Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Nine: The Village Hall Visit

He visited the village hall on the third Wednesday of June.

Catherine had arranged it. She had written back within the week — the committee chair's prompt reply, the person who had been waiting for the correspondence to begin and who received the first letter with the readiness of the long-prepared. She had written: come on a Wednesday. The hall is used in the morning by the toddler group and in the afternoon it is empty. You can attend to both conditions.

He had thought about this. He had thought about Catherine's instinct — the toddler group and the empty hall offered as two conditions of the same room, the correspondent already understanding that the practice needed the room in its inhabited condition and its uninhabited condition. He had thought: Catherine already understands the attending visit.

He arrived at ten. The toddler group was already underway — the hall in its Wednesday morning condition, the large room full of children under three and the adults who had brought them. He stood in the doorway and looked.

The south windows floor to ceiling. The June south light falling across the full height of the glass — the summer light at the summer angle, the high sun, the light entering the room at the steep angle and making a band of brightness on the north wall from the floor to two metres. The brightness was considerable. Several of the toddlers were avoiding the south side of the room — the bodies already knowing the light was too much, the attending people moving to the north and east sides where the light was diffuse.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: the south windows floor to ceiling — the summer light too direct, the bodies self-organising to the north. The room sorting itself away from its primary light source. This is the wrong condition.

He stood in the doorway for fifteen minutes. He watched the toddler group self-organise — the children and the adults finding the parts of the room the light allowed them to use. He watched the south side of the hall remain largely empty, the summer brightness making it inhospitable, the blinds not drawn because no one had drawn them yet this morning. He watched the room being used as though it were smaller than it was, the attending people compressing into the northern two-thirds because the southern third was too bright.

He thought: the room loses a third of itself to the summer light.

He thought about the section. He thought about the south windows and the light at the floor-to-ceiling height and what the correction would require. He thought about the community centre south window at forty centimetres — the low sill, the light at the height of the attending body, the light offered rather than imposed. He thought about the village hall requiring a different correction than the community centre: not the low sill but the high sill — the south window from ninety centimetres up, the direct summer light entering above the head height of the sitting person, the light in the room without the glare on the attending face.

He thought: the correction here is the opposite of the coastal school correction. The coastal school needs the window lower. The village hall needs the window higher.

He thought about the different corrections for different buildings and different lights. He thought about the practice as the practice of the correct correction for the specific correspondent — not the formula applied to every building but the attending that found the specific answer the specific room required. He thought about the east window at forty centimetres for the sea children and the south window higher for the village hall — the same practice arriving at opposite corrections because the attending had been different.

He thought: the correction is always specific. The attending makes it so.

He walked through the hall slowly, without speaking to anyone. The toddler group continued around him — the attending adults nodding to him as he passed, Catherine having prepared them. He walked to the north wall and turned and looked south. The south windows from the north — the full height of the glass, the June light, the brightness. He stood at the north wall and thought about the funeral reception. He thought about the room in its funeral condition — the grief in the room, the south windows letting in the full afternoon light, the brightness that Catherine had described as making the room unusable in summer.

He thought about grief needing the managed light. Not the darkness — not the blinds drawn against the world — but the light at the correct height, the light that could be received or declined, the light that did not insist. He thought about the high south window above the head height — the light entering at the ceiling level, the room lit without glare, the brightness diffused across the ceiling plane and descending gently into the room. He thought about the funeral reception in a room with the light managed at the ceiling — the grief held in the soft light, the room not demanding that the attending people look at the brightness.

He thought: the correct south window holds the funeral reception and the toddler group with the same light.

At midday the toddler group left. The hall emptied in fifteen minutes — the tidying and the folding of the mats and the packing of the bags and the going. He watched the room empty and then stood in the empty room.

The hall in its uninhabited condition. The June midday light — the highest angle, the most direct, the south light at noon. He stood in the centre of the room and looked at the south windows and let the light fall on him. He stood in the direct summer light and felt the heat of it on his face and understood what Catherine had meant. The room was not uncomfortable. The room was impossible. The June noon light through floor-to-ceiling south windows was not a light condition for the attending human body. It was a light condition for a greenhouse.

He walked to the kitchen.

The kitchen behind the wall. The service hatch — the wide opening at the tray height, the practical dimension, the hatch for the efficient transfer of the catered food. He stood at the hatch on the kitchen side and looked through into the empty hall. He could see the north wall and the folded chairs stacked against it and the long table. He could not see the south windows. The hatch framed the north wall of the hall and nothing else — the person in the kitchen seeing only the functional room, the storage and the chairs, the hall in its between-events condition.

He thought: the hatch shows the kitchen person the wrong view.

He thought about the correct view from the kitchen — not the north wall with the stacked chairs but the room in its inhabited condition, the attending people visible to the person making the tea, the correspondence possible. He thought about the hatch position — the current hatch in the wall that separated the kitchen from the hall, the hatch placed for efficiency and giving the wrong view. He thought about the hatch repositioning — moving along the wall, the hatch relocated to the position where the kitchen person could see the inhabited room, the attending people visible through the opening, the correspondence possible across the threshold.

He thought: the correct hatch position changes the kitchen person's relation to the room entirely.

He walked the perimeter of the hall. He walked slowly, the notebook in his hand, attending to the walls and the floor and the ceiling and the windows and the door positions and the storage and the kitchen wall and the hatch. He walked the perimeter twice — the first time looking, the second time writing. He wrote about the floor: a timber floor, worn in the centre where the use accumulated, the wearing as the record of the forty years of the hall's attending — the paths of the attending people written into the timber in the daily passage.

He wrote: the floor is the hall's most honest section. It has drawn the attending people's paths across forty years. The worn centre and the unworn edges — the record of where the bodies have been and where they have not been. The floor knows which parts of the room are used and which are not.

He stood in the worn centre of the floor and looked at the south windows and thought about the correction. He thought about the high sill — ninety centimetres, a metre, the light entering above the attending head, the direct summer glare removed. He thought about the hatch repositioned. He thought about the kitchen wall and whether it needed to remain a wall at all — whether the kitchen could be opened further to the hall, the full correspondence rather than the hatch correspondence, the between-time room and the preparation room in a fuller relation.

He thought: I am not ready to draw yet. I have attended to the inhabited and the uninhabited. I have not attended the funeral reception.

He wrote to Catherine that evening: I have attended the toddler group and the empty hall. Thank you for both conditions. Before I draw anything I would like to attend the funeral reception — not to be present at a funeral, but to sit in the empty hall and think about the grief the room is required to hold. Could you tell me about the most recent funeral reception? Who came, how many, where they gathered in the room, where the light fell, what felt wrong. The room cannot be corrected until the grief is understood.

He sealed the letter.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: first village hall visit. The south windows — the bodies self-organising away from the June light, the room losing a third of itself to the summer brightness. The correction: the high sill, the light above the attending head. The hatch showing the wrong view — the repositioned hatch for the correspondence. The floor has the honest section — forty years of attendance written in the worn timber. The funeral reception has not yet been attended to. The correction is not yet ready. The correspondence continues.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Nine