My Bee goes to his Betty by the sink and they hum together, complacent, a soothing sound. Thomas uses the flat of his knife to scrape the onions into his pot on the heat and they sizzle; the smell hits me, an instant panacea. What can be wrong in the world when onions fry?
Then he turns to me, and I see how his face has shrunk in on itself overnight, the skin pulling back, giving him a beaky nose, a stretched forehead. And he is bending to one side, as if a force pulls at him. Under his apron, on his left hip, there is a bulge and is it as if his entire body is curving to it, favouring it, making him into a question mark.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. He takes up a wooden spoon from the drawer and turns back to the onions. The Beauty hums on. The room is hot and pleasant, with the wooden surfaces and the gleaming dip of the sink. I have never seen death. I have spent time in the graveyard and felt the desiccated remains of death – the dry, cold taste of it as it travels through your veins in shreds, blocking you up, slowing you down. Death is not lurking in this room. This is life. The yellow glow of the leaves through the window is life.
I understand what Bee showed to me last night.
I leave the kitchen and find Uncle Ted and Doctor Ben in the hall, deep in quiet conversation. They stop talking as I approach. I know I must look strange to them with my happiness shining out of me, as bright and hopeful as sunrise.
‘It’s not a tumour,’ I tell them.
Ben shakes his head. ‘Nate, there’s no escaping the fact that there’s a growth in the bowel that will, in a matter of months–’
I repeat, ‘It’s not a tumour.’ I can’t contain the words any longer. They are the best words I’ve ever spoken. ‘It’s a baby.’
Part Three
I lie in a proper bed, blankets piled high against the cold, Bee beside me, and I think of the line.
The line is invisible, but it exists. It runs from the edge of the wood, through the centre of the campfire, to the graveyard. On one side there is William’s hut, the communal huts, the school hut and the fields, and on the other side there is the big house where Ted now lives with Thomas. And where I spend all my time, waiting for a miracle.
For the birth of this baby will be the miracle that will unite us once more. The line draws its strength from its invisibility. Nobody wants to talk about it and I am forbidden to mention it, so the line grows longer and stronger. William, Eamon, the farmers, the older men: they all think there will be no baby and they hate the idea that there could be hope. Because hope takes the form of a joining rather than a continuation.
We will meld to grow. Part human, part Beauty. Could anything be more wonderful, more terrifying? The offer of salvation in the form of a baby who is not a baby. I can finally begin to understand why men kill.
And yet Uncle Ted, the killer, stands firmly with us as a protector of Thomas, never leaving him, grim-faced whenever one of the others approaches. I don’t understand this change in Ted. But then, his motives have never been up for untangling. For all his calmness, I feel there is a mess of man underneath. He loves, he hates, he hides the emotions where he thinks nobody can see. And then his eyes burn and his lips draw up, like a threatened dog.
It has occurred to me that my mother was afraid of Ted, of what he might do to others if he thought they were drawing too close to something. To what?
It has been a long six months of consideration and revelation for me; and in that time Thomas has swelled, not to the front like the pictures of pregnant women in the books, but to the side, low on his hip, then pushing out his stomach and distorting his chest. He wears the dresses that once belonged to Miriam – she was a large woman – and still he cooks on, with no perturbation on his face. Thomas emits a serenity that affects all who spend moments with him.
It sneaks into my bland stories of the past, stories that have become more and more fantastical. I tell stories of fairies and goblins, and tea parties for trolls, while the real meanings pretend to be invisible. The goblins go to war or the fairies squabble over a golden crown, hidden deep in the woods. And meanwhile the meanings squat low, so low in the words, that Ted cannot complain.
William and Eamon sit on one side of the fire and we sit on the other, and everyone listens to my stories, long serials that go on night after night. They all wear the expression of hearing pleasant diversions.
We have become excellent liars all round.
Sleep is a truth that will not come readily to those who fill their minds with pretence, so I sit up and watch my breath billow out into the December cold. Then I get up, wrap myself in one of my blankets and think of hot milk in the kitchen, the warm froth of it. One of the delights of living in the big house is the ease of raiding supplies.
Bee sits up and I send it an image of milk. It lies back down with a low hum. In the past months it has become less interested in staying beside me at all times. We can spend a few minutes apart; we no longer even meld every day. That flush of first need has mellowed into a companionship that brings its own pleasures. I could never be without my Bee, but physical presence is not always necessary. I’ve noticed the same with some of the other Beauties, such as Ted’s Bonnie, but by no means all.
As I tiptoe down the stairs it occurs to me that the Beauty are showing differences between themselves. Could it be that this has always been the case and I simply didn’t know them well enough to see it? I don’t think so. Maybe they are no longer of one mind. Like the Group, there are fresh divisions. We grow and change – all of us. Will we all grow together?
The smooth surfaces of the kitchen still this thinking. I find the milk jug and pour a little into a small pan, then place it on the cooker. The bottom of the pan makes a hiss as it connects with the heat. It must still have been wet from washing. I picture Thomas methodically cleaning up late at night after my story, finding peace in his movements. For a moment I am jealous of him.
The moon is bright and full through the window. I look on it and see a forever face, a permanence. Some things will always remain the same.
In the stillness it comes to me that I am not alone.
I go to the pantry and listen by the door. Is that breathing I hear? I open the door and at first there are only the black lines of the shelves against the grey jumble of the night. And then I see Thomas. He is crouching, his back against the bottom shelf where the large jars of pickled onions live. His hands are over his face, but I know him.
Betty stands beside him. It takes a step forward, radiating energy, and I get the feeling that it might be about to hit me. ‘I won’t hurt him,’ I tell it, and it stands back and lets me through. I kneel down and put my blanket around him; he is a puddle on the floor in his floral dress, with his big white socks and his blue knitted jumper. I say words of comfort and feel them sink into him, penetrate his misery and bring him back to himself. Eventually he drops his arms and I sit back on my haunches.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ I say.
Thomas says, ‘It’s a larder. It’s meant to keep the food cold.’
‘I know that.’
‘Help me up.’ He holds out his hands, and it takes all my strength to pull him to his feet. Then I collect the blanket from where it has fallen and try to put it around his shoulders once more, but he shrugs it off. ‘Too hot anyway,’ he mutters. ‘You have it.’
But his skin is so cold as I help Thomas to the kitchen. Should I call Doctor Ben? But he has washed his hands of us, that is what he said to Ted. ‘I can’t treat a patient who doesn’t believe he is sick,’ Ben said.