How Green Was My Valley (3 page)

But when my mother clapped her hands at the crowd and told them to eat, you would
be surprised how quick it went. Indeed if me and Cedric Griffiths had not found a
hole in the back of the big tent we would have been empty. Not, mind you, that anybody
rushed with their plates, but they were all so busy talking and eating, and the grown
girls were full of small children to be fed, and the grown-ups were serving other
grown-ups, and Cedric and me were the wrong size, too big to be fed by girls, and
too small to be with the other boys, that we had to make the best of it, and indeed
we did very well for ourselves under the long table.

The women were walking right by us, but all we could see was their boots and the bottom
of their dresses, and the table cloth covered the rest. When we wanted more, we crawled
out, and one would kneel while the other worked whatever came handy. Every time Cedric
got up to get more he chose jelly or blancmange, but I took cakes or a pie.

“Go on, boy,” Cedric whispered, “there is soft you are to eat old cake when you can
have jelly with you.”

I think perhaps he kept to that way of thinking all his life because he always did
very well. Last time I heard, he was running a boarding house on the coast and doing
splendid.

Still, we had to suffer for being pigs later on when they started the races for all
of us. My brothers had been looking for me to go in the little boys’ race and never
mind how I shouted and struggled, I had to go in too. I always hated people in crowds,
and it was that and the thought of being beaten in front of them all that made me
kick and shout.

But in the end I started because Davy threatened to take off my trews in front of
the girls and smack my bottom.

That was enough for me. Davy was never one to promise and not keep his word. So I
went in the race with about a dozen other boys and I won and I was sick.

Davy thought I was dying and indeed I was so giddy I kept falling over, till Dr. Richards
gave me a glass of cold water, and that did it. Then Davy and Ianto gave me a whole
sixpence each and I won the prize too, and
my
father gave me a shilling for that. Mama called me in the tent and took all my money
away for the box, and gave me three pennies to spend instead, and put a chair to the
table for me to sit on for more jelly and cake.

In the evening after we had finished tea we all sat on the grass on horse cloths and
sang hymns and songs, and we had prizes for the best. Indeed if I was not chosen again
for the best voice among the small boys. There is pleased my father was. I will never
forget the way he looked when Mr. Prosser, St. Bedwas, gave me the sweets.

Singing was in my father as sight is in the eye. Always after that he called me the
family soloist. That night he held my hand tight all the way home, with my mother
on his other side, and my sisters behind us.

There is strange how things come back if you start to think of one thing and become
tangled up in memory. Because sometimes you think of a thing, and it reminds you of
something else, but nearly always you forget why it should remind you, and you find
you have forgotten the link between them.

Ianto was married after that to a girl in the village who was staying with relations.
I never saw much of her because her father invited Ianto to go and work with him after
they were married, and go he did, and got married up there. I was out of that picture
because I had the mumps, but my mother and sisters went, and they were sorry for Ianto
when they came back. He had got in with the wrong lot, my mother said, and we heard
nothing from him after that for years.

Mama always worried after him but it was no use.

Davy was the brain of the family. He always wanted to go in for doctoring, but Dr.
Richards said he was too old. Whenever there was an accident in the pit you would
know Davy was about with the bandage box, and if anybody was hurt in the village Davy
was always sent for. He never charged anybody only for what bandage and ointment he
used, and he was very well thought of all over the district.

He began to get very moody when I was going to school, and soon I stopped asking him
questions about sums because he would never answer. My father asked him after supper
one night what was the matter.

Davy was a long time answering. Such a long time I was afraid my father would take
his mind off him and think of sending me to bed. He was always strict that I should
be in bed by eight at night.

“Dada,” Davy said, and he was staring into his empty cup, “I am not a bit happy.”

“I am sorry to hear that, my son,” my father said.

“What is wrong here, Davy?” my mother asked.

“Everything,” Davy said. “Everything. And yet nobody seems to notice. And if they
do, nothing is done.”

“Let me hear you,” my father said, “and if it is something a man can do, you shall
have it done.”

“No, Dada,” Davy said, “there is nothing you can do. It is something for all of us.
It is this. Next week our wages are going to be cut. Why? Just as much coal is coming
up, in fact, more than last year. Why should wages be cut? And then, look, the ironworks
are closing and going over to Dawlais and they are calling for men for Middlesbrough.
Are the men from the ironworks going to follow iron to Dawlais, or to Middlesbrough,
or are they going to the pit for work?”

Davy was staring hard at my father, and his eyes were shadowed by his hair which was
long and fell down over his forehead.

“Well,” my father said, moving his pipe as he always did when he was worried, “wherever
they will find work, I suppose.”

“To the pit,” said Davy, nodding, “and the pit is well supplied with men. The Owain
boys have had to go over the mountain for work. So what chance have others, when their
uncles and fathers have been here years? I will tell you what will happen, Dada,”
said Davy, and he got up to go to the mantelpiece and tap the box, “you will soon
have this as empty as my pipe.”

“Nonsense, my son,” my father said, very surprised and looking at my mother. “Goodness
gracious alive, that will never happen while there is coal.”

“We will see, now,” said Davy. “When those ironworkers gather round the pit for work,
you will have some of them offering to work for less, and the manager will agree.
You will see, now, and the older men and them with more pay will be put outside, too.
And you will be one if you are not careful.”

“There is silly you are, boy,” my father said and laughing. “Come on, Beth,” he said
to my mother, “give us a good cup of tea, will you. And you,” he said, catching sight
of me, “off up to bed. Quick.”

As Davy said, so it happened. The ironworkers started to work in the pit for not much
more than some of the boys. Some of them even started pulling the trams in place of
the ponies. A lot of the older and better-paid men got discharged without being told
why, although it was put out that they were too old and could not work as well as
they ought. But that was nonsense, because Dai Griffiths, one of them, was one of
the best in the Valley and known for it.

My father had been working for some time on the surface as checker. When the coal
came up, he put down how much coal was in the tram and who had worked it. On that
figure, the men were paid. So he was a kind of leader, and indeed the men looked to
him to settle most of the troubles that arose among them. And there were often plenty.

One night he came home from a meeting at the Three Bells and very glum he was. Davy
was sitting at the table reading and I was doing a bit of drawing in the bed corner.

“Davy,” my father said, “we are going to strike.”

“All right, Dada,” Davy said, with quiet. “Have you decided what you will do when
you have had your discharge?”

“I will have no discharge,” said my father, angrily. “That is what the fight is for.
Proper wages, and no terms that are not agreeable to us all.”

Davy looked up at the box and smiled. That only made my father angrier, although he
kept it to himself.

“Why were you up here when you should have been at the meeting?” he asked Davy.

“Because I wanted to see what they would do, first,” said Davy. “Now I know, I can
do something. And the first is, you keep out of it, Dada, and let me do the talking.”

“No,” my father said, “I will not. They have asked me to put the case, and put it
I will.”

“Then,” Davy said, “Gwilym and Owen and me will soon be keeping this house going.
You will join Dai Griffiths and the rest of them.”

“We will see about that,” my father said.

And indeed Davy was right again.

My father and two other men went to see the manager and came back quiet and cheerless.
There was nothing to be done, they said, only strike work.

So strike work they did.

For five weeks the strike lasted, the first time, and the men were only back two days
when they came out again because a dozen of them were discharged, my father among
them.

The second time they were out for twenty-two weeks.

Pits were working all round the Valley, but nobody outside our village seemed to care.
So on it went, right into winter. Then some men came down from Town with somebody
from London, and my father went to see them by himself.

By that time people were feeling the pinch. Food was scarce and so was money, and
if the women had not been good savers in better times, things would have gone very
hard. As it was, savings were almost at an end, and my mother was dipping into our
box to help women down the Hill who had big families still growing. Poor Mrs. Morris
by the Chapel, who had fourteen, and not one older than twelve, had to go about begging
food, and her husband was so ashamed he threw himself over the pit mouth.

My father came back worried but steady after speaking to the men. My mother asked
him no questions.

“We have finished the strike, Beth,” he said. “But our wages must come down. They
are not getting the price for coal that they used to, so they cannot afford to pay
the wages they did. We must be fair, too.”

“Are you having your job back, Gwilym?” my mother asked.

“Yes, my girl,” he said. But I thought he looked queer at my mother when he said it.

I found out why a couple of mornings later.

The men went back the morning after my father had spoken to the owners, and you should
have seen the Hill as they went down.

It was early morning and cold, and the moon had not yet gone down. White frost was
hard and thick on the roadway and roofs, and all the lit windows threw orange patches
all the way down.

As the doors opened and the men came out, their wives and children followed them into
the road and stood to watch them go. My father was one of the first, with Davy, and
as soon as the men saw him they started to cheer, for they all thought he was the
saviour of the village. But my father was not a vain man, and he disliked any show
about him. So he waved them all quiet and started to sing.

As soon as they heard his voice, tenors and altos waited for their turn, then the
baritones and basses, and then the women and children.

As soon as the singing started, all the doors opened all the way down the Hill, and
men and women and children came out to fill the road.

I looked at the smooth blue sky and the glowing white roofs, the black road, choked
with blacker figures of waving men passing down the Hill between groups of women with
children clustered about their skirts, all of them flushed by flickering orange lamplight
flooding out from open doorways, and heard the rich voices rising in many harmonies,
borne upward upon the mists which flew from singing mouths, veiling cold-pinched faces,
magnifying the brilliance of hoping eyes, and my heart went tight inside me.

And round about us the Valley echoed with the hymn, and lights came out in the farms
up on the dark mountain, and down at the pit, the men were waving their lamps, hundreds
of tiny sparks keeping time to the beat of the music.

Everybody was singing.

Peace there was again, see.

Chapter Three

I
WENT TO SCHOOL
with Mrs. Tom Jenkins in a little house far from the village. Tom had been burnt
by molten iron at the Works and had done nothing for years only lie in a chair, and
his wife had started a school to keep things going. She had two little girls of her
own, and while she was teaching they used to sit on stools by the board, separate
from the payers. Tom was always in pain, so lessons were often broken off when she
went out to see if she could do anything for him.

We learnt sums and letters, some history and the names of towns and rivers and where
they were. Mrs. Tom Jenkins had come from Caernarvon where her father had been a book
seller, so, of course, she knew a lot.

Indeed I will give her what she is due, for she gave us more than our fourpennyworth
a week. That was when I was taught to think, but I was never aware of it until I started
to work. The other boys and girls who were there with me have all done well, though
I am not certain they would say the same for her.

We used to sit in her front room on stools and rest our slates on our knees. Mrs.
Tom stood in front of a blackboard nailed on the wall and wrote with knobs of chalk.

First thing when we got in, she made us hang up our hats and coats tidy, and then
walk into the front room and say good morning to her, and to the little girls. Then
we turned about, and the boys set stools for the girls, and the girls got the slates
and pencils for the boys.

When we were all ready, we stood to sing the morning hymn, and Mrs. Tom said a little
prayer, asking a blessing on us all, and strength of mind and will to live and learn
for the benefit of mankind.

I remember well trying to think about mankind. I used to try to build up something
that would look like mankind because the word Man I knew, and Kind I knew. And I thought
at last, that mankind was a very tall man with a beard who was very kind and always
bending over people and being good and polite.