How Green Was My Valley (14 page)

“Good,” I said, and back to my books as she closed the door.

I was learning Euclid at the time. Even till now I have enjoyed his theorems. So simple
they are, and so wise, and good for the training of the mind. I shall always remember
the drawing I made of an isosceles triangle inside a circle, for it was while I was
trying to thread lead in the compass that Marged threw open the door, and stood with
the wind blowing her cloak against her, staring at me as though she could kill.

“Who is with Owen?” she was whispering, and not blinking.

“Bronwen is,” I said.

“I will have a knife in her,” she said, and pulled the buttons from her cloak as she
threw it from her.

“Only talking they are,” I said.

“Talking?” Marged said, in a high voice, as though we should be laughing. “For weeks
he has treated me like a ghost. Only talking? Now I know.”

“What, then?” I asked her, for I was so surprised at her, acting as she was, with
her hair all ends against her face, and her eyes staring and froth at her mouth.

“Shut up,” she said. “You will know this minute.”

She turned round to face the shed and lifted her chest to have a deep breath.

“Owen,” she shouted, “Bronwen Morgan. Come you out from by there.”

She had no need to shout twice. The shed door opened before she had finished and Bronwen
came running to her, catching her by the shoulders and pushing her in the kitchen.

Owen came in behind and closed the door, standing with his back to it, looking drawn
knives at Marged, who was in the lamp shadow, pressed against the wall, facing Bronwen.

“There is silly you are, girl,” Bronwen said, looking from Marged to Owen and across
at me.

“Not silly I am, now,” Marged said, as though the life had gone from her. “I have
watched you these weeks looking at him.”

“Hush, girl,” Bronwen said. “You know well there was a better reason than the one
you thought.”

“Tell her,” Owen said, as though he was throwing bones to a dog.

“Wait now, Owen,” Bronwen said, “there is a child in the room.”

“Not much misses him,” Owen said. “Tell her why you came out there.”

“I went to ask Owen why he was so cruel to you,” Bronwen said to Marged.

“Tell her what I told you,” Owen said, in the same voice, worse because it was so
deep.

“Take her outside and tell her yourself,” said Bronwen.

“Am I going to be treated like an old bit of rag between you?” Marged asked. “Pull
you, now. Settle it.”

“Tell her, Bron,” said Owen.

“He said he is not in love with you after everybody had a hand in the courting,” Bronwen
said.

“After you had finished with him, he meant,” said Marged.

“Shut up, and behave yourself,” Owen said. “You are talking like the women at the
pits.”

“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 father, 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?”