How Green Was My Valley (2 page)

When she had it on the table, she would open the lid and sit back, looking at my father.

“Well, Gwilym?” she would say, in her deep voice.

“Well,” my father would say, and take the pipe out of his mouth to sit up and blow
his nose. That was always how it was when there was money to be spent over the usual
housekeeping.

My father always said that money was made to be spent just as men spend their strength
and brains in earning it and as willingly. But just as they work with a purpose, so
the results of that work should be spent with a purpose and not wasted. So in our
family, since all the grown-ups were earning except my sisters and my mother and me,
there was always thought before the tin was taken out of the kitchen.

If my father and the boys were going over to the Mountain to see a rugby match, they
would want a few shillings extra between them and my father would take half a sovereign
and share it out. Their spending money was fixed because there was little to spend
money on.

They had their beer down at the Three Bells at the bottom of the Hill, and my father
paid all the dues once a fortnight. Sometimes there were outings with the choir and
now and again a visit to a match over in the next valley or an International in Town.
But when that happened the whole Valley, you might say, except those in bed or on
crutches, would be going. Very few of them ever saw the match, mind, but they would
all go to Town, and that was the main thing. They would know about the match from
their friends on the way home, so they could argue as well as the next. So what was
the odds if they saw the match or not.

I had my Saturday penny when I was quite small, and I used to buy toffee with it from
Mrs. Rhys the Glasfryn. She made the toffee in pans and then rolled it all up and
threw it soft at a nail behind the door, where it stuck. Then she took a handful with
both hands and pulled it towards her, then threw the slack back on the nail again.
That went on for half an hour or more until she was satisfied it was hard enough,
and then she let it lie to flatten out. Hours I have waited in her front room with
my penny in my hand, and my mouth full of spit, thinking of the toffee, and sniffing
the smell of sugar and cream and eggs. You could chew that toffee for hours, it seems
to me now, and never lose the taste of it, and even after it had gone down, you could
swallow and still find the taste hiding behind your tongue.

The first time I had real spending money was when Ivor got married. Bronwen came from
over the mountain where her father was a grocer. Ivor met her when he went there to
a choir competition and went in the shop for some eggs for his voice. Bronwen served
him and I suppose they started talking about one thing and another, but whatever it
was, it must have been very interesting because he missed the competition by hours,
and he was well cursed for it. A grand tenor he had from my father, see, and trained
beautiful. So he was a sad loss.

Dai Ellis the Stable, who took the choir over and back in the brake, told my father
about it. Ivor must have walked every step of the way over the mountain home because
he only got in about an hour before my mother got up to get the breakfasts. My father
only laughed.

“Beth,” he said, “we will be losing Ivor before long now, you will see. He will be
the first.”

“Well,” my mother said, and she was not exactly smiling, but as though she was wrapping
a smile inside a thought, “it is quite time, indeed. I wondered how long. Who is she?”

Nobody knew, then. And nobody would dare to ask, even my father. He said everybody
had their own thoughts and likings, and it was the business of nobody else to go about
asking questions and poking their snouts. He never did.

Poor Ivor had it very badly too. He was off his food for days. Coming in after the
shift, he had his bath and went up on the mountain-side to lie in the grass and think.
At least, he said he was thinking, when I went up there one day to him.

“Thinking,” he said to me. “Go from here, now, before I will sling you head first
in the river.”

He used to go over the mountain twice a week after that, week in and week out in snow
and all, and if he missed Dai Ellis, he walked back all those miles over the mountain
in the pitch black. It must be real love that will have a man like Ivor doing all
that just to see a girl for a few minutes with her father and mother in the room.

One Saturday afternoon after dinner when Ivor had almost driven my father silly with
walking up and down and sighing and going out to the door to look down the Hill, and
coming back to pick up the
Christian Herald
and give it a shaking and put it down, we heard a trap pull up outside the door.

My father got up knowing he had a visitor, and my brothers stood up too. Ivor was
at the door being very polite to the father of Bronwen who had come over to see the
family. My father sent me from the room as they passed in.

“Dada,” said Ivor, as white as lilies, “this is Bronwen’s father.”

“O,” said my father. “How are you, sir?”

“I am very well, indeed,” Bronwen’s father said, looking at all of them and the room
too in one single look. “There is cold it is.”

From then, of course, they got on fine, and by the time my mother had made the tea,
they were like old friends indeed, and Bronwen’s father got drunk as a lord down in
the Three Bells before he went home that night. My father had had a couple, too, mind,
but he always knew when enough was going to be too much, and you could not get him
near another pint after that.

Then my father took my mother over the mountain to meet Bronwen’s mother.

But one Saturday before that, Bronwen came over by herself before the men came up
the Hill.

I will never forget Bronwen as she was when I saw her coming up the Hill with the
double basket held on her hip.

She had on a straw bonnet with flowers down by her cheeks, and broad green ribbons
tied under her chin and blowing about her face. A big dark green cloak was curling
all round her as she walked, opening to show her dress and white apron that reached
below the ankles of her button boots. Even though the Hill was steep and the basket
big and heavy she made no nonsense of it. Up she came, looking at the houses on our
side till she saw me peeping at her from our doorway, and she smiled.

Indeed her eyes did go so bright as raindrops on the sill when the sun comes out and
her little nose did wrinkle up with her, and her mouth was red round her long white
teeth, and everything was held tight by the green whipping ribbons.

“Hullo, Huw,” she said.

But I was so shy I ran in to Mama and hid behind the wall bed.

“What is the matter with you?” my mother asked me, but I only pushed my face in the
blankets.

And then Bronwen called softly from the front.

Mind, my mother had never seen Bronwen or heard her voice, but I am sure she knew
who it was. She put her head on one side, and put down the fork she had been cooking
with, and went to the little looking-glass to take off this old blue cloth and do
something to her hair.

“Is that you, Bronwen?” she asked, while she was still looking at herself.

“Yes,” Bronwen said, though indeed you could hardly hear.

“Come in, my child,” my mother said, and went out to meet her. They looked at each
other for a little time without speaking, and then my mother kissed her.

In five minutes my mother knew all there was to be known, and Bronwen had been told
most of the little tricks Ivor had got up to when he was small, and what sort of things
he liked to eat, and how he would never drink his tea hot and things like that. Indeed,
talk got so warm that Mama nearly missed sitting outside and my father was shouting
a chorus with my brothers almost at the door when she screamed, and ran to push out
the stool, sitting down quick, and putting her hands tidy to wait.

“There is something radically wrong here,” said my father, coming in. “You have never
been late before, my girl.”

Then he saw Bronwen behind the door and he laughed.

“Wrong?” he said. “No, indeed. Right, that is what it is. Ivor.”

My father put his fingers down the back of my neck and pulled me out of the kitchen
just when Ivor, coal and dirt and all, was going to kiss Bronwen.

“Those things are not for you, my son,” he said, “you will have your turn to come.”

My sisters came back from the farm just then and my brothers were bathing out in the
back, so the house was full of noise and laughing, and the smell of the cooking made
you so hungry you would have pains inside.

Bronwen came over plenty of Saturdays after that, but I was always shy of her. I think
I must have fallen in love with Bronwen even then and I must have been in love with
her all my life since. It is silly to think a child could fall in love. If you think
about it like that, mind. But I am the child that was, and nobody knows how I feel,
except only me. And I think I fell in love with Bronwen that Saturday on the Hill.

Still, that is past.

Chapter Two

A
GRAND TIME
we had at Ivor’s wedding. There was nearly a fight about where the wedding was going
to be. Bronwen’s father wanted it done in the Zion chapel over the mountain, but my
father was sure our chapel would be ready in time.

Every man in our village had been helping for months in the evenings to build our
chapel. I used to play in the bricks and blocks and plaster with the other boys while
the men were working, and fine times we did have.

Indeed, the Chapel looks the same now as the day it was opened by some preacher from
Town. We had no preacher of our own for a long time because the village was not rich
enough to pay one, so the grown-ups took turns to preach and pray, and of course the
choir was always there.

Ivor got married to Bronwen in our new chapel as my father wanted, and you should
have seen the fun after.

For a miracle, it was a fine day. My father wore his top-hat, my mother had a new
grey dress and bonnet, all the boys had new black suits and bowlers, and I was in
a new black overcoat with a velvet collar. There is a swell I was.

But you should have seen Ivor and Bronwen. He had a new black suit too, but my father
lent him his white waistcoat, and it looked a real treat on him, with a bunch of pinks
in his buttonhole.

But Bronwen.

Everybody said how beautiful she was. She had her great-grandmother’s dress on, so
her mother said, and indeed even though it had been washed special, the lace was still
looking a bit brownish, or so I thought and no wonder being that old.

There was my mother and Bronwen’s crying down on the front, and my father and Bronwen’s
standing next to them, and then my older brothers, Ianto, Davy, and Owen.

I was down farther with my sisters and my other brother, standing with my aunts and
uncles. The Chapel was packed so full there was no room to lift your arms, and opening
a hymn book was out of the question. It is a good job they all knew the words of the
hymns backwards.

The preacher gave a fine sermon. He used some big English words I had never heard
before because our meetings were taken by the grown-ups in our language. But I remember
the tunes of some of them and asked my father afterwards. I suppose I must have got
the tunes wrong because although my father tried and said them over again, we never
found out what they were and I am still in ignorance to this day.

But everybody there listened very close, some leaning forward holding their ears,
and some leaning back with their eyes shut, and some just sitting down.

Whenever he said something extra, some of the men hummed to themselves and you could
see all the older women’s bonnets nodding like the wind passing over a field.

I hummed myself, once, when nobody else did, and of course it was in the wrong place,
and my uncle gave me a push with his elbow that sent me flying in the aisle with a
bump. I got up trying to wipe the dust off my new coat and the preacher stopped what
he was saying to look down at me, and everybody turned round to look at me, and you
could hear them clucking their tongues all over the Chapel. I wished I could have
dropped through a crack, and indeed I often dream of it, and I can still feel how
I felt, as though I was still small, and all those people were still alive.

It is very strange to think back like this, although come to think of it, there is
no fence or hedge round Time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like
if you remember it well enough.

I will never forget the party after the wedding when Ivor and Bronwen had gone up
to the house to go away. They went in Dai Ellis’ best trap with the white mare that
used to take the Post.

In the big tent they had the food and in the small one the drink. There were tables
for the grown-ups under the trees by the Chapel garden, but the children had theirs
in their hands on the grass by the baptism tank.

The big tent was a picture inside with all the food laid out on tables running round
the sides, and the women in their best dresses and bonnets, and flowers in jugs and
buckets.

Bronwen’s father had baked till all hours and you should have seen the stuff he brought
over. There were pies so heavy that two men had to lift them, and the crust on top
so pretty with patterns it was a shame to cut. The wedding cake was out under the
trees, white and going up in three rounds, every bit of it made by Bronwen’s father,
with horse-shoes and little balls of silver spelling out Ivor and Bronwen’s names
and the date.

And, of course, everybody in the village and from all the farms, and the friends of
Bronwen’s family had brought something made special, because everybody knew everybody
else would be looking to see what had been brought, so by the time it was all on the
tables, it looked as though it could never all be eaten, and in any case, it would
be a shame to start and spoil the show.