How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  That night Mrs. Tom Jenkins came up to give me a polish in sums, written and mental. My father and mother, Ivor and Bron, and Davy were all round the table listening, and everybody quiet, pretending not to look.

  We were doing very well, up to the kind of sum when a bath is filling at the rate of so many gallons and two holes are letting the water out, and please to say how long will it take to fill the bath, when my mother put down the socks she was darning and clicked her tongue in impatience.

  “What is the matter?” my father asked her.

  “That old National School,” my mother said. “There is silly the sums are with them. Filling up an old bath with holes in it, indeed. Who would be such a fool?”

  “A sum it is, girl,” my father said. “A sum. A problem for the mind. Nothing to do with the National School, either.”

  “Filling the boy with old nonsense,” Mama said.

  “Not nonsense, Beth,” my father said, to soothe, quietly, “a sum, it is. The water pours in and takes so long. It pours out and takes so long. How long to fill? That is all.”

  “But who would pour water in an old bath with holes?” my mother said. “Who would think to do it, but a lunatic?”

  “Well, devil fly off,” my father said, and put down his book to look at the ceiling. “It is to see if the boy can calculate, girl. Figures, nothing else. How many gallons and how long.”

  “In a bath full of holes,” Mama said, and rolled the sock in a ball and threw it in the basket, and it fell out, and she threw it back in twice as hard. “If he went to school in trews full of holes, we should hear about it. But an old bath can be so full with holes as a sieve and nobody taking notice.”

  “Look you,” my father said to Mrs. Jenkins, “no more baths. Have you got something else?”

  “Decimals, Mr. Morgan,” said Mrs. Tom, “but he is strong in those.”

  “Decimals,” said my father, “and peace in my house, for the love of God.”

  “Hisht,” Mama said.

  Decimals, then. And the look on my mother’s face when the decimal point started his travels up and down the line was something to see.

  In bed that night I heard my mother come upstairs and speak to Angharad, and then my father came up with the lamp, and left their door open a bit to hear the clock.

  “Gwil,” my mother said, “who is in charge of this decimal point?”

  “Who?” my father said, and flap went his braces on the cupboard door.

  “Decimal point,” my mother said, “this thing Huw has got downstairs.”

  “More of this again, now,” my father said, and laugh strong in his voice. “Look, Beth, my little one, leave it, now. Or else it will be morning and us fit for Bedlam, both.”

  “But what is it?” my mother said. “Why is a small boy allowed to know and I am such a fool?”

  “Beth, Beth, Beth,” my father said, “bless your sweet face, there are things for boys and things for girls. Decimal point makes fractions out of a whole. Instead of saying one and a half, you say one point five. Because five is half of ten, a one and a nought. The one is a whole one and nought is nothing. Now you are wiser.”

  Minutes went, and only the sound of clothes coming off and somebody late walking up the hill outside.

  “But whose is it?” my mother said, as though a gate had been loosed. “Does it belong to somebody?”

  “Well, Beth,” my father said, “there is silly. Why should it belong to somebody? It is a decimal point, a dot on the paper. How can an ink dot belong to somebody?”

  “Then who knows what is to be done with it?” my mother asked. “Multiply by ten, move the point, add a nought.”

  “No, girl,” Dada said, “not add a nought. That is division. Multiplying, move the point down. Dividing, move the point up.”

  “Go on with you,” Mama said, “it can stop where it is. I would like to know who found it out, anyhow.”

  “The French, I think,” my father said, “and leave it now, will you?”

  “Well, no wonder,” my mother said, and glad to blame someone, see. “Those old Frenchies, is it? If I had known that, the book would never have come inside the house.”

  “O, Beth,” said Dada, “there is an old beauty you are. Go now, before I will push you on the floor.”

  “Frenchie, indeed,” my mother said, “and decimal points, move up and down. Like monkeys. With Frenchies and old baths full of holes, what will come to the boy?”

  “A scholarship,” said my father, “that is what I would like.”

  “Scholarship? Well, I hope so, indeed,” my mother said, for the sound of the word was like the name of an anthem. “What the world is coming to, I cannot tell you.”

  “Sleep, now then,” my father said, “not for you to worry about the world, is it? Think of the old Queen with a Jubilee of worry to think about, and be thankful.”

  “I wonder does she know about this decimal point?” my mother said.

  “Oh, hell open and crack,” said my father, and out went the lamp. “The poor old lady is asleep these hours. Let us follow. Good night, now.”

  “Go and scratch,” said Mama.

  I started off to school at a quarter to seven next morning with my pencil-box and books in a bag on my back, and a tin box full of food to swing in my hand. Up the mountain with a little rain to wet my face, but most of the wind held back by the trees until I got to the top, and then it could have blown me all the way down again.

  The town looked even worse than it had, with big grey clouds hanging down between the tops of the mountains, and a mist dragging across the roof-tops, and yellow smoke from the furnaces thick over there. The school I could see easily, with three long roofs of slate among all the houses, and a few trees near it. And the river running grey with dirt, and the rocks in it black.

  The streets were quiet, only a few traps and wains out, and a milk wagon going to the station with all the churns grumbling together as they bumped on the cobbles.

  School, then.

  A few boys were playing in the yard when I got there, but I waited until they had run down to the other end before I went in the door. The same smell of chalk, that I hate to this day, and quiet. So I went all round the hall to look at the pictures, some painted, but most of them drawn and painted by scholars, and very good, too, and the roll of honour with names in gold.

  The door opened, and I learned how Mr. Motshill opened doors, by kicking first with the toe, and then pushing with the shoulder, a double bump, one loud, one softer, because he saw little.

  “Well,” he said, when he saw me, “what is it?”

  “I have come to join school,” I said.

  “Speak English,” he said. “What is it you want?”

  “To join school,” I said, in English.

  “Much better,” said Mr. Motshill. “You were here yesterday, were you not?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and here are my references.”

  “Sit there until I send for you,” he said, and I sat.

  The bell was rung outside for some minutes, and teachers began to come in, shaking rain from their coats and hats, and nodding to one another, not speaking because of the bell, five men, two women, and both the women old and thin, in black. The boys and girls came in by two and two, and lined up with their backs to me, but plenty turned to have a look at me, some of the boys to pull faces, and a couple to laugh and dig the one next to them to turn round to me and laugh too.

  Mr. Motshill came from his room to stand on the platform where one of the women was sitting by the piano. He stood looking at them for a moment, very solemn, and then put his hand to his face, with some of his fingers round his jaw, and his first finger upright between his eyebrows.

  “Let us pray,” he said, in that voice of his, but on a higher note like tragic poetry. “Our Father,” he started, and the children all said the prayer with him, most of them making their own time, and Mr. Motshill raising his voice at the start of each line to over-ride them and have them with
him. But no use. They were well in front at the end, and some had opened their eyes before he was at Glory be.

  He opened his eyes and looked up, pious and with feeling.

  “Let us lift our voices in a hymn,” he said, and turned to nod his head to Miss Cash, shutting his eyes on the downward bend, and opening them coming up, all slow, and as though he was hurting with goodness. Miss Cash nodded too, at the piano, and lifted her hands to play, with her fingers stretched and the little ones a bit crooked, and touched a couple of bass chords, with two notes sour, and one missed.

  “O,” sang Mr. Motshill, in a couple of keys, and then sliding to find the note, “Ah. Take your note, Ah.”

  “Ah,” sang the boys and girls, with mouths like buttonholes, no tone, no depth, and no heart.

  “Rock of ages cleft for me,” sang Mr. Motshill and Miss Cash played any notes near her fingers, and pulled a face for every note wrong, while the boys and girls rambled at will.

  “To your classrooms,” said Mr. Motshill, “dismiss.”

  Some lines turned one way, some another, and all tramping hard on the floor and glad to make noise, the classes marched out. Mr. Motshill stood until the last were almost gone, and then got down to go to his room. But half-way there he seemed to remember me, and turned.

  “Come along, come along,” he said. “You will be given a paper by Mr. Tyser, and then we shall know exactly what to do with you.”

  Big bump, little bump, through another door, and into a classroom. Mr. Tyser always looked tired. A good little man, no harm in him, but at wits’ end in dealing with noisy fools of boys.

  “Mr. Tyser,” said Mr. Motshill, “this is Morgan. I have already had to check him for using Welsh. Give him the senior paper and see what he can do with it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Tyser. “Come along, Morgan. Sit here.”

  I sat and quickly got up to pull a bent pen-nib out of myself. The boys behind were looking blank at the blackboard, with their arms folded, pictures, indeed.

  “Did you put this here?” I asked one of them.

  Red as summer roses Mervyn Phillips looked at me, and James Herriot looked, too.

  “Did you speak, Morgan?” Mr. Tyser asked, with surprise.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Kindly use the English tongue in future,” said Mr. Tyser, “or there will be trouble.”

  “I will see you in the playground,” Mervyn Phillips whispered to me. “I will punch your head from your shoulders.”

  “Right, you,” I said.

  Mr. Tyser gave me the papers, one arithmetic, one grammar and composition, one religion, and a history and geography, and I took out my pencils and books, and made a lovely show on top of the desk.

  If they had put silk ribbons about those papers they could have done me no greater favour, for I waltzed through, and it was good indeed to see the pleasure in Mr. Tyser’s face when he looked through them.

  “You write a beautiful hand, Morgan,” he said. “Who has been teaching you before this?”

  “Mrs. Tom Jenkins,” I said, and everybody had a little laugh into their hands, that sort of laugh that makes you want to take burning iron and put in their eyes. “And my brothers and my sisters-in-law.”

  “It is a great pity,” Mr. Tyser said, “that Mrs. Tom Jenkins was not invited to direct the education of some of these young ladies and gentlemen. What did Mrs. Jenkins do if you were lazy and rude, Morgan?”

  “The strap,” I said, “and no dinner, and a note home.”

  “Come with me,” he said, and I went.

  Outside he put his hand on my shoulder and looked down at me.

  “You are not a cripple, are you, Morgan?” he asked, and very kind.

  “No,” I said. “Thin about the legs, I am, but not a cripple.”

  “I am very glad,” he said. “Come along.”

  Down to Mr. Motshill’s room, knock at the door, and Mr. Motshill saying to come, and inside to a bare room, with grey light coming in on a table piled with papers and books, books on shelves and on the floor, and a couple of scratched leather chairs with bow legs, and a picture of the Queen as a young woman, very pretty, with a small crown and lace. And Mr. Motshill just come from sleep and tasting his mouth, and finding it little to his liking.

  “Mr. Motshill,” Mr. Tyser said, but so different, as though he were afraid for his life, in a little bit of a voice, and not looking up at all, “I am afraid Morgan is too advanced for Standard Four. Standard Six is the lowest possible standard, sir, if you will permit me to say so.”

  “Show me the papers,” said Mr. Motshill, and reached across to snatch them away, looking at them with flicks of the eyes from side to side, and turning over the pages in haste so that they were torn at the top.

  “New brooms sweep clean,” he said to me. “Standard Six, then. Take him to Mr. Jonas.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mr. Tyser said, and we went out.

  “Shall I get my pencil-box and books?” I asked him.

  “Get them by all means,” Mr. Tyser said, as different again, “and when you come out, knock on the next door but one, there.”

  I went in to Standard Four room and across to my desk, looking at nobody, but they were looking at me in that quiet that seems to stretch, when you know something has happened to concern you.

  There was my desk, shifted a bit, and the two boys who had been sitting on the end gone now to sit in the desk in front, and the sun looking his brightest through the window and alive on the desk top to show me why.

  My pencil-box was in three pieces. The pencils were all cut, and dirty with grit from rolling on the floor. Ink was on my books, and wet in the grooves of the box. Drawing pen, ruler, nibs, pens, all broken or chipped, and dirty.

  I know well the feeling of murder.

  It is hot, too hot to keep inside, and it rises to the head, and burns as it goes, making the throat dry, so that breath comes in jerks and with a low noise. Trembling takes you, and the eyes fill, but not with tears, and a cloud comes before your sight, and in the darkness there is a torment to take flesh in the fingers and tear until the blood spurts, or to take a knife and plunge until the point blunts, or to take a weapon and smash until strength has gone, to pound, to stab, to strangle, to pulp, to kill, kill, kill. O, I know well the feeling.

  But soon comes a calm, and though you tremble still, there is no more room inside for more feeling. You live as one dead, and for no good reason you want to cry.

  And as I looked at my little box, I tried hard to hold the tears, I prayed to hold the tears, but the dear little box with scratches on the patterned lid and ink and grit all over it, and all its riches in ruins, one by one I saw them bleeding their own blood with unjust wounds, and I cried for them.

  There is a terrible feeling when your head is in your arms and your knees sharp on the floor, and sob, sob, sob, and laughing going on all round you. You call yourself names, you are so shamed that you feel sight should be taken from you, yet there you kneel, and the more names you call yourself, the more shame you feel, the worse becomes the sobbing, until you are not sure whether your tears are in sorrow at what has happened to you, or rage at yourself for being such a fool.

  And then the tears stop. Not a drop more would come if knives were put in you.

  So I picked up the broken trays and tried to fit them together. There was no harm in that little box. A hundred years before, a craftsman in wood had put love into his job for all men to see in that little pattern of grained woods on the lid and round the sides. There was no need for him to spend those hours, for the box was made, but that pattern was his kiss of love, and I could see his hands passing over its smoothness, feeling its weight, having joy from the look and feel of it, and slow to let it pass into the hands of a buyer. I could see Mr. Gruffydd’s grandfather having it, and passing it to his son, and then Mr. Gruffydd himself, and I knew how they had felt for it, for so I felt myself.

  Solomon never felt for his storehouse as I felt for that little
box, and three men before me. To have pens, and pencils, and the tools of writing all your own, to see them and feel them in your fingers ready to do anything you tell them, to have them in a little house fit for them as good friends of yours, such is sweet pleasure, indeed, and never ending. For you open gently and take what you want, and careful in closing again, and you look at it before you start your work, and all the time a happy fullness inside you that sometimes will make you put out your hand to touch it as though to bless, so good you feel with it. God bless the craftsmen who give their fellow men such feelings even out of pieces of wood.

  I dried the ink on the books and inside the box, knowing well what my mother would say to my handkerchief, but careless, and put them back in my bag and went to the door. Still they were laughing, but not in comfort, for they feared I was going to tell. Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.

  “I will fight you all one by one,” I said, “but nobody will be told about this.”

  “Go now,” Mervyn Phillips said, “before I will empty red ink on you.”

  “No matter,” I said, “I will fight you all, and you first.”

  Outside I went, and Mr. Tyser was standing in the door of Standard Six, talking to Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions, but Mr. Jonas for short in school, and him I saw with my heart falling inside me.

  Sandy coming to ginger was Mr. Jonas, and small and pale in the eyes, with that look in them to warn you he had the tongue of a mountain adder, to be careful in what you said, or he would twist every word of it for you.

  “What a long time you took, Morgan,” Mr. Tyser said.