The Green Bell by Paula Keogh

Author:Paula Keogh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press

8

Back Home,

November 1972

Within a week, the stress of being home starts to take its toll. My face aches from the effort of smiling as I try to fit in with my family, with meal rituals and customary ways of relating. Everyone is polite and considerate, and the strain of all this niceness is excruciating. I want to smash something, break through the veneer so that everyone can relax and go back to being themselves. My family tiptoe around me as though I might detonate if they say the wrong thing, or collapse if they bump into me. The spontaneity and looseness I remember has gone. I long to excuse myself and go down to the sanctuary of my room so that they can relax, and I can be alone with the lethargy and depression that has settled in me like a dirge.

The family home is a solid, cream-brick house built in the mid-1960s, with views across to the Brindabella Ranges at the front and the foothills of Mount Majura at the back. At ground level there’s a double garage and my room, with wide steps in between leading up to an open porch and the front door. For Mum, buying the house was a dream come true, bringing together her love of the bush with her desire for the suburban quarter-acre block. She knew that this was the house for her when she stood at the kitchen window and looked out onto a spread of gum trees and wattles.

This morning, with Mum out shopping and the boys at school, I sit alone in the dining room eating a late breakfast, kept company by the empty house and its silence. Sunlight streams through the sheer white curtains and shines on the honey-coloured wood of the table in front of me. The carpet swirls in patterns of orange and brown, and the chairs stand upright and formal. It’s like a stage set, waiting in readiness for the actors to appear and the drama to begin. I drink my coffee and think of the time when I was at high school and, except for my eldest sister, Irene, we all lived at home, and the house was full of people and activity.

There were eight of us, including Mum and Dad: Irene had entered the Brigidine convent a couple of years before we moved to Hackett. My four brothers played rugby union, Anne and I were on netball teams, and we rode our bikes everywhere. Weekends were a whirl of activity, with friends dropping in, people coming and going, and on weekdays there were routines of meals around the table, homework and washing up. I can almost hear the voices echoing through the house – my brothers yelling out to one another, my mother urging us to hurry up, and my sister Anne singing along with Elvis Presley on her transistor radio as she washes the dishes.

Memories of Saturdays return with a particular immediacy. I hear the noise of the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine, and someone screaming from the shower that the hot water has run out.

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