Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Three: The Village Hall Section

He began the village hall section in July.

He had not begun it earlier because he had not been ready. The practice had a principle about the beginning — the section could not begin until the attending was complete, until the correspondent had given what the drawing needed, until the pocket notebooks held enough of the inside view to make the first honest line possible. He had visited the hall in June and read Catherine's letter about Dorothy's funeral reception and sat with both for the weeks between. He had been ready to begin in July.

He began with the south wall.

This was not the usual beginning. He usually began the section with the floor — the horizontal datum, the ground, the line from which everything else was measured. He had begun the coastal section with the floor and the three-generation house section with the floor and the library section with the floor. He began the village hall section with the south wall because the south wall was the correction's origin — the floor-to-ceiling windows, the winter sun line, Dorothy's funeral reception divided, the room unable to find its correct size. The south wall was the building's most urgent correspondent.

He drew the south wall in pencil first. The existing south wall — the floor-to-ceiling windows in three bays, the glass from the floor to the ceiling plane, the openings that had been admitting the wrong light at the wrong height for forty years. He drew the existing condition accurately before drawing the correction. He had learned this from the coastal section — the wrong window drawn before the right window, the existing condition honoured in the drawing before the correction replaced it.

He thought: the existing condition must be drawn honestly before the correction is possible.

He drew the correction over the existing. The solid wall at the lower metre — the masonry filling the lower bay of each south window, the glass beginning at a metre from the floor, the direct light lifted above the sitting head. He drew the new sill line in pencil across the section and looked at it.

The corrected south wall. The light enters at a metre — above the head of the sitting person, below the head of the standing person. The light enters the upper portion of the room, diffusing across the ceiling plane, descending into the room softly. The winter sun at the low angle enters above the sill and crosses the upper wall rather than the floor — the sun line on the upper wall, not on the lower floor, not dividing the gathering.

He thought about the upper wall sun line. He thought about the February sun in the corrected hall — the low winter angle entering through the metre sill and crossing the ceiling and the upper north wall, the brightness above the gathering rather than across the floor between them. He thought about Dorothy's eighty-three in the corrected hall — the winter light above their heads, the room finding its correct size for the grief, the northern and southern halves both available, the gathering not compressed.

He thought: the corrected south wall holds Dorothy's eighty-three together.

He drew the floor. The existing timber floor — the worn centre, the unworn edges, the forty years of attending written into the surface. He drew the worn centre as a tone in the pencil — the darker pencil in the centre of the floor where the use had accumulated, the lighter pencil at the edges where the feet had not been. He had not done this before in a section. He had not drawn the evidence of use into the floor of a section. He drew it now because the floor had told him something the walls could not: the floor had drawn the attending people's paths across the forty years and the section needed to receive that drawing.

He thought: the floor is a correspondent. The section must acknowledge it.

He drew the kitchen wall. The existing kitchen wall — the solid division between the preparation room and the large room, the service hatch at the tray height, the opening that showed the kitchen person the stacked chairs rather than the gathering. He drew the hatch in its existing position. He looked at it in the section — the hatch centred in the kitchen wall, the view through the hatch to the north wall.

He thought about the repositioned hatch. He had been thinking about the repositioned hatch since the June visit — the hatch moved along the kitchen wall to the position where the kitchen person could see the inhabited room, the gathering visible through the opening, the correspondence possible. He thought about the repositioned hatch in the section and drew it in pencil. The hatch moved fifteen centimetres along the wall, a small movement that changed the view entirely.

He looked at the repositioned hatch in the section. From the new position the kitchen person could see across the large room — not the north wall with the stacked chairs but the south wall with the corrected windows, the light entering at the correct height above the gathering. He thought about the kitchen person at the repositioned hatch looking into the corrected hall — the light above and the gathering below and the room finding its correct size.

He thought: the repositioned hatch gives the kitchen person the corrected room.

He thought about the two corrections operating together — the high south window and the repositioned hatch. He thought about the two corrections as the two attending conditions of the village hall: the gathering's attending condition and the preparation person's attending condition. He thought about the high south window as the correction for the gathering and the repositioned hatch as the correction for the preparation person. He thought about the two corrections as a correspondence — each one answering a different attending need, the two needs in relation through the shared room.

He drew through the morning. The floor plan emerged beside the section — the large room and the kitchen and the storage and the door positions and the covered entrance. He drew the covered entrance carefully — the village hall had an existing covered porch, a lean-to structure that gave the arriving person a moment before the hall, the between-time of the arrival. He thought about the between-time of the arrival — the person coming from the car park or the street and entering the covered porch before the hall, the brief covered moment between the outside and the inside.

He thought about Dorothy's eighty-three arriving through the covered porch on the February afternoon. He thought about the covered moment — the arriving in ones and twos through the porch, the gathering of the coats and the low voices and the recognition before the hall. He thought about the covered porch as the threshold of the gathering — the between-time before the between-time, the covered approach that prepared the attending person for the room.

He thought: the covered porch is already correct. The threshold is already honest.

He drew the covered porch as it was — not corrected, the existing porch acknowledged as the threshold already doing its work. He drew it with care because it had been doing its work for forty years without being noticed and the section should notice it.

He pinned the section and the plan above the drawing board at the end of the morning. He stood back and looked at both.

The village hall in section. The corrected south wall with the metre sill. The worn centre of the floor. The repositioned hatch. The covered porch as the honest threshold. The kitchen wall in its relation to the large room. He looked at the section and thought about Dorothy's sixty-three years of the village and Catherine's list of uses and the eighty-three people and the room unable to find its correct size and the toddler group self-organising away from the light.

He thought: the section holds all of them.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: village hall section begun. The south wall first — the existing condition drawn before the correction. The corrected sill at one metre: the winter sun line lifted to the upper wall. The floor drawn with the wear — the forty years of attending acknowledged in the section. The repositioned hatch: fifteen centimetres along the wall, the kitchen person given the corrected room. The covered porch is already correct — the threshold already honest. The section holds Dorothy's sixty-three years and the toddler group and the eighty-three and Catherine's list. The section begins with the correspondence.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Three