Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Seven: The Village Hall Section Completed

He finished the village hall section in November.

It had taken from July — the pencil south wall, the worn floor, the repositioned hatch — to November to arrive at the full drawing. Four months, the same duration as the coastal section. He had not planned for four months. The drawing had taken what it needed and he had attended to it across the July and the August and the September and the October while the coastal school was being built and the planning permission was awaited and Joseph's letter arrived and the children sorted themselves on the Monday morning after the half-term. He had attended to the village hall section in the margins of the other correspondence and in November he had looked at the drawing and found it complete.

He drew it in ink on a Thursday. The mapping pen, the single weight line. He had been through the pencil corrections across the four months — the south wall and the hatch and the floor and the covered porch and the kitchen in their pencil states, each revised and reconsidered and confirmed before the ink. He drew the ink on a November Thursday and the inland November light was on the drawing board and he drew without stopping for three hours.

The corrected south wall first. The solid lower metre — the masonry that would fill the lower bay of the south windows, the glass beginning at a metre from the floor. He drew the new sill line in ink across the south wall and thought about Dorothy's eighty-three and the February sun line on the floor and the room unable to find its correct size. He drew the sill as the line that returned the room to the gathering.

He drew the floor. The timber floor in section — the worn centre indicated by a difference in the line, the ink slightly thicker in the central portion of the floor as he had done in pencil, the attending people's forty years of paths made visible in the section drawing. He had not done this in a section before — the worn floor drawn as the floor's own correspondence, the material attending to the use. He drew it in ink now with the same care he had given it in pencil, the floor given its voice in the honest drawing.

He thought: the floor has been a correspondent for forty years. The section receives its letter.

He drew the kitchen wall and the repositioned hatch. The hatch fifteen centimetres along the wall from its existing position — the small movement that changed everything. He drew the new hatch position and then drew the sight line from the kitchen person at the hatch through the opening into the large room. In a section you could not draw a sight line — the section was a cut, a slice, the building shown in its cut condition. But he drew the implied sight line in his mind as he drew the hatch: the kitchen person at the new position looking through the corrected opening into the corrected hall, the high south window above the gathering, the room finding its correct size.

He thought: the repositioned hatch and the corrected south window are one correction. They answer each other.

He drew the covered porch. He drew it with the attention he had decided to give it — the existing threshold honoured in the section, the honest porch drawn as carefully as the corrected elements. He drew the roof of the porch and the timber posts and the step and the mat and the door into the hall. He drew the moment of arrival — the covered threshold, the between-time of the approach, the preparation of the attending person before the room.

He thought about drawing the moment of arrival. He thought about the section as the inside view — the section always looking from within the building outward or within the building inward, the cut revealing the interior. He thought about the covered porch as the section's threshold — the moment where the outside and the inside met in the drawing, the cut revealing the approach as well as the arrival.

He thought: the section that includes the threshold is more complete than the section that begins at the wall.

He drew through the morning. The full village hall section emerged in ink across the cartridge paper — the covered porch and the south wall and the large room and the kitchen wall and the hatch and the floor and the ceiling and the door positions and the storage. He drew the section in four hours and then put down the pen and looked at it.

The village hall in its corrected condition. The section showed the metre sill on the south wall and the hatch repositioned and the worn floor and the honest porch. It showed the large room in its corrected relation to the light — the February sun line no longer on the floor but on the upper wall, the gathering no longer divided. It showed the kitchen person at the hatch with the corrected view — the corrected hall visible through the repositioned opening.

He thought: the section holds Catherine's list.

He thought about Catherine's list — the polling station and the funeral reception and the toddler group and the amateur dramatics and the monthly lunch for the older residents. He thought about each of them in the corrected hall. He thought about the toddler group no longer compressing into the northern half and the funeral reception no longer divided and the polling station in the full room and the monthly lunch for the older residents with the southern light above their heads and the kitchen person visible to the room through the repositioned hatch.

He thought: every item on Catherine's list is better served by the corrected south wall.

He thought about one more thing. He had been thinking about it since the June visit — the thing the section did not yet show. He had been thinking about the kitchen. He had corrected the hatch position and the view from the kitchen into the hall. He had not thought about the kitchen window. He thought about the kitchen window now — the existing kitchen, the preparation room, the window above the sink. He thought about the kitchen person at the sink with the window above it. He thought about what the kitchen person saw from the sink.

He went to the plan. He looked at the plan and traced the kitchen window — the north-facing kitchen window, the window that looked from the kitchen into the service yard. The service yard — the bins and the delivery space and the car park beyond. He thought about the kitchen person at the sink looking at the bins and the car park. He thought about the between-time kitchen in the community centre and the south-east window above the counter and the field in the peripheral.

He thought: the village hall kitchen person looks at the wrong thing from the sink.

He thought about the correct view from the kitchen sink. He thought about the village hall and its setting — the field behind the south wall, the field that faced the south windows of the large room. He thought about whether the kitchen could have a south window — whether the kitchen plan allowed a south opening, whether the south wall of the kitchen was available for a window.

He went to the plan. He looked at the south wall of the kitchen. There was no existing opening — the south wall of the kitchen was solid, the field invisible from the preparation room. He drew a window in pencil on the south wall of the kitchen — a modest window, not the full correction of the large room's south wall but a single modest opening above the kitchen counter, the counter along the south wall, the field in the peripheral of the person at work.

He thought about the field in the peripheral of the person at work. He thought about Raymond and the between-time kitchen and the field waiting at the edge of the attending. He thought about the village hall kitchen person with the field in the peripheral — the field not demanded, not required, waiting at the south window above the counter while the sandwiches were made and the tea was prepared.

He thought: the village hall kitchen person deserves the field.

He drew the south kitchen window in pencil and pinned it to the board beside the ink section. He looked at both.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: village hall section complete in ink. The south wall in ink — the metre sill, the winter sun line returned to the upper wall, Dorothy's eighty-three held together. The floor with the worn centre — the forty years of attending given a voice. The repositioned hatch — the kitchen person given the corrected room. The honest porch is drawn as the section's threshold. One further correction in pencil: the south kitchen window above the counter — the field in the peripheral of the preparation person. The section is nearly complete. The kitchen window to confirm with Catherine.

He wrote to Catherine that evening: the section is complete in ink with one remaining question. The kitchen looks at the service yard from the north window. I believe the kitchen person deserves the field. There is a south wall available. Could we put a window in the south kitchen wall above the counter — the field in the peripheral of the person at work? I will wait for your answer before the ink.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Seven