How Green Was My Valley (23 page)

“Good God,” Angharad said, with impatience and a stamp on the wet stone, “are they
using six plates for every bit of devil-ridden food they are stuffing in their old
bellies, out by there?”

“Down on the floor I will put them,” Gwilym said, for the sink was crowded. “Nearly
finished they have, now. Have heart, girl.”

“Heart?” Angharad said, and nearly crying in temper. “Fifty pairs of hands, a new
sink and dry feet is what I want, not heart. Tell them in by there to take their old
snouts from the trough before I will come in and push the rest down their gullets
with the poker.”

Wash and wipe, wash and wipe, plates and dishes and knives and forks and spoons and
basins and cups. More kettles to boil for more hot water. More steam, more soda, more
wash and wipe, more wet on the floor. Wash and wipe. Dear, dear, there is glad I was
that night that I was born a boy. A man will never know a woman until he knows her
work. Wash and wipe, hot water and soda, kettles and saucepans, heat and steam, and
always the water.

At last we finished, and Angharad threw the last wet dishcloth over the line.

“Let us go out up the mountain, Huw,” she said, and there is surprised I was.

“What for?” I asked her. “Let us go in by there now, and listen to the talk.”

“Talk,” she said, and her eyes were dull with contempt. “I have had enough for one
day. Come on up the mountain where we shall be quiet. Talk? I would be looking at
their old mouths and thinking how many platefuls that one took in it. Come, you.”

So up the mountain we went, and sat on the branch of a big oak that the storm had
pulled off. There is beautiful to watch a mountain sleeping, and other mountains in
the other valleys rising up like bits of blue velvet to make you feel you could cut
a piece and wear it for a coat, to dance in above the fat clouds.

We had been there only a minute or two and then somebody came up toward us, a man,
and whistling as though he expected to meet somebody. Right, too, for Angharad got
up quickly and ran headlong down to meet him.

Young Iestyn Evans, son of Christmas Evans the Colliery, it was with her. He had just
left Oxford University and a proper swell, and starting with his father. There is
surprised I was.

“Iestyn,” Angharad said, “this is Huw.”

“Hulloa, Huw,” Iestyn said, in an English manner. “It is very kind of you to bring
your sister to meet me.”

“I knew nothing about you or I should have stayed at home,” I said. “And if my father
knew Angharad was meeting you, he would strangle her.”

“For shame, Huw Morgan,” Angharad said, but still on Iestyn’s arm, “only meeting for
a moment, I am.”

“The moment has gone these minutes,” I said, “come you home.”

“Wait,” Iestyn said, “and I will come with you.”

“If you do,” I said, “my father will know about this meeting. Better for you to call
after Chapel to-morrow.”

“How old is this Daniel?” Iestyn asked Angharad.

“Fourteen, I think he is,” Angharad said. “Not old enough to give orders. Come. Let
us go to the top of the mountain.”

“I am going home this minute,” I said.

“Wait,” said Iestyn.

“I am too young to give orders, perhaps,” I said, “but too old to take orders from
you.”

“There is a mean old thing you are,” Angharad said, and almost crying, this time properly.
“Only a minute.”

“Home, me,” I said, and started down the mountain.

“Huw,” she called. “Wait. I am coming.”

So I waited, and I heard them kiss, and then Angharad caught up with me and home we
went.

“What is the matter with you?” she asked me, and there is a temper for you. “I could
kill you. Five minutes would have been no harm.”

“That is what Meillyn Lewis might have said,” I told her.

“Huw,” she said, with her face white and her eyes black and her hair blowing about
her, and her cloak like a witch’s in coils with the wind, “you would say that to me?”

“I would rather say it now than after,” I said. “Why does he want to see you up the
mountain? Why not come home?”

“I hate you,” she said, and wrapped her cloak round her so that she was a black pillar,
with a white face and her eyes with glitter and shine to make you afraid.

“See if he asks Dada after Chapel to-morrow,” I said. “Then you shall start.”

But she was running down the path, and I was too unsteady to catch up with her, so
when I got in the house, she was making tea for them all as though nothing had been
amiss.

They were all talking about the Unions when I got in, and Mr. Evans looking very black
indeed.

“I pay my men well,” he said. “The best wages in all the valleys they have from me
and always have.”

“But your colliery is only a small one,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “and the rest of them
think differently from you. And they pay differently, too. That is the evil. You manage
your own colliery. But others are managed by paid servants with the owners interested
only in the profits. Rich, lazy lordlings and greedy shareholders are our enemies.”

“And middle-men,” said Davy.

“Keir Hardie says the mines should belong to the people,” said Ianto. “Like the Post
Office.”

“Hyndman says the land should all belong to the people,” Davy said, “and I am with
him.”

“Marx has always said so,” Owen said.

“I am not in favour of anything put up by a lot of old foreigners,” my father said.
“Owain Glyndwr said all there is to be said for this country hundreds of years ago.
Wales for the Welsh. More of him and less of Mr. Marx, please.”

“The peoples of all countries should own their countries,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “This
world was created for Mankind, not for some of mankind.”

“It is a good job some of us have done something with what land we have got, whatever,”
Mr. Evans said, still sour. “Enterprise is in the individual, not in the mob.”

“Then let enterprising individuals pay rental to the mob,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and
the mob will be that much better off. It is money that enables men to come from the
mob by education, and the purchase of books, and schools. When the mob is properly
schooled, it will be a less a mob and more of a body of respectable, self-disciplined,
and self-creative citizens.”

“We have come off the Unions now, properly,” said Mr. Evans.

“The Unions are only part of a whole,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “Let the Unions become engines
for the working people to right their wrongs. Not benefit societies, or burial clubs.
Let the Unions become civilian regiments to fight in the cause of people.”

“We are trying to join the Social Democratic Federation, now,” Davy said.

“Have you got members in this Valley for a Union, yet?” Mr. Gruffydd asked him, and
looking at his pipe.

“Only a few,” Davy said, and went a bit red in the lamplight.

“Have a strong Union of your own first,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “then you can join fine
sounds and names.”

“The sliding scales are stopping us,” Owen said. “They are not even wanting to join
the Miners’ Federation because of it.”

“They are fools,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “Tell them so and tell them why.”

“You do it,” Ianto said. “I had a try last week.”

“I have other work to do,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and got up. “You do it, and when you
have done it, you will find that my work has met yours, like forks in a road. Then
we shall help one another.”

“That meeting last week showed,” my father said, and helped Mr. Gruffydd with his
coat. “With the sliding scale the men know they have got something to work for and
take home. The women are behind them and that is their strength.”

“If more coal is sold at a cheaper price,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “wages will go down.
The cheaper the selling price, the less the wages, and the more the selling price,
the more the wages. That is sliding scale, and it’s working, is it? Now think, knowing
your enemies, what could be done by using a little guile. Has coal gone up? No. And
not likely to till your sliding scale is thrown aside and a fair living standard adopted
as a basis for a working wage. Not only by the miner but every other working man in
the country. Good night to you, Mr. Morgan, and good night, boys.”

When they had all been seen off down the Hill, the boys came back very quiet indeed
and stood about the fire.

“Well, Dada,” Ivor said, “what shall we do? I kept my mouth shut by there, but I wanted
to tell old Evans, the old hypocrite.”

“Is this our Ivor?” Owen said, looking at him and pretending to be fainting. “Never.”

“Who put the pepper into you?” Davy said.

“Nobody, man,” Ivor said. “Do you think I have been living and working here with my
eyes fast shut? Old Evans only pays a few pence more because he knows the men would
work at an easier pit if not. A fine one to talk.”

“How about having a crusade on our own?” Davy said. “We can take a valley each. After
work.”

“After whose work?” Ivor asked him. “You and Ianto and Owen are gentlemen of ease.”

“We are starting work in the colliery on Monday,” Davy said. “We went down this afternoon.
We will pay our way, Dada.”

“There was no need for that, boys,” my father said. “This is your home and there is
no question of paying.”

“And live off the box?” Owen said. “No, indeed. I can do my work after I have been
to the pit.”

“What about the crusade?” Davy said.

“To-morrow is Sunday,” said my father. “We will speak more on Monday. Quiet to bed,
now, or you will wake Mama. Then you will have another crusade.”

There is good it was to walk to Chapel on a Sunday morning when the sun was shining,
everybody in Sunday clothes and polished boots.

All the people on the Hill started about the same time, and you would hear nothing
for a long time but Good-Mornings and How-Are-You-This-Mornings all the way down to
the road at the bottom, all the men taking off their hats, and the women nodding their
bonnets and the boys touching their caps and the girls dropping a knee.

Our family started with me and little Olwen, walking now, with her little hand in
mine and very important with Owen and Angharad behind, then Davy and Ceridwen, then
Ianto with little Gareth, and Ivor and Bron behind, with my father and mother last.
The Tribe of Morgan my father called us, but there were lots of other families as
big, and many bigger, that we met on the way, and knew well, of course.

We used to walk quietly for a bit till we were out of the houses of the village, and
then my father or mother started a hymn softly, and the girls caught up with their
parts, Angharad and Bron in contralto, Ceridwen in soprano, and then the boys all
came in, and you heard the echo running to catch up, all over the Valley.

Beautiful were the days that are gone, and O, for them to be back. The mountain was
green, and proud with a good covering of oak and ash, and washing his feet in a streaming
river clear as the eyes of God. The winds came down with the scents of the grass and
wild flowers, putting a sweetness to our noses, and taking away so that nobody could
tell what beauty had been stolen, only that the winds were old robbers who took something
from each grass and flower and gave it back again, and gave a little to each of us,
and took it away again.

And as we all climbed the mountain side to the Chapel, there was Mr. Gruffydd, big
and strong with the blackness of his beard gone gold in the sun, waiting for us, and
everyone starting to sing the same hymn, from those nearest the Chapel to those down
at the bottom of the mountain, and to listen, you might think the mountain himself
was in song with him.

The Chapel always smelt the same, of wax, for the woodwork in the gallery and the
big seat and pews and pulpit, of soap and water for the stones, of paint a bit, and
of hymn books, and camphor from the best suits and dresses, and of people, and of
smoke from the wood in the stove.

But when you were near Bron, there was only lavender. My mother always made rose water
from the wild roses of the mountain, and though it was a lovely smell, it kept close
to her. The girls used it, too, and little Olwen was drowned in it. But Bron was lavender,
and three away from her, you could tell Bron. It was faint, so faint as a baby’s breath,
yet there.

We had two pews, one behind the other, and my place was just in front of Bron’s in
the back, so I was always with lavender, and thankful. I could never have a liking
for old camphor, and just in front of me was old Mrs. John, who must have bathed and
cooked food in it, so strong it was with her.

My father went up to sit in the big seat with the other deacons, and then one of them
would choose a hymn, while Mr. Gruffydd was coming in with the last of the people.

Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to
the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with
quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso,
and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and alto and mezzo, and contralto,
singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.

O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.

When Mr. Gruffydd started his sermon, he always put a few sheets of paper on the ledge
by the Bible, but never once was he seen to use them. He started to speak as though
he were talking to a family, quietly, in a voice not loud, not soft. But presently
you would hear a note coming into it and your hair would go cold at the back. It would
drop down and down, until you could hear what he said only from the shapes of his
mouth, but then he would throw a rock of sound into the quiet and bring your blood
splashing up inside you, and keep it boiling for minutes while the royal thunder of
his voice proclaimed again the Kingdom of God, and the Principality of Christ the
Man.

That is how we came from Chapel every Sunday rearmed and re-armoured against the world,
re-strengthened, and full of fight. As we came, so we went back home, but now some
of the elders would stop to talk outside the Chapel, especially those living far apart,
with the mountain between their homes, and the children would go to talk together,
too. So there might be a crowd of people outside the Chapel, all talking, with laughing
going on, with black bowler hats and top-hats nodding and bonnets with feathers bobbing,
and the crowded black clothes and white linen very plain against the green of the
mountain and the grey of the Chapel.