Madhatterington
I’ve had a Revelation. I haven’t become a crazed bell junkie because I love bells*. I’ve become a crazed bell junkie because of the drama.**
I’ve told you that Madhatterington recently had its bell tower done up, its old bells restored and (I believe) two new-to-this-tower bells installed*** for a total of five. Which is lovely and all that, barring the bells themselves, and the fact that the village is Deeply Divided over the issue: there are the people who love bells and the people who hate bells. And while the PWLB won the first round, the PWHB have regrouped and are trying with might and main to prevent the bells from being rung.† This affects ringers in the area because Madhatterington (a) has no band and (b) the PWHB have forbidden practise nights††, so if the bells ever are going to be rung†††, somebody else has to do it.
I’m not sure whether this has to do with parishes and districts and things or whether she just didn’t move out of the way fast enough, but Crabbiton’s tower captain got saddled with dealing with Madhatterington’s bell tower. Except that Crabbiton’s tower captain doesn’t take being saddled with things too stressfully, which is, I believe, how she got saddled with being Crabbiton’s tower captain in the first place, when Felicity, who runs Crabbiton, decided that being tower captain was one thing too many, and delegated.
This leads to situations like today. Two or three days ago Crabbiton’s laid-back tower captain, let’s call her Zenobia, appears to have recalled two things. One: there was a service at Madhatterington for which bells had been requested Sunday afternoon. Two: she was leaving for a week in Greece on Friday.
I haven’t rung at Madhatterington in a while, and I like a good joke. When she phoned me I said yes.
When I got there this afternoon there was one other ringer there. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked him if he knew who else was coming. Um, he said. Felicity. —Three? I said. I guess so, he said.
Well, at least Felicity will be in charge, I said, being rather preoccupied with in-charge-ness since New Arcadia’s last annual meeting‡.
Other Ringer developed a faint gleam in his eye. Felicity insists she is not in charge, he said.
Felicity herself arrived at about this point looking a trifle pink and steamy around the edges. This is what happens when Certain People Do Not Plan Ahead, she said, before leading the way briskly toward the bell tower. Pierce said he’d come, she threw over her shoulder . . . pausing long enough to snabble a deacon-like person trotting past and looking stricken. There is a service here today, isn’t there? Felicity demanded.
Well, there should be, said the stricken-looking deacon-like person, waving her hands in a desperate manner. I put it in the schedule before it went off to the printer, but it’s not in the schedule. What is in the schedule is a service for next Thursday, and there is no service here next Thursday. The rector is here, she added hopefully.
Splendid, said Felicity, growing pinker and steamier. I will proof the parish magazine before it goes to the printers next month. I do not want to proof the parish magazine, she continued to us as we resumed our brief passage to the bell tower.‡‡ But I guess I must.
We will pass tactfully over my having lost control of my demon-infested bell during ringing up, was attacked by the rope, and escaped being strangled only by quick thinking and a hastily muttered charm and a pinch of belfry dust gathered during a gibbous moon by candlelight, which usually works against homicidal bell ropes. We were about to start ringing pathetically on three because three was what we had when there was the welcome thunder of feet on the ladder and Pierce emerged from the hole in the floor.‡‡‡ Four! Yaay! Four is no longer pathetic, it’s just sad!
And then, and then . . . more foot-thunder! And an actual Madhatterington ringer appeared! I only know this because Felicity fell on her like a lion on an okapi, dragged her up the last few rungs into the ringing chamber, and thrust a bell rope into her hands, crying, Excellent! It’s time you began ringing at your own tower! —Madhatterington’s beginners attend Crabbiton’s practise nights.§ This poor woman was clearly still very much a beginner—it’s only that I could hear there were only four of you, she said worriedly—yes, yes, said Felicity, eyes and teeth glistening, take the two, you’ll be fine on the two . . . the other three of us ringers maintained a tactful silence.
It was . . . interesting. I don’t think our ringing will have brought any of the local PWHB into the PWLB camp. The beginner only dropped her bell twice,§§ which on a Madhatterington bell possessed by demons, is not at all bad. But we made a bell noise—we made a five-bell noise—and nobody died.
We rang for forty-five minutes, which is a long time on evil-tempered bells when there are no spare ringers to spell [sic] you. (Felicity did take some pity on the beginner, and we rang four for a while.)
We rang for forty-five minutes.
. . . For a congregation of seven. Including the rector, the organist, the deacon-like person, and the beginner and her husband.
* * *
* Especially Madhatterington’s bells
** At some tower gossipfest recently, precipitated by poor Ditherington’s troubles, someone said that it was very surprising, given the pride everyone involved seems to take in the idea that the Archers reflects genuine English village life, that they’ve never had a plot about bell ringers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/info/ ^ Ambridge even has a bell tower but other than some rather erratic (I’m told) background bell noises it has not been much taken advantage of.
^ In which you will learn that the Archers is a radio programme that has been going on since 1950. It’s a frelling soap opera: Dynasty or The Young and the Restless with farmers and without the hair.+ To call it a British institution barely scratches the surface. It’s up there with cricket, Marmite, and the Magna Carta. Cricket no longer seems deeply weird to me simply because I walk past cricket fields full of cricketers so often that the basic element of two teams struggling over the placement of a ball emerges irresistibly from the roil of its incomprehensible rules. I like Marmite. And the Magna Carta is clearly okay, the American Bar Association put up the memorial. But I draw the line at the Archers. I’m assimilated, I’m not that assimilated. I never watched Dynasty either. Or The Young and the Restless.++ But I don’t need to. I’m a bell ringer.
+ I mean, maybe it does have the hair, but you don’t see it, because it’s on the radio. Duh.
++ I did watch Dark Shadows for a while. But it was too silly.
*** I hope they are not new bells, or the foundry should go into another line of business. Immediately. And since we’ve only got one bell foundry left in Britain . . . I hope they’re old bells.
† I have mentioned that bells are expensive, right? Like thousands and thousands of pounds expensive?
†† Don’t ask me why the PWHB failed to block the bells being installed but succeeded in prohibiting a practise night. It probably has something to do with the Magna Carta. Or the American Bar Association.
††† And I’ve told you before that not being rung makes even nice bells cranky. This is part of Old Eden’s bells’ problem—and is an additional reason why Ditherington’s practise night being cancelled for the foreseeable future is such a dismal situation.
‡ NIALL IS GOING TO BE GONE TWO FRIDAYS IN JUNE. TWO FRIDAYS. PENELOPE SAID, OH, WE DECIDED IT WOULD BE SO MUCH NICER TO BE GONE FOR A LONG WEEK.
TWO FRIDAYS. TWO. FRIDAYS.
‡‡ Note that Madhatterington is an extremely pretty village and an extremely pretty church in an extremely pretty churchyard. I think all that bucolic flimflam saps the will.
‡‡‡ Okay, what do you think? Big tall corporate-looking-type bloke who obviously fancies himself whom you’ve rung with a few times^, don’t know at all and have exchanged maybe six words with. Shows up to ring with his fly down. Do you say anything? No, nobody else said anything either.
^ Note: I ring better than he does, when I’m not being strangled by fiend-infiltrated bell ropes.
§ And when the wind is in the wrong direction, I’m sure Madhatterington’s PWHB can hear them.
§§ Ie missed her grab comprehensively enough that the bell had rung itself most of the way down before she got hold of it again, and then we stopped while someone kindly rang it back up for her. Not her fault. This is trial by fire stuff. The question is whether she’ll come back.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.