Westminster

Westminster



Elizabeth Tower remembers to this day how for two long years, almost a century ago, Westminster Bell's chiming was gone from London. She vowed then never to let him go, and her bell has been at her side ever since.


Elizabeth shudders as Ben's deep ring resound through her frame. Waves of pleasure crash into her, cascading down her impressive height and into her concrete base. With every stroke, her spire shakes, and the streets of London move below them. Her faces glow warmly in the midnight air, and a small part of her thinks how lucky she is, to have a bell so faithful to her through her long life.

A final reverberating impact sounds in the night, and Elizabeth feels it from her foundation to the tip of her spire. As the white-hot light fades, she stretches and feels her stairway creaking a little. The soft beat of her thirteen-foot pendulum ticks on, and she listens to the soft clicking of her double three-legged gravity escapement as she basks in the afterglow of another year gone by. It should be an happy occasion, she muses, breaking in a new year, but Elizabeth can't help but feel every single one of her many years.



Her sister Victoria is tall and stately and strong - and perhaps surprisingly bookish, but Lizzie can never find it in herself to be jealous. As sisters they've always been close, and one and a half centuries together have only strengthened their bonds. Every time she feels like collapsing, or after she's rained on again, or whenever life throws a spanner in her life - Elizabeth panics incoherently when her routines are interrupted - it's Victoria who holds her tightly, tells her again and again that everything's going to be all right, listening attentively to her choked sobs and brushing away the warm rivulets that run down her faces.

Elizabeth loves her sister, loves the warm, caring side of her that many fail to see beneath her impassive facade and steel-hard will. She doesn't like that she has to rely on her underappreciated little sister so much, when she gets all the popularity and fame. Technically it's Ben that's famous, but it's her that people see and remember, and it's her, not her bell, that people think of when Big Ben shows up somewhere.

When Vicky just smiles and says that it's okay and she doesn't mind and she's happy to stay in the archives and read, Lizzy can hear the slight waver in her sister's usually smooth voice, and feels all the pain her sister locks up and tries to hide away behind endless lines of numbers and words. Elizabeth wants her baby sister to be happy too, and when she cries, she cries enough for both of them.



Ben, bright and optimistic and happy, is the counterpart to Victoria's stoicness. He's loud and exuberant, and knows all of Lizzy's soft spots. His tower was nearly inconsolate with worry when he returned from the Great War, and then and there they promised each other never to be apart again. There have been hiccups over the years, but whenever their routine is disturbed, Ben gives her his lopsided grin with his chipped tooth and chases her fears away.

Although long years of experience have taught him when to stop, he still goes overboard on special occasions. When asked, Elizabeth says it's cheesy, but when his steady strokes reduce her to a quivering pile of bricks, it's the best thing in the world.  Victoria pretends not to care, but when nobody is looking, she lets herself smile a litte. Ben has been good for her sister, even if it leaves herself more than a little lonely. She knows she can deal with loneliness, but Elizabeth would be little more than an empty shell if she lost her bell.



No-one has ever seen her cry, but in Victoria's sprawling collections, there are more than a few books with pages where the ink runs off the page in little streaks.