How Green Was My Valley (64 page)

“Shall we read a chapter, my sons?” he asked us, in a little while, and Davy was up
quick to fetch the Book.

“What shall we have, Dada?” he said, with the thickness of guilt and black leather
ready on his knee, and his fingers hooked in the pages.

“Isaiah, fifty-five,” my father said. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.”

And while Davy read, my mother came to sit by my father, and Olwen sat on the floor
with her arm on his knee, and her face on her arm, and his hand was on her head nearly
hidden in her hair, and his other hand lay in my mother’s lap, with her hands tight
about it.

Chapter Forty

I
ANTO AND DAVY
went away together, for Ianto knew that two good-byes would be hard on my mother,
and Germany sounded just as far as New Zealand to her.

I crated all Davy’s furniture, and made boxes with baize linings for the crockery,
but it was a job of sadness for me. Every tap of the hammer seemed to send him farther
away.

One morning they stood before my mother with their coats on their arms and their hats
in their hands, and the clock telling them to leave home.

“Well,” my mother said, and took off her apron to show her best black silk.

“Well, Mama,” Ianto said, and smiling a big one, but having it hard with his voice.

“Off, now, again then?” my mother said, smiling too, with her hands busy to puff the
sleeves of her dress.

“Yes, Mama,” Ianto said and rubbing his hat with the cuff of his coat, though Olwen
had brushed it to smoothness only a minute before.

“And you, Davy,” Mama said, with her hands quiet.

“Yes, Mama,” Davy said, and putting another knot in his parcel of sandwiches and cake,
looking at nobody.

“Will you write?” Mama asked them, high.

But they said nothing, and I looked out of the door and down the Hill.

The kitchen was full of the speech of my mother’s eyes, but quiet except for the clock.

“Well,” my father said. “Shall we have a move?”

More quiet, and Olwen coming to cry.

“Good-bye, Mama,” Ianto said.

“Good-bye, Mama,” said Davy.

But my mother had no good-bye for them, but only the sound of her kiss, the little
sound her kisses made, that were dry upon the cheek.

Ianto went first, and Davy after, and then my father, and the people on the Hill looked
up at the mountain, and down at the pit, but not at them when they waved good-byes,
for Ianto had his arm about Davy’s shoulder, and my father was standing in the middle
of the street giving them a start, and a chance to button their coats.

My mother went to sit on the stool by the fire with the work-basket close to her feet.
She never mended socks before the peace of the afternoon, but she could never sit
still and do nothing, so while her good boys went from her she sat to think of them,
but I never saw her so round in the shoulders or slower to thread a needle.

And Olwen piled the breakfast plates as though it was their fault her brothers were
off down the Hill.

With my atlas I tried to show my mother where her children had gone. I drew pencil
lines from us to Owen and Gwilym across the Atlantic, and to Angharad down there in
Cape Town, and to Davy in New Zealand, and to Ianto in Germany.

She looked at the page with her head back as though it had a smell, and sideways with
the eyes, holding the book with loose fingers, not anxious to see, distrustful of
what she saw, and ready to stop her ears against what I was telling her. She wanted
to listen to nothing, and see nothing that might bring to her more coldness of the
heart than their going had given her.

For she thought of them all as she thought of Ceridwen, only just over the mountain,
to be seen any time of the day with only a good walk there and back.

“What is this old spider, now then?” she asked me, and not even putting on her glasses
to see.

“One line from us to Owen and Gwil,” I said, pointing it for her. “Down here to Angharad.
Over there to Ianto, and down by here to Davy and Wyn. You are like the Mother of
a star, Mama. From this house, shining all that way across the continents and oceans.”

“All that way,” my mother said. “Goodness gracious, boy, how far, then, if they can
have it all on a little piece of paper?”

“Only a map, it is, Beth,” my father said, and a wink to me to be quiet. “A picture,
see, to show you where they are.”

“They are in the house,” my mother said, flat. “And no old pictures, and spiders with
a pencil, if you please.”

“Yes, my lovely girl,” my father said, and I put my atlas away.

It was a blessing that Ianto and Davy went then, for they would have been in trouble
sure if they had waited for the end of the year.

“It is coming, Huw,” my father said, as a man will look at a rain cloud and wonder
if there is time to go back for his coat. “This time it will be worse than ever. I
have told your mother to prepare for a bad winter. But thank God your good brothers
are from here. I was always worried from my life in case they landed in jail.”

I think my mother was glad, too, for that fear had always been near to her, and perhaps
the relief that they had gone from the Valley in peace helped her in her dark days,
when she was quiet, without words for us, and short with Olwen, and we knew that she
mourned.

Bron was a help at those times, for we never dared to say a word, but Bron could put
an arm about her and tickle her, and make a good cup of tea, and put her in a chair,
with talk about the boys and Angharad till the tears dropped and she smiled to remember,
and then she was right for another couple of weeks.

So the weeks went, but day by day the trouble was coming to be worse. Where there
was one meeting, now there were a dozen, and not only at night but in the afternoons
too, and toward the end, in the mornings.

It was the subject-matter of the meetings that made me worry. Before, in the time
of Mr. Gruffydd and my brothers, the meetings were called for a purpose and were orderly,
with a subject defined and a vote to be taken on a show of hands.

But then it seemed that anybody who could talk was sure of a hearing, whatever might
be coming from his mouth, sense or not, and it was a surprise to me, that men I knew
to be as hard in the head as the bole of an oak, would stand to listen.

I was busy in my shop in the back yard from morning till night, making doors and window-frames
and tables and chairs. I started small to have the time to work up a stock, so that
I could use my time, later on, to make good furniture and perhaps panelling.

Orders I had in plenty, though I would never touch coffins, and in that, lost many
a fat job and thought it no matter. I never saw a reason for putting noble wood and
good work about deadness and dropping it down a little pit.

So, busy with my own job, I had little time to notice what was going on outside, and
when I did, and worried, my work covered the worry and I forgot in the joy of using
my shining tools, and thus the shock was greater.

One Saturday Bronwen had a birthday and I thought I would take her to Town for an
outing and buy something new in a box for her. We left the boys with my mother and
took Olwen with us.

Well, well.

There is a time we had.

There is good to take somebody you love on a trip to Town, for a smile is happy on
the face, and even a little joke will bring a good laugh, but one with salt will have
you in stitches.

O, and a royal feeling it is to spend money without caring, and a prince I was that
day. So between laughter and princeliness I had my day and lived it well, and found
it much to my liking.

People were stopping in the street to look at Bronwen and Olwen.

“What is the matter then, Huw?” Bron asked me, with big eyes, and a little voice.
“Dress, or what, is wrong with us?”

“Nothing wrong, girl,” I said and feeling in my pride to be three of me, and twice
as high. “Lovelier than Pharaoh’s daughters, you are, see. So go you, now.”

“Go on with you, boy,” Bron said, pretending a frost of impatience, but a smile in
the making behind her eyes, and watching people to see if Olwen was having more of
the looks. If she had seen a man looking at her, she would have turned her nose to
the skies and so put him in a bruise of blushes, but if she had seen him looking at
Olwen she would have been hurt, and wondering if she had a bit of soot on her nose
or too many years.

A good, good laugh I had, to see them playing the game of Woman. A pretty game it
is too, and men having quite as much of the fun when they have the courage to use
their eyes. Women love to be looked at, though they will deny it with an oath, and
men, the fools, will look up, look down, and blind themselves and have humped backs
with looking at the pavement, or have twists in the neck from looking at something
on either side, only not to look, or be thought looking at a woman. There is senseless,
there is stupid and there is dull.

For please to tell me what is better to look at than a lovely woman, and I will come
from my dinner to see. And all women, never mind who, or what, have a loveliness of
their own, so who will say that we must cover our eyes and see nothing only stones
and sky, is one without good sense and feeling, an ingrate for the gift of vision,
and barely half a man.

Bronwen walked in front of me looking up at first-floor windows in the street, knowing
only that eyes were on her, and coming to be a pincushion full of the spikes of sight.

“I have got a name,” she said, when I told her not to mind the stares. “So please
to mind your affairs. How would I feel if I looked at a shop and a man spoke?”

“Would you have time to feel?” I asked her. “And would he?”

“Trouble then,” she said, “and an end in a police-station. Leave it now. I will look
when I want to, and when I want to, I shall look.”

Strange that women always trouble for the worst that never happens. Not a man of all
the hundreds we saw that day would have dared to say a word to her, even if she had
looked back at him, for there was an air about Bronwen that shouted a warning to fools,
that was plainer than a written sign.

Too conscious of her womanhood she was, and ready to spoil her day by worrying over
it.

“There is silly you are, girl,” I said to her. “No matter about tongues at home, but
only old eyes here, and you are running up a street with no enjoyment of it.”

“I have yet to hear the words,” she said. “But these looks I can feel. Change places
only for a minute.”

“With gladness,” I said. “Only to give you comfort. They are looking because you are
a new wonder, not often to be seen, and they will think of you in years to come. So
you will live in many places at once, and always in beauty. Are you thankful?”

“No,” she said, and then I saw that she was, but denying it because she was playing
the game of Woman.

Olwen was looking at Bron in hope that soon a slackness would come to her steps so
that we might look at the shops, for about us were the things of dreams and all of
an afternoon was in front of us.

But Bronwen was used to the village street, and the eyes of those who knew her, so
I knew we had perhaps an hour of discomfort to live through before she grew less tender
of herself and more a part of the crowding streams of people, the dusty street of
many sounds, and the noise of horses by the hundred, with more traps and carts and
carriages than we had ever seen in all our lives before.

There is strange to walk in a town. Something is strange in the faces of people who
live all their lives in a town. For their lives are full of the clock and their eyes
are blind with seeing so many wonders, and they have no pleasure of expectation or
prettiness of wish. Good things are heaped in the windows all round them, but their
pockets are empty, and thus they suffer in their minds, for where they would own,
now they must wish, and wishes denied soon turn to a lust that shows itself in the
face. Too much to see, day after day, and too much noise for peace, and too little
time in a round of the clock to sit by themselves, and think.

At last we had ease of eyes when we reached the arcades and went in to the lighted
quietness of those winding streets of glass, full of thanks to the man who thought
of them, and happy to be there.

I had splendid minutes in a bookshop while Bron and Olwen were buying presents in
the shops for women.

O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness
holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.

I would willingly have stayed there till the bolts were itching to be shot, but Bron
came in and took me by the arm, with her mouth tight, and pulled me gently to the
door.

“Old books, again,” she said. “And two out here to march up and down while you are
rubbing your old nose up and down pages.”

“Let us buy a couple of books for the boys,” I said, for the book-seller was looking
at me as though I owed him money.

“A couple of testaments,” Bron said, quick, for the shop was full of them.

“Go on, girl,” I said. “They have got testaments to spare. A book to read, I mean.
Would they thank me behind my back for a testament?”

“A little Prayer Book and hymn book in a case,” Bron said, “there is pretty.”

“Have it yourself,” I said. “Something to make them shout to have. A couple of good
books. Something worth taking back from Town.”

So I bought
Ivanhoe
and
Treasure Island
, after a serious talk with the bookseller, a good little man with loose teeth and
plenty to say, and all of it sense, and a few good dips into both of them myself,
until Bronwen started to tap her foot, with her mouth screwed up on one side, and
Olwen looking so sour to make miracles of sweetness out of little green apples.