Archived report · 4 min read · Set in Saint-Verel ·
The Bell Log That Runs Backwards
Report of confusion filed by the verger of Saint Verel's on the tower copy of the ringing book, in which every week of the year is found already written.
- filed: "At the turn of the season"
- reference: "SV/B/774"
1. I am the verger of Saint Verel's, on Hangman's Stair above the coal quay, and for nineteen years I have kept the ringing book in two copies: the first copy, which lives in the ringing chamber, and the parish copy, which I enter up fair on Sundays and lodge with the Diocesan Campanalog Office in Murrow. I write this report at the Office's instruction, which asks for confusion stated plainly. I will state it plainly.
2. The first copy is a bound register, one ruled page to the week. Each page carries the Sunday's date, the peal rung, the bells, the conductor, and, where a death was told, the tellers: the nine tailors struck at three in the morning and the minutes after, which the old use of this parish places inside the hour the city calls thin, from three o'clock to the third minute past the half.
3. On Thursday I brought the book down for the audit. It holds an entry for every week of the year, fifty-two of them. The year has reached its twenty-seventh week. The weeks after the twenty-seventh stand written none the less: dated, described, conducted, six of them carrying tellers with the names left blank. The hand throughout is mine. I did not write those pages.
4. Mr. Quennell, the steeplekeeper, keeps a chalk tally of the ringing, week by week, on the chamber wall. Set against it, the peals this year were rung in the exact reverse of the order the weeks were written: the peal rung on the first Sunday of January was the peal written for the last week of December, and so down through the year one page for one. Last Sunday the bells rang, note for note, the peal my fair copy holds for the twenty-sixth week. Next Sunday, if the tally holds, they will ring my twenty-fifth.
5. I have gone over the two copies line by line. Word for word, toll for toll, they agree: the tower copy, which I did not write, and my parish copy, which I have written out every Sunday for nineteen years. The blots agree too, even where a blot is mine from a wet February over the word rounds. In the tower copy the blots came first, beneath writing older than the year. I cannot explain this.
6. I tested the ink on the pages that are to come, as far as the form permits. It is old. It sits in the paper. The entries were written long ago, in the dry of past summers under my seal, and the six teller-pages among them name no one yet. Per the standing order, tellers unattached to any reported death go to the Cantor's office in Murrow. I copied the six across. The Cantor's office returned a receipt the same week: names pending, to be called when the tailors fall due, the six filed in the order received, which is the reverse of the order they will be rung.
7. The seventh bell has come down from the tower to be cleaned. It is the bell the old use appoints for tellers, the passing bell. The steeplekeeper did not order it down and does not know who did. It hangs now in the ringing room, wrapped, with its rope coiled over it, and the chamber is quieter round it than the rain can account for.
8. Procedure binds, and I have kept it. I wrote to the Office for a ruling on which of the two books is the first copy, mine or the tower's. The Office has replied that the tower's is, the first copy being defined as the copy the ringing follows. I have therefore not written my parish copy since the audit, and will not, pending instruction. The tower copy has not appeared to notice. Next Sunday's page stands entered in it already, in my hand, drying as I watch.
9. I keep the tower copy now in my own house overnight and find it in the chamber by morning, wet with river rain that no one else's coat shows. The rain has not lifted off Hangman's Stair all quarter. On the tower roof it sounds, under the bells, like the tail end of a peal run backwards, and I have stopped writing down the hours when I hear it. This is the whole of what I can report. The bells will ring my twenty-fifth page on Sunday, then the twenty-fourth, and so along the book to the January page, which I wrote first of all, and which will be rung last.