How Green Was My Valley (60 page)

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “You have done everything, then, and nothing I can do for
you. I am sorry.”

“There is, my little one,” he said, and smiling. “A great service you may do for me.
Will you?”

Well.

You shall only look, and try to move the stones.

He turned his back and went to look through the window.

“Do you remember the daffodils, my little one?” he said, and his voice with the lowness
of wind from the north-east. “Mentor and pupil, we have been. But friends always.
This furniture, that we made together, I want you to take to Tyn-y-Coed. I promised
it.”

Quietness again, and birds beginning to shout in the garden.

“I was wrong to call this room Gethsemane,” he said, “I sullied the name. Blind and
selfish and foolish, we are, at such times. We did that work with love in this room.
We were happy here. Nothing wrong with the Garden, only me.”

A blackbird putting loops and twists in his voice outside, and thrushes shouting in
the grass, and blueness coming to the sky.

“I am only sorry to go, with nothing done,” he said. “Sorry for nothing else. The
idle tongues, the meannesses, the poverty of mind, are as much my fault as anybody’s.
Perhaps there will be good work to be done where I am going.”

Ellis going by, and Mari the mare wanting a nail in her shoe.

“I am going this morning,” he said, and Mari dancing among the deeps of his voice.
“This watch my father gave me when I entered the Ministry. I would like to give you
more. Take it, Huw. It has marked time that I loved.”

Warm from his pocket in my hand, the smoothness of gold and glass.

“No need for us to shake hands,” he said, and his voice riding winds and seas, and
his back black in front of me. “We will live in the minds of each other, Huw, my little
one. Good-bye, with love.”

I went from there. With blood on my chin I went from there.

Up on the mountain I went, and stayed there with my face in the grass till the sun
was hot on my back.

When I went down, Gorphwysfa was empty.

Place of Rest, well named.

The village was like a place of the dead for days afterward. People walked as though
the skies might open and pour fire. Children were kept from the streets. A quietness
was upon us.

My father was like a man in his sleep, but he had the sense to pay rent for a stable
and buy paint and whitewash to clean it. We were down there every day till Sunday
scrubbing and painting.

On Sunday morning we went to Chapel just the same. We said good mornings to the same
people and passed them on the Hill as we had always done. But we turned to the right
at the bottom of the Hill and went in to the stable, that was our new Chapel, and
my father read the lessons.

The Split, we were.

Ten of us.

And for three-quarters of an hour we sat in silence, and the voice of Mr. Gruffydd,
wherever he was, filled us again with courage, and with hope of a better world.

And his watch was in my hand, warm as when he gave it to me.

“Are you with us here this morning, Mr. Gruffydd?” my father said, with my mother’s
hand in his. “Lifting up our eyes to the hills, we are, see. As you said, so we do.
Forever. God bless you. Yes. And, O God, give ease to the sore hearts this day. Amen.”

“Amen,” said we all.

“Let us sing a good hymn,” my father said. “Let us give our voices a good bit of work,
now, before they will wash away.”

So we sang, and I seemed to hear Mr. Gruffydd’s basso as you will hear it from a choir,
only to be heard if you bend your ear and listen well, and only then, if you know
what to listen for.

As months went to winter, the Split came to have nearly a hundred people, and we bought
the stables between us, and worked on it to make it a fitting place for the reading
of The Book. Night after night we were down there, carving seats, and woodwork for
the pulpit, and making doors, and paving the floor, until it was pleasure to go in
there.

Even Dai Bando and Cyfartha helped with the masonry, for Dai could lay stones with
the best, and no help needed to lift them, either.

“Huw,” he said, one night, “come with us on Saturday, is it? Benefit for Cyfartha
it is, and we want extra seconds. You have never been before. Eh, Cyfartha?”

“For a favour,” Cyfartha said. “Dai is fighting, see.”

“Dai?” I said, and in surprise, for he was coming to fifty in years, and a bit short
in the lungs on top of the mountain, too.

“Needle match,” Cyfartha said. “I am timekeeper. Willie Lewis is one second we can
trust, see, and you are the other. Will you come?”

“If it is benefit for Cyfartha,” I said, “I will come. What is the needle for?”

“Talking too loud,” Dai said. “Big Shoni, it was. In the Three Bells.”

But Big Shoni was taller, and broader even than Dai, a man with a loud voice who punched
little men and drank their beer. Many times he had been hit across the head with pick-handles
to teach him, but he was not the kind to learn. So many were afraid of him, and even
in the colliery they kept friends, and gave him good places where he could fill trams
with least trouble.

“Where will you fight?” I asked him.

“Over the mountain,” Dai said.

“I will be with you,” I said.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I
TOLD BRON
where I was going, for I liked to be in the house early to tell the boys stories
before to go to bed, and it was a long walk home, so I knew I would be early if I
got in the house with daylight.

“Well,” she said, with thinking, “as long as you will be safe, go, you.”

“I will be safe, Bron,” I said. “Sorry I am, not to tell them their story. But two
on Monday, is it?”

“With a couple of sweets,” she said.

Happy we were, in that little house, happy, indeed.

There had never been a word between Bron and me since the morning I had told her how
shamed I was, and that feeling of shiver between us had gone, too. We were as though
one, neither man nor woman, safe, solid, at peace.

There is strange to go from the quiet of home to a place where men go to enjoy themselves
with sport. A change, they call it, and a change it is, indeed.

I had never been to a prize-fight before, so it was a life in another world, and a
world I can rest quiet to see burnt.

The air was a stink of blueness, sharp with the heat of bodies, and with the weight
of puddled beer drying into boards that never knew soap and water, and soured with
tobacco spit.

Black and grey they huddled on benches, the sportsmen, with their faces red in rows,
regular as match heads, one behind the other, every mouth wide, every eye wild, and
their voices mixed in a thickness of sound, an untidiness of raw tone, without good
thought or sense.

Born in the image of God, they were, every one of them, and some loving woman having
pains of the damned to bring them forth, to sit there with their mouths open, like
calves under the net in the market-place.

Enjoying themselves.

“Dai,” I said, “I would go from here quick, if you and Cyfartha had another second.”

“What is the matter, man?” Dai asked me, and bending to my ear, for the shouting was
senseless.

“It is shame to bring good lungs in here,” I said, “more shame to fight only to please
these. There are better grazing in the fields.”

“Sport this is,” Dai said, in such surprise that you would laugh to see, “boxing,
man. Do you want it in bloody Chapel, now then?”

“These men are in blood for money,” I said. “To hell with it.”

“To hell with you, too,” Dai said. “Eh, Cyfartha?”

“Would you fight free, Huw?” Cyfartha asked me.

“Every morning for years with you,” I said. “No money, and better sport than this.
I will have a man in blood if there is a matter between us. But not for money. And
not for these cattle, either.”

“Let them hear you,” Dai said.

“To hell with them,” I said. “Am I afraid of worse than cattle?”

Dai looked at Cyfartha with pity and hopelessness.

“A second, mind you,” he said. “Fighting two, I will be, to-night. Big Shoni and him,
eh, Cyfartha?”

Cyfartha spat a full ten feet.

Two men were in the ring, tops bare, and belts about their trews. Small gloves they
wore, but worse than the bare fist to punch, for the leather was frayed and it cut
the skin.

I looked at the floor, for both of them were punching the life from each other, hit
one, hit the other, no science, no brains, nothing, only fists landing flat on flesh
to fetch blood bubbling, and bruises red.

A rare pleasure, indeed, and a sport, and please to hear the cattle bawling.

A boxer would have put both in their graves, and a riddance.

What is there in the spirit of man to make him earn his money by crushing the bones
and drawing the blood of another, I shall never know.

I was sick to sit there, with that sound about me that stained the air when a Man
sweated on a cross, and blood spurted upon the walls of Roman arenas, and flames took
flesh from the legs of silent men.

Here with us still, the same sound, changeless.

“Come you,” Cyfartha said, “our corner, this one by here. Bucket and bottle up there,
quick.”

You should have seen Big Shoni.

Six foot of him, solid, with muscle thick under fat, and smooth, without a hair on
him. Big jaws he had, that seemed to come out of his chest without help of a neck,
and his bald head coming to a point, like an egg, with scars across it, and little
dents that were full of shadow. His eyes, it was, that gave fright, for they shone
yellow in any light, and looking across at us, they seemed to be jewels of the devil
put there to kill spirit.

“God is my life,” Willie Lewis said to me, in whispers, “Old Dai must be from his
senses to put foot in the ring. Look at that one, by there.”

“Big he is,” I said. “But Dai knows where to hit.”

“I hope,” Willie said, and meant. “If that one hits Dai, we will bury him on the way
back. If you are having my opinion, see, old Dai have picked himself a burden, here.”

“Bucket and bottle?” Dai said, and pulling on the ropes to come in, with a coat over
his shoulders, and his legs in clean white breeches and stocking, with soft shoes.

“All here,” I said.

He looked square at me while he rubbed his hands dry from the pickling tub. Each knuckle
was like a little rock with him, and each hand bigger than both of mine, brown now,
from the pickle that hardened them. Fists to put fear in you, especially with those
pale eyes that watched you, without a blink from slits that never opened. Deadly,
they were, with courage that knew nothing of doubt, little of worry, and less of powers
beyond. A man whose world was fixed inside the things he knew, with the things he
had done and seen, and having seen and done, he knew, and knowing, was unafraid, without
desire to question further, or wish to have a reason.

“Cattle, then?” he said to me, in his high little voice.

“Look at them,” I said, “only waiting to see you in blood. Hear them, then.”

“Shouting for a win, they are,” he said. “What is the matter with that?”

“Plenty,” I said. “If you had friends here they would be stopping you, not shouting
for a win. And friends of his would be sorry to see him having disgrace to fight a
man half his weight.”

“Me, half his weight?” Dai said. “What the hell do I care? I will hit him out in two
rounds.”

“Hear the cattle, then,” I said.

“Men, they are,” Dai said. “Come to see sport, man. What is wrong, Huw? Are you having
fogs in the brains, with you? A good boy, I thought you, and hoping to see you earn
a few sovereigns for yourself.”

“Never,” I said. “No money buys my blood, or pays me to take it from somebody else.
Fight, yes. Prize-fight, no. Prostitution, it is.”

Cyfartha rang his bell, then, and boots were busy on the floor to show impatience,
and the cattle were shouting ready to be milked of lust to see pain plain on the faces
of others, and bruises blemish the white polish of other flesh, and blood sticky about
fists and chests and floor, and red and thick from crushed nose, and cut eyes, and
broken mouths.

Eliel John, landlord of the Post Horn, with a belly curving almost to the knees, and
thick in the moustache, was pushed up on the outside boards of the ring, and held
on to a corner post, looking about the cattle with an eye soft with spirits, tearful
with fellowship.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and pulled home a breath to straighten himself, knowing himself
at last to be an importance, and feeling inside himself a desire to show forth the
qualities of dignity that oratory demands. “I am known to you all as a sportsman,
I am hoping. Yes?”

“Yes,” the crowd shouted, and other things.

“It is my proud duty, to-night, in this hall,” he said, with a slow sweeping of his
grey bowler hat, “where I am known to you all, every one of you, Eliel John, me, and
my father, Enoch John, before me, always at the Post Horn, and no man have ever come
in for a drink, thirsty and gone away empty, if no money to pay. Eliel John, me, and
friends we are, all of us, and I would stand to the face of the devil and tell him.
I love you all and you all love me.”

“Yes,” the crowd shouted, and some rudeness, too.

“So in this hall to-night, we are, all of us, good ones all, and working for our money,”
said Eliel John, coming to cry and his mouth like a cut in a ball under pressure from
a thumb. “No thanks to anybody, only our work, and us. They can all go to hell, and
I will fight anybody who says not.”

His grey bowler hat fell from his hand, and he almost fell from the ring, but the
arms propping his bottom saved him, and finding support there, he thought himself
back in his seat, and sat, and more men had to come to help the others, with clapping
and shouting from everybody, and Eliel looking about with tears, and bending his head
left and right to give thanks, as though throned.