Blinded by the Light

by Sherry Ashworth

  BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

  SHERRY ASHWORTH

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by CollinsFlamingo 2003

  Text copyright © Sherry Ashworth 2003

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  Source ISBN: 9780007123360

  Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007394944

  Version: 2016-05-19

  Dedication

  Thanks to Linda Kerr, Robyn Ashworth, Jonathan Abel

  For Greg and John

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: The Journey

  Bodies Recovered

  1. From The Preface, Rendall’s Book of Prayers

  2. From Rendall’s Parables: The Tale of the Traveller

  3. From Rendall’s Laws Governing Purity: Abstinence

  4. From Rendall’s Book of Prayers: The Morning Service

  5. From Rendall’s Parables: The Tale of the Hungry Child

  6. From Rendall’s Parables: The Tale of the Brothers

  Part Two: The Arrival

  7. From Rendall’s Laws Governing Purity: Alternate Sense Deprivation

  8. From Rendall’s Book of Prayers: The Induction Service

  9. From Rendall’s Parables: The Tale of the Stallion

  10. From Selected Commentaries on Rendall: “They were male and female together.”

  11. Letter to all Cell Leaders: From Colin Rendall

  12. From Rendall’s Laws Governing Purity: Degrees of Passion

  13. From Rendall’s Laws Governing Purity: antimatter

  14.

  15. From Rendall’s Book of Prayers: Prayer for Recovery

  Part Three: The Revelation

  16. Bea’s Story

  17.

  18. Bea’s Story

  19.

  20. Bea’s Story

  21.

  22. Bea’s Story

  23.

  24. Bea’s Story

  25.

  26. Bea’s Story

  27.

  28. Bea’s Story

  29.

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  THE JOURNEY

  BODIES RECOVERED

  The Orcadian April 5th, 1969

  The bodies of Matthew Chalmers, 20, and Trevor Norrington-Smith, 21, were recovered today from Hoy Sound.

  The young men, together with another friend, Colin Rendall, were students at Cambridge University, holidaying in Orkney. The accident occurred on Saturday evening, when the three men took a boat out for a midnight row. Rendall managed to stay afloat until he was picked up by Angus Middleton, 66, a retired fisherman, who had witnessed the capsizing from his bedroom window. Rendall was flown to Aberdeen, where he is recovering in hospital with his father by his bedside.

  Police are refusing to comment on how the accident could have happened. The inquest will take place in Kirkwall after Easter.

  1.

  From The Preface, Rendall’s Book of Prayers

  The pain and struggle ceased. I was travelling without effort, moving towards the Light. Where there had been terror, there was now beauty, and peace beyond all understanding. An angel swathed in brightness stood by a table. On it was the Book. White pages, whiter words, thousands upon thousands of them. In essence they said, be free, be pure, do not despair of Perfection. The Book remained inscribed in my head and heart. My purpose was clear.

  Didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I was pissed off, to tell you the truth. I’d been on my own since two o’clock when Phil had to go to band practice and left me in the middle of campus.

  “Great seeing you, Joe,” he’d said, thumping me in the ribs. I thumped him back even harder. We grinned at each other.

  “The sixty or sixty-one’ll take you near the station,” he’d said. “Come up again. Any time, like.”

  “Sure,” I said. I thought, I might, but then again, I might not. I slung my overnight bag over my shoulders and set out for the bus stop.

  Hell, it wasn’t Phil’s fault. If all had gone according to plan I wouldn’t have been in Birmingham, or even in England for that matter. I would have been in a village in Kenya digging, or teaching kids, or doing some other GAP voluntary work. But just after my A2s, my throat swelled up like a balloon. I lay in bed for weeks – glandular fever.

  At first I was too ill to care. Life was just Mum changing damp sheets, pain, nightmarish dreams. Then I was as weak as a baby. When Tasha came to see me she looked taken aback. I date the end of our relationship from that moment. But who could blame her? I was hardly sex on legs. I couldn’t even struggle on to my legs for that matter. Tasha shoved some flowers down by my bed, pecked me on the cheek, and stressed a bit about her forthcoming results.

  But it was OK in the end. She got her place at Oxford, went up in October and was mesmerised by the whole experience. She sent me a couple of emails about the college and how cool it was, the amazing people she’d met, the course being harder than she thought, more about the amazing people and parties, and then there was the email which started, I don’t know how to tell you this… You can guess the rest.

  To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really gutted. I saw it coming. But put together with the fact that I had to cancel the overseas stuff because I still wasn’t a hundred per cent, and all my mates were off at uni, and I was living at home, it was a bit of a bummer. OK, I was gutted. Tasha and I had been going out for ten months, which was a long time for me. And I liked having a girlfriend. The weird thing is, even when you’re close to your mates, as I was – as I am – you don’t talk to them in the same way as you do a girl. You say stuff to her you wouldn’t say to anyone else. You do things, too, but that’s another story.

  But please don’t get the impression I was a loser. That’s never been the case, which was why being at a loose end that November was getting me down. I wasn’t used to it. As soon as I was well, I got myself some work – nights in a pub pulling pints and lugging crates around, and weekends in Electric Avenue selling geeks the latest PC, PlayStation and Dreamcast games. So I wasn’t short of cash. Or invitations. Dave, Rich and Phil all asked me to stay, and I took Phil up on it. So I spent two nights on his floor, both times in a drunken stupor. It was good, kind of.

  But like I said, he had to go to band practice, and I made my own way back to Birmingham New Street.

  Nowhere is more depressing than a railway station on a Sunday afternoon. There’s a kind of sour, dusty smell. People look fed up; they stand around eating junk food and swigging Coke. Their luggage m
akes them look like refugees. But you can’t help feeling that where they’re going to might be worse than where they’re coming from. You feel yourself becoming more trashy by the minute, sidling up to the newsstand and reading all the tabloid headlines about scandalous celebrity love lives – as if I gave a toss about which plastic bimbo went to bed with which braindead footballer. I’m tempted to buy the paper anyway – something to read, innit? But then again, I’m almost out of cash and I might want a coffee on the train.

  I feel myself getting depressed and I don’t like it. It’s not me. I’ve had this a few times since the glandular fever, a sort of heaviness washing over me. I fight it by walking up and down the platform, reading the ads for frothy paperbacks for women with boring lives. I look down the line to see if the train’s coming. Gotta keep moving. The train should be here any minute now. And sure enough there’s a dot in the distance that grows into the front of an engine and, yes, it gets bigger and is arriving at my platform.

  So I’m moving through the carriages to find my reserved seat, taking involuntary snapshots of people’s faces: Chinese guy reading a paper, couple of chubby pensioners with sandwiches in plastic bags, good-looking girl staring sullenly out of the window, fat bloke asleep with his mouth hanging open. I finally reach my seat and discover I’m on my own; mine is the window seat and the other three seats are empty, having only reservation tickets sitting on the top of them like shrunken hats. I get my Walkman and phone out of my bag and settle down. I glance at my mobile and want someone to text me. And with a jolt and a lurch the train moves forward.

  I reckon it’ll take about two hours to get to Manchester, more if there’s works on the line, which there usually are. The guard announces all the stops, and then another voice takes over to talk about the buffet. When I was a kid I used to like train journeys, but this one feels like another form of waiting, which is all I ever seem to be doing at the moment. Waiting for texts, for phone calls, for next year when I start uni, for something – anything – to happen. Even when I go out to try to make something happen, nothing happens. Or I drink too much and forget what happened. I feel that slide into depression again and stop it by trying to remember the joke Phil’s mate told which had us falling about. Then I look out of the window, through the smears and grime. The train stops and starts. I see embankments with rubbish strewn down them, scrubby old plants. And then we pull up in Wolverhampton. And wait. And move again.

  It comes as a shock when I realise the couple moving along the carriage in my direction are going to come and sit opposite me. But they check their tickets and acknowledge to each other that this is the right place. I sort of watch them. They can’t be much older than me. Girl has brown hair in bunches, a good figure, jeans, white sweatshirt. Bloke looks thin; he’s wearing a denim jacket over a white T-shirt, cream combats. Students? They don’t look seedy enough. I wonder if they’re an item but they don’t make body contact – I get the weird impression they must be brother and sister. She gives me a shy smile and he nods in a friendly way But like I said before, I don’t feel like talking to anyone.

  So off we go. I try to go back to my previous stupor, but the presence of the couple opposite stops me. It’s hard sitting with someone and not interacting – it seems rude. But there’s two of them and only one of me, so I won’t make the first move. She’s pretty, the girl, brown eyes, heavy lids, well-defined lips – a thoughtful face. I can see her as a singer in a folk band in the sixties, say. The bloke is harder to place. He has to be a student – maybe the sporty type? Nah, he’s too skinny for that. But what’s intriguing me is their total ease with each other, and I can’t reconcile it with the read-out I’m getting that they aren’t a couple.

  Yet they can’t be brother and sister because they’re being nice to each other. I have a sister – Gemma – who irritates the hell out of me. And even when we’re getting on, I’m always taking the mick, because that’s what you do with sisters. Sure, this couple opposite could be platonic friends, but I have my doubts. I don’t believe in platonic friendship. Take Tasha; she wants to be friends – I can’t stand the thought of losing your friendship, Joe! Like you should have thought of that before you split with me. It was your choice, Tash. I don’t reckon a bloke and a girl can be friends without sex coming into it somehow. Unless, of course, you don’t fancy the girl one iota. But then, she might fancy you. Which is worse in a way

  And so I was drifting off again when the bloke spoke to me.

  “Are you going to Manchester?” he asked.

  I started. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Us too.” His voice, his body language all gave away that he wanted to talk. So I couldn’t see that I had a choice.

  “We’re running late,” I said.

  The girl joined in now. “Yeah. Half an hour, they said at Wolverhampton. We’ve been staying with friends from the university there.”

  “Yeah, I was with a mate from Birmingham.”

  “Are you a student too?” she asked.

  “Will be. Next year. It’s my gap year,” I said. Weird how it’s easier to talk about yourself to strangers. I could feel my earlier reluctance to speak dissolving. I liked the way this girl was taking an interest in me.

  “Cool,” she said. “What are your plans?”

  I explained about the glandular fever and how I was earning money so I could travel – backpack, maybe – in the spring. I didn’t tell her that I seemed to be spending most of it on clothes and CDs and booze.

  “Where are you thinking of going?” the bloke asked. He had bleached hair, wore glasses with thin black frames.

  “Maybe Thailand, or India. I haven’t really looked into it yet.”

  The girl smiled. “Nick’s been to India.”

  I looked interested. I was, a bit. “Backpacking?”

  “No. Teaching,” he said. “I was involved with a scheme that sent classroom assistants to Indian schools. I lived there for six months.”

  I was impressed, and jealous, too. But this bloke – Nick – he didn’t seem as if he wanted to go on about it. I appreciated that. Still, I was curious.

  “Did you live with Indians, like?”

  “I had lodgings in a house and shared a room with one of the other assistants. A lot of the Indian families gave us hospitality. India changes you – you look at the world differently afterwards.”

  “You mean, coming to terms with the poverty and that?”

  “Yeah,” Nick nodded. “That, and just comparing other cultures. And it makes you appreciate different things about living here.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Nick paused before he answered, as if my question had made him think.

  “The freedom to move about,” he said, which wasn’t what I was expecting. I found myself cheering up. It put me in a better mood to be able to talk about something not to do with my life.

  “Have you travelled?” I asked the girl.

  She shook her head deprecatingly. Yeah, she was pretty Not my type, but pretty.

  “I’ve not had the chance yet. I did my art foundation course last year and I’m hoping to go on to college next year, but right now I’m getting some cash together.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I said.

  We all smiled, as if it was us three against the world, cash-strapped and just travelling. It was great, finding people to talk to like this, people I could relate to. I revelled in my luck at actually sitting opposite this couple, rather than a Palm-Pilot-obsessed man-in-a-suit, or a family with noisy kids. And weirdly, the sun made a last effort to brighten up the late afternoon sky Fields rushed by on both sides.

  “So you live in Manchester too?” I asked them.

  Nick answered. “Not in Manchester exactly. Just outside Todmorden. West Yorkshire.”

  “Yeah – I know it well.”

  “We share a house there.”

  “Like, together?” I mumbled. I was fishing to see if they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

  The girl laughed. “Not toge
ther in the way you mean! There are a few of us. We’re renting an old farmhouse.”

  “Nice one!” That sounded great to me.

  “What about you? I’m Kate, by the way” The name suited her. It was fresh and wholesome. And by now my tongue had loosened. My earlier blues had lifted completely Words were coming easily

  “I still live with my parents – no choice, if I’m going to get some funds together. I probably wouldn’t mind if I’d planned to stay at home, but I imagined myself somewhere completely different. But I’m not complaining – they stay out of my hair. But it’s their place, know what I mean?”

  Kate nodded vehemently Nick asked if I wanted anything from the buffet. I thanked him and asked for a coffee. I offered him the money but he was adamant in refusing it. This left me and Kate.

  “I bet you have lots of friends, though?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but they’re all at uni. Not all of them,” I corrected myself “but the crowd I went around with last year have all gone.”

  “Your school friends, you mean?”

  “Yeah, mainly”

  “Which A2s did you take?”

  “Maths, Politics, Economics. Actually, I’ve got a place to study law next year. At Bristol.” I said this to impress her. She seemed the sort to fall for that. She was, too. She raised her eyebrows and smiled.

  “Why law?”

  “Well, I got fed up with all of my A2s. I couldn’t see myself studying any one of them exclusively And even though I know law doesn’t guarantee you a job, it must improve your chances. But I don’t see myself as one of those city lawyers raking it in through extortionate fees.”

  Kate was nodding, as if she emphatically agreed with me.

  “I’d like to get involved with legal aid,” I continued, “helping the sort of people who find themselves outside the system. What appeals to me is representing people who can’t represent themselves.”

  At that point Nick came back with drinks – a coffee for me, a fruit juice for Kate and a bottle of water for him.