Chapter 31: The Woman from Reeth

She came up the path from the south, from the direction of the road, walking with the steady pace of a person who had been walking for hours and who would walk for hours more, the pace of a fell walker, a long-distance walker, and Tom heard her before he saw her, heard the rhythm of her boots on the path, the crunch of the gravel and the grass, the sound of approach, and he looked up from the wall and saw a woman in her fifties climbing the slope toward him, a rucksack on her back, a waterproof tied around her waist, walking poles in her hands, the equipment of the recreational walker, the person who walked for pleasure rather than for purpose, who walked the dale because the dale was beautiful rather than because the dale was their place of work.

She stopped at the wall. She stopped because the path crossed the wall at the point where Tom was working, the footpath that ran along the contour of the hill and that passed through the gap where the stile would be but was not yet, the stile that Arthur had asked for and that Tom had not yet built, and the woman stood on the uphill side of the wall and looked at Tom and looked at the wall and said, "Good morning."

"Morning."

"Are you rebuilding this?"

"Aye."

She set her poles against the standing wall and took off her rucksack and set it on the ground and stood with her hands on her hips and looked at the wall with the frank curiosity of a person who was interested in everything and afraid of nothing, and Tom continued working, setting a face stone, packing hearting, the routine undisturbed by the audience, the hands doing what the hands did regardless of who was watching.

"How long does it take?" she said.

Tom thought about the question. He thought about the weeks he had been working and the weeks that remained and the hours in each day and the stones in each hour, and he said, "Depends on the gap. This one's nine yards. Two months, give or take."

"Two months for nine yards."

"Aye."

"That seems slow."

Tom did not answer this because there was no answer to it that would not be either defensive or rude, and instead he picked up another stone and turned it in his hands and set it on the wall and the stone sat there, fitting, the face true against the string line, and the placing of the stone was its own answer, the speed of the work being the speed that the work required, the pace determined not by the man but by the stone, by the wall, by the craft, and the craft could not be hurried any more than a lamb could be hurried from the womb or a tree could be hurried from the seed.

The woman watched him work. She watched with attention, with genuine interest, leaning forward slightly, her eyes following his hands, and Tom could feel her attention on him the way he could feel the sun on his back, a warmth, a presence, not unpleasant, and he worked and she watched and the minutes passed.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Aye."

"Why no cement? Why not just — put cement between the stones? Wouldn't that be faster?"

Tom set down his hammer and straightened and looked at the woman and considered how to answer, because the question was one he had been asked a hundred times and that he had never answered well, because the answer was not simple, was not a single reason but a system of reasons, a wall of reasons, each one sitting on the one below, each one supporting the one above, and to pull out a single reason and present it as the answer would be like pulling a single stone from a wall and presenting it as the wall.

"Mortar makes a wall rigid," he said. "A rigid wall cracks. A dry wall moves. It expands in the heat, contracts in the cold. It flexes in the wind. It absorbs the pressure of the ground behind it. The joints between the stones are the wall's flexibility. Take away the joints and you take away the wall's ability to survive."

The woman nodded. She was listening the way Helen listened, with the whole body, the attention not just in the eyes but in the posture, the lean, the stillness.

"And the mortar hides mistakes," Tom said. "You can put a bad stone in a mortared wall and the mortar holds it. You can leave voids inside a mortared wall and the mortar bridges them. You can build a poor wall and make it look sound with mortar. A dry wall has no mortar to hide behind. Every stone has to be right. Every joint has to hold. The wall is honest. What you see is what it is."

He picked up the hammer and turned back to the wall and set another stone and the conversation might have ended there, might have drifted into the silence that followed most exchanges between dale men and outsiders, the silence that was not unfriendliness but was simply the resumption of the natural state, the state of work, the state of stone against stone, but the woman said, "What are those?"

She was pointing at the hearting pile, the mound of small angular stones on the uphill side of the wall, the stones that Tom had gathered from the collapse and from the quarry above, the irregular pieces that were too small and too rough for the face.

"Hearting," Tom said.

"Hearting."

"The fill. The interior of the wall. The face stones are the outside, the two faces, and between them there's a gap, and the hearting fills the gap. Small stones. Angular. Packed in tight."

"So you can't see them."

"No. You can't see them."

"But they're important."

"They're the most important part of the wall."

The woman looked at the hearting pile and looked at the wall and Tom could see her thinking, could see the idea forming, the understanding building the way a wall built, stone by stone, course by course, the comprehension rising from the foundation of the question through the courses of the answers to the coping of the insight, and she said, "So the part you can't see is the part that matters most."

"Aye."

She stood for a moment, looking at the wall, and her face had changed, had moved from the expression of casual interest to something else, something more inward, the expression of a person who had heard a thing that applied not just to the wall but to something else, something in her own life, her own experience, the expression that Tom had seen on Arthur's face when Arthur said that Margaret was the hearting and he was the face stone, the expression of a metaphor landing, a comparison finding its fit, the idea sitting in the mind the way a stone sat in a wall.

"I'm a teacher," she said. "In Reeth. I teach primary school. Year five. They're ten."

Tom nodded and waited because the woman was going somewhere with this and the going required time, the way a good sentence required time, the clause building on the clause, the meaning accumulating.

"I teach them all sorts of things," she said. "Maths and English and science and geography and history. I teach them facts. I test them on the facts. I report their scores. I put the scores in a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet goes to the headteacher and the headteacher sends it to the county and the county compares it to other counties and the whole system runs on the numbers, on the scores, on the measurable things, the things you can test and count and report."

She paused and looked at the wall.

"But the things that matter," she said. "The things that actually matter. Whether a child can be kind. Whether a child can listen. Whether a child can sit with another child who is crying and not say anything and just be there. Whether a child can fail at something and try again. Those things — I can't test those. I can't put those in a spreadsheet. Those are the hearting."

Tom looked at the woman and the woman looked at Tom and between them the wall stood half-built, the face stones in place, the hearting visible from above where the next course had not yet been laid, the interior of the wall exposed to the sky, the hidden thing temporarily revealed, and the moment was a through-stone, a connection between the waller and the teacher, between the wall and the school, between the stone and the child, between the invisible thing that held the structure together and the invisible thing that held the person together, and the connection was brief and was real and was the kind of connection that the dale produced without trying, the accidental meetings between people who would not otherwise meet, the crossings at the stile, the exchanges at the wall, the conversations that happened because two paths converged on the same hillside on the same afternoon.

"I'll tell them about the hearting," she said. "I'll bring them up here. Can I bring them?"

"Aye. I'll be here through May."

She picked up her rucksack and her poles and adjusted the straps and stood for a moment, ready to go, and she said, "What's your name?"

"Tom. Tom Ashworth."

"I'm Ruth Calvert. Thank you, Tom."

She walked on, north along the path, the steady pace resuming, the poles clicking on the stones, and Tom watched her go and turned back to the wall and picked up a piece of hearting and set it in the gap between the face stones and pushed it down with his thumb and the hearting was tight, was snug, was in its place, and the wall rose and the afternoon passed and the woman from Reeth walked on across the fell and the dale held them both, the waller and the walker, the builder and the teacher, the man who packed the hearting and the woman who understood why.

She did bring them. She brought them on a Wednesday in late May, twelve children in waterproofs and walking boots, chattering and stumbling up the hillside in a ragged line, and Tom let them touch the wall and feel the weight of a stone and look at the hearting and he showed them how the through-stones spanned the width and how the coping stones leaned against each other and how the creep hole opened and closed, and the children listened with the attention of ten-year-olds, which was intense and brief and easily redirected, and one boy picked up a piece of hearting and held it and said, "It's heavy for how small it is," and Tom said, "Aye, it is," and the boy set the hearting stone on the pile and looked at the wall and his face had the expression that Tom had seen on Ruth Calvert's face, the expression of understanding arriving, the insight landing, the through-stone of comprehension spanning the gap between the known and the unknown.

They left after an hour, the ragged line descending the hill, the chatter resuming, Ruth Calvert at the rear counting heads, and Tom stood at the wall and watched them go and thought about Jim, who had taught him, and about Arthur, who had watched him, and about the boy who had held the hearting stone and felt its weight, and he thought that the teaching was another form of walling, another way of setting stones in a structure, the teacher placing knowledge in the child the way the waller placed stone in the wall, carefully, precisely, in the right order, in the right place, the visible knowledge on the face and the invisible knowledge in the hearting, and the structure would stand or fall depending on the quality of the interior, the density of the packing, the care of the arrangement.

He picked up his hammer and turned to the wall and began again.