Delabole Slate Feb 2018

THE PILGRIMAGE. By Wina Leighton
The sun reflected off the wet slate almost blinding me. The summer rain had gone as suddenly as it came leaving me
and the quarry standing in pools of shining water. The air carried the green scent of wet earth and that certain quarry
smell of long hidden things now exposed, which took me back to childhood.
This morning we had buried Granfer Jack Tredan in the little graveyard by the church alongside his wife Bess who died
last year when I was overseas. Granfer Jack had lived in Delabole all his ninety six years and had only been to Plymouth,
foreign parts he called it, twice in all his life. He and I had spent many happy hours strolling round the quarry edge and,
sometimes, climbing halfway down the pit to pick wild honeysuckle and dog roses to take home to Granny Bess. My
legs were short, chubby ones then, so he had to lift me up onto the huge slate boulders where we would sit to watch
the jackdaws, he called them ravens, perhaps they were in those days. He told me tales of the quarry and the folk of
Delabole. I loved him dearly.
This afternoon was, I suppose, a sort of pilgrimage round the quarry from Medrose end where Granfer lived, but I had
been in the navy a long time and it had been many years since I had visited the village. It was different, new houses,
new people, hardly any shops and all run by strangers. The quarry was so different I stood and stared in disbelief, all
the old tracks gone, all the bushes and the badger runs, just banks of bare slate dotted with gorse. Roads down round
the pit to the new square cut workings. The diggers still looked like dinky toys. In the bottom a blue lagoon reflecting
the blue sky in it’s still waters. I wondered how deep it is and would Granfer have approved of all this. The quarry had
been his life, he worked there all day and walked around it on his days off. He knew every path, every rock, every
bush, where the best blackberries were and where to pick sloes for wine. He knew the animals, birds and all the names
of the wild flowers.
I was soaked through, the hot sun set my shirt steaming. I sat on one of the new wooden seats on the new footpath,
beside the new fence. It seemed that everything I knew had changed. Granfer Jack, Granny Bess, both gone. The
village and the quarry changed, so many unknown faces to pass in the street. I sat there a long time, my thoughts sad
and happy all at once. Granny and Granfer arm in arm in their Sunday best. Me in my short trousers clutching wild
flowers to take home to Granny; schooldays and secret dens built in the undergrowth; bonfire nights with baked potatoes.
I had been away a long time; I would go home tomorrow, back to my ship docked in Plymouth, my girl friend, my full
and happy life. A shadow cut off the sun from my back and I felt the familiar touch of his hand on my shoulder.
“Jack cheel, tis progress, nothing stays the same. Life is full of changes.” He said.
I knew then that he had watched the changes over the years and in his steady way had accepted them as they happened.
I remembered his letters with all the snippets of news about the changes in the quarry; the posh new footpath and
fences. The nice new neighbours and the shop closing. They had seemed small things, dull news in my busy life, at
the time.
I thought back to this morning and Granfer’s sitting room with the alcove decorated in my hurried post cards from all
around the world, my only contact over the years. I thought about the village, My childhood home was still here, the
old houses were still here, the school, church and chapel, the pub and the quarry. All the friends and neighbours that
had come to the church to support the family and pay their respects to Jack Tredan. The new neighbours had come
too.
“You’m grown cheel and you’m changed too, but you’ll always be me own Jack, you got the blood, see.”
I turned, but the shadow had passed on, I followed as it slowly passed the newly planted trees and disappeared between
the new slate standing stones and on around the quarry. It really had been a pilgrimage to say goodbye to Granfer
Jack and Granny Bess, to accept that life is full of changes and to know that I had grown.
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