And then there was no point in him moving, not an inch, because Mr F was holding the blade of the cutting knife right close to the side of his neck. He’d come over that bench so fast, you’d’ve thought he’d practised the move a hundred times.
Beauty hardly dared breathe. The blade was lying on the right side of his neck, the tip of it just stinging the skin beside his Adam’s apple. Mr F’s pale blue eyes were right up close to his now, and staring straight into them. He’d never seen them this close before. Set in such a dark face, they looked as pale and fierce as a gas-jet, just where the flame is hottest. He could feel Mr F’s slightly foul breath on his cheek. He’d never quite realised until now just how big and bulky the old man was. How powerfully built. For a while, the only sound was Mr F’s fierce breathing. Then Beauty forced himself to find his voice.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you how it’s done. Remember?”
Whatever the answer was supposed to be, the boy couldn’t think of it. The point of the blade shifted a fraction, pricking him.
“No? Then let me jog your memory. ‘Always use the knife swiftly and clearly; any hesitation, and you will bruise the skin. The first cut is always the most important; a mistake made now cannot be corrected later. The blade needs to move swiftly and firmly, and at the correct angle. If it swerves in the wrong direction, the whole pattern will be spoilt.’”
Now that he hears them, the boy remembers the words; he remembers them being recited in this very same room. But now Mr F’s voice is completely different; it is harder, and wilder. It is somebody else’s. As the hot, rank breath strikes Beauty’s cheekbone with each phrase, the words sound as if they are meant to wound or sting; if they were a whip or belt, they’d be meant to cut the flesh open. He knows he is being punished, even if not what for, so he stands stock still, and waits for Mr F to make his next move.
The words stop.
Beauty is used to the workroom being silent, because everybody knows that Mr F won’t stand for too much chatter at the benches — but tonight the silence is different. This is the sound of there being absolutely no one here who can help him. He can’t think of any way out of this, and he closes his eyes.
When he sees him do that, Mr F, still holding the blade of the knife against his neck, reaches up with his left hand and takes hold firmly of Beauty’s tie, just below the knot.
Beauty can’t help himself; as he feels that slight change in the pressure round his neck, he involuntarily jerks his head back, and gasps.
And waits.
The first cuts come so quickly and lightly that the boy hardly feels them, much less sees them coming. With a delicate adjustment of his wrist, Mr F lifts the knot of the tie, gets the tip of the blade in behind the button which holds Beauty’s collar closed, and severs the threads of cotton holding it in place with one neat flick; then, in one firm outward stroke, he slices through the fabric of the boy’s tie, just to the side of the knot. Beauty feels the air reach his throat as his collar falls open. Mr F slides the cut tie away from around his neck, and lets it drop to the floor.
“And what else did I tell you?”
Beauty is too frightened now to reply. He still daren’t open his eyes, but can sense that the blade of the knife is hovering just above his left breast.
“Come on, come on.”
The boy manages a whisper;
“I don’t know, Mr F.”
“I told you it would take years. Years. Thirty-three, in my case. Thirty-three fucking years… before you can really do a skin justice.”
Beauty has more sense than to move; he knows the next cut is coming. And indeed it does; without ever once touching his skin, Mr F moves the blade button by button down the boy’s shirt-front, severing each one in turn. Beauty hears them as they bounce on the floor. To get at the last two buttons, of course, Mr F has to pull the shirt out from the waistband of Beauty’s trousers. He does it simply and efficiently, removes the buttons with his knife, and lets the cloth fall open. Then he steps back half a pace, to inspect the way the shirt now lies open from neck to navel and beyond. His eyes appraise the gleaming white skin of the boy’s chest and the faint trail of dark hair on his stomach as expertly as if he was aligning the seams of a coat on the stand.
“Patience, you see. Patience and concentration. That’s the trick.”
He sounds calmer know, and Beauty thinks that he knows this sound. This is how he talks when he talks to himself; how he talks when he isn’t thinking about anything except his work.
“I think we’ll have that jacket off now,” says Mr F.
Never having done it myself, I cannot imagine with what ceremony or trembling fingers a bride and groom begin to slowly un-hook or -button each other’s clothes in the first dark hour that they are left alone together. But I do know how Mr F set about stripping his beloved, there in the cutting room of Number Four, Skin Lane; without hesitation. Of course, no one can handle a knife like that unless they have been doing it for years; neither could they dismantle a garment back to its constituent pieces of fabric so swiftly unless they knew all the tricks of seaming and pattern-cutting and lining — but still, it was wonderful, the way he did it. Not once, no matter how boldly he sliced down or across or up, did he ever even graze the boy’s skin. Using his other hand to lift, pull and steady the fabric — sometimes running the tip of the blade delicately over the stitching of a shoulder-seam so that it would part — almost gratefully — of its own accord, sometimes running the full blade ruthlessly down through the more resistant cloth of a cuff or collar — he cut away first the tight-fitting jacket and then the white cotton of his shirt from Beauty’s body with extraordinary skill, never once pausing in his task. As each piece came away, he tossed it to one side without even looking at it, so intent was he on the job in hand. Seam by seam, the boy’s skin was freed from its covering; the workroom floor might as well have been that of a bedroom, the way Mr F littered it with pieces of discarded clothing — and all this time, remember, he was working in almost no light at all. It was almost as if he knew the contours of Beauty’s body so intimately that there was never any need to consider exactly where the next deft flick or lunge or slice should land; no need to calculate just how close, beneath the intervening cloth, the flesh might be to that heartless, exposing blade.
Anyone would think he could already see the boy naked. In his mind’s eye.
Only when the warm night air was free to reach every part of Beauty’s torso did Mr F pause and step back again to admire his handiwork. The boy’s back was framed in the mirror behind him, and it looked as pale and lovely in the moonlight as any of the picture-gallery beauties Mr F had once so hesitatingly admired; his spine was traced in one single daring downward brushstroke of shadow, dark against an ivory ground. Now, Mr F didn’t hesitate; he inspected every inch.
“Very nice,” he murmured, to himself. Then, very softly, so that the boy wouldn’t have known what he was saying if he hadn’t heard the words so many times before, he whispered the sentence
“Never waste your time working on a spoilt skin.”
From the gentleness with which he said it, Beauty had hoped this might be the end of it. But Mr F wasn’t finished.
“And the rest,” he said, pointing with the blade of the knife at the waistband of Beauty’s trousers.
This boy has never undressed for anyone before; that is, he has never considered the possibility of being the one who gets watched while he undresses. The unaccustomed feeling is hateful to him, and because all he wants now is for this to be over, he does it the only way he knows how, which is as quickly and clumsily as possible. As if he was at the doctor’s, or being examined at school, he unbuckles, unbuttons and unzips himself, and then pushes his trousers and his underpants down around his ankles in one single, defiant move. Then, hobbled, he stands straight back up, and looks Mr F right in the eye. He can feel the air all over him, and that Mr F’s eyes are all over him too. He knows the man can see the rest of
him from behind in the mirror. He grits his teeth.
So there, at last, it is. The body Mr F had been dreaming of all these wretched nights. The body, he now thinks, he has been dreaming of all his life.
He steps a few feet back, so that he can take in the whole thing. He looks it up and down.
As he stares at it, wondering, just as he used to in his bathroom, at the inexplicable whiteness of its skin and the soft, shining darkness of its hair, he hears, but doesn’t speak, the sentence which inevitably comes into his mind; “It all comes down to choice of skin.” Now he has, truly, made his choice. This is the one. And this — now — is the time: the building is empty, the front door is closed, the city is silent — and surely it must be midnight by now. All he has to do is to walk forward, reach out his hand, and begin.
Why, then, does he not?
Why does he not put down the knife, and touch him?
Why is it the boy who, not able to stand it any longer, has to be the first to speak — because speak he does, desperately trying to stand up straight with his trousers wrapped round his ankles, desperately trying to keep the tears out of his voice, the shame and the fear, spitting his words out:
“Come on then if you’re going to.”
Mr F’s right hand, the one holding the knife, begins to shake, ever so slightly. Somewhere in the room, he begins to hear the mocking, insistent ticking of a kitchen clock. Still, he does not move.
The boy senses his hesitation, and his fear makes him sarcastic:
“Something stopping you?” he says.
Much as you or I might want Mr F to answer that question, he cannot; perhaps, like all beasts, he is after all dumb. At this point, you or I might have said — or cried out — the words we’d learnt from one of the stories; If you had never woken me, I could have slept for ever — or, If you had not come to torment me, this would never have needed to happen…’, even, If you had not been so beautiful, I would never have needed to punish you like this — but Mr F said none of these things. He stood there, dumbfounded, until, at last, unable to stand his silence any longer, the boy almost shouted at him.
“What is it?”
Still nothing. Still, the trembling hand, and the clock.
“Afraid, are you?” said the boy.
In answer to that most terrible of questions, the beast, goaded beyond endurance, did finally find his voice — but not the one that you might be expecting. Tradition dictates that at this point in the story he should speak with an animal roar, one that will echo down the corridors of the castle and shake its foot-thick walls with its fury; but in this telling of the tale, the only sound that Beauty hears is that of a single, broken-winded man, in a darkened room, saying, in a voice more truly like that of a child than his own, just the one, hollow word:
“Yes.”
That one word, however, is enough. The silence is broken, and the fatal sentence has been begun. The clock is still ticking, but Mr F struggles to make himself heard against it. Step by step, he tries to complete his explanation. “Yes, I am. I am afraid. Because — ”
Tears threaten to waylay him, and he pushes them back. He knows that for this to work, he has to say every single word out loud.
“I am afraid, because I have never. Never. I have never — ”
He shakes his head — just as if he really was an animal. Then throws it back, and gasps, as if for breath. There is silence again. The ticking grows louder.
Seeing him struggle like this, Beauty, remarkably, does not taunt him. He can see that Mr F is fighting for the words with which to speak about something dreadful, something that is lost deep inside himself, and of all the things he could be, he is gentle with him. I suppose it must be because he has never seen a man like this before; there is even an odd kind of astonished tenderness in his voice, when he asks,
“ What, Mr F? Never been what?”
Even in the darkness, he can see the old man’s eyes are starred with tears.
“Because no one has ever — ”
Mr F knows what he is going to say — what he must say — and he braces himself to get the word out; that one word which he knows never can be, or should be, and never has been said to him. There is no one to hold him now, no one to reassure or talk him through this; no one to hold him gently by the shoulders and whisper in his ear That’s it, I’ve got you; there we go; that’s better. He must do this on his own. He knows that.
“No one has ever — ”
Here it comes…
But the missing word is never spoken.
He cannot do it; if he admits that, he may as well turn the knife on himself. Instead, he looks helplessly down at his still trembling hand, and with a sickening lurch of his stomach, he knows what is about to happen next. He wishes he could fight it, but, gasping for breath, he begins to drown. His tears overcome him in great agonised gulps, and as they begin to course down his contorted face, he cannot help himself. With an inhuman scream (he is a red-tongued panther; a stuck boar; a maddened, blinded bear) he again draws back his right hand in preparation and then, as if the caged beast had seen its freedom through a swinging-open door, he makes it across the few feet that separate him from the naked boy in one single uncanny leap or bound, swinging the blade back up and across in one dreadful slashing arc towards his throat as he goes.
Don’t be frightened; don’t flinch, or look away. I promise you, there will be no blood. What happens is this.
As the arc of his hand completes, the scream strangles in Mr F’s throat, and his hand stops: just in time. The boy has jerked his head back, and again he feels the sting of the blade as it rests against the taut skin of his neck. Instinctively, he has closed his eyes; his mouth gapes open, but there has been no time for him to make a sound. Mr F, who has never been able, remember, to properly see this boy’s face in his dreams, and could rarely if ever bring himself to look openly or frankly at it in real life — in the flesh, so to speak — now does see it; and right up close, in a shaft of moonlight.
He sees it, you might say, for the very first time, and for the very first time, the mask of its beauty cracks open. It has always been the face of a stranger; but not now. Now, he recognises it.
Thank God, the sight is enough to stay his hand.
He rests the knife against the boy’s throat, and stares in astonishment: and now, the tears come in earnest. Mr F cries; he cries so hard and so much that the hot tears go splashing down his face and onto the boy’s naked chest. Hardly daring to believe that the knife still has not opened his throat, Beauty slowly opens his screwed-shut eyes. Without thinking, as he sees them blink open, Oh, you poor boy, Mr F murmurs; then, letting the knife fall away, but still gazing at the boy’s moonlit face, Oh, he begins to sob; oh, you poor boy. You poor, beautiful thing — and then, with his other hand (the words still tumbling out between his sobs) he reaches out and runs his fingers — gently; so gently, as if touching the breast of a frightened bird — first through the boy’s dark hair, and then across his face.
It is himself, you see, that Mr F thinks he is seeing; his own face, at sixteen.
That is why he is crying.
It is himself at sixteen that his hands are aching to console; it is himself, at sixteen, whose cheek he now so gently strokes. His own dark hair that he so tenderly caresses.
As Mr F does this, Beauty shudders and screws his eyes closed again — not understanding at all that the danger is now past, he thinks that the fingers are going to clench into a fist, grab a handful of his hair and use it to pull his head roughly back, exposing his throat to one final sweep of the knife — and so Mr F gently withdraws his hand, and runs the back of one finger across the boy’s cheek again, so that he will open his eyes again and look at him. As he does, and their eyes meet, Mr F simply, unceremoniously, drops the knife to the floor, as if to prove his change of heart; then he uses the back of his hand to wipe his own face, across and back, as if it was some workroom rag. He seems not to have realised that he has been crying, because when h
e finds that his hand, coming away from his face, is wet, he stares at it, and then touches his fingers to his lips as if to see what this unexpected liquid could possibly be. As I promised you, it is not blood. Quite involuntarily, and after all these years, Mr F tastes his own tears.
When he hears the clatter of the knife on the workroom floor, and sees the expression on Mr F’s face, Beauty finally realises that the dreadful thing which he’d feared might be going to happen to him in this room now isn’t. In fact, he can see that this man would rather die than hurt him, rather die — and perhaps it is because of this, as much as out of simple shock, that he starts to have to gulp back tears of his own. Inch by inch, his body is flooded with the sweet, utter relief of realising that he is safe.
Mr F still has his finger to his lips.
Beauty tries his best to stop his eyes welling up and making a fool of him — but it’s not that easy. When they start to trickle, he has to knock his tears back where they came from with a manly swipe of his knuckles — and then, to make matters worse, as he starts to collect himself, he realises that he is still standing there stark bollock naked in front of another man — wet-chested and naked and snivelling like some little boy. He stoops, and struggles to get what’s left of his clothes back on, quickly pulling up his underpants and then, clumsily, his trousers. But he wants to cover himself with more than just his clothes; when he’s done up his belt, and sniffed back the last of his tears, he attempts an odd and entirely inappropriate attempt at a cheeky grin. He knows that the crisis has passed — and now that he’s safe, is already prepared to propose that the two of them look back on the whole thing as some sort of a ridiculous aberration. After a decent interval (he can see that Mr F is still in a bit of a state, and although he is a man of the world, he is not without feelings), he says
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