How Green Was My Valley (13 page)

But my mother was only joking, of course. Women are so brave.

“Are you ready to see the house, Beth?” my father asked. He was standing in the doorway,
watching us.

“Yes, indeed I am,” my mother said, and she got up. “There is beautiful, Gwilym.”

She was looking about the kitchen, and then she looked quickly at me and ran, yes,
ran, from there, and up the stairs.

My father and mother were up there a long time, enough time for the choir to go through
four hymns and Comrades in Arms, and then I heard them coming down. Back they came
to the kitchen again and they stood by the table.

“Well, Gwilym,” my mother said, and looking at him.

“Well, Beth,” said my father, and smiling.

“There is beautiful,” said my mother.

“Glad I am you like it,” my father said.

“What is left in the box, now?” my mother asked.

“Plenty,” said my father.

“After the doctor and all this?” asked my mother.

“Plenty, plenty, and to spare,” said my father, still smiling and giving a wink to
me.

“There is kind you are, Gwil,” my mother said, putting her hand on his arm. “There
is a wife you have got, staying in bed all this time and leaving her family to strangers.”

“Yes, indeed,” my father said, pretending to be angry, “and bringing another little
sister for Huw, too. Dear, dear, there is a wife.”

“I wanted to get up, Gwil,” said my mother.

“Sweetheart mine,” said my father. I had never heard him call my mother that before.
There is pretty it did sound. She did think so, too. There is a blush, indeed, and
white hair.

“Sh,” she said, and looked quickly at me, and saw me smiling, and blushed more, looking
on the floor and curling her fingers in her chain.

“Shall we go out to Mr. Gruffydd now, Beth?” my father asked her, and frowned at me
to say nothing.

“Yes,” my mother said, “but there is to be no say from me, mind.”

“You will have to have a couple of words with them, girl,” my father said, and laughing.
“They will be shouting if you try to run.”

“But what will I say?” my mother said.

“You found something to say last time you spoke,” my father said. “It should be easier,
now, with friends.”

“Right, you,” said my mother, nodding as she did when there was nothing more to be
done. “But if I will start shouting laughing in the middle, you shall have the blame.
Then I did talk for good reason to a parcel of dull men. But now, there is no profit
to talk.”

“Only to say thanks, girl,” said my father, urging her.

“I will say that with a good cup of tea,” my mother said. “Have those girls got ready?”

“Yes, Mama,” I said. “Out in the back they are waiting.”

“Good,” said my father, “and the rest are out in the front, waiting these months.
Come you, Beth. Let me see a smile with you, then, girl.”

No good to keep straight your face when my father looked at you like that. So my mother
struggled with her mouth for a moment and then she started to laugh.

“Go on with you, boy,” she said, and taking his arm from her waist and giving him
a little push to the door, “I am coming back again, now just, my little one,” she
said to me, “blackberry tart for you this minute.”

“Thank you, Mama,” I said, “speak so that I will hear you.”

“Gracious goodness,” my mother laughed, “there is like your old Dada you are, boy.”

Out they went, then, and such a shout to meet them as they opened the front door.
A big voice called for silence, and I knew that the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd would not
find it hard to be heard over in the next valley if he had notions to try.

“Beloved,” he said, standing upon the window sill of the front room, “I give you greeting
in the name of the Crucified.”

“Amen,” they said, and the deep sound of it slid down the Hill.

“Great is my joy,” he said, “to be thus honoured upon the first day of my ministry
among you, to be called to this house of sacrifice to welcome back a wife and mother,
whose name shall for ever be borne upon a shield of shining gold through the Five
Valleys and beyond.”

He had to stop, for the crowd was big and shouting was loud.

“It is evident,” he said, with laughing in his voice, “that your patience will not
permit an oration. But I will have you in Chapel, indeed.”

A big laugh from the crowd who knew they would have to be silent in the four walls
of the Zion.

“Beth Morgan,” he called, and his voice tolled about the Valley, “come into your house.
O woman, O noble mother, enter thou in honour while we give thanks to Almighty God
for His many mercies, for the gift of thy life, and for the sparing of thy gallant
son.”

Again the crowd were shouting, but a different note in the shout.

The kitchen went so quiet that I could hear the grease dropping from the chickens
on the spit. Not a sound else was to be heard except the littler sounds of the new
paint finding homes in the cracks, and the table getting comfortable on the new tiles,
and the chair resting itself, and my breath coming slow and steady and making the
bedclothes hiss.

“Friends,” in my mother’s voice, “there is nothing to say except thanks to Mr. Gruffydd.
That I have come home, thanks to God I have said a thousand thousand times, and for
somebody else inside here. No more to be said. Come you, now, and have to eat. There
is plenty.”

Shout, then, shout. Mouth on mouth, open and shouting, that soon will be filled with
food. There is patient is the mouth.

In a moment the kitchen was full. All the girls ran round the back lane and through
the back door, and processions came and went through the front, all taking out plates
of bread and butter and pies and cakes and buckets and baths of hot water for the
teapots, all getting in each other’s way and laughing and pushing and pretending to
be stuck in the doorway.

My mother came through the crowd with a big blackberry tart in one hand and my tea
in the other, carrying them high and with care not to spill, keeping off the people
with her elbows and eyes.

“Now then,” she said, and put them into my hands, “wait you till I will have a cloth
here.”

“No matter, Mama,” I said. “I have been waiting long for this, not the cloth.”

“If your Dada will see you eating without a cloth,” said my mother, “what will he
say to me? You are bringing up your son fit for a sty. Wait you, now.”

But before she had turned her back, I was into that tart.

O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick
with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both
passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you might
live for ever in the wideness of that rich moment.

Angharad came over with the cloth while my mother was pouring tea in her place, and
Bronwen came to spoon my cup for me. There was no talking to be done for now the house
was packed solid with people to see the new furniture and paint, and make a noise,
and some to look at me and smile.

I was thankful that Bronwen was sitting by my pillow for she hid most of them. But
those who had made up their minds to see me, poked in their heads and patted my feet.
Strange it was to see tears in their eyes and to feel their sympathy, and yet to be
able to say nothing to them in thanks.

But the noise was beyond words, indeed.

Cups and saucers and plates and knives and forks and spoons and boots and shoes were
clattering and scratching and shuffling, and women were talking and laughing in soprano
and contralto, and men were shouting and joking in tenor and in basso, but it was
all stirred up as though someone was bent on making a cake out of sound and would
have a good mixing for a start.

Then it was that I heard Owen shouting out in the back. Almost then, everybody heard
him, for a quiet fell, and people near the door were hushing others in the front who
were still talking.

“I will take no orders from you,” he was shouting, in anger.

“Let me find you near my daughter again,” Marged’s father shouted back, “and I will
thrash you till the end of your life, you wastrel.”

“Leave me go to smash in his head,” Gwilym was shouting, as though hands were holding
him.

“Close your head, Gwil,” Davy said. “Mr. Evans,” his voice went on, “there is no need
for language like that from you.”

“I will be judge of that,” said Mr. Evans, “and I will thank you to keep out of this
matter.”

“Give the old fool a good kick,” shouted Gwilym. “Loose his teeth, the old devil.”

“Shut up, man,” Owen said.

“Be silent, Gwilym,” said Davy. “You are making it worse. Mr. Evans, please to see
my father before you say more.”

“I will have my daughter from here, now,” said Mr. Evans, in anger.

“I will run away from you,” Marged said, and tears were in plenty.

“So now then for you,” mocked Gwilym, “you old fool, you.”

“Hisht, hisht, Gwilym,” said my mother, pushing through the crowd from our side, “go
from here, now, this moment.”

The crowd in the kitchen made way as my father and the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd moved
out of the front room toward the crowd outside the back door.

“Beth,” my father called, “what is it?”

“Come you, Gwilym,” my mother said, with relief, “there is an awful thing to happen
indeed. I am ashamed of you, Owen. And as for you, young man, I shall never know why
you were called after your father. Say you are sorry to Mr. Evans.”

“No, Mama,” said Gwilym, stubborn as a pig of iron.

“Wait you,” said my father. “Now then, what is the trouble, Mr. Evans?”

“Your son was in this shed with my daughter,” said Mr. Evans.

“Eh, dear, dear,” said the crowd to one another.

“What were they doing?” asked my father.

“O,” said Mr. Evans, as though he had no wish to air the matter. “He was holding her
about the waist.”

“I was kissing her,” said Owen.

“O,” said my father, as though that was the end of the matter. And I suppose he started
to smile, and the crowd began to laugh.

In a moment the whole house was shaking in laughter. But presently it drained off,
and people in front began hushing again.

“Glad I am,” my father was saying, “that it has ended like this. I will be very happy
to have Marged in the family.”

“There are none better,” said her father. “I am sorry, Gwilym, for causing this trouble.
But I am strict about such things.”

“Right, too,” said my father. “Gwilym, say you are sorry.”

“I am not sorry for saying what I did, as he was then,” said Gwilym, “but if I said
it as he is now, I would be very sorry indeed, Mr. Evans.”

There was quiet for a moment.

“That is the best you will have from that quarter,” my father said, and again everybody
started to laugh.

“The tea is getting cold,” Bronwen called. “Come you, now, quick.”

Bronwen took my cup from me and pinched the crumbs of tart from beneath my chin.

“There is an old fool that Evans is,” she whispered. “Her mother have known these
weeks. Wait till she will have him home. Only pretending, he was.”

As though Mrs. Evans had heard, her voice rose out in the back.

“Shame on you, Sion Evan Evans,” she said, plain to be heard, and making all the talk
fall away again. “Of course she will marry Owen Morgan, and thankful I am, too. Shame
I do feel, dear Mrs. Morgan, that this old fool of a man should cause trouble on this
day of all others.”

“Let us go now,” said my father, “and have a glass in health. Come, all of you.”

Up went the talk again, and somebody started to sing.

“Owen will never forget that as long as he is living,” Angharad said, bringing back
my full cup. “If you had seen his face.”

“I will have a talk with him,” said Bronwen. “If he will listen.”

But now everybody was singing and it was getting dark and the lamps were rising into
yellow flowers and the women had work to do, while the men went down the Hill to drink
healths and sing on their own.

Owen was not to be found that night.

Chapter Eight

I
T WAS MANY DAYS
before Bronwen had chance to speak to Owen because now she was not in our house such
a lot, for my mother was having her way about things, and she took care, now that
she was downstairs, to see that they were done.

Bronwen used to come in at night when Ivor had finished supper, and sit with me to
hear my lessons, ready for Mrs. Tom Jenkins in the morning, and then help Angharad
with the food boxes for the men next day.

One night, my mother went down to a prayer-meeting with my father, the first she had
been to since she was ill, so they were giving her a special meeting and everybody
was going. All except Owen, who was hard at work on his invention.

He had been very quiet, lately. Several times he had missed his meals, and although
my father had said not to worry, I knew that my mother was unhappy about him. But
she always was if any of us ever missed having a meal, for it was a certain sign,
she said, of sickness in us.

Not only my mother was unhappy, but Marged, too. I saw it clearly though she tried
not to show it. Often she stood looking through the window toward the shed where Owen
was working, and tears were in her eyes for so long that I would start to count the
beats before they fell. Then she would shake, once, from head to foot, as though she
were bitten through with cold, and turn to run out in the wash-house, with her hand
to her mouth, and the door coming to shut quietly behind her.

When my mother had gone with my father, and the house was still, Bronwen came in through
the back and took off her cloak as though she had work to do.

“Is Marged here?” she asked me.

“No, Bron,” I said. “Gone with Mama and Dada and the others, she has.”

“Good,” she said, and opened the door. “Wait you. I am having a talk to Owen for a
minute.”