Isobel followed the old man across the hall, passing display cabinets containing all manner of disparate objects – she saw a cadre of tin soldiers, arranged beside an old-fashioned iron, the kind that was heated in the fireplace before use, a cream coloured antique telephone, and a large cleaver. She swallowed at the sight of that last object – she wouldn’t be asking the story behind that one. But as Mr Dunwoody opened the door to the sitting room, she noted, mounted on the wall above the doorway, what appeared to be a ship’s bell. The name Tsunami was etched into it’s gleaming surface.
ITEM #2 – The School Bell
They had seated themselves opposite each other almost without thought. Isobel was reminded of the several informal interviews she had had at work for internal positions. Her mother had always insisted she seek promotion – “Push yourself my girl, those that don’t get nowhere and those that do but still get nowhere can at least say they tried!”
“Actually,” Mr Dunwoody was saying. Isobel smiled across at him, shaken from her reverie. “Actually, the bell came to me from a school.”
“It was a school bell?” Isobel was incredulous. She only ever remembered electronic bells at her schools and college. Fake bells for the fake feeling of freedom at the end of the school day.
“It was indeed. But of course you are quite right that it had been a ship’s bell. You noticed the word etched into it?”
“Tsunami?”
“Confidence my dear!” Now he sounded like mum. “You’re absolutely right – excellent eye for detail!” His praise raised another smile from his guest. “Yes, the Tsunami was a sea-going vessel many years ago. I have it on good authority that the captain was a Catholic and he passed the bell on to St Joseph’s after… Well, that would be getting ahead of myself wouldn’t it?” The question was clearly aimed at himself and yet she felt the urge to say “no, not at all, please finish the sentence!”. But all she did was nod obligingly.
“I’ll tell the story as I heard it from the Headmaster, a Mister Tillingworth. He was a strange little man – pale skin stretched as thin as paper over a body clearly pushed to its limits by gluttony. A vein in his forehead pulsed visibly the entire time he was here. His eyes were watery and slightly yellow. He wore a suit which had clearly not been replaced since his last major weight gain. I should be surprised, all told, if he were still with us. Such a shame. He seemed an intelligent gentleman and I’m sure he had been an inspirational teacher in his day.
“But I digress. He was here a long time – he and his vein. I had to have the full story, you see? All of the objects in this house are more than simple objects – they are stories and this building a mere library in which to contain them. Which makes me the librarian I suppose.” He chuckled at this thought and shook his head, reprimanding himself once more.
“To tell the story correctly, we have to start almost at the end and work backwards.
“The bell, you’ll recall, was in the possession of Mr Tillingworth of St. Joseph’s school. I don’t know if you know the school my dear – it’s the sprawling complex at the western edge of town. A curious mixture of ancient and modern, the school was originally a large mansion house owned by the Williams family. Upon the death of the last of the family, the building passed to the Catholic church who organised for a new school to be installed there, under the auspices of St. Joseph’s Church. I see that you do know where I mean now.
“The manor house still stands, at the centre of the complex, and acts as a kind of central hub. The administrative staff and faculty rooms are all housed there, along with our friend the fat headmaster’s office. I really mustn’t judge, you know. It’s just that, of all the Deadly Sins, I find gluttony the most distasteful.” He chuckled again. “No pun intended!
“Initially, the stable buildings were converted to additional classrooms before newer and more modern constructs grew from the fertile grounds of the estate to form specialist teaching areas. I believe it now has academy status, though quite what that means I have no idea.”
If this was getting to the point, Isobel thought, Heaven forbid he should start to waffle.
“The bell resided in pride of place in the main vestibule of The Old School, as the manor house became known. Throughout the rest of the school, electronic bells were employed – rather soulless I find, don’t you my dear? But in the Old School, the old ship’s bell was ceremonially rung to announce the start and the end of the school day. Of course, this meant that it was only usually heard by those members of staff and pupils who happened to be in the building at the time.
“The person who’s job it was to make the bell chime was a lady by the name of Eileen. Her surname will come to me soon. I’ve never really been good with surnames. Except for those names that stick in the mind – like Tillingworth and, I suppose, Dunwoody!
“As the aforementioned headmaster has it, Eileen was in her fifties and had taken the job on because she was a historian and she was fascinated by the bell. Not just by the bell itself, but by the story it held within it. I think I would have liked Eileen immensely.
“Mr Tillingworth, however, doesn’t seem to have been a fan of the lady. He described her as airy-fairy – a phrase I have never really got to grips with but never mind. That said, he admitted that the pupils all seemed to love her and he had never had any complaints about her grade records. By all accounts, a good teacher. Obviously she was not available to chime the bell on every occasion and that job was dolled out to administrative staff by her at the start of the day. It was not a job that anyone but Eileen seemed to enjoy doing.
“One evening, as she was among the last of the staff to leave, she volunteered to lock the building up. This suggestion was eagerly accepted by the head and the caretaker (described by Tillingworth as ‘lazy and in need of a can of deodorant’). Eileen, it appears, had decided to find out a little more about the bell from the good ship Tsunami.
“The Old School is a beautiful building and is a repository for many different stories in its own right of course. The entrance hall, home of our bell, was not carpeted. The original floorboards greeted all-comers, polished every Wednesday night by the undesirable caretaker – Willets I think his name is – so woe betide anyone who arrived on Thursday morning with wet shoes.” Another chuckle.
“This particular night, though, was a Friday, meaning that, as she turned the key in the front door, she was completely alone in the building. Eileen crossed the wooden floor, passed the administration office, with its main desk situated behind a large communication window, from which staff would greet visitors and provide a point of contact for employees and pupils alike.
“This took her to the foot of the staircase to the first floor. She stood with her back to the door, the office to her right and the door to the Assembly Hall directly in front of her. To the left was the headmaster’s office and a general meeting room. A three-quarter turn to the right and she would have been facing the staircase directly. Above her was the bell and hanging from a hook on the wall above the second step was the means by which the bell was rung – a long wooden pole with a cushioned point at one end. The procedure was to use the pole – cushioned end forwards – to gently coax the bell into ringing. All of this would take place from the stairs as one would likely be killed in the rush from the hall should it be in use at the end of the day.
“Eileen took the pole from its resting place and removed the cushioning to reveal a hook. This was used to retrieve the bell from its own hook for cleaning. This was a process that Eileen herself had never been a party to, despite the proprietorial attitude she had towards the item. She climbed the third step, which apparently creaks more than any of the others. Not being terribly tall, she stretched forward, with her hands almost at the end of the pole, the step beneath her creaking and cracking. On her second attempt she succeeded in hooking the bell and drew it towards her.
“By the way, I must say that Tillingworth had no explanation for why Eileen chose that night to more closely examine the bell. Perhaps we shall never know.”
For the first time during the telling of the story, Isobel interrupted her host. “Do you mean..?”
“Oh yes, my dear. When Messrs Tillingworth and Willets came to open up the school on Monday morning, they found poor Eileen in the middle of that lovely wooden entrance, quite dead, a dried pool of blood surrounding her lifeless body. Mr Tillingworth did comment on the condition of the body but I surmise that you would not like me to dwell on such things. Suffice to say, there was no doubt in either of their minds as to her condition.
“She clearly didn’t fall to her death from the third step so how and why? Now that is where the tale gets really interesting.”
Mister Dunwoody will continue the story of The School Bell next week.
(c) Andrew Evanson, Durham, UK, 2019
The Other Shore 