How Green Was My Valley (20 page)

“Hulloa, Teg,” I said, and stopped by the door, though there was no door.

“Hulloa, Huw,” she said, and looked shame. “Putting straw in sacks, we are. The straw
do go from under you if you turn in your sleep,” she said, trying to make fun.

“Yes, yes,” I said, as though I slept on straw every night of my life. “Here is a
pie in by here.”

“Good,” she said. “Mama will be glad of the taste.”

“And tea,” I said.

“Tea?” said Tegwen. “O, God. Let me have it in the kettle, quick.”

“How is Mrs. Beynon?” I asked her, for as far as I could see, she was in pain with
her, and mumbling, with froth on her mouth, and red in the face, with sweat binding
her hair.

“Mrs. Price will be down now just,” Tegwen said, and blowing the fire. “Then she will
be better.”

“What has Mrs. Price got to do with it?” I asked her.

“Then the new baby will come, boy,” Tegwen said, laughing. “That is why Angharad gave
me the sheet.”

“Does Mrs. Price bring the baby, then?” I asked her, and surprised I was, see.

Tegwen sat down laughing out loud, and then put a hand over her mouth and looked at
her mother.

“There is dull you are, boy,” she whispered, with lights in her eyes. “The new baby
is with Mama, see. But Mrs. Price do know how to have it from her. Bring cups, quick.”

The only cups I could find I would not have drunk from, but Mrs. Beynon drank and
drank though with no sign she knew where she was, or what it was she was drinking.

“Where is the new baby, then?” I asked Tegwen, for I could see no signs.

“Are you going to sit fat by there and say you know nothing about new babies?” Tegwen
asked me, and looking as though she thought I was a fool.

“No,” I said, “we have had new babies at our house and Bron’s, but I thought Dr. Richards
brought them in his bag.”

“Who told you?” Tegwen asked.

“My mother and Bron,” I said.

“Lies,” Tegwen said.

“How do you know?” I said. “You are only twelve, so you can still do with a lesson
or two.”

“Lies,” Tegwen said. “Wait, you, and you shall see.”

“How, then?” I said.

“When Mrs. Price comes, she will send us from here,” Tegwen said, “so we will go round
the back and look through that hole up by there.”

I looked up where she was pointing and saw a piece of wood hanging down from rot.
There was darkness at the back.

“Right, you,” I said.

Then everybody started to come in with the collections, and all the women were saying
O and Eh and clicking their tongues, and taking off their coats to tidy the place,
and chop grass, and move iron. Then the men started coming in and knotting ropes to
put up canvas over the bad places, and boards over the open window and doorways. Indeed,
in a couple of minutes it looked so good I could have lived in there myself.

Mr. Beynon came in and looked for a moment and went outside to cry, and then Mrs.
Price came in with a bundle and an elegant bag with patterns on it, made from carpet.

“Now then,” she said, with her foot barely inside the door. “Let us be having a couple
of you outside, please. All the children, this minute, for a start.”

“Come you,” Tegwen whispered to me, and off we went, out in the yard, up the steps
of the works and inside where the bats were thick in the roof, and flying like angry
whispers.

We went close to the hole and looked in.

Mrs. Price had put the smallest children in the bedstead at the side, and the other
woman with her was pulling their clothes off. Mrs. Beynon was crying, not quietly,
but out loud, like a boy who had fallen and hurt his knee. She was kicking at the
clothes and her face was swollen, with veins.

“Poor Mama,” Tegwen said, below a breath, “she always has this for a new baby.”

It was in my mind to ask why, but it was no business of mine. There was something
ugly and cruel in it that I could feel but not describe. Mrs. Beynon was a big, fat
woman, always very cheerful, but to see her like that was like being in a dream. I
found myself getting hot and having trouble to breathe.

There was a strange smell coming up to us, too. I have often smelt it about the house
where a baby has just come. It is a deep smell, an early smell, with the secrets of
blood and milk in it, with tenderness and terror.

Mrs. Price went to the fire and brought back the bucket to the bedside. Mrs. Penry
had finished the children and had come to stand at Mrs. Beynon’s head. Mrs. Price
pulled off the blankets as Mrs. Beynon started to scream, and Mrs. Penry was guiding
her hands to the wooden rail above the head of the bed. The children awoke and began
crying, but nobody took notice of them. Mrs. Beynon’s legs were like white stalks,
and they made little kicks, and her toes curled in, and her heels dug in the bed.
Her mouth was open with shouting and her eyes wide, and wild, and terrible to see
upside down as she was to me. Mrs. Price and Mrs. Penry were doing something to her,
but what I was not sure, for I could see only their backs beneath there, and the bats
were all round us, pulled from sleep by the crying and wailing and sobbing and shrieks,
and flying at us as though we were something to do with it.

“There,” Tegwen said, in my ear, pulling my arm to be closer to the hole. “There you
are, see. The new baby.”

But I looked only enough to see a redness in the deepening light, and stained cloths
in Mrs. Price’s wringing hands above the bucket and Mrs. Beynon’s toes set at peace.
And I turned away in shame and sickness for I felt I had been where only fools do
tread.

“Let me go from here,” I said.

“Wait, you,” Tegwen said. “There is plenty more to be seen.”

“I am going from here this minute,” I said, and went on hands and knees to the doorway.

“Do you believe now?” Tegwen said, with laugh in her voice.

“Yes,” I said, sick, and looking down the dark steps.

“Tell nobody, mind,” Tegwen said. “Else there will be trouble, sure.”

“Well, good-bye, now,” I said, and went through the yard smart as I could. Savage
glad I was to be in the air and feel it freezing me. I felt I deserved more than freezing.
I felt I should throw myself over a pit mouth or go under the wheels of a hay wain
or get tangled up in the cables of the big winding wheel, so low I did feel.

But instead I went inside Bron’s, and sat down in the usual chair. Bron was ironing,
and sprinkling water on the stiff white clothes, and spitting on the iron and hitting
the table hard to rub a clean shine into the plain parts, and smooth frills in the
embroideries.

“Well,” she said, “and how is the old man to-night?”

“I have just seen a new baby come to Mrs. Beynon,” I said.

Bronwen went on ironing as though she had heard nothing, but her face was flushed,
and her eyes were wrinkling as though the heat of the iron was too much.

“How did that happen?” she asked, but quietly and still looking at the washing.

“I was looking through a plank,” I said.

“And now you are satisfied?” Bronwen said, and looked up at me.

“Is it true, Bron?” I asked her, and hoping she would say no.

“If you saw what you saw,” Bronwen said, “then it must be true.”

“Will I get in trouble for knowing it?” I asked her.

“The only trouble you will have is thinking about it and having it on your conscience,”
Bronwen said. “People who go where they are not wanted will always have trouble. So
will those who poke their noses.”

“Are you angry with me, Bron?” I asked her.

“Not angry,” Bron said. “Only surprised. I thought you were growing up to be a gentleman.
But gentlemen never poke their noses. And if they do by accident, they keep it to
themselves.”

“I wish I had shut my mouth, now,” I said. “But I had to say something to somebody.
There is terrible it is, Bron.”

“Hisht, now,” she said. “Have to eat. Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Right, you,” she said. “Lay the table. I am just going to Mama’s for my meat dish.”

But I knew she had gone to our house to tell my mother.

There is a funny feeling you will have in you when you know trouble is being made
and waiting for you, in a little time to come. It is as though you had an open window
below there, and all the fears putting their hands in carelessly, not to hurt, but
to make discomfort.

“Mama wants to see you,” Bronwen said, when she came back, and without the meat dish.

“You told on me,” I said.

“Yes,” Bronwen said, “your Mama should know. You came to me but you should have gone
to her, first.”

“I never thought you would have me in trouble, Bron,” I said. “I would never tell
on you.”

“Go on with you, boy,” Bronwen said, half a smile and half a frown. “Nobody has told
on you. There is too much weight on that brain of yours and there is nothing I can
do to lighten it. Your mother is the one. Have something, and then go home, is it?”

“No,” I said. “If there is to be trouble, let me have it now.”

So out I went without saying good night, and walked straight in our house and found
my mother by herself in the kitchen, darning socks.

“Well,” she said, busy, careful to pull a thread.

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

The light was in her grey eyes when she looked up at me above the shining needle.
There was nothing there to frighten me, yet I was trembling. Nothing to be heard in
the house but the clock, and sometimes the resting fire.

“I hear you have been somewhere,” my mother said.

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“And you saw something,” my mother said.

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“Why?” my mother asked, with ice.

There are some questions that cannot be answered at all, so I looked at her slippers,
and hours went by me.

“Do you feel well?” my mother asked me, with a little tremble in her voice that made
me feel worse.

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“Dada will have to speak to you,” my mother said. “Go to bed, now.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and she held her cheek for me to kiss, and I went to my bed in
the back room, thankful to be in the cold darkness. I cannot tell how long I had been
asleep when I woke up and found my father looking down at me with the lamp.

“I am sorry I woke you, my son,” he said. “I hear you had a bit of trouble to-night?”

“Yes, Dada,” I said. “Will I take off my shirt?”

“Stay where you are, boy,” my father said, with a smile well on the way. “Not strapping
you, I am. Only talking. Are you awake and clear?”

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“Right, then,” my father said. “Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your
mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know
what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up
to your Mama and to all women.”

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“And another thing let it do,” my father said. “There is no room for pride in any
man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others.
All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw to-day, so come the Captains and
the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with
men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it?”

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“God bless you, my son,” he said. “Sleep in peace.”

I did, indeed.

Chapter Fourteen

T
HE AFFAIR
of the white turkeys will always be clear in my mind because it was the start of
the wickedness of old Elias the Shop against us as a family, and it happened when
Mr. Gruffydd began the revival.

We kept good hens out in the back. Brown, and white, and some good layers that were
black from my father’s sister’s. There is happy are hens. All day they peck for sweet
bits in the ground, twice they come for corn, and in the mornings they shout the roof
off to have you to come and see their eggs. And no trouble to anybody. I do like a
little hen, indeed. A minder of her own business, always, and very dainty in her walk
and ways.

Every year toward June, we had young turkeys from my mother’s brother, and these we
made fat for Christmas. But instead of the usual turkeys this year, Uncle Maldwyn
sent a new kind, white, and lovely fans in their tails, with pale yellow legs, and
bright red combs. White turkeys we had never seen.

All the village came up to see them and for a few hours the back was like a fair,
and for days farmers used to come up to see the White Ladies, they were calling them.
After a little, of course, we took no notice of anyone in the back, and anybody could
come up, and just take his time to look in, and go his way again.

That is how they went one night, without a sign or a sound.

The hens at any other time would have screeched to have your teeth out, but so many
people had been to see the turkeys, that I suppose they thought it was usual, and
made it no matter.

Angharad found out, for she always went for the eggs for breakfast.

She came in running, with her face red, and her eyes wide, and stood holding the door
while my father looked up from strapping his trews.

“Dada,” she said, “the turkeys have gone.”

“Gone, girl?” my father said. “Where, then?”

“The door is broken,” Angharad said; “and there are feathers on the ground.”

“O,” said my father. “Well, let us have breakfast, first. Then we shall see.”

“Will I go for the police?” Davy asked.

“Police?” my father said. “Why should we invite police? I will be my own police while
I have health and strength.”

At breakfast we were all quiet, for there was a look in my father’s face we all knew
well. Indeed, I would rather have seen a hundred police than that look.

So we were all taking a good breath when Ivor called for him to go on the morning
shift. It was getting light outside, so I went out with my brothers to see what could
be seen.