How Green Was My Valley (19 page)

“His observations,” said Ianto, “should never have been made. I would have punched
his nose if he had been a man.”

“Well, indeed,” said the preacher, and very distressed, “I am sorry to cause such
trouble. If I have said anything, I am deeply sorry.”

“Good,” said Ianto. “Now I am sorry. Have some more of my good mother’s blackberry.”

After that, it was like trying to talk through a net. Words seemed to stick in the
air. Nobody seemed willing to look at anybody else. And when somebody laughed, you
could tell how hard they were trying.

Mr. Gruffydd had been rolling little pieces of bread for minutes on end, looking straight
at the butter. Many times my mother took up the butter to help people, but his eyes
never moved. My father kept looking at him out of the side of his eyes, and trying
to talk business with Mr. Parry.

Presently Mr. Gruffydd blinked his eyes as though coming from sleep and cleared his
throat, and at once the room was still. Angharad, coming through from the wash-house
with more plates, first stood still, and then at a sign under the table from my mother,
quickly went out backwards.

“Ianto,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “at any other time, and in any other house, I would not
start this discussion. But this matter to-night requires airing. Why am I a limpet
on society?”

“Because you are doing useless work,” said Ianto, quick as that.

“Ianto,” said my father, across the table, and angry, with my mother’s hand on his
arm. “Mr. Gruffydd healed Huw.”

“Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “Huw healed himself. Ianto,” he said, “why is mine
a useless work?”

“Because,” Ianto said, with knife and fork idle, and his eyes on fire, “you make yourselves
out to be shepherds of the flock and yet you allow your sheep to live in filth and
poverty, and if you raise your voices, it is only to say it is the Will of God. Sheep,
indeed. Man was made in the image of God. Is God a sheep? Because if He is, I understand
why we are all so damned stupid.”

“I cannot tolerate this,” said the preacher who had not yet spoken, a little man with
glasses, who sniffed when he spoke and had a little cough with him that he used all
the time.

“True,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Perhaps, Ianto, you would come down to my lodgings to-morrow
and talk there. I am interested in your views.”

“But, Mr. Gruffydd,” said the sniffing preacher, “your dignity surely will not allow
you to talk with him.”

“Go from the house,” Ianto said, looking knives at him, “before I will throw you,
and your dignity. I will be with you at eight to-morrow morning, Mr. Gruffydd.”

“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “And God bless all in this house this night.”

“Amen,” we all said.

Chapter Thirteen

I
WENT DOWN THE HILL
with Ianto next morning before eight o’clock to start school again with Mrs. Tom
Jenkins. A big morning it was for me. More than two years had gone by since I was
last in the little front room, but nothing had changed, not even the curtains, though
they had been washed, of course.

Eunice and Eiluned had grown nearly big enough to wear their mother’s dresses without
cutting, but they still went about the house in bare feet to save their shoes and
stockings for going out. The blackboard was still cracked across at the top, and with
all the lessons chalked on and rubbed off into the minds of the boys and girls since,
greyer still than I remembered it, so that the alphabet, which Mrs. Tom always wrote
at night for us to copy first thing in the morning, was barely to be seen.

Even the smell was the same, of frying bacon, baking bread, sage in a bunch, the herbs
she burnt for Mr. Tom Jenkins’ comfort, and chalk, old books, airing washing and mice.
It was not the smell of our house, and I was always a stranger to it for it reminded
me of the purple head of Mr. Tom Jenkins and his noises.

When Mrs. Tom came in we had prayers, and then a prayer for sending me back to school
nothing worse except for thin legs, and then we sang “Let my life be all thanksgiving.”

But when we started lessons I had a shock, for there was nothing Mrs. Tom could teach
me. All the days I had been in bed I had either read books or listened to Bron or
my father and brothers, and hour after hour I had talked with Mr. Gruffydd.

Mrs. Tom tried me with the names of the kings, starting from Canute, but I could go
back hundreds of years and tell her of British kings who ruled before Rome became
nasty with us. Oceans, seas, continents, islands, countries, rivers, towns, and industries,
I knew all of them she asked me, and at last she put down the pointer.

“I had better see your father, Huw,” she said. “You are wasting time coming here.
Only your sums want a bit of help from me, and I can give you that every night after
tea. Go to your dinner now, and stay home.”

So back we all went up the Hill, and the boys and girls looking at me as though I
knew everything.

Ianto was in the house when I got there and looking very straight. Owen was in the
back doing a bit of filing and putting my mother’s teeth in brine, and Angharad was
peeling apples in the wash-house. When I got a wink from her I knew there was trouble
to come, so I went in with Owen.

“O,” he said. “You, is it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you want help?”

“Give this bolt head a scrape,” he said. “Can you?”

“Give me the file,” I said.

While I filed, Owen was fitting together a lot of parts all new and shining and looking
beautiful indeed, when they were fast and whole.

“What is this, Owen?” I asked him.

“An engine,” he said, “to drive people instead of a horse and trap. But say nothing.”

“No, no,” I said. “Why is Ianto looking at the wall in by there?”

“To rest his eyes from the faces of fools,” Owen said. “Why are you home so early?”

Then I told him what Mrs. Tom Jenkins had said, and he laughed.

“Right, you,” he said. “You shall go to a proper school. It is time, too. No man ever
learnt anything from a woman.”

“Mrs. Tom has taught me a lot,” I said.

“She passed information to you,” Owen said. “Figures and names and facts. You have
learnt nothing very much. But you have a splendid memory. It will help you when you
start to learn.”

When my mother called us in the house for dinner, I told her about Mrs. Tom. She was
so surprised that she stopped with her spoon in the sprouts and a leaf sticking to
the thumb on the plate.

“Eh,” she said, with round eyes. “Another worry, now then. School for Huw. Where,
then?”

“Technical school,” said Davy.

“Boarding school,” Owen said.

“All he will learn in that kind of place,” Davy said, “is how to look down on his
father and mother.”

“His Dada shall say,” my mother said. “Perhaps Mr. Gruffydd will say a word about
it, too.”

“Perhaps,” Davy said, “this family will do something without the help of Mr. Gruffydd.
Not yet, mind. But one day in the future.”

“Eat your plateful,” my mother said, pointing her fork at Davy. “If we have a friend,
Mr. Gruffydd is his name. Not a word about him in this house from anybody.”

“He is a good man,” Ianto said, “but I wish he was out of the Chapel.”

“Did you get a slicing this morning, then?” Davy asked him.

“No,” Ianto said. “But I found out how much I have to learn.”

“About what?” asked Owen.

“Men,” said Ianto, “and the way we live, and treat each other.”

“O,” said Davy, “that should be interesting. What are Mr. Gruffydd’s views?”

“The Sermon on the Mount,” said Ianto. “Brought up to date, and given out with a fist
on the end of each arm, and a good voice.”

“When is he starting?” asked Davy. “I will be there to hear him.”

“He started on me at eight o’clock this morning,” Ianto said, “and there will be a
meeting again on Saturday afternoon.”

“Did he have you on the floor?” Davy said, and laughing, though not unkindly.

“Yes,” said Ianto. “We disagreed on nothing, except method. I said to start now. He
said to wait. The time is not yet.”

“I have heard those words before, at any rate,” Owen said. “When will it be time?
Shall we know? Will it be given for a sign? Did you ask him?”

“No,” said Ianto. “I listened. I have a good mind to join the Chapel.”

“But, Ianto,” my mother said, while we all looked at him, “you are in the Chapel now,
boy. Since you were born.”

“I mean as a minister, Mama,” Ianto said, and put down his knife and fork, and excused
himself, and left the house.

“Dear God,” my mother whispered, with his boots still on the cobbles. “There is beautiful.”

“It would be more beautiful if there were sense and purpose in what he wanted to do,”
Davy said, and put his knife and fork together, though his dinner was steaming.

“There is plenty to be done outside the pulpit,” Owen said, and stopped eating, too.

“If Ianto thinks he can do more from the pulpit,” my mother said, “he shall try, and
I will help. We can do with a few more like Mr. Gruffydd.”

“Mr. Gruyffdd. Mr. Gruffydd. Mr. Gruffydd,” Davy said, and pushed back his chair to
stand. “I am tired of his name. There are men in the Valley without food in their
bellies or boots to their feet. There are children without houses and mothers without
hope. What has Mr. Gruffydd to give them? The Sermon on the Mount? God’s holy will?”

“For shame, David Morgan,” my mother said. “Mr. Gruffydd has collected more for them
than a dozen of you. Not another word, now. If you have left the table, go from here.”

“I am sorry to leave your pudding, Mama,” Owen said, and followed Davy out.

“I suppose I am to look to you for a few words, now?” my mother said to me.

“I will say them after I have had my dinner, Mama,” I said.

“O?” said my mother. “Well, let me warn you. One word from you and you shall have
a good couple round the ears. Now then.”

“Mama,” Angharad said, “Mrs. Beynon is having her baby in the old shed down by the
ironworks.”

“Which baby?” my mother asked.

“The new one she was going to have before they put her from the house,” Angharad said,
and put gravy over her potatoes.

“Eh,” my mother said. “How do you know?”

“Tegwen told me now just,” said Angharad eating fast. “I gave her a sheet for tearing
and the two old red blankets.”

My mother put down her knife and fork and looked at Angharad with her eyes in slits
and her lips together and puffed up.

“Do you mean to sit there,” she said, very slowly, “with that sheet in pieces and
two good blankets gone from the house, without a word from me?”

“They had nothing, Mama,” Angharad said, and no sign of fear. “The landlord’s men
put her from the house with nothing. Not a stick or stitch. And the new baby is coming
to-day. Only straw she has to lie on. And the seven other children.”

“Hisht, now,” my mother said, “I know how many. I will see to it. But no more sheets
and blankets behind my back. I am mistress in this house.”

“Yes, Mama,” Angharad said, and we had a wink together.

“I suppose,” my mother said, as though her mind were over the mountain, “nothing else
went with the sheets and blankets? It would be too much to expect of Miss Angharad
Morgan, of course?”

“Well, Mama,” Angharad said, and so pretty your mouth would run, “there were some
old pots and pans out in the back.”

“Go on,” Mama said. “Pots and pans.”

“And some of the boys’ old clothes,” Angharad counted on her fingers, “and some of
Dada’s.”

“And some of mine,” said Mama, in a voice you could barely hear.

“Yes, Mama,” said Angharad, “and some of mine. And my cloak.”

“Your best cloak, of course,” said Mama, in the same voice, and cold in the face.

“Yes, Mama,” said Angharad. “I only wear it on Sundays and winter has gone. And they
are cold down there with only old straw under them and holes in the roof.”

“Just put your eyes round the house,” said Mama, in her ordinary voice, “because I
am sorry to say there are a few things of ours Mrs. Beynon has missed. But perhaps
if we have a cart up here we can put it right. Is it?”

“O, Mama,” Angharad said, and her eyes that were so big were bigger now with tears,
“poor Tegwen Beynon only had on a dress. Nothing else. And no breakfast this morning.
And her poor face so white with her.”

“Angharad, my little one,” my mother said, and went to put her arms about her, for
she had pushed away her dinner and her face was flat upon the table. “Hisht, now.
I was angry because I was not asked. Ask in future. Is it?”

“Yes, Mama,” Angharad said, and reached out for my handkerchief. “What shall we do
for the new baby?”

“Go you and ask Bron for some of little Gareth’s baby clothes,” my mother said. “I
will have a basket of food now in a minute. Huw, go you up and down the Hill with
a basket and ask for anything to eat they can spare.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

Well, if you could have seen the collection.

The clothes would have covered a shift in the pit. The food was enough for the village.
And by the time the furniture was all together, two houses would not have held it.

Well, there it was, and no lack of hands to take it down to the old shed at the ironworks,
either.

I went down there first with the first basket of food, and indeed it was a poor place.

Mrs. Beynon was lying on one of our old red blankets and another one hanging over
her to keep out the water coming in from the roof. Evan Beynon had broken a plank
to make a fire, and an old bucket was heating water. Rusty iron wheels, and broken
rods of iron were red among the growing grass and dandelions. Puddles were plenty
and a rill ran right through to the river. Cold and damp, too.

The three youngest children were sleeping by Mrs. Beynon’s feet, and two more little
ones were playing shop with stones at the window. Tegwen and her smaller brother were
putting straw in sacks to make beds for the night.