Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Nine: Catherine's Answer

Catherine's answer about the south kitchen window came in the first week of February.

She had taken three weeks. He had expected this — the committee chair who thought carefully before committing, the person who received a proposal and sat with it and brought it to others before replying. He had waited three weeks and the letter had arrived on a Wednesday morning.

Catherine wrote: yes. But she wrote more than yes.

She wrote that she had taken the question to two members of the kitchen committee — the women who organised the monthly lunch for the older residents, who knew the kitchen across its full use better than anyone else on the committee. She wrote that she had asked them: if there were a window on the south wall above the counter, looking out to the field, would that change how the kitchen felt to work in? She wrote that both women had been quiet for a moment and then one of them had said: we have always felt cut off in there.

He read this twice. We have always felt cut off there. He thought about the village hall kitchen in its existing condition — the north window looking at the bins and the service yard, the solid south wall, the preparation room sealed from the field and from the large room except through the service hatch. He thought about the cut -off as the kitchen's condition — the cut-off kitchen, the preparation room that did not know what was happening in the hall and did not know what was happening in the field. He thought about the kitchen person who had been making the sandwiches and the tea for the monthly lunch for the older residents for however many years the monthly lunch had been held and had felt, through all of those years, cut off.

He thought: the kitchen has been the wrong correspondent for forty years.

He thought about the correspondent who had been excluded from the correspondence — the kitchen person at the service hatch looking at the stacked chairs, at the wall, at the service yard through the north window. He thought about the excluded correspondent as the attending person the section had not yet fully drawn — the person whose attending the practice had begun to address with the repositioned hatch and was now completing with the south kitchen window. He thought about the two corrections together: the repositioned hatch giving the kitchen person the view into the hall and the south kitchen window giving the kitchen person the view to the field. The cut-off kitchen re-joined.

He thought: the two corrections end the forty years of the cut-off.

Catherine wrote more. She wrote that the second woman on the kitchen committee had asked a further question after the first woman's answer. She wrote that the second woman had asked: would we be able to see the field while we washed up? Catherine had said yes — the window above the counter, the field visible to the person at the sink. The second woman had said: then we would know what the weather was doing.

He thought about knowing what the weather was doing. He thought about the kitchen person at the sink knowing the weather — the field in the south window, the summer field and the winter field and the October field and the January field, the weather visible across the seasons in the periphery of the preparation person. He thought about the community centre kitchen and Raymond's field in the peripheral — the field waiting, not competing, the patient offering. He thought about the village hall kitchen person with the weather in the peripheral — not only the field but the weather of the field, the rain and the wind and the October and the February and the sun on the summer ground.

He thought: the south kitchen window gives the kitchen person the year.

He thought about the year given through a window. He thought about the year of the attending — the practice's deepest aspiration, the inside view across the full year, the room or the landscape known from all the way in through all the seasons. He thought about the kitchen person washing up after the monthly lunch for the older residents in January and knowing the January field and in July knowing the July field and in October knowing the October field. He thought about the year of the attending made available through the kitchen window to the person who had felt cut off for forty years.

He thought: the south kitchen window is the year of the attending given to the preparation person.

He picked up the mapping pen.

He drew the south kitchen window in ink. He drew it above the counter on the south wall — the window at counter height, the modest opening, the field in the peripheral of the person at work. He drew it in ink because Catherine had answered and the second woman on the kitchen committee had answered and the answer was yes and the window was confirmed and the section was now complete.

He looked at the village hall section in its completed state. The ink drawing on the cartridge paper, all elements now in ink: the covered porch and the corrected south wall with the metre sill and the large room with the worn floor and the kitchen wall and the repositioned hatch and the south kitchen window above the counter. The full correction. The full correspondence in the form of a drawing.

He thought: the section holds the monthly lunch and Dorothy's eighty-three and the toddler group and the two women on the kitchen committee who have felt cut off for forty years.

He thought about the two women on the kitchen committee. He thought about them as the practice's correspondents who had not written a letter — the correspondents who had been reached through Catherine's question, the kitchen knowledge arrived at secondhand but arrived at truly. He thought about the practice's correspondents as never only the named correspondents — the letters always reaching further than the person addressed, the knowledge always arriving from unexpected quarters. He thought about the two women as the practice's most recent correspondents, their answer coming in three weeks through Catherine, the cut-off and the weather given as the section's final confirmation.

He thought: the correspondence always reaches further than the letter.

He wrote the specifications across the following three days. The full specification for the village hall correction — the south wall masonry and the new sill and the glazing and the repositioned hatch and the timber counter along the south kitchen wall and the south kitchen window above it. He wrote the specifications in the careful language of the specification, the dimensions and the materials and the fixing methods and the tolerances. He wrote them as the correspondence translated into the builder's instruction — the attending visits and the pocket notebooks and Catherine's letters and the two women on the kitchen committee all arrived at last in the language the builder would need.

He thought about sending the section and the specification to Colin. He thought: Colin has built the coastal school. He knows the practice section. He knows how to read the honest drawing.

He wrote to Colin: I have a village hall. The section is complete. Can you read it?

He wrote to Catherine: the south kitchen window is in ink. The section is complete. I will send the full drawings next week. Thank you for the two women on the kitchen committee. They have given the kitchen its correct condition. The cut-off has been forty years. The correction is one window above a counter. The correspondence always reaches further than the letter.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: Catherine's answer — yes, with the kitchen committee. We have always felt cut off there. Then we would know what the weather was doing. The south kitchen window in ink — the year of the attending given to the preparation person. The village hall section is complete. The correspondence reached further than the letter — the two women reached through Catherine, the kitchen knowledge arrived truly. The specification written. Colin to read the drawings.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Nine