Ringing The Changes

Simon reached up with the rope as it rose, then as it slowed he readied himself to pull it gently down.

He could feel the bell pause as it balanced above him in the darkness of the bell loft, then as the bell lost momentum at its highest point and started its rotation downwards again, he gently pulled to help it in its fall. He could feel the weight of the bell as it swooped its circular route around its shaft, heard the clang of the clapper against the ancient iron sides of the bell, then it was slowing again as it approached its zenith from the other direction, before swooping again in its ever-lasting demonic dance. The other bells swung in co-ordination and together they were ringing the changes, ancient melodies which sang out across the rooftops of the village and beyond, their sound carried on the gale over the woodland and dark fields downwind.

On the flood plains east of the village, Jake stumbled in the darkness to herd his sheep to safety, before the waters came, borne by the swollen river. The cold rain stung his bare face and knuckles and with it came the snatched suggestions of the bell-ringers’ tune, the eddies of the wind playing with the sound amongst the trees, teasing the listener with a half-recognised song that disappeared as quickly as it was heard, with the rush of a gust from another quarter.

Jake knew the melodies by heart, however, and hummed with the tunes as they appeared and disappeared with the wind, for he was a bell-ringer himself. Normally he would be pulling the bells tonight, but tonight his sheep had won his attention. Once before he had ignored the flood warning and the next morning found his flock washed up, sodden corpses strung along the barbed wire fence of another farm a couple of miles downstream. As the bells sent their sound upon the wind, he could feel the rope in his hand, the weight of the bell in the muscles of his arm, the coolness of the air in the bell-tower upon his skin, the smell of the ancient dust in his nostrils: he could feel his brain working as it sought to perfect the connection between himself and the others. Jake found himself pausing, his eyes closed as he imagined himself not here but in that bell-loft across the fields. He knew he could ring with his eyes closed.

In the bell-tower, Simon’s whole being concentrated on the rope in his hands, the bell above him, and the movements and sounds of the other ringers and their bells. He could see each of them, their body language predicting exactly when their bell would chime.

Then the lights went out. There was a sudden frisson of tension in the air: in the darkness a disembodied voice bellowed out: “Carry On”. They were in tune with each other: they knew they could carry on. The commands continued as before, as they pulled in the darkness, ringing the changes, changing key and melody, progressing to the next piece without pausing. They had played in competitions, won awards, were proud to be able to continue this centuries old tradition in an ancient stone building hundreds of years old, with bells some of which were also centuries old, bells pulled by arms of countless men who had passed their years sometimes from their youth to their old age, then passing the honour onto the next generation, down the endless passage of time measured by the steady ticking of the cobweb-covered iron clock above them on the south facing wall of the church tower, watched warily by the crows swooping amongst the ancient trees of the churchyard. Another storm of thousands through the years would not stop these players, despite losing their light due to the power cables being parted in some distant part of the parish.

Jake squelched through the mud, sending his whistles to Jack his friend and four-legged assistant who hurried the sheep across the field. Jake’s eyes, attuned to the darkness, could see the outlines of Jack and the sheep in the gloom. Then suddenly, something felt wrong. Straining to see what was going on, he could make out that the sheep weren’t suddenly running at full speed across the field: they had slowed, and Jack was moving around them in a different way.

And a new sound came to Jake’s ears, above the wind and the rain and the church bells: water. The sound of water running, a different sound to normal. Jake took a few further paces, then found he was wading. This was not normal. As he stood there, he felt the water rise up his wellies and he had to consciously stop a feeling of panic. The field was flooding, and fast. He knew where he was: Jack and the sheep were on a higher part of the field, fifty metres away, heading downwards towards the corner of the field, separated from Jake by a lower part of the field which must now be under water. And Jake was on a high spot in the centre of the field, surrounded by low marshland, lower all around than where he stood. He was effectively marooned.

He had to choose between saving his sheep, and his dog, and himself.

In an anonymous office in a city miles away, an alarm bell rang. A phone call was made, a voice mumbled something about a canal bank giving way, sending a tidal wave of water across the countryside. A mini-tsunami.

In a hedgerow bounded by a barbed wire fence, along which the sodden corpses of sheep hung in grotesque shapes, a phone rang. Caught up in the branches, reflecting the light of a clear morning following a night of heavy rain, the phone’s display showed Jake’s wife’s face and telephone number. The phone rang unanswered.