Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Four: Margaret's Letter

Margaret's letter came in March, three days after the coastal visit.

He had not written to Margaret since the opening — the October opening, the village's first between-time, Raymond at the hatch and the children in the corner and the older woman with her chair moved toward the south window. He had written to her the week after the opening: a short letter, the correct letter, thank you for the eleven years and the correspondence and the rooms prepared from what you already knew. Margaret had written back briefly: thank you for attending. That had been the last letter.

Her March letter was longer.

He read it at the drawing board in the afternoon, the March inland light on the desk. Margaret wrote about the winter — the between-time building in its first winter, November and December and January and February. She wrote about the weight-bearing room in winter. She wrote that she had not anticipated the winter light — she had attended to the building in October and had known the October south light on the limestone floor, but she had not attended to the winter. She wrote that the January sun line was longer than she had expected — the January sun lower in the sky, the angle steeper, the light reaching further into the room across the limestone, further than the October light and further than the section had shown her.

He thought about the section. He thought about the December sun line drawn in pencil across the section — the lowest angle, the longest reach. He thought about Margaret reading the section in the office, looking at the December sun line. He thought about Margaret in the weight-bearing room in January watching the sun line reach further than she had expected.

He thought: the section showed her December. She attended in January and found it further.

He thought about the January sun line as further than the December — the January angle, the month after the solstice, the sun still low, the light still reaching. He thought about the section drawing December as the extreme and the room teaching Margaret that January was its own extreme, the sun line having its own January reach that was not the December reach but was also long, also far across the limestone.

He wrote in the margin: January further than expected. The section draws in December. The room teaches the January. Both are true. Neither complete without the other.

Margaret wrote about Raymond. She wrote that Raymond came three mornings a week — the Tuesday and the Thursday and the Saturday. She wrote that she had not arranged this: Raymond had simply appeared on a Tuesday in November and again on Thursday and again on Saturday and had continued to appear. She wrote that the between-time had found its rhythm without being prescribed one. She wrote: I did not tell Raymond when to come. The rooms told him.

He thought about the rooms telling Raymond when to come. He thought about the between-time building as the thing that had organised the between-time without a programme — the rooms prepared for the between-time, the between-time finding its own rhythm in the prepared rooms. He thought about the practice's aspiration — the honest building that prepared the conditions without prescribing the use — and thought about Raymond appearing on the Tuesday and the Thursday and the Saturday as the aspiration arrived.

He thought: the rooms prepared the invitation. Raymond accepted it in his own time.

Margaret wrote about the hatch. She confirmed what Raymond had written in the January letter — the hatch as the ceremony, the cup given and received, the threshold that made the passing into an event. But she wrote something further. She wrote that the hatch had done something she had not anticipated: it had made the kitchen into a room. She wrote that before the hatch the kitchen had been a service space — the place where the tea was made before it was brought into the room where the people were. She wrote that the hatch made the kitchen into a room of its own, with its own attendant, the person at the counter in the south-east kitchen with the field in the peripheral and the hatch open to the weight-bearing room, both rooms in correspondence through the opening.

He thought about the kitchen as a room through the hatch. He thought about the two rooms in correspondence — the kitchen and the weight-bearing room, the hatch between them, the opening that made each room aware of the other. He thought about the section — the hatch drawn as the detail, the counter-height opening in the wall — and thought about the section having drawn the correspondence between the two rooms before either room existed.

He thought: the hatch draws the correspondence between the rooms.

He thought about all the correspondences drawn in section — the inside view of the relation between one room and another, the opening that made two rooms into a pair, the threshold that organised the passing. He thought about the practice as the drawing of correspondences: between the rooms and between the rooms and the light and between the rooms and the people and between the attending people and the things they already knew.

He thought: the practice draws correspondences. The buildings make them possible.

Margaret wrote at the end of the letter about a woman named Frances. She wrote that Frances had come to the between-time on a Saturday in February — not a village person, a woman from the next village, someone who had heard about the building and driven the seven kilometres to attend it. She wrote that Frances had sat in the weight-bearing room for two hours and drunk two cups of Raymond's tea and said very little and then before she left had asked Margaret: who designed this room? Margaret had told her. Frances had said: I have been looking for this room for twenty years. I did not know I was looking for it until I was in it.

He read this twice.

He thought about Frances looking for the room for twenty years without knowing she was looking for it. He thought about the between-time as the condition Frances had known for twenty years — the between-time without its room, the condition accumulated and unhoused. He thought about the room that had been drawn from Raymond's letters and Margaret's eleven years and the allotment December and Ellie's sketchbook and the village's accumulated knowledge — the room drawn from all of this — receiving Frances who had driven seven kilometres from the next village and sat for two hours and said very little.

He thought: the room drew Frances. Not the programme. Not the advertisement. The room.

He thought about the room as the correspondence — the room prepared from the attending people's knowledge, the attending people finding the room that had been drawn from what they already knew, the recognition arriving in Frances after twenty years of not knowing what she had been looking for.

He thought: twenty years of the between-time without its room. The room is ready. Frances drove seven kilometres.

He thought: this is why the section must be honest.

He wrote to Margaret that evening. He wrote about the January sun line and the rooms telling Raymond when to come and the hatch drawing the correspondence between the kitchen and the weight-bearing room and Frances driving seven kilometres and sitting for two hours and saying very little. He wrote: the room drew Frances. The honest section makes the room that can do this. Thank you for Frances. Thank you for attending to the winter.

He wrote in the pocket notebook after the letter was sealed: Margaret's March letter. The January sun line further than the section showed — the room teaches what the drawing cannot. Raymond on Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday — the rooms prepared the invitation. The hatch draws the correspondence between the rooms. Frances from the next village: looking for this room for twenty years without knowing it. The room drew her. The honest section makes the room that draws the people who did not know they were looking.

He looked at what he had written.

He thought: the practice draws the room. The room draws the people.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Four