Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Seven: Raymond's Arrival

Raymond arrived at four o'clock.

He came through the covered approach alone — before the parish council, before Margaret's formal opening, before the village. He had come early in the way of people who have waited a long time for a thing and who need the first moment to be unwitnessed.

Daniel stood inside the weight-bearing room. He had positioned himself at the side — the correct position, the attending witness — and he watched Raymond come through the covered approach and put his hand on the timber panel.

Raymond's hand on the panel.

He thought about Ellie's hand on the panel in the October morning. He thought about the September child at Patrick's school and the panel was warm in the morning. He thought about the panel receiving hands — the correspondence of the hand on the timber, the body reading the building before the mind assembled the words.

Raymond stood with his hand on the panel for a long time. He did not look at Daniel through the glass. He stood in the covered approach with his hand on the warm timber and his face turned toward the field — the October field, the harvest completed, the between-time of the year.

He thought: Raymond is reading the panel the way the experienced body reads the honest material.

He thought: thirty years of between-time is sufficient preparation.

Raymond came through the door.

He stood in the weight-bearing room and said nothing. He looked at the south window — the wide low opening at forty centimetres, the October light on the limestone floor. He looked at the light on the limestone for a long time. Then he looked at the ceiling — the height that breathed, the room neither tall nor low, the height the body could trust.

Daniel stood at the side and said nothing.

Raymond walked to the south window. He did not stop at it — he walked past it, slowly, the way a person walks past something they intend to return to. He walked to the kitchen. He stood at the counter along the east wall and looked through the between-time window at the October field in the peripheral view. He stood there for several minutes without speaking.

He said: "You can see the field without looking at it."

"Yes," Daniel said. "The between-time window is for the peripheral view. The person at work keeps the field without attending to it directly. The field is always there."

Raymond was quiet. He was looking at the field in the peripheral — the October ground, the between-time of the year's field. He looked at it the way a person looks at something they have known for a long time without having the correct room for it.

He said: "I've been standing at a window for thirty years. I had to choose between work and the field."

"Yes," Daniel said.

Raymond turned from the window. He looked at Daniel with the attending look — the experienced person's full attention, the look that did not miss the face. He said: "The hatch."

They went to the hatch.

The counter-height hatch between the kitchen and the weight-bearing room — the opening at the height of the passed cup, the width of two cups side by side, the between-time threshold that the section had drawn and that Raymond had written about in the second letter, the hatch through which the tea would pass from the person who made it to the person who received it.

Raymond stood in the kitchen. Daniel stood in the weight-bearing room. Raymond looked through the hatch at Daniel and Daniel looked through the hatch at Raymond.

Raymond said: "This is where it happens."

"Yes," Daniel said.

He thought about the second letter — Raymond's description of the between-time, the tea made and the tea handed, the threshold between the person alone in the kitchen and the person arriving into the room. He thought about the hatch as the correspondence of the second letter made physical — the letter drawn into the building, the building receiving the letter and answering it in timber and limestone.

He thought: the hatch is the letter's honest answer.

Raymond put his hand on the counter beside the hatch. He said: "I'm going to make the first cup now. Before the village arrives. Before the ceremony."

Daniel said: "Yes."

He stood in the weight-bearing room and waited. He heard Raymond fill the kettle. He heard the kettle begin. He looked at the south window — the October light still on the limestone, the light having moved since the morning, the October angle advancing.

He thought about all the cups of tea not yet made in this kitchen. He thought about all the between-time people who had not yet arrived. He thought about the cups to come — the winter cups and the spring cups and the summer cups and Raymond at the counter making them, the field always in the peripheral.

He thought: the practice had drawn the first cup before it was made.

Raymond appeared at the hatch. He passed the cup through.

Daniel received it.

He stood in the weight-bearing room with the first cup of tea made in the between-time kitchen and the October light on the limestone and the field through the south window and Raymond on the other side of the hatch and said nothing. He held the cup. He felt the warmth of it.

He thought: this is the correspondence completed.

He thought: this is the correspondence beginning.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Seven