Blinded By The Light

Just before Christmas was the one night I’ll always remember. It began just like an average evening – me at the farm, watching Auriel dish out a rather watery but over-spiced chickpea stew. I was quite happy not to have too much of it. I was glad that Nick was able to join us. I knew he suffered bouts of ill-health, but he was looking slightly better tonight. Kate was there, Fletcher, and Bea. The Evening Service had been about an hour ago – it was pitch-black outside now – but the kitchen was warm and it was great to be all together like that.

“Do you like it?” Auriel asked. She meant the stew.

“Sure,” I said.

“You don’t. I can tell. You’re eating it too slowly, Joe.”

I shovelled in a few mouthfuls and grinned at her. I’d already got to know Auriel quite well. She was the neurotic one, always needing reassurance. But she wasn’t on antidepressants any more, Bea had told me. Before the White Ones, Auriel had had some kind of mental problem. Her family were talking about having her sectioned. Then she met Kate. Living here had straightened her out. Well, almost. But the White Ones tolerated odd behaviour – it was only on the outside that unusual behaviour was classified as mental illness. Auriel lived happily here, and Bea said her parents even came to visit her from time to time.

“Eat some more, Nick,” Auriel cajoled.

Nick moved his spoon around the plate and then attempted a mouthful. He never had much of an appetite. Will meanwhile shovelled his food down. He used to be a soldier, I’d learned. He was a straightforward kind of guy, loyal, no nonsense – the most ordinary person you could think of. He’d come from a group of White Ones in Scotland – because I’d learned there were groups everywhere. Not that they advertised themselves. They didn’t seek to convert, but just wanted to live according to their principles.

Fletcher said to Nick, “You look better.” Then he turned to me. “When Nick was in India, Joe, he picked up a parasitical infection. He’s not completely cured yet. We’re all focusing on his recovery, and Nick’s doing what he can to overcome it. It’s a matter of boosting his immune system.”

“Yes,” Nick said. “The mental and physical are linked.”

I nodded vigorously “Like when I had glandular fever – it was after my exams, when I was exhausted.”

“Yes,” Nick continued, looking flushed. “But your body also expresses its spiritual lack of balance in an external fashion.”

“Come again?” I said.

“Illness isn’t random – it seizes on a weakness, a fifth column in your system. Tackling illness is as much about spiritual discipline as medicine. Rendall shrunk a tumour through a full SD vigil.”

That was interesting. Rendall, I knew, was the Father of the White Ones. SD was sensory deprivation. However, White Ones mainly practised Alternate Sense Deprivation – ASD – as a spiritual discipline. I’d seen them do it, wearing blindfolds, stuffing their ears, covering their skin. They did without one sense each day. But full SD! I wondered what that would be like.

Before I had a chance to ask, Bea spoke. “I only wish I’d met the White Ones when my mother was ill.”

I saw Auriel reach out to hold Bea’s hand and I wished I’d thought of doing that. Bea had told me her mother had died of cancer, around two years ago. We were all sombre for a moment.

Then Fletcher said, “She is with the Light.”

Bea looked at him gratefully. Just then she looked so vulnerable and lost I wanted to hold her tight to me and show her that someone loved her. But instead I had to satisfy myself with being part of the group.

Still, when the meal, such as it was, had finished, I asked Bea if we could have some time alone. She looked a little unsure and I noticed how her eyes sought Fletcher’s.

He answered my question. “Later,” he said. “There’s some things I’d like to talk to Joe about.”

It was a friendly suggestion, and I was made to feel as if there wasn’t enough of me to spread around. So later I followed Fletcher up to his quarters. Nick came too, leaning on Will’s arm for support.

I’d not been to Fletcher’s room before. We walked up the stairs and along a corridor into a large living/bedroom with a door leading off, presumably to a private bathroom. There was a fireplace with a three-bar electric fire standing in it, a bed with a faded patchwork bedspread, a desk with books, papers, and an anglepoise lamp. In one corner there was a rail with a few items of clothing hanging down. There was a poster on the wall of that mushroom-effect explosion you associate with nuclear bombs. Quite striking, when you looked at it. The floor was just polished floorboards scattered with cheap rugs. The effect was fairly Spartan, but also comfortable, the kind of place you wouldn’t mind spending time in.

Fletcher sat on the floor, cross-legged, his back against his bed. Nick sat by him on the bed, like a sort of bodyguard. Uncertain what to do, I followed Will and sat on the floor, below the poster, my back against the wall, my legs stuck out. I had this feeling that the guys had something important to say to me and my first thought was that I’d done something wrong. I felt a bit fidgety. Or maybe they were going to say that I’d spent enough time with them and they wanted me out. Why was it I always expected the worst?

“So,” Fletcher began. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” I said, a bit nervous.

“Have you got any questions?”

Why is it your mind always goes blank when people ask you that?

“Questions about what?” I parried.

“Us. The Light. Anything. We’ve seen you getting more and more involved and thought it was time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for you to be honest. Why are you here, what do you want, what do you want from us?”

With Fletcher, you always told the truth. He had no truck with lies.

“I like you all as people,” I said, “and I’m interested in what you do here. It gives me something to do with my time.”

Whenever I spoke like that, completely honest, I felt kind of naked, or as if I’d crept out from behind a bush and a sniper had me in his targets. Fletcher rested his chin on his hand and thought about what I’d said.

“It gives you something to do with your time. Most people don’t think about how they spend their time. They’re just led by their desires, towards food, sex, material possessions. Thinking is what separates White Ones from the rest.”

I was flattered by what he said.

“I admire the fact you’re prepared to be different,” I said, “and I admire your principles. But what I can’t get my head round is your belief system. Tell me if I’m right. You believe in the forces of Light and Darkness. That Light is Good and Good is Light and you have to be one with the Light by living as purely as you can. And then when you die you sort of merge with the Light. And you fight the forces of Darkness. Like the Jedi,” I kidded.

But Fletcher didn’t look amused. “That’s only a very crude description,” he said.

“There’s much more to it than that,” Nick agreed.

Fletcher looked me in the eyes. “There are countless religions and superstitions all over the world, but in fundamentals they’re all very similar. There’s this belief in a divinity – God, Allah, Yahweh. And before the so-called discovery of God, people still saw the forces of nature at play, and still had the need to believe in something. What people call God is just their way of naming the incomprehensible.”

I went along with all of that. “Like Father Christmas,” I added, trying to be a good student. “He’s just a symbol.”

Fletcher nodded but didn’t really seem to hear me. “We would never deny anyone’s concept of God. But what we know is that there is a force for Good. That this Life is not all there is. And that there is a reason why we’re here.”

It intrigued me, the way he sounded so definite. He had a certain power, Fletcher. He had a compelling presence. When he talked, you listened. You were only aware of him in the room. His voice was slower than most people’s and his eyes held you.

“Before Creation, there was just bliss. It existed beyond time and space in a unity of thought and emotion. Then a vast explosion occurred. Matter was formed, and antimatter. Matter is what our world is made of; antimatter is pure evil. It causes bad thoughts and propagates illness. All living things in our world have a yearning to return to the time that was. We can return to that time, but only through self-purification – achieved through self-control – keeping our bodies pure, total honesty, confession and working towards an end to hypocrisy and corruption in the world around us.