“Very well,” I said. “And you?”
She said nothing, but gave me a stricken look. She seemed paler than I’d remembered her, and her face more lined. I could see she was unhappy.
“Mum,” I said, “there really is no need to worry about me. I’ve never felt better. I’m studying, working, I’m doing what I want. I know it’s hard for you, me leaving home, but all parents have to go through it.”
“I know,” she said, fiddling with her teaspoon, “but Dad and I are worried about the people you’re staying with. We’ve been reading up about cults and we think – look! Why don’t you come home this weekend? Just for a break. We can really talk about this, about your friends, what they do there, and Dad and I won’t force the issue. I promise. I’ll gag your dad if needs be.”
Mum attempted a smile.
“No,” I said. “I’m happy where I am. I know it’s hard for you. I’m safe – listen. As a White One I’ve pledged never to do drugs, never to smoke, to drink – there’s nothing for you to worry about!”
“A White One? What on earth is that?”
I deliberated for a few moments, and then decided to explain our philosophy to Mum. Maybe once she’d heard it, she’d understand why I had been so drawn to them. I told her about Rendall, about his Book, about the Light, about Purity, about our theories of the universe, and how they were no more extreme than any of the major world religions. I talked for ages, ignoring the pangs of hunger that assailed me every time I caught a whiff of scones and jam, or toasted teacakes. Listening to myself, I was impressed with how well I was explaining it all. I had learned a lot.
“So what do you do all day?” Mum asked.
I told her about our daily routine, although I didn’t mention ASD. There was no point as I knew it would worry her. I mentioned I’d learned to cook and that I studied. I told her about Bea too.
“She sounds nice,” Mum said.
I appreciated that and smiled. Mum smiled too. For one moment it seemed like the old times.
“Here,” Mum said, scrabbling about in her handbag. “I’ve got something for you. A letter from Gemma.”
She handed it to me. It wasn’t in an envelope, just a folded piece of paper. I read it.
Dear Joe,
Look, I’m sorry for going ballistic at you. I was just upset that you were cutting me out. It’s crap here without you. I want you to come home. It’s a bit because I miss you and a bit because I’m scared for you. Your mates on the farm sound like a bunch of losers. Well, someone’s got to say that. I don’t care if you’re angry. I hated it when you left home and you went all calm and funny. Mum is on antidepressants and Dad doesn’t sleep. So come home, you bastard.
Gem
“I don’t know what she put in there,” Mum said. “I had to promise her I wouldn’t read it.”
I was silent for a bit. Gemma was trying to make me feel guilty, but it was understandable; she was only a kid and had a very limited vision.
“Tell her I won’t come home,” I said to Mum.
For some reason that got to Mum. She suddenly started ranting.
“For goodness’ sake, Joe, can’t you see what’s happened to you? You’ve been brainwashed. I don’t know how, I don’t understand it for one minute, and I’ve tried to be nice to you, tried to be reasonable, but if that won’t work, then maybe some straight talking will. You’ve changed. You don’t seem like my son any more. I know we can’t come and forcibly take you away from the farm, but we’ve talked of it. We’ve been to see the local vicar, even though your dad and I haven’t set foot inside a church for years. He’ll talk to you, and he knows organisations that help people who’ve got involved in cults. Why don’t you meet him? Joe – grow up and face the truth.”
“The Truth,” I said to her, “is the Light, and the Light is the Truth.”
“Joe! Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
“Mum, I did, but listen to me. I am happy. I’m doing what I want to do. If you can’t accept that then I won’t see you again.”
“Any more tea?” asked the dumpy waitress.
“No,” said my mother.
We were quiet for a bit. When I looked at her again, she was crying.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “I will carry on seeing you, but you must stay calm.”
She said nothing.
“Next month maybe?” I suggested.
“You must ring next week,” she said.
I nodded. She asked for the bill and as she paid, I noticed the waitress give us an odd look.
We left the tea shop.
“I love you, Joe,” she said. “Remember that. We all do. And when you’ve finished with these White Ones, just come home.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“Joe, I love you.”
“Love you too,” I mumbled.
She kissed me again, I kissed her back and turned and walked to the bus station.
Even though I coped very well that afternoon, it disturbed me. I was preoccupied for the rest of the day and the other guys noticed. Fletcher suggested I talk it through with them, as a number of them had similar difficulties with their families.
So Will, Kate and Auriel sat with me in the kitchen, and I debriefed.
“Yeah, my parents went nuts,” Will said. “They even tried locking me in my room when I told them I was going. And they came to my cell – the one in Forres – and threatened to get the police.”
“What happened eventually?” I asked him.
“They gave up. I didn’t hear from them for ages and then they moved to Winchester. Sometimes I get a letter but I don’t think about them much now.”
“My parents visit me here – they know it’s the best place for me,” Auriel said. “But when I see them, it makes me glad I live here and not with them.”
She got up then and went to the sink to wash her hands. I’d noticed Auriel was always washing her hands. Then afterwards she would dry them very carefully, then say something like, this towel is dirty! Then she’d start again. She tended to be over-enthusiastic about her purity, but Fletcher said that was hardly an error, and we were to let her travel her path as she saw fit.
Kate said, “It is difficult for your parents. There’s a loss for them, and they’re made to feel their own shortcomings. This often expresses itself in anger or grief. I went through all that too. But like you, Joe, I have an arrangement with my mother and I keep in contact. Everything is under control. These are early days yet, and you’re doing well. Remember, just as the process of birth is painful to a mother, so is your process of rebirth.”
Her words cheered me, and the scene with my mother began to fade. Kate had analysed it and put it to rest. It also helped me to think all my brothers and sisters had gone through what I had.
Fletcher entered then and came up to me. In a gesture of affection he ruffled my hair. I felt completely at peace again.
“Joe,” he said, “how would you like to go and visit Nick?”
I jumped up, eager. I hadn’t see Nick for some time – I knew he’d had a relapse. The duty of nursing him was not one of my responsibilities. But I had a bond with Nick, and liked him. I was only too ready to visit.
Together Fletch and I made our way upstairs. We went to a small room at the end of the landing. Fletcher knocked, then entered.
Nick was sitting up in bed. I had to admit I was a bit taken aback. He looked shrunken and the bones of his face stood out. I had to fight an impulse to run. I guess that was the antimatter emanating from whatever was causing Nick’s illness. I mastered the impulse and went to sit down on a chair by his bed. I noticed Nick’s hands were trembling like an old man’s.
“I’m feeling better,” Nick said to me. Without his glasses on his eyes looked small, timorous.
“Good,” I said.
“I asked if I could see you,” he said to me. “I wanted to know how you were getting on.”
Fletcher was silent so I knew it was OK for me to talk. I updated Nick on my life at the farm,
hoping the distraction would cheer him up. He smiled when I mentioned my clumsy attempts at bricklaying and the vegetable stew I made that no one would eat. I also told him about my mum, and he said, “It’s hard.”
That struck me as profoundly true, coming from Nick, looking so ill.
While I was talking, I scanned the room. It was bare for a sick room. There was a jug of water by Nick’s bedside, and someone had put a spray of flowers in a vase. I wondered again exactly what was wrong with him but I thought it would be rude to ask. So I tried an oblique approach.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Better today,” he said. “There’s been a very exciting development.” I saw Fletch nodding out of the corner of my eye.
“What? Is your medicine working?”
Fletch answered that. “Carbister is taking an active interest in Nick’s case and they’re taking over his treatment profile.”
Nick looked as if he wanted to talk, so Fletch let him.
“Yes – it’s essential to starve whatever is still in my system, which is, of course, essentially antimatter. I have been ASD’ing but alone it’s not enough. I need something more rigorous. I want to try this, Joe, because otherwise it’ll have to be conventional medicine. Fletcher has promised me that.”
“One last attempt,” Fletcher said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m waiting for Carbister to send through the details,” Fletch answered me. “But meanwhile, Nick has something to ask you.”
I felt so sorry for him I would have said yes to anything.
“Joe – I’ve not been much use to the White Ones lately. My Attracting days are over. I’ve spoken to Fletcher and he feels – we feel – you should step into my shoes. We want you to be an Attractor.”
My heart leapt with joy. It was the one thing I’d been secretly hoping for. I knew how to be an Attractor. You see, it wasn’t like other evangelical religions, where you stand around on street corners handing out leaflets. You just mingled. Then at a particular moment someone would come to you. Or you would see someone and know he was a potential White One, just like Nick and Kate found me.
Fletcher said, “The world is a maze and people get lost. Like a shepherd looking for his flock, you must find the missing souls.”
I knew how to do this. I was sure I had an instinct for it – I was a good judge of character. It was important I kept my purity – I mustn’t be sullied by the world. And I wasn’t to preach – that wasn’t the point. And just like Perfects, immortals who live among us but retain their Perfection, I would stay as a White One in the outside world.
“We thought,” Nick said, “you could start by going with Will to the shop. There you’ll come into contact with different people. It will be a starting point.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d really like that.”
Nick smiled at me, then turned to Fletcher and said he was tired. It was our cue to go. I waved goodbye at the door and left, my heart singing with happiness.
I continued on that high for days. I was a trusted and honoured White One, and had just been given one of the highest accolades. The Light shone in me and through me. Everyone said so. And then it was the day of Bea’s initiation.
I remember just before the ceremony looking at myself in the long, speckled mirror in the men’s washroom. I only caught my reflection in it by chance. It surprised me because for a split second I didn’t recognise myself. But it was me all right. Same old Joe, except my hair was considerably longer and I’d dropped about a stone. I looked older too. I tried to decide if I preferred myself thinner and older and I decided that I did. It kind of made me look more interesting. More intelligent. It expressed what I was becoming. It was as if my body was taking its cue from my spirit. I stared myself out, looking for the intensity in my eyes that the other White Ones said I had. Then I rotated my shoulder blades, flexed some muscles. The physical work I had been doing was making me stronger; it was much more effective than anything I ever did at the gym. And more meaningful too.
Then I told myself my body was only a vehicle and that I had better move away from the mirror and instead think about the significance of the occasion. And I did. I believed Bea was fully ready to commit, and knew it would bring us closer still. We were good for each other. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that and, besides, no one, not even Fletcher, had commented on our spending so much time together.
That hour or so, before Bea’s initiation, was my happiest, purest hour.
So it’s hard to even begin to account for what went wrong. But I must try White Ones don’t lie, even to themselves.
We all congregated in the common area which led into the Gathering Place where Bea’s immersion was to happen. It was good – it made me remember my own act of commitment not many weeks ago. We all greeted and hugged and there was a happy, yet awe-filled atmosphere. Then the girls left us and went to join Bea in the Gathering Place.
The guys sat cross-legged on the floor and hummed, pressing our fingertips together so that our individual energy was contained and circulated in one continuous stream. As we hummed we thought about the significance of the occasion and how each initiation increased the Light in the world. We were to focus on the Light. I did, but I had to admit I was thinking of Bea too. She was special to me, and there was no one I wanted to be initiated as much as her. So as I meditated I visualised not only the Light, but the shell she had bought me, the shell which even now was hanging around my neck, in fragile, pristine whiteness.
Then it happened. I thought – bizarrely – of that old painting. You know the one – what’s it called? The Birth of Venus. Some Italian guy painted it. There’s Venus, the Goddess of Love, standing on a shell on the sea, naked – like Bea would be emerging from the water now – with one arm covering her breasts, and her hair sweeping free, and curling round her stomach to conceal the place my eyes were always drawn to. And so I thought of Bea next door, coming out of the water, her hair dripping over her full breasts, which I had never seen. I imagined the curve of her stomach and thighs and thought about embracing her now, naked, her arms and legs wet, pressed against mine – what did she look like naked? I didn’t know. I wanted to know. My meditation was shattered and I became aware that I was getting a hard-on.
Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was the pure one, the strong one. I didn’t know what to do. I had to stop thinking of Bea, that was for sure. I tried to refocus on the Light, but there was nothing. Just Darkness. Just the chaotic whirl of antimatter. I tried to think of my mother, saw her face and gradually I regained control of my body. But my heart was racing and there was a flush on my face. I hoped the other guys wouldn’t notice; luckily they were all deep in contemplation.
I tried breathing deeply in order to calm myself. What bothered me was that the deviation from purity had come from me. I had let myself down. This was bad. When the foe was outside yourself – your family, food that tasted good, whatever – it was easy to withstand it. But I had produced my own antimatter.
I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. I wondered what the other blokes did about this stuff. Before, I had thought that all the ASD affected you so that you didn’t react physically in the way you did in the other world, where all round you there were pictures of semi-naked bimbos flouncing their way through pop videos, and women lying prone on posters in the streets and girls who used their sexuality to get you – I thought it was their fault. Like, what’s a guy to do? But maybe there was something about me. The thoughts came from me. Maybe I wasn’t so pure after all.
Then the other worrying thing was, ought I to tell Fletcher? Answer – I had to. He was my mentor. Then it struck me I would be compromising Bea and risking her reputation, which I wasn’t prepared to do. Besides, I didn’t tell him everything. Like, maybe, I was digging and accidentally sliced a worm in two. Well, I wouldn’t tell him that. Or that my back ached so I rested for a couple of minutes. He would be bored stiff if I told him everything. So mayb
e I could just omit this. For all I knew, Fletcher had hard-ons. It was just something you weren’t supposed to talk about. Maybe being a successful White One was about what you chose to do when your body let you down. As in, nothing. No sex. It was one of our vows.
There was movement from next door and the guys were invited in. I lingered at the back. I still didn’t feel ready to face Bea. I felt my sinful thoughts still clinging to me. Eventually I entered the room and saw Bea wrapped in a big white towel. I joined in the cheering and clapping. We all pushed forward to greet her in the usual way, and when I did I found I couldn’t look at her properly.
“Joe?” she questioned.
She had noticed. Then I made my eyes meet hers and there was such pain for me as I saw her. She was so beautiful and I wanted her so badly. Her wet hair framed her face and she looked like the Virgin Mary now. I felt worse and filthier than ever. And more determined to have her. And more determined than ever to fight that impulse and not to have her. Ever.
When the others gave her their gifts, I shoved mine forward. It was a music manuscript book which I had painted carefully with white nail varnish. With it was a white fountain pen. I gave it to her and then went. I saw Fletcher and explained to him that I felt I needed to have some solitude. Meditation, prayer and reflection were an important part of our way of life, and it was quite usual to want to have time out.
I made my way to the Reading Room at the front of the house. Someone had turned off the light, as we were all at Bea’s initiation. I switched it on again, closed the door behind me and sat at an upright chair by the wooden table. There were several copies of the Book on the table, as well as some service sheets. I began to stroke the leather cover of the Book, felt its rough skin and the smoothness of the gold-leaf-embossed letters spelling Rendall’s name. My fingertips had never seemed more sensitive.
May it be my lot to achieve Perfection.
I opened the Book at random. I hoped my eyes would light on a passage that would help me in my confusion. But the first page I turned to just gave instructions on how to purify food that had come from the wrong source, such as a supermarket or fast food outlet. It held no relevance for me. Maybe I was floundering in such a deep Darkness that even the Book could not reach me. But reading about food made me realise I was very hungry. I had fasted for the last twenty-four hours and was weak and light-headed. There was food in the kitchen but to go there would be to break my enforced solitude.
Blinded by the Light Page 9