Алия Уайтли: The Beauty

Thomas holds the mushroom to my nose, and says, ‘Meaty…’ I inhale, and, yes, there is the tang of meat on it, not unpleasant, like beef slow-cooked to softness. But when Thomas pokes out his tongue and holds the yellow ball to the tip of it he recoils, shudders, and says, ‘Bitter, bitter.’ We both know that is a sign of poison. He spits and says, ‘No good can come of it.’

‘You talk like an old woman,’ I tell him, which is true, although I doubt he can remember how old women talked. They had a kind of bellicose gabble on them, gathering in groups like geese, all honk and no teeth. But Thomas is barely out of his teens and not popular with others his age. Maybe because of that impressive belly, or the fact he already has a job, a good one, while the rest of them are still under the care of Eamon, who took up teaching when Miriam failed.

‘I do not,’ says Thomas. ‘Actually. Can you tell a story about my mother tonight?’

‘Can’t. William has asked for the story of the Group. Besides, I only spoke of her last week. She sang lullabies to you in the sweetest voice and knitted you blankets, don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t mind more.’

I say, ‘That’s what they all say.’ I am stretched thin with their wanting sometimes, but I wouldn’t change that feeling of being needed, of being necessary. ‘You can have a story about her soon,’ I tell him. ‘Can I have it?’

Thomas says, ‘Wash your hands afterwards.’ He is so very authoritative in his field; he likes his power, just as I like mine. Perhaps we two will lead the Group one day, in the final days. He adds, ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Take it to Doctor Ben, I reckon. It might have medicinal benefits. If they’re springing from the bodies of women maybe they contain, I don’t know, an antidote.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ says Thomas, with a laugh, and I know for sure that he doesn’t remember his mother, or any woman, to be able to wear that expression in this graveyard. The disease that killed them all – it has become safe to him. He has never even considered the idea that it might grow, change, come for us men one day.

I know Doctor Ben has thought of this. He discussed it once with me, when I sat with him at dinner and collected the memories of his sister, who lived longer by scraping it out of herself with a knife for a while. He told me diseases are like people. They fight and fight and throw themselves around to escape the walls of tighter and tighter boxes.

In truth, if this happened it would only speed up the inevitable. There will be no more humanity after us; at least, none here in the Valley of the Rocks. Out there, beyond, there might be men in laboratories with tubes and eggs making fresh women, golem women as Doctor Ben says sometimes. It makes me picture white rooms with pink limbs, breasts and heads, pinned to long tables, the scientists in shiny coats taking them and building women one organ at a time. It gives me shuddery dreams.

I think if there were real women in the world I would have felt it, just like I feel spring’s shoots arriving and winter creeping over the rocks. But there is only silence, only silence in the soil.

‘You’re right,’ I tell Thomas. ‘It’s too late for that.’

Something in my expression stops his laughter. We look around the graveyard. The rough fence, chicken wire and wooden posts make a sorry sight. Some men put a pebble in front of the cross of their loved ones – wives, daughters, mothers – a count of pained days. Now these little stones make pyramids and spill over into the soil. They are interspersed with the yellow growths, making a pattern I can’t interpret.

‘What do you think Doctor Ben will do with them?’ says Thomas, as we leave the graveyard. ‘grind them into magic pills?’

‘Take two in the morning after drinking new cider to cure your headache.’

‘Take three and your cock will stop throbbing like a thumb hit with a hammer.’

‘We’re all saved!’ I say, and this time we both laugh, facing the sea, feeling the freshness of the foamy waves crashing until it is difficult to remember what we are laughing for.

Doctor Ben is the oldest of us. He came from just outside the valley with Teresa, his sister. Neither of them liked the outside world much, and he’d been coming into the Group to treat illnesses and injuries for a good few years before he made the decision to join. His sister said if he was going she was too. She was not a woman to be argued with.

I remember when the two of them came up through the valley with three suitcases of differing sizes between them, matching red and sleek with little wheels on the bottom. They struggled along with those cases as if they were more important than the journey itself.

Ben still has those cases. They sit in the corner of his house, unchanged and immutable. They continue to mean something to him, just as they mean something different to me. I never can take my eyes from them when I sit in his room. The rain strikes the canvas over our heads with regularity, even jollity, as Ben throws mint leaves into mugs of hot water, which he collects from the fire. I stare at the suitcases and wonder what happens now in the world when people want to leave a place. There are still boats and aeroplanes, we see them; but there is no new place go to any more, no escape to be made on little shiny wheels.

He hands me my tea, then sits at his desk and looks at the fungus I have placed on it. He pushes it across the grainy wood with the blunt tip of his pencil.

‘Where did you find it, Nate?’ Ben asks.

‘The graveyard.’

‘And there are lots?’

‘Getting bigger every day.’

‘Every day? Visibly?’ He shakes his head. Ben says, ‘That’s odd.’

‘You think?’

The mint tea is refreshing and tingles on my lips. Doctor Ben puts his face close to the mushroom, eyeing it. He sits back on his stool. We don’t talk for a while. The noise of the rain cheers me, makes me feel close to him; we are allies in this endeavour. Once before, he said to me, ‘We are like minds, aren’t we?’ – and I agreed, all the time my mind elsewhere, flying over the peaks in the skies of my stories. But now I am here, all of me, content in his company and with my mug of mint tea.

‘What will you be telling us about tonight?’

I say, ‘The start of the Group again. William asked for it.’

‘I’ll look forward to that.’ He swallows and says, ‘Every time you tell it, it’s better than the one before.’

I say, ‘Thank you.’ He looks surprised, and then I think that maybe he didn’t mean it as a compliment. ‘But it’s always the same story.’

‘Is it?’

Stories are as slippery as seasons; it’s beyond my power to make either stand still. I try to tell them the same way, but each telling leads to small changes; something is added to the structure, a change of pace, a tweak of testimonies, all of them make circles in our minds.

Our friendship is broken once more. The rain has dried and the tea is gone; the yellow mushroom is shrivelling before our eyes, and the stalk is oozing a greyish gunk. Within a moment it is half the size it was and the liquid is sinking into the wood of the desk, making a smell like earthy compost.

‘I think we should declare the graveyard off limits for now,’ says Doctor Ben. ‘I’ll talk to William about it tonight. After your story.’

It doesn’t need to be said that such a decision will not be popular. I am not the only one who will miss those quiet mounds, even though the men say: I see Cathy in the stars, not at a graveside , or Sandra’s body is not important. It never was, so it makes no difference where it lies . They say these things reasonably with their logical heads while their hearts lead them to the graveyard to sit, to place their pebbles.