Soup for Whoever Rings Midnight

Wren of the Bell had rung the hours at Cloudbreak for five weeks, and had a complaint ready for every one of them.

Six in the morning was too early to be polite. Noon thought far too much of itself. Nine at night was the friendly one, which only made the others look worse. But the hour Wren complained about most was midnight.

“Half the harbor’s asleep and the other half’s hungry,” said Wren, “and the bell has to tell them both the same thing at once. It’s the same bell all day. I know it’s the same bell. It’s heavier at midnight.”

“Then get somebody to cover it,” said June, “and come up to the Wayside for supper. Just supper. That’s all I’ve planned.”

“Nobody covers midnight.”

“Have you asked?”

“No. I know. You don’t have to do the face.”

June did the face anyway. It had not worked in five weeks of letters, and it did not work now. That was why June had walked down from the Wayside that evening with the supper in a basket.

The basket would not shut. There were five bowls in it. One was stew and one was potatoes and one was greens with butter. One was a pudding with a plate on top to keep it honest. The fifth was empty, for whoever turned up, because June did not hold with a supper that had no spare bowl. She had wanted six. The lid had not agreed.

They ate at the little table under the bell, in the arch of the gate. A stair went up from there to the bell loft, and steps went down from there to the harbor. At the bottom of the steps Cloudbreak was lit from end to end. There were roofs and quays and stalls, and sky-ships riding on their lines with lamps glowing underneath them. Under all of that lay the cloud, white in the dark, exactly where the ground ought to be.

June looked at none of it. She was looking at the ledge by the gate.

“Where’s my blue bowl?”

“Out,” said Wren.

“It’s a bowl. It doesn’t go out.”

“It goes out every morning,” said Wren. “It comes back at midnight.” Wren put down the spoon. “I want to tell you about it. Properly, from the start. And I want you to let me get to the end.”

“I always let people get to the end,” said June.

Wren looked at her.

“Go on, then,” said June, and gave Wren more potatoes to be going on with.

* * *

“My first week,” said Wren, “I had my supper out of the blue bowl you packed with my things, every night, right here. Then one night I left it on the ledge to wash in the morning. And in the morning it was gone.”

“My blue bowl,” said June. “With the chip like a thumbnail.”

“That one. So I looked for it. I did the bell loft first.”

“Why would a bowl be in the bell loft?”

“Everything I lose is in the bell loft. I found a pigeon sitting in a teacup. It wasn’t my teacup. I don’t know whose teacup it was, and the pigeon wouldn’t discuss it. Then I did the stair. All forty-one steps, on my knees, and I found a button, a hairpin and a piece of string. I kept the string. It’s good string.”

“You went looking for my bowl and came back with string.”

“Good string. Then I looked on top of the gate lamp, in case somebody tidy had put it up there out of the way.”

“Who puts a bowl on top of a lamp?”

“Tidy people. You put the salt on top of the dresser.”

“That’s where salt goes,” said June.

“Then I went all the way down to the bottom of the steps, where the stalls are. And it was so loud, June. Crews coming off the ships. Baskets coming down on ropes. A man selling hot paper packets, shouting the price as if he was cross with it. Nobody looked at me once. I was the new bell, and nobody down there knew my face.”

“So you asked them.”

“No.”

“Wren.”

“They were busy.”

“Everybody at Cloudbreak is busy,” said June. “That’s what Cloudbreak is for.”

“I wasn’t going to stop a whole harbor for one bowl. I went back up and rang four o’clock, and I decided I’d tell you it got broken.”

June put her hand flat on the table, which was how she kept her opinions from getting out.

“Two nights after that,” said Wren, “I rang midnight, and I came down the stair, and there it was on the ledge. Your bowl. Full of hot barley soup, with a spoon in it.”

June opened her mouth.

“I’m getting to the end,” said Wren. “The next night it was there again. And the next. Every night since. I wash it in the morning and leave it on the ledge, and in the day it goes, and at midnight it comes back full.”

“And who did you think was sending it?”

“Well,” said Wren. “You.”

June put the plate back on the pudding, which meant this was serious.

“Everything here comes down on ropes,” said Wren. “I thought you’d got one over the Wayside rail, down through the cloud, with a basket on the end. I thought it was a secret, so I never said thank you. Saying thank you spoils a secret.”

“A rope,” said June. “Through the cloud. Every night.”

“I didn’t say I’d worked out the rope.”

“I don’t do things in secret,” said June. “I do things loudly, with too many bowls. And I’d have sent better soup.”

“It’s very good soup.”

“What’s in it?”

“Barley. Carrot. Something green.”

“Something green,” said June, and ate a potato, hard.

* * *

“Then last week,” said Wren, “I turned the bowl over to dry it, and there was chalk on the bottom. BELL, in capitals. And the E had four arms.”

“An E has three arms.”

“That’s what I said, to the bowl. So the next morning I went down the steps for bread, and there was the man who shouts. He has a slate over his stall. HOT PEAS. BEEF AND BARLEY. Every E with four arms.”

June had stopped eating. This almost never happened.

“And before I could say a word,” said Wren, “he looked up and said, ‘Morning, Midnight. Bowl all right?’”

Wren did Barley’s voice for this, low and gruff, the voice of a man who had shouted prices for a long time. June laughed and then covered her mouth, because she wanted the rest.

“His name’s Barley Hatch,” said Wren. “He’s been at the bottom of those steps for thirty years. And for thirty years he’s sent soup up to whoever rings midnight, whether they ask or not. He says somebody has to feed the one who tells everyone it’s time to eat. The last ringer’s bowl broke before I came, so there was nothing on the ledge to fill. Then one night there was. Your bowl, sitting there empty.”

“He thought you were asking.”

“He said, ‘An empty bowl on a ledge is a question. I answered it.’” Wren grinned. “He chalked BELL on the bottom so his boy wouldn’t sell it to a sailor. And it took him two nights because the first night was pea, and he says pea is no way to start.”

“Thirty years,” said June. “Of barley.”

“Thirty years. And they all knew me down there, the whole time. The packets don’t go on till the midnight bell, and the crews don’t come off till the packets go on. They set their suppers by me, June. They knew exactly whose face it was.” Wren sat back. “That’s the end. You let me get to it.”

“I always do,” said June. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I’ve been sending you supper in my head every night for five weeks.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad somebody’s been doing it with soup.”

“So am I,” said Wren. Wren looked up at the bell and stood. “Ten to midnight. Stay where you are. It’s best from the table.”

* * *

June had heard the Bell Gate before, on still nights at the Wayside, a small far note coming up through the cloud. She had stood at the rail and thought, that’s Wren, and gone back in to wash up.

This was not that. This one came down through the table and up through her shoes. Her five bowls rang along with it, each one a different note, and the spoon jumped in the potatoes. Twelve times the bell rang, right over her head, and twelve times the bowls answered.

And at the bottom of the steps, Cloudbreak went to supper. Shutters banged open along the quays. Lamps came up on the stalls. Steam rose off a hundred hot paper packets, and the crews came down off the ships, all of it at once, as if the bell had a string tied to every one of them.

Wren came down the stair rubbing one shoulder. “Heavier,” said Wren.

A boy came up the steps from the harbor two at a time, whistling, with a bowl in each hand. One bowl was white. The other was blue, with a chip in the rim the shape of a thumbnail.

“Evening,” said the boy. “Dad says there’s company.”

June looked at the two bowls, and then she counted. That made seven bowls on the table, which was one better than the basket lid had allowed. June looked happier than she had looked in five weeks.

She filled her empty fifth bowl with pudding and gave it to the boy, because he had turned up, and that was what it was for. He ate it on the top step.

Then June picked up the white bowl and tried Barley Hatch’s soup. Wren watched her over the blue one.

“I’d have sent better soup,” said June. She had another spoonful, and then a third. “Very nearly as good,” she said. “Don’t tell him I said very.” She pushed the white bowl across the table. “You finish it. Three spoonfuls of somebody else’s soup is plenty for one night.”

When it was time to go, June picked up the blue bowl, which Wren had already emptied, and turned it over. BELL, in capitals, with four arms on the E. She could have taken it home. It was her bowl, and it had been her bowl a good deal longer than Wren had been ringing anything.

She set it back on the ledge, chip outward, ready to go down empty in the morning.

“It’s got BELL on it,” she said. “I’m not going to argue with chalk.”

Empty bowls stack, and Wren tied the basket shut with the good string from the stair. It held. June did not do the face once. She said she would come again, and then she said it again from the road. Then she went home up the long road to the Wayside, under the lamps, with her basket on her arm. She was a little sorry to be going.

Wren sat down under the bell with Barley’s white bowl, still half full and still warm. It was a quarter past midnight, and Wren could not think of a single thing to complain about. There would be one ready by six in the morning, because six was far too early to be polite. Tonight Wren just ate the soup.