Secrets in the Slates

Postcards from Cartrefle - No.1

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof." Barbara Kingsolver

It’s almost been a month since I started project managing the renovation of my dream beach house Cartrefle , as Deborah Levy likes to put it “my very unreal estate.” I’ve been practically dismantling her, one slate at a time, with not much time left for anything else.

Old Welsh slate, the real stuff, not the flat grey uniform kind you’ll find on new builds, but the kind that has texture, a sort of marbling and age in it. The kind of slate that was pulled from the ground somewhere in the North Wales mountains, not too far from where I was born, probably a hundred and fifty years ago by men whose names nobody remembers. Each slate tile unique in its own right. And each one heavier that you’d ever expect.

We lifted them carefully. Well I say we, there were two of us, and I was the one who didn’t entirely know what I was doing, which meant I was the one who thought far too deeply about it all. While the other hands moved with the efficiency of experience, mine moved with something more familiar to a ceremony.

I stacked them, slowly.

In neat rows, in one of the dusty outbuildings.

At first they were face down, as though I was laying them to rest. But I soon realised this wasn’t practical or efficient. Once common sense emerged from under my brain fog, I stacked the slates like paper thin headstones, one against the other, each showcasing an epitaph, like a message of remembrance.

I don’t know why carefully removing these roof slates felt so important to me. I know the best ones would be recycled and the damaged ones reduced to rubble. But in the moment of lifting each slate, I kept thinking: what did they cover, what did they witness? I imagined all the storms, especially the February nights when horizontal rain and wind lashed out relentlessly. Not forgetting those rare, blazing August afternoons, when the house sat in the heat and the slates ticked and expanded and held everything inside cool and still. I tried to imagine what each of those old slates would have endured over one hundred and fifty years.

Then my thoughts were with every person who ever slept in Cartrefle, how they were protected while they slept under these slates. Every argument, every love affair, every ordinary weekend - all of it happened under this particular roof, under this particular weight of slate.

Looking back, perhaps I was stacking them out of respect.

Because I truly admire Cartrefle, all of her, especially her hard outer shell. The top layer she shows the world, practical, weathered, undecorated, Welsh - and underneath it, all that warmth, life and story. All those years of being the shelter. I wonder how many others looked up at her roof and thought like this?

Cartrefle means home in Welsh. This is Postcard No. 1 of hopefully many more.

There is something in this story that I’m still turning over in my mind.

The fact that we all have our slates, don’t we? The outer layer we grew in a particular climate, that thickened over time, that takes the brunt of the weather so our inner self doesn’t have to. And sometimes someone comes along, and lifts our slates carefully, one by one, stacking them with more tenderness than we would ever expect.

I’m glad I was there to take care of Cartrefle’s protective layer, because has she more than sheltered me from many of my storms over the past few years. A very humbling experience and one I shall never forget.

Until the next time

Take care and stay safe xx

Here are just some of the books I’ve adored reading while spending time in Cartrefle…