The lengthsman's hut is a brick shelter by the cut where the man who walked the length kept his tools and his log, and it is a heritage feature now, with the stove and the log book behind a rope. Every night the stove is lit. Every morning the log has a line: the length walked, the state of the banks, the leaks, in pencil, and the length is a branch of the canal that was filled in and is a field. Across the field, in the morning, in the dew, there is a path, walked, from where the branch left the main line to where it ended, and back.
I am the heritage officer for a stretch of canal, which means the lengthsman's hut is mine to look after, and somebody else's to use.
The hut.
Brick, by the cut, one room, a stove, a bench, a shelf with the tools, and the walk log, which is the book the lengthsman wrote his length in every day: the banks, the leaks, the towpath, the water. The last entry is 1963, when the lengthsmen went. The hut is a feature. There is a rope across the door and a board outside that says what it was.
Every night the stove is lit.
The night.
I can see the hut from the road. At about nine there is smoke from the chimney, and light in the window, the low light of a stove door open, and in the morning the stove is warm and the ash is fresh and the coal in the scuttle, which is a display scuttle, is down.
The log has a line. Pencil. Under 1963. The date, tonight's. The length walked, which is the third length, and the third length was the branch. The banks, sound. The water, up. Leaks, none. And the initials of a lengthsman who is on the earlier pages, every day for thirty years, until 1963.
The branch was filled in in 1970. It is a field. The farmer grazes it.
And across the field, in the morning, in the dew, from the stub where the branch left the main line to the far hedge where it ended, and back, there is a path. Trodden. The dew off it in a line a man's stride wide, and in the middle of the field, where the branch had a bridge, the path goes over nothing, the way a man walks over a bridge that is not there.
What has been checked.
The hut, at nine, by me, inside the rope, on the bench. The stove door opened. I did not see a hand. The coal went in from the scuttle, a shovelful, the sound of it, and the fire took, and the door shut, and the room warmed, and the pencil on the shelf, on its string, went to the book, and the line was written, and then the door, the hut door, opened, and the cold came in, and boots went out, and across the towpath, and I followed, to the stub of the branch, where the field starts, and the boots went into the field, and I could hear them, in the grass, going away, at a walk, the lengthsman's walk, which is slow because you are looking at the bank, and there is no bank, and he was looking at it.
I did not follow into the field. I stood at the stub. Forty minutes. And the boots came back, and went past me, and into the hut, and the door shut.
Who.
The company's staff book has him. Lengthsman, third length, from the thirties to 1963, when the lengthsmen were finished with, and the note against his name says he was offered the hut to live in and took it, and lived in it, and walked his length every day without pay until the branch was closed, and after it was closed, the note says, he walked it anyway, and after it was filled in he walked it anyway, and he died in the hut in the seventies and the farmer found him, and the note says, he had been to look at the water.
He is walking the third length. Every night. The banks are sound and the water is up. He writes it down. And it is a field.
What is done about it.
The stove is lit and the coal goes down and the trust has asked why the display coal needs replacing every month, and I have said it is being used, and they have asked by whom, and I have said, the lengthsman.
What I do.
I look after the heritage.
A lengthsman's log was read. The section inspector came round once a week and read the book and initialled it and if the lengthsman had found a leak the inspector sent men. That was the whole point of writing it down. Nobody has read his book since 1963, except me, and I read it as a curator, which is not the same.
So I read it as an inspector. Every week I go to the hut and I open the book and I read his seven lines, third length, banks sound, water up, leaks none, and I initial each one, in ink, in the inspector's column, and at the bottom of the week I write what the inspectors wrote, which was, length in good order, and I sign it.
The lines have changed. Not the length. The water. He wrote, water up, for months. He writes, now, water going down. Slowly. An inch a week, in his log, on a branch that has been a field for fifty years, and I think he is letting it go. I think a lengthsman whose book is being read has been able, at last, to write the truth about his length, which is that the water is going, and I think that when he writes, water gone, the stove will not be lit, and the field in the morning will have no path across it, and I will initial that line too, and write under it, length closed, in good order, and close the book.