Blinded by the Light Page 10

  Then I decided that prolonging my fast was just what I needed. The flesh had to be subdued. Only then would I regain my sanity and be able to face the others and Bea. And to help that, I could calm myself with some ASD. I glanced quickly round the room and as I hoped, there were some blindfolds in a heap on one of the shelves. I helped myself to one and, fumbling, put it on. It took some doing but finally it was in place. I felt my way back to the chair and sat down. The blindfold cut into my cheekbones and it felt good. I stared with my inner eye into the darkness and discovered the darkness was not dark but multicoloured. Perhaps the Light was returning to me. I regulated my breathing and tried to visualise the rise and fall of my diaphragm.

  I don’t know how much time had passed when I started. Someone had entered the reading room. But it was OK. They wouldn’t be surprised to see me here. Now I was doing nothing wrong. I expected the person to respect my right to privacy and leave quickly. I heard the click of the door closing but then there were footsteps and I felt a displacement in the air. The person was with me, in the room. My heart raced. It was instinctive to want to remove the blindfold but I knew I mustn’t. So I remained still.

  “Joe?” Bea said. “Why aren’t you at my feast?”

  She sounded puzzled and hurt. I didn’t know what to say. With her Bea brought the aroma of food, freshly baked bread, the crispness of salad. My stomach contracted with hunger.

  “Joe? Say something. This isn’t like you.”

  I felt myself heat with embarrassment. I couldn’t begin to explain to her. But if I lied, then I would be breaking my vow to utter the truth at all times. If I told her the truth, I could never speak to her again. I felt my way carefully.

  “I needed to be alone,” I said.

  “Why? Is it anything to do with me?”

  Oh, God. This was getting worse. I didn’t want her to think she had done anything, or that I’d gone off her. But to tell her the truth, I would have to say that it was to do with her. Again I side-stepped without exactly lying.

  “It’s to do mainly with me.”

  I heard her pull up a chair and she sat beside me. Then she stroked my arm. Because I was blind her action was startling. The sweep of her fingers on the skin of my arm felt dangerous and ran through my body like the tremor of an earthquake.

  “Joe, tell me. You can. I’m a White One now, remember. Share it.”

  Now she squeezed my hand. I could still smell food.

  “Look, I have some bread,” she announced. “Eat this. You’ll feel better.”

  She brought her hand to my lips, parted them, and inserted a morsel of bread. I couldn’t help it. I ate it. She put the rest in my hand and bit by bit I finished it all.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  I was glad I was wearing the blindfold. It’s easier to say difficult things to people when you can’t see them.

  “It was just… while you were being initiated. I began to think about our relationship. Whether – you know – if it was getting out of hand. If maybe I was in danger of breaking a vow. Because of my feelings for you.”

  That was as near the truth as I could manage. Bea didn’t speak for a while. I could hear her soft breathing.

  “So you thought you’d be better apart from me for a while?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. So I came here,” I said.

  She didn’t respond to that either. I couldn’t know what she was thinking as I couldn’t see her. I didn’t even know what I wanted her to think.

  “Joe,” she said, after a while. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Her voice sounded fragile, as if she was fighting back disappointment.

  “I know. But I’m scared we might, if we spend too much time together.”

  There was another gap in our conversation. It was wrong of me, but I was pleased that she was upset. If she didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t have minded that I wanted to back-pedal our relationship. Except I didn’t want to back-pedal our relationship – I wanted more from Bea. I wasn’t being entirely honest. And not to be honest was to break a vow too. My head throbbed in confusion.

  “But people see us spend a lot of time together,” Bea said plaintively. “No one objects. Kate would have spoken to me if we were in danger. Has Fletcher said anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there we are. We can carry on as we were before.”

  “No,” I said, surprising myself by my sudden determination. “We can’t. My feelings for you are getting stronger. I want us to have a proper relationship.”

  My hand found her hand and my fingers prised her fingers apart. We interlocked.

  “I know what you mean,” she whispered. “I’ve been feeling that way too. But I can’t see what’s wrong in us being boyfriend and girlfriend. We’re not breaking the vow of physical purity. I need you, Joe. It’s hard, being a White One. When it’s the two of us, it isn’t hard.”

  I was taken aback by what she said because I felt exactly the same way. And if that was true, if our relationship actually helped us keep pure, then it had to be a good thing.

  I could even imagine myself explaining that to Fletcher.

  “And since both of us are initiated now,” she continued, “it brings us into a closer relationship anyway. You need both male and female. It says so in the Book.”

  “And it says that love and purity are connected,” I added.

  We were still holding hands so I increased the pressure. Then she moved closer to me. The next thing I knew, she pressed her lips to my forehead above my blindfold and kissed me, her soft lips pressing themselves eagerly on the skin and bone of my forehead. My other hand found its way behind her head just to keep her close to me for a moment or two. Then I lifted my face and our lips met.

  It was the best kiss I’d ever had in my life. All of me was in that kiss. I revelled in the sensation of our lips meeting, the way they opened, the way our tongues caressed each other as if they were alive. I could taste Bea, I was feeling my way inside her – in my darkness, all my senses were on fire. But it wasn’t just that it felt so good – it was being so close to her that counted, being inside her like that, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, nothing but Bea.

  I don’t know how long we kissed for. Too long, and not long enough. I don’t know which was stronger, my joy or my guilt. When eventually I pulled away, it was more because of the fear of discovery than any desire for us to stop.

  “That wasn’t wrong,” Bea said, reading my mind again.

  I wished she was right and feared she was not. With my fingers I caressed her face.

  “Joe – I bet we’re not the only secret couple here. Have you seen the way Will looks at Auriel?”

  That struck me as slightly blasphemous. But Bea was probably right. Now she began to untie my blindfold.

  “Please don’t worry,” she said. “Being a White One is as important to me as it is to you. We’ll never do anything wrong. Come and join the others now.”

  I blinked as my eyes accustomed themselves to the light. I looked at Bea. She was beautiful, her hair still damp, with some dry tendrils curling at the sides. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked at me with such tenderness that I wanted to kiss her again. Only I didn’t dare.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said.

  I only wished I could believe her.

  She took me by the hand and led me out of the room.

  10.

  From Selected Commentaries on Rendall:

  “They were male and female together.”

  They were male and female together. These words, taken from Rendall’s Vision of the Light, have been interpreted in various ways by different commentators. Laban North says they confirm that the greeting angels were both male and female, denoting that both male and female can follow the path of Light and achieve Perfection. Paul Telford suggests that the angels were hermaphrodite, therefore suggesting homosexual White Ones are acceptable. Laban North has disagreed and says
that “male and female together” implies that male and female White Ones may marry to produce pure White offspring.

  Did Fletcher guess?

  I didn’t know. I didn’t want to tell him about what had happened with Bea, unless it became relevant. I didn’t feel I had to; it was clear that our vow of purity related to the act of sex itself. Our kiss was not exactly wrong, not exactly right. And the Book was ambiguous. I took the coward’s way out, which was to wait and see.

  Meanwhile, it was time for me to re-enter the world as an Attractor. I was to work with Will in the shop in Hebden Bridge. Maybe someone would come in and feel my magnetism. It would also give me an opportunity to readjust myself to the Outside. I was keen to get started. I didn’t think this desire to get away from the farm was a bad thing. It was more like my will was in tune with Fletcher’s will for me. Maybe my instincts were beginning to attune themselves to my spiritual welfare. In that case, it was possible my feelings for Bea were healthy too. Yet there was always the possibility that since Bea also lived on the farm, Fletcher thought I was best away from it. And thus my thoughts went round in circles; they spun themselves round me like the mesh of a spider’s web with a gossamer touch and sticky insistence.

  I’d seen the shop once or twice but I’d never been inside. It was just like any other charity shop, the window brightly lit and full of a jumble of goods, old clothes, piles of books, small items of furniture. The inside was surprisingly small, or maybe it was just the effect of the clutter. There were rails of clothes, stools, chairs, a wall of shelves with stuff on it, books, a pile of records, and a counter at the rear. Behind that was a door which I later discovered led to a small storeroom, a sink and toilet. It was all fairly basic but I didn’t mind. Life on the farm had got me used to roughing it.

  “Do you take much money?” I asked Will.

  “You’d be surprised,” he replied. “You get plenty of bargain hunters coming to Hebden Bridge. But making money isn’t the point. Too much money corrupts, anyway. It’s a moral poison.”

  “The glister of gold is a thief in the night,” I repeated.

  That was a line from one of Rendall’s poems. We often did this, quoted at each other. It might sound feeble, but it’s only what I used to do with my old mates if we were discussing a match or something. You’d describe something you saw that everybody else knew about anyway. You just said that stuff to bond. As Will and I did then.

  “Money deafens the ears to the needs of the poor,” Will added.

  “It’s true,” I said. “When you possess, you fear to lose.”

  But the odd thing was, standing in the shop, which seemed so normal and everyday, these words sounded hollow. We seemed to be parroting them. But never mind.

  Will showed me how to work the cash register and found a couple of chairs for us nearby.

  “So where do you get this stuff from?” I asked him.

  “People bring it in. Or there are house clearances,” he said. “The other guys fill the Transit occasionally. Fletcher comes down in the evenings sometimes and goes through the consignments, to see if there’s anything valuable. He keeps what he finds separate.”

  “What do you say to people when they ask what charity we are?”

  “Didn’t you see the sign outside? We’re The Sisters of Light.”

  “Sisters?” I queried.

  “Yeah, well, the story goes it was the girls who had the idea for fundraising like this. And then Fletcher thought it would be better for the men to help out too. But there was no point in changing the name.”

  “It sounds like we’re a holy convent or something,” I joked.

  Will laughed. His laughter seemed to tangle self-consciously with all the junk. I wondered, not for the first time, what sort of customers we might have. I couldn’t see that this would be a hotspot for potential recruits. I always got the impression that it was old folk that came into charity shops, and White Ones were generally – actually, they were all – young. But Fletcher knew best. And anyway, I was here as a sort of halfway house. Later, Fletcher said, I would be sent further afield, into Manchester maybe. Nothing much would happen today.

  But when the bell rang and someone pushed the door open, my pulse raced.

  Two people. Blokes, both big. One in a puffa jacket and denims hung low, under a jutting stomach. The other in a football shirt, long hair like rats’ tails and a tatty briefcase. They couldn’t possibly be recruits. Instead I felt myself repelled by them. They looked the sort of geezers who might mean trouble. I glanced at Will. He didn’t seem worried – in fact he evidently knew them.

  “Have you got anything for us?” the long-haired one asked.

  “Yep,” Will said. “It’s in the back.”

  He left me alone in the shop for a moment while he went into the back room. He emerged just a moment later with a cardboard box full of old clothes. While he was handing it over to the puffa jacket, the bottom gave way, and the clothes cascaded to the floor. The bottom must have been damp, or the clothes too heavy for the box. Will got a black bin liner from under the counter and I helped him fill it with the clothes. There weren’t just clothes. There were several Jiffy bags sealed with thick masking tape. The long-haired bloke also helped us with the bag. The puffa jacket took it when we’d finished.

  “Cheers,” he said, and they left.

  “Who were they?” I asked Will.

  “Market traders. They have a stall out in Dewsbury. I pass them the stuff Fletcher tells me to – things he wants to sell on, or get rid of, whatever. He sees to the business side of it. I don’t understand the accounts.”

  “What was in the Jiffy bags?”

  “Those? I guess small valuables, watches, jewellery, stuff like that. I dunno, really. Fletch passes them to me. But it doesn’t do to ask too many questions.”

  I laughed. “I can tell you were in the army,” I said. “It’s the way you accept authority.”

  Will laughed now. “Heck, you might be right. But if it wasn’t for the army, I wouldn’t have become a White One.”

  I knew what was coming next. Will was going to tell me the story of how he became a White One again. We all did this from time to time. It stands to reason. Becoming a White One was the most important thing that had ever happened to us. We all felt compelled to repeat our stories and had learned to love each other’s stories too.

  “My dad was in the air force. That meant we moved around a lot and lived on army bases. We stayed for a time at Findhorn – in northeast Scotland. It was a bit bleak. I wanted to be in the forces like my dad, have a uniform, be in a parade, or fly one of those bombers. He used to take me round the base. School was a bit tough because we moved so much. I had to fight my way to being accepted – well, nothing unusual about that. I ended up not really trusting anyone, like, I was permanently on my guard. Defensive. My parents were all right but they didn’t talk much. They had their own separate lives. That’s what I thought you did. You each had your own life. Mum lived in the kitchen mostly or sewed in the back room – she didn’t reckon much to the other women on the base. When Dad wasn’t on duty he watched TV in the lounge. I had my own room.”

  “Sounds lonely,” I prompted.

  “Yeah. Next to the base there was this commune of weirdos, people who talked to trees and grew enormous vegetables. They’d cycle around and lived in caravans. Dad used to take the rise out of them. I watched them, like kids do. I went there, once, and this woman said she could see my aura and it was all white. At the time I thought she was batty.”

  I was silent.

  “My mum insisted I worked hard at school because she had ideas for me. She wanted me to get a civvy job. But I was no good at school, I couldn’t concentrate, I just messed around. It all seemed pointless. I thought I could just join the army when I was sixteen and they’d sort me out. And I could travel, see the world, learn a trade. So I ignored her and I did, I joined the army. It was tough and yeah – you were right – I was always obeying orders. But then, when
we were off-duty, we’d go out, get rat-arsed.”

  I started at the word. It was a little strong for a White One. But I guessed away from the farm standards might be more lax. Will was unaware of my reaction. He continued.

  “It was one of those nights. We were all out drinking and one by one my mates went home. One or two had work in the morning, another one was ill and someone else took him home. I forget the details, but they all deserted me. I was in this club and however much I drank, it was like I wasn’t getting drunk. I was stone-cold sober.

  “So when I saw Pete looking at me, I was edgy. It wasn’t a gay club or anything, but you couldn’t be sure. I reckoned if he came over and offered to buy me a drink I’d just flatten him. But he just started talking, and everything he said, I agreed with. About the club being a dive, the girls just on the pull, the fact that even booze didn’t make the sadness go away. By rights, I should have walked. Like, a bloke doesn’t come up to another bloke in a club like that. But there was a click, know what I mean?”

  I did. It was what I had felt with Nick and Kate. We call it Galvanisation.

  “We went for a coffee after that and, as it was too late for me to get home, he gave me a bed at the place in Forres. I met the other guys and thought they were weird but better than anyone else I’d ever met…”

  I knew all the rest, from my own experience. But it felt good to have one’s own convictions confirmed by somebody else’s experience. Will had started his life as a White One in Scotland, but you would never have guessed because he didn’t have a Scottish accent. Even then, he’d never met Rendall or been to Orkney. The place in Forres was closed down as they couldn’t make it viable. Will was sent to us, just a little time before I joined. He was probably my best mate on the farm.