How Green Was My Valley (58 page)

But the smile kept coming back and spoiling it.

Bron knew.

And she laughed about it.

There is strange, that only a little problem of your own will take your mind far from
a tragedy belonging to others. I had forgotten Angharad and Mr. Gruffydd, and only
Gareth crying upstairs, and waking Taliesin, made me think of Bronwen’s errand, and
so brought me to think of mine.

So off I went, down the hill at a trot, and round the back of the little house with
the sea-shell porch.

“Well, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and just pulling down his cuffs, and his face fresh
and a bit pale from a wash, with his hat and coat and some books ready on the table,
and his slippers pigeon-toed by the chair.

“Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “I have got something to tell you.”

“Will it wait, Huw?” he asked me, and smiling. “I am late now, see.”

“To Tyn-y-Coed you are going, sir?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, and turned his back to put on his coat, and I knew from the bend of
his back that he was ready against attack, and for some reason feeling an anger.

“That is what I have come for, sir,” I said.

“For what?” he asked me, and cold, and still with his back to me.

So I told him.

Not a move from him all the time. Only standing in the candlelight, with his back
to me and his hands fast in the collar of his coat.

“O,” he said, as though I had told him that rain was starting, “at last then, eh,
Huw?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Next,” he said, “what to do? Angharad must be protected.”

“You shall do that only by strangling Mrs. Nicholas,” I said.

“You cannot stop people from talking, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and still without feeling
in his voice, still with his back to me, “nor shall you stop them thinking. They are
products of a faulty environment. And faults are what you shall expect.”

“What shall you do, sir?” I asked him.

“Leave me, now, my little one,” he said, “I will think about it.”

“Good night, sir,” I said.

But he was quiet when I went from there, and still standing with his back to the door
when I passed the window.

The village was still when I went back home after a walk along the river. Not a light
anywhere, except at the pit. I had thought to clear my head, but the walk made me
feel worse than before, and I found pain alive in me to walk up the hill.

Even in the time I had been to work, change had come to the river, to the streets,
and even to the shape of the village. The river had been built on all the way down
to the path that led up to the Chapel, and the walls of new engine sheds were built
flush with the banks, so that the bilge spewed into the stream, and the sound of them
all, one after the other, like a sickness.

The new streets were much narrower than ours, and the front doors opened straight
on to the street, no garden, no flowers, no bit of green to bless you coming in or
going out. No backyard, either, and not even a blade of grass for a garden. And every
house in a street full of houses, on both sides, exactly the same as its neighbour,
with not a brick difference. And all of them jammed tight together, with not an inch
of air between them.

Four new slag heaps had been started, with their cable tips running to the top of
the mountain, so that the slag dropped on to the green pasture and found a level down
among the trees. A big beech, that I had climbed not long before, now reached out
of a smoking heap like the hand of a spirit entombed.

There was a light in the kitchen when I got back, and my heart was lifted to see it.

Bron was sitting in the chair, sewing, and the kettle jumping on the hob, and the
cat leaning his chin on his front paw and opening only one eye for me, and a good
smell of onion soup to kiss the nose.

“Up still?” I said, but not looking at her.

“We were going to talk,” she said, with smile in her voice, “so I stayed. Did you
see Mr. Gruffydd?”

“Yes, he only said you cannot stop people from talking and thinking,” I said. “He
is going to think about it.”

“Angharad is off back to London, first train,” Bron said.

“Was she angry?” I asked her.

“No,” Bron said. “She knew about it.”

“She knew?” I said.

“Has she been living all her life here, and no sense?” Bron said.

“But did she let Mr. Gruffydd go there and go there all this time and no word?” I
asked her.

“Do you think Mr. Gruffydd knew nothing?” she said, and busy with plates.

“Then what use to tell them, or worry for even a moment?” I asked her, and feeling
wronged to the heart.

“Have what there is to be had while there is time,” she said, and put a bowl of soup
in front of me. “They have done harm to nobody.”

“But he is a preacher and she is Mrs. Iestyn Evans,” I said. “Surely it is wrong,
Bron?”

“Why?” Bron asked. “Why is it wrong for Mr. Gruffydd to see Angharad?”

“Well,” I said, and steam from the soup wetting my face, and glad to make it an excuse
to pull out my handkerchief to have a good wipe to have time to think.

“Yes, well?” Bron said, with sharpness, and the knife half-way through the loaf. “Shall
I say? Because your mind is like those beauties down by there. Like Mrs. Nicholas.
A fine brother you are. And a fine one to talk. Strangle her, you wanted. Strangle
yourself for a change.”

“Well, Bron,” I said, “there is nasty you are. Only asking why, I was.”

“Is Mr. Gruffydd to be treated any different from other men only because he is a preacher?”
she asked me, and angry. “Is he any less a man? Has he fewer rights?”

“But with another man’s wife, I am saying,” I said, and ready to break the house to
pieces in temper.

“With another man’s wife, what?” Bron said, in a voice to put ice to hang from the
stove. “Harm to who, if he talks to her, and she has benefit from his company?”

“No harm,” I said.

“Then?” she asked me, with the smile that was not a smile.

“O, to hell,” I said. “It is none of my business.”

You should have heard Bron laughing. In fits and helpless, trying to cut bread, but
too weak to hold the knife.

“Eh, dear, dear,” she said, and wiping the tears, “there is a silly old boy you are,
man.”

“Why am I silly?” I asked her, and trying to smile, but finding it hard to work against
the soreness.

“Because you are doing what Mr. Gruffydd has been doing,” she said, “and sleeping
in the house, too. Would you like others to talk about you?”

Well. Like sunlight coming to blind.

“Nobody could say anything about me or you either,” I said. “I would only like to
hear them.”

“You shall, before long,” she said, certain as bricks.

“Well, Bron,” I said, “I will go, then.”

“You shall stay,” she said. “Let them talk, with their minds like a cess, and mouths
like pots, with them. And think well about yourself before to talk of others. I told
you this afternoon about the way you looked at me. Think of it a little more, and
ask is it right before to ask questions of others.”

So I sat like a dog with hurts after a good kicking, and went to bed, feeling the
weight of her eyes, and her smile warm in the room, but not looking at her and unwilling
to smile back.

Chapter Thirty-Four

A
NGHARAD
went to London, and Ceridwen went to stay with her, with the children, for a time.
My mother went up there for a month, and indeed, from the fuss you would think the
south pole was only the next stop from where she was going.

How quiet is the house when the mistress has gone.

You walk in, and the same smell is a comfort to you, the air on your cheek has the
same feel, the fire makes the same noise, the china plates on the dresser shelves
laugh at you as they always did, and the clock is still as loud as he always was with
his heels on the road of Time.

But a warmness is missing, a briskness, that moved as soon as the latch was lifted,
and those sounds that followed, the rattle of the teacaddy, the crunch of the lid,
the chime of spoons in saucers, the poking of the fire, and the hot hurry of scalding
water upon tea leaves, are gone, too.

“Good God,” my father said, “nobody shall know how I miss your mother. Sweetness have
gone from life, indeed. The first time to be without her for thirty-nine years. Eh,
dear. I am lost without my good Beth.”

So I often saw my father writing under the lamp, scratching his head to find something
to write about, even telling her that the handle had come off the kettle, and about
Gareth cutting a lump out of the door with my chisel, with pages about Taliesin, of
course.

There is strange to see a man quiet in his own world, and searching it for jewels
to give his queen. I often wondered how my father saw his world, and wished I could
be sitting inside him only for a minute, while he was writing to my mother.

Her letters to him were on one page, and written big to fill up room. Without fail,
she had to hurry to catch the post and remained his loving Elizabeth Morgan.

And he always cried when he read them to us.

I went back to work with only a good swearing from the smith, and a couple of weeks
later I was sent underground again with a place of my own and a boy to work with me.
Twelve years old, he was, and a good little boy, but a bit young for the job, so I
had more work to do.

He was filling the tram at the bottom of the holding one Saturday morning, and I was
up at the face piling slag. I heard shouting down on the main, and I thought he might
have been run over, so down I went bent double, sliding on coal all the way.

Fighting, he was, with a bigger boy, and having a hiding, but fair play to him, standing
up and giving some good ones when he had chance.

“Come on,” I said, “working for me, you are.”

“I am sorry, Huw,” he said, and dropped his hands, but the other one put a hard right
into his ear that sent him flat.

Well, well.

One good smack on the side of his head sent him over a pile of coal.

“Manners,” I said. “Lacking in your family, evidently.”

“O,” said one of the men, who had been looking on, “since when has your family come
so good, then?”

“Please to keep shut your mouth about my family,” I said.

“You keep family matters out of your talk, then,” Evan John said. “A lot to talk about,
you have, with a sister whoring after every preacher in the district, and a married
woman.”

I broke two of his ribs with a right, I broke his nose with my left, and I left his
face only when I felt his jaw smash under my fist.

Then I went back to work.

When I got out of the cage on the pit-top the assistant manager beckoned me.

“The police want you,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Where?”

“In the office,” he said.

So I followed him into the office and a sergeant of police came from behind the door
and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Huw Morgan?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Assault and battery,” he said.

“Will I have a bath before you lock me up?” I asked him.

“Not locking you up,” he said. “You will be summoned first.”

“Shall I go?” I asked him.

“Warning,” he said. “Keep in the house.”

“You are discharged from the colliery, Morgan,” the manager said. “You Morgans have
been a nuisance here for years.”

Home I went, and bathed, and sat down to dinner.

Bron put the plate in front of me, and then looked.

I could see her blue dress and a bit of apron from the side of my eye.

“What did you do to the backs of your hands?” she asked me, as though a hand were
over her mouth.

“If he had been a single man,” I said, “I would have killed him. He spoke of Angharad.”

“O, Huw,” she said, and sat beside me. “What, then?”

“I am due for a summons from the police,” I said, “and I am put from work.”

We were quiet together. Then she put a hand on my shoulder.

“Eat your dinner,” she said.

Only a little while after, there were footsteps in our back with no scraping of the
heel, quick, clean, solid, belonging to somebody with a duty to be done and no time.

“Mr. Gruffydd,” Bron said, and ran to put chairs straight, give the table cloth a
smooth, and poke the fire.

“Huw,” he said, and big and dark in the doorway, “you have had trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and standing, for his face was white, with a redness in his eyes.

“Over my name,” he said, “and your sister’s?”

I said nothing.

“I am shamed,” he said, tired, but with anger shaking him. “Shamed. It will be worse
in the court-house.”

“I think no matter of them or the court-house,” I said.

“Mr. Elias will see to it that you do,” Mr. Gruffydd said.

“Mr. Elias?” I said, and with surprise.

“Mr. Abishai Elias pressed the charge through his son,” he said, “or there would have
been no summons. Evan John’s father is his shopman.”

“I will wait for it,” I said.

“I am going away,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and sat down slowly. “I am going from the Valley.
They dare not say anything to me, but I see it in their eyes. Some of them, anyway.
I am wrong to stay here from stubbornness. I should have gone long ago.”

With the weariness of a beaten man, and his eyes at the mat, and his hat turning in
his fingers, and his hair falling down to cover his face, and his shoulders a curving
width of wrinkled black. Bron, with her apron to her eyes.

Me, cold.

“I am sorry, sir,” I said.

“I will see your good father,” he said.

And he went, while I looked at the flames behind the bars of the fire, and thought
of nothing, only the curving yellow sharpness of them, and the deep mourn of Bron’s
tears beside me.

“Well, Huw,” my father said, “what, then?”

“I will go in carpentering,” I said.

“What is happening to us?” he said, quietly, with thought. “It is terrible, with us.
Ivor, Ianto, Davy, Angharad, you. What your poor mother will say, I will never tell
you. Now, Mr. Gruffydd.”