How Green Was My Valley (63 page)

“You,” he said, and a spinning quietness came to draw tight about us.

“Me, what?” I asked him, but somebody else talking.

“You and Bron,” he said, but with pleading and softly. “I know it is all lies, Huw.
But there you are. They say Gomer and me are out because you are in.”

“Who have you heard?” I asked him.

“My mother told me,” Matt said, “and she had it in the market weeks and weeks since.
She was out of patience with me, and it came out, sudden, see.”

There is blind we are at times in our lives, sometimes over years and years.

How I could have imagined Bron and me could live in the same house day in and day
out for years on end, both of us grown, with only two boys in the house beside us,
and go free of the evil of people’s minds, well, there, I cannot tell.

I must have been mad all the time.

For people with little sewage systems in their minds are only waiting for a man to
live in the same house as a woman, and then starts the stench, and the bigger the
system, the more the stench, until it is wonder that they are not rotten from the
poison, and ready for their graves.

“Keep your ears open,” I said, “and I will keep mine. And if he is a man, Christ help
him. If it is a woman, we shall see.”

I went straight and told Bron, and she smiled, a bit at first, and then, full on her
face, the old, old smile that only Bron could smile.

“I knew, boy,” she said. “For months. Years.”

“You knew?” I asked her, “and no word to me?”

“Did I want a murder, then?” she said, and laughing. “No, boy. Let them talk. They
are not even worth spit.”

“You are worth more than spit to me,” I said.

“What harm?” she said. “I am still as I was. You are still as you were. Talk, that
is all it is. Nothing more to do, so talk.”

“Let me catch anybody,” I said. “I will tear the tongues from their throats.”

“Leave it, now,” she said, and a hand on my arm, very pretty in the eyes.

So I kissed her, and went out, and up on top of the mountain to have peace, for I
had a grudge that was savage with heat against everybody, and only up on top there,
where it was green, and high, and blue, and quiet, with only the winds to come at
you, was a place of rest, where the unkindness of man for man could be forgotten,
and I could wait for God to send calm and wisdom, and O, a blessed ease.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

U
P THERE IT WAS
, on that day, that I knew teeth of fear.

I was coming back, empty of anger, and ready to let tongues have their way, when I
saw men working to put up tipping piers from the colliery to the top of the mountain
directly behind our house, and all the other houses on the Hill.

“Good day, Lewis,” I said to the foreman. “What is this, then?”

“Slag tip,” he said. “Up the top here.”

“But it will roll down on top of us,” I said.

“In time to come, I suppose,” he said, but not taking much notice. “Years, yet.”

“Years?” I said. “They have got no right. Those are our homes down there.”

“Go on, man,” he said. “Where the hell will the slag go, then? If you want to work,
the slag must come out. If it comes out it must have a place to go. So there, you,
and here it is.”

No use to blame him.

Useless to curse the men, or their work, or the steel struts they were bolting together
to carry deadness to the mountain.

I went to see my father, but he only nodded and wiped his glasses.

“Yes,” he said.

“We must do something, Dada,” I said. “Quick.”

“What?” he asked me, with quiet. “The slag must go somewhere. They can only do the
best they can. If they keep it underground as they used to do, it will have to come
from the wages of the men. While they are piling slag, they cannot be cutting coal.
One of the two. So the mountain it is, for the sake of wages.”

“Who sold the land?” I asked him. “Jones the Chapel?”

“No,” he said, “he sold it long ago.”

“Who, then?” I asked him. “If we know we might get him to sell to all of us on the
Hill.”

My father smiled and scratched his head.

“Go and see Abishai Elias,” he said. “He is the owner. Or was. It belongs to the colliery,
now. So does all the mountain land, excepting only our land on the Hill.”

“A hiding without a fight,” I said.

“Yes,” my father said. “For the women and children. Leave it, my son.”

I almost hated my father, then, but I saw what he was afraid of doing and I had sympathy,
for however hard we fought, we must be beaten by empty bellies. The rights of man
are poor things beside the eyes of hungry children. Their hurts are keener than the
soreness of injustice.

But then Davy had more trouble, and our minds were busy with him until he was out
of it. By that time the tip was built and working, and we could only look up at it
with our hands on our hips and curse it, and hope for the hate of Satan to fall on
old Elias.

Davy had been back only a few weeks when it happened. My father had spoken for him
to start work in his pit, and down he went, gladly, and Wyn was happier than she had
been for years, for she was tired of going from one place to another, and wanted a
home, and for once in his life he listened to her.

One morning I met him coming up the Hill off the night shift, and even under his dust
I could see his anger.

“What, now?” I asked him.

“They have paid me short,” he said. “Working to the waist in water all week, with
the boy, and short to-day.”

“How about the minimum?” I asked him.

“They said no,” he said. “But I will have a reckoning.”

He was not allowed to join the shift on Monday because he had written a letter to
the manager.

“Right,” said my father. “Let us have a solicitor, and put them in Court. Or the men
will come out and more trouble.”

Over the mountain we went, and found a solicitor, a young man, not very happy to take
the case because he had thoughts for the future, and he knew, and we knew, that the
colliery could starve him out.

“Right you are,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

We left it, and the days and weeks went, with appearances in Court before justices,
and commissioners for oaths, and swearings of affidavits, and all the drawn-out painfulness
of law cases.

And money going out, and going out, and going out.

“Never mind, my son,” my father said to Davy. “If it costs the last sovereign, the
last stick, and the last brick of this house, we will have them before a Judge. And
all their slipperiness shall not avail them in the day of judgment. There was a bargain
struck, and they shall keep it as we have done.”

The day of the hearing came, and notices were given to Davy with the arms of the King
upon them.

“At last,” my father said, and pointed with his pipe to the arms. “Here is a sign,
see. As the devil loves the cross, so do rogues love this. Now you shall see another
bolting of swine.”

But when we got to the court our solicitor was standing in the front, in the big hall
that was dark with the rain outside, waiting for us with impatience, and shaking in
the hands with anxiousness.

“Settle with them,” he said, almost in whispers, and looking about to see if any were
listening. “Be sensible, Mr. Morgan. They are powerful. They can take the case as
far as the House of Lords if they want to, and break you on the way.”

My father’s fists struck into Mr. Vaughan to hold him by the coat as a hawk strikes
into a mouse.

“Look,” he said, with splinters of glass in his voice, and his eyes two inches from
the little green onions of Mr. Vaughan, “we have come here for a hearing after months.
House of Lords or House of God, go in by there and start to make your case, before
I will take the bones piecemeal from your carcass.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Vaughan, and swallowed a small town, and picked up his papers,
and went in, with little steps, like a girl going to meet her other mother for the
first time.

A good, big place, the Court, with a smell of books, and ink made from powder, and
soft coal smoke.

Up on the high place was the Judge with a robe of blue and red, and grey hair to his
shoulders very tidy, and looking as though he was willing to go to his grave before
to hear any more of the silliness of men.

Our case was called among the first, and a solicitor stood up to put the colliery
case. Detail after detail was read out of Davy’s past life, about his activity as
a firebrand, and his discharge, and the generosity of the colliery in having him back
again through the good offices of his father.

“What has this to do with the claim?” the Judge asked, as though clean sand had just
been dusted on the floor of his mouth.

Eh, dear.

The question had everybody in fits down in front, with whispers and frowns, and little
men running on tiptoe with pieces of paper one to another, and the Judge looking at
the end of his pen over the top of his spectacles.

“My clients claim,” the solicitor said, “that there is no basis for a claim. The man
was paid the wage that he received, which we admit is below the minimum wage, because
in the manager’s estimation he was incompetent. That estimation will be borne out
by witnesses.”

If you had seen my father’s face.

Davy sat stone-still, arms folded, as man after man we knew well, went into the witness
box and swore that Davy was an incompetent workman. And him sitting there, watching
them.

And Mr. Vaughan doing nothing, except a bit of a smile here and there to the solicitor
on the colliery side.

“Might we hear the claimant?” the Judge asked into the air, to nobody, as though he
spoke to hear his voice.

More running down in front, and Mr. Vaughan looking far from happy when he looked
at Davy to take his place in the little box near the Judge.

“How are you going to prove to the Court’s satisfaction,” the Judge said, direct at
Davy, and I thought, with something of kindness, “that you are, in fact, a competent
workman, and entitled to be paid the minimum wage allotted to that class of man?”

Davy looked very good in his best black suit, indeed.

“I have been working since I was twelve, Your Honour,” he said.

The Judge’s greyness shook quickly from side to side, and his glasses flashed in the
light of the lamps.

“You may have worked for fifty years,” he said, “but still be lacking in competency.
How can you prove your claim?”

My father gave me a dig with his elbow that almost took me from the world with fright.

“The dockets,” he said, in whispers, with fire burning high in his eyes. “The dockets,
man. Where are they, with you?”

Thank God for a lifetime of tidiness and order in the home, for every pay docket we
had ever had was on the file, all of us, from the first week’s pay we had ever drawn.

I stood up with the files heavy in my arms, and Davy’s eyes came off the Judge to
look at me, for he had seen my movement, and all in Court heard me make a way through
the benches toward the front.

“What is this man doing?” the Judge asked.

“My brother, Your Honour,” Davy said. “With proof of competency. Those are the amounts
I have drawn every week since I started work.”

One docket after another the Judge turned over, and for quiet minutes there was only
the voice of crispness in paper to be heard.

Then the Judge looked at Davy, and down at the solicitor.

“Can anybody tell me,” he said, “how a man can earn three and four times, and even
more than six times, as much as the amount of this claim, over a period of years in
the same colliery, and still be held as an incompetent workman?”

No answer from anybody, but the air going to shrivel about us.

“Apparently not,” said the Judge. “In my view, on evidence provided by the company
in its own pay dockets, the plaintiff establishes beyond doubt that he is a competent
workman, and therefore is entitled to receive the minimum wage as provided under the
agreement. The claim is allowed, with costs.”

I am only sorry that we were not allowed to shake the Judge’s hand, and then dance
on the desks.

It was late before we had supper that night, for people were coming from all the other
valleys to cheer my father and Davy, and shake their hands, and call them true men.
My mother stood to watch, holding her chest with one hand and putting tucks in her
apron with the other, pretending to smile.

She knew, and my father knew, that there were two sides to every face.

“Make your minds firm,” my father said to us, while my mother and Olwen were washing
up. “To-day is the last of us in this Valley. If I am spared, I have got a couple
more years’ work, and then finish, me. Ianto is in iron, and Huw is in wood. What
will you do, Davy, my son?”

“I will have my share of the box, Dada,” Davy said, “and I will go to New Zealand.
Wyn’s father will come with us.”

“You could go to your good brothers in the United States,” my father said, but with
weakness in his voice, for he knew his answer.

“New Zealand,” Davy said, with nothing in his voice or face.

“Not charity, my son,” my father said. “But I will be happy to know you are close
together. They are your brothers.”

“New Zealand, Dada,” Davy said.

“Good,” said my father.

“Dada,” Ianto said, “I am going too, I am sorry to say.”

In the dark pane of the window I saw my father shut his eyes.

“You too, Ianto, my son?” he said, with stiffness. “To New Zealand, then?”

“No, Dada,” Ianto said, and looking up at Davy’s jersey, “to Germany. There is a German
over at the works there, now, and he says I could have a better job with him. So I
will go. There is nothing in front of me here.”

“Say nothing to your Mama,” my father said. “Let this day be over, first.”

We sat still, looking at the floor, and the walls, and the furniture, but not at one
another, and we dare not look at my father, for he was fighting rivers.