How Green Was My Valley (47 page)

The brake they went in was covered with leeks, and the horses wore three white ostrich
feathers in their head straps, and more leeks on their blinkers, and red blankets.
A prouder team of horses you never saw, and no use to say that horses cannot tell
when they are dressed for show, for if you had seen them, and their little dancings,
and half a neigh, and a couple of coughs, and restless with the hoof, and swish with
the tail, good gracious, it was so plain that they wanted you to look at them, and
pat them, and make those sounds through the teeth that horses love to hear from friendly
men.

Up with the boxes with the best clothes, first, then two casks of beer and crates
of bottles from the Three Bells, to see them as far as Paddington Station, and parcels
of food, and then the men climbed up, my father among the last, with Ivor.

Mr. Gruffydd had shaken hands with all of them, and every one of them had asked him
again, making a hundred times, to go with them. But Mr. Gruffydd smiled and shook
his head. He would not, for he had Chapel on Sunday, and sick to go to before that.
So the choir he had started went to Windsor without him, with enough noise from everybody
to sound like the departure of the Persian hordes.

All the way up the mountain we watched them, and then Mr. Gruffydd turned about and
went to the little house with the sea-shell porch, with a nod and a smile for us,
and a pat on the head for me.

“Breaking his heart,” Bron said. “If he had the money, he would be with them.”

“They could have passed the hat,” I said.

Bron looked at me with pity to burn.

“For him?” she said, and said no more.

Chapter Twenty-Six

M
R. GRUFFYDD
had changed a little, but I think I was the only one in the village to know how much.
He seemed tired, and yet restless, and somehow older, not with lines in the face,
or white coming to his beard, but something dark in the eyes made him so. The furniture
took a long time, for only I was working on it, and then with gaps of days. He had
a lot of work to do, with more men coming to the Valley, and labour troubles to preside
over, and meetings in Chapel. He was reading less, too. I could tell from the set
of the books, and the length of the candles. As to the furniture, he would start to
work, and then sit, staring, and then shake his head, and give me a bit of a smile,
and get up and go out to make tea. But he came a lot more to our house, and sat by
the fire for a long time, night after night, smoking his pipe, and my mother glad
to have him and always sorry when he said good night.

I was sorry to tell him that I would not be working with him on Saturday afternoon,
but he asked no questions, and only looked at me, and smoothed his hair, and nodded.
And that was worse, for I felt bound to tell him what I was going to do, if only to
put myself right with him, but I lacked the courage, for it sounded so silly. Please,
Mr. Gruffydd, I must leave the polishing on Saturday because I am going with Ceinwen
up the mountain to listen to the nightingales.

So I left him, and there seemed to be a hole in the air that nothing would fill.

Round the mountain, by the beeches, I met Ceinwen. After three o’clock, it was, with
the afternoon just coming heavy, and the sun hot, with the wind gone to hide up in
the trees at the mountain-top. She pulled up by the stone I was sitting on, and took
out a couple of rugs and a red straw basket and handed them down to me.

“What is this for, then?” I asked her, dull that I was.

“To eat, boy,” she said, and jumped down to unharness the mare. “Are we going to be
up there all night with nothing in our bellies but old sounds and screeches?”

“All night?” I said, and hot with fear. “I have got choir practice at seven o’clock.”

“Let seven o’clock come,” Ceinwen said, and gave the mare a smack to send her up to
the grass. “Help to push the trap in by here, now.”

So we put the trap tidy, and I led the way, loaded like a donkey, up the mountain
to the trees near where the nightingales sang. Ceinwen was in a dress striped in grey
and white, with a white cap with flowers and cherries in the lace round the edges,
and red velvet ribbons drawing her dress tight at the neck. Heavy in the chest and
hip she was, but long from hip to the ground, and inches taller than me, of course,
and from behind, more a woman than a girl.

And my danger light giving me flash, flash, flash, all the way up, and putting my
tongue in a clamp.

In and out of the sunlight, under the shadows of the trees, into their coolnesses,
where leaf mould was soft with richness and held a whispering of the smells of a hundred
years of green that had grown and gone, through the lanes of wild rose that were red
with blown flower, up past the flowering berry bushes, through the pasture that was
high to the knees, and clinging, and that hissed at us with every step, up beyond
the mossy rocks where the little firs made curtseys, and up again, to the briars,
and the oaks, and the elms, where there was peace, and the sound of grasshoppers striking
their flints with impatience, and birds playing hide and seek, and the sun blinding
hot upon us, and the sky, plain bright blue.

“Well,” Ceinwen said, when I stopped.

“Not too near,” I said, “or you will hear nothing.”

“Let us have a bit of shade, then,” she said. “I am cooking.”

We put down the rugs among the twisted legs of an oak, and Ceinwen lay flat, puffing,
with her handkerchief over her face.

“How long to wait?” she asked me.

“Hours,” I said.

“Good,” she said, “I will sleep.”

I watched an ant running over the oak’s leg. On my back, with my hands going dead
under my head, I watched him, so near to my eyes that he might have been as big as
a horse. Hard, shiny, and brittle, he was, with a good polish on his back, and legs
bent like wire. I wondered if he saw me as I saw him, if he had the same feeling about
his home and his people as I had, and if he was as scornful of me as I was of him.
I have always wondered what is inside the skull of an ant, and what is the feeling
to be an ant, if it is like the feeling to be a man, if he sees, and thinks, or knows
his friends, and calls them by name, and can be happy.

This one looked to be in a hurry about something, and then forgetting what it was,
and stopping every couple of steps to try and think what it was, and putting his feet
in his pockets to see if he had everything and going on a bit, and turning back. Silly,
it was, but no sillier than some of us. Old Owen the Mill often stopped in the streets
feeling in his pockets for something and then sending a boy back to the house to ask
Mrs. Owen what he had forgotten, and standing there empty in the face and scratching
himself till the boy came back, and often it was nothing at all.

So there was no blame to the ant, and I watched him for a long time, seeing Ceinwen’s
shoes, with the dust half wiped off by the grass, just beyond the edge of the oak’s
leg, and purposely lying still not to wake her.

Then I slept, and woke with Ceinwen shaking me, and shivering with cold I was, stiff
and damp, and surprised by the darkness.

“O, Huw,” she said, in a little voice, and her teeth chopping, “light a fire, or I
will die of cold or freeze to the death or perish of fright. Not sure I am, which
is best to come first.”

“Wait you,” I said, and put my hand in the squirrel’s hole and pulled out pieces of
bark and dry leaves. There is a fire I made, too, with stuff from under the briars
that burnt with a yellow flame, and gave lovely warmth.

So we took the eating from the basket and I filled the little saucepan from the rill,
and made tea to go with the pie.

“Did you cook this?” I asked her, for something to say.

“Well,” she said, with big eyes, yellow from the fire, “who else? Is it poison?”

“No, no,” I said. “You are a cook.”

“Well, thank God, now,” she said, with laugh. “I wondered when I made it what you
would say. Not very good, it is. A bit heavy in the pastry and not enough thyme with
the meat. Not good.”

“Good,” I said, “I like it, and I will have more.”

“A flattery,” she said, opening and closing her eyes slowly, and each time she opened
them, making them bigger.

“If it was bad,” I said, “I would leave it.”

“Spoilt at home,” she said. “There is a job your wife will have with you.”

“Only as good as I get now,” I said, “no more, no less.”

“You would drive the girl mad,” said Ceinwen, “and she would throw a couple of dishes
at you, and you would smash every pot on the dresser with temper. If you did it to
me I would wait for you to sleep, and kill you with one hit.”

“There is no hope of that, anyway,” I said, and went to cut more tart.

She was quiet for minutes, and the fire cracked his whip to send up sparks and I looked
at her a couple of times, but she was watching the fire without seeing it, with her
arms stiff behind her, and her head buried between her humped shoulders, and her feet
pointing straight, one foot crossed over the other.

“There is good,” she said, with quiet, “to marry and have a little house.”

I said nothing.

“A little house of your own,” she said, “like your brother and sister. A new little
house, fresh with new paint, and your own furniture where you want to put it, and
no old nonsense from anybody else.”

Nothing from me, again.

“With a little bit of garden, and a couple of hens to scratch,” she said, “and babies.”

“It will be long before any old babies are near me,” I said. “I have had a house full
with our family.”

“Different if they are yours, boy,” she said, and laughing wide.

“Plenty of time to think about it, any rate,” I said.

“Would you marry me, Huw?” she asked, very shy, with a look sideways, and a small
voice.

“No,” I said, “there is dull you are, girl. Not from school yet, and marry?”

“My mother married from school,” she said, “and four of us, still home, and me the
youngest, and like a sister instead of Mama. Let us be married, Huw, and have a little
house, is it?”

“To hell, girl,” I said. “I will have to earn before marrying.”

“Come to work with my father,” Ceinwen said, and came nearer. “Learn the business
while you are working and have good wages, then we can marry and have our own little
house, is it?”

“Look you,” I said, “no more silliness, to-night. To hear the nightingales we came
up here. So listen.”

“Well, give me a kiss, then,” she said.

“Go from here,” I said, and put more tart in my mouth. “Nightingales, not marrying,
or kissing.”

“Speaking with the mouth full,” she said. “There is manners for you.”

“Leave me to eat in peace,” I said.

“I wish I had cooked nothing,” she said, and angry. “You would be starving.”

“We would have gone from here the sooner, then,” I said, and glad to have a change
of subject.

“O, Huw,” she said, and pulling her handkerchief from her belt, “there is nasty you
are to me.”

And she cried.

With her legs curling under her, and hidden in the whiteness of her dress, and her
hair like new hay fallen about her and spreading on the grass, and the white handkerchief
in both her hands pressed to her eyes almost hidden among her hair, and her voice
coming in little swords of sound at the end of each breath, O, there is a soreness
inside me now to remember Ceinwen as she cried up there on the mountain and the nightingales
sang about us, and the firelight was bright upon her, for the fire is out, the nightingales
are quiet, and she has gone.

The man is made of stone who will see a woman in her tears and keep voice and hands
to himself. So I went to her, and put an arm about her, and took her hands from her
face and kissed the salt from her cheeks, and she lay heavily upon me, shaking, but
finished with tears.

“Listen,” I said, “there are the nightingales for you.”

Fat and sweet is the song of the nightingale. A good, full singer, he is. No pinching
of the throat or nonsense with half-opened mouth, or shakiness through lack of breath.

A good big chest full of breath, him, and a chest to hold it, too, and up with his
head, and open with his mouth, thinking it no shame to sing with the voice that God
gave to him, and singing with fear for none, true on the note, sharp at the edge,
loud, fat with tone, with a trill and a tremolo to make you frozen with wonderment
to hear. A little bird, he is, with no colour to his feathers and no airs with him,
either, but with a voice that a king might envy, and yet he asks for nothing, only
room to sing. No bowing, no scrapes, no bending of the knee, or fat fees for Mr. Nightingale.
A little bough, a couple of leaves, and nightfall, and you shall have your song with
no payment other than the moments of your life while you listen. Such voices have
the Cherubim.

Many sang for us that night, and long we sat to hear them, till ash was grey upon
the fire, and the wind was waking to do his work for the day to come. Ceinwen was
sleeping with her head heavy on my knees, and her breath coming soft, slow, and no
sound.

There is beautiful is sleep, and to see somebody soft asleep. So still, and the hands
so pretty with quiet, with sometimes a little sound in the breathing, or an instant
tremble, and in the face a calmness of pink; and the mouth in an easy innocence of
rest, and gentleness a scent in the air about them.

So Ceinwen slept as I watched, and she woke, eyes wide, empty for moments and then
filling with memory, showing teeth in a smiling yawn and her eyes full with a sleepy
smile.

“It is late,” I said. “There will be trouble.”

“O, Huw,” she said, in a voice to melt stones, and stretched her arms far above her
head and brought them slowly down to put about me, and her body went from soft to
coiling steel under me, and we kissed, and she laughed in the middle of it, and clicked
her teeth at me.