Memories of Redruth Station

Before I launched this blog, I met my friend Bert Biscoe, poet, local politician and musician, by chance in Truro. As someone who doesn't drive, he regularly takes the train between Truro and Redruth. Bert writes a poem each day and has done so for decades. He movingly told me of his granny, Florence (Jennings/Rogers) Barteki married to Polish born Leon Barteki. She lived in Redruth and even when suffering from dementia could vividly recall the station and its departures. Bert brings these memories to life as shared over Sunday lunch in her later years.

Leon and Florence Barteki Bert Biscoe performing his poetry

Granny travelling in time

Bert Biscoe

18th May 2024

There was half a potato on her fork –

Her mind had taken its time

To recall the mechanics of hunting –

The eye and hand awaking their line –

The stalk through gravy swamps –

A salivating conjure of hungry purpose –

A plunge, recoil, plunge and Aha!

Triumph waving a speared legume.

She was in nineteen hundred and ten,

King Edward on the throne,

Certainties of Empire, of chapel and Lodge,

All unspoken, and excitement

In Porthtowan spume at Whitsun,

Coal ships docking and Portreath

No place for children, but gripping

Daddy’s saddler’s paw, she, in and out

Of leather sailors, carts, horses, and gone –

With turkey hollowed between decanters,

Arrived from nineteen eighty something –

She was excited and recounting

Everything her eyes were seeing –

Sensuous farewells translated to tears,

And motherly savings slipped into hands,

The smells of steam, the hiss and slams

Of carriage doors, the great wheels

And rods still in the sun, the squeals

And shouts of sons returned to grass,

Diamonds gold and klondike scars –

and she, too young to know their names,

But the drifting tides of a working world

Made their ebbs and flows

On Platform One, below Chapel –

She took us between the gaitered legs,

Trunks, carpet-bags, tobacco breath

And softly spoken revelations of brotherly death –

Of people from all over waiting

To know the hard-rock skills

Of Redruth men who knew too well –

Voices cried a language of vowels

Twisted and turned in stopes

Down a mile or so, watch-chains

Bounced across worsted waistcoats

 Below waterfalls of wild moustache,

And she, her potato cold,

Waved like a weapon over china,

Knew them all, not names,

But sounds and smells and faces,

And she took us there

In her ravaged and sluicing mind –

She spoke to ghosts, and described

All, at the same time – we sniffed

The tang of glowing coal,

The grease and brass, the brown

And cream carriages disgorging, filling –

And then, her fork dropped

Into the pool of gravy, the potato

Fell, mown down in a no-man’s land

Of world’s end – her silence become

A long and hand-held friend –

She was hugged, squeezed and gone –

Redruth Station lay wet,

Un-swept, echoing within to steam

As cold as death on parting’s lip.

Waiting on Redruth Station

(an extract)

 16.5.24

And here am I, alone on Platform 2

Of Redruth Station, echoes

Of many a generation bedded

In dark-stained bricks of coal

And steam, of fortunes brought

Home on wings of emphysema

And lungs become strangers to air,

And youth pegged to lines

Of un-won un-lost events

Of trenching tunnelling warfare –

Look! In the second-hand book

Of Holmans’ effort, of women

Over lathes with wild hair

Tucked under linen caps

To sit in lines and Woodbine stare

Into historical lenses, to fashion

Machines for pumping air

Into covert shafts below

No-Man’s Land, prepared to blow

To smithereens cousins

And retainers of many Queens –

I await the screech of steel,

Wheel and rail announcing

Arrival – more reliable by far

Than tannoy or table or plotted

Course measured by shifting star!

I hear her child’s voice

 At Christmas, our last occasion,

And she uncertain of fork’s function

In relation to roast spud

In congealing gravy, standing

Among legs and cases

In an ocean of coming and going –

Just here, on Platform 2,

Khaki memories of Nowhere

Already sealed and safe within

To remain unspoken, and she,

With a cracker’s paper hat

Green and torn on a permanent wave,

And plastic teeth laughing

To see the brave and broken

Coming home to stand on watch

Beside the shell-shock

Nightmare, the memorial bugle

And mustard gas grave –

With thanks to Bert for sharing his poems. There are others by him on the Cornish Story website https://cornishstory.com/2024/04/05/the-journey-by-bert-biscoe/