How Green Was My Valley (10 page)

But by the bridge we met the full wind and it carried snow with it so thick that nothing
could be seen through it. I felt my way across the logs by holding on to the plank
rail, and my mother holding me by the hand. Careful and slow we had to go, and all
the time the wind was alive to push us in the ice.

But we found the other side and then we were lost, except to guess.

From where we were was not far to our house but we could see nothing except the blackness
knitted with snow. From the bridge I was sure I knew which way to go but after we
had been walking a few minutes my boots touched stones and I knew that one more step
and we would be in the river.

“I am sorry, Mama,” I said. “I am wrong here.”

“Very well, my little one,” my mother said, “you had a good try, indeed. Shall we
turn round, now?”

“These stones are down nearly by the Chapel, Mama,” I said, “so if we go across from
by here, we will go straight in Morris the Butcher’s.”

“Go you, then, Huw,” my mother said, “you are the man, here.”

So hot I went when my mother said that, I was fit to shine in the sun. It gave me
a new spirit indeed, and I struck out to where I thought Morris the Butcher’s lay
as though it was three o’clock on a spring afternoon.

But if I was strong and sure, my mother was not.

We had got about half-way across the rocks and gravel, and she was heavy on my shoulder
and having her breath in pain with her, when she put her hands to her chest and fell
down on her face flat, soundless, not moving.

Fright took me.

I looked at her, black in the snow, and snow going white upon her, and I was afraid.
But I remembered she had called me a man, and I made tight my fists. What to do, I
was asking myself. If I ran for my father, perhaps I would not find my mother again.
If I stayed here with her, perhaps we would both not be found and then she would die
of cold. Perhaps if I went, leaving her here, I would not reach my father.

And all the time I was thinking what to do, I was kneeling beside her, brushing and
scraping the snow from her, hating each piece and handful as though it were living
and able to understand, the white, quiet, cold, cruel snow.

Then I thought of the boys. They would all be coming down soon, and some would be
coming over the bridge. If I could have my mother down by there I would be bound to
meet somebody. As soon as I thought, I started.

But there is heavy my mother seemed to me. I tried and tried but her arms were loose
and slipped through when I tried to lift her by the shoulders. And it seemed too rude
to take hold of her by the leg as I would have done with a boy. So I tried and tried,
and I cried in rage to be so weak and I wished the snow had been harder and with shape
to throw myself upon it with my teeth.

At last I got my arms about my mother’s waist and, kneeling in the snow, clasping
her like that, I crawled backwards toward the bridge, pulling and dragging her as
I went.

Hours it did seem, and no feeling or sense was in me, but I was crying to God to help
me to save my mother, and I was helped for sure, or I cannot tell where I found the
strength.

I knew I had reached the bridge when my shoulders came against the rail. I pulled
my mother into the shelter of the post and tried to sit her against it but she was
far off and her mouth was open and I had to keep closing it. Then I found I could
not stand up. Strength had gone from my legs. So I had to crawl to find the middle
of the bridge and scratch away the snow to feel the logs to be sure that I would be
near when the boys crossed over, and then crawl back to my mother. She had slipped
sideways and almost she was falling in the river. I pulled and pulled to have her
back, but she was too heavy, and my arms were weak and there was nothing to be done
with my fingers, they were so frozen.

And when I knew I would lose her in the river, I knew there was only one thing to
be done.

I held her flat by lying on her and pressing her, while I rolled over her into the
river. I knew it was not deep by there, only about up to my waist because that is
where I had learnt to swim.

But now it was up to my chest and when I went in, so cold it was, it seemed to open
its hands and grip, and so strong that I was without a good breath for minutes. I
had my mother with my head in her middle, and my hands holding her chin and leg, so
she could not slip, but I was afraid my legs would go from under me, for I was not
standing but kneeling against the rocks, and the ice was cutting my chin.

My mother made no sound nor did she move, but I was too senseless to be afraid.

How long it was I cannot tell, but there was a weariness of time before I saw a light,
a yellow lantern light swinging near me in the paining dark. I tried to shout but
my voice was gone from my throat. Madness was in me to shout, to have that light nearer,
to have my mother taken back to the house.

So my voice came, but the voice was not mine, for there is no voice that will make
the sound I made. All the fury of living kind, fighting against useless pain, was
in the cry that brought the lantern to us.

It was Davy, but I had only enough in my eyes to see his cold, blue face, lit with
yellow light, and his eyes glistening big and staring, and his hand about the lantern
to shield it. I remember falling among the ice when I felt him take my mother from
me.

“Huw, Huw,” I heard him crying. “O, Huw.”

Chapter Seven

I
WOKE UP
in the bed downstairs in the kitchen, and saw the lamplight shining red on the wooden
panels. There is funny to wake up and not know yourself to be You.

Although you are like yourself as you are ordinarily, still there is something missing,
and you ask yourself where you are, and who you are, and why. There is a lot missing
in your life when you have no notion who you are. You have only a picture in front
of your eyes and nothing but emptiness behind them, not even the comfort of knowing
your name. Indeed, it is that which makes you so afraid and you will start to shout
to keep yourself company. Man is a coward in space, for he is by himself, and if you
feel you are alone, with not even yourself, that is fright for you. I wonder where
the real You goes to when you are strange like that.

I started to shout.

But I had nothing to shout with, and that made it worse. Try as I would, nothing would
come.

You have never been frightened if you have never lost yourself and your voice.

That is real fright, and awful, too.

For there you are in pure space, hearing, thinking, and seeing, but speechless and
without knowledge, and you begin to cry and tears blind you, and you are frantic to
wipe them away to be able to see, but still they come and you are lost in a fog of
shining wet.

Then I heard Bronwen singing, quietly, just near to me.

Lightning quick I found myself, and blood rushed warm all over me and brought on such
pain that I tried to twist. I was held tight in bandage. My face, arms, all my body
and legs, all of me was a sausage of soft slippery bandage.

The smell of goose grease was sweet and fat about me, and I knew then why the bandage
was slippery. I was bound up in goose grease to cure cold.

The memory of holding my mother came back to me, and now I found time to be afraid.
I tried to look at Bronwen, but I could not move my head, and it was hurting all over.
But Bronwen must have seen me strain to move and speak, for she left her chair quickly
as though she had jumped.

She did smell always of thyme and lavender because she made little bags of it for
the sheets, and I suppose she put a couple in with her own wash. So that smell was
always with her, and lovelier than that you will never have.

She knelt by me, whispering, but I could not hear for the bandage. She wiped my eyes
for me, and rose up to look down at me.

Beautiful, beautiful, was Bronwen, indeed.

“Huw,” she said, as though she ought not to be speaking, “are you hurting with you?”

I made to nod, and her teeth went fast in her lip.

“O, Huw,” she said, smiling so kind and crying soft, “little Huw, there is proud I
am to have your name. Proud, indeed.”

She bent to kiss me, quickly and so lightly, it was the touch of a warm moth, and
ran then to call my father, who was upstairs here, sitting with my mother.

Dr. Richards came in first to make a fuss over me and feel my pulse and look at his
watch with his eyebrows up, and then my father came to stand by his shoulder and look
down at me, with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“He will do,” Dr. Richards said. “But it is beyond me to say why, indeed. You are
breeding horses in this family, Mr. Morgan. This boy should be in his coffin, for
my part.”

“Thank God he is not,” my father said to him. He looked again at me and smiled. “Your
mother is doing very well, my son, and so is your new sister. Thanks to you, of course.
Your old father is very proud of you, Huw.”

He bent down to kiss me and left the smell of him near me, of his pipe and himself.
My silence seemed to make him afraid for me, but Dr. Richards pushed him out of the
room and told him I was sleepy.

“Mrs. Ivor,” Dr. Richards said to Bronwen when my father had gone, “let us undo the
bandage now and see what has gone with him. I am afraid of a fracture.”

Well, that is the last I remember, for as soon as Dr. Richards pulled back the clothes
and put his hand on my leg, I had such a flash of hurt that I suppose I dropped off.

Strange it is to think back like this and be a small boy again, and talk to people
who have been gone these years.

I had fever in the bones of my legs for nearly five years after that. Five years of
lying in the wall bed, and not able to get up, or go out, or move at all.

I have had plenty of time to think.

For months, at first, I was not quite balanced because of pain. Then it got better,
and at last I was having no pain at all. But still I was not allowed to get up because
of the fracture, which kept on having to be broken and set.

While I was only just living I took no notice of what went on, and indeed I remembered
nothing very much about it.

I only know that it was Bronwen who nursed me night and day, until she had her baby,
a little boy.

They called him Gareth.

The boys were often in to see me. They all had their meals in the parlour during the
time I was bad, and sometimes in the evening they were allowed in for a minute, though
I still could not speak to them because of a broken jaw.

But they were very kind to me, later on, and Davy and Owen took turns to read books,
but they had to stop reading Mr. Boswell’s
Life of Johnson
because it made me laugh, and laughing hurt too much.

There is a man was Dr. Johnson. Indeed I do wish we had a few of his kind living to-day.
Mind, I have heard him called an old busybody and other things, too. But I have always
noticed that those who said such things were the very ones whom Dr. Johnson would
have had under the table with a look, never mind a word. I owe a big debt to Mr. Boswell,
indeed. How happy he must have been to write about so great a man.

It was during that time that I found out about books. We had not many in the house,
but what there were, were good, although a bit solid for me, mind. But my father,
and Davy, and Ivor when he had time, were all at pains to explain when hard words
came up, and so by easy stages I grew with them.

But we were in agonies there with Mr. Stuart Mill’s
System of Logic
. It was so hard that we laughed no end at ourselves. But we got through to the end
and all the better for it. There is another man with a head.

The Bible, of course, my father and Owen read before going to bed, and I knew it in
the end as well as Owen.

It was then that I had thoughts about Christ, and I have never changed my mind. He
did appear to me then as a man, and as a man I still think of him. In that way, I
have had comfort. If he had been a God, or any more a son of God than any of us, then
it is unfair to ask us to do what he did. But if he was a man who found out for himself
what there is that is hidden in life, then we all have a chance to do the same. And
with the help of God, we shall.

Indeed, I am going from this house to-night to try and find out what is the matter
with me and the people I know, because there is something radically wrong with us
all, to be sure.

Davy used to say the same thing, and if ever a man had cause to question his fellows,
that man was Davy. I used to write his letters for him when I got better, not that
he was unable to write his own, but because I had all day to write in. So I got to
know all about matters concerning the Union and from the first I knew that things
were wrong.

Mrs. Tom Jenkins used to come up after school with her little girl, and give me the
lessons for the day to follow, and take away the work I had done during the day. There
is kind of her to come up all that way day after day, just to earn fourpence a week
and do her best for a sick boy. And make no mistake, best it was. She got handwriting
primers for me, that my father paid for, so that I would have a good hand when I was
ready to leave my bed. And I could write beautiful, too. I have never said so, but
I cannot put in words what came in me when I won a handwriting competition set by
a paper in Town.

And you should have seen the look in my father’s eyes when he brought in the paper.
They were all in the kitchen, for it was reading time, and we were waiting for my
father because he was late, and a strange event with him.

But when he came in, breathing a little extra from the Hill, he had the paper under
his arm as he carried his Bible, and we knew from the way he came in and sat down
in his chair that there was something serious to be said. So we all sat quiet. We
could hear my mother singing to my new sister upstairs.