How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Will I come after dinner to finish?”

  “No,” he said. “Leave me to be by myself. I will tell you when.”

  So out I went, again, and home.

  My mother said nothing when I told her, but she gave a look at Angharad who had been crying on the stool by the fire and clicked her tongue, and went to cut the bread as though she hated it.

  Old Evans had a funeral that looked to be never ending. Not only did people walk over the mountain behind and before, but almost every foot of the way up was lined with people from all the other valleys. Every colliery, every railway yard, every ironworks, every customer and agent, every chapel, every society and choir and football team came over in strength.

  Never had I seen so many people, and long, long, sad lines of red faces, shining with soap and redder and shinier because of the snow. And black, black, black, everyone, from top to toe, except about the collar in the men and to the nose in the women, where all was spotless white. Hymn on hymn for miles, with all the legs moving, sometimes together, sometimes ragged. And when the hymn stopped for a moment you heard the tramp and squeak of best boots, and the muttering of women’s skirts going up, and up, and up, never stopping, and the snow giving a marvellous polish to the hundreds of top-hats.

  Angharad was with my mother and father, just behind Iestyn, and his two uncles from London, who sold the output, and Mr. Gruffydd, and four other preachers.

  I was with Bronwen, watching from half-way up the Hill, and glad to be out of it.

  “Come you,” said Bron, when it was not half gone by, “back to the house and a good cup of tea, us.”

  So we ran up all the way, but I had the kettle on before she was near the house.

  “Poor Angharad,” Bron said. “Though why poor, there is no telling. Two good men and make a choice. Not much poor in that.”

  “Do you think she will have Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked her.

  “If Mr. Gruffydd will have her,” Bron said. “His trouble is conscience. She is going on for eighteen. He is near to forty. And a poor man to the end of his days.”

  “Is he poor?” I asked her, and surprised, too.

  “Twenty-five pounds a year,” Bron said. “Your mother has had that from your father in ten days many a time not very long ago.”

  “Ten shillings a week?” I asked her, and surprised now outside words. “For Mr. Gruffydd? Only ten old shillings a week?”

  “If they remember to pay,” Bron said. “Your Dada has been on to them now for weeks, but they only say the strike has swallowed all and let Mr. Gruffydd wait. He will wait till the shoes do rot on his feet, and not a word will he say.”

  “How can we help him, Bron?” I asked her.

  “By keeping our mouths shut, boy,” she said. “Mr. Gruffydd will be talking for himself when he wants. Not for us, him.”

  “So Iestyn will have Angharad, then?” I said.

  “I hope,” Bron said. “Marry a preacher and you marry the Chapel. Not for a hundred gold sovereigns a week, me. Iestyn is a rich man, now, so poor Mr. Gruffydd shall have it all the harder. There is sorry I am.”

  When Angharad came from the funeral she went straight to bed, and next day my mother sent her with Ceridwen up to the farm to be out of the way. Mr. Gruffydd came nowhere near our house for days, and whenever I went down there to help with the furniture, the little house was always closed. But we knew he was at his work, for Ellis saw him going up to the farms on the mountain, and he had big meetings every night of the week in Chapel.

  Iestyn had gone to London with his uncles. Every morning Ellis came with a fat letter for Angharad that Bron took up to her, and not one morning except Sunday was missed all the time he was away. He must have spent his days in front of black-edged paper.

  Back to school I went on the Monday and very anxious I felt every step of the way. Ceinwen met me down by the ironworks, and pretended she was only going that way for thread for her mother, but though we passed Meredith the Haberdasher she made no move to go in, even though I reminded her. We said nothing very much till we got to the gate and then she hung back because boys and girls were crowded about it.

  “Huw,” she said, “will you take me to hear the nightingales one night?”

  “Nightingales?” I said. “It is winter, girl.”

  “Well, when nightingales are ready, then,” she said.

  “Right,” I said, “in three months, perhaps more, you shall come.”

  “Right, you,” she said. “A promise, mind.”

  “A promise,” I said.

  I went through the crowd and they made way very civil, smiling and wishing me good morning, until I was surprised to find myself swelling up as though I had become someone of importance, but I squeezed it from me with one look at the study door. I had another look at the boards on the wall while I waited for Mr. Motshill, and tried to imagine a board with only my name on it, in gold, there between the picture of the last headmaster and the board with the boys who had gained other awards. I made certain I would have it there if I had to bleed from the brains.

  “Well, Morgan,” said Mr. Motshill, behind me.

  “Good morning, sir,” I said, and going hot.

  “I hope it is a good morning, Morgan,” he said, but cool, and wiping his glasses, not looking at me. “Are you sorry for what you did?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Are you prepared to work harder than you have been doing?” he asked me, and putting on his glasses, looking up at the window to see if they were clear.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Then go to your classroom,” said Mr. Motshill. “I shall expect to be confounded with pleasure when I open your books on Friday next. Nothing less than confounded, understand.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and went in the class, glad to be alone to crush the tears that were coming to my eyes. It is strange how kindness will bring tears, and so silly.

  Well, there is a surprise I had when the class came in.

  Instead of Mr. Jonas, there was Mr. Tyser.

  So glad I was to see him that I stared, and felt the surprise hardening my face, and he smiled to see me, but then pretended not to notice and went to his books.

  O, and then came to me a grim, grim feeling, when the blood inside my body froze and yet was boiling, and I shook, and my breath was stopped, while I resolved to repay a thousandfold the kindness of Mr. Motshill. Nothing would be too much, everything too little.

  Work.

  Out in the playground at dinner-time I had another surprise, but it made me feel sick, and angry, and then pleased, but not comfortable.

  Mr. Jonas was in charge of the infants’ class, the one just before they came to Standard One, with boys and girls of seven and eight. I saw him come from the infants’ door and walk away with his hands in his pockets. There was a look about his back that made me feel sorry for him, for one shoulder hung down lower than the other so that his coat had a big crease at the back, and his heels dragged, and his hands were not right in the pockets, but just on the top, with his cuffs pushed up and his wrists red, as though he cared nothing if they were in or out, cold or hot.

  I thought of the smile, and of the little children. I thought pity for them, and shuddered with gratitude to be free of it myself.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE GLASS IN THE KITCHEN window-panes has fallen in at last. I am glad now that I took so many out and gave them away for it was good glass, made in a day when men did the rolling by hand. A lovely roundness they had to them, looking from the side as though they were rising from the pane as a pastry crust will rise from the edges of the dish, and a pleasure to clean, so clearly and bright they shone. Many and many a time I saw my mother clean them inside. She could reach up to the third line on tip-toe, for the fourth and fifth she used the stool, and for the sixth, she put paper on the sill and climbed on it from the stool to reach. Then she got down and looked at it from the side to see if she had left any marks, and if she had n
ot, she folded the paper to put in the cupboard, gave the stool a good polish, and put it back by the fire, and then to the glass in the cupboard, for window-day was glass-and-china-day, and every pot, piece of glass, and window-pane shone at the end of it.

  The next to go will be the doors downstairs or the panes up here. The next movement, the next downward slip of that heap outside there is bound to cover the house. It may take the roof off. Poor little house, I hear you groaning, and I feel your pain, with all these hundreds of tons bearing down upon you. Almost I can see your little face crooked with pain and looking at me to help you. But I am helpless. It would take me ten generations to move it from you with a shovel, and not even a shovel I have got to my name, now. All I have got are the clothes on me, and those couple of shirts and socks that I will take with me in the little blue cloth. I used to have such plenty, too. Good tweed from the cloth mill, and old Hwfa Williams to cut it and sew it cross-legs on the floor in his little shop.

  The first time I went in there was with my father to have my measures taken so that he would know how much tweed to buy from the mill. Two and a half yards.

  Down we went to the mill and inside the yard, and through the low doorway into the weaving-room. There is a lovely smell with tweed. Good it is, and honest, of the earth and of humankind, and a pleasure to wear, and always a friend to you.

  I had a brown tweed, the colour of a ploughed field in the pebbly soil, when leaf has been put down about three months before, and grass is just poking through, barely to be seen, but there. That, and a grey, the colour of spring rain, and almost as soft to the touch. My father bought a bolt of it for my mother and sisters, and black for himself and my brothers, and we watched a piece come from the loom in green, and that my father took for Olwen and Gareth to have little cloaks.

  We went from there like journeymen loaded for a trip to the Indies, and by the time we got to Hwfa Williams I was ready to drop, so heavy was my share.

  “Long trews or short, Mr. Morgan?” Hwfa asked my father, and his eyes smiling and shining at me like little blue shoe-buttons. “Shall he be a man or stay a boy?”

  “O, Dada,” I said, “long, is it?”

  My father looked at me, and turned to look through the window that was covered with pictures of elegant gentlemen with narrow waists and trews tight at the ankles, with capes, and canes with tassels. I was aching all over and shouting at him in my mind for him to say yes.

  And Hwfa rubbed his thimble along his bottom lip, and his blue shoe-buttons went first to me and then to my father.

  “Very well, Huw, my little one,” my father said, and I could have swung on the beams, “long trews. You are grown, now, of course.”

  “Four button front, do up the top,” said Hwfa, and coming very practical. “Front pocket trews, collar to waistcoat. Flaps to top waistcoat pockets?”

  And the shoe-buttons went again to my father, and my father looked at me.

  “Yes, Dada, please,” I said.

  “Yes,” said my father, and looking through the window again.

  “Fitting for Master Huw Morgan, Thursday next, five of the evening,” said Hwfa, all business now, and speaking to old Twm, who kept the writings and the patterns, and put braid on coats and sewed buttonholes.

  “Right, you,” said old Twm, with needles sticking from the side of his mouth and all over his waistcoat. “And Nan Mardy coming in at half-past the hour for a three-quarter coat and a rain-cloak with black braid and pockets both sides.”

  “Never mind to talk of Nan Mardy, man,” Hwfa said, “Master Huw Morgan, I said.”

  “Well, only saying I was,” Old Twm said, with impatience, “in case.”

  “In case, in case,” Hwfa said, and the shoe-buttons flying everywhere. “What, in case, for the dear love of God, you old fool, you?”

  “In case he do have his trews about his boot-tops and the shirt tails above his chin, man,” old Twm shouted, out of temper.

  “O, to hell with you,” Hwfa shouted back. “Mind your own shirt tails and let everybody else mind his and devil fly off with old Nan. A good look at a shirt tail would put life in her.”

  “Come you,” said my father. “Mr. Williams, please to guard your tongue while this boy is near you.”

  “The boy will learn quick enough,” Hwfa said. “Five on the evening of Thursday, and to hell with Nan Mardy and this old fool by here, is it?”

  “Good afternoon, now,” said my father, and I pulled the door the harder to have more noise from the bell. Hwfa was still shouting and old Twm was swearing back at him when we were two houses away, and my father looked at me and smiled.

  “Why will a good look at a shirt tail put life in Nan Mardy, Dada?” I asked him.

  “Mind your business,” said my father, “then Nan shall mind hers, and we shall all be happy.”

  Again I had that feeling in me of helpless heat at being denied to know a matter which only a few words would explain. I made my mind firm to know about it, and tried to think of someone who would tell me without laughing at me. Tegwen Beynon I thought of, and Ceinwen Phillips, for I felt they knew much more about the things that the grown-ups wanted to keep to themselves than I did. But there was a look that I remembered in their eyes, and it came to me that Tegwen and Ceinwen had the same look, a heated fogginess within, that clouded their eyes, yet left them clear. Then I thought of Bron, and I knew with warmth that I had the right answer.

  Ceridwen and Blethyn were going to marry as soon as their house in the next Valley was ready, in two weeks’ time. For that, and Angharad’s marriage to Iestyn, I was having the new suits.

  Ceridwen and Blethyn made no fuss about their match, for they were happy, they knew they were going to be married, their house was going up brick by brick in front of their eyes, their furniture was bought, and Ceridwen’s bottom drawer was full, so there was no need for fuss.

  And if ever a girl had less fuss in her I would like to put eyes on her. As for Blethyn, well, nobody lived within a yard of her. She was his eyes, his heart, and his soul, and it was funny and yet sad to see his eyes upon her going with her wherever she went. And if she passed him, she tickled the back of his head with her fingers, and sometimes pulled the lobe of his ear, but gently not to hurt, and he looked up at her, then, with a smile that would go to the heart as a spear.

  But Angharad and Iestyn.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Kiss and Scratch,” my mother said of them. “Kiss one moment, scratch the next. Arms round now, fists up then. I will chase them from the house with a dishcloth if there is more of it.”

  Indeed, my mother had cause to complain, too.

  As soon as Iestyn was back from London, up to the house he came in a new dark blue gig with red lining round the wheels, and a polished brass rail with a long brass holder for a hickory and ivory coach whip, lovely, indeed, with a white lash that came round in a beautiful curve at the top, and then curled round the handle, and a little bay mare, polished like a piece of furniture, with a short barrel and a neck that came round like the top of a letter S, with knots in her mane and four white socks. And her little shoes shining like silver with her.

  I could have cried to watch, so pretty she was, and so proud of her red leather bridle, and the sun strong upon her.

  Iestyn, in a grey bowler hat and black-and-white check suit, with a white stock and pearl pin, and brown boots. There is a swell for you. A light flew to my mother’s eyes and flew out again to make you wonder if you saw it or not, when she saw him. He took off the bowler hat and gave her a bow with his good morning, and she nodded, looking at him straight, and went to the kitchen. Iestyn stood with the bowler going round and round in his hands, not knowing whether to go in or stay out. Then Ianto gave him a wink and a nod, and he smiled as though he had caught a finger in the door, and went in as to a lion’s den.

  Out he came again in a minute, and gave us all a wink of discomfort, and climbed up on the seat, put the rug about his knees, and drove up the Hill toward the farm.

 
When we went in my mother was still having her temper out of the clothes in the washtub. Up comes a shirt of my father’s frothed with soap, and quickly she screws it round and round, slap against the board, then, and rub, rub, rub till it was a wonder there was shirt or board, and a bit of her hair falling from under this little blue cloth, and hanging down across her face, and soapy from her impatient hand trying to push it away.

  “Did you see him?” my mother asked us, with her hands in the froth, and looking at us, and trying to blow away the hair with her eyes going up at it.

  “Yes,” said Ianto. “There is a lovely little mare.”

  “Mare?” my mother said, and slap, slap, slap with the shirt, and froth flying. “Him, I mean.”

  “Well, if he can afford to dress like that,” Ianto said, “he has got the money. Leave him, now.”

  “Money or not,” my mother said, “let him dress in satin and diamonds. It is no matter to me a bit. But let him wait to dress like that till he can wear them with comfort. He was in pain with him to have them on his back. Wait till Miss Angharad sees him. She will pull the hairs from his head.”

  Next day Angharad came home just after I came from school. There seemed nothing wrong with her, for she looked just the same, and she laughed, and just as ready to wipe up after supper. Yet there was something wrong that I could only feel. It was as though an extra light had gone out inside her. Iestyn was there for supper, and he took her for a walk after, but although they were smiling at one another, they were not a bit like Ceridwen and Blethyn. I never felt for Iestyn that pity I felt for Blethyn. He never once made me sad as Blethyn did, or made me laugh. Iestyn was fierce to kiss her when he thought they were unseen, and Angharad was ready enough to be kissed. But she never once looked as I had seen Ceridwen look, with that happiness that is not of the earth, when the world could tumble to blue ruin and it would be no matter.

  Then Ianto came in with The Times one night, and showed my mother and father a piece on the left of the front page with ink marks round it.

  “From who is it?” my mother asked him.