The Beauty

Part Four

Thomas plants runner bean seedlings. He grows them on the kitchen windowsill where they can enjoy the sparing sun of early spring and the residual heat of the stove. Holly is wrapped up close to his heart, in a length of green curtain that he took from one of the bedrooms we no longer use. We all sleep in the dining room now, pressed down deep together while the Unloved hum outside the walls.

I hold Thomas’s watering can for him. He swaps it for his small spade at the end of every row so he can welcome his thirsty little shoots to the garden. He murmurs to himself, or maybe to the plants. He does love runner beans so.

I love them too. At least, I love these ones looking so questing and perky. Spring has come around with a determination that has taken all of us by surprise. I had thought it would sneak in, ashamed to be seen in this place, but no! The snowdrops will trumpet and the birds will shout. Change comes. Doesn’t it always? Then why am I so grateful for it?

Our Beauties live in the house with us and have become very different from the Unloved. They are also seedlings, I see now, just beginning to bud with personalities of their own. I could always tell Bee apart, but now I know all the ones to which we bonded.

Jason’s Bernadette is the most active and cannot stand still for long without giving strange little hops, rather like a dance to the personal music in its head. Bonnie is the opposite – so still. I realise now it enjoys being subservient to Uncle Ted. It fetches and carries and stands in his shadow, with such quiet pride. Oliver has his Bess, to whom he always looks so many times throughout the day, as if it makes all decisions for him.

Betty remains devoted to Thomas and Holly, but is stern in its love, rather removed. It stands over them at all times; right now, it is in the shade of the red brick wall with Thomas’s sun hat on its head for some reason. I know its severe personality well enough to find this a comical juxtaposition, and Bee is emitting a bubbling hum that tells me it finds this funny too.

‘Can,’ says Thomas. I take his spade and give him the can.

There are moments, comic pauses, every day amidst our dread. Another surprise. Months have passed since William and the others were killed and the Beauty split, just as our Group split, to create the Unloved. Bee and the others guard us, but the Unloved want in. They want it with a passion that seeps through brick and glass. They stand and hum all day and all night. I think the only reason they do not come in is the fact that I am pregnant and Holly is so small. The offspring are of the greatest concern. But this will surely not last forever.

‘I’m telling a special story tonight,’ I say to Thomas’s back, as he waters his seedlings. I’ve thought this through so carefully. Ted is powerless – what can he do to me? We are all prisoners in this house now and this captivity has given me back my voice. There is one more story that I must tell.

‘Spade,’ says Thomas. I take the can and give him back his spade.

The Unloved hum on. I could almost pretend, in this gift of bright morning sunshine, that this is midsummer and the hum outside the walls is only the heavy drone of bees.

But I will have a baby of my own by then and will have no time for sunbathing. I will feed my baby from a hole in my hip, and my cock and balls will shrivel away to nothing. The idea of this was worse when it was happening to someone else. Now it is me and it is inevitable, and nothing inevitable is ever that bad. If I have to live with it, then how can it be unbearable?

Besides, bodies betray us. That is what they do. They die and this is, at least, not death. I will choose any option but death. This body wants the story to go on.

‘Thomas,’ I say. ‘This can’t end well.’

He says, ‘Hmph.’

‘The babies will only be young for so long.’

‘So we’ll have more.’

He understands this breeding, growing, training. It’s part of the garden too.

‘I reckon,’ he says, ‘that the Unloved will give up and go away. Look for other men to bond with. Beyond the rocks, back down to the town.’

‘You think the town is still there?’ I ask him.

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

He has spoken of the thing that has obsessed me over these long nights. It used to be that the Group and the Valley of the Rocks was everything to me. But this, too, is changing.

I say, ‘We should go look.’

Thomas says, ‘What?’

‘Find other men. Bring them back here for the Unloved. Then they’ll leave us alone.’

He says, ‘Just stroll out through the front door? You first.’ He digs fast and dirt sprays up from his spade. There are only a few seedlings left to be planted.

‘We can go. With a baby in me and Holly against your chest, they won’t touch us.’

‘So you say.’ He throws a look over his shoulder and in it I see he has finally grown up and away from me. I am no longer the leader between us two. Now he is in charge because he has Holly. He has travelled to this new place first and I must be the one to follow.

‘The Unloved won’t be able to stop themselves for much longer,’ I say. ‘They will come and in and they will kill the Beauty, and then they will take us and use us. Maybe they’ll even kill the babies so they can make their own with us. The Beauty and the Unloved grow apart every day. Soon they won’t recognise each other at all.’

Thomas stands up abruptly. Holly whines against his chest and Betty takes a half-step forward.

He says, ‘What’s happened to your stories of forever rainbows and lullabies? You want to tell horror tales now it suits your purpose? You can tell those someplace else. I’ve got no interest in listening. If you haven’t noticed, Nate, there are children to think about now. I need to hear a better future than the one you’ve chosen to tell. For Holly’s sake, and for the sake of the baby inside you, you need to stick to the old stories. You owe it to them, if not to me. You owe it to them!’

‘You don’t believe they need to hear the truth?’ I ask.

I don’t know what happens. There is an intense pain in my temple, like the sting of a hundred wasps – I clap my hands to it, feel the wetness of blood. Then I see the spade on the ground, near my feet. Thomas threw it. He threw it straight at me. His face is grey with shock.

Bee moves forward, so fast, and Betty is moving too–

‘No!’ I say. ‘No! I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s not serious.’ I spread my hands, show the blood on my fingers. It isn’t a lot. I feel a trickle down my cheek. ‘I swear it’s not serious.’

Bee and Betty stop coming towards us. Betty still wears that ridiculous sun hat. My head throbs in the sun. I will have a terrible headache, but that is nothing new. I’ve had a headache for months from the thoughts, the desires and the rages of the Unloved. But I am alive. We are all still alive.

Thomas opens his mouth. He shuts it. He bends down and retrieves his spade. Holly’s wails grow into sharp cries.

‘You know I’m right,’ I tell him.

‘Holly wants feeding,’ he says, and he goes inside. Betty follows.

I plant the final seedlings with my hands, and then water them.

To start–

There was only one. Then one divided into two, and two into four, and on it went, each division bringing a new reality, a new possibility. Sometimes the many that sprang from the one agreed and moved with a mutual purpose. And sometimes they didn’t.

It’s an impossibility to calculate when the many became too many. Things are born and they die. They bleed and divide and begin again. But in one moment they changed from living in a land of plenty to lacking the one thing they needed above all others.

Love.

They lacked love. And the lack of love, new questions – questions that had not been asked before – came into their minds. Why should some have happiness and others have none? Such thoughts lead to jealousy, and that alters you inside. You lose sense of the paths, the divisions that you can walk, and you see just one road, long and grey and loveless.

And so the Beauty divided again. They became the Beauty and the Unloved, and there was no return from that division.

The Unloved no longer recognised the Beauty as part of them. Instead they waited for the chance to take the love away from the Beauty. They wanted their own future, for that is what all living things want, and they could not be blamed for that. But they forgot how to be gentle, to be reasonable. They had started down a path that could only lead to death.

Or could it?

It’s important to remember that there have always been such divisions. That is the basis of life. Division brings not only discord, but also hope. Who knows what will happen when the rules ceaselessly change? Those that were weak may grow strong. Those that are strong may lose themselves and fall away. And those that once upon a time did not dare to act, may yet find the strength to take the road that reaches into places that nobody else will dare to go.

The past, the present and the future – none of those are set. We know that now. They change as we change.

So let us write a new ending to our story.

Let us say – the Unloved waited for the chance to take the love away from the Beauty. Every day their patience got a little less, and their desire grew a little more. It is so very difficult to be alone when others are not.

Then one day they could take it no longer. And they became one again, united in their pain. They acted as one, surging towards the house with plans to murder the Beauty and find happiness in the flesh of the men they found inside. They threw their weight against the doors, the windows, the walls – and the house started to creak, to groan, while the men inside wept with fear. The house could not keep them safe. It would fall.

And then, from the road that led out of the Valley of the Rocks, a sound: singing. Men singing, a mass of men, men who had known and lived in loneliness too since their women died so long ago. The men poured into the Valley, their voices loud, their arms open, and there was a man for every Unloved.

Leading the men to their destiny were Nate and Thomas, brave ones, with babies of their own in their arms and a future to fight for. They had gone out into the world and found that future, and brought it back to the Valley. And so the Group could begin again, the many becoming one, the one growing and growing, to make a beautiful world populated with so many happy men, on and on, until the end.

‘No,’ says Thomas.

The dining room is lit only by a few candles and the smouldering logs in the grate. He stands up and he is alive with his indignation; it jumps out of him like the short, sharp breaths he exhales.

I try to tell him with my eyes that I am sorry, but it must be done. I must get Ted to side with me, to order us away. It’s our only chance. ‘We’ll go and get help. We’ll save everyone. You’ll be a hero,’ I tell him.

‘No. Not now. Not ever.’ The candlelight makes him look bigger, taller. He has a dignity that I have not seen in him before. Thomas says, ‘You say the Unloved will kill and rape, and I say they won’t. Why are you right, and I am wrong? Just because you know how to wrap it up in a story?’ He is warming to his outrage, his hands flying out like sparks. The curtain wrapped around his chest where Holly rests gives him the air of invincibility.

Ted stays in his chair, arms crossed, not bothering to stir himself. Bonnie stands to attention behind him. ‘Nate,’ he says, with a smile, ‘what makes you so sure that the Unloved, as you have named them, want us? Perhaps they are simply protecting the children. In which case, they’re not going to be happy if you try to take Thomas and Holly away with you. Besides, lad, if they really wanted to come in they could. Windows can be smashed. Doors can be knocked down. They’re easily strong enough for that.’

I hate the way he diminishes me with his ‘lad’. Oliver and Jason, on blankets near the fire, nod along. I will need better arguments.

I say, ‘If they are only protecting us, why are we cowering in the house all day and all night? Why don’t you simply walk outside, Uncle Ted? Right now?’

He shrugs. ‘What is there to go outside for? We’ve had a long cold winter and it’s been easier to stay indoors. That’s all. I think maybe those long dark nights and your… pregnancy… are playing tricks on your brain, lad. Come the summer, everything will look better. We’ll go out, into the woods maybe. When your little one arrives, we’ll have a fine time playing out together.’

Jason and Oliver have copied Ted’s smile. Thomas sits back down with an air of vindication. Can they really not feel it? This threat that encloses the house? Or perhaps they cannot name it. They have no practice in naming the truth and now they do not trust me to do it for them.

I see in the four faces that patronise me that my time as a storyteller is at an end. I have no listeners any more. I could talk on and on and it would be as if the world had gone deaf.

I can’t stay here.

‘If nobody will come with me, then I’ll go myself,’ I say. ‘I’ll save you, even if you don’t want saving.’

‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Ted shifts in his seat. He says, ‘You and your jumped-up ideas. I always knew it would lead us all into trouble. You need to learn how to give up your selfish ways now. There’s that thing in your body to think about. The mushrooms are so desperate to keep it safe and I’m not going to let you put us all in danger.’

‘What are you going to do? Keep me here against my will?’

‘So melodramatic, as usual. So keen to sniff out a good tale. From now on, I’ll tell the tales and you can shut up and listen. You’re just like your mother. Get yourself into trouble, and then whine when you’re told what to do.’ He gets up and faces me; I can see he is what he believes a man should be. His hand moves to the stick in his belt. How he loves to threaten those that are weaker. My mother gave way to him. Maybe I was in her body already when she was brought here and Ted told her it was the only way to be safe from the scary world out there.

Now the same choice is upon me. And I find I am not powerless. Not at all.

‘Get back,’ I say. ‘You are not to touch me.’

Bee shifts from the corner of the room. The other Beauties stir, rock from side to side.

‘I’ve known you since you were a baby, Nathan, and I will reprimand you if that is necessary. Don’t push me, boy.’

I put my hands on my bump. It is cold and firm, getting bigger every day. I say, ‘I’m no longer a boy, Uncle Ted. And I will leave this place.’

He says, ‘You will not.’

I take a step forward. He blocks my path to the door.

But I am the powerful one. I have the baby in me, and he cannot touch me. He knows it. I see it behind that mask of stone he uses.

He steps aside.

‘Nate!’ calls Thomas, a plea. I ignore him and carry on walking to the kitchen. I grab a canvas bag from under the sink and take it to the larder. It’s too dark to see properly. I grab whatever I can identify: some stored apples, some bread.

The larder door slams behind me. The darkness is total. I yelp, sounding like a dog. It takes me an age of groping to find the handle, but my relief gives way to intense dread when the handle won’t turn. It won’t move for me. I am trapped.

‘Stay in there until you learn some sense,’ says Ted, from the other side.

This is what Ted does. He forces his problems into the dark, and keeps them there. Like my mother’s feelings, like the women he killed and buried in the forest. But I will not be kept in the dark. He has finally managed to teach me how to be a man. I will do whatever is necessary to beat him. I am ready to kill.

I call Bee with my mind. I tell it what to do. I show it a picture, every detail, with slow deliberation. I leave nothing out.

Then I wait.

I hear Thomas and Ted arguing, but I pay no attention. I concentrate on what Bee shows me. I can see through Bee’s eyes.

Bee is coming, moving to the kitchen. It shows me that Ted has jammed his chair against the pantry door and is sitting on it. Thomas, Jason and Oliver hover, trying to persuade him to move. Are those tears on Thomas’s cheeks?

Bee touches nobody but Ted. It picks him up by his neck. I thrill at the strength of my beautiful Bee. Ted does not make a sound, but he fights and fights, his kicks and punches connecting. Bee feels arms around the waist. Bonnie is in the room, squeezing hard, fighting for Ted. I feel white pain in my mind, but Bonnie is not strong enough to stop this. Bee knocks Bonnie down, and looks around.

The others huddle back against the sink. Holly is awake now, I feel her fear. She wails. The Unloved hum, hum, hum – a nest of hornets. Bright red flowers in my head light up my darkness. But I tell Bee – do it. Do it.

Bee grabs one of Ted’s arms as he flails and breaks it, clean, like the snapping of a stick. He goes limp. Bee carries Ted out of the kitchen, down the corridor to the front door. It opens the door, and throws him out into the night.

Bonnie screams. It is a human sound. It plunges out after Ted, and Bee closes the door, not looking at what is happening. It does not want to look.

The larder door opens and my normal vision returns. I can see Thomas’s tear-soaked face. He holds out his arms to me and I push past him and go to Bee. I let it scoop me up and hold me tight. It pats the bump, over and over. I feel our mutual relief amplified in my mind like a circle, no beginning, no end.

Outside, Bonnie screams and screams. When it stops we can hear Ted’s pleading. He begs and moans and demands that they stop, but the Unloved continue to hum with an expressive and endless happiness.

In the morning, they are gone. Ted too. Perhaps into the woods, I don’t know. Bee doesn’t either. It has lost all connection to them, but it thinks they have gone for good.

All that is left are the scattered yellow and grey lumps that were once Bonnie.

I stand outside where the Group once made its campfire. It’s a chilly spring morning, but bright. The grass is growing back over that burned circle of earth. Thomas, Jason and Oliver stand close together, looking around like baby birds seeing out of the nest for the first time. How small our lives have become.

I heave the canvas bag over my shoulder.

‘Well then,’ I say. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Don’t go,’ says Jason. Oliver bursts into tears and his Bess reaches out to him, then wraps him up in its love.

‘What do you want?’ says Thomas. He has Holly out of the curtain papoose for once, in the crook of his arm. She is looking around with wide grey eyes and her skin is a very pale yellow. She is as beautiful as the daffodils that are starting to poke through the remains of William’s house, and as natural to behold. It is undeniable that she deserves her place in the world.

I say, ‘Nothing. Only to go. That’s all there is, now.’

He says, ‘You want me to say I’m sorry? Because I am. If you were a true friend you would forgive me, and forget all this nonsense.’

‘I do forgive you.’

‘Then stay. We need you. You have to tell us what to do. Please, Nate. Stay.’

I don’t answer. I’m sick of words. Instead, I show Bee a picture in my mind: the two of us together, our baby inside me, walking out of this place. Going to find out what remains of humanity. Not to bring anything back, not even to find new stories to tell. Just for the sake of knowing.

Bee agrees. It holds out a hand and I take it. We start to walk, following the path that leads out of the Valley of the Rocks. It is a path that unravels one step at a time, on and on, with no end.