I Can't Stay Long

by Laurie Lee

  If pretty, to thank God and enjoy her luck and not start beefing about being loved for her mind. To be willing to give pleasure without feeling loss of face, to prefer charm to the vanity of aggression, and not to deliver her powers and mysteries into the opposite camp by wishing to compete with men.

  In this way, I believe – though some of her sisters may disapprove – she might know some happiness and also spread some around.

  And as a brief tenant of this precious and irreplaceable world, I’d ask her to preserve life both in herself and others. To prefer always Societies for Propagation and Promotion rather than those for the Abolition or Prevention of.

  Never to persecute others for the sins hidden in herself, nor to seek justice in terms of vengeance; to avoid like a plague all acts of mob-righteousness; to take cover whenever flags start flying; and to accept her frustrations and faults as her own personal burden, and not to blame them too often, if she can possibly help it, on young or old, whites or coloureds, East, West, Jews, Gentiles, Television, Bingo, Trades Unions, the City, school-milk or the British Railways.

  For the rest, may she be my own salvation, for any man’s child is his second chance. In this rôle I see her leading me back to my beginnings, reopening rooms I’d locked and forgotten, stirring the dust in my mind by re-asking the big questions – as any child can do.

  But in my case, perhaps, just not too late; she persuades me there may yet be time, that with her, my tardy but bright-eyed pathfinder, I may return to that wood which long ago I fled from, but which together we may now enter and know.

  II

  She is now only a few months old and at the beginning of it all, rolling her eyes for the first time at the world. A dangerous temptation for any father, new to the charms and vanities of parenthood, to use her as a glass in which to adore his own image, to act miracles and be a god again.

  Inert, receptive, captive and goggle-eyed, she offers everything for self-indulgence; her readiness, for instance, to restore one’s powers to astonish, and to be shown the whole world new. She laughs easily already, demanding no effort of wit, gulping chuckles at my corniest gestures – a built-in appreciation so quick and uncritical it seems to promise a life-long romance.

  But I am late to parenthood and I know I must beware; my daughter and I stand in mutual danger; so easy for either of us to turn the other’s head, or for me to ruin her with too much cherishing. A late only child is particularly vulnerable, of course – a target for attentions she might be happier without, or liable to be cast into rôles that have little to do with her nature in order to act out some parental fantasy.

  Nevertheless, here she is, just a few months old, clear clay to work wonders with. No doubt, if I could, I’d mould her into something wispy and adoring, but fortunately she’ll have none of that. Like any other child, she is a unique reality, already something I cannot touch, with a programme of her own packed away inside her to which she will grow without help from me.

  Even so, there is much I want to show and give her; and also much I would protect her from. I would spare her the burden of too many ambitions, and too many expectations, such as the assumption that simply because she is mine she must therefore be both beautiful and clever. I’ll try not to improve her too much, or use her in games of one-uppance, or send her climbing too many competitive beanstalks; and I’d like to protect her from the need to go one better than her parents in order to improve their status by proxy. One can’t help sympathising with the dad who says: ‘I never had a chance myself, but my kid’s going to have the best.’ But the result very often is a stranger in the house, a teen-age aristocrat served by parent serfs, forced to talk and dress a cut above the old folks and to feel little save guilt and embarrassment.

  At the same time I’d best protect her from the opposite kind of freakishness – that of using her as a sociological guinea-pig. For next to circus-trained animals, few creatures look so fundamentally awkward as children who have been forced into experimental postures of behaviour in order to indulge some theoretical fidget of their parents. One feels that children should be left to enjoy their conservative birthright, and not be conscripted as second-hand revolutionaries. A child can, and should, when the time is ripe, initiate its own revolutions.

  What I want for my child is an important beginning, a background where she can most naturally grow. My own childhood was rough, but it was a good time too, and I want her to have one like it. I was lucky to be raised in a country district, rich with unpackaged and unpriced rewards; and although we were materially poor (and I don’t wish that she should be poor) I believe there are worse things than that kind of poverty. There is, for instance, the burden of abundance, often as stultifying as want, when too many non-stop treats and ready-made diversions can mount almost to infanticide, can glut a child’s appetites, ravish it of wonder, and leave it no space or silence for dreams. So I would like to give my child chances to be surprised, periods of waiting to sharpen her longings, then some treat or treasure that was worth looking forward to, and an interval to enjoy and remember it.

  I was brought up in a village when childhood and the countryside were simply their own rewards, when electricity had not obliterated the old ghosts in the corners, and songs were not changed once a week. That time and condition can’t come again, but I’d like my daughter to know what is left of it. For it still contains people undazed by street lamps, who know darkness and the movements of stars, and who can talk about mysteries the townsman has forgotten, and who are not entirely cut off from the soil’s live skin by insulations of cement and asphalt.

  I want to take my daughter to this surviving world – not as a visitor, but to be a native in it. So that she may accept it simply as part of creation, and take its light into her eyes and bones. To know the natural intimacy of living close to the seasons, where they are still the gods in possession; to feel the quick earth stir when she treads upon it, to take the smokeless wind in her mouth, to watch the green year turn, lambs drop and stagger, birds hatch, grass grow and seed. To have for her horizons the banks of woods rather than the rented air of office blocks, and to be accompanied on her walks by the coloured squares of fields rather than raddled posters for fags and petrol. Not later, but as soon as she can use her eyes, I’d like her to have this world to live in, so that she can know it and regard it as a place to belong to, and not just a piece of prettiness to be gawped at from a motor-car.

  I suppose the country can only properly be given to a child – as from birth it was given to me. And as it was given to me, so I’d like to show it to her, and see it again through her eyes – the veils of blue rain wandering up from Wales, streaking the sky before they hit the ground; copper clouds of thunder towering over the Severn, mist wiping great holes in the hillside, the beech-tops breaking into a storm of rooks, the light on the cows in the evening … And there will be the naming of plants (if I can remember them), explaining the differences between daws and ravens, collecting woodlice, earwigs, frogs and grasshoppers; and the attempts to tame a fox. I must also refind the valley’s traditional playground – the caves and holes in the quarries, Roman snails on the walls and fossilled fish in the stones, the bridge of willows across the stream, pools and springs and water voles, hooked burrs and thistle-seeds, the sharp free food of crab and damson, and the first mushrooms of a September morning. Best of all, at full moon, to be able to take her from her bed, and carry her down through the warm bright wood, to the lake where the heron stands like a spear of silver and the blue pike nibble the reeds …

  Children can often be grubs, even in a pastoral paradise, and I believe that I was one by nature. Relaxed and drowsy, content to sit in corners, I had to be taught to use my eyes. My mother, sisters and brothers taught me, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. But what they showed me then, I never forgot, and I hope my daughter will find it the same. Yet for all the milk-fed charms of country life, I want her to see it whole, to acknowledge the occasional savageries as well as the soft gr
een days, the dark as well as the light. Unlike the secretive city, the country is naked, and displays most of the truths about us; but even the worst of these truths, being part of a primitive harmony, are seldom exploited and never morbid. So it is against this background, which neither conceals nor excuses, that I think my child can best balance her life, can look on birth and death in their proper relation – not taking them soiled or second-hand from the Press – and can accept the valley as real, not only in fat-cheeked summer, but also under the dead necessary face of winter.

  Given this world to be in, where she can grow reasonably wild, she will also expect the comfort of some authority. To load any child with absolute freedom is to force it to inhabit a wasteland, where it must push its will to find the limits allowed it and grow frantic unless it does. Let her have the assurance, then, of a proper authority, and of a not too inflexible routine, within whose restraints she may take occasional refuge – otherwise I hope she’ll be free. I want her to be free from fear to enquire and get answers, free to imagine and tell tall tales, free to be curious and to show enthusiasm, and free at times to invade my silences.

  I hope she’ll sing when she wants to, and be flattered when she needs it, and not get attention according to timetable. May our house not be so tidy that it inhibits her gusto, nor so squalid that she resigns her pride. She shall love God if she wishes, and have a place for saints and angels, or even dress shrines for the more unfashionable spirits. She shall not be condemned to grey flannel, nor kept for ever in jeans, nor treated as sexless or a pretended boy, but be given nice clothes early, and occasions to wear them, and be encouraged to value her mysteries. She will not be suppressed too much, nor yet spoiled I hope, but taught politeness, good manners and charm – not as affected graces but as ordinary gifts designed to make other people happy. She will not be the first in the family, nor yet the last, but a respected member of it; and when good things occur I’d like her to stay up and share them – and sleep late through the next dull day.

  As for the arts, I hope she’ll want some of these, but not too self-consciously. May she paint herself blue, and the walls and ceilings, but not as part of some art-school posture. And may she dance and spin for the pleasure her young limbs give her, but not with Dame Margot always in mind. She shall have music, too, not wherever she goes, but as an important embellishment of her life. A house without music is like a house without lights, but no light should burn night and day. Today’s non-stop music, piped from shuddering plastic boxes, debauches the senses of one of its sacred pleasures. Music should be a voluptuous treat, like a deep hot bath, not a continuous shriek in the plumbing. I’d like my child to have music for consolation, excitement, and occasional exaltation, to think of it as an event and an extravagance of the senses and not just a background for chatter and peanuts. If it’s good, I don’t mind whether it’s jazz or the classics, though I hope she’ll feel free to like both. Best of all, may she succeed in playing some instrument herself, which is one of the most intense of musical pleasures. We are all listeners today, passive or otherwise, and for some it can be a genuine enrichment; but to play any instrument, no matter how badly, is worth a thousand hours of listening.

  There remains the question of education, usually a subject for snobs or fanatics (I’ve still time to develop into either). But I would like to give her the sort that matches her curiosity and needs, and not one to make her life a misery. I’ll not send her away if I can help it; she’s bound to leave soon enough. I hope she’ll stay at home, inky fingers and all, and be around where I can watch her grow. It is the privilege of the poor – and the very rich – to keep their children at home; I’m neither, but I’m too jealous of my daughter’s childhood to wish to give it away to the pattern-makers. I’ve no mind to pack her off to some boarding-school, to lose sight of her for months at a time, only to get her back, stiff as a hockey post, and sicklied o’er with the pale thought of caste … No, I hope she’ll be content to get her conformity at a day school and to unravel it back home each night.

  She may have other ideas; to be a blue-stocking, for instance, in which case I must give her the chance. But I’d rather she was less clever, and wholly a woman, than a brilliant scholar later frustrated by marriage. Meanwhile, I’ll give her a house full of books, with none of them closed to her, but not expect her to prefer Proust to Pam’s Schooldays. If she’s a success I’ll be pleased, but I’ll not care if she isn’t nor measure my approval in terms of her O Levels. May spontaneity and warmth be her main achievements, not gradings in academic abstractions. May she feel confident, wanted, take pleasure and give it, be artful (but not want to act), laugh easily, covet no one, forget herself sometimes, never be bored or feel the need to kill time, avoid painting-by-numbers, processed food, processed language, have an antenna for the responses of others, and learn that though animals are often much easier to love than men (and both worth it) loving man needs more talent …

  These are hopes, of course, rather than exact intentions. For who knows what my girl will be? She’s only a few months old, and a surprise already – and I imagine I’ve got a lot more surprises coming. But in the end, I suppose, I just want to give her love and the assurance of a home on earth. This child was not born merely to extend my ego, nor even to give me unbroken pleasure, nor to provide me with a plaything to be fussed over, neglected, shown off and then put away. She was born that I might give her a first foot in this world and might help her to want to live in it. She is here through me, and I am responsible for her – and I’m not looking for any escape-clauses there. Having a child alters the rights of every man, and I don’t expect to live as I did without her. I am hers to be with, and hope to be what she needs, and know of no reason why I should ever desert her.

  The Village that Lost its Children

  ‘October the twenty-first, man, nineteen hundred and sixty-six. At ten past nine in the morning, the last day of school, just as they was saying their prayers …’

  Returning to Aberfan, almost a year after the disaster, this was the first voice I heard, coming from an old Welsh miner who stood alone with his dog on the embankment looking over the ruins.

  ‘Nobody was to blame,’ he went on, ‘– or all of us …’ The rain dripped black from his cap. ‘Why, when I worked underground I filled many a truck for the tip. But not to knock down the school I didn’t … There have been worse than this, man. Those in Italy with the water, and that other place with the great big wind. Ay, there was worse – but this one was different …’

  His lilting chapel voice seemed to be addressed to the air or to anyone who cared to stop and listen, and I soon learned to recognize it as part of a village chorus rising all day from the streets and pubs, a kind of compulsive recitation of tragedy, perpetually telling and re-telling the story.

  A winter and summer have gone, and it is still the main topic in the village – re-living the moment it happened. When no stranger is around it is told interminably to one another, but the presence of a stranger makes it easier. Then the face of the speaker grows trancelike, often oblivious to the listener, as the details are gone over again and again, as though the teller were alone, repeating the words of some riddle, some perverse mystery as yet unsolved.

  ‘I was in the kitchen when I heard it. I didn’t take much notice. I thought somebody was delivering coal. Then the neighbour came shouting, “Quick, the tip’s on the school!” I just stared at her. I thought she was mad …’

  ‘We heard this swishing noise. “That’s a jet,” said me husband. “It’s never going to take the mountain.” Then he looked out of the window. “The school’s down!” he said, “and your uncle and auntie’s house has gone …”’

  ‘The muck slid over the road, carrying the school tiles on top of it, all neat, just as if a man had done it … It was the water that saved us – it pushed the muck the other way. Otherwise we’d have gone like the others …’

  ‘After it’d happened, everything went quiet, like turning off the wire
less. All those children inside, and you couldn’t hear a whimper, not a sound, not even a bird …’

  ‘People were just standing. They couldn’t take it in. We broke some windows and got out the first of the children …’

  ‘The women were cold as stone. It was the men who panicked. They was tearing at the muck with their hands – it was like wet rubber – a shovel wouldn’t go into it …’

  ‘As they was bringing out the bodies, one of the women said, “There won’t be a child left in our road …”’

  ‘Some of the little ones who got out – all covered in muck – they didn’t cry, they just walked away …’

  ‘I was standing on something that moved. I pulled some of the stuff away and saw the face of me cousin …’

  ‘I still think of the farm up the field where the old woman and child were killed – they never found stick nor stone … And the poor boy Michael carried dead on a mattress all down the mountain to the back door of the school …’

  ‘The next day I said to me husband, “Let’s go from here.” But he wanted to stay where the child was laid …’

  ‘I take charge of me granddaughter now. She’s too much for me really, but her mother’s in bed with nerves. Been in and out of hospital ever since the day it happened. Can’t stop crying. I do what I can …’

  And so on and on – from women leaning out of windows, standing at their doors, or at their garden gates. After a year they seem to have found little rest or comfort, and few facile consolations. Most of them are still living in a state of shock, in a village which remains an open wound.

  Few people had ever heard of Aberfan until disaster struck it. It was just another of the small mining ghettoes lying tucked away in the sump of the South Wales valleys – a huddle of anonymous terraced houses of uniform ugliness unrelieved except for chapel and pub.