Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-One: Catherine's Letter

Catherine's letter about the funeral reception came in the last week of June.

She had taken ten days to write it. He had expected this. The funeral reception was not a thing to be described quickly — the letter required the thinking, the sitting with the memory, the arriving with the thoughts already in order. He had waited for ten days and the letter had come on a Friday morning and he had read it at the drawing board before the day's other work began.

Catherine wrote about the funeral reception for a woman named Dorothy who had lived in the village for sixty-three years. She wrote that the reception had been held in February — the February hall, the winter, the short afternoon. Eighty-three people had come. She wrote about the eighty-three without making it a number — she wrote about them as the accumulation of Dorothy's sixty-three years in the village, the people who had received something from Dorothy across the decades and who had come to the hall in February to sit with the loss of her.

He thought about the eighty-three as the accumulation of sixty-three years. He thought about Dorothy's sixty-three years of the village as the correspondence — the sixty-three years of the attending and the giving and the receiving, the accumulation of all the cups of tea and the conversations at the gate and the letters written and the things carried across the road and the quiet presence over six decades. He thought about the eighty-three people as the embodiment of that correspondence — the people who had been in it with Dorothy and who had come to the hall to sit with its ending.

He thought: a funeral reception is the correspondence of a life held in a room.

Catherine wrote about the light. She wrote that the February afternoon light had come through the south windows at the low February angle — not the summer glare but the winter light, the light at the low angle entering through the floor-to-ceiling glass and lying across the floor in a long band. She wrote that this band of winter light had bisected the room — the light running from the south windows across the floor to the north wall, the room divided by the brightness into two sides, the people who sat on the east side of the room and the people who sat on the west side of the room unable to look across at each other without looking into the low February sun.

He thought about the room divided by the winter light. He thought about the February sun at the low angle entering the floor-to-ceiling south windows and lying across the floor — the long winter sun line, the light that the summer blinds did not address because the summer blinds were for the summer and the winter light at the low angle came in below the blind line. He thought about the eighty-three people divided by the sun line, unable to see each other across the room without the winter brightness between them.

He thought: the room could not hold the eighty-three together. The light divided them.

Catherine wrote about where people had gathered. She wrote that without knowing why — without anyone directing them — the eighty-three had gathered in the northern half of the room, away from the south windows, as far from the low February light as the room allowed. She wrote that the southern half of the hall had been largely empty through the reception, the chairs there unused, the tables with the sandwiches and the tea approached briefly and returned from. She wrote that the effect had been of a much smaller gathering in a much larger room — the eighty-three compressed into the northern half, the southern half open and unused and lit.

He thought about the eighty-three in the northern half of the room. He thought about the bodies self-organising away from the light — the same self-organisation he had watched in the toddler group on the Wednesday morning, the bodies knowing the correct position and finding it without instruction. He thought about the June toddler group and the February funeral reception both self-organising to the northern half of the same hall, both finding the same refuge from the light that the building had failed to manage.

He thought: the building has been organising its gatherings wrongly for forty years.

Catherine wrote one more thing. She wrote at the end of the letter, after the eighty-three and the winter light and the compressed gathering in the northern half: the hall felt too large for the grief and too small for the company. She wrote: I have thought about this often since February. I believe the room could not find its correct size. The eighty-three filled the northern half and the southern half was empty and the room was neither full nor empty. It was divided.

He read this three times. The room could not find its correct size. He thought about the correct size of the room — not the physical dimension but the experienced dimension, the room felt from the inside by the attending person in their attending condition. He thought about the divided room as the room that could not find its correct size because the light had imposed a division the gathering had not chosen — the eighty-three wanting to be together and the light separating them, the room's experienced size determined by the light rather than by the gathering.

He thought: the honest room finds its correct size from the gathering. The wrong room imposes a size on the gathering.

He thought about the correction. He thought about the high south window — the sill at ninety centimetres or a metre, the direct light entering above the head height, the winter sun line lifted off the floor and onto the upper wall where it could not divide the gathering. He thought about the eighty-three in the corrected hall — the winter light above their heads, the room finding its size from the eighty-three, the northern and southern halves of the room both available, the grief not compressed into one end.

He thought: the correction gives the room back to the gathering.

He thought about the correct size of the room for grief. He thought about the weight-bearing room in the community centre — the room that had received Frances from the next village who had been looking for it for twenty years. He thought about the weight-bearing room's ceiling height — the height that breathed, the room neither tall nor low — as the room finding its correct size for the between-time gathering. He thought about the village hall requiring a different correct size — the large room, the room for eighty-three, the room that needed to find its size not through the intimate ceiling but through the management of the light that had been dividing it.

He began to draw in the pocket notebook. Not the section — not yet — but the plan. He drew the plan of the hall from memory and his visit notes: the large room, the kitchen wall, the south windows, the door positions, the storage. He drew the south wall and marked where the windows were — the floor-to-ceiling openings, the three bays of glass. He drew a line across the windows at ninety centimetres and thought about the wall below that line — the solid wall at the lower level, the light entering only above the head height.

He thought about the solid lower wall. He thought about the solid lower wall as the surface the room had not had — the wall below the window line, the surface for the sitting body, the surface that did not demand the eye go to the brightness. He thought about the south wall with the lower metre solid and the window above — the wall that could receive a chair against it, the chair against the south wall facing north into the room, the sitting person with the south wall behind them and the light above them and the room in front of them.

He thought: the corrected south wall gives the room a seat.

He wrote to Catherine that evening: your letter about Dorothy's reception has given me the correction. The room could not find its correct size because the light divided the gathering. The correction is the high south window — the solid wall below ninety centimetres, the light entering above the head height, the winter sun line lifted off the floor. The corrected hall can hold the eighty-three together. The grief will not be compressed into one end. I am ready to begin the section.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: Catherine's letter — Dorothy's funeral reception. Eighty-three people, sixty-three years of the village. The February sun lines across the floor dividing the gathering. The bodies self-organise to the northern half — the same self-organisation as the toddler group. The hall organized its gatherings wrongly for forty years. The room cannot find its correct size — the light imposing the division. The correction: the high south window, the solid lower wall, the light above the head, the room returned to the gathering. The section begins.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-One