House of Bells

by Chaz Brenchley

  There had been, presumably, hammocks swinging below decks, all swinging together, snores harmonized in rhythm. Something to hold on to. And then, presumably, a captain’s cabin, isolation, extremity. Something to let go. The loneliness of command, the man on the summit of the mountain: achievement, and what else? A power that he didn’t want, that he’d walked away from. A career and a lifetime left behind. Five oceans left behind. He was a long way here from the sea.

  He had been further. Literally in the mountains, sleeping in temples and longhouses with warm bodies clustered all around him. She could see how that would influence a man, how he might try to bring something of it back with him. Even so: ‘If you don’t want people being private,’ she said, ‘if you don’t want them going off by themselves, why come here?’ This house was too big. She hadn’t seen halfway around one wing of it yet, and even so. She could take everybody from the ballroom at her back and isolate them, one in each room that she came to, and there would still be rooms left over. A lot of rooms.

  ‘So that we can be ready,’ he said. ‘As we are. When they come, we’ll always have space for them.’

  ‘When who comes?’

  ‘Everybody.’ Just for a moment then he was mad, or else he was a messiah, both. His smile, his gesture encompassed the world. This was a church, then, after all.

  She just looked at him.

  He chuckled and drew his hands back together. Here’s a church, here’s a steeple – except that the steeple was a chimney, smoking.

  He said, ‘You came. So have all these others. So will others yet, as the word reaches out. Here’s a community that works, in every sense. That’s the other rule, the one we haven’t told you yet. Everybody works. What you work at, that’s up to you. Inner peace or world peace, waving joss or weaving jute, we don’t care. It’s not “do what thou wilt”, that’s discredited, though it comes from Augustine of Hippo, with love attached. Our rule is “be who you are”. One way or another, that tends to keep people busy.’

  And then he looked at her, and puffed on his foul cheroot, and said, ‘So who are you, Georgie Hale?’

  This was it, her moment. Tell her story, explain herself. Little bits of truth, like slates nailed on to a frame of solid lies; they might make a roof, to keep the rain off. For a while.

  Be who you are. She opened her mouth to break that first commandment, to be someone utterly other than herself – and back in that corner again, by the shuttered window, Mary lit new joss and rang a little bell.

  Just a little brass trill – it was nothing, a mention to the gods, not worth mentioning. But it made the hangings billow all along the wall there, where there must be other windows closed behind them; and there was a shape that formed behind that shifting fabric, small and dire. It might have been a boy just standing there, being there, waiting, ready.

  And there was a drip, drip between her feet, and that wasn’t her cup of tea, no, spilling from her heedless hand. That was her hand, where unheeded blood was dribbling from beneath the bandage and running down her fingers and drip, drip dully on to the rug where really she shouldn’t have heard it at all because really she should have been screaming.

  FIVE

  Instead she was crying, just a little: tears drip, drip down her face as she stood up, as she stumbled forward, as she went to where that hidden horror waited.

  Of course there was nothing there. That was the point. She would pull that vivid cloth aside and there would be a terrible absence waiting for her, the emptiness where her baby grew. It used to lurk inside her, like a hollow in her heart. Now it was here, expressing itself. Taking itself literally. Coming to take her away.

  She was terrified, entirely. She could barely bring herself to move. It couldn’t call, it had no mouth except the bells’ mouths where their clappers swung like knives to cut at her; but it sucked at her, and she tottered towards it because she had no choice. It would swallow her down like a whirlpool, manifest and appalling, and she was doomed and almost glad of it, and—

  And there was suddenly a strong stout arm to block her, tangling with her own; and a voice that said, ‘Whoa there, Georgie, where are you going?’

  She was lifting her arm, either to point or to appeal – come and get me, reach out, you can do it, you’re a big boy now – but it was the wrong arm, the one that bled, because Mary was gripping the other.

  ‘Hullo, have those cuts opened up again? That’s nastier than I thought. I’d better put some stitches in there. Come on back to the bathroom, dear, I’ll clean it up for you and have a better look . . .’

  Almost, she wanted to protest. But when she looked again, the fabric hung down like a curtain over wood and glass and nothing, no movement in it now, no figure hiding, waiting, reaching. She shuddered, and let herself be blindly led away.

  ‘Why did you, why do you—?’ You. I don’t understand you.

  She might have been talking to herself: standing in the bright-lit bathroom under a naked bulb, staring at her own reflection for the first time in hours, seeing neither immaculate distant Grace nor vulnerable Georgie but some pale washed-out clumsy imitation. Hair askew, huge eyes, lips gone to nothing. She never looked like this; she’d never let herself. She had no way to fix it now: one hand, no handbag, and her case was gone from where she’d left it, just over there.

  Her other hand was pinioned, laid out on marble, fit for dissection and no more. That was how it felt, at least: quite dead. Mary had numbed it with a needleful of novocaine and now was plying needle and thread, where those cuts were gaping open.

  She might have been talking to herself, but she wasn’t. The half-formed question, the expression of bafflement was meant for Mary, even if it was only to stop her asking questions of her own, about why healed cuts should suddenly start to bleed again.

  ‘Why do I what, dear?’

  ‘You were a nurse, you said. And now you’re here, being mother to a commune. Burning incense, ringing bells. Are you . . . are you married to Leonard?’

  ‘Married to him? No. Not that. Persuaded by him, perhaps. He brought me here, at least. I suppose I came for him. For what he’s doing here. I came to help.’ Her hands were brisk and impersonal, ideal; she might have been sewing a mattress cover. Her voice was meditative, as though she were thinking this through for the first time, which surely couldn’t be true. ‘He didn’t convert me, if that’s what you’re thinking. He didn’t bring back much in the way of religion. I’m further down that path than he is. I was a believer already; I’m a cradle Catholic, and when he sent me to India I didn’t lapse so much as accumulate. Hence the smells and bells. I grew up with them. I’m quite used to making a little noise to ask for God’s attention, puffing a little smoke his way. This is just a different flavour. I used to need priests to do this work for me; now I can do it for myself.’

  ‘Isn’t it a different god?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure it’s any god at all any more. Any god in particular, I mean. In my father’s house are many mansions, and I do try not to discriminate. I don’t suppose they squabble over us in heaven.’

  She did apparently still fervently believe in heaven: only that it was more populous now than the imperial palace of her childhood, which had been staffed with angels and blessed souls all in service to a solitary dictator-god and his immediate family. She was happy to make room up there for the Hindu gods and the Muslims’ god and whatever gods the Buddhists might believe in, they were both a little confused about that – and if that meant that her notion of heaven was really just a mirror of what she was trying to achieve down here on earth, a big house full of space and ready for anyone, neither of them could see any great harm in it.

  ‘There, now. I think you’ll do – but you’re not to use the hand, mind. Not for a few days. And if it bleeds again I’m taking you to the doctor, for it’ll be beyond me. It’s beyond me now, what made it open up like that. Nothing you did, I’m sure, so don’t go taking it to yourself.’

  She rigged a quick simple sling w
ith a spare length of bandage. ‘More as a reminder than anything else; you don’t really need to keep it up, but this should help you remember to be careful, not to go knocking it. You won’t harm my stitches, but you might give yourself an uncomfortable hour if you bang it about.’

  It was uncomfortable already, a dead weight at the end of her arm. She knew too well how it would feel in an hour, as the feeling came back; she thought anaesthetics were like a dam that held back troubled waters, rather than an oil that soothed them. Sooner or later, she was going to feel it all. Sooner, if anybody rang another of those bloody bells. They’d cut right through the chemicals, as they cut right through her skin . . .

  Did she really want to believe that? Well, no: no more than Mary really wanted to believe in every god that she encountered. Neither of them would have chosen this, but you couldn’t argue with your own faith, any more than you could with other people’s. The world worked the way you knew it worked. For Mary that included the afterworld. Not for her. Death was death and that was that: which was why her son was nothing now, a sucking nothing, a cold and brutal fact lurking in the corners of her life. And bells were blades that used to cut her inside, only now those wounds rose right to the surface.

  It was almost no surprise at all: as if she’d only been waiting to see it happen, or to find the space that let it be.

  Be who you are. Very well, then. She might carry on lying, but she’d carry on bleeding too. Sooner or later they’d figure it out.

  She didn’t think they’d stop ringing their damn bells. She’d be the one who bled, that was all. For as long as she stayed. Every church needs its martyrs.

  It was almost an effort already to remember that she wasn’t Georgie, and she hadn’t come here looking for a place to hide. Or that she was Grace, and she still wasn’t looking for salvation. Not here, not from these. Not from anyone. Grace was unsaveable.

  Unsalvageable, maybe. Nothing in her worth the trouble.

  Nothing at all, any more. She was a hollow vessel, full of blood and nothing. Which the bells did keep letting out.

  She muttered her thanks, and almost asked which way to her room; she’d have liked to close a door and cry a little, even before the pain came marching up her arm like sharp little soldiers, bayonets fixed to cut her from the inside. Just in time she remembered, no private rooms here. No separation, no doors to close. And no drugs in her case, wherever that was: she was travelling as Georgie, too nice to dull herself with chemicals.

  There were drugs here, drugs in plenty. But Webb hadn’t offered to share, and again Georgie was too nice to ask, she’d have to be inveigled.

  She might just rather go to bed.

  But Mary was taking her good arm suddenly, matron no more. If she was motherly yet, she was more like a mother trying to be one of the girls, eager and conspiratorial. ‘Come along now. It’s time.’

  ‘Is it? Time for what?’ Seeing Mary snatch a glimpse of her hidden fob-watch reminded her that her own wristwatch had been sternly removed and put aside, when her bleeding arm was dressed the first time. She’d forgotten to reclaim it, and it wasn’t here now. Like the rest of her things. She didn’t think they’d been stolen, only taken away, but it was almost the same thing. She felt like a girl newly arrived at boarding school, all her personal property confiscated.

  ‘You’ll see. Everything changes when the sun goes down. Despite Leonard, I think that’s when we discover who we really are. If you spend all day working at it, you forget that you don’t need to be so earnest. There are walls inside too, which you have to let down sooner or later. Knock down, in some cases. But firelight and starlight and music will at least open a few doors, show you where the walls are.’

  Firelight, starlight – she glanced down at her feet, in their endangered tights. ‘Should I fetch my shoes?’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. Take those nasty things off, I would, and go barefoot. Remember when you were a child and it was the most natural thing in the world? I’ve never understood why girls want to wrap themselves up in clingy nylons anyway; it’s all so sweaty and artificial. Peel them off and throw them away and let your skin breathe for a while – you’ll never go back. I expect everything you brought with you is the same, is it? You modern girls, you do like your man-made fibres, but they’re really no good for you. There’s a reason we were blessed with wool and cotton and silk, you know.’

  ‘Some of my undies are cotton . . .’ That was Georgie, of course, being a nice girl, trying to please her. Some of Grace’s undies were silk, gifts from old admirers, but she didn’t wear them. They lived under layers of tissue paper, in boxes, at the back of a drawer. Really she ought to throw them out, if she couldn’t sell them.

  ‘Are they? Well, good. Come the morning, we’ll find you some nice things to go with them. Or to replace them. We’re not so hot on binding underthings around here. A girl should be glad of her figure, not confine it to some rigid conformist shape. I mean, you can wear what you like, of course you can, and no one will point a finger or say a word. Still, we have rooms full of clothes to play with, and fabrics too, and most of us are handy with a needle and thread, so why not try something different? We can’t dress you in the height of London fashion, perhaps, but we can make you pretty and comfortable, in clothes you can wear and wash and wear again. That’s the point, surely?’

  Grace knew girls in Chelsea who would choke and die at the very idea. Time was when she’d have done the same herself, loudly, dramatically; when her flat was full of clothes that she’d wear once and then send to the dry cleaners, or else back to the shop. Georgie – well, Georgie dropped her eyes and murmured her agreement and said she’d be grateful, and swore privately never to mention here what Grace had more recently learned: how wonderfully convenient nylon was, dripping dry over the bath overnight and never needing an iron in the morning.

  Mary was perhaps not fooled. She’d take what she could get, perhaps, one day at a time. For a moment she was brisk again, impatiently motherly; she said, ‘Off with those, then. You’ll only end up with tatters around your ankles anyway. Can you manage one-handed?’

  Oh, she could manage, if the alternative was to be mothered. She was at least still limber. A minute later, she had one leg free and the other up on the edge of the basin; she was just rolling the tights – and yes, of course they’d laddered, and no, of course it didn’t matter now – down to her ankle when the bathroom door opened and a man walked in.

  No one she knew, no one she even recognized. Presumably he’d been there at dinner, somewhere in the shadows, in the vast swallowing spaces of that room.

  He took the pipe out of his mouth and nodded a greeting which was casual enough, though she thought his eyes lingered a little on the exposed smooth length of her leg; it was hard to be sure behind the bushy extravagance of his beard, but she did rather think that he was smirking.

  Then he went into a cubicle, and did at least have the courtesy to close the door. After a moment she heard the rattle of a matchbox and the hissing flare of a light, sounds of puffing.

  Her own eyes may have been bugging out on stalks. Mary patted her shoulder reassuringly and didn’t try to talk. A jerk of the head and a more determined nudge impelled her out into the corridor, where: ‘I’m sorry, dear, I would have introduced you, but I had the impression you might just shriek or make garbled grunting noises. Did no one think to warn you?’

  ‘Warn me? Warn me of what, that men just wander into the ladies’ at random? No. No, they didn’t.’

  ‘Not the ladies’, Georgie. Just the bathroom. We share and share alike here. No modesty, and no shame; those are just as artificial as your nylons and almost as modern an invention. Don’t tell me you’re body-shy, a modern girl like you?’

  ‘Well, no. No, of course not.’ Not Grace, at least: Grace had skinny-dipped with dukes, while an older generation sipped champagne and hooted from the side of the pool. Georgie was another matter, afflicted with her parents’ morals and the standards of her
private school. And would deny it fervently, of course. ‘I just . . . I don’t think I’ve ever – well. Not in the toilet!’

  ‘No, probably not. We are quite absurd about lavatories; there’s no reason in the world not to use the same facilities, if you think about it. Elsewhere in the world, everyone does; and here, too. And the baths too, you’ll find. If you really can’t stand the idea, club up with some other girls and snag one of the bathrooms when it’s empty. If you all wash together, there’ll just be no room for the men. Though that won’t stop them popping in to see. Truly, though, after a week or two you won’t care any more. It’ll all seem ridiculous, so much fuss over a few body parts. Now, that’s enough lectures for today; you’re making me sound altogether too much like Mother Mary. Come on down to the water. Chances are you’ll see a few body parts tonight too – it’s warm enough – but no swimming, mind. Not in that water, and not with that hand. No baths either, come to think of it, until I say you may; which will mean when that dressing comes off, and not a minute before . . .’

  If she really didn’t want to be known as Mother Mary, she really shouldn’t lay down the law so insistently, halfway between encouragement and scolding, with that natural assumption of authority. She offered no quid pro quo: no hint of a carrot, no sight of a stick. Grace had small experience of it, but even so this was her utter definition of maternal: how she would have been herself, how she had been in her head, as unlike her own mother as she could manage.

  Today, here, now, she didn’t mind being mothered. She didn’t mind being led by the hand, even. Grace would have kicked up a fuss, almost certainly, just because. Grace made a fuss about everything, only to be sure that everyone was looking. Not Georgie. Meek and mild, Georgie was. Bashful. Shy. Always looking for someone else to take charge.

  Funny, it was almost comfortable. She went hand in hand with Mary, through the house to that high front door, where the master staircase swept down in two divided curves. She would never have dared to open that door herself, after Tom’s telling her they never used it; but Mary never hesitated, turning the heavy iron ring and dragging one great leaf wide.