The Green Bell

by Paula Keogh

  I study the shadows of the tree on his face, breathe in his smell, enjoy his voice. I’m somewhat reassured by his presence, but during the pauses in our conversation, phrases from his letter repeat in my mind. It’s so hard staying alive. The pale light of the sky plays on the surface of the muddy dam, and birds call out in the stillness. I lay my head on Michael’s chest, listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat, feeling his despair. My love is also my pain, and I don’t know how to reconcile myself to the contradiction.

  *

  After dinner that night, we go down to my room. My parents seem happy for us to spend a few hours here together before Michael goes back upstairs. He takes my old photo albums down from my shelves and insists on looking through them. Family scenes in black and white describe the passage of my childhood. Michael and I sit on my bed, the albums open across our laps, watching a skinny little kid in shorts turn into an awkward adolescent in a beanie and scarf. Michael teases me. ‘You were such a smiley, pie-faced kid,’ he says. ‘Looks like you ran wild.’

  He particularly likes the photos of my family taken at Patonga near the Hawkesbury River, where we had a beach shack built by my grandfather and a friend. Michael’s curious, so I tell him stories of times we spent there, becoming more and more caught up in the memories as I describe the place and our escapades. The shack consisted of a large room surrounded on three sides by a wide veranda open to the elements from waist height, and it overflowed with children – our family, another family of five children, and two brothers, Frankie and Malcolm, from the boys’ home at Westmead.

  We slept on camp stretchers on the open veranda, and in the morning we folded them up to make space for playing. At night I’d look out at the stars, listening to the cries of gulls, the pounding surf from the other side of the peninsula, and the wind whipping through the bushes along Patonga Creek. I felt an awe that lifted me beyond myself and overwhelmed me. I felt small and huge at the same time, my heart beating beneath my pyjama top.

  In the day, I was one of a loose band of wayward kids. Once we learned to swim, at about age four or five, we could go off for the day with the older kids. For the swimming test, Dad would hold us over the side of the rowboat with a rope around our chests while we swam along, kicking our feet hard.

  As I describe these childhood holidays to Michael, the grey cloud that had weighed on us during the day dissipates, and our mood lifts. I’m feeling traces of the excitement and happiness I felt at Patonga, and Michael wants me to tell him more stories of our time there. It surprises me how vivid the memories are and how immediate the feelings. I tell him of swimming in the tidal creek until we were sunburned and sleepy and our skin tasted of sand and salt. The exhilaration of chasing schools of blue soldier crabs, watching them disappear into the holes they dug in the sand with their stick-like legs. The dreaminess of wandering along the beach, collecting shells and driftwood to take home. And the fun of fishing from the wharf with Dad, catching flathead off the sandbanks at the Point and rowing up to the mangroves in a neighbour’s boat. I would drag my hand in the water, watching the reeds waving in the slanting rays of sunlight below.

  I describe to Michael the trees I climbed to find a solitary place to read and daydream. And I tell him about searching for little frogs under rocks near a creek, and the reaction when I tipped a bucket of them onto the floor of the town post office. I don’t know why I did that, but I remember the commotion and my excitement as dozens of frogs jumped around the floor, people yelling and squealing.

  I ask Michael if he, too, ran wild as a kid. ‘In my mind I did,’ he says. ‘I was already writing poems and sending them into The Argonauts when I was seven. The most exciting thing for me was getting my poem read on the radio one afternoon.’

  I try to draw Michael out about these poems, but he just wants me to tell him more about Patonga. It’s then that I remember our family’s five minutes of fame.

  Dad had taken us for a walk around the cliffs one afternoon. We played in the rock pools, looking for crabs and sea snails in the crevices, laughing when we busted the beads on seaweed necklaces and water squirted out. But then Dad started herding us close to the bottom of the cliff, trying to get us to hurry as the sea rushed in over the rocks. I could tell he was alarmed. The sea had cut off our way around to the beach, and Dad insisted we climb the cliff-face before the whole rock shelf was submerged.

  I scrambled up through the small scratchy bushes, with Dad helping me find places for my bare feet to push off from. Somehow, one by one, Dad got us all to the top. By then it was late afternoon, and the bush was dense, the area rocky. We tramped through the scrub, keeping close to Dad, collecting wood for a fire. Later, we lined up facing the sea, cooeeing in our loudest voices as we waved our shirts above our heads. I remember the exhilaration of the adventure and my fear, especially when it got dark.

  Dad made a huge fire using his matches and a detective novel he’d brought in his back pocket with his tobacco. The fire was seen by people on a fishing boat, and the alarm went out. It was after midnight when we got home. Mum made a pot of tea and a huge pile of toast dripping with jam and butter. We were ravenous. The next day, our adventure was reported on page three of a Sydney newspaper under the headline ‘Family Stranded on Lion Island’. I couldn’t understand how the paper had got it so wrong, and I wanted Dad to tell them we’d just been caught out by the tide on the mainland.

  Inspired by the memory of tea and toast, I put together a snack for Michael and me. We make plans to go to Patonga and explore the Hawkesbury River, writing poems of our journey. We’ve emerged from our despair. When Michael goes upstairs to the spare room, I go to bed and fall asleep, grateful for this temporary reprieve.

  *

  With every parting from Michael, there’s a wrench, an anguish. When he leaves the following morning, I return to my room feeling emptied out. The image of him riding away down the road on his Kawasaki, the oversized helmet perched on top of his thin, upright back, stays with me. There’s something in it of that Nolan print of Ned Kelly: his back to me, the helmet, and him disappearing towards the horizon.

  My room with its small window and exposed brick walls is dark and empty without him here. I think of him in his hut at Caloola, feeling restless and claustrophobic as he struggles through the nights, and I can’t sit still. I tidy my room. Return clothes to drawers and cupboards. Stand books and records upright on the shelves. Move my record player to a side table. I’m able to deal with the chaos in my room, but I have no notion of how to deal with Michael’s state of mind, or my own.

  I don’t like the word ‘depression’ – it makes me think of a dip in a bitumen road. I prefer to think I’m sad. My heart is heavy. I’m despondent, dispirited, disconsolate. I’m dreary, dull, miserable. I’ve got the blues. But these words are somehow too resonant and graphic for the thick, slow state I’m in now. I accept that it’s more true to say that I’m depressed. I can’t bring any light into my life, and I can’t get up in the morning. I’m a dip in a bitumen road.

  I can’t stop thinking of Michael’s last letter to me, of his struggle to stay alive. He has put all his faith in me, and I don’t know if he realises I’m just not that strong.

  *

  I sit at the table in my aunt’s dining room in Carlingford, Sydney, surrounded by my grandmother, aunt and uncle, and my mother. I stare absently out the window at the row of pink azaleas in the garden. They’re so perfect, they don’t look real, but nothing does these days. I’m living in a film of my life. After a couple of weeks at home, I agreed to come with Mum to visit family in Sydney, thinking it might inject some life into me, but I’m lost, unable to contribute to the conversation.

  My grandmother looks like the picture of a grandmother, like the Queen Mother. She’s wearing a blue dress and a pearl necklace, and her silver hair is curled and neat. When we arrived I wanted to bend down and hug her, but she’s so small I thought I might break her. Now I notice her bright, bird-like eyes as she sips her tea. They m
iss nothing. Not my discomfort or the uselessness of my hands, moving from the table to my lap and then under my arms as she tells us about a recent tennis match that she watched on television. The discussion turns to Evonne Goolagong’s chances of winning the Australian Open. I become aware that my tea is cold and my piece of sponge cake is untouched. It’s just too perfect to bite into.

  No one is looking at me, and I can’t look at them. In spite of the lively discussion, there’s an awkward energy around the table. The faces of people I’ve known and loved all my life seem strange. My mind retreats into a baffled, distant region of itself. I drift in and out of the conversation, attempting to follow what’s being said but losing track, slipping off into random images. The geometrical pattern of the lino. The photo of my grandfather on the dresser. The handle on a drawer. Or I slip into the dark fantasies of my inner world and stare into the distance. I can’t focus on anything for long. Something catches my eye, or a thought trips up my mind, and I forget where I am.

  A phone call from Michael brings me back to myself. As my aunt hands me the receiver, I realise that she hasn’t been told that I’m engaged, and I haven’t told her myself.

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask Michael. I need to be able to see him to make his voice real.

  ‘Tharwa. The booth outside the post office. Had to beg for change. How’s Sydney?’ His voice crackles through the line.

  ‘It’s awful. I’m missing you. What’s happening?’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know. I’m a total wreck. Hit rock bottom last night. There’s –’

  ‘I can hardly hear you, the line’s breaking up. What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. You’re too far away anyway. I’ve got the horrors, Pauls. Haven’t slept the last two nights. Got a bit of sleep last night, but woke up in a sweat about three. I had this dream, dead birds falling from the sky. Horrible feeling, hollow, there isn’t any –’

  ‘I didn’t catch that. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Just putting in more coins, hang on … All done.’

  ‘You sound awful, babe. What a horrible dream. Have you talked to Richard?’

  ‘Everything I say makes me feel like a fool … claustrophobic … Don’t think I can –’

  ‘The line’s cutting out, I can’t hear you properly. Sounds like you’re on the edge. Come stay at my place.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll come in. When will you be back?’

  ‘Monday. Just remember –’

  ‘What was that? Can’t hear you. Forget it. What’re you up to?’ His voice is as thin as wire.

  ‘I love you. Think of you all the time. Wish I was with you.’

  ‘Come back. I have a –’

  Dial tone.

  My cousin’s room is fairy-floss pink and white, and I’m sitting on the bed, doubled up with helplessness and longing. Phrases from my conversation with Michael sound ominous as they return to me, disconnected and broken. I think of him standing in the phone booth, the dead birds of his dream falling from the sky, and I want to know what he was going to say when the line cut out.

  The slow work of getting through the rest of the day takes all my energy as I try to resist the sedative effects of the medication and the fall into circular, self-pitying introspection. After dinner I try to phone Michael at the farm, but the line is engaged.

  That night I keep waking up from a nightmare involving an organ grinder playing music faster and faster until it sounds like a siren. In the morning I send Michael a telegram, conveying my love, as specified, in ‘ten words or less’.

  *

  Home from Sydney, I play the music I love, but it either overwhelms me with misery or I can’t relate to it. The emotional rawness of Nina Simone’s voice is too painful, and Vivaldi’s music creates a world I can’t enter. Only Dylan reaches through to me, though there’s no comfort in listening to his songs, just familiarity and nostalgia.

  I’m no longer deluded, and I’m not suffering from hallucinations, but the depression I’m in will not shift. I’m also having problems adjusting to my new medication. I was suffering negative side effects from the previous drugs, so I’m now taking Stelazine and Cogentin as well as Largactil. They slow everything down so that emotions and reactions are sluggish and thick, but they also put me on edge, make my nerves jangly and irritable. My nervous system seems to tingle unpleasantly with mild electric charges – but in the ocean of my mind, thoughts drift like debris.

  No amount of counting my blessings makes any difference to my defeated lethargy. For hours I lie on my bed like a corpse in the darkness. Eventually I’m able to direct my limbs to move. Brush my hair. Go upstairs. Eat dinner with the family. Stare at the television. A mannequin at home.

  One afternoon I manage to catch a bus into Civic and walk over to the ANU library to borrow some books. The supplementary exams I need to sit if I want to pass my year at university are coming up next month, and I’ve decided that I want to take them after all; I don’t want to add yet another year to my degree. But at the library I can’t read well enough to find book titles in the catalogue, let alone study. The medication is still affecting my eyesight. Words still blur on the page. I can only focus for a few minutes, and I can’t take anything in. My plans are nonsense.

  Life in the world demands action, competence, decision-making – all abilities I strive unsuccessfully to find in myself. The wild energy swings of M Ward have passed, and everything seems flat and closed off. Where once Michael and I shared every nuance in our feelings and thoughts, now we have to organise meeting places and navigate issues of transport before we can even begin to talk. Such logistical problems confuse me. In the face of these complications, my sedated mind wants to shut down, turn to the wall, sleep.

  9

  Village Life

  Towards the end of November, Michael finds a new place to live. He’s given the key to a room at Lennox House, where I lived for a year before moving to Ursula College, and we can’t believe our luck. With this move to Canberra, there’s some progress in our lives at last. Lennox is just up the peninsula from the hospital, and although it’s two bus rides from my parents’ house, we’re excited to be closer to each other.

  Lennox consists of a series of low, rather dilapidated wooden buildings that settle comfortably into the remains of an old garden dotted with trees, shrubs and patches of lawn. Life there is loose and communal. Some rooms are empty during the summer break, and Michael’s going to live there until the beginning of the next university year.

  He has been welcomed by Chris Ash and Simon Clough, friends of mine from the time I lived at Lennox. They met Michael when they visited me in M Ward, and it seems serendipitous that he’s now living down the hall from them, just metres from my old room. Chris is a Buddhist and Simon is studying law, and Michael’s already their friend.

  One warm and sunny afternoon, Michael and I are sitting on the veranda at Lennox with Simon, Chris and a group of other residents. Songs from a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album are drifting from someone’s room. Michael’s arm is around my shoulders, and I lean into him, my body curving to fit the arc of his chest, feeling at home with him again. There’s an easy camaraderie in the group, and it rubs off on me. People are coming and going, randomly joining in conversations. Slow and casual talk flows along the shady veranda, while out on the lawn a political discussion is becoming animated. Gough Whitlam has just won the election, and everyone is excited about the changes that the Labor Party has promised to make. There’s a buzz in the air. Whitlam has announced that Australian troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam: the war is ending at long last.

  I’ve been cut off from politics for months now, and this expansive mood is lifting the fog in my brain. There’s a sense that we all have the same political views and are part of the changes that are just around the bend.

  The ritual of sharing a joint seems to bring people together, create a group consensus. Marijuana has come to signify not only a person’s political position but also tastes in music a
nd dress, and stances on a range of moral issues. People tend to assume that because they get high together, they all share a worldview – and somehow, by association, I’m included. I sink into the collective hum, quiet and peaceful, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of the afternoon.

  The conversation moves to a discussion of the virtues of various drugs. I listen to enthusiastic testimonials, but I still don’t think that drugs are for me. I fear that they would unlock a Pandora’s box and mad sprites would fill my head.

  But I can’t help being curious. I want to at least try marijuana again in order to really understand Michael’s zeal for it. I’m also interested in the idea that LSD can ‘cleanse the doors of perception’, and I wonder if it would help me to see the world as infinite and eternal, like William Blake did. I want to be liberated from my narrow and restricted viewpoint – just not right now. So I pass the joint on and instead take a drag on my cigarette.

  As people begin to feel the heat in the afternoon sun, they gravitate to the area where the shade of the veranda meets the shade of a plum tree. Talk moves from complaints about the quality of dope being sold in the university bar to an argument about the relative genius of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. I listen but don’t say much. The sun is shining, music is playing, Michael is here with me. I breathe in, breathe out. I see the green light playing on the leaves of the plum tree, I hear a lightness in the voices rising and falling, and I sense my life out in the world with Michael is just beginning.

  People wander off during the evening, disappearing into their rooms or along University Avenue to the Union Bar. Feeling hungry, Michael and I stroll through the trees down to the hospital cafeteria, high on the mood of the afternoon. The cafeteria is the only place close to Lennox where we can get something to eat, so it’s practically our local restaurant now. We bump into Sally coming in for her shift. She makes a joke about the nights when we slipped away from M Ward, and she invites us to visit her and our friends there. We decide not to – our easy state of mind wouldn’t survive the bleak atmosphere of the day room.