The Bell

The next morning, Toby is in the visitors’ chapel of the convent, pondering the events of the past days. The silence and darkness remind him of the seclusion of the lake, and he feels an urge to peer through the screen, which fills him with shame. He thinks of holding Michael’s hand last night and of how he himself welcomed the touch. Worrying that he might be gay, he imagines a woman’s figure experimentally and soon realizes that he is imagining Dora. Disturbed and excited, he registers an “obscure wish to do something violent” (175). He leaves the chapel and walks along the convent’s wall into the woods.

Suddenly, he decides to break all the rules and climb the wall to see what lies on the other side. Once straddling the wall, he decides to jump down and explore, aware of the immensity of his trespass. He approaches a door and opens it, realizing with shock that he has entered a cemetery and come face-to-face with a couple of nuns. One of them approaches him, smiling, and tells him she knows who he is. Toby experiences an “agony of embarrassment and alarm” (179). The nun welcomes him and even offers to let him try an old swing. She then escorts him to the gate, which he is dismayed to find unlocked. He apologizes, but the nun smiles and replies that children are allowed into the enclosure sometimes.

Dazed and confused, Toby comes across Mark Strafford driving the Land Rover, and Mark gives him a ride. Mark informs him that Dora has left the community and gone back to London.

The same morning, Dora is lying in bed after having made love with Paul, feeling “tired and unreal” (181). Things between Paul and Dora are not smooth, and she feels his contempt acutely. She also feels watched at Imber and “organized” by others. She finds everything around her lacks a sense of reality, and the idea frightens her. Impulsively, she decides to go to London and, leaving a note, sneaks away.

She is in London by noon and decides to go visit Noel, who is “easy on the nerves” (184). He welcomes her effusively, gets her a drink while she takes a bath, and they kiss and dance. Noel then leaves to buy wine for lunch, and the telephone rings. Dora answers and hears Paul asking for her, his voice “trembling with nervous anger” (188). She hangs up, realizing that here too she feels organized and unreal.

She visits the National Gallery, a place she knows well, but this time, looking at the paintings, she sees them as anchors to a reality beyond her subjective state, and she understands she must go back to Imber at once.

Dora arrives back at Imber at ten o’clock in the evening and finds the group gathered in the common room, raptly listening to Bach—music she dislikes, as she cannot sing or dance to it. Cloaked in darkness, she observes the people in the room, feeling invisible. Disappointingly, she sees that Paul is with them, “tense, concentrated, as if he were about to bark out an order” (194). She feels indignant seeing the group sitting complacently and with a seeming air of superiority. Then she realizes that Toby has noticed her, but he does not react, so she moves away and heads toward the lake.

Soon Toby joins her, looking pleased to see her, and they walk into the woods. She feels relaxed with him, as if his youth confirms her own. Toby brings her to the ramp and the place in the lake where he has found the bell. He shares this fact with Dora, and she reacts with excitement, recalling the legend Paul told her and feeling an “uneasy elation of one to whom great power has been given” (197). She urges Toby to keep the underwater bell a secret and makes a sudden plan to hoist the bell out of the water in secret; when the new one arrives for the ceremony, she will attempt to exchange it with this old one and thus “make a miracle” (198). Toby is not too keen on the idea, believing it to be a trick in bad taste, but Dora’s excitement sways him, and she feels powerful, sensing she could avenge herself on the group by playing the witch to their self-satisfied religiosity.

On a Sunday, Michael is giving the address to the gathered community and speaking about knowing oneself well enough to judge how to behave. While he talks, he thinks of the tumult his meeting with Nick has caused both of them. While it was obvious that Toby returned the handclasp, Michael believes he has destroyed the boy’s peace of mind as well as his own. He is also aware that, in his mind, the images of Nick and Toby are almost interchangeable and feels “tormented by a two-way jealousy” (203).

After the address, he goes to the yard to find Catherine, with whom he has a meeting. He finds her with Nick, accompanying him as he repairs a truck—one of the rare occasions Michael has seen the siblings together. He feels ill-equipped to deal with both of them. Soon Toby appears, surprised to see them all, and Nick invites everyone to join him for a trial run of the truck. To Michael’s surprise, Catherine gets into the driver’s seat and Nick and Toby join her, Nick sitting in the middle and hugging both of them. Michael observes them go, “wretched in the empty yard” (209).