How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  “Have what there is to be had while there is time,” she said, and put a bowl of soup in front of me. “They have done harm to nobody.”

  “But he is a preacher and she is Mrs. Iestyn Evans,” I said. “Surely it is wrong, Bron?”

  “Why?” Bron asked. “Why is it wrong for Mr. Gruffydd to see Angharad?”

  “Well,” I said, and steam from the soup wetting my face, and glad to make it an excuse to pull out my handkerchief to have a good wipe to have time to think.

  “Yes, well?” Bron said, with sharpness, and the knife half-way through the loaf. “Shall I say? Because your mind is like those beauties down by there. Like Mrs. Nicholas. A fine brother you are. And a fine one to talk. Strangle her, you wanted. Strangle yourself for a change.”

  “Well, Bron,” I said, “there is nasty you are. Only asking why, I was.”

  “Is Mr. Gruffydd to be treated any different from other men only because he is a preacher?” she asked me, and angry. “Is he any less a man? Has he fewer rights?”

  “But with another man’s wife, I am saying,” I said, and ready to break the house to pieces in temper.

  “With another man’s wife, what?” Bron said, in a voice to put ice to hang from the stove. “Harm to who, if he talks to her, and she has benefit from his company?”

  “No harm,” I said.

  “Then?” she asked me, with the smile that was not a smile.

  “O, to hell,” I said. “It is none of my business.”

  You should have heard Bron laughing. In fits and helpless, trying to cut bread, but too weak to hold the knife.

  “Eh, dear, dear,” she said, and wiping the tears, “there is a silly old boy you are, man.”

  “Why am I silly?” I asked her, and trying to smile, but finding it hard to work against the soreness.

  “Because you are doing what Mr. Gruffydd has been doing,” she said, “and sleeping in the house, too. Would you like others to talk about you?”

  Well. Like sunlight coming to blind.

  “Nobody could say anything about me or you either,” I said. “I would only like to hear them.”

  “You shall, before long,” she said, certain as bricks.

  “Well, Bron,” I said, “I will go, then.”

  “You shall stay,” she said. “Let them talk, with their minds like a cess, and mouths like pots, with them. And think well about yourself before to talk of others. I told you this afternoon about the way you looked at me. Think of it a little more, and ask is it right before to ask questions of others.”

  So I sat like a dog with hurts after a good kicking, and went to bed, feeling the weight of her eyes, and her smile warm in the room, but not looking at her and unwilling to smile back.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ANGHARAD went to London, and Ceridwen went to stay with her, with the children, for a time. My mother went up there for a month, and indeed, from the fuss you would think the south pole was only the next stop from where she was going.

  How quiet is the house when the mistress has gone.

  You walk in, and the same smell is a comfort to you, the air on your cheek has the same feel, the fire makes the same noise, the china plates on the dresser shelves laugh at you as they always did, and the clock is still as loud as he always was with his heels on the road of Time.

  But a warmness is missing, a briskness, that moved as soon as the latch was lifted, and those sounds that followed, the rattle of the teacaddy, the crunch of the lid, the chime of spoons in saucers, the poking of the fire, and the hot hurry of scalding water upon tea leaves, are gone, too.

  “Good God,” my father said, “nobody shall know how I miss your mother. Sweetness have gone from life, indeed. The first time to be without her for thirty-nine years. Eh, dear. I am lost without my good Beth.”

  So I often saw my father writing under the lamp, scratching his head to find something to write about, even telling her that the handle had come off the kettle, and about Gareth cutting a lump out of the door with my chisel, with pages about Taliesin, of course.

  There is strange to see a man quiet in his own world, and searching it for jewels to give his queen. I often wondered how my father saw his world, and wished I could be sitting inside him only for a minute, while he was writing to my mother.

  Her letters to him were on one page, and written big to fill up room. Without fail, she had to hurry to catch the post and remained his loving Elizabeth Morgan.

  And he always cried when he read them to us.

  I went back to work with only a good swearing from the smith, and a couple of weeks later I was sent underground again with a place of my own and a boy to work with me. Twelve years old, he was, and a good little boy, but a bit young for the job, so I had more work to do.

  He was filling the tram at the bottom of the holding one Saturday morning, and I was up at the face piling slag. I heard shouting down on the main, and I thought he might have been run over, so down I went bent double, sliding on coal all the way.

  Fighting, he was, with a bigger boy, and having a hiding, but fair play to him, standing up and giving some good ones when he had chance.

  “Come on,” I said, “working for me, you are.”

  “I am sorry, Huw,” he said, and dropped his hands, but the other one put a hard right into his ear that sent him flat.

  Well, well.

  One good smack on the side of his head sent him over a pile of coal.

  “Manners,” I said. “Lacking in your family, evidently.”

  “O,” said one of the men, who had been looking on, “since when has your family come so good, then?”

  “Please to keep shut your mouth about my family,” I said.

  “You keep family matters out of your talk, then,” Evan John said. “A lot to talk about, you have, with a sister whoring after every preacher in the district, and a married woman.”

  I broke two of his ribs with a right, I broke his nose with my left, and I left his face only when I felt his jaw smash under my fist.

  Then I went back to work.

  When I got out of the cage on the pit-top the assistant manager beckoned me.

  “The police want you,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “Where?”

  “In the office,” he said.

  So I followed him into the office and a sergeant of police came from behind the door and tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Huw Morgan?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Assault and battery,” he said.

  “Will I have a bath before you lock me up?” I asked him.

  “Not locking you up,” he said. “You will be summoned first.”

  “Shall I go?” I asked him.

  “Warning,” he said. “Keep in the house.”

  “You are discharged from the colliery, Morgan,” the manager said. “You Morgans have been a nuisance here for years.”

  Home I went, and bathed, and sat down to dinner.

  Bron put the plate in front of me, and then looked.

  I could see her blue dress and a bit of apron from the side of my eye.

  “What did you do to the backs of your hands?” she asked me, as though a hand were over her mouth.

  “If he had been a single man,” I said, “I would have killed him. He spoke of Angharad.”

  “O, Huw,” she said, and sat beside me. “What, then?”

  “I am due for a summons from the police,” I said, “and I am put from work.”

  We were quiet together. Then she put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Eat your dinner,” she said.

  Only a little while after, there were footsteps in our back with no scraping of the heel, quick, clean, solid, belonging to somebody with a duty to be done and no time.

  “Mr. Gruffydd,” Bron said, and ran to put chairs straight, give the table cloth a smooth, and poke the fire.

  “Huw,” he said, and big and dark in the doorway, “you have had trouble.”

  “Yes,
sir,” I said, and standing, for his face was white, with a redness in his eyes.

  “Over my name,” he said, “and your sister’s?”

  I said nothing.

  “I am shamed,” he said, tired, but with anger shaking him. “Shamed. It will be worse in the court-house.”

  “I think no matter of them or the court-house,” I said.

  “Mr. Elias will see to it that you do,” Mr. Gruffydd said.

  “Mr. Elias?” I said, and with surprise.

  “Mr. Abishai Elias pressed the charge through his son,” he said, “or there would have been no summons. Evan John’s father is his shopman.”

  “I will wait for it,” I said.

  “I am going away,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and sat down slowly. “I am going from the Valley. They dare not say anything to me, but I see it in their eyes. Some of them, anyway. I am wrong to stay here from stubbornness. I should have gone long ago.”

  With the weariness of a beaten man, and his eyes at the mat, and his hat turning in his fingers, and his hair falling down to cover his face, and his shoulders a curving width of wrinkled black. Bron, with her apron to her eyes.

  Me, cold.

  “I am sorry, sir,” I said.

  “I will see your good father,” he said.

  And he went, while I looked at the flames behind the bars of the fire, and thought of nothing, only the curving yellow sharpness of them, and the deep mourn of Bron’s tears beside me.

  “Well, Huw,” my father said, “what, then?”

  “I will go in carpentering,” I said.

  “What is happening to us?” he said, quietly, with thought. “It is terrible, with us. Ivor, Ianto, Davy, Angharad, you. What your poor mother will say, I will never tell you. Now, Mr. Gruffydd.”

  “Have you tried to keep him back, Dada?” I asked him.

  My father pointed his pipe up at the mountain.

  “Go you,” he said, “and push that one by there out of its place. To Patagonia he is going, and in Patagonia he will land one of these days. So make fast your mind.”

  My mother came home while I was over the mountain buying wood. When I went in the house she was still in her bonnet sitting on the rocking-chair in Bron’s, and nursing Taliesin, with a towel over her black silk to save trouble.

  “Well,” she said, when I kissed her. “More, now then?”

  “Yes, Mama,” I said.

  “When is the summons?” she asked me, as though she was asking when was Wednesday.

  “Day after to-morrow,” I said.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked me, and looking at me straight.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “I brought back a London hat for you special.”

  “Thank you, Mama,” I said. “How is Angharad?”

  “Going to Cape Town,” she said, and lifted Taliesin to kiss him and keep the shake from her chin.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  SO IN MY LONDON HAT, and best tweed, off I went to the court-house, with my father and Mr. Gruffydd on each side of me in Thomas the Carrier’s best trap, and people to watch us go all the way down the hill and through the village, without a smile or wave.

  All the way over the mountain, slag heaps were like the backs of buried animals rising as from the Pit. Living trees were buried in them, and in some, gorse was growing with its lamps alight, and grass was trying to be green wherever the wind would let it rest in peace.

  “Will there be any of the Valley left free of slag?” I said to my father.

  “It was never allowed in my young days,” my father said. “Laziness and bad workmanship, and cheapness, my son. But I am thinking more of you coming to be free. The slag is there, and nothing to be done about it.”

  “We have got a good solicitor for you, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “so there is plenty of chance for you.”

  “I am not worried,” I said, and strange, I was not. I had been feeling that strangeness in the belly as though a window was open down there, only to think of the court-house, and police, and a judge, and worst of all, of prison and bars.

  But Bron had given me my hat before I left, and stood by the door to kiss me good-bye.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  We looked at one another, deep, deep we looked. And with suddenness I knew her loneliness, her grief, her wanting for Ivor, that she never showed by word or look. Women have their own braveries, their own mighty courageousness that is of woman, and not to be compared with the courage shown by man.

  In that moment when I was full of thought for myself, with winds in chorus through the window in my belly, Bronwen had pity upon me, and in her pity, lost for only a little minute the shield of her courage, and I saw deep into her eyes and felt the emptiness behind there, and heard the voice calling in the silence, and felt the tears she wept when all of us were sleeping.

  So shamed I was, that I wanted to drop down there and kiss her feet.

  Well I know why the old ones put camel hair upon themselves and used the whip.

  “O, Bron,” I said, “only now I know.”

  Her face cracked in front of my eyes, and I could not bear to look.

  Up at the mountain I looked, to the green, the blueness up there on top, to feel his hardness under my feet and his strong breath cold upon me, and then to pray for some of his peace, while Bronwen bled beside me.

  “I am not afraid any more, Bron, my little one,” I said, “but I am glad this came if only to know this. If I come back, I come back. And if I stay there, I stay. But back or stay, I am not afraid. I am only shamed. Good-bye, Bron.”

  I put my arm about the gentle warmth of her, and in her tears and softness, with lavender reaching into me to tear with claws, I kissed her cheek with a brother’s kiss, and left her with my window tight shut and ready for the deaths of War. The bowmen at Agincourt were not colder to choose a shaft than I was to pull a bit of mignonette to wear in my buttonhole.

  So into the trap and off, and with figs to everybody.

  The court-house I never noticed. I had that feeling in me that you will have when a cut is to be stitched, or a burn to be scraped, when the doctor is threading the needle or honing his little knife. It is a blunting of feeling that you put upon yourself, after you have prayed for the strength to keep your mouth shut and be held from the shame of being a coward. As though you slept while you stood awake.

  For long we sat on forms outside among crowds of people I knew. I smiled at them, and that was all.

  Then, Evan John came to me, with his youngest brother to talk for him, for his chin was in thick bandage, and his eyes still swollen and sore with cuts.

  “Huw,” Dafydd John said, “Evan wants to say this is no doing of his. He is going in court only because he have been summonsed. He will say nothing.”

  “Thank you, Evan,” I said.

  “And he is sorry you had a fight and please to shake hands,” Dafydd said.

  “I am sorry, too, Evan,” I said. “We have always been good friends. But I had to do it, see.”

  Evan shook hands and nodded a little bit, but even so such a nod gave him pain and he frowned, and smiled with his eyes.

  “No case, then,” Mr. Gruffydd said.

  “Self-defence, if the colliery prosecutes,” our solicitor said. “That will be our defence. The only danger to us will be the witnesses they call.”

  Mr. Esdras Daniels was a small man with a long moustache that curled right down to his chin, and then came back up again with another twist, like two broken circles, tight, both of them, with pomade. His hair was flat to his head and polished across his skull to hide the pinkness. Little black eyes he had, that looked at you as a shopman looks at you for size, but Mr. Daniels was measuring you for a bill to item, six and eightpence, with stamp, five shillings, and witness fee with expenses, and begged leave to remain your most humble and obedient servant, in copperplate script and a blur of purple ink.

  “Morgan,” a man in a black gown shouted, from a face that had it
s colour from a handling of pots. I passed by him while his mouth was slack, and knew.

  Four old men on the bench up at the back, and that one on the end there, Abishai Elias.

  “Up in the box,” somebody said to me, and I went to a little space behind three sides of wood, while everybody shuffled feet and spoke in low voices, and book-covers flapped on desk-tops, just like school when the teacher has gone out for a moment.

  I will never know to this day how the man who asked me to raise the Testament said the oath. In one long word he said it, and I gave him back my notion of what he said, only by relying on the sound it made to my ear, and repeating it. If I said the oath, it was not in my language, but nobody shall tell me that it was in English.

  I swear by Almighty God.

  Terror, there is, in the words.

  Yet, in his mouth, and in mine, nothing, only a mess of oral sloth, shameful even from a baby.

  After that, I went back in my sleep, again, and I was up on the mountain with Dai Bando and Cyfartha, and with Shani down by the school, and with Ceinwen at the acting, anywhere with anybody, but firm in my mind not to make sense of the talk that I could hear going on all round me.

  Only when I saw my father’s hands on the back of the seat in front of him, and the shouting whiteness of Mr. Gruffydd’s face, then, I opened my ears.

  The other solicitor was talking to the Justices, and very graceful with a pencil between his fingers, with his little fingers like women will use them on teacups when somebody important is visiting.

  “We apologize for having brought the case to court,” he was saying, “but in the circumstances my client thought it necessary in the interests of justice. That our witnesses have decided not to testify is, I think, a tribute to the defendant’s prowess. It is known that he is a crony of prizefighters and others of the same kidney.”

  Mr. Esdras Daniels got up very quiet and bent forward to the Bench with a smile made by queen bees.

  “Your Honour,” he said, “is this preamble strictly necessary?”

  “My friend must allow me to acquaint the court,” Mr. Pritchard said and smiling to chide angels, “of the circumstances which force us to withdraw the summons, thus causing a great deal of inconvenience, and avoidable delay in a much-overworked court.”