Blinded By The Light

“So?”

“Well, everybody else…” My voice trailed away. I was the only person drinking. I tried to defend my position.

“Well, OK. It relaxes me, makes me feel good. What’s wrong with that?”

“Do you need alcohol to make you feel good?”

“No, I don’t need it, but I choose to have it, which is different.”

“But you said before it relaxes you, which means you were feeling tense when you came in here. It sounds as if you’re using alcohol as the solution to a problem. So it’s a necessity.”

“OK. So I walked into a place I’ve never been before. Of course I feel on edge. Drink isn’t a necessity, but it helps. And I like it.”

This was different. This was not normally how I chatted up girls. But somehow this argument was fun. We were sparring, sparking off each other. It was more meaningful than the usual crap. I swigged down a mouthful of Bacardi as a challenge. Bea laughed.

“I don’t drink,” she said. “I can feel good without it. As I do right now.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. Was she flirting with me? I hoped so. I had to admit she seemed much more relaxed than I did, but then she knew these people. There was something about her, too, that was centred and peaceful. I’d not met any girl quite like her before. Tasha had been like me, a bit mad, a bit of a piss artist. Bea was completely different.

“Let’s forget about us,” she said. “Think of other people. It’s Saturday night. The pubs are full. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people all over the country are getting wasted. If you were a Martian and came down here and looked, you’d think we had a problem.”

“Drinking’s just a recreation, like football,” I said. “Or music.”

“Music is harmony and order,” she said. “Drinking leads to disorder, fighting, illness. Even football is controlled. Drinking leads deliberately to a lack of control. People are giving themselves permission to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, not if they had their judgement intact.”

This was strong. I realised then she may have had hidden reasons for speaking the way she did. What if her father was a drunk, say? What if she’d suffered from other people’s drunkenness? I back-pedalled a bit.

“Sure. I’ll concede that in some cases, drinking controls the drinker. But most people enjoy drink as much as they do a walk, a concert, ice cream, whatever. Alcohol is a naturally occurring substance.” I knew that was illogical, but that was the drink talking.

Bea shook her head and her hair moved in ripples. “Men brew beer and distil whisky It ain’t natural,” she said.

Then we were interrupted. A bloke came over to us with a guitar and asked Bea if she was ready to sing. She eagerly agreed and left me. There was a general exodus into another room and Kate swept me up and took me with her there. I picked up the third bottle on my way.

The room we arrived in now had a low beamed roof, and cushions and beanbags were scattered around it, some creamy leather, others a grubby white corduroy. There were plants, more than you would normally see in a house, and a poster of the planet Earth. I noticed the faint smell of incense and watched while some people lit candles. I reckoned I was right about the hippie thing. I imagined myself laughing about these people to Phil on the phone tomorrow.

Anyway, we gathered round, and the guy with the guitar played a few chords. It sounded as if it was going to be some kind of folk music. Definitely not my scene. Then Bea began to sing and I changed my mind.

Her voice was liquid and golden. The song she sang wasn’t folk; it was simple, like a hymn, almost. The words were strange and sounded old-fashioned, like Shakespeare, though it wasn’t Shakespeare.

They are all gone into the world of Light!And I alone sit lingering here;Their very memory is fair and bright,And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breastLike stars upon some gloomy grove,Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest,After the Sun’s remove…

Another thing alcohol does for you is make you appreciate music more. Bea gave the words such significance that they seemed true to me. I related to them. They made me think of this night, the moors, the feeling of being left alone. She sang with a rich melancholy that sent shivers through me. Candlelight flickered, shadows played on the ceiling, there was complete stillness as we were all held spellbound by her voice.

At the end of the song, there was silence. Then a ripple of applause. My clapping was the loudest of all and I regretted my enthusiasm immediately, as everyone looked round and smiled. Then there was more guitar music. I drank quickly, then. This time because something had moved in me that I couldn’t put a name to. I felt different, spaced out, kind of emotional. Bea came and sat by my side.

“Nice one,” I said to her.

“Thank you.” She paused for a little. “I set it to music myself. It’s a metaphysical poem.”

“Come again?”

“Metaphysical. Seventeenth century. The poet was called Henry Vaughan. Metaphysical means beyond the physical, beyond our everyday experience.”

I thought to myself, that was how I felt. Metaphysical. I didn’t say that, though. I wondered if I could reach out and take Bea’s hand, but I noticed no one else in the room was touching, even people who looked like couples. That inhibited me. You don’t like to stand out from the crowd. It was enough that she was sitting by my side.

“Who are all these people?” I asked her.

“I suppose you’d call them a kind of commune. They have a vision about the way they want to live.”

“They’re not religious nuts?”

“Oh, no. Not in the conventional sense. Fletcher runs the place; Nick, Will and some other guys live here. So do Kate, Layla and Auriel. For now. But there are more of them that just visit.”

“Why?”

“For enlightenment,” she answered.

“What do you mean, enlight—”

People were making hushing sounds. Someone else started to sing, a bloke. It seemed rude to carry on talking, so I stopped. I took a closer look at the people around me now. At first glance, they looked dead ordinary. A few ugly blokes, a rather chubby girl in a white dress that made her look like a bridesmaid, faces you might see anywhere. But on closer examination they did look different. And then it dawned on me why. Everyone seemed remarkably happy. Most people look fed up seventy-five per cent of the time. These guys gave the impression that here was where they most wanted to be. I wasn’t jealous exactly, but I decided I’d go and get the last Bacardi.

Back in the kitchen two people I hadn’t been introduced to were sitting in a corner talking intently. They both said hi to me. I took the last bottle and thought I ought not to drink it as I wouldn’t be fit to drive home. But then – what the hell! I opened the bottle and gulped some down. I felt unsettled and alone. I wanted Bea to come back but perversely I didn’t want to fetch her.

There were stirrings from the other room and people started to drift back. Bea and Kate were among them. They came over and I saw Kate glance at my drink.

“How did you get here tonight?” she asked.

“I drove,” I said.

“You can’t drive back.”

This was true.

Kate then invited me to stay the night. “We’ve lots of room,” she said.

Well, why not, I thought. I was still sober enough to ring my parents and let them know I wouldn’t be back until the morning, assuring them I was fine. Dad told me to make sure I returned the car by eleven. It was weird and uncomfortable hearing their voices. They sounded so ordinary. I was glad to end the call and put my mobile back in my pocket.

“Come on,” Bea said. “I’ll take you on a tour.”

She reached out for my hand now and I let her lead me out into the hall. She pointed to a staircase. “The offices are up there. And Fletcher’s quarters. A bathroom too.” She took me back into the room where the singing had been. Now I could see a sort of conservatory adjoined it, roughly built, with wooden benches ranged around inside.

“That’s the Gathering Place,” she said. She opened the door and I followed her in. It was cold and damp in there. The floor was uneven stone. We went through another door and were outside. The slap of the wind sobered me up.

“Here’s where the lads sleep,” she said, pointing to a stone-built barn. “There’ll be a bed in there for you.”

Shit. I had hoped for something else, but never mind.