The station bells are rung by the mobilising unit and by nothing else, and the old bell counter above the watch room door counts the rounds, which is how the old hands knew a big job from the count before the slip printed. With the unit isolated at its breaker the bells ring, at twenty to four, and the counter records eleven rounds, which is the count of the biggest job in the station's history.
I am the station manager, and the bells are the one thing in the building that everybody hears.
How the bells are rung.
The mobilising unit receives the message from control and rings the bells in rounds, one round per appliance being sent, and prints the slip. A counter above the watch room door, which is older than the unit and older than me, counts the rounds mechanically, and it has done since the bells were rung by hand.
The unit is the only thing wired to the bells. Isolate it at its breaker and the bells are dead.
At twenty to four, on a handful of nights a month, the bells ring.
The unit's log has nothing. Control has nothing. The counter above the door shows eleven rounds, which is more appliances than this station has ever housed.
I have had the unit isolated at the breaker, with the lock on it and the key in my pocket, and the bells rang, at twenty to four, eleven rounds, and the counter counted them.
Eleven rounds is a specific thing. It is the count on the counter's own brass plate, in a scratched line under the glass, with a date in 1993, and the count of the job that night, which sent everything this station had and everything the next two had, to the terraces, and which is why there is a plaque by the door.
What has been checked.
The bells, which are two solenoid bells on the same circuit, and which have been disconnected at the terminals. With the wires off the bells, at twenty to four, the bells rang, eleven rounds, and the counter counted, and I stood under them with the wires in my hand.
The counter. It is mechanical. It is driven by the bell circuit. With the circuit dead it should not turn, and it turned, eleven times, while I watched the pawl move.
The building. There is no other bell in it, and the sound is the sound of those bells, from where they are, loud enough to wake the watch, which it does.
What the watch does.
They get up. The bells ring and the watch comes down the pole and stands in the bay by the appliances in their kit and waits for a slip that does not print, and after a minute I stand them down, and they go back up, and nobody says anything, because the oldest hand told them on their first night what the eleven rounds are, and after that it is not talked about.
I have not stopped them coming down. A crew that learns to stay in bed when the bells ring is a crew that will one night be wrong.
What is done about it.
The bells are logged as spurious operation, and the brigade's engineers have rewired the circuit, replaced the bells, and replaced the counter, which was a mistake, because the old counter is in a box in my office now and the new one, which started at zero, shows a count that is eleven higher than the unit's log every month.
What I do.
I run the station.
The one thing I have changed is that at twenty to four, on the nights I am on, I am already in the bay.
I go down at half past three and stand by the pole, and when the bells ring I am there when the watch comes down, and I say the stand down at the top of the count rather than after a minute of waiting, so they are back in bed sooner.
The reason is a night in the winter when I was in the bay at the count and the eleventh round ended and the doors opened. Both bay doors, on their motors, which the unit drives and which were isolated with it, rolled up to the yard, and the yard lights came on, and the appliances' engines, both of them, started, with the keys on the hooks in the watch room, and idled for the length of time it takes a crew to board, and stopped, and the doors came down, and the watch stood beside me in the bay and watched it, and nobody said a word until the youngest one said, quietly, that he supposed they had gone.