How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  There is lovely after that senseless noise. In dignity and harmony, in rich beauty rose their voices now employed in noble purpose. Glorious is the Voice of Man, and sweet is the music of the harp.

  I looked round quickly at the doorway and found my mother watching me with diamonds in her eyes, and her hand to her mouth. Whether to laugh or cry, now.

  “Huw,” she said. “Huw, my little one.”

  No words would come from me, and I turned my head.

  My mother came over to me and I heard her skirt sighing across the tiles, but when she bent over me and saw me pulling faces, she began to pull a few, and then we looked at each other and we started to laugh at the same time. There was nothing to cry about, see, so there was no sense in crying.

  “Wait you,” my mother said, and wiping my face, “there are some blackberry tarts coming up the Hill now in a minute. Wait you.”

  “Are you better, Mama?” I asked her.

  “Better, boy?” my mother said, and laughing she was, now, with her. “Of course I am better. Do I look better?”

  “Your hair is white with you,” I said.

  “The snow got into it,” she said. “You had your old cap on.”

  But my mother was only joking, of course. Women are so brave.

  “Are you ready to see the house, Beth?” my father asked. He was standing in the doorway, watching us.

  “Yes, indeed I am,” my mother said, and she got up. “There is beautiful, Gwilym.”

  She was looking about the kitchen, and then she looked quickly at me and ran, yes, ran, from there, and up the stairs.

  My father and mother were up there a long time, enough time for the choir to go through four hymns and Comrades in Arms, and then I heard them coming down. Back they came to the kitchen again and they stood by the table.

  “Well, Gwilym,” my mother said, and looking at him.

  “Well, Beth,” said my father, and smiling.

  “There is beautiful,” said my mother.

  “Glad I am you like it,” my father said.

  “What is left in the box, now?” my mother asked.

  “Plenty,” said my father.

  “After the doctor and all this?” asked my mother.

  “Plenty, plenty, and to spare,” said my father, still smiling and giving a wink to me.

  “There is kind you are, Gwil,” my mother said, putting her hand on his arm. “There is a wife you have got, staying in bed all this time and leaving her family to strangers.”

  “Yes, indeed,” my father said, pretending to be angry, “and bringing another little sister for Huw, too. Dear, dear, there is a wife.”

  “I wanted to get up, Gwil,” said my mother.

  “Sweetheart mine,” said my father. I had never heard him call my mother that before. There is pretty it did sound. She did think so, too. There is a blush, indeed, and white hair.

  “Sh,” she said, and looked quickly at me, and saw me smiling, and blushed more, looking on the floor and curling her fingers in her chain.

  “Shall we go out to Mr. Gruffydd now, Beth?” my father asked her, and frowned at me to say nothing.

  “Yes,” my mother said, “but there is to be no say from me, mind.”

  “You will have to have a couple of words with them, girl,” my father said, and laughing. “They will be shouting if you try to run.”

  “But what will I say?” my mother said.

  “You found something to say last time you spoke,” my father said. “It should be easier, now, with friends.”

  “Right, you,” said my mother, nodding as she did when there was nothing more to be done. “But if I will start shouting laughing in the middle, you shall have the blame. Then I did talk for good reason to a parcel of dull men. But now, there is no profit to talk.”

  “Only to say thanks, girl,” said my father, urging her.

  “I will say that with a good cup of tea,” my mother said. “Have those girls got ready?”

  “Yes, Mama,” I said. “Out in the back they are waiting.”

  “Good,” said my father, “and the rest are out in the front, waiting these months. Come you, Beth. Let me see a smile with you, then, girl.”

  No good to keep straight your face when my father looked at you like that. So my mother struggled with her mouth for a moment and then she started to laugh.

  “Go on with you, boy,” she said, and taking his arm from her waist and giving him a little push to the door, “I am coming back again, now just, my little one,” she said to me, “blackberry tart for you this minute.”

  “Thank you, Mama,” I said, “speak so that I will hear you.”

  “Gracious goodness,” my mother laughed, “there is like your old Dada you are, boy.”

  Out they went, then, and such a shout to meet them as they opened the front door. A big voice called for silence, and I knew that the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd would not find it hard to be heard over in the next valley if he had notions to try.

  “Beloved,” he said, standing upon the window sill of the front room, “I give you greeting in the name of the Crucified.”

  “Amen,” they said, and the deep sound of it slid down the Hill.

  “Great is my joy,” he said, “to be thus honoured upon the first day of my ministry among you, to be called to this house of sacrifice to welcome back a wife and mother, whose name shall for ever be borne upon a shield of shining gold through the Five Valleys and beyond.”

  He had to stop, for the crowd was big and shouting was loud.

  “It is evident,” he said, with laughing in his voice, “that your patience will not permit an oration. But I will have you in Chapel, indeed.”

  A big laugh from the crowd who knew they would have to be silent in the four walls of the Zion.

  “Beth Morgan,” he called, and his voice tolled about the Valley, “come into your house. O woman, O noble mother, enter thou in honour while we give thanks to Almighty God for His many mercies, for the gift of thy life, and for the sparing of thy gallant son.”

  Again the crowd were shouting, but a different note in the shout.

  The kitchen went so quiet that I could hear the grease dropping from the chickens on the spit. Not a sound else was to be heard except the littler sounds of the new paint finding homes in the cracks, and the table getting comfortable on the new tiles, and the chair resting itself, and my breath coming slow and steady and making the bedclothes hiss.

  “Friends,” in my mother’s voice, “there is nothing to say except thanks to Mr. Gruffydd. That I have come home, thanks to God I have said a thousand thousand times, and for somebody else inside here. No more to be said. Come you, now, and have to eat. There is plenty.”

  Shout, then, shout. Mouth on mouth, open and shouting, that soon will be filled with food. There is patient is the mouth.

  In a moment the kitchen was full. All the girls ran round the back lane and through the back door, and processions came and went through the front, all taking out plates of bread and butter and pies and cakes and buckets and baths of hot water for the teapots, all getting in each other’s way and laughing and pushing and pretending to be stuck in the doorway.

  My mother came through the crowd with a big blackberry tart in one hand and my tea in the other, carrying them high and with care not to spill, keeping off the people with her elbows and eyes.

  “Now then,” she said, and put them into my hands, “wait you till I will have a cloth here.”

  “No matter, Mama,” I said. “I have been waiting long for this, not the cloth.”

  “If your Dada will see you eating without a cloth,” said my mother, “what will he say to me? You are bringing up your son fit for a sty. Wait you, now.”

  But before she had turned her back, I was into that tart.

  O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes
and wish you might live for ever in the wideness of that rich moment.

  Angharad came over with the cloth while my mother was pouring tea in her place, and Bronwen came to spoon my cup for me. There was no talking to be done for now the house was packed solid with people to see the new furniture and paint, and make a noise, and some to look at me and smile.

  I was thankful that Bronwen was sitting by my pillow for she hid most of them. But those who had made up their minds to see me, poked in their heads and patted my feet. Strange it was to see tears in their eyes and to feel their sympathy, and yet to be able to say nothing to them in thanks.

  But the noise was beyond words, indeed.

  Cups and saucers and plates and knives and forks and spoons and boots and shoes were clattering and scratching and shuffling, and women were talking and laughing in soprano and contralto, and men were shouting and joking in tenor and in basso, but it was all stirred up as though someone was bent on making a cake out of sound and would have a good mixing for a start.

  Then it was that I heard Owen shouting out in the back. Almost then, everybody heard him, for a quiet fell, and people near the door were hushing others in the front who were still talking.

  “I will take no orders from you,” he was shouting, in anger.

  “Let me find you near my daughter again,” Marged’s father shouted back, “and I will thrash you till the end of your life, you wastrel.”

  “Leave me go to smash in his head,” Gwilym was shouting, as though hands were holding him.

  “Close your head, Gwil,” Davy said. “Mr. Evans,” his voice went on, “there is no need for language like that from you.”

  “I will be judge of that,” said Mr. Evans, “and I will thank you to keep out of this matter.”

  “Give the old fool a good kick,” shouted Gwilym. “Loose his teeth, the old devil.”

  “Shut up, man,” Owen said.

  “Be silent, Gwilym,” said Davy. “You are making it worse. Mr. Evans, please to see my father before you say more.”

  “I will have my daughter from here, now,” said Mr. Evans, in anger.

  “I will run away from you,” Marged said, and tears were in plenty.

  “So now then for you,” mocked Gwilym, “you old fool, you.”

  “Hisht, hisht, Gwilym,” said my mother, pushing through the crowd from our side, “go from here, now, this moment.”

  The crowd in the kitchen made way as my father and the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd moved out of the front room toward the crowd outside the back door.

  “Beth,” my father called, “what is it?”

  “Come you, Gwilym,” my mother said, with relief, “there is an awful thing to happen indeed. I am ashamed of you, Owen. And as for you, young man, I shall never know why you were called after your father. Say you are sorry to Mr. Evans.”

  “No, Mama,” said Gwilym, stubborn as a pig of iron.

  “Wait you,” said my father. “Now then, what is the trouble, Mr. Evans?”

  “Your son was in this shed with my daughter,” said Mr. Evans.

  “Eh, dear, dear,” said the crowd to one another.

  “What were they doing?” asked my father.

  “O,” said Mr. Evans, as though he had no wish to air the matter. “He was holding her about the waist.”

  “I was kissing her,” said Owen.

  “O,” said my father, as though that was the end of the matter. And I suppose he started to smile, and the crowd began to laugh.

  In a moment the whole house was shaking in laughter. But presently it drained off, and people in front began hushing again.

  “Glad I am,” my father was saying, “that it has ended like this. I will be very happy to have Marged in the family.”

  “There are none better,” said her father. “I am sorry, Gwilym, for causing this trouble. But I am strict about such things.”

  “Right, too,” said my father. “Gwilym, say you are sorry.”

  “I am not sorry for saying what I did, as he was then,” said Gwilym, “but if I said it as he is now, I would be very sorry indeed, Mr. Evans.”

  There was quiet for a moment.

  “That is the best you will have from that quarter,” my father said, and again everybody started to laugh.

  “The tea is getting cold,” Bronwen called. “Come you, now, quick.”

  Bronwen took my cup from me and pinched the crumbs of tart from beneath my chin.

  “There is an old fool that Evans is,” she whispered. “Her mother have known these weeks. Wait till she will have him home. Only pretending, he was.”

  As though Mrs. Evans had heard, her voice rose out in the back.

  “Shame on you, Sion Evan Evans,” she said, plain to be heard, and making all the talk fall away again. “Of course she will marry Owen Morgan, and thankful I am, too. Shame I do feel, dear Mrs. Morgan, that this old fool of a man should cause trouble on this day of all others.”

  “Let us go now,” said my father, “and have a glass in health. Come, all of you.”

  Up went the talk again, and somebody started to sing.

  “Owen will never forget that as long as he is living,” Angharad said, bringing back my full cup. “If you had seen his face.”

  “I will have a talk with him,” said Bronwen. “If he will listen.”

  But now everybody was singing and it was getting dark and the lamps were rising into yellow flowers and the women had work to do, while the men went down the Hill to drink healths and sing on their own.

  Owen was not to be found that night.

  Chapter Eight

  IT WAS MANY DAYS before Bronwen had chance to speak to Owen because now she was not in our house such a lot, for my mother was having her way about things, and she took care, now that she was downstairs, to see that they were done.

  Bronwen used to come in at night when Ivor had finished supper, and sit with me to hear my lessons, ready for Mrs. Tom Jenkins in the morning, and then help Angharad with the food boxes for the men next day.

  One night, my mother went down to a prayer-meeting with my father, the first she had been to since she was ill, so they were giving her a special meeting and everybody was going. All except Owen, who was hard at work on his invention.

  He had been very quiet, lately. Several times he had missed his meals, and although my father had said not to worry, I knew that my mother was unhappy about him. But she always was if any of us ever missed having a meal, for it was a certain sign, she said, of sickness in us.

  Not only my mother was unhappy, but Marged, too. I saw it clearly though she tried not to show it. Often she stood looking through the window toward the shed where Owen was working, and tears were in her eyes for so long that I would start to count the beats before they fell. Then she would shake, once, from head to foot, as though she were bitten through with cold, and turn to run out in the wash-house, with her hand to her mouth, and the door coming to shut quietly behind her.

  When my mother had gone with my father, and the house was still, Bronwen came in through the back and took off her cloak as though she had work to do.

  “Is Marged here?” she asked me.

  “No, Bron,” I said. “Gone with Mama and Dada and the others, she has.”

  “Good,” she said, and opened the door. “Wait you. I am having a talk to Owen for a minute.”

  “Good,” I said, and back to my books as she closed the door.

  I was learning Euclid at the time. Even till now I have enjoyed his theorems. So simple they are, and so wise, and good for the training of the mind. I shall always remember the drawing I made of an isosceles triangle inside a circle, for it was while I was trying to thread lead in the compass that Marged threw open the door, and stood with the wind blowing her cloak against her, staring at me as though she could kill.

  “Who is with Owen?” she was whispering, and not blinking.

  “Bronwen is,” I said.

  “I will have a knife in her,” she said, and pulled the buttons from
her cloak as she threw it from her.

  “Only talking they are,” I said.

  “Talking?” Marged said, in a high voice, as though we should be laughing. “For weeks he has treated me like a ghost. Only talking? Now I know.”

  “What, then?” I asked her, for I was so surprised at her, acting as she was, with her hair all ends against her face, and her eyes staring and froth at her mouth.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You will know this minute.”

  She turned round to face the shed and lifted her chest to have a deep breath.

  “Owen,” she shouted, “Bronwen Morgan. Come you out from by there.”

  She had no need to shout twice. The shed door opened before she had finished and Bronwen came running to her, catching her by the shoulders and pushing her in the kitchen.

  Owen came in behind and closed the door, standing with his back to it, looking drawn knives at Marged, who was in the lamp shadow, pressed against the wall, facing Bronwen.

  “There is silly you are, girl,” Bronwen said, looking from Marged to Owen and across at me.

  “Not silly I am, now,” Marged said, as though the life had gone from her. “I have watched you these weeks looking at him.”

  “Hush, girl,” Bronwen said. “You know well there was a better reason than the one you thought.”

  “Tell her,” Owen said, as though he was throwing bones to a dog.

  “Wait now, Owen,” Bronwen said, “there is a child in the room.”

  “Not much misses him,” Owen said. “Tell her why you came out there.”

  “I went to ask Owen why he was so cruel to you,” Bronwen said to Marged.

  “Tell her what I told you,” Owen said, in the same voice, worse because it was so deep.

  “Take her outside and tell her yourself,” said Bronwen.

  “Am I going to be treated like an old bit of rag between you?” Marged asked. “Pull you, now. Settle it.”

  “Tell her, Bron,” said Owen.

  “He said he is not in love with you after everybody had a hand in the courting,” Bronwen said.

  “After you had finished with him, he meant,” said Marged.

  “Shut up, and behave yourself,” Owen said. “You are talking like the women at the pits.”