How Green Was My Valley
Page 27
That was July, and a hot month, when the grass went brown and the river dried, and the rocks so hot that they would almost burn your feet as you crossed them. Meeting after meeting the men held on the mountain side, and it was strange to see them every day going browner and browner with the sun, and it was then I saw how pale they had always been, even my father and brothers, with lack of it.
Nothing was said, not a word, at home about the strike. It was never allowed to come past the door. Food got less. Tea we had without sugar and milk, and then no sugar, and after, no tea. Meat came less and less. Bread was spare, thick in the slice, and presently, butter only on Sunday.
August, September.
Still the men held meetings, not only in our Valley, but in the others. My brothers and my father were always tramping over the mountain to meetings. The men wanted more wages. The owners said they were getting less for the coal so wages had to drop. No one would give an inch.
Women were going thin, and children were not so ready to play. Men were fighting among themselves for nothing, for they were idle, penniless, and eating little, and their tempers were just under their skins.
At school, nothing was happening, only Mr. Jonas was teaching and I was sitting. We had nothing to do with one another. Not a word he said to me about his meeting with Dai Bando, and Dai heard nothing more, either. Some of the boys and girls stopped coming to school because their shoes were gone and their parents afraid to buy more in case the money was wanted for food. Some stopped coming because they were only eating once a day.
I only noticed it in Shani one morning when she stood next to Edith Moss, of Moss the Butcher’s near the school. Edith was a lump of a girl with big red cheeks and black hair, straight, who said she drank blood hot from the carcass when her father slaughtered. Next to her, Shani was a dove to a raven, so small, and thin, and so white in the face.
Her father was in the collieries, too, in the manager’s office, but out as well, of course. One dinner-time she stayed in class to sew. I went out with my can to the playground, but it was raining, so I went to sit in the cloakroom, and I saw Shani looking through the classroom window. I tapped on the glass and smiled at her, but instead of smiling back, she looked as though she wanted to cry, and jumped down from my sight.
Then she came outside and pretended she was going to have a drink, but when she saw me looking she came closer.
“Just going to have a drink, I was,” she said.
“Good,” I said, and ready to eat my bread and cheese. “Will I get it for you?”
“No, no,” she said, but making no move.
It is a fact that if you are hungry and you see somebody eating something you would like to have your teeth in too, spit will flood to your mouth and you will swallow to make a noise. That noise Shani made as I watched her. Then I saw her eyes, and they were on my can.
“Why no home for dinner to-day?” I asked her.
“Oh,” she said, and going to do something to her hair, “too much trouble to go all that way for old dinner.”
“Will you have a bit of this?” I asked her.
“And take from you?” she said. “No, indeed. You have got longer to come.”
“No matter,” I said. “There is plenty, look. Have to eat, girl.”
I held out bread and cheese, crusty bread, and yellow farm cheese, with cress and lettuce from the garden.
She looked at it, and swallowed again, with her hands behind her.
“Come on, girl,” I said. “There is slow you are.”
So she took them, and bit into them, and bit and bit and bit, until her little mouth was sure to burst, and her eyes had tears, and as she chewed she sobbed. Your throat goes dry and you cannot have your food in peace when somebody is hungry and shows it. So Shani had dinner for two of us that day, and in the afternoon she fell to the floor during history, and Mr. Jonas carried her outside, and she went home with another girl.
I told my mother when I got home but she said nothing, only clicked her tongue and looked tired. There were many in the village just the same. Next morning I went to school with my can packed tight, and more in a brown paper parcel hanging on my coat button. Not a word from my mother, only a little smile.
So Shani and me sat together to have dinner every day in my mother’s smile. I never saw her mother or father, and never went home with her, and though I asked her, she never came over in our Valley because they had sold their trap and it was too far for her. And after we had been having dinner for a couple of weeks she stopped coming. It was said that her father had gone to find work in the north, at Middlesbrough.
I will always remember her in something of blue and three lines of yellow braid, and a little bow on top of her hair and her face so pale and looking from the side like the face of the queens on coins of ancient Greece.
July, August, September.
October.
All down the Hill, and along the walls in the village street, a long black mark could be seen where men’s shoulders had leaned to rub grease. Up and down in a dim, wavy line, but always at the height of the shoulder. Some of the women had taken a bucket of hot water to scrub it off, but soon it was back, and the line was unbroken again.
The public houses closed except for two days a week, when the farmers came through to sell at the market. The three shops gave credit for a bit, and then closed up. Friendly Societies paid out all they had, then those few shillings stopped. The men in the Union with Ianto and Davy had benefit for weeks and weeks, but then that stopped, too.
Women like my mother, who had sons earning, and had saved and kept a good house were putting money and food together each week for the babies of women who had just married, or for women with only a husband earning and many children. But as the weeks and months passed by, more and more women had to stop giving, and needed help themselves.
Mr. Gruffydd went time and time again to the Town and came back with food, money, and clothes for the people down in the hovels. But the people of the Hill would never have any of it. He was thinner, and his clothes were loose on him, and my mother said he would have starved if people had not asked him to eat with them, for he was paid by the Chapel, and the money was all gone in food for the hungry ones.
From all the men in idleness he got together a choir, and made Ivor second conductor to him. All over the valleys they walked, singing for funds, and presently men from the other valleys were coming over the mountain in dozens and scores to join them.
One night I heard a choir of a thousand voices singing in the darkness, and I thought I heard the voice of God.
Then children began to die.
The processions over the mountain were long at first, and sometimes two and three a day. Then they grew shorter, and the hymns fewer, for the people had no strength.
July, August, September, October.
November.
The cold was on us and the snow was thick in the very first week. People were burning wood, and some of the men went down to the colliery to get coal and were stopped by the watchmen, but they took no notice and loaded up. Next morning, police came by brake, and went to live in the lamp house. Two men who were caught were taken over the mountain and had six months in jail. So those who had no money for coal went up on the mountain for wood, and since all the people in other valleys were looking for wood, there was soon no wood to be had, except standing trees. But they were green and not to be lit by anything but a fire.
More and more children were dying, and now women were dying, and men. No more were coffins built by Clydach. A sheet had to do, and did.
Two, three, and four families went into one house to eat and have warmth together. Windows were boarded to keep out cold. Even Mr. Gruffydd had trouble to keep the men from a riot, and going down to the colliery and killing the police.
One morning in the third week, Ellis the Post stopped Mari outside our house and gave my father a letter.
“Come you in, Ellis,” said my mother. “Breakfast is ready.”
“You shall have breakfast now,” said my mother, “or never come inside this house again.”
“Yes, Mrs. Morgan,” said Ellis, and off with his cap, and sitting next to me. “But no tea, and no bacon, if you will excuse me.”
“Tea you shall have, and bacon, and potatoes,” said my mother and ready to fly at him. “And please to have what you are given.”
“Yes, Mrs. Morgan,” said Ellis, and hang-dog, with his eyes looking at her upwards and sideways.
“If there shall come a time when you leave this house without a proper something to eat,” said my mother, “look for me on the floor.”
“Beth,” my father said, and passing the letter to Ianto, “the boys and me will go into Town to-day.”
My mother looked at him straight, with her fork in the potatoes and one foot on the fender.
“Well?” she said.
“The owners,” my father said, with more colour in his face then I had seen for weeks.
“We shall have to give in,” Davy said, sipping hot water.
“They have promised a minimum wage,” my father said. “That is a straw, at all events.”
“And we are the drowners,” said Ianto, looking at the letter still.
My father raised his fists and hit the table to make the crockery jump.
“No matter,” he shouted, with flames in his eyes. “Let us drown, then. But by God Almighty, I will have food in those children’s little bellies before the night is out.”
“Good, Gwilym,” my mother said. “Go you Angharad, go to Mr. Gruffydd and ask him to breakfast.”
“O, Mama,” Angharad said, and jumped from the stool, and flew from the house.
We had a lovely breakfast that morning, indeed.
Bacon sliced thick, and potatoes, and toast with butter, and strawberry jelly, and tea, with sugar and milk, too. There is good it is to have good food with taste after a long time without.
“Where have you been hiding all this, Beth, my little one?” my father said, eating the breakfast of two and a pleasure to watch.
“You mind your affairs,” my mother said, and blushing red and beautiful, indeed, “and I will please attend to mine. Have I been living all this time and nothing to show?”
“Beth, my sweet love,” my father said, “you were made and the mould was hit with a hammer.”
“Go from here,” said Mama, tears and laugh together, “before I will give you a good hit with one, too.”
The people were crowding round our house, for they knew that Ellis must have brought a letter, and now they began to shout, and their shouting roused everyone, and presently people were running from their houses to fill the street.
“Shall we have a ride to the station, Ellis?” my father said.
“If I will ride on the back of old Mari, you shall, Mr. Morgan,” Ellis said, and meant.
My mother went to the box and counted out the money for each, and kissed them, and out they went. As soon as the people saw them in their best, they knew they were off on business, and because of my father’s face, they knew they would have good from it.
So they cheered with tears, and my father was crying when Ellis whipped up Mari, and went off down the Hill, with the people running after, all the way down and out of the village.
No school for me that day, but plenty to do, for I made copies of the letter with Ivor and we took them over the mountain for the checkweighmen of other collieries to read out to their men, and asked them over to meet my father coming back next night.
The news the strike was ended came through the telegraph about five o’clock that night, only a few words in pencil, but indeed, people could not have gone crazier if the writing had appeared again upon the wall.
Up and down the street they ran, shouting and dancing with everybody else, and women looking out of windows and waving, and children playing ring of roses.
When it was dark, about seven o’clock, a big waggon came round the mountain road, and stopped in the middle of the street. People had gone in their houses, for it was cold and starting to snow.
When the driver started to shout they came out one by one, but when he handed out hampers full of groceries, they came running to kill themselves, and he had to ask a couple of the men to make everybody take their turn or he would have been crushed underfoot.
Some said it was a London paper that had asked readers for gifts, and some said it was Old Evans, trying to make peace with the men, and others said it was Mr. Gruffydd again. But Mr. Gruffydd knew nothing about it, and we only found out who it was when my father and the boys came back next night.
Now that was a procession for you.
They came back by train to the end of the line, and then with Thomas the Carrier from there to home. To-night, the men took big torches with them through the snow right to the top of the mountain, where it was so cold that the brass was frozen and the band had to sing instead, and met Thomas as the horses came over the brow. Then they took out the horses and put in pairs of pit ponies from the colliery my father worked in, with all the hauliers dressed up in colours, and lit the torches, and got in lines back and front, and started off for home.
There is pretty to see all those little lights wagging down the mountain and to hear their voice coming nearer and nearer. Hundreds on hundreds were in the procession, more hundreds running to meet them, and hundreds more, with all the women, waiting in the village. So big was the crowd and so much the noise that my poor father could say nothing much himself, for he was tired, but never happier in his life.
“Back to work, boys,” he shouted, and the people were cheering to burst the ears. “We will have less, but we have fixed a limit to the less. It has been signed, and it will be made law. Back to work.”
“When?” the men were shouting. “When, when?”
“To-morrow,” my father shouted back.
“To-morrow,” shouted the crowd, and the band struck up for everybody to link arms down the street. The Three Bells opened up to hand out the last of the beer, and then more dancing, until Davy Pryse, who played the big brass horn, had a red ring big as half a crown round his mouth and looking very sore with him, and ice from his breath round the brim of his hat and on his mittens and muffler.
Only the cold, and the torches going out and no more to be had, and nothing much to eat and drink sent the people home.
“For all that has happened, Heavenly Father,” my father said when he came in, and went to his knees with my mother beside him, “for the mercies, and the guidance to-day, I do give thanks from my heart. Yesterday I gave thanks, and to-day, thanks again, and to-morrow I will give thanks again, from the heart. In the Name of Jesus the Son.”
“Amen,” said we all.
“Gwilym,” my mother said. “Bed, you.”
“Will I have a bit to eat first, then?” my father said. “Starving we are.”
“Wash and bed,” said my mother, as though from far away. “You have always starved in this house. I know you have had a long way to come, but, of course, there is nothing in the house for you.”
“Well, Beth,” my father said, trying to find his way into her good books again, “not that I meant, only saying, I was, girl.”
“Have you got a nose?” my mother asked, cold still.
“If not screwed off by that old ice on the mountain,” my father said, and holding the tip with his finger and thumb.
My mother looked at him while we laughed. Her face was straight and her eyes cold, to let him see how insulted she was that he should think to come home and find nothing for his comfort. But Mama could never keep straight her face when Dada was funny, and now you could see the smile coming to her eyes and then she put her hand to his face.
“Oh, Gwil, my little one,” she said, “there is tired you are looking. Wash, and to bed, and when you are warm, I will bring what there is.”
“What, then?” my father asked, and trying to put his arm round her, but she pretended she was still cross, and pushed him away, but not hard.
“Hot water, boy,” she said, and impatient.
“I will wash in that,” said my father. “With soap. Is that all I am to have? Hot old water?”
“Smell, boy, smell,” my mother said, right out of patience.
My father had a sniff, but he was too cold.
“If I was going to have what I can smell,” he said, “there is no need for a pot to be washed in the house.”
“O, dammo,” my mother said, and took him by the shoulders to put him in his chair to undo his boots. “Hot water you are having, with an old chicken from the farm, and a bit of old beef and lamb, and old rubbish with it. What, now?”
“Beth,” my father said, “I will give thanks till I die that I married you. Brandy broth, I will bet you. Let me go to bed.”
“I have got a good mind to pour it down the drain,” my mother said.
“Bring a bowl of it upstairs,” said my father, “and a spoon, and you shall pour it to your heart’s content. Is the bed warm?”
My mother smacked his foot, so angry she pretended to be.
“No, boy,” she shouted. “Have I got the sense to warm your old bed? Angharad and Bronwen and me have been running up and down stairs all night with blocks of ice, melt one, put the other. Now then, for you.”
“Good,” said my father, and winking at us, “I do love a good block of ice in bed, indeed.”
“Hisht,” said my mother, and turned on us. “You are standing there grinning like a lot of monkeys in the circus. Are you washed?”
“Yes, Mama,” we said.
“Come to the table,” said Mama. “And no more nonsense from you or your father. Gwilym?”
“Yes, my sweet love?” said my father, straight in the face, with gems in his eyes.
“Bed,” said my mother.
“Yes, Beth,” said my father, and went to the door, and turned round. “Will I have a block of ice, Mrs. Morgan?” he said, in a little boy’s voice.