A Matter of Life and Death

Instructions
For chiming hymn tunes on church or hand bells
To all, and especially those unacquainted with either the old or new notation of music, a careful perusal of the following instructions will prove beneficial. Study them with care before even attempting to play the most simple tune.

I have just finished the first week of rehearsals and I am on a train to visit my mother and my uncle. I need something that belonged to my Grandad.

On striking
The bell should be struck firmly. A slovenly blow not only spoils the melody, but gives the bell a muffled sound, and reflects discredit on both performer and apparatus alike.

My Grandad was the gentlest human being I have ever met. He had a wide, clear face, snow white hair and rough gardening hands as wide as shovels. He was as magnetic as catnip to the local cats as he stroked them so hard their tummies would dip down to the ground. As a child, I loved to be with him, calm and safe, picking runner beans or collecting sweet tomatoes from his green house. My Grandad was also almost totally silent

I have only two recollections of him really speaking. Once was when he explained his worries for my Gran as they approached their mid 80's. She wanted to move out of their remote Dorset village into Dorchester. He appeared to be quietly and stubbornly refusing to even engage with the debate. In her usual dramatic way, she stormed out of the living room to make tea.  He turned to me - "I don't want to stop her moving into town because of me - she doesn't make friends easily and I think she needs to stay here where she is known and cared for". She came back in and he reverted to silence, but in that moment, that window of communication, I saw him not as my Grandad but as a man and a husband. The other time he spoke was about the war. I can't remember the details, so shocked was I that he was talking animatedly. None of us interrupted or asked questions in case he stopped. I remember holding my breath as I heard of fear and of seeing Monty drive past and of a bullet being caught in a mess tin. He described how my Great Uncle Harold had to drive the ammunition truck at night with no lights so as not to be spotted and how he screamed out in his sleep to this day, so consuming was the terror. A lifelong campanographer, he talked about how he carried a set of hand bells with him throughout the war. He and his fellow soldiers would play them over the graves of the friends that had fallen.

Position
The performer (like a pianist at a keyboard) should be in a central position, the arms having perfect freedom of action

I am here to pick up my Grandad's hand bells and bring them back to the National theatre.  I also needed to ask some questions, to fill the silence.

On counting time
Unless the bells are struck at the proper time, the melody will be imperfect, perhaps even unrecognisable.

I am now returning to London with the hand bells sat in the seat next to me, the leather handles shiny with handling, the dull metal crying out for brasso and some care and attention after years in an attic. These bells have seen more, and expressed more, than I will ever understand. I have talked to my family and now have a few more fragments to add to my own memories, but more is lost than found. None of us will ever know what he was like before the war, I'm sure he was always kind and placid, but I also suspect that a piece of him died in those years, or perhaps it was buried so deep that it was lost forever. A matter of life and death, indeed.

So, here\'s what I know about him after today

 - Born in 1907, he left his home in Hampshire at 14 and walked to Dorset where he worked for the vicar of Evershot. He gardened and dug graves and learnt to ring the bells. He met my Gran, Edna Mary Rutley.

 - He was enlisted into the Dorset Regiment in 1939 along with all the other young men he had grown up with. He left my Gran with my mother, who was one year old, and pregnant with my uncle who he would not meet properly for another 6 years.

 - He was posted in the Catering Corps, his best friend Harold in transport. Throughout the war they held on to each other\'s friendship and tried to meet up as often as they could. Harold is the great uncle I described earlier, ravaged by nightmares for the rest of his life.

 - He went over to France hot on the heels of the Normandy landings but the invasion failed and the men had to be brought back to England in any boat they could find - my Grandad never told anyone how he got back.

 - In 1944 he was part of the 2nd invasion, pushing forward through Holland and towards Arnhem. He was part of the battles dramatized in ‘A Bridge Too Far\'.

 - He described seeing bodies at the side of the road stacked like haystacks.

 - My mother remembers him saying that since the war, he vowed he would enjoy every day.

 - My uncle believes that if he had the education and the support, he would have been a conscientious objector - if he'd met a German soldier, he would have shaken his hand.

 - I also know that in the loft, along with his bells were his medals. 5 of them. They were still in their boxes and their greaseproof paper bags. These had no patina of handling, no story worth telling. He had never worn them, never attached the ribbons and never even looked at them.

‘Fuck war' is what these discarded medals screamed at me, but of course, my Grandad would neither swear, nor scream.

But I do swear and I do scream. I scream that my Gran was left with a young family, no running water, no electricity, no husband to help, I scream that this gentle man was forced to be part of horrors unimaginable and I scream that we are still at war now.  I rant that war is so random and that it takes no stock of individual beliefs, dreams or hopes. It is tsunami dragging anyone in its path to death and sometimes even worse, survival. Grandad survived because he was lucky, not because he was a hero, not because he was worthy and certainly not because he was in love. He was plain and simply, lucky: unlike the thousands of others who perished around him.

On ..., in the belfry of Evershot church, Grandad had been teaching another generation of young people to ring. Feeling tired, he sat down to listen and died silently. If there was a God, I would thank him from the bottom of my heart for this gentle gift.

So, this production is dedicated to Harry Dennis Watton Bishop, my beloved Grandad, and all the memories he chose not to burden those he loved with. I thank him and all the other good men and women that fought with him for their bravery and their terror and the shadows they endured for the rest of their lives. It is in their honour that we will play Grandad's hand bells tonight. We will play them for the dead of all wars, thanking them, mourning them and raging at the dying of the light.