The Bellowing Bells by Billy Stanton

The balconies had been intended as a benevolent gesture. One in particular has become a joke and a curse.

Not every flat has a balcony- only every other flat in the five-storey structure that is like an incomplete circle looking down on a courtyard that is not a perfect communal vision, but a desolate receptacle for empty cardboard boxes, abandoned white goods and whale-like plastic bins reeking of milk left in sunlight. When the flats had been doled out originally, the homes with ‘outside space’ had been reserved for those considered most in need and least in danger if granted possession: families with young children and those with a complicated mental health history had been passed over and pointed towards the adjacent park as an alternative due to the fear of the consequences of an unintended or purposeful fall to the tarmac and the mostly-housebound elderly and those of a weak constitution had been given priority.
But all that charity, all that generous paternalism, was a long time ago. In the decades since, the flats have either been sold or, as the consequent lack of social housing bit, re-allocated depending simply upon who had been waiting for somewhere to live the longest. Thus, there have been half-hearted suicide attempts; thus there have been ambulances called to help little bodies with broken limbs; thus The Bellowing Bells have become known in Chasteborough.

The Bellowing Bells are not those of Bow, St Clemens or Old Bailey. Rather, they are a single man, of indeterminate but advanced years, who never leaves his balcony. He is three stories up on the left; he sits forever on a deckchair covered in the ragged remains of striped beach towels; he sleeps fitfully in the passages of time when no pedestrians cut across the courtyard and onto the street though the small opening in the central part of the structure. He is called Harry and he used to be a fireman- that much is known. He also worked in a warehouse, from which he was eventually let go for stealing singlets- that is also known. The council, slow even when not overworked, have given up on him. His neighbours no longer hear him. To the unaccustomed ear, however, it is impossible to imagine how he could ever come to be ignored.

Whenever another occupant comes down to throw their recyclables into the whale’s enormous blowhole, or a trespasser lingers in the shade to enjoy a cigarette, Harry snaps awake from otherwise endless slumber. He is sensitive to the smallest noise; when the cold comes, the cold that Harry doesn’t seem to otherwise notice, he can hear the minutest cracking of the frost upon the guardrail of the balcony. The park was for a long period almost intolerable to him: the rustling of the wind in the trees was like the constant taking-off of a plane, the children’s cries like the wailing of medieval condemned. But as the building’s inhabitants have expelled Harry from their consciousness, so he has forbidden the park from troubling him any longer.
The bellowing of The Bellowing Bells begins almost immediately after that moment of waking; each person who falls within his line of vision, or the sonar field of his hearing, is greeted by invective and abuse that is only identifiable as such due to the volume and tone of what emerges from Harry’s throat. He appears to be, despite the previous normality of his life, now either a creature without language or the sole source of knowledge, the dictionary and thesaurus, of a secret and ancient language. His words sound like words, but they are not English and not identifiable as anything else to even the most learned polyglot: exclamations emerge in jagged bursts or flowing streams that are like sentences, in all their manifold forms and structures, but not possessed of any comprehensible meaning. He does not chant or wordlessly exult the Gods; he is not scat singing or letting language expire within him as he faces overwhelming pain: something that appears to be clear and precise is being expressed by The Bellowing Bells and he acknowledges, sometimes, his own moments of verbal brilliance with satisfied smiles or grimaces when he cannot hit upon the right phrase, but the distance between the speaker and the listener is never shortened, is always a barrier that cannot be breached. His sounds, like the sound of bells, are a symbol- where the bell tells of death or the invitation to prayer, the passing of the hour or the sheer simple joy of ringing, Harry’s noise is that of hate or irritation, an attempt to repel or draw the line around the sanctity of the abode- but the detail and the peculiarities pass by in the moment of their occurrence and are gone forever at the cessation, the next incident always being ever-so-slightly different.

And so, The Bellowing Bells are for most a matter of gossip, of pub-bore speculation, of in-joke and urban legend. Some are sympathetic towards Harry; some wish to protect him, although attempts to intervene have proven fruitless. Some raise the man in myth, as is fitting considering his apparent imperviousness to any weather, his seeming ability to go forever without sustenance. For those who write early obituaries for the qualities of the English language- of language in general- he is a prophet, a time-traveller from the age where declining standards and solipsism have rendered the individual only intelligible to themselves. For others, he is only the perfect specimen of isolation, a living corpse emptied by the neglect of state and society. But, generally speaking, Harry is Harry, the Bells are the Bells, the balcony is the balcony; from the perfect seat in the panopticon, the noise cascades down and the shadows pass through, listen for a second, are left with little impression and then are gone.

Billy Stanton

Miles Glendinning, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons – Tower block in Portsmouth. U shaped with grass area in the centre