Copyright Oggbashan October 2017
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Clang!
Clang! Clang!
Clang!
How could I sleep with that irregularly tolling bell sounding every time I thought it had stopped? I peered at my watch. It was three thirty in the morning, late June, pitch black beyond my tent, and cold and raw outside. I snuggled back into my sleeping bag and tried to cover my ears to shut out the mournful bell.
I woke bleary-eyed hours after dawn. Automatically I cooked myself a breakfast and ate it before I was really aware that I was up and about. I couldn't hear that bell but the memory still clanged in my head.
I hadn't visited this part of South Wales before. Until last night I had been enjoying the area. It isn't an obvious tourist destination but the scenery and buildings were just as attractive as better known places but with less people. I was camping in a field behind the public house. My car was parked beside my tent.
I had intended to move on today but I was tempted to stay. Amanda, the landlord's daughter, had booked me in a few nights ago. They were quiet and I had time to talk to her once I had erected my tent. She was helping out while her mother was away visiting Amanda's grandmother. Amanda works in Bristol a few miles from me but had taken a few days off. I'd like to see more of Amanda. I might stay as long as she does.
I washed up and left for a refreshing walk to the sea nearly a mile away and along the coastal path. When I reached the sea the tide was ebbing down the Bristol Channel. The tides here are dangerous, running fast either way, and very easy to misjudge. Today I would stay on the path at the top of the cliffs except where small streams trickled down valleys far too large for them.
I had nearly forgotten that irritating bell when I returned to my tent at dusk. I cleaned myself up and changed into more respectable clothing. Tonight the pub would provide my evening meal.
It was far too early when I entered the bar. The landlord was stacking clean glasses on shelves.
"Hello, Henry," he said. "Fed up with your own company? The meals don't start for a couple of hours yet."
"I know, Mr Jones" I said. "I want to have an early night. I was kept awake last night by a bell ringing somewhere."
The landlord looked at me as if he hadn't seen me before.
"What did it sound like?" He seemed genuinely concerned.
"A slow irregular clanging," I replied. "A deep note but irritatingly random. Every time I though it had stopped; it started again..."
"That'll be the bell buoy on Bell Rock then," Mr Jones said. He seemed relieved. Why?
"The bell buoy? What bell buoy? I haven't seen a bell buoy."
"You wouldn't. It isn't there anymore. It was removed in the 1960s when they modernised the buoy system for the Bristol Channel."
"Are you telling me that I heard the ghost of a bell buoy?"
"Yes. All of us hear it from time to time. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't toll a message of doom. It just is."
"Why was there a bell buoy?"
"I'll tell you what, Henry. I'll lend you one of my books about this area. It has several chapters about the Bell Rock and the shipwrecks there. I have to get on before the dining room starts to fill. What are you drinking?"
"A pint of your local bitter, please."
"OK. I'll get the book then pull your pint." He turned towards the kitchen area. "Amanda? Can you take over for a minute or two?"
Amanda pulled my pint. Her father took longer than I had expected. Amanda and I discussed Bell Rock and the recent weather which had been unusually wet for late June.
When the Mr Jones returned, Amanda went back into the kitchen. The book was a modern paperback reprint of the original published in the 1960s. It was fairly thick with several pages of old photographs of the local coastline.
"Could I buy a copy of this locally?" I asked as I sipped my pint.
"I can sell you that one for eight pounds ninety-nine," he answered. "I have a stock of them. The author used to be a regular."
I paid for the book. I sat in a chair by the log fire and started to read. I continued over my meal. The landlord and Amanda were busy with the evening diners.
Bell Rock had originally been called Yns Iestyn after an anchorite who had his cell on what was then an island. In the fifteenth century, long after Iestyn had died, a storm swept the anchorite's cell and the top soil off the island. Over the years the sea had eroded the rest until the island became a heap of jagged rocks only visible at low water. The name changed to Iestyn's Rocks until the early nineteenth century when a prison transport hit them. The Esmeralda, bound for New South Wales with women sentenced to transportation, struck the rocks on a dark stormy September night after leaving Bristol, the Esmeralda's last port of call in England. Most of the crew and the women prisoners drowned. A few were saved. After that shipwreck the rocks were renamed 'Esmeralda Rocks'.
Within a year a public subscription had raised money for the rocks to be marked with a bell buoy that was anchored off the rocks while the wreck of the Esmeralda was still visible. Gradually the locals started referring to Esmeralda Rocks as Bell Rock because a superstition against mentioning the Esmeralda had grown. The book referred me to Chapter 11 for the details of the Esmeralda legend. I decided to leave Chapter 11 until later.
It was obvious I wouldn't have a chance to talk to Amanda tonight. Back inside my tent I poured myself another pint of the local bitter from a four-pint carryout jug. I continued reading and drinking until I fell asleep.
I had a dream. The third officer of the Esmeralda, Richard Jenkins, sat in my tent and began to tell me his version of the wreck.
