We fell silent. I played around with the idea of opening up the subject of Bea with him. I was certain Will wouldn’t give me a hard time about it, and talking to someone might help tease out the tangles I was getting in. When you talk things through they always seem more logical. So I rehearsed what I might say.
Something like, Will, I need to talk about my relationship with Bea. It’s not just friendship. I fancy her – not even that. I think I love her. I want to have a proper relationship with her, and I know about our vow of chastity and all that, but I don’t see why two White Ones can’t have a relationship – even a physical relationship – because what we feel is more than just sex. And if we did the stuff normal couples do, then maybe I wouldn’t have these dreams I’ve been having – mad, crazy dreams, disgusting dreams, I’m doing stuff in them I wouldn’t have ever imagined doing in my old life even, so I’ve been trying to stop the dreams by jerking myself off, which makes me feel even more guilty, because White Ones rise above that kind of stuff – don’t they? Do you?
No. There was no way I could have said any of that to Will, or to anyone. I’d have to puzzle it out all by myself, or give up Bea. But every time I saw her I just melted – I would look at her and feel suddenly weak, because I wanted her so much. And I knew she felt the same because she told me. And it was so ironic that we should meet now, when we couldn’t have each other. Or could we? Was there a way round it? I scoured Rendall’s Book and all the literature and found some promising Commentaries. I would have written some myself except I reckoned Fletcher would be able to guess what was going on in my mind. My biggest fear was that Fletcher would separate me from Bea. Except, surely he could see that we were good for each other. We studied the Book together, cooked together, worked in the allotments.
Like, if he’d said, I know how you feel about Bea, and we’ve decided you two guys can get married, I’d have jumped at the chance. I know that sounds crazy, me being only nineteen, but being a White One had made me so much more mature. I knew about commitment in a way that few people did. I knew what it was like to make sacrifices. I’d had one bad relationship in the old world and now I had a good one, and I knew the difference. It made me sick to think about the things I did with Tash but – Christ! – I wanted to do them with Bea. And that was making me doubt my purity And sanity.
I give thanks to the Light for true Vision. I give thanks to the Light for warming my flesh and giving me life. I yearn for the Light and crave the day we are united. May it be my lot to achieve Perfection.
Will saw me mouthing those words and made no comment. Later, he said, “There’s some blackcurrant tea in the back. Do you fancy some?”
I nodded. Reality was reasserting itself. I walked over to the pile of vinyl records and sorted through them. They were mostly easy listening or old rock and roll groups that even my parents hadn’t mentioned. I quite missed listening to the sounds I used to like. But that wasn’t really a problem. Bea played and sang for me and the others. It didn’t bother me that I missed some aspects of my old life. There would be no sacrifice involved if I didn’t.
I sipped at the blackcurrant tea and found it too sweet. Will must have loaded it with sugar. I wondered whether that wasn’t an infringement of our principles, and decided next time he made a brew to specify that I wanted mine plain. I glanced towards the door. Business was slow, or rather non-existent.
“Do you prefer it here to the farm?” I asked Will.
“I’ve got used to it,” he said. “I prefer being outdoors but sometimes I lock up and go for a walk around. There’s a canal round the back.”
I was about to ask him if I would be allowed to do that, when there was a ping and the door opened again.
“Oh, no!” muttered Will.
I could see why he said that. The bloke who walked in was obviously a nutter. You could smell him before you saw him. He was in his fifties – maybe sixties – but he wore a filthy baseball cap turned back to front. He staggered a bit as if he was drunk. But what you noticed first of all was the placard he wore on his chest, saying Doom Is Nigh. I heard Will sigh exaggeratedly.
“Prepare yourselves,” this bloke said. “It’s the end of the world.”
“Oh, yeah?” Will was obviously used to him. “So when would that be exactly?”
“Next Tuesday,” said the bloke. “Quarter to three in the afternoon. Thirty-three devils and thirty-three angels will arrive on horseback at Stoodley Pike.”
“Must arrange to get front-row tickets,” Will said. “And by the way, last time you came in you said the world was ending last Wednesday.”
The bloke ignored him. “Thirty-three devils and thirty-three angels. The sky will fall and the beast from the scarlet sea will rise again and kill the infidels. You wouldn’t have some spare change for a cup of tea? And the mountains will move and Darkness will fall upon the face of the earth. And God will pass judgement upon the waters. And the firmament will explode in fireworks. Just 50p will do.”
Will chuckled and went to open the till. The bloke shut up then and cleared his throat noisily. Will handed him a couple of quid. As the bloke moved over to take it there was a miasma of dank, sweaty clothes and urine.
“Thank you kindly. You will find yourself among the saved. You’ll be bathing in milk and honey. And dancing with maidens. Do the hokey cokey and you’ll turn around.”
He shuffled out of the shop.
“You get all sorts here,” Will said.
I wished we had some air freshener.
The day dragged on. We chatted a bit, and had a study lunch break where we read the Book and I helped Will with a Commentary he was working on. Only five more people came in, three old ladies and a young woman with a toddler in a pushchair. I felt no pull to any of them. Later we rearranged some of the second-hand paperbacks we had on to a shelf. I began to feel homesick for the farm. Fletcher called for us about four and I was glad to lock up.
It was a beautiful evening. The sun seemed reluctant to go down and back at Lower Fold I realised I was living in a kind of heaven. Gentle, fading sunlight bathed the buildings, and the people out in the fields and allotments were my brothers and sisters. Among them was Bea. When I went into the kitchen for some water she was there, stirring something on the cooker. Her face brightened when she saw me; she stopped what she was doing, and just smiled at me. I stood in front of her, dumb, not wanting to break the spell. Our eyes locked on to each other’s, our mutual gaze bringing us closer than any physical union could do. Again I felt perfect contentment.
As the evening wore on, that feeling didn’t go away. At the Service I felt surrounded by love and light. I said the words of the prayers with conviction. As I washed away my sins I felt the water charged with a healing warmth. I noticed Fletcher look on me approvingly. I knew then I was a chosen one, more fortunate than I deserved to be.
So I don’t get why it was that the nutter from the shop wouldn’t leave my mind; why I felt I loathed him, and dreaded seeing him again, why his stench invaded my nostrils, and I wished he could be taken from the face of the earth.
May it be my lot to achieve Perfection.
11.
Letter to all Cell Leaders: From Colin Rendall
Brothers,
A recent Vision has implanted in me the conviction that a Perfect walks among us now. As contact with this Perfect will help us achieve our own Perfection, it is imperative that we locate him. He is young and fair of skin and, I believe, it is likely he is already one of our number. He will not know of his own Perfection, for is it not logical, brothers, that the nature of Perfection is humility and the absence of all ego? It is therefore the duty of all cell leaders to bring here to Carbister that member of your cell who might be the missing Perfect. Seek him whose personal purity is above all others. Once the candidates are here, the Light will guide us to his true identity. You are requested to reacquaint yourselves with those rituals necessary upon encountering a Perfect. These can be found in the Reserved Manual.
May it be your lot to achieve Perfection.
I’d been working in the shop for a few weeks when Fletcher said he wanted to see me. There was something serious in his demeanour and my first thought was that he wanted to talk about me and Bea. I knew it was coming and I’d been planning a defence in my head – sort of like we haven’t done anything, we won’t do anything, we couldn’t help it… He told me not to go in to Hebden Bridge with Will but wash the kitchen floor.
I hoped Bea would be there – she was often in the kitchen. I’d noticed that among the White Ones men and women still kept to their traditional roles. Once Bea had asked why that was and she was told nurturing and compassion were female qualities and tasks relating to those virtues devolved naturally on women. In contrast, activity and order were male attributes, so each White cell was led by a man, and men did the bulk of the physical and outreach work. It resulted in harmony, she was told.
In the old world, I used to say I was into women’s rights because it stood to reason that you can’t generalise and different people were good at different things. So why couldn’t women be lorry drivers and men stay at home to look after babies, if that’s what they wanted to do? But now I could see that society would become chaotic if individuals all chose to do precisely what they wanted, and that many individuals had unhealthy struggles with their true natures. And the modern idea of “finding yourself” was wrong too. What you needed was to find your role, the job you had to do. The job of a White One was to bring forward the Time of the Light.
But Bea wasn’t in the kitchen and I was on my own. Breakfast had been cleared away, and I was a bit disappointed, because I was pretty hungry. Yesterday I had been fasting and nasal-blocking and the kickback today was that I was obsessing about food. It usually happens like that. Double ASD is so powerful that the antimatter tries to force a way in – so if you fast, you get hungry the next day too. So, to help us, there was never much food around on the farm unless it was a feast for a special occasion. Most of the time I was pretty hungry but also so exhausted at the end of the day that I didn’t care. To be a White One you had to deny yourself stuff, but other people gave you so much more – all that love and sense of belonging. It was good for me – I was getting tough. I was learning to submit and endure.
I sat at the scrubbed kitchen table, just listening to the noises around me, the banging of the building works, some stray bird chirping repetitively outside and was about to start the cleaning when Auriel came in.
“Joe! Thank God it’s you. Have you got a razor? An electric razor?”
“Just my shaving stuff but it’s in the men’s bathrooms. What do you want a razor for?”
“This,” she said, and in a wild gesture lifted her mass of hair off her shoulders.
“For your hair?”
“It’s filthy,” she said. “Crawling with things, disgusting things. And it’s impeding my purity. You see, Joe, it makes me vain, having all this hair. I think about it too much. I think how I should wear it. I think whether Will likes it. It’s a net, trapping antimatter. Sometimes I love my hair and I think it’s beautiful and this diverts me from the path of the Light. But the truth is that my hair is a spider’s web and I’m the fly. It’s vile. I’ve made the decision. I don’t want it any more. Help me get rid of it. Give me a razor.”
I was a bit alarmed. Auriel’s hair was her best feature and it seemed a shame for her to lose it. Also the way she was talking sounded desperate to me, and White Ones took actions calmly, through conviction, not in the heat of the moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I tried to stall her.
“Look, Auriel. It might be a good idea but why don’t you think about it first. Speak to Kate. She’ll know what’s best.”
“No, I can’t. I want to be perfect. And clean and pure.”
Before I could work out what she was doing she moved over to the cutlery drawer and found a pair of kitchen scissors.
“These will do,” she said, lifting a clump of hair, and cutting it.
“Auriel, don’t!” I shouted.
She carried on. “I need to do this, Joe. Then I can think clearly. It stops me thinking. All the time, my thoughts run in circles like my hair. And I must not be vain. Vanity is my shortcoming.” As she spoke, her curls drifted to the floor. I wasn’t sure what to do. Ought I to get someone? Yet as she cut her hair she seemed to calm down. That made me think the best thing to do would be just to stay with her, keep an eye on her. Bit by bit her voice became more normal and she spoke of other things. I thought it best to join in, bizarre as the situation was, with Auriel’s hair spread all over the kitchen floor, and me watching her.
“What was that letter Fletcher received this morning?” she asked.
“What letter?”
“That’s what I thought you might be able to tell me. The way he acted, I think it was something important. He went into the Meeting Room with it and prostrated himself in front of the Book.”
“He’s said nothing to me,” I told her.
She carried on cutting. She’d almost finished. Her hair was now spiky, like a punk. Her eyes looked larger than ever. Yet now she seemed serene. Maybe cutting her hair was a good idea, how was I to know? She took the broom from the cupboard to sweep up the mess.
“Do you get on well with Will?” she asked.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“You’re lucky, working in the shop. Do you think Will likes girls with no hair? There – I’m being vain again – I’m a lost cause! You don’t know how hard I find it not to be vain. It must be deeply-rooted antimatter. Bea is so lucky She looks gorgeous but she never seems aware of it. She is gorgeous, isn’t she?”
I didn’t want to give anything away.
“As much as any White One.”
“But you’re special friends, aren’t you?”
“It’s true we discovered the Light at around the same time and that’s made us close.”
“You spend a lot of time together,” Auriel prompted.
“Sure,” I said. I felt nervous. I didn’t know why Auriel was questioning me like this.
“Look. I don’t want you to think I’m jumping to any conclusions and probably what I’m going to tell you, you don’t even need to know, but I like you both and I don’t want you to get into trouble. A couple of years ago there were two White Ones, Luke and Anna. They liked each other. Well, it was more than that. People knew but thought it didn’t matter. Then one day neither of them was there in the morning. Luke had been sent to another cell somewhere in South Wales. No one knew what happened to Anna. But there was a rumour – oh, God, I know I shouldn’t be spreading rumours. I’ll confess tonight, but I’ll say there was a positive intent to the rumour. She had a breakdown. And then they threw her out. And she was lost.”
“What do you mean? That someone stopped them seeing each other? Someone broke them up?”
“I don’t know. We weren’t allowed to speak about it. It wasn’t Fletcher, at that time Jacob was in charge – he’s in Orkney now. Fletcher was his second-in-command. Jacob used to scare me. Do you ever wonder about all the people here, Joe? A lot of them are a bit frightening. Not you, not Bea, not Will – you’re my best friends. But Layla sobs at night – I hated it the night she told us about all that abuse. And Nick is dying, I think, and they won’t let him have any medicine. Kate cuts herself at night – on her thigh – I’ve seen her do it. She can’t stand the pressure of all the Perfection, you see. And what about Fletcher? I don’t know anything about him. I know how he found the Light – that time when he was homeless and walked the streets – we all know that story, but what about before that? I haven’t found anyone on the farm who knows anything about him. But he must have a past – so why won’t he talk about it?
“When I think like this I reckon I must be the worst White One of all. I have all these wrong thoughts and I can’t help it. I question things and I hate myself for being so awful and think I shouldn’t be here. But then where would I go? Just to some mental hospital
. Did you know my parents pay the White Ones for my keep? But I’m glad – I’m free here – and here they’re all as mad as me. I have these times when I see everything very clearly, you know. I need someone to help me, don’t I? I shouldn’t be talking like this. I’ll see Kate later. Kate’s all right. I don’t mind that she cuts herself. We all have to suffer because we want to achieve Perfection. That’s why the antimatter is more out to get us than anyone else. It’s like a war, isn’t it, Joe? We’re in the front line.”
I didn’t know if I should be listening to her. I thought I’d better go and get Kate. But at that moment we were interrupted by Jenny, a new girl who Kate had Attracted. Auriel started.
“Yes – I forgot – we were going to study together. I’m sorry, Jenny. Be with you in a moment.” She turned to me. “Don’t repeat any of this. I’m not well today. I envy you. You’re special, Joe. Bea is lucky.” And she went.
I sat there for quite some time, thinking. Auriel was in a pretty bad way and I hadn’t noticed. I would have to discount all the rubbishy things she had said as they were dangerous. I thought I might hint to Fletcher that Auriel needed special care. I wiped my forehead and discovered it was damp, even though I hadn’t been exerting myself. I felt sorry for Auriel. I liked her and I feared she was cracking up. I would pray for her, pray for all of us.
It was after lunch when Fletcher came for me. He knew about Auriel and said she was spending the rest of the day with Kate. It seemed there was no need to debrief to him. Instead he said that since it was such a good day, we could walk somewhere and talk at the same time. That wasn’t unusual. Leaving the farm was the best way of having a private conversation as no one could surprise you – you’d see them coming. Fletcher was in his bleached jeans and a white vest top, revealing his sinewy arms. He made me feel a bit inferior. I’d borrowed an old T-shirt of Will’s as mine were grubby and I hadn’t had time to wash them. My baggy white combats made me feel skinnier than ever. We set off out of the farm and walked down the road. There was an occasional car so we faced the oncoming traffic. I noticed an old bloke staring at us from the front garden of a house on the opposite side of the road. I knew the locals thought we were a bit strange, but we knew we were lucky, privileged to be together.
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