Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-One: The Sixth Section

The sixth section was drawn on a Saturday in March.

He and Ellie drew it together — the second drawing session at the long table, the two chairs, the morning light through the office south window at the March angle, the light higher than January, the first warmth of the returning year on the drawing surface. He thought about the March light as the commission's correct light — the community centre drawn in its February and corrected in its March, the section arriving at the spring before the spring arrived in the allotment.

He had the fifth section pinned above the board. He had the commission notebook open at forty-three pages. He had Raymond's words and Margaret's words and the south edge and the between-time bench and the wider corner window and the kitchen counter needing to move back two hundred millimetres.

Ellie arrived at nine with the corrected sketchbook — the fifth section revised, the counter moved back, the peripheral view restored. She put the sketchbook on the table and they looked at it together.

"Ready?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

He began drawing.

He drew the south face first — the limestone wall and the south window at forty centimetres and the bench at the south face outside the building, the between-time bench, the outdoor seat that Ellie had added in the fifth section and that remained in the sixth. He thought about the bench as the section's summer now confirmed — the element that had arrived in the fifth section without instruction and that had survived into the sixth because it was correct.

He drew the covered approach. The no-commitment entry — the level floor, the coat hooks, the timber panel. He drew the timber panel with the care he gave the honest elements: the vertical boards with their slight gaps, the living surface, the material that breathed and held the warmth. He thought about the September child at the timber panel — not the school September child now, the community centre September child, the first person who would come to the community centre not knowing whether they were arriving and who would put their hand on the timber panel and find warmth and go through the door.

He drew the weight-bearing room. In the sixth section he clarified what the fifth section had begun — the room wider than it was tall, the ceiling at two metres forty, the width at six metres and then a little more. He thought about Margaret's eleven years of failed schemes and the rooms that gave space but not reason. He drew the weight-bearing room as the room of the reason — the December sun line crossing the floor from the south window, the gathering room that breathed, the in-between room of the village.

He drew the north wall. The timber boards, the vertical grain, the material from the school hall chain. He drew it and Ellie said: "The timber on the north wall and the timber panel at the entry — they should be the same boards. The same timber species. The same width and gap. So the person at the entry and the person inside are reading the same material."

He thought about the same timber at the entry and inside. He thought about the material continuity — not the floor material continuous from outside to inside, which he had drawn in the covered approach, but the wall material continuous from the entry to the gathering room. The person at the timber panel touching the outside of what they would find inside.

He thought: the entry panel and the north wall are the same surface, separated by the building between them.

He thought: the building is inside the material, not the material inside the building.

He drew both in the same timber specification — the same note in the margin, the same species, the same dimension. He thought about this as the section's most precise statement of the entry — the person at the timber panel is already touching the north wall of the weight-bearing room. The outside and the inside are made of the same thing.

Ellie was looking at the kitchen.

"The kitchen hatch," she said.

He looked at her. "Tell me."

"The kitchen needs a hatch," she said. "An opening in the wall between the kitchen and the weight-bearing room. So the person making the tea can hand the cup through without going around. And so the people in the weight-bearing room can see the kitchen without going in."

He thought about the hatch. He thought about Raymond saying: the kitchen visible from the weight-bearing room. He thought about the person at the south-east counter visible to the gathering — Raymond in the between-time kitchen still present in the room. He had drawn the kitchen connected to the weight-bearing room through the opening in the south-east corner — the person walking between the two. The hatch was different: the connection made through the wall, the person and the room in contact without the person having to move.

He thought about the hatch as the honest window between the rooms. Not the view — the passage. The cup of tea passed through the wall. The material present on both sides.

He thought about the window between the children's corner and the in-between room — Ellie's window, the section of the growing up. He thought about the hatch as the same principle in the kitchen — the opening between the working and the gathering, the two rooms in contact through the shared wall.

He thought: Ellie has been drawing windows between rooms since the sketchbook.

He drew the hatch. He drew it at the counter height — the opening at the working surface level, wide enough to pass a tray, the wall between the kitchen and the weight-bearing room holding the passage between them.

He looked at the sixth section at midday.

The community centre in its sixth version — the limestone south face with the bench outside and the south window at forty centimetres and the December sun line and the level entry and the timber panel and the weight-bearing room and the kitchen with the hatch and the between-time window and the children's corner with the wider north window and the bench and the step and the in-between room at the in-between ceiling with the table for four and the east window to watch the last light go. The community centre with all its attending accumulated across six sections.

He thought: this is the section to submit.

He thought about the previous times he had thought this — the third section, the fourth section. He thought about the honest section always being in the process of becoming more honest. He thought about the sixth section and asked himself whether there would be a seventh.

He looked at the section. He looked at it with the attending of eleven years of inside views, the practitioner's reading, the body in the room. He looked at the entry and the kitchen and the corner and the hatch.

He thought: the sixth section is sufficient.

He did not think it was final. He thought: there will be corrections from the planning authority and the structural engineer. He thought: the build will produce its honest corrections, the way the three-generation approach beam had produced the steel in the sandstone soffit and the platform recess had been corrected to the hundred centimetres. He thought: the building will be truer than the section.

But the section was sufficient to begin the process. Sufficient to go to the authority and the engineer and the parish council. Sufficient to carry the attendance to the people who had not been in the allotment on the December Saturday.

He thought about the second test. He thought about the section carrying the attendance to the person who was not there. He looked at the sixth section and thought: Margaret will read this and find her between-time. Raymond will find his kitchen and his between-time bench. The parish council will find the reason the wrong schemes could not give.

He thought: the sixth section passes the second test.

He said: "This is the section."

Ellie looked at the drawing. The clear assessment, the settled practitioner.

"Yes," she said.

He thought about yes as the confirmation — the same word Frances had used at the step into the threshold room, the complete agreement, the affirmation without qualification.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-One