Podcast 7 - B1 level story - The Bell-ringer

Story starts at 5:09

Hello. The story that I'm going to tell you today, I think, is based on truth - on something that really happened or did it?

Archos de la Frontera church of St Mary

Many, many years ago, I can remember when I went to a small village in the province of Cadiz, or Cádiz, as they say in Spanish. And the village was called article Arcos de la Frontera. Now, this village is a beautiful place on the top of a hill and overlooking the valley below.

In the middle of the village, there is a church in the square. And the church is called Santa María, or St. Mary's. Now, when we were there, somebody told us that the bells of the church clock were rung by this little old lady from the first hour in the morning, until the evening. Now, what was also a little bit of strange, we thought, was that apparently, she was deaf. She couldn't hear. Now, many, many years later, I looked that story up on the internet to see if it was really true. But I could find no reference to it at all. So I wonder now, perhaps, well, perhaps I just dreamt it. Anyway, here's the story that I, well, fabricated a little bit myself - I've added details and made it into a story that I call The Bell-ringer.

I will just give you a little bit of the vocabulary. Bell-ringing is the activity of ringing the bells by putting the bell-rope - a long cord which you pull and it makes the bell swing backwards and forwards to ring it. And as I said she was deaf. D-E-A-F. That means she couldn't hear. She couldn't hear.

And there's another word as well in the church. You have the priest who is the one who gives the sermons and who says mass in the church. And there's another part of the church mentioned to which is the sacristy. The sacristy being a small room in the church, where the priest prepares for mass usually by changing his clothes, and getting some other objects that he needs to say mass.

Other words, the man is the chief or the head of the councillors in the town hall. Or in this case of village hall, which is the administrational center of a village or town and the mayor is the head the most important person in the village or town hall.

I have a verb here, which is to sigh, we sigh perhaps when we are frustrated, perhaps when we don't know what we can do. And we shrug our shoulders. We lift our shoulders up and we sigh. What can you do?

And one more word is the name of some flowers or poppy or poppies in the plural. These are red flowers, which are bright red, and they grow in many countries in Europe, in Andalusia, where this story takes place. They're very common in the fields at about May time during May, June perhaps and they're beautiful red flowers. Okay, so that's enough. I'll tell you now the story of The Bell-ringer.

The Bell-ringer (story)

When Pilar rang the bells in the church of Santa María in the village of Arcos, she could see the people in the square below. During the summer months, there were always a lot of people, especially at twelve o'clock midday. They looked up at the church bell-tower, and talked and pointed, but they could not see her. The window was too small, and too high.

Pilar was a tourist attraction. Perhaps it was truer to say Pilar's bell-ringing was a tourist attraction, because the tourists rarely saw Pilar. But everybody knew about Pilar. They knew she was deaf.

Occasionally, the tourists tried to see her. The priest or one of the choir boys sometimes left the door of the sacristy open. From the sacristy, a curious tourist could open the door of the bell-tower, and climb the stairs to the top. That was where Pilar lived and spent the days of her life. When she felt the vibration of somebody climbing the wooden stairs, she ran to the door at the top of the stairs and locked it with a large heavy key.

But sometimes she did not detect their footsteps. Or she thought it was Mrs Sanchez, who came once a week to check her wall clock was right. Then the tourists came in and took her photo. They smiled and said things but Pilar could not hear them. She did not smile. She covered her face and looked away. Pilar rang the bells in Santa María church every hour, from eight o'clock in the morning to six o'clock in the evening.

Her great grandmother started the family tradition of bell-ringing. She used to ring the bells in the clock tower to pay the rent for the small apartment at the top of the tower. Her grandmother followed in the tradition, and then Pilar's mother. When her mother died, Pilar became responsible for telling everybody the time in Arcos de la Frontera by the clock bells.

But Pilar was different. The previous bell-ringers in the family used to rest at weekends. And then the bells were silent. But Pilar stayed in her tower every day. She never forgot to ring the bells of the village church clock every hour and on the hour, seven days a week. And she never forgot to pull the bell-rope the right number of times, eight times at eight o'clock, nine times at nine o'clock. Pilar never heard the bells, but she felt them through the ropes in her hands. After six o'clock, Pilar could go out and buy her food at the grocery shop near the village square. Then she came home and cooked her dinner.

Once, the mayor and the councillors from the village hall, came to see Pilar. They explained she did not need to ring the bells if she did not want to. Pilar found what they said very difficult to understand, so they showed her a picture of a church clock with an electric motor. The bells would ring automatically. They would not need a bell-ringer. Pilar shook her head and cried. What would happen if she did not ring the bells? What would the people think of her? The mayor and the councillors sighed and left.

That happened many years ago. Few people visited Pilar now. She had no friends. One morning, Pilar got up, but she did not feel well. She looked at the calendar on the wall. It was Sunday, May the 10th. Pilar thought about that date for some time. Then she remembered - it was her birthday! Pilar knew she was seventy years old. Pilar looked at the wall clock. It was nearly eight o'clock in the morning. Pilar rang the bells at eight o'clock and at nine and ten and at eleven o'clock. Then she felt very tired and weak. She looked out at the small window in the bell-tower. She saw a blue sky with little white clouds. In the countryside, past the village square, there were hundreds and hundreds of red poppies in the fields. The sun felt warm through the small window...

At twelve o'clock, midday, Pilar was not in the bell-tower. She was walking through the fields of red poppies. She looked back at the village square and the bell-tower. What would happen if the bell did not ring, she thought. What will people think of her? But she was too tired to worry anymore. There were a lot of tourists in the square. They looked up at the bell-tower and pointed. That day, the bell did not ring in the church bell-tower of Santa María. But they rang in the church of San Bartolomé and they rang in the church of San Pedro and they rang the bell-tower of the village hall. But Pilar did not hear them. She just kept on walking through the red poppy fields with the warm spring sun on her face.