Chapter 16: The Coping

He began at the north end, as he had begun everything, the waller's habit of starting at one end and working toward the other, the methodical progression that was the craft's rhythm, the left-to-right of the wall's construction matching the left-to-right of a sentence, a page, a life, the beginning on one side and the ending on the other, and between them the work.

The coping stones were different from every other stone in the wall.

Every other stone lay flat. The foundation stones, the face stones, the through-stones, the hearting — all of them lay on their broadest surface, weight pressing downward, gravity pulling them into their seats, the horizontal the natural orientation of stone in a wall, the same orientation as stone on the ground, the stone doing what stone did when left to itself, which was to lie flat, to seek the lowest point, to settle.

The coping stones stood on edge.

They were set upright, their longest dimension vertical, their narrowest dimension sitting on the wallhead, and they leaned against each other in a row, each stone pressing against the stone beside it, the row of copings interlocking like books on a shelf that had been tilted slightly to one side, each stone's weight leaning into its neighbour, each stone held upright by the stone beside it, the whole row standing because every stone in it was standing, the collective holding the individual, the individual contributing to the collective.

Tom lifted the first coping stone from the pile and held it in both hands. It was roughly triangular, about eighteen inches long and ten inches wide, and its edges had been dressed with the hammer to create the angle that would lock it against its neighbours, the angle not quite ninety degrees but slightly less, slightly acute, so that when two copings were set side by side their upper edges touched and their lower edges gapped slightly, the V-shape between them shedding the rain, directing the water outward and downward, away from the wallhead, away from the hearting, the coping not just a crown but a roof, a shield, the wall's defence against the water that would destroy it.

He set the first stone on the wallhead at the north end, standing it on edge, the broad face facing south, the narrow edge sitting on the wallhead's flat surface, and he held it with his left hand while his right hand reached for the second stone, and he set the second stone against the first, leaning it into the first, the two stones touching at the top and gapping at the bottom, the V-shape forming between them, and he adjusted the angle, a fraction of a degree, feeling for the fit, the lean, the balance point where both stones would stand without being held, each one supporting the other, each one relying on the other, the partnership of stone.

He released his hands.

The two stones stood.

It was the moment that Tom loved most in the building of a wall, the moment when the coping stones stood on their own, held by nothing but each other, by the angle of their lean and the friction of their surfaces and the weight of their stone pressing against the weight of the neighbouring stone, and the two stones standing on the narrow wallhead with nothing to brace them, nothing to support them except each other. It was a kind of miracle, Tom thought, though he would not have used that word, would have called it physics, would have called it the result of correctly calculated angles and properly dressed surfaces, but the feeling it produced was the feeling of the miraculous, the feeling of a thing happening that should not happen, stone standing on edge, stone defying its own inclination to lie flat, stone standing because another stone was standing beside it, the two of them finding in each other the support that neither could find alone.

He worked along the wallhead, setting the coping stones one by one, each stone leaning into the one before it, the row growing, extending, the crown of the wall appearing stone by stone, and the wall's silhouette changed as the copings were set, the flat horizontal line of the wallhead becoming a ragged line of pointed stones, the wall's profile sharpening, the wall gaining its final shape, the shape that would be its shape for the next hundred years, the shape that would stand against the sky and say wall, that would be visible from the valley floor, from the road, from the village, the thin line of stone on the hillside that marked the boundary between the intake and the common, the line that the Wensleydale gang had drawn a hundred and seventy years ago and that Tom was drawing again, the same line, the same stone, the same intention.

The morning was warm, the sun strong, the air still, and Tom worked without his jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, his forearms brown from the weeks of outdoor work, the muscles moving beneath the skin as he lifted and placed, the tendons in his wrists shifting, his hands doing the work that they had been shaped to do, the work that had shaped them, the fingers thick and scarred, the palms calloused, the nails broken and regrown and broken again, the hands of a waller, the tools of the trade, the instruments of the craft.

He set the fifth coping stone and stood back and looked at the row. Five stones, standing on edge, interlocking, the V-shapes between them clean and even, the angles correct, and the row was stable, self-supporting, the stones holding each other in a line that was both delicate and strong, the paradox of the coping, the paradox of a thing that looked fragile but was in fact the strongest part of the wall, the part that held the wall's weather, that took the wind and the rain and the frost and the snow and shed them all, that protected the wallhead and the hearting below it, the crown that was also a shield.

He thought about crowns. About the coping as the crown of the wall. About the crown of a head, the soft spot on a baby's skull that hardened with age into the dome that protected the brain, the tender becoming the tough, the vulnerable becoming the resilient. And he thought about Arthur, whose crown was still hard, whose mind was still sharp, but whose body beneath the crown was softening, weakening, the structure beneath the coping failing while the coping itself held, the head remaining while the body went, the crown of the man's life still in place while the wall beneath it was being stripped away.

At eleven o'clock he saw Helen's car pull into the yard below, the small blue car that he knew as well as he knew his own Defender, and he watched her go into the farmhouse and he knew she was seeing Arthur, checking his blood pressure, his pain, his medication, the daily assessment that was also a daily visit, the nurse and the friend, and Tom thought about what Helen did in that kitchen, the care she gave, the hands on the blood pressure cuff, the stethoscope on the thin chest, the fingers on the pulse, the touch that measured and the touch that comforted, the two kinds of touch inseparable, and he thought that Helen's hands on Arthur's body were like his hands on the wall, the same care, the same attention, the same determination to do the work properly, to leave nothing undone, to fill every void, to pack every gap, to maintain the structure for as long as the structure could be maintained.

He set the tenth coping stone and then the eleventh and then the twelfth, the row extending, the crown growing, the wall's silhouette lengthening, and the sun moved overhead and the shadows shortened and then lengthened again, the dial of the day turning, and Tom worked with a steadiness that was not haste but was not slowness either, a measured pace, the pace of a man who wanted to do the work well but also wanted to do it, wanted to reach the end, wanted to set the last stone and stand back and see the wall complete, whole, finished, the thing that he had been building for weeks now finally done.

But he was also aware of the other thing, the thing that midsummer had made him feel, the reluctance, the not-readiness, the knowledge that finishing the wall would end something more than the wall, would end the daily connection to this hillside and this farm and this man, and so his pace was measured, deliberate, neither fast nor slow, the pace of a man negotiating between the desire to finish and the desire to continue, the pace of a man building his way toward an ending that he both wanted and did not want.

At noon Helen came up the hill.

Tom saw her climbing the path, her walking boots and her nurse's uniform, the incongruity of the two never quite resolving, the outdoor footwear and the indoor profession, and she climbed the hill with the ease of a woman who had grown up in the dale and whose legs knew the angle of the hills the way Tom's hands knew the weight of the stones, and she reached the wall and stood and looked at the coping stones and her face changed, softened, the way it had softened when Arthur showed her the through-stone, the way it softened when she saw something that moved her, that touched the part of her that was not the nurse but the woman, the wife, the person who loved the man who built these walls and who understood what the walls meant to him.

"It's beautiful," she said.

And Tom did not argue with the word this time, did not think about function and decoration and the difference between them, because the coping was beautiful, the row of stones standing on edge against the sky was beautiful, the line of them sharp and clean and precise against the blue, and he knew it, could see it, the beauty of the thing he had made, the beauty that was not separate from the function but was the function made visible, the rightness of the stones in their places producing a visual effect that could only be called beauty, the beauty of a thing perfectly made, perfectly fitted, perfectly held.

"How is he?" Tom said.

"He asked about the coping. I told him you'd started."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Good.'"

"That's Arthur."

"That's Arthur."

Helen stood beside Tom and they looked at the wall together, the wall that was nearly finished, the coping extending halfway across the gap, the wallhead bare for the remaining four and a half yards, the two halves of the wall showing its before and after, the uncoped and the coped, the unfinished and the finished, and they stood side by side and the dale was spread out below them and the river was a line of silver in the valley and the fields were green and the walls ran in every direction and the sky was blue and deep and the clouds were high and white and the world was, for this moment, as good as the world could be, and they stood in it and were part of it and the wall was part of it and the coping stones were part of it and everything was held.

Helen went back down the hill and Tom went back to the coping and the afternoon passed in the setting of stones, the row extending, stone by stone, toward the south end of the gap, and the wall beneath the coping was complete, was finished, was done, the face stones and the hearting and the through-stones and the stile and the creep hole all in place, the structure sound, the batter true, and the coping was the last thing, the finishing, the crown, and Tom set each stone with the care that the last stones deserved, the care of a man who knew that these were the stones that people would see, the stones that would show above the bracken and the grass, the stones that would stand against the sky and declare the wall's presence, and he set them well, he set them true, he set them the way Jim had taught him and the way the Wensleydale gang had set them a hundred and seventy years ago, on edge, interlocking, leaning into each other, each stone held by the stone beside it, the row self-supporting, self-sustaining, the crown that held itself.

He did not finish that day. He set twenty of the twenty-eight copings and then the light began to change, the afternoon sun dropping, the shadows lengthening, and he stopped, not because he was tired but because the stopping felt right, the way a sentence sometimes stopped before the period, the pause before the final word, the breath before the last note. Twenty copings set. Eight remaining. Tomorrow he would finish.

He gathered his tools and walked down the hill and the wall behind him was almost crowned, the coping extending across most of the gap, the last four yards of wallhead still bare, still waiting, and the wall in the evening light was the most beautiful thing Tom had ever built, the coping stones catching the low sun, their edges sharp against the sky, the line of them running along the hillside like a notation, a score, a piece of music written in stone.

He went to the farmhouse and found Arthur in his chair, and Arthur's eyes were closed but he was not sleeping, he was resting, his hand on the through-stone, his fingers still, and Tom stood in the doorway and looked at him and then went in and sat at the table and Arthur opened his eyes.

"I heard you," Arthur said. "The hammer. All day. I could hear it through the window."

"You could hear the coping?"

"Every stone. Each one sounds different when you set it. A dull sound first, when you're adjusting. Then a sharp sound, when it's right. When it's in its place."

Tom thought about this, about Arthur sitting in his chair listening to the sounds of the wall being finished, hearing the coping set stone by stone, the dull thud of the adjustment and the sharp click of the final placement, and he thought that Arthur was right, that each stone did sound different when it found its place, a change in pitch, a change in resonance, the sound of a thing settling into its correct position, the sound of rightness.

"Nearly done," Tom said.

"Aye."

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

They sat in the kitchen and the light went out of the window and the dale darkened and the wall on the hillside disappeared into the dusk, the coping stones that had caught the sun now lost in the gathering dark, and Arthur sat in his chair and Tom sat at the table and the through-stone was on the armrest and the kitchen was warm and quiet and the two men said nothing because nothing needed to be said, because the wall was nearly finished and they both knew what that meant, and the meaning did not need words, the meaning was in the stone, in the coping, in the twenty stones set on edge along the wallhead, standing, holding, crowned.