How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  The house was in uproars. Gwilym’s bath water was still in front of the fire, dirty from last night. Pots were on the table for at least three meals. The floor was brittle with coal dust from Gwil’s boots and clothes, and furniture was everywhere except the right place.

  So I set to work and emptied the bath, and put on water for Gwil’s fresh bath, washed the floor, washed the pots, lit the fires, peeled potatoes and pulled a cabbage from the garden, and went next door to have a bit of meat for Gwil’s supper.

  The woman next door was very civil, and gave me a shoulder of lamb, with a lesson in cooking, as though I had watched my mother and Bron for more than two years for nothing. She asked no questions and I told her nothing, though I knew she was losing years keeping it back.

  When the lamb was in the oven, I went upstairs to see if I could do something to the beds. Just the same upstairs as down, so I made the double bed, and I was just putting the windows up when I heard a noise in the second room. It was going from evening to night and not a lamp alight in the house, and I have never been a great one for noises in darkness.

  I waited a bit, and I heard it again. A little laugh, it was, not very loud, but clear.

  Now lamps were going yellow down in the Valley, and the sky was smoking blue, with the trees black in it, and the wind singing flat, and going loud, and then dropping away.

  There is funny to have your feet fast to the floor in fear. You can see and hear and think so well that it will hurt. But you cannot move. There is a force outside yourself which makes you stand still, and it will take a grinding of teeth and tears to the eyes to turn against it.

  One step at a time I went to the door of the second room on the little landing, though how I got there I will never know. There is a spirit greater than you, always within reach of you, but he only comes to take charge when your own spirit is lost, and cries out in his own tongue, which you cannot know but only feel, and it is in feeling that you will have orders. Yet not even in feeling, for I felt nothing, only surprise that I was going forward. I heard no voice, I felt no hand, yet I was at the door, knocking, and wondering how I had come by there, and then I opened it to look in.

  Marged was sitting over in the corner by the window, and looking at me with the light from outside touching the wet of her eyes and mouth.

  The room was just like our back, with the same sort of bench and vice, all the tools in racks, with a hay-cutter on the side, and sacks of potatoes and seed piled along the wall, and onions and hams and leeks hanging up. Even beams had been nailed up, the same number and the same colour as ours, though there was no need of them, only to make the room more exactly like our back.

  Marged stayed still, just looking, with her hands in her lap and her feet flat on the floor, going back into the darkness with every moment, and the wind blowing tin trumpets round the house.

  “Owen,” she said, from the black corner, and laughed again. “You have come then?”

  “No, Marged,” I said, and indeed I sounded very loud even to me. “Huw, this is, see. I have put Gwil’s bath for him, and a bit of lamb to cook. Now I will go back.”

  “No,” she said, and moved. “You shall never go from me again. I have waited too long.”

  “But, Marged,” I said, “it is dark, girl, and a long way to go over the mountain.”

  “You shall stay,” she said, and stood, and I saw her black shape against the window, reaching over to the tool rack. “I will have you with me. I will have you in pieces and hang you on hooks, is it?”

  I saw the light on a tool, white in her hand.

  “Come you,” she was whispering. “Long I have waited in this old place in the cold and now I shall be warm. Come and kiss me, Owen, come and kiss. Kiss your Marged. Never leave me again, is it?”

  And in between her words were whisperings, and noises. I waited till she was so near that I could feel the warmth of her fingers on my face, and then quickly I pulled the door shut. Kick and scream from her, then, and digging at the door with the tool. Down the stairs I went, and ran to have my cap from the kitchen, and off through the back door and up the mountain.

  But when I looked back in the darkness, I could see the pale mark of her apron running up the path after me, so quietly that the breathing of the trees was louder. I stopped dead, with my legs like bars screwed to the ground, and then she screamed, and that seemed to have them free, and I turned and ran.

  I ran through bushes, and round rocks, and through bushes and over rocks, and through grass and ploughed land, through briars and over hedges, I ran and I ran and the breath gone before taken, until my legs were dragging along the ground and my mouth wide to the sky, the air red about me and sickness inside me. Up on the top of the mountain I fell flat, face down to the cold short grass, with sheep at peace near me, looking up as I ran, but going back to crop as I fell.

  And in a little while the sheep looked up again, but this time they ran down the other side, and Marged came up over the edge, slowly, holding her chest with both hands, and I could hear her breathing, like a tearing of sacks, and walking as though she had drunk too much. She went to the rock and leaned against it, and hit her head against it and the wind brought the sound to me, with her crying, and hit, hit, hit, with her head against the rock.

  Trembling I was, but with tiredness, when I went to her, and pulled her away. She was bent from the waist and hitting herself by ducking her head into the rock, but as I pulled her she fell and I beside her.

  “Owen,” she was saying, “Owen.”

  “Hisht, you,” I said to her. “Sleep, is it? Sleep, now. Owen will come in a minute, yes?”

  “If he will come, yes,” she said, and indeed, she slept, not good sleep, but as one dead.

  In the Valley it was pitch black, with only a light from the farm. The moon was on us, but not yet high enough to see over the mountain. I knew well we would perish of cold if we were there much longer, so I covered Marged as far as I could, and then made a start to light a fire with twigs. In a few minutes I had a fire roaring by the rock and giving good heat, too, so I pulled Marged where she would have warmth, and started back to Gwil’s for help.

  Half-way down in the darkness of trees I heard her screaming again, but it only made me travel faster, and farther down by the first lot of rocks I saw Gwilym with some men carrying lanterns, all beating the briars, and some of them pushing the lamps under the hedges. I shouted until I was almost into them, but the wind was out of me, and Gwilym dropped his lantern to run and meet me when the other men shouted.

  He and most of them started up the mountain ahead, with me on the shoulders of a big collier who was straight from the pit, no bath, black, and smelling of coal and strong tobacco. We were at the top almost as soon as the others, because I knew the way, and Gwil and his men came up on the wrong side of the rock, and had to run all the way round to where the fire was burning.

  Up over the edge and out on the flat we ran, and across to the fire. The two men who were there first started to shout and ran into showers of sparks, beating with their caps and jumping back again. Gwil came round and stopped, staring, and then screamed, and ran to go in the flames, but the other men held him away, and they fought with him to hold him down.

  More men were all round the fire trying to stamp it out and getting in my way. Then they stood clear of the heat as we came closer, and I could see.

  Marged was lying in the fire, and burning, with smoke.

  I slipped from the collier’s shoulders and looked away, up at the sky, and down in the dark of the Valley. Behind me the shouts, and Gwil crying, and a bubbling among the snapping of burning wood, and boots stamping the ground, and the wind humming to the fire.

  I walked away, in no hurry, but just walking, down the path and home, thinking nothing and seeing little. I went in round the back, in the quiet, and saw the light where Owen was working, and went in to him. His face was wet with sweat, but his eyes were bright with smiles as he looked up at me, and back to the engine.

/>   “Come on, boy,” he said, “missing the best of it, you are, man. Give me the number three, now, quick.”

  I gave him the tool from its place in the rack and thought of poor Marged and started to cry, but Owen was too busy on the engine to notice.

  “Now, then,” he said, “you prime her, and I will start her. Huw, my little one, you are helping to make history. Hold on, now.”

  He put the crank handle in, and I stood above the funnel, with the tin of spirit ready to pour in.

  “Right, you,” he said.

  In I poured the spirit, and tears dropped with it, but Owen was winding and winding, with the engine waking up at every turn. And now it fired, and fired again, and Owen turned no longer but pulled the handle clear, and looked as though to make it run by his will. Quick as quick the firing came until it was in a storm of firing, shaking the place under my feet, making me clench my jaws.

  The engine was going. After years, it was going.

  Owen looked and looked and then threw the crank to the roof and started to dance with his knees bent high, shouting, but barely to be heard.

  The door slammed back and my father came in with his eyes wide, going from Owen to the engine, and my mother and Bron behind with some of the people next door, all surprised and some of them afraid, speechless in the noise. My father looked at me, smiling, but I was crying and nothing would stop me.

  I could see Marged so plain in the fire.

  My mother ran across to me, pushing Owen and telling him to stop the engine, and my father lifted me over the heat of it, and carried me into the kitchen. But my mother took me from him and held me in her lap by the fire, and I felt her strength about me and her kiss upon my forehead, and her voice with love.

  “There, my little one,” she was saying, “too far for you with that big basket. Your Dada was coming to look for you, now just. And there you were in that old place making all that noise, and your Mama worried in case you were lost on the mountain.”

  “Mama,” I said, with tears nothing would stop, “Marged is burning.”

  My mother looked up at my father and his eyes changed.

  “What is that you are saying, my son?” he said, and came to kneel by me.

  “Marged is burning,” I said, “and they have got Gwil on the ground, crying.”

  “O, God,” my mother said, “go you, Gwil, quickly. Owen, go for the boys to follow Dada. Angharad, go you for the doctor.”

  Then I had broth, and went to sleep.

  For weeks our house was quiet. Owen and Gwil went away, nobody knew where, and my mother was worried pale for them. The doctor came and wrote down what I told him of that night, and that was the last I heard of it. Marged was never spoken of in the house after that, but I often thought of her.

  School for me came up one night, when my father had come back in the house after looking at Owen’s engine, still in the back, but kept clean and shining by me.

  “If you were able to go to Town every day,” he said to me, “you would go to school to-morrow morning. Wasting your time on a machine like that.”

  “Where is the boy to go?” my mother said. “Weeks, now, I have been asking, but no notice.”

  “He shall go over the mountain to the National School,” my father said, “till the one is built here. Not very far for him and much better than hanging about the house.”

  “National School?” my mother said. “No son of mine is going to a National School. There is a thing to say.”

  “Then where is the boy going?” my father asked her. “The others could walk and look after themselves, and no trouble.”

  “Are you going to blame him for his weakness?” my mother said, “because if you are, you had better say it to me, first.”

  “Go on, girl,” my father said. “Not that, I meant. If he is not going over the mountain, where is he going?”

  “Has he got to go to school?” my mother said.

  “Well, Beth,” my father said, and standing up as though strangers were in the house, “how will he make a way for himself without good schooling?”

  “There is something about the National School I will never like,” my mother said, “but if that is all there is, very well. National School.”

  So next morning Bron took me over the mountain to the National School. The way we went was not one we took often, and in all my life before I had only been in that valley twice, for it was where the iron works were, with even more dirt over there than on our side.

  The town over there was getting bigger every day, and rows upon rows of houses were building, and plenty were being lived in without a road or even a good path to them. Public houses were on every corner, almost, and most of them full even so early as we were, but there were some tidy little chapels in building and built, so somebody was awake over there. Bron liked the look of the shops, and so did I, for they were bigger, and more in them than the little couple we had, so we had a walk round before we went to find the school.

  Chapter Sixteen

  GOING IN TO A NEW SCHOOL is a lot worse than drawing teeth, I am sure. That morning I would have given anything to grow wings and be a dragon fly, or anything without a tongue and hands. But Bron was with me so I could do nothing only follow behind, past the yellow-rick, long, low, big-narrow-windowed school building to the doors, and go in to the dark with her. Inside it smelt of chalk.

  Mr. Motshill was English, a tall man, thin in the leg, high of collar, and with long fair whiskers on both sides of his face, and a bald head, and no moustache.

  He came out of his room as we went in.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he asked her, in English, and as though his throat had a cord about it pulled tight.

  “Yes,” Bron said, “this is my brother-in-law. His parents want him to join the school here.”

  Then Mr. Motshill asked questions. Who was my father, and what did he do, how much could he afford, and things like that. Bron answered civil with a face like a white cloud, but I knew that if she had caught my eye we would have shouted laughing like fools, and that would have settled school.

  “Well, Master Morgan,” Mr. Motshill said to me, with a big lump of my cheek between his fingers and thumb, and bending over me so that I could smell the snuff on him, “shall we take you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Very well,” he said. “To-morrow morning, with copies of references, fees, and fees to cover books, and bring pencils and pens with you. You will be examined as to the present state of your education, and remanded for a class. Fourteen eighteens?”

  His face flew down at me and his voice blew in my ears. His eyes were big near mine and his glasses made them smaller. A lot of little red paths in them, too.

  There was no sense in a question like that, for we had played figures ever since I could remember, and the tables I had known almost from the time I could walk.

  So I told him, and he stood up, but slowly.

  “Yes,” he said, as though he had made a discovery, “yes. But say it in English, you understand. You are to instruct his parents,” he said to Bron, “that he must on no account be allowed to speak that jargon in or out of school. English, please, at all times. Good morning.”

  And off he went, leaving Bron and me in the hall. From down at the far room, children were chanting arithmetic tables in a sing-song. I could tell where they were from the sound and length of it. Bron looked down the hall at Mr. Motshill going round the corner, and turned about sharp, walking out and slamming the doors in a stamping temper.

  “What is the matter, Bron?” I asked her.

  “You heard what he said, boy,” Bron said, “to speak in English. What will your Dada say? You shall never go to that school. You shall see.”

  “More trouble in the house, now then,” I said.

  “What trouble, boy?” Bron asked me, in the middle of the street, and people looking at her because she was lovely.

  “Mama and Dada,” I said. “Dada will say no school, and Mama will say y
ou and your old National School, and I will still be about the house all day. But if nothing is said about speaking English, I can go to school and nobody wiser, and Mama and Dada in peace, see.”

  Bron looked down at me with her hands on her hips, then looking at her shoe, and then at me.

  “Right you, old man,” Bron said, and gave me a kiss. “School, then. But if you let that old slug by there make you speak English when you want to speak Welsh, tell me. That is all. Just tell me.”

  “What will you do?” I said, to see her face.

  “Do?” Bron said, and her mouth came together and her eyes went to slits. “I will put him upside down on his old desk and hit the flap on his old head.”

  “Good,” I said, and we were laughing, to think of his thin legs waving, “let us have toffee, is it?”

  So up the mountain we went back home with our faces swollen with toffee we used to have, called stickjaw, and laughing loud at nothing very much because the sun was shining and we were happy.

  The rest of the day I was going up and down for references, one from Mr. Evans the Colliery, one from Dr. Richards, one from Mr. Silas Owen, solicitor, and one from Mr. Gruffydd.

  “Well, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “to school at last, then?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, “and learn. Learn anything. Here is a pencil-box for you. It was mine and my father’s, and his father’s. Go you, now, because I am busy. But come you to-morrow night and tell me about the first day, is it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, and took the letter home, with the pencil-box in front of me. There is a beautiful box it was, too.

  About eighteen inches long, and three wide, with a top that slid off, and a piece cut out for your thumb to press it through the groove. On the top tray, three lovely red pencils, new, and without the marks of teeth, with sharp points, and two pens green, with brass holders for nibs, and at the end a little pit for a piece of rubber. The top tray was fast on a pivot, and you pushed it round to come to the second tray, with five more lovely pencils, three yellows, and a red and a blue. Under that one, another then, with dividers, a compass, a ruler, a box for nibs and drawing-pins, a couple of ivory angles, a drawing pen, and crayons. And all so good you wished it had more trays again underneath. Nothing so pretty as good pencils, and I do think the feel of a long pencil in your fingers is as good to the taste as something to eat.