How Green Was My Valley (22 page)

“Let me carry one, Dada,” Ianto said.

“No,” my father said. “All the people on the Hill shall see me with them. Then if
there is trouble, it will come to me and not to you. Him and his English law.

All the way up the Hill people looked and wished my father good night, but nobody
asked questions. It was enough for them to know that the turkeys were home again.
They could find out where they had been later.

Mr. Gruffydd was in the house when we got in, so that was more shock to us. My father
went round the back to hutch the turkeys, so he came in after, to a silence.

“Good evening, Mr. Gruffydd,” he said, and went to the mantel for his pipe.

“Good evening to you, Mr. Morgan,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “I hear you have had trouble
with Mr. Elias?”

“Bad news has good legs,” said my father.

“It is all over the Valley,” Mr. Gruffydd said.

“The trouble is finished,” my father said.

“He stole your turkeys?” Mr. Gruffydd said, and watched the smoke from my father’s
pipe.

“The turkeys are in the hutch outside,” my father said. “Is there anything to be done
for you, Mr. Gruffydd?”

Mr. Gruffydd was quiet for a moment or two and then he started to laugh. It started
in the depths of his chest and slowly rose until he was shouting laughing. Well, of
course, when we had finished to be surprised, we started to smile first, then our
cheeks went fat with laughter trying to get out, and then we laughed, too. We were
in stitches. Nobody knew why. Mr. Gruffydd kept trying to say, but laughter would
catch up with him, and off he would go again.

Then Ianto, with tears, would point to his nose, then at my father and make a weak
little punch, and that would start us all off again. Laughter is foolish to think
about, but good to have.

“Mr. Gruffydd,” my mother said, “have to eat.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Indeed I will. Tomorrow night, I shall be speaking
on the Chapel field down by the river, Mr. Morgan. I hope I shall see you beside me?”

“Well,” my father said, and very pleased and surprised, too, “thank you, Mr. Gruffydd.
I will be glad, indeed. What is the subject, sir?”

“The bringing of men closer to the spirit of God,” said Mr. Gruffydd.

“I punched a man’s nose to-night,” said my father.

“I know a few more that would be the better for it,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “And if things
are not better very soon, I will go out of my way to deal a few in person, too.”

“Good,” said my father. “I will be with you to-morrow night, sir. Eat, now. Eat plenty.”

The Chapel field was where Mr. Gruffydd baptized those who were ready. Along the river
it was, outside the village, and in that day a little paradise, with the river so
clear and broadly green, and silver about the rocks, and willows bending to wash,
and reeds in plenty for the frogs, and fish for the herons, and quiet for the ducks
and little water-hens.

Everybody went that way on Saturday for Mr. Gruffydd’s meeting. There was a crowd
in front of us, and a crowd behind. Up the mountain side we went and turned down for
the gate leading to the field. There was a big crowd outside, and their voice came
up like the low note of the north wind. When we got to them we saw why. There was
a notice nailed on a board, and it said that the landlord had left the district and
withheld permission, hitherto given, for meetings of any description.

The landlord had signed his name Abishai Elias.

The crowd wanted to go in, never mind the notice, but Mr. Gruffydd refused to set
foot beyond the gateway. So we all walked a little farther up the mountain, and there
Mr. Gruffydd found a place to stand where we could all see him, and spoke until the
sun went, and evening put a coldness upon us. But if we were chilled outside, we were
well warmed within from the heat of his discourse, and we walked home fast as well,
to have the blood full pitch in us.

He wanted to start his fight that evening down at the baptizing place, he said, because
it seemed a fitting meeting place for crusaders. Wickedness was creeping into the
Valley without halt or check. Thieves there were, and vagabonds, and drunkards by
the score, and even bad women.

“Before you are much older,” he shouted, and his voice was running in a ring all round
the Valley, “you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate next. Then perhaps
even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery
and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray.”

“Amen,” said the people, soft and deep.

“How shall we fight?” Mr. Gruffydd asked us. “How? It is simple. Men lose their birthrights
for a mess of pottage only if they stop using the gifts given them by God for their
betterment. By prayer. That is the first and greatest gift. Use the gift of prayer.
Ask for strength of mind, and a clear vision. Then sense. Use your sense. Not all
of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think
long and well. By prayer and good thought you will conquer all enemies. And your greatest
enemy now is coal. You must become stronger than coal. Coal is lifeless, but to subtle
men it lives in the form of gold. To you it is so many trams at so much a ton. To
others it is so many shiploads, so many credit notes, so many loans, investments,
interests. Your enemy is usury. And the usurer takes no heed of men, or their lives,
or their dependants’ lives. Behold, the night is coming. Prepare, for the time is
at hand.”

He went through the history of the Valley and spoke to them of the steady fall in
wages, and their willingness to work for less and less, while others who had nothing
to do with coal, but handled only paper, or owned the land above the workings, took
more and more.

“You must fight,” he said. “Fight. Fight now.”

“Tell us what to do,” men were shouting. “Show us a way.”

“Elect men to Parliament,” Mr. Gruffydd told them. “Gain for yourselves representation.
Then form a society among yourselves. Elect a body of officers to tabulate your wrongs
and give them authority to approach the chief men in the coal trade and in the Government.
Do all things with order.”

“Mr. Gruffydd,” shouted Mr. Rhys, a check-weighman with my father, “are you coming
outside your position in life? Your business is spiritual.”

“My business,” shouted Mr. Gruffydd, in a voice that made us jump, “is anything that
comes between men and the spirit of God.”

“Amen,” said the crowd.

“Let it not be forgotten,” said Mr. Gruffydd, in the same voice and waving the people
quiet, “that the Lord Jesus drove the money-changers from the Temple, not only because
they profaned that holy place, but also because they were corrupting the people, who
were too simple to see how they were being cheated, and by degrees, poisoned, till
they were in their own way corrupt as their masters.”

“Now then for you,” said Ianto to Davy, and Bronwen gave my hand a squeeze. “There
is how to talk to them. Sense.”

There was more talk then, and shouting, but Mr. Gruffydd said the women would be cold
if the meeting went longer, so after a prayer and a good hymn we went back home singing.

Even Ivor and my father were ready to work with the boys, and that had never happened
before. Indeed, when Gwilym came over after tea, he was so surprised he stood looking
in at the door.

“Come on, my son,” my father said. “Sit you by here, now. You can take the message
to the men on your side.”

“What is this, then?” Gwilym asked, looking all round us, Ianto, Davy, and Owen with
pen and ink, my father with a board and chalk, and Ivor with a ruler. Angharad and
my mother were in Bron’s, fitting a dress on Ceridwen.

Owen told him, while my father wrote a notice of a meeting to be held at the Three
Bells a couple of nights later. Ianto, Davy, and Owen were writing notices to be sent
to every colliery in the district, for the men to turn out in force. Then we all took
copies of the notice to take to the pits we had chosen, and my father took Mr. Boswell’s
Life of Dr. Johnson
from the shelf and read a couple of chapters aloud, and passed it round for us to
read in turn.

There is good were those nights, indeed.

Chapter Fifteen

H
APPY
we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing
to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But
even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or
reading, then we were making something out in the back, or over the mountain singing
somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.

I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all. I can remember nothing,
except death, to account for it. Gaslight, when it came, made people want to read
less, for comfort perhaps, and electric light sent them to bed earlier because it
was dearer. But when did people stop being friends with their mothers and fathers,
and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot
think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he
had it, but there it is, and nothing to cure it.

Dear little house that I have lived in, there is happiness you have seen, even before
I was born. In you is my life, and all the people I have loved are a part of you,
so to go out of you, and leave you, is to leave myself.

That great black bully who presses upon you with such hurt will soon cover you. Your
windows will break, and your doors, and slag will fill your rooms. Your roof may fall,
and this room and the others may become filled with slag. But you will stand upright
inside, with the slag behind, above, and beyond you, but you will never fall. You
shall be buried, but you will never fall.

Ceridwen stood in that doorway by there, with her new dress tight about her shoulders,
and her face laughing among her long hair hanging down, bending forward to do up the
fastenings at the back, and struggling to reach.

“Come you, Huw,” she said, pretending to be halfway to crying, “do these old things
up for me. Tight it is, see.”

How soft, warm, pale, the skin, and touched with the light, not flashing, not even
shining, but as though polished soft, and then breathed on with half of half a breath.

“Ceridwen,” my mother was shouting, downstairs, “you will be late, girl.”

“O, dammo,” Ceridwen said, and struggled again. “Hurry up, boy. There is slow.”

“Keep still, then,” I said to her for when she moved, all I had done up came loose
again. “Like an old eel in the pocket you are.”

“Right, you,” she said. “So an eel I am, is it? No present from Town for you, now.”

“Right,” I said, and stopped working. “No present, no dress done up. So now for you.”

“O, Huw, my little one,” she said, all eyes and soft voice, and laugh tears, “nasty
you are to your sister. You will have me late and then no Town and no bottom drawer,
and Dada will be angry and Blethyn will marry someone else. Come you, now, is it?”

“Will I have a present from Town, then?” I said.

“O, God, boy,” Ceridwen said, making claws at me, “nine old presents you have said.
But put me in this old dress before I will jump from that window.”

And the dress was done up, and downstairs we went, to see her go off with my mother
and father with Thomas the Carrier to catch the train to Town.

“Another one off,” Davy said, when we were waving to them down the Hill.

“When is it your turn?” Owen asked him.

“Yes,” Ianto said, “while there is still something left in the box.”

“O,” Davy said, “plenty of time.”

“Bring her home, man,” Ianto said. “Are you afraid one of us will take her?”

“One of you?” Davy said, and pushed back his hat to laugh. “Just for that, I will
have her home here on Saturday.”

“By damn,” Ianto shouted, “I knew well he had a girl, see. There is an old devil,
keeping quiet. Roll him down the bank, boys.”

But Davy had too long a start and they had no chance.

That was the first I knew of Davy having a girl.

But it was no wonder when we saw her.

Ceridwen came home with my father and mother on Saturday afternoon, full of parcels,
and talk of Town, and the railway, and the sea, but everybody was talking so much,
all at the same time, nobody had a good listen, except me to a lot of old noise and
words piled up on one another.

Blethyn Llywarch was a good size and fair looking, with a broken nose from fighting
and black hair in a mop that got in his eyes when he was excited. He was shy at first,
and blushing when he was near Ceridwen, but she was cool as a stream up the mountain,
pushing his tie, and patting his handkerchief and putting the flaps straight on his
pockets, but his hair was too high for her to reach.

My father was trying to make him sit back in his chair instead of having a bit of
himself on the edge, and my mother got a him a cup of tea and took the spoon away
after he had dropped it twice and splashed his good trews. Everybody trying to think
of something to say, not to be rude, and our faces with smiles so tight as to be stitched.

In came Davy and Ethelwyn on top of it.

Well.

Wyn we called her from the start, see. Nothing else to be done with a girl like that.
Brown eyes she had, big, with eyelashes that touched her brows, and a smile in her
voice, and looking to Davy as to a brother of God.

There is a big family we were that night. My father and mother, Ivor and Bronwen,
Ianto, Davy and Wyn, Owen, Gwilym, Ceridwen and Blethyn, Angharad and me, and little
Olwen upstairs and sleeping these hours, and Mr. Gruffydd, and old Mrs. Rowlands the
Villa, who was managing his lodgings for him, Mr. Evans from the colliery and more
who called and went. I did so much washing up that night, because Ceridwen was out
in the back with Blethyn, I never wanted to see another old pot while I lived.