Built From What They Had

The chapel on Lamb Holm is two army huts end to end, which is the first thing anyone notices and the last thing anyone remembers. A caretaker was unlocking it when Polly arrived, an unhurried man with a ring of keys. "What is your job?" she asked him, and he said he opened the doors in the morning, closed them at night, and repainted what the salt air took off in between.

Kapellet på Lamb Holm er to militærbarakker sat sammen ende mod ende, hvilket er det første, alle bemærker, og det sidste, nogen husker. En opsynsmand var ved at låse op, da Polly kom, en rolig mand med en nøglering. "Hvad arbejder du med?" spurgte hun ham, og han sagde, at han åbnede dørene om morgenen, lukkede dem om aftenen og malede det op igen, som den salte luft tog i mellemtiden.

Inside, the huts disappear. Italian prisoners of war were brought here in the nineteen forties to work on the sea barriers, and they asked for somewhere to worship. What they got was corrugated metal. What they made of it was a vaulted ceiling, a stone chancel, a wrought iron screen and a painted altarpiece, and one of them, a painter named Domenico Chiocchetti, led the work.

Indenfor forsvinder barakkerne. Italienske krigsfanger blev bragt hertil i nittenhundredefyrrerne for at arbejde på havbarriererne, og de bad om et sted at holde gudstjeneste. Det, de fik, var bølgeblik. Det, de lavede ud af det, var et hvælvet loft, et stenkor, et gitter af smedejern og en malet altertavle, og en af dem, en maler ved navn Domenico Chiocchetti, stod i spidsen for arbejdet.

"What do you need to complete the work?" is the question the camp had to answer. They asked for cement, and were given cement. Everything else came out of what the camp was throwing away. The screen is scrap iron worked cold. The candle holders are corned beef tins. The stone of the chancel is plasterboard, painted so carefully that you have to lean in before it admits what it is.

"Hvad mangler du for at gøre arbejdet færdigt?" er det spørgsmål, lejren måtte besvare. De bad om cement og fik cement. Alt andet kom fra det, lejren var ved at smide ud. Gitteret er koldsmedet skrotjern. Lysestagerne er dåser fra corned beef. Stenen i koret er gipsplade, malet så omhyggeligt, at man må helt tæt på, før den indrømmer, hvad den er.

The caretaker had left a small hand tool on the sill. "Could you show me how to use this tool?" Polly asked, and he did, and the explanation went past her the first time. "Could you explain that again?" He did that too. Then he went back to his paint, and Polly looked up at a ceiling that is flat metal pretending to be a curve, and holds the pretence from every seat in the room.

Opsynsmanden havde efterladt et lille håndværktøj i vindueskarmen. "Kunne du vise mig, hvordan man bruger dette værktøj?" spurgte Polly, og det gjorde han, og forklaringen gik hen over hovedet på hende første gang. "Kunne du forklare det igen?" Det gjorde han også. Så gik han tilbage til sin maling, og Polly kiggede op på et loft af fladt metal, der lader som om det buer, og som holder det bedrag fra hver eneste plads i rummet.