How Green Was My Valley (62 page)

“You are Bronwen,” I said. “No other reasons.”

“The law is against us marrying,” Bron said, with quiet.

I looked at her, and found her eyes full of the shinings of tears and her head on
the side, gently, as though she would bless me, and her mouth soft, to shake, and
her hands tight together in her lap.

“Long we have been together, Bron,” I said, “and God love the dear day. But never
mind about the law, it would be wrong. You are not for me as wife, and I am not for
you.”

“So I knew,” she said, with tears, “but you are sweet comfort to me only to have you
near. Like Ivor you are, see, and in you I see him. In your voice I hear him. Your
eyes are like his. You put your boots on as he did. Tie your tie. Put your hair.”

Then I knew that there can be sin in the world, and sin so vile that words will not
dishonour themselves by coming forward to describe it.

I had thought our silence, our feeling to be the same, born of the same fear, a fear
of touch that might lead to union.

But now I was filled with ashes to know that Bron had been keeping the barrier at
its strongest only to turn me aside, for she had known what was in my mind, and had
suffered it only because in me she saw my brother, and the likenesses were dear to
her, and she longed for them, and was brave, without fear, ready to withstand what
was really me only to have those little things in me that were in the likeness of
Ivor.

O, the love of woman is a glorious thing, and strange in its ways of work.

I thought of her looking at me tying my boots, and seeing Ivor, and watching me do
my hair, and seeing Ivor, and hearing me sing, and the pains of knives in her to think
of Ivor, and all the time she looked and watched in hungriness, I had thought her
to be thinking as I was.

Sin, a blackness of sin, to be thrown in a cess of disgust. Iscariot and his rope
were near me as I sat there that night.

“Bron,” I said, and not seeing her, “you know why I was shamed?”

“Yes,” she said, with her smile that was not a smile. “But no harm.”

“Why?” I asked her. “Supposing I had been a fool?”

She looked into the fire and there was quietness, except the kettle whistling to tell
us that he was too hot, and please to take him off, or he would burst and rust the
stove. So I took him off, and knelt beside Bron, with warmth for her, but with coolness
in me, and strange, restful it was, to take her hand and feel for her only the love
of the heart.

“Well,” she said, soft, and with regret, but with smiling that was half of crying,
“I suppose I would have been a fool, too.”

“For Ivor’s sake?” I said.

“Who is to know?” she said. “For Ivor, yes, to think him back again. But I was sorry
for you, too. So lonely. And always so kind to me. It is a little thing to do for
some.”

“Then why did you know it would be wrong to marry?” I asked her, in wonder.

“O,” Bron said, and moved her head, “Ivor was strong, I suppose. And I was afraid.
Eleven years older than you, I am. You are young. And you think beyond me.”

“But why afraid?” I said.

She looked at me with calmness, and I saw my mother in her.

“Have you been with a girl, Huw?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Who?” she asked me, and looking again in the fire.

I was quiet, for I was unready to break the peace of the world I had found up on the
mountain.

“Ceinwen Phillips,” she said, as though I had answered.

I said nothing.

“O, Huw,” she said, and put her arm about me. “There is sorry I am.”

“Why?” I asked her.

“Why, why, why,” she said, and with laugh. “All your life, why. This time because
it is pain to think of innocence in ruin.”

“But I found it beautiful beyond life,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled, and O, to see Bronwen smile. “Beautiful, indeed. Ivor
said the same to me.”

“That is why we cannot marry,” I said, and stood up. “Ivor found his world with you.
Shall I bring strangeness to you, and trample where he lives still? Let the law be
wise.”

“But, Huw,” she said, with something of hurt, “what is this world Ivor had, then?”

“The one we find with a woman,” I said, but in shame to speak of it, because in words
it sounded foolish. Ordinary things like teapots may be talked about because we know
them and they are solid under the hand. But to talk of the world that is hidden in
every woman is a journey of pain, for the words are not in use to tell of it, and
to use the words that are is only a hopping on uneven crutches.

“What world is it, Huw?” she asked me, and sat up straight to hear.

“O, Bron,” I said, “I only know it is with me. Only for a little we live, and feel
ourselves truly alive, with truth, then the Angel with a flaming sword comes to slash
us out. Beauty and music, there is. I am a fool.”

“No, indeed,” she said, and gentle. “But I also have a world, is it? And I will have
whoever I say to share it. Ivor it was, first, because I said Ivor and nobody else.
You, it would have been second, if I had said yes. But neither of you if I had said
no.”

So Bronwen showed me more of the strength of woman, which is stronger than fists and
muscles and male shoutings. For now, instead of thinking about her as guardian of
a world denied to me, and foreign to me because it belonged to another, I was made
to think of her in truth and verity as owner and possessor, with right of denial and
sanction over all, as equal sharer, and with right to say who and when, according
to her will and none other.

And she was bigger in my eyes, with more of respect, for she had responsibility and
I had none. Her strength had kept me from her, her will had prevented me, her spirit
had triumphed. Mine was the emptiness of one who waits at gates locked beyond his
vision, flattering himself that he waits at an open fairway out of respect, not to
disturb, and then, essaying entry, marches forward with boldness only to break his
nose upon the unseen steel.

The world I had shared with Ceinwen was as much her own as mine, and the world Ivor
had known was Bronwen’s as much as his. It was a death to me to think of Ceinwen as
possessor, and with right to allow another man to share.

But if I had the right to think of the world with Bron, there was no reason to deny
the right to Ceinwen of sharing with another man.

I died, but I lived again.

“Huw,” Bronwen said, “did you think of children?”

“What children?” I asked her, as though pulled from darkness.

“Children,” Bron said, and gentle, watching me as though with pity. “Ivor had two
sons.”

Still I was dense, for there are times when the mind is far away, and words are only
a tracing of sound, meaningless.

“Gareth and Taliesin,” I said, “and fine boys, indeed. They would laugh to have me
for a father, or even foster-father.”

“But supposing you were a father, Huw,” she said, “what, then?”

So surprised I was that she laughed at me.

“Do you expect to find this world of yours,” she asked me, “without to become a father?”

“O God, Bron,” I said, and a coldness coming to make me shake and freeze inside the
brain. I could feel the pinch of whiteness in my face, and in my ears the voice of
Mr. Gruffydd. “Ceinwein.”

She looked at me straight, and the lines in her forehead and above her eyes smoothed
out as though a hand had passed across.

“Have you heard?” she asked me.

“I have asked plenty of times,” I said, and with soreness in the throat, “but she
has gone. I never once thought. Never once these years. There is a swine I am. There
is a swine.”

“But just now, see, a world of beauty and music,” she said, “then, a swine.”

“A responsibility,” I said, hearing a deep voice, “in beauty and majesty beyond words.”

“Mr. Gruffydd,” she said, simple, quick.

“He told me,” I said, “and I forgot. Witlessness, he said. Good God, Bron, what is
the matter with us that we act like fools instead of men?”

“The beauty and music,” she said, and looking in the fire again. “It is a call, Huw.
And some are not strong.”

“Do you feel it, Bron?” I asked her.

She smiled at the fire, and was quiet, and her fingers turned and turned her wedding
ring.

“Yes,” she said.

I looked at the kettle, to have rest from the mysteries piling one on the other, for
he was black with work, and puffing fat cheeks, ready to go about his business any
moment of the day, with a will and always at his best, wanting only a drop of water,
a little fire, and he would boil and blow and spit like a good one.

I envied him his simple life, and then was ashamed again, for I was a man, with responsibility,
though with little thought for it, and he only a kettle, yet doing his job and living
his life, a kettle, nothing but a kettle, born in the image of a kettle, pretending
to be nothing else, and on his mark every moment, to carry out his responsibilities
as a kettle.

But I was born in the image of God, a man, creator, with power of life and death,
a father, blessed with the gift of the seed of Adam, a sower of seed, to bring forth
generations of new lives.

This I was, and envying a kettle.

“There is strange to talk like this,” she said. “I would have blushed to burn a little
while ago. Now it is nothing. But glad I am your mother is from here. She would think
little of me, indeed.”

“I will think more of you,” I said, and kissed her cheek, “and you will marry Matt
Harries, is it?”

“I will think,” she said, and got up to get the tea caddy. “The boys will have nothing
to do with him. And so kind to them he is, too.”

“Jealous, they are,” I said.

She looked sideways at me, smiling, and then I was coming to blush again, and ready
to hit my head on the door for being such a fool.

“Are you jealous, Huw?” she asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Sure?” she asked me.

“Sure,” I said, for I could feel Ivor warm about us, and all round Bron, and the thought
of him steady beside her filled me high with pity. For gone though he might be, she
still was blessed by him, for he was about her, near to her, part of her, with her
in and out of sleep, and to think of putting a kiss upon her, then, with anything
more than the love of the heart was a hollowing, deep disgust.

“How do you know?” she asked, with a bit of hurt, as though I was not giving her respect.
“Am I ugly, then?”

“O, Bron,” I said, and went to her, but she turned her back, that was straight as
boards, slim, a perfection of rest for a right arm, “not ugly, only sacred, you are.
So plain it is now. How could I be jealous? If I was a fool with you, what would be
the end? I would cut my throat from shame.”

“Why would you be a fool, and where is the shame?” she asked me, cold, resting her
hands on the caddy, and staring wide at me. “Am I somebody from the gutter?”

I looked at her for long, trying to find the words, but they sounded so hurtful that
I feared to open my mouth.

“Look, Bron,” I said. “One man, one woman, is it?”

“Yes,” she said, but ready to say no.

“Ivor and you,” I said. “He has gone, but you are here. Yet, for me, he is still with
you. You and he are one. To see you is to see him. To touch you is to touch him. To
think of you is to think of him. He is about you like lavender. His hands touched
you, his mouth kissed you. He was with you and used your flesh for his sons. Where
is there place for me?”

“But, Good God in Heaven,” Bronwen said, and whiter than I had ever seen her, and
staring to put you in fear, “am I a belonging, then? Bronwen Morgan I am, but the
Morgan only because I said so. Ivor is still Ivor with me, and our sons upstairs to
tell you so. But what right have you to make me property? Am I an old den of house,
then, with a sign outside? Stop to think like a fool, man, and have a cup of tea.”

Well.

I shut my mouth, and had my cup of tea, silent, thinking, watching Bron, but unwilling
to talk again, for it was like a tangling of ropes that one moment you think you have
got straight, and the next is a despair of knots to try patience and drive you mad.
I think I felt a bit of hurt, too, that my fine feelings had been kicked in the ash
tub, where they belonged, no doubt.

“I will marry nobody,” Bron said, with quiet. “And that will settle it. But no more
nonsense, is it?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and lit her candle. “Good night, now.”

“Good night,” I said.

I sat, and she went upstairs lightly as she always had, and across the landing to
the front bedroom.

For the first time I heard the key turn stiff and sore in the door.

Dai Bando never hit a man harder.

Eh, dear.

For long after that, the feeling was between us again, but this time not happily as
it had been before, but with more of resentment, until I thought I would have to leave
the house only to have peace for us both.

A horrible feeling, it is, to know you are a burden in body and spirit to somebody
dear to you.

Matt Harries cured it, and quick.

Fair hair, he had, curly, and parted with neatness, and a good moustache the colour
of his hair, always pulled tidy but never greasy. A good grey eye, he had, too, that
looked at you straight and with deepness not to be denied.

“Huw,” he said, one day out in the back here, “shall I say something?”

“What, now?” I said, and into my pockets for a bit of pencil.

He was handling a chip of mahogany, pulling bits off, and watching the wind have them.

“You will have to hold the temper,” he said, and the greyness of his eyes sober upon
me.

“What, then?” I asked him, and stood to face him.

“Bronwen,” he said, but quiet, as though in shame to say the name.

“Well?” I said, coming to be impatient.

“There is talk,” he said, with tongs pulling the words from him.

“O,” I said. “For what?”