The Green Bell

by Paula Keogh

  ‘“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,”’ Michael quotes. ‘Good ole William Blake knew a thing or two.’

  I put on the ring – an exact fit.

  Michael quickly tries on a few with the same design until he finds one that fits him. He gives it to me and insists that I take off the ring I’ve just put on. ‘Let’s exchange rings,’ he says. I like the idea and hold out my hand. He slips my ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. I do the same with his, pushing it over his knuckle, my heart radiant. The moment the rings are on, Michael is kissing me.

  The Spanish man behind the counter laughs. ‘You’d better watch him,’ he says. ‘He’s after your heart.’

  As we walk away, arm in arm, I can’t stop smiling.

  Later, when we’re eating toasted sandwiches at a cafe, Michael tells me more about Jumping Creek, the small property he owns near Candelo on the south coast of New South Wales. ‘You’ll love it, Pauls,’ he says. ‘The house is a bit dilapidated and neglected, but the countryside is really pretty. Rolling hills all around and a creek running through. It’s just waiting there for us to fix up, make a home of it.’

  ‘It sounds perfect,’ I say. ‘My dream house is small but has big windows, lots of light, wooden floors and stone walls.’ I imagine living with Michael in this house. Flowers on the windowsills and a view from the kitchen sink: green hills, watercolour sky, drifting clouds. I hold this image in my mind and feel a sense of homecoming.

  Michael raises his hand and smiles. ‘I’ll wave my wand –’

  ‘And cosy,’ I continue, laughing. ‘Rugs and cushions thrown over the floors.’

  ‘A den! It’ll be our place. Let’s have the wedding down there, invite all our friends. Make a festival of it, lots of people and music.’

  ‘Vivaldi and Dylan. All our favourites.’

  ‘Purcell and The Incredible String Band,’ he says. ‘We’ll have the ceremony inside the birch spinney, then throw a huge party.’

  Michael’s hand is lying flat on the table, his new ring on his finger. I put my hand next to his, noting the contrast between them. One is the hand of a pianist, long and bony but strong, with fingernails that are short and ovoid. The other is pale and small, but looks capable and trustworthy with its square shape and blunt fingers. I can hardly believe it’s mine. It feels separate from me, lying there like a porcelain sculpture, unreal next to Michael’s tanned hand with its knotty veins and nicotine-stained fingers.

  I like these different hands, and they like each other. All afternoon, as we negotiate shops and crowds, they seek each other out; they play together, showing off their silver finery. They are like the hands in that Escher sketch, bringing each other into being. Him drawing her drawing him.

  We come across a fabric shop called George’s and stand together at the front window, looking at a roll of cotton wrapped around a mannequin. I lean against Michael, and he puts his arm over my shoulder. The fabric has a vivid border, a swirling design of flowers and leaves, and we decide that it would make the perfect wedding dress.

  Then, in the optometrist’s where Michael is getting his glasses fixed, I catch sight of myself in a mirror. My mood sinks. I see an imposter, a girl in jeans playing at being normal. I smile at her while the noise in my head attacks me for thinking that Michael could possibly love me. I turn the ring around on my finger, but I have lost my lightness.

  At a health food shop in an arcade, we do a serious sweep of the counters, making extravagant plans for macrobiotic diets and yoga retreats. But when I try to pay for a bag of almonds, I can’t count out the right change, and my hand dipping into my purse is shaking too much to pick up the coins.

  *

  Back at the hospital, we show off our rings to the other patients and the nurses. ‘We’re getting hitched,’ says Michael to the group gathered around us. ‘A wedding, marriage, kids, the whole trip.’

  I’m standing next to him, amazed at the picture he’s painting, daring to believe that we can make it happen. Just weeks ago, I wanted to die. Now I’m planning an idyllic life in the countryside with the man I love.

  ‘They’re not proper engagement rings – you’re supposed to have diamonds,’ says ward prefect Lydia, pointing at my hand.

  ‘Not for this engagement,’ says Michael, smiling. ‘See the Celtic infinity knot? Diamonds are old hat. Take it from me, these are official. Very cool.’

  Michael is wearing his yellow and purple-striped beanie and a Nepalese waistcoat, and I’ve changed into my favourite dress of flowing cotton in a Native American print design. Hand in hand, we waft around the hospital corridors, oddly matched, strangely translucent. I’m in a state of shock, but this time it’s the shock of happiness, the belief in a future with a man who, in spite of everything, loves me.

  Later that night, Michael shows me a poem called ‘Always a season’ that he wrote as we sat together at a table in the day room. He tells me it’s dedicated to me.

  all is new

  more than once

  under the sun

  see all

  for the first time

  or as

  for the first time

  ‘a time for peace

  I pray

  it’s not too late’

  and yes

  there is for love

  always a season.

  *

  During my teens and childhood, my imagination was inspired by archetypal figures. I was captivated by the various faces of the suffering Christ and by the lives of saints such as Francis of Assisi. I collected holy cards of bright winged angels and archangels. In high school, I was entranced by the love poetry of The Song of Songs. Later, I moved on to the vagabond, Bob Dylan, with his uninhibited sexuality, his poetic lyrics and his voice like broken marbles.

  Michael fits the same archetype as Dylan – a kind of masculinity that I find exciting, a physicality that is fluid, ambiguous and roguish. He’s a shy exhibitionist, sensitive and outrageous, old-fashioned and avant-garde, earnest and ironic. His manner of listening, his responsiveness to the lives of others, and his ability to be present to whatever is happening makes him many friends on the ward. But he also attracts critics – people either love him or hate him. He’s vocal about his drug use and his lifestyle as a junkie and a hippie, and some people don’t like this openness. It’s a quality that’s somehow both an expression of naivety and a deliberate baiting of prejudices.

  Still, Michael speaks everyone’s language on the ward, whether it’s talk of drugs or depression, or patients just feeling hassled and out of it. He takes our despair and desperation, and turns it into poetry. For Michael, we’re all ‘prisoners of the Hotel Grand’, a band of escapees from reality occupying a purgatorial space, belonging nowhere. The day room is the hotel lobby, our visitors emissaries from another world.

  One of these emissaries is a family friend of mine, Father Peter Gannon, a young priest with a ruddy face and open smile. Michael likes him and enjoys his sense of humour. They sit together in the day room, laughing and telling jokes, while I lurk around, ungrateful and resentful. I believe that the priest is trying to get me to return to the faith; although, as Michael points out, he doesn’t actually talk to me about religion.

  After Father Gannon leaves the ward, Michael tells his jokes to the other patients and me. ‘What do storks do on Sunday? Fly over the convent to scare the hell out of the nuns!’ Our friends scream with laughter.

  All of us in M Ward are troubled and self-absorbed, and Michael is no exception, but he has a way of sharing his world that gives the rest of us hope for another sort of existence. He’s diffident and reticent at the same time as being attentive and focused. He carries about him an air of aloof attention, a stooping tallness that’s both angular and graceful as he bends to listen more closely to the person he’s talking to or as he leans forward in a chair to listen to music.

  Into a bleak environment, Michael brings soul – the dreaming, imagining part of ourselves, a sense of the essence of things
, the inner life.

  *

  The sign Nil by Mouth is hanging on the door of my room. It means I’ll be having ECT tomorrow – the first of another series of treatments. I’ll be having it every second day for a week or more. I’m angry. I flick the sign with my hand as I walk past, and it falls to the floor.

  ‘Nil by Mouth,’ says Michael in a lilting accent as he picks it up. ‘Sounds like a Welsh railway station.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t think any trains are coming tonight. We’re stuck here.’

  He hangs the sign back on its hook, and we settle into my room.

  ‘No trains scheduled, perhaps,’ he says, ‘but it’s the unscheduled ones that have the most interesting destinations.’ He stretches back into the chair by the window and places his hands behind his head. ‘So, where would you like to go?’

  ‘Anywhere away from here.’

  ‘Let’s make it St Petersburg, or Tierra del Fuego – or, for something completely different, how about … Gundagai?’

  ‘Gundagai?’

  I laugh, but my stomach is tight with fear. The night before ECT is always terrifying; each time, it feels like the last night of my life. I dread the fasting, the thirst and the waiting, the machine behind my head, the doctor and a nurse at my side, and the anaesthetic dragging me into unconsciousness.

  Julianne seems very near to me as I think of what’s ahead. Her presence hovers so close, I don’t know if I’m clinging to her or she to me. What I do know is that I have to resist falling into her death again.

  Michael is reading my book of Japanese poems, and I’m going through the contents of my drawers, obsessively folding and refolding my clothes and putting them in piles on my bed. I imagine the dormitory set up for ECT treatments, and it takes on a strange, nightmarish quality. I think of myself lying with my head at the wrong end of the bed, listening to the machine as it’s wheeled closer. The doctor in his white coat is hovering over me like a ghost, fiddling with the dials, checking his watch. The fear in these imaginings sucks the air out of my lungs.

  *

  I’m starting to stir, don’t know where I am. The room comes and goes. Vision is blurred. I’m thick with drugs, body heavy and unresponsive. Brain is stunned and burnt. Can’t work out where I am. Who I am. What’s happening.

  I become aware of sounds, a voice close by that seems to be chanting a prayer. As I drift, its rhythm is a focus, something familiar that draws me upwards. I’m trying to open my eyes, then closing them against the sliding geometry of the room. The voice fades, and I fall away. My brain is sore.

  Sometime later, the voice starts again. As I focus on the pitch and rhythm, someone takes my hand. I can’t find his name, but I’m aware that he’s someone I love. Someone who gives me a clearer sense of myself. Someone who strokes my hand.

  I lie there listening to his voice as it flows over me. His words start to make sense: he’s playing a game. He’s asking me if I’m Helen of Troy, waiting for Paris to return. Or Lilith, goddess of the night. He suggests that maybe I’m Anna Karenina, or possibly Marianne from the fish’n’chip shop. Then he bends down and whispers in my ear, telling me I’m Pauls, his beloved. ‘You’ve had ECT. You’re dopey from the anaesthetic.’

  I begin to remember. I’m aware that he’s Michael, and I know who I am. Through the fog, I find my way to him. I am his beloved. I turn over in the bed and fall asleep.

  After that, Michael always sits next to my bed while I sleep after shock treatment. It’s impossible not to love someone who sits by you as you sleep. It’s a most delicate, most profound intimacy.

  *

  One evening after dinner, my parents arrive in the day room, my mother carrying a small bunch of sweet peas, my father dressed in a suit and tie. It’s been a while, and I’ve been looking forward to them coming – I want to tell them my big news. I bring them to the table where Michael and I have been sitting, and I introduce him to them.

  As soon as we sit down, I extend my hand to show them the ring. ‘Michael and I are engaged.’ My mother looks at it, then at Michael and me, confused and alarmed. This is the first time my parents have met him. This is not how things are done.

  ‘We didn’t want diamonds,’ I say. ‘This is an infinity engagement ring. Michael has one too.’

  ‘You’re … engaged?’ Mum says, clearly disturbed.

  For what seems like a long time, no one says anything.

  Then Michael says, ‘Yes. We love each other and we’re going to get married.’

  ‘There’s no need to rush this,’ Dad says, pulling himself up on his chair.

  ‘What do you mean? Aren’t you happy for me?’ My voice rises above the hum of conversation in the room. People stop talking and look in our direction.

  My father takes my mother’s hand to steady himself. It’s important not to make a scene. ‘Of course we’re happy for you,’ says Mum, though it’s quite obvious that they’re not. Her tone is that of someone placating a child.

  ‘This is not something we need to talk about right now,’ says Dad. ‘We’ll have lots of time to discuss this when you’re well again.’

  ‘Michael and I are getting married as soon as we get out of here and find a place to live,’ I say, determined that we settle this now.

  ‘You aren’t well at the moment,’ Dad says carefully. ‘I think you should wait a while before you make a decision like this. At least six months.’

  Silence descends on the table again. I feel the weight of their opposition, and I’m suddenly unable to stand up against them.

  Michael turns towards me and takes my hand. ‘Perhaps we could wait three months,’ he says. ‘What do you think, Pauls?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, relieved that the tension has been diffused.

  The conversation immediately turns to other topics. Before long, Mum and Dad are leaving, the small posy of sweet peas still lying on the table. I want to throw it in the bin. I don’t want sweet peas; I want them to be happy for me. I’m angry with myself for needing their approval, angry that I’m ‘unwell’, frustrated that everything is so complicated. I pick up the posy, take it to the laundry and put it in a vase, feeling trapped.

  *

  One day when we’re in the green bell, Michael tells me the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. It’s overcast outside the bell, and shady and warm inside. As he talks, Michael is massaging my forehead and pressing down on the base of my skull. I relax easily into his tales of Camelot. According to the legend, Michael tells me, Queen Guinevere is condemned by King Arthur to burn at the stake for her infidelity, but at the last minute Lancelot sweeps in and saves her from the pyre.

  Michael kisses my neck and claims that he is my Lancelot and I am his Guinevere. He plans to save me from M Ward and make a life for us at Jumping Creek. We’re hopeless romantics, children playing dress-ups, but I enjoy the illusion. I’m happy to borrow some of Guinevere’s glamour, and I’m charmed by the idea of Michael as a twentieth-century knight, riding courageously through the taboo regions of our culture, writing poems about his journeys and then sweeping me off to a rural retreat. I’m his beloved, captivated by the dream of love.

  Later, alone in my room, I begin to imagine what marriage with Michael will be like in a practical sense.

  Being a romantic doesn’t seem compatible with my feminism. As I see it, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are the ideal couple – but they never married. When Julianne and I read de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she became my hero. She wanted to be a writer and a philosopher, and she refused to marry Sartre even though he proposed several times. She believed marriage would prevent them from having the equal relationship that she wanted, and I agreed with her.

  But now I’m beginning to think that a different kind of relationship is possible.

  I’ve just turned twenty-three, and I want to be a feminist and a romantic. I decide that Germaine Greer is wrong in her critique of romantic love: that it’s an egoistic, lustful, masochistic, sentimental fantasy. I
prefer to go with Shulamith Firestone’s view that love is only destructive in the context of inequality. I can’t imagine Michael wanting to be in a position of power over anyone.

  For Michael, it’s important that the life we live is true and real. When I talk about de Beauvoir’s objections to marriage, he says, ‘There’ll be no hubby and wifey stuff with us. We’ll be real – really you, really me. No acting out roles, laying down rules.’ I agree, and I’m pinning all my hopes on us blazing a trail into unpredictable territory.

  I don’t see, around me, any examples of the sort of marriage I want. My parents have a strong bond and it’s obvious they love each other, but they don’t seem to have an equal partnership. Their marriage works because of strict gender roles: my mother’s domain is the home; my father’s is the outside world. I don’t want to be confined to domesticity, and I want the right to have opinions on politics and world events.

  I wonder what a true partnership would be like. I’ve never seen one, but I’m determined that there will be no strict gender roles and obligations in my marriage to Michael. Ours will be a journey into a new and creative way of being together.

  *

  We pass the days in our usual hangouts – my room, the day room, the hospital cafeteria and the green bell – sharing memories and fantasies, delusions and self-deceptions, and finding happiness in our strange fit with each other. But it’s a broken wholeness: love in a time of madness, a blind and wild joy rampaging through bodies mired in grief. For long moments, the mind is quiet, just a witness, startled and wondering.

  Other times, it ruminates and probes, and Michael is often the focus of these ponderings. He perplexes me. He’s the kind of puzzle you can’t solve, because it doesn’t conform to any familiar principles. He’s a shapeshifter, a chameleon. While he resembles the representations of Christ that filled my imagination throughout my childhood, and fits my idea of the vagabond, he could also be a revolutionary from Trotsky’s day. He’s an adventurous, chivalrous knight, but he’s also a social critic, very much of these times.