Алия Уайтли: The Beauty

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.

Men come and stand by me on the edge of the tree line. I look amidst the branches but there is nothing, no yellow, no movement. There are only still, brown branches, bearing the buds of spring.

I realise it’s only the teenagers who stand with me. Adam, Paul, Oliver and Jason, the ones who used to tease poor Thomas before he became the cook. They always looked like a pack of dogs in my mind, standing together, sleeping in a heap. Now they look like four puppies who have been left behind by their mothers.

‘Where are they going?’ says Paul. He is dark blond with a long, curved nose and front teeth that protrude in an attractive way, like a spaniel.