Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Eight: The Village Hall Correspondence

The first letter from the village hall committee came in May.

It had been preceded by a telephone call from a woman named Catherine who was the committee's chair. She had heard about the community centre — the between-time building, the weight-bearing room, the hatch — and had telephoned to ask whether the practice would consider the village hall. He had said yes. He had said: send me a letter first. Tell me about the hall you have now and tell me what is wrong with it. Catherine had said she would.

The letter arrived on a Thursday. He read it at the drawing board.

Catherine wrote about the existing hall — a nineteen-fifties building, the functional hall, the large room and the small kitchen and the storage and the car park. She wrote about the things the hall was used for: the parish council and the toddler group and the amateur dramatics and the fitness class and the polling station and the funeral reception and the wedding reception and the village fete committee and the monthly lunch for the older residents. She listed them without hierarchy, the polling station and the funeral reception and the toddler group given the same weight in the letter, the hall as the room that held the village across all its conditions.

He read the list and thought about the room that held the village across all its conditions. He thought about the between-time room and the weight-bearing room and the rooms he had designed for the specific correspondent — the library corner for the five-year-old and the east window for the sea children and the hatch for Raymond. He thought about the village hall as the room not for the specific attending but for the full range of the village's attending — the room that had to receive the funeral reception and the toddler group without asking either to be the other.

He thought: the village hall is the most demanding correspondent.

He thought about the demands of the room that held everything. He thought about the community centre's between-time specificity — the room designed for a specific condition, the weight-bearing room for the between-time gathering, the kitchen for the peripheral field. He thought about the village hall as a different problem: the room that could not be specific because it was required to be general, the room whose specificity lay not in the attending condition it prepared but in the quality with which it received all conditions.

He thought: the village hall's attendance is the attendance of the full village.

Catherine had written more. She had written about what was wrong with the existing hall. She had written with the directness of the person who has been in committee with a difficult building for many years and has accumulated a precise account of its failures. She wrote that the large room had no natural light on the north side and too much unshaded light on the south — the south windows floor to ceiling, the afternoon sun making the room unusable in summer without drawing the blinds, the room choosing between the light and the usability. She wrote that the kitchen was entirely separate from the large room, behind a wall with a service hatch, the person in the kitchen unable to hear the room and the room unable to hear the person in the kitchen.

He stopped at the service hatch.

He thought about the service hatch in the existing village hall — the wall between the kitchen and the room, the hatch for the serving, the person in the kitchen behind the wall. He thought about the community centre hatch — the correspondence hatch, the cup as the letter, the threshold that made the passing into an event. He thought about the distance between the service hatch and the correspondence hatch: the same opening in the same wall performing entirely different functions because of the height and the width and the relation to the rooms on either side.

He thought: the difference between the service hatch and the correspondence hatch is the difference between the functional building and the honest building.

He thought about this for a long time. He thought about the village hall's existing hatch as the functional hatch — the correct height for the tray, the correct width for the plates, the opening designed for the efficient passing of the catered food from the production kitchen to the receiving room. He thought about the community centre hatch as the honest hatch — the correct height for the cup, the correct width for two cups side by side, the opening designed for the correspondence of the between-time.

He thought: the honest hatch is not more efficient. The honest hatch is more true.

Catherine had written about the funeral reception specifically. She had written that the funeral reception was the hall's most difficult event — the large room full of people in grief, the kitchen producing sandwiches and tea at the service hatch, the room required to hold sorrow and practicality simultaneously and managing neither well. She wrote that after every funeral reception the committee received the same feedback: the room felt wrong. She wrote: we do not know why it feels wrong. We know that it does.

He thought about the room that felt wrong for the funeral reception. He thought about grief as a between-time condition — the person in grief in the between-time between the before and the after, the loss not yet resolved into the new condition, the attending person in the gap. He thought about the funeral reception as the between-time gathering — not the same between-time as Raymond's Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, but the same structure: the people gathered in the gap, the room required to hold them.

He thought: the village hall feels wrong for the funeral reception because it is not a between-time room.

He thought about the difference between the functional room and the between-time room for the funeral gathering. He thought about the south windows floor to ceiling and the afternoon sun making the room unusable and the blinds drawn against the light — the room in its closed condition, the light excluded, the grief in the darkened room. He thought about the honest room for the funeral between-time: the room with the light at the correct height, the light that did not demand but offered, the south window at the height of the sitting body so the light could be received or not received according to the attending person's need.

He thought: the room that feels wrong for the funeral reception needs the between-time light.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: Catherine's letter. The village hall has the room for the full range of the village's attending. The service hatch versus the correspondence hatch — the functional opening and the honest opening. The funeral reception as the between-time gathering — grief as the between-time condition. The room feels wrong because it is not a between-time room. The correction: the between-time light, the south window at the correct height, the room that holds the grief without asking it to be something else.

He thought about the first visit. He thought about when to go — the May or the June, the early correspondence, the first attending. He thought about going before he drew anything, before he had formed any position about the hall or the kitchen or the hatch. He thought about going with the notebook and the attending eyes and the correct position and listening to the building before listening to the committee.

He wrote to Catherine that evening: thank you for the letter. The hall sounds like a building that has been asked to do more than it can in its current form. I would like to visit before we discuss any changes — to attend to the building and the village before I have any views about either. Could we arrange a visit in June? I would like to come on an ordinary day, not a committee day. I would like to see the hall in its daily condition, without an agenda.

He thought about the visit as the beginning of the correspondence. He thought about all the first visits — the three-generation house and the library and the coastal school and the community centre — and he thought about the first visit as the practice's most important act: the attending before the drawing, the listening before the line, the body in the room before the section began.

He thought: every honest section begins with a visit.

He thought: every honest building begins with a correspondent.

He sealed the letter. He wrote in the pocket notebook: village hall first correspondence. Catherine's list of uses — the polling station and the funeral reception and the toddler group without hierarchy. The room for the full village. The between-time analysis: grief as the between-time condition, the room wrong for the funeral because not a between-time room. First visit in June. The correspondence begins.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Eight