am given the confidence to tell the story I have been shaping, and they will listen to the end. They will understand what I have to tell them.

  *

  In the beginning there was a lonely orphan boy. His father was only known to him as a figment of his own imagination and his mother went the way of all women. He mourned them, but not excessively so for he was only as lonely as every other man he knew and it would have been selfish to weep when others must work.

  So he worked too. He was lucky, he had a talent for tales: long tales, short tales, tales of reality, of mystery and of imagination. The other men recognised his talent and encouraged it. All men should be so lucky, but the truth is – talent does not touch us all. The orphan appreciated this and did not squander his talent or waste his words. He worked very hard to entertain and delight his listeners around the fireside, and his talent and his tales grew a little more every day.

  It grew, but his talent did not bloom.

  This bothered him. All organic things grow and reach fruition. He saw this in the earth and the seasons, in the wild flowers and the tame vegetable patch. But what kind of flower would his talent produce? Where do stories lead? The answers he imagined scared him. But his mother had always said to him, ‘Your imagination can take you to the best and worst places. It is a ship on a sea of dreams and it’s up to you to steer it.’ And so he tried to control the rudderless boat of his brain, and sweated daily with the effort.

  It seemed storytelling was as hard a form of work as tilling the soil, in some ways.

  Years passed. The orphan began to lose the sound of his mother’s voice and the movement of her mouth, the colour of her eyes, the feel of her hair. So he held tight to an old photograph, staring at it, carrying it with him, until he realised that the mother he knew had become only the photograph, an image of what a mother should be, and there were no real memories left. On the day of that realisation he took the photograph to the edge of the valley, the steepest cliff that overlooked the sea. He tore his mother’s face to pieces and then threw the pieces over the rocks to be carried away, to be truly forgotten.

  And on that day there came the Beauty.

  They were found in the graveyard, springing from the decaying bodies of the women deep in the ground, and they were found in the woods, spreading themselves like a rug over the wet earth. The Beauty were small at first but they grew, and they took all the best qualities of the dead. They sucked up through the soil all the softness, serenity, hope and happiness of womankind. They made themselves into a new form, a new birth, shaped from the clay of the world and designed only to bring pleasure to man.

  But the Beauty knew, from the many experiences of the women that had gone before, that men did not always love what was good for them. Men could attack, hurt, maim and murder the things that came too fast, too suddenly, like love, like beginnings that involved the death of the old way. So the Beauty decided to find a man who could accept them, who could speak for them. And serendipity sent to them the lonely orphan boy.

  They came across him, lost and wandering in the forest, like a gift, and took him into the earth with them. The Beauty treated him kindly, gave him time to come to appreciate the devotion they offered. They chose one of their number, a patient and wise one with large breasts and a beguiling scent, and sent it to the boy. He recognised the smell and form of woman. His memories were returned to him in that aroma, in the pendulous feel of the breasts, and it was as if his mother had returned to him, as if all of womankind had returned.

  He did what came naturally to him with this beautiful creature, and soon the shame and guilt he felt at fondling and fucking passed away into death and something else was born in its place: a new delight, unfettered, in such beauty. And, for the first time, hope.

  So the boy agreed to speak to the other men, to tell them of such happiness and to offer it to them. And they said–

  They said–

  I stop speaking.

  A time passes. The men look at each other. I know they are waiting for me to finish the story, to give it a meaning, but this time around it is not my job to say the final words.

  ‘You aren’t finished,’ says William.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Neither are you.’

  And then I see the shapes move from the darkness, coming into the light. William jumps to his feet, then Uncle Ted and the others: all shouting, moaning, pissing and frothing, fighting, struggling, running. The Beauty encircle them, enclose them, take them into their embrace and rock them, absorb them, until terror and pleasure become one and the same. Then the only sounds are the sighs and sobs of wordless confusion that will, no doubt, soon be replaced with an acceptance as deep and wide and thankful as my own.

  Part Two

  ‘The men are unhappy,’ says Doctor Ben.

  I shake my head. I say, ‘No, they’re not. They’re not able to admit they’re happy. That’s all.’

  Thomas keeps a clean kitchen. The fridge and the oven are old, rust-speckled white-slabbed boxes, side by side like grizzled guard dogs, standing to attention on the tiled floor. The house is old too – a small brick building at the entrance of the Valley, where once a warden lived to watch over nature and protect it from humanity. Or so the story goes.

  As
the cook, Thomas lives in a kind of luxury here. It is warmer at night than in the huts, no doubt. The otherness of this kitchen, powered by windmills and overlooking the tidy walled garden, is the perfect setting for difficult conversations. The kind that should not be overheard.

  ‘Landers tried to kill himself,’ says Doctor Ben.

  Thomas stops chopping green beans and turns to us, knife in hand. ‘Really?’ he says, saucer-eyed.

  ‘He did a bad job of it. One small cut of the wrist. I bandaged it.’

  I lean back against the shelves and feel the first twinge of discomfort. Separating from Bee quickly leads to an ache in my stomach, a queasiness that grows with passing minutes. Bee stands on the other side of the kitchen door waiting, along with the Beauties that belong to Doctor Ben and Thomas. As the first three to find pairings, kept under the earth with them, the feeling is strong that we shouldn’t be in different rooms, not for a moment. It is this that makes me uncomfortable, but I can appreciate it. Discomfort is not a disaster.

  ‘Landers’ Beauty picked him up and carried him to me,’ says Ben. ‘It refused to let him suffer.’

  I say, ‘Then it did a good thing, right? It cares for him. They care for all of us.’ They have taken over the heavy tasks, the unpleasant ones. They farm and they chop without complaint. And now they save our lives.

  ‘It’s my opinion,’ says Ben, raising his eyebrows, ‘that some of the men will never get over the feeling of revulsion. We can’t live like this.’

  ‘Give it time. We got over it, didn’t we?’

  ‘You came round in weeks. So did Thomas. It’s easier on the younger ones. But we’re well into spring now and the older ones are so ashamed still. They don’t want it, but they can’t refuse it.’

  ‘Is that how you feel?’ I ask him. I’ve seen him struggle to accept the couplings round the fire after my nightly stories, and the way the Beauty simply touch, mould, demand the comfort of our bodies at any time, blocking out all other thoughts. ‘Do you wish you’d never met your own Beauty? That you’d never met Bella?’

  ‘Every day,’ he says, and I believe him. Ben adds, ‘I wish I’d never gone into the wood that night with Thomas to look at the mushrooms. And yet it’s not that life was better before. It’s that – I can’t explain it.’

  ‘Let me explain it for you, around the fire. I can give it a voice.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No.’

  I say, ‘Why not? That’s my job. I should make a story about this. It will help us all to face it, overcome it.’

  ‘That’s just it, Nathan. Your stories, all of them – they aren’t the truth any more. Last night you told the story of the Group, and you made it into… a saga.’

  ‘It is a saga!’

  ‘No! It hasn’t all been a journey towards meeting the Beauty. It hasn’t been a straight road leading to a dawn. We didn’t come to the Valley of the Rocks in order to meet and meld with these – walking mushrooms!’

  Thomas snorts.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ I tell him, but it only makes him worse. He laughs out loud, and in between gasps for air he says, ‘Mush… rooms…’

  Doctor Ben and I wait for his laughter to subside. When Thomas finally manages to control himself we hear scraping on the kitchen door; our Beauties want in. The urge to go to them is strong, palpable in the room, but none of us move.

  Thomas puts down the knife and stares at his fresh spring beans. He has lost weight since joining with Betty. There is a sleekness to his cheekbones, the muscles starting to show through on his shoulders.

  ‘I’m making goat stew,’ he says. ‘Cooked for hours with green tomatoes from the hothouse, new potatoes fresh from the buckets by the back door and the first green beans plucked from the canes. Topped with griddle bread and melted goat’s cheese. One of my favourites. Before all this I would have put in mushrooms. The earthiness gives it something, deepens the taste of the thyme.’

  Thomas rubs his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Delicious. But I can’t. I can’t pick a mushroom. It would be like cannibalism. How crazy is that? Cannibalism.’ He laughs once more: softly, weakly.

  Doctor Ben moves to him and pats him on the shoulder. ‘Can you represent this truth in your tales?’ he asks me.

  I say, ‘I can make a story about a boy who went off mushrooms.’

  He says, ‘That’s not what this is.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Then you see, you misrepresent our history. It’s not safe in your hands.’

  His words sting me, like bees in my ear. The scratching on the door intensifies. I have to raise my voice to be heard over it.

  ‘I don’t hold our past in my hands and I’m not responsible for it. I’m a storyteller. I speak of the deeper truth of our morality; our history should reflect that.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You represent your own morality, and expect us all to agree with it.’

  ‘Please don’t fight,’ says Thomas. He is crying. He goes to the door, throws it open and lets in the Beauty. Betty is first. It backs him up against the counter and takes Thomas into itself, wrapping its arms around him. He slumps into its embrace. His trousers work their way down his legs and he thrusts and shudders. Then my Bee is upon me and I don’t think about Thomas or Ben any more.

  *

  To start–

  There will be love. The word was dead. Then it rose from under the earth, took form, came to us and demanded our attention anew, even though we were not willing to give it. For it is easier to be loveless, to dismiss that tender stretching. The heart is a muscle; when we love, we exercise – we must breathe hard, we must feel the burning of our legs and lungs, we must grow dizzy with it. We must run with this new love until we feel an exhaustion of our souls.

  There will be change. The word can move from myth to material. We shall weave cloth from it, add squares to the patchwork blanket of our Group. Older squares are fraying and torn; this fresh, clean cloth will comfort us, even if our fingers are pricked in the act of stitching.

  There will be beauty. The word can be reclaimed from the wasteland of women, from thoughts of the crawling disease that infested wombs. Beauty is here, fresh and willing to hold our hands once more, like a child in a garden.

  So let us hold hands. Let us join in these final days of our fate. Let us walk together in love, in change, in beauty, on and on until the end.

  *

  It is early morning and I am looking upon Belinda, lying on the floor of the hut it shared with Hal. Its head is stamped open, its arms and legs ripped off. The stumps drizzle black. The body has been opened with something sharp like a knife, and inside there are grey strings and shapes with the rich smell of the compost heap.

  This death is your fault, Nathan, the older men will say. It’s on your conscience.

  It’s not that I don’t have reservations. Perhaps they all think that I am impregnable to their misgivings, but I see it, I see it! We must give up so much of ourselves to the Beauty, and not just our semen. We surrender our independence that was ever the strength of our Group; we make ourselves reliant on their soft sponginess, those blank faces. I feel the same repulsion to this but the truth is – what are we keeping our independence for?

  Once upon a time we idolised the past because that was all we had. Now we must look to the future and sacrifice the sacred cow of our glorious Group. We are being made anew. We change, or we die. Or, it seems, we kill.

  Once such thoughts have come to me I can’t forget them and I know they will work themselves into my stories whether I like it or not. So, instead of waiting for it to trickle out of me, I decided to spurt out my ideas in a new kind of story. A story of the future.

  After I finished my new story I was met with a profound silence. My stories normally provoke feelings of friendliness or appreciation. The good will, the gratitude of the Group, has been my reward. But this story did not provoke such feelings. I couldn’t say what they thought. But I was sure that they did listen; I felt the
disturbance my words caused like the ripples on the surface of a pond after the falling of a stone.

  Is this death my fault? Is it on my conscience?

  Hal sits in the corner of the hut, eyes closed, face calm, hands clenching and opening. Gareth stands by him, holding a scythe. Of course – not a knife. A scythe. The black liquid coats its edge.

  ‘Why?’ says William.

  Gareth jerks his head to Hal. ‘He asked me to.’

  There is a scratching at the door.

  ‘Don’t let them in,’ says Hal. His hands work against the material of his trousers, picking, picking, picking.

  ‘What can we do?’ William asks Uncle Ted. They exchange long looks.

  ‘We have to let them see,’ I say. ‘What other option is there?’

  ‘Hide it,’ says Gareth.

  The men, apart from Hal, look around the room as if there is a rug under which this crime could be swept. Hal looks only at me. I think he knows what I am about to do, and his eyes contain a pleading.

  I walk over to the door and open it.

  Our Beauties do not enter. They sway on the threshold and I wonder – how can they tell? With no eyes, how can they know so quickly that one of their number lies mutilated on the floor?

  They make no sound, and neither do we.

  I see my Bee, feel my need for it rise up in me. When it does not come to me, I remember the old coldness of my life, and I know I do not want that again, not ever. How could Hal bear to watch his only comfort be destroyed? How could he give that command? There is something at work here that I do not understand and for the first time I am scared. Not of the Beauty, but of my own kind.

  Gareth leans the scythe against the wall, then clears his throat. Perhaps he’s considering an apology, and I wonder how that would be phrased, but before he can speak the Beauty move backwards as one and walk, at speed, away from us. I step out into the bright sunlight and follow them as they cross the camp, past the huts, past the campfire, their numbers growing, pulling together until every Beauty has collected together and they are retreating past the boundaries of the forest faster than I can run. Then they are gone from sight.