“You made me,” said Marged. “Owen, was it my fault my father called us in front of them all? It was you who wanted to kiss. I had the teapots to fill and I told you to stop but you only kissed me more.”
“Take her outside, Owen,” Bronwen said, looking at me.
“No use,” Owen said. “My mind is hard.”
“Harden not your hearts,” I said, and had a mind to fly under the bedclothes, quick. But not one of them moved, so I stayed as I was.
The three of them looked at each other, Bronwen and Owen at Marged, and Marged at Owen.
“Owen,” Bronwen pleaded.
But Owen was still.
The clock rocked away, seeming to get louder at every stroke, as though it were rowing Time toward us, until I was wondering why it was never heard at other, ordinary times. I suppose it is because when such things as this happen, the minds of men reach out for something ordinary to think about, to try and take the hurt out of the matter, using ordinary little sounds, perhaps the tick of the clock, as a buffer for their mental engines.
Marged put down her head and started to cry so hard that when she sobbed, her head bounced up and back to her breast. Her neck at the back was so white it was a lovely surprise.
Bronwen looked again at Owen, but Owen looked at the blue tiles that ran round by the table legs.
“Right,” she said, as though that was the end of it for one night. “Come you, Marged, my girl. Let us have a cup of tea at my house.”
Marged went without a word, and Owen came from the door as they passed out.
He stood looking at a cut on his hand for a minute.
“Huw,” he said, without looking at me, “there is no need to tell you to keep this to yourself.”
“No,” I said, “but it was pity she should cry like that. There is white is her neck with her.”
“Be quiet now,” Owen said, and went to the fire.
I could still hear Bronwen talking to Marged out in the back.
“How did you come from Hebron, Owen?” I asked him.
“Where, boy?” Owen said.
“Hebron,” I said, looking in my books, “where you met Marged. This is beautiful she must have looked in her jewels and gold.”
“Hush, boy,” Owen said.
“Long time you did wait, too,” I said. “Five thousand years. I counted five thousand bricks outside here. That was long enough. Indeed, I had my eyes crossed, looking at them.”
Owen was looking up at the ceiling.
“You can spend your time better than that,” he said. “Better than a lot of us, too. Good night now.”
“Good night,” I said, watching him go to the door. “Tell Bron, I am waiting to do my lessons.”
Out he went, quick, and the door shut to wave the house.
But Bronwen never came.
My mother sent Angharad down to fetch Marged when she came back from the meeting. But Marged had left hours before, when Morris the Butcher had come up to ask Bronwen to sit with his wife, who was waiting, then, for her third boy.
All night they searched for Marged, up on the mountain and down by the river, and at last, early in the morning, when the men were going to work, they found out from Ellis the Post that she had met some people going from the meeting the night before who were driving into the next valley, and she had gone with them.
There is angry were my father and mother.
But not so angry as when Mr. Evans came over that night.
I heard nothing of it because they met in Bronwen’s house. But when they came home my father was so angry he would eat no supper. So nobody had any, and I had mine after the others had gone to bed.
So Gwilym married Marged.
They were the same age and Gwilym had always been in love with her, I suppose because Owen was, in the first place. Owen was away from home when the wedding happened, and only my mother and Angharad went. Bronwen was tied to the house because of Gareth at the time, and my father refused to meet Mr. Evans on any excuse at all.
Gwilym took Marged to live over in the new houses in the other valley, furnished with money out of the box. Our box.
Old Evans gave them nothing, not even a cup and saucer or a bit of fat for the pan. But when he died a couple of years after, he left over three hundred pounds to the Chapel. I never heard my father mention his name after the wedding. They had been friends, but something must have altered Evans, or else my father was having more sense.
Owen stayed away a long time after that. He was working on his patent models at the steel works, where they were giving him tools to make his invention. He went one night when I was asleep. So the house was nearly empty of boys, except Davy and me, and Davy was away so often that he was almost a stranger when he came home.
The Union was climbing. I knew, because I was writing his letters when he was home, and I often read his letters to his friends who could not read for themselves. He was trying at that time to join with the men on the Railways, but he had so many enemies among them, and so strong were the companies, that he was unable to make much progress, hard as he tried.
But I was making progress, with the help of the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd. Every day he called in to see me, sometimes for a minute in the early morning, or at night, and sometimes, but few and far, in the afternoons for an hour at a time. He was a hard-working man, with a conscience that would not allow him to rest idle. Day in and day out, he was over the mountain to see people and ask them why they were not at Chapel, or to sit with the sick, or to talk to old people who could not walk the miles across the gorse on a Sunday to come and pray.
From him I learnt our history. Caradog, Cadwaladr, Lud, Coel, Boadicea, all the princely, shining host passed into my keeping and from me to little Gareth, who was old enough now to understand all that was said to him. I saw in his eyes the light that Mr. Gruffydd must often have seen in mine.
“Men who are born to dig coal,” Mr. Gruffydd said to me, “need strength and courage. But they have no need of spirit, any more than the mole or the blind worm. Keep up your spirit, Huw, for that is the heritage of a thousand generations of the great ones of the Earth. As your father cleans his lamps to have good light, so keep clean your spirit.”
“And how shall it be kept clean, Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked him.
“By prayer, my son,” he said, “not mumbling, or shouting, or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiments. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you, mind, body and spirit. Do you still want to see the first daffodil out up on the mountain, my son?”
“Indeed, I do, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.
“Pray, my son,” he said, and left.
Christmas that year was quiet with us because Davy and Owen were away, and Gwilym had taken Marged over to see her parents. Angharad had gone to the farm where Ceridwen was working to take our Christmas presents, and Ivor took Bronwen and Gareth over the mountain to see her father and mother.
So it was an empty house, until Mr. Gruffydd brought some people up for a night of singing on Boxing Day. So big was the harp in the kitchen that the harpist had to sit in the doorway so that all might come to have warmth of the fire. Besides my father and mother and me, there was Mr. Gruffydd and the harpist, Miss Jenkins from over the mountain, Mrs. Tom Jenkins and her two little girls, growing fast now, Morris the Butcher and his wife, Mr. Christmas Evans the Colliery, Dr. Richards and his wife and daughter, Mr. Bowen ap Rhys, the cashier, Mr. Owen Madog from the new railways, and a couple of people I cannot remember, with their children, who were sucking their oranges in a way that was making my mother to look at them sideways and bite her lips.
People heard the singing, and, of course, everybody knew Mr. Gruffydd was in our house, so very soon the front and back of the house was thick fast with people all standing and listening, and any of them who knew my fa
ther, even by sight, were trying the old trick of putting their heads in at the door to wish us all well, in the hopes of being asked to come in. But there was soon no room, and as for the air, indeed, you could have stood things on it without them falling down, and for me in the wall bed it was so hot as being in the oven with the geese.
But the fingers of Miss Jenkins on the strings of the harp took all feeling from us, excepting the joy of song and the desire to sing. Songs and part-songs, cantatas, arias and dance melodies, hymns and psalms, all followed as fast as one would stop. Now the men singing, now the women. My mother started cradle songs she had taught us years before, and taught the strangers, and the strangers sang their songs and taught us. Then Mr. Evans danced a couple of songs he had learnt from a gypsy, tapping. He had a voice like a little crake with him, and so funny it sounded against the basso of my father that I was bound to push my fist in my mouth not to be rude.
In between songs, plenty of home-brewed beer, and bottles, and wine for the women, or tea in abundance. And if the songs made them hungry, the table was heavy with every mortal thing that can be made by women who are anxious to please the stomachs of their guests, and their own vanity. Nothing pleased my mother more than to be told how good were her dishes. Perhaps vanity is not the right word, for it pleased her to know that she was a good cook and that people enjoyed what she made for them, for she spent hours in cooking and making new dishes, so she deserved the praise.
I had just finished a song when Elias the Shop pushed his way through the crush at the back door and stood pressed in with his face and one shoulder showing, looking at us all as through we were all ripe to be swept into the Pit, and he was ready with the broom.
“Gwilym Morgan,” he shouted, above the clapping for me, “you should think shame to be acting like this on such a night. As for you, Mr. Gruffydd, your conduct is fit for a meeting of the deacons. I am surprised and deeply hurt to think that such a man has been teaching my children in Sunday School. Shame upon you. Upon all of you.”
“Give Mr. Elias a pint of home-brewed, Beth,” my father said, and put the pipe back in his mouth.
“If I will reach it,” said my mother, “I will give him a good clout with the frying-pan.”
“Shame on you,” Elias said to my mother, “so soon delivered from the jaws of death to repay your Maker by fouling His holy day.”
“Strike the note, Miss Jenkins, my dear,” said my father, and everybody looked uncomfortable. “Let us have Comrades in Arms again.”
“A moment, Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Gruffydd, looking at Elias. “What is your object in making this outburst, sir?”
“It does not concern you,” Elias said, “till you will meet the deacons.”
“There are eight deacons present,” said my father. “Shall we have a session now, then?”
“Shame on you,” Elias shouted, and struggling to come more to the front, but the crowd leaned against one another to hold him tighter. “Profaners of the holy days, what next will you do in your iniquity?”
“Well,” said my father, “if it is all the same to you, I will have the leg of that goose if Beth will pass the plate.”
Mr. Gruffydd got up while we were all laughing, and went as close to Mr. Elias as the crowd would allow, looking not at him, but into him. Fine eyes had Mr. Gruffydd, and bright, sharp points to them like the needles poking from my mother’s apron front.
“Mr. Elias,” he said, “I am very sorry if you have been hurt in your good conscience, by any conduct of mine, which you may have judged to be out of keeping with the time. But you must not forget that the Man Himself attended at Cana, and also provided the best wine. What do you find wrong in this meeting?”
Mr. Gruffydd’s quiet voice, so filling in the close space, sent everybody so still and soundless that I could hear the water coming from the stream above the garden.
“If you do not know,” Elias said, in a voice that told very plainly that he did not, “it is not my place to tell you. This is a holy day. That is enough.”
“It is far from enough,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “You have forced your way into this house and you have been abusive, and you have chosen to take your authority from the Bible. There are too many of your sort walking the earth. Now go, before I take you by the neck and throw you. I will have a word with you in Chapel, sir.”
How could we have known, then, that what happened that night, so small, so foolish, would be the cause of misery to us all. Elias never forgot that night. But his revenge was the sweeter when he had chance to have it. Sweet it was, and greatly he relished it, and every morsel of it he took.
But even of him I can think of with sorrow, now at this moment.
Those times, those people, even Mr. and Mrs. Elias, their son and daughters and their shop, have gone. How can there be fury felt for things that are gone to dust.
Chapter Nine
HERE IN THIS QUIET HOUSE I sit thinking back the structure of my life, building again that which has fallen. It do seem to me that the life of man is merely a pattern scrawled on Time, with little thought, little care, and no sense of design. Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.
The slag heap is moving again.
I can hear it whispering to itself, and as it whispers, the walls of this brave little house are girding themselves to withstand the assault. For months, more than I ever thought it would have the courage to withstand, that great mound has borne down upon these walls, this roof. And for those months the great bully has been beaten, for in my father’s day men built well for they were craftsmen. Stout beams, honest blocks, good work, and love for the job, all that is in this house.
But the slag heap moves, pressing on, down and down, over and all round this house which was my father’s and my mother’s and now is mine. Soon, perhaps in an hour, the house will be buried, and the slag heap will stretch from the top of the mountain right down to the river in the Valley. Poor river, how beautiful you were, how gay your song, how clear your green waters, how you enjoyed your play among the sleepy rocks.
I shall always remember the day I saw you after I had been in bed so long.
That morning Mr. Gruffydd came to the house early and opened the door of the kitchen so that the sun shone in all round him. Big he looked, and full of happy purpose.
“Good morning, Mrs. Morgan,” he said.
“Good morning, dear Mr. Gruffydd,” said my mother, in surprise. “There is good to see you.”
“I have come for Huw,” he said, as though he was asking to take a loaf for old Mrs. Llywarch.
“Huw?” my mother asked, and looked over the table at me with her eyebrows almost touching this little blue cloth.
“Yes,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “this is the morning he has been waiting for.”
I looked at Mr. Gruffydd and knew. But my mother was still in fog with her.
“The daffodils are out, Mama,” I said.
“Oh, Huw,” my mother said, and put down the bread knife, and turned her head away.
“Where are your clothes, Huw?” he asked me, but quiet, and looking at my mother’s back.
“Under my pillow, sir,” I said.
“Your pillow?” he said.
“For these months,” I said, “ready for to-day.”
“Come you, then,” he said, and smiling he was. “You shall bring back a posy fit for a queen for your brave mother, is it?”
“Indeed I will,” I said, and back I pulled the pillow, and out came my clothes that I had made ready ever since I had put my mind to the matter.
Pain there was, and a helpless feeling in all my bones, but I was determined to have those clothes on. On they went, and no nonsense, though the stockings were big and the trews too short, but I had grown and got thin, so it was no use to grumble.
There is a sight I must have looked when I put my legs out and stood up. But neither Mr. Gruffydd no
r my mother looked at me, so I was spared to blush and very thankful.
“Up on my back, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and bent his knees so that I could put my arms about his neck. I shall never forget how shocked I was to find myself up on the shoulders of a minister. It seemed wrong to be so familiar. But there I was, and carried to the door.
“He will be back in two hours, Mrs. Morgan, my little one,” said Mr. Gruffydd.
“God bless you,” my mother said, and still not looking.
“Good-bye, our Mam,” I said, with my legs falling about at the back. “Get ready the big pot for the daffodils. I will have an armful for you, and some for Bron.”
Outside, then, and through the blessed curtains of air, spun with morning mist and sunshine, blown upon us by wind from the southeast and the draughts that played in the Valley.
“Are you right, Huw?” Mr. Gruffydd asked me. “Am I too quick?”
“No indeed, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said. “Go, you.”
“Right,” he said. “Here is the road, and up by there are the daffodils. Tight, now.”
For the first few minutes I was shutting my eyes to get used to the sunshine, so raw and pure and shining white. Then I got used to it and less tears came and I was able to see without screwing up my eyes and having to blink.
The first thing I saw was the slag heap.
Big it had grown, and long, and black, without life or sign, lying along the bottom of the Valley on both sides of the river. The green grass, and the reeds and the flowers, all had gone, crushed beneath it. And every minute the burden grew, as cage after cage screeched along the cables from the pit, bumped to a stop at the tipping pier, and emptied dusty loads on the ridged, black, dirty back.
On our side of the Valley the heap reached to the front garden walls of the bottom row of houses, and children from them were playing up and down the black slopes, screaming and shouting, laughing in fun. On the other side of the river the chimney-pots of the first row of houses could only just be seen above the sharp curving back of the far heap, and all the time I was watching, the cable screeched and the cages tipped. From the Britannia pit came a call on the hooter as the cages came up, as though to remind the Valley to be ready for more filth as the work went on and on, year in and year out.
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