by Paula Keogh
Michael and I have no tolerance for ambiguity and conflict within our relationship, no understanding of how to negotiate anything that threatens our dream.
*
Although Michael feels isolated, in truth he has the support of other poets, both in Canberra and Sydney. He invites me to go with him to a dinner party at Geoff Page’s house. Geoff is a Canberra poet and teacher whose first book of poetry was published two years ago. Michael and Geoff share the same publisher – and, more significantly, they share a dedication to their writing.
When Michael arrives to pick me up from my parents’ house, something’s wrong. He paces around the room and flings himself on my bed. He tells me that he doesn’t want to go to the dinner. A social evening with other poets and writers will freak him out, he says. We talk for a while, and he changes his mind: it will be cool, he can handle it.
There are about eight people present, and the conversation ranges from politics to poetry. Geoff is a generous and hospitable host, and Michael’s charm gets him through, though I sense he’s tense and wired.
Afterwards, back in my room, he talks about his inhibitions, his anxiety, and his nervousness in social situations. He feels that drugs would have made the situation less nerve-wracking. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no doubt they help give him the confidence that he feels he needs to engage socially.
Another day, we visit David Campbell at The Run, his property near Queanbeyan. David is a poet of the same generation as Manning Clark and Patrick White, and he counts them among his friends. Michael is impressed by David’s standing as a war hero who fought in the same region as Michael’s father, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery. David’s spent most of his life as a farmer and poet, living on a number of rural properties around Canberra, and many of his poems are inspired by his life on the land. A tall man, he has an open manner that invites trust. His face reminds me of the countryside, its granite and bare paddocks.
Guests are sitting around a low table, laughing softly and passing plates of food. Sunlight shines on grass that’s wet from overnight rain, and there’s a warm and loamy smell of soft earth. But best of all is Michael’s happiness. David’s very interested in his work, and Michael is animated and relaxed, talking about poetry and farming on the Monaro.
In the evening after our day at The Run, we head to Gus’s cafe in Civic. We relive the afternoon as we eat our favourite toasted ham and tomato sandwiches and drink coffee. David Campbell is the ultimate ‘Jack’ figure for Michael, inspiring his visions of a life of poetry that has its roots in the land.
The contact with David also encourages Michael to think of his writing plans. He reckons that he has about three hundred poems from his time in M Ward, and he wants to keep the best of these for a collection that he decides to call The Second Month of Spring. He’s also keen to write a history of the teamsters, those men who drove wagons drawn by teams of horses or donkeys, transporting goods and people overland through the bush. We make plans to travel around the country together, following their old routes. Logistics and practicalities don’t bother us as we dream of searching for physical evidence of the past and sleeping under the stars.
When Michael is manic with ideas, full of plans for new projects, the future is irresistible. He’s also considering writing about his father’s navy regiment and their time in the South Pacific. And, Michael tells me, someone has invited him to teach his poetry at a university course in New Delhi, so we talk about me deferring my studies and us going to India together. Just the thought of taking off into a strange place and an unknown future is enough to give me hope that my depression will soon lift.
A few nights later, Michael saunters into my room exuding happiness and a kind of self-conscious confidence. He’s written a few new poems and his mood is contagious. When he speaks of these poems, it’s as if he hasn’t a single doubt about his work. His eyes are a deeper blue, and his smile like a flame, flickering and leaping across his face. It’s as if the world lies at his feet and everything is possible.
But the next day, this confidence has evaporated. He’s plunged back into despair about his work and his feeling of isolation from other writers.
His attitude soon shifts again, and he reflects on the friendship and support that he’s received from the writer and poet Rodney Hall, a particular friend and mentor since 1967. I first heard of Rodney in M Ward, where Michael spoke warmly about him. Now Michael tells me of a visit he once made to Rodney and his wife, Bet, when Michael was very ill – he’d collapsed at their door from what turned out to be pneumonia and pleurisy. Affectionately, Michael describes how they nursed him back to health.
When Rodney was the literary editor of The Australian, Michael sent him some poems. Rodney didn’t publish any of this first selection of submissions, but he wrote a letter to Michael in which he discussed the work and asked him to send in more. Michael replied with a passionate rant against the lack of acceptance of his poetry but, in the end, he thanked Rodney effusively for his letter and resubmitted. This sudden change of mood is typical of Michael’s mercurial style and his passionate involvement in his art. Rodney and Michael soon became friends, sharing a commitment to their work as poets and a deep love of music.
From what Michael tells me, the poetry scene in Sydney can be chaotic and cut-throat, but he revels in gossip of struggles and cliques. And he becomes animated when talking about the Sydney poet Robert Adamson, another friend, and how they spent whole days and nights together writing poetry, talking poetry, listening to Dylan and reading Rimbaud. He also talks about the poets Tom Shapcott and Geoffrey Dutton, describing how they’ve given him friendship and practical support, as well as the sort of encouragement that comes from people in your field having faith in your work.
But although Michael acknowledges the very real support he’s been given, his profound sense of himself as an outsider seems entrenched in his psyche.
*
Lying in my room, ruminating on my life, I’m aware that our love is more ordinary now, less transcendent. I feel it in the simple things. The sight of Michael’s hand holding a coffee mug, the way his voice changes when he talks of love, his habit of playing with the hair at the nape of my neck. More human and personal. I miss our ecstatic times inside the green bell, but I’m taking pleasure in Michael and the world around me.
I realise that the transcendent and the ordinary, imagination and reality, need each other. They’re essentially one and the same thing; as Michael often says, ‘Imagination is reality.’ Michael is my true love and a human being. The green bell is a willow tree.
As I think about this, I feel that I’m a sailor at sea, finding my way home, the shore in sight. I’m leaving behind the extremities of madness, both the despair and the ecstasy.
*
One day in late January, eight of us go for a picnic on the banks of the Murrumbidgee. We spend a lazy afternoon sitting together in the sunshine with the river sparkling and casuarinas throwing shade over the fine sand. The feeling is light and loose; Michael is telling stories about Ludwig of Bavaria, and everyone is laughing. Time is boundless, the air is crisp, and the smell of the flowing water is earthy and close. We drink warm white wine from a cask and eat vegetable pie and salad from Tupperware while Chris plays his guitar. His collie dog, Issa, snores and twitches in her sleep, stretched out on the sand.
Later that day, Michael and I sit on the veranda at Lennox drinking coffee and eating cheese and biscuits. There’s no one else around except for the possum that the residents call ‘one-handed’ because of his mangled leg. We place some food on the ground a short distance away and coax him to take it. He hops towards us, snatches it up and wobbles back to the plum tree. We watch him manoeuvre himself up the trunk, passing the food between his one hand and his feet as he climbs. Michael is stroking his wispy beard in the yellow light of the veranda, pondering the one-handed possum’s predicament. We make up stories of his life’s adventures until there’s no food left and the possum has disappeared.
I head back to Hackett that night, and the next afternoon Michael and I go for a bushwalk at the back of the family house. We’re strolling along a dirt track when we see a clump of yellow dandelions and stop to pick them. We pierce the stalks with our fingernails and make a chain. Placing the flowers ceremoniously in my hair, Michael jokes that I’m now officially a hippie.
We wander through the afternoon talking about Vincent van Gogh and the colour yellow, and my mind is soft with light – the yellow of the dandelions, the yellow in the conversation, the yellow in van Gogh’s paintings – and it all comes together with the sunny day, the bush, the wattle, and the feeling of being with the man I love.
10
The Last Month of Summer, Early 1973
I’m woken from sleep by a soft knocking at the door of my room. I know it’s Michael. He comes in wearing his old air force boots, and although I’m still in bed trying to drag myself to consciousness, I notice that the top flaps are undone. The curtains are closed, and my room is still gathered into itself, all soft contours and veiled light. Michael walks towards me smiling, bouncing across the floor with an excitement that alerts me to the possibility that this is no ordinary visit.
‘Hello, you,’ I say. I sit up, hold out my hand and pull him onto the bed. ‘How’s things?’ I’m still thick with sleep, but I notice that he’s looking at me differently, as if weighing me up in some way.
‘I met up with Sally last night,’ he says.
‘Sally?’
‘You know, Sally – the night nurse from M Ward. We bumped into each other at a party in Turner.’
‘Oh, yeah, how’s she going?’
‘She’s great. She asked about you.’
‘Oh? What did you say?’
‘I said you were as crazy as ever, just enjoying it more.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I say, smiling. ‘So, how was the party?’
‘Really cool. The most amazing thing happened. I’m really getting my health back, Pauls, I can really feel my strength coming back. Sally’s got these Great Danes – huge, they take up the whole of the lounge room. We played with them, it was crazy …’
I’m now listening from a deeper region of myself. My mind becomes alert and clear. I see my room as if I’m looking in through the window, watching Michael and me sitting on my bed, the space around us chaotic. Clothes hang over chairs, papers are scattered over my desk, and I want to impose order, get things under control.
I hear footsteps in the hall of the house upstairs and muffled sounds of talking. I look back at Michael. ‘Have you ever had a dog?’ I ask. I’m not sure where this conversation is going, but I know that it’s going somewhere.
‘Yeah, I used to have a corgi, the Queen’s dog, but that was a while ago. Had a cat too. Cats are mysterious and they purr, like this – purrrr.’ Michael leans towards me, nuzzling my neck. ‘I think I’m a cat purrrson.’
I laugh, pull his head closer and run my fingers through his hair. But I still sense a strange vibe. Michael is high, and I’m both confused and hyper-alert.
‘So Sally has cats too?’ I ask.
‘No, just these Great Danes. Amazing dogs – gorgeous, aristocratic beings. You should’ve seen them.’ Michael’s eyes are shining. ‘They’re huge but really gentle. We were playing on the floor with them …’ His expression is eager, expectant. ‘The party was so cool – everyone was out of it. Sally and I were high. It was quite a night. We went back to her place afterwards, and I stayed the night with her. We slept together –’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well … we made love.’
I close my eyes against the pain in my heart. ‘What does this mean?’
‘Nothing, just that we were there together and –’
‘But what does this mean for us?’ I’m just not getting it.
‘It doesn’t make any difference to us. You’re everything to me, Pauls. This doesn’t affect us at all. It was nothing. Her husband was away, and it just happened.’
‘Just like that,’ I say. So many things just happen. Planes fall out of the sky. People die in their beds.
I listen to Michael’s descriptions of how crazy the whole night had been with Sally. The tightness in my throat becomes more intense, so narrow it obstructs all the words I want to say. Words so huge they can’t get through. Other words – small, light things – slip out instead. Their thin sounds float in the space between us like confetti. They say it’s okay. They say I understand. That I can see he’s happy. That it’s great he feels so well. I smile, and I keep smiling. A mechanical clown at a fun fair.
When he walks towards the door to leave, I try to follow but find I can’t make my legs move. It takes me a few seconds to get myself up, go outside and kiss Michael goodbye. He waves to me as he rides away on his Kawasaki. I stand in the doorway holding on to the frame, watching him through eyes of jealousy and loss as he disappears. My vision blurs. I couldn’t be more shocked if he had hit me.
*
That evening, I stand in the hallway holding the phone to my ear, taking a deep breath. Michael has asked me how I am.
‘I’m not so good,’ I say. ‘I feel terrible. Can’t understand what’s happened.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I don’t want to see you tomorrow. I need to work things out.’
‘That’s cool.’
I’m silent. I can’t speak. I hear through the receiver the sound of breathing.
‘Okay then,’ he says. ‘See you in a while.’
‘Michael,’ I say urgently, before he can hang up, ‘do you still love me?’
‘Of course I do. I told you, what happened makes no difference to us.’
I don’t believe him. ‘Okay, good,’ I say. ‘See you soon.’
I’m burning with jealousy, the emotion that hates itself. My self-pity obsesses over my many failings. I’m not desirable, not exciting, not cool. Not interesting, beautiful, fun. Not part of the scene.
The next morning, I wake up to the sense that a catastrophe has occurred. Then I realise the commonplace nature of my heartbreak and turn to the wall, unable to face the day. I’m no longer Michael’s beloved, and I miss him already. There’s nothing left of my dream of him or my vision of the life we planned to share. I’m annulled and in pain. I don’t know why – there’s no point to it, no reason. Why do I need an exclusive love? My feelings are acid in my heart, my brain, corroding my sense of self. Unforgiving and unforgiven, the wound ulcerates. I am no longer the one.
I curl into the pain, hating the feelings that crush me, the weakness that takes me so far down that I’m unable to get up or speak. Another person speaks, functions in the world in my stead. I’m trapped inside the darkness again, head full of noise and abject silences.
There it is: I can’t move, and I can’t sit still.
*
A few days later, Michael and I decide to see a film in Civic. We don’t talk about what happened. After the movie, sipping coffee in the outdoor section of Gus’s cafe, we try to make conversation, but a deep pall has settled over us. I can’t take for granted that I understand what he’s saying, or that he understands what I’m saying, so I tread, step by careful step, through this new terrain, trying to establish a sense of where we’re going. Michael is subdued, though, and I’m nervous and tense. When I look at him, my eyes lose focus, and he seems a long way away, unreachable.
‘I’m working on Going South,’ he tells me. ‘It’s shaping up as a sort of autobiographical prose work.’
‘So it’s about your life now? Are you writing about us?’
‘Um, well, not really … some bits, perhaps …’
‘What have you said about us?’ I ask, trying for a light, teasing tone. ‘Is it all doom and gloom?’
‘There’s really not much about the present in it,’ he says, flatly.
We both look sideways as a couple walks past, arm in arm. In the pause that follows, Michael puts
his hand over mine. I pull away.
He strokes his beard as if nothing happened. I stir the coffee in my almost empty cup. A huge anchor drags through our deep silence. I feel something emerging, coming loose, but I don’t know what it is.
‘I don’t think we should get married just yet,’ I say. ‘I think we need more time. To work things out.’
I see the shock on his face and realise what I’ve said.
‘That’s cool,’ he says eventually.
He looks out across the street to the car park, his glasses glinting in the headlights of a passing van. I wait for him to look back at me. Instead, he reaches for his packet of cigarettes and takes one out. I pick up my tobacco and concentrate on rolling a plug, licking the edge of the paper and poking the strands in at each end with a match. Michael leans over and lights my cigarette before lighting his own. After inhaling deeply, he starts coughing – harsh, wrenching eruptions.
When they subside, he asks, ‘Doing anything tomorrow?’
‘Haven’t any plans. What about you?’
‘Not much.’
Another silence descends. We’ve both finished our coffee. The bill is on the table.
I sense myself falling. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to hold me together. In the chill air I try to breathe, but my chest has cramped as if I’ve just been told of a death.
I’m searching Michael’s face for signs, but it’s a pale mask. The man I know has disappeared. There’s no part of him that I can reach. If I touch him now, he’ll shrink from me. His eyes are distant, his mood restrained and cold.
I hadn’t planned to postpone the wedding, hadn’t even thought of it until the words came out. I’ve done something irrevocable.
‘It’s not long till the last bus,’ I say. ‘I guess I should be going.’
*
During the sleepless hours of the night, I realise that I’ve deceived myself. Immersed in the belief that our love was perfect, I’ve ignored the ambivalence, the questions, the loneliness that’s crept into it since we left M Ward. Now I’m defeated by Michael’s infidelity. I replay the moment he placed his hand over mine and I pulled away, and I’m gripped by regret. Maybe if I could have loved him in that moment, all would be well now between us.
