How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  “Well,” said Ianto, “Ellis just gave it to me.”

  “By post?” my father said, and putting on his glasses to read.

  “Yes,” said Ianto, and smiling with a lot up his sleeve. “Who from, Mama? Guess, now then.”

  “Well, from who?” my mother said, and frowning.

  “Owen,” said my father.

  My mother’s hands fell to her lap and she looked about the kitchen as though the house was going from her. Ianto put his arms about her, and she held on to him.

  “Goodness gracious me,” my father said to the paper, “Evans, Morgan. A marriage has been arranged between Iestyn Dylan Evans, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Christmas Dylan Evans, of Tyn-y-Coed….”

  He stopped and looked at my mother with his mouth tight shut.

  “Read, boy, read,” my mother said, in wonder.

  “Not another word,” said my father, in anger. “But I will read something to Mr. Iestyn Evans when I do see him. His father not cold, and putting this old nonsense in the paper. If a marriage has been arranged, I know nothing of it. I will be consulted if there is arranging to be done. Mr. Iestyn has got too many English ways. I will put a bit between his jaws before he is an hour older.”

  “Please to tell me who sent the paper,” my mother said, and slapping her knee with each word, “and from where?”

  “Owen,” my father said, bending down to her. “Owen sent the paper from London. And he says will we let Angharad marry this fool, and love from both, home soon.”

  “Thank God my boys are safe,” my mother said, “and thank God to have them home. When?”

  “Not a word about it, the rascals,” my father said, looking again at the writing. “Wait till Mr. Iestyn comes back.”

  “Leave it now, Gwil,” my mother said. “If he had reasons, he had reasons.”

  “Am I the father of Angharad Morgan?” my father said, with fists, “or am I a marriage-broker?”

  “Swanking, he was, Dada,” Ianto said, “but no harm.”

  “Harm to me,” my father said. “If Angharad is to be married, it shall be read in Chapel properly, and old papers after. But after, not before. Are we a lot of pagans, then, because a bit of a boy has no father to say yes and no?”

  I was out in the back when I heard Angharad coming back with Iestyn, so I put my head from the door and gave her a whistle.

  “Watch out, you Iestyn,” I said, in a whisper, “The Times has come from London, and my father has got basins out for your blood.”

  “What is this, then?” Angharad asked Iestyn.

  “Our engagement,” Iestyn said. “Who has been busy-bodying?”

  “Engagement?” Angharad said, with a frown up at him. “What have you been doing now, again?”

  “O, my God,” said Iestyn, “you will drive me crazy, between you. I announced our engagement in the Press in a proper and suitable manner. Have you any objection?”

  “Yes,” Angharad said, flat and quick. “Who are you to engage me without a word?”

  “What are you talking about?” Iestyn said, and so surprised he could hardly say it. “Why the hell have I been coming up here all this time? Why have I been urging marriage on you for weeks?”

  “Have I said yes?” Angharad asked him, freezing cold.

  I think that was the only time in his life, or mine, that I felt sorry in my heart for Iestyn Evans.

  He looked at her, and though his eyes were not to be seen, I could feel his look, so deep, so pleading, so woeful, so shaking to the senses, flying, and piling up through the darkness at her.

  “Angharad,” he said, as though a strangler was at work on him, “Angharad. Why are you so cruel to me?” And on his knees he fell, with his arms about her waist. “You must marry me. You must. You must. I love you, my darling. I love you.”

  “Get up, man,” Angharad said, with knives, and her breath quick. “Will you make yourself a carpet for every fool to see? Go home, now. Come in two days and you shall have yes or no.”

  He got up and looked again, and the sounds of night were not loud enough to smother the silence of his fury.

  “If you think you can treat me like this,” he said, “you have made a mistake. There are plenty of other women in this world, and I can have my choice, any time I care to choose. Why have you kissed me if marriage was out of your mind?”

  “I am Angharad Morgan,” she said, and the river never ran colder. “Go to hell.”

  And she was gone before he could move, with the back door closing to rock the house.

  “Damn all women to hell’s everlasting depths,” said Iestyn, and looked round as I blew out the lamp. “Have you got a loose tongue, Huw?”

  “No,” I said. “And if you want Angharad, say nothing of other women, and no showing off.”

  “The whole family the same,” Iestyn said, and still wet about the eyes. “Never met such a crowd, from the youngest up. Does she ever see anything of that Gruffydd fellow?”

  “Who am I to say?” I said. “Leave me, now. I am going to bed.”

  “Here is half a crown for you, Huw,” he said, and put hand to pocket.

  “Buy barley sugar for your little bay mare,” I said, “and say who it is from. Good night, now.”

  “God damn,” Iestyn said, and went round our back as though witches were at him with besoms.

  Down at the little house next day I was busy planing lengths of walnut for the top of a writing-table, and Mr. Gruffydd was running a wheel to shape chair legs, when Angharad came in with tea and cake, no words, and pouring us out a cup each and coming with the plates.

  “Well, Angharad,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “how are you to-day?”

  “Well, thank you,” Angharad said.

  “Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and put cake in his mouth, and back to the wheel.

  “Shall I talk to you in the next room when you have finished tea?” Angharad asked him as she used to ask my father for pennies to buy sweets, pretty, with big eyes, and a small smile.

  “Now just,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and got up, shaking wood shavings from his trews.

  “Please to finish your tea first,” Angharad said, and a crack coming to her voice.

  “Come,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Huw, save your partner a cup of tea, yes?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Mr. Gruffydd went to put his arm about her shoulders, but opened the door instead, and closed it behind him.

  There is good it is to plane a good piece of wood with a sharp tool, and watch the grain coming better and with more shape with every peeling that curls from the blade. Mr. Gruffydd had his wood free from Daniel Thomas the Woodyard, because he had never missed a day to see Mrs. Thomas who had ridden her bed for years ever since a horse had bolted with her and tossed her on the cobbles of a farm. Good wood it was, too, and no better to be had, dark, with a reddish grain in the best shape I have ever seen, and dry and hard with age. Even the plane was giving it a polish, so I was having sweat to finish and go to polish it properly, for there is nothing to satisfy more than to see a high, shining smoothness coming to life under your hand, and to bend down to watch the sun lying upon it and enjoying himself.

  I heard Angharad run from the house, and a little while passed, and Mr. Gruffydd came in, but I kept my eyes on the planing. The wheel started to turn, and stopped. Then it started again and went on a little bit, and stopped for longer. Then it started again twice as strong, and kept on, and it was still going when the light had gone and I put my tools in the chest.

  “Well,” I said, “I will go to my supper, now, sir, thank you.”

  “Thank you, Huw, my little one,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “To-morrow again, is it?”

  “Straight after school, sir,” I said. “Good night, now.”

  “God bless you, my son,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and I left him quiet before the wheel, on the floor, in darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  MR. GRUFFYDD read out the notice of the marriage of Angharad and Iestyn in Chapel the ne
xt Sunday, and when our family came out it was hours before we could come from there, for the people crowded to shake hands and kiss, and wish well, to my mother and father and Angharad and Iestyn, and Bronwen and Ceridwen and all my brothers, and even me.

  “Well, Huw,” Isaac Wynn said, and giving me a pat on the head that with a bit more would have been a clout, “there is a lucky boy you are, indeed. A rich uncle, and a job all your life, eh?”

  “I shall be down the colliery with my father,” I said, and ready to give him a good hit on his old nose. “And not long to wait, either.”

  “O, tall talk from a short one, is it?” Isaac Wynn said, and staring, with the smile off his face.

  “We will see when it comes true,” I said.

  “You are going to be another with those brothers of yours,” he said, and shaking his head.

  “That is all I want,” I said, “so good-bye, now.”

  Then came the fuss, when Angharad and Iestyn started to choose where they would live, what they would put in the house, how they would dress for the wedding, and where they would have the service.

  “Leave them,” my father said, when my mother was in a temper with both of them for fighting over what each wanted and the other thought awful. “No business of ours. What business we had is finished. They have got to live in the house wherever it is, so keep from it, now. If you put a word in, and something is wrong in a couple of weeks’ time, you will have sour looks, and little respect to the end of your days. So leave them.”

  “That Angharad,” my mother said, and twisting her hands, “I will box her ears. Want this, take away that. Not this, that over there.”

  “I have noticed the young mistress,” my father said, and a bit of a smile. “I seem to remember her mother with some want-this-take-away-that, too.”

  “Never as bad as that, I was,” my mother said.

  “I could tell a tale,” said my father, up at the ceiling. “But no matter. One week of married life will cure her.”

  “Hisht, Gwil,” my mother said.

  “Well,” said my father, “there was a radical change in someone else I know. And before the week was out, too.”

  “I am going in to Bron’s,” said my mother, and went out, nose high, and my father gave me a wink.

  But indeed, it was making us silly to see them and hear them whenever they were in the house, and when Iestyn’s aunt, who looked after him, came to see my mother, she said it was the same over there. She said that some nights he was so angry, that he would smash three and four pots to have ease of his temper, so she had packed the best pieces in the cellar till he found sense.

  My mother wanted them to marry with Ceridwen and Blethyn to have both lots out of the way on the same day. But Iestyn was firm against it, and in that Angharad let him have his way. That was a surprise. Iestyn wanted to be married in the Chapel in London and then go to Paris and Berlin for a honeymoon. Angharad wanted to marry in London and then come straight back. Iestyn had his way. Angharad wanted to stay at Tyn-y-Coed, where his fathers had lived for six generations, a good big house, and full of splendid farmhouse furniture, but Iestyn wanted to sell it and build a house outside the town. Kiss and scratch, my mother called them, and so it was.

  One night they came back to supper after a walk. Angharad was pale thunder, Iestyn with a pout.

  “Mr. Morgan,” he said, as soon as he was through the door, “a word with you in private, if you please.”

  “What is it, now again?” my father said, and got up from the chair clicking his tongue and nodding, and took Iestyn in the back.

  My mother went on cooking, and I went on with my schoolwork. Angharad sat on the stool, looking in the fire, still with her cloak, and her hair hanging almost to the floor.

  “What is it, now then, Angharad?” my mother said, as though it was no matter.

  “Iestyn wants to take me away to-morrow to marry in London,” Angharad said, low and so sad to make you stop thinking what you were doing.

  My mother went on cooking as though she had heard nothing. Then she put the bakestone on to get hot, and wiped her hands, and turned to Angharad and knelt beside her to put her arms about her. And Angharad started to cry. O, broken in the heart, she cried.

  “Hisht, my little one, hisht,” my mother said, and rocking her as she did with Olwen. “There now, peach blossom mine. Dry the pretty eyes, is it?”

  “Mama,” Angharad wept, “I love him. Only him. But he sends me away.”

  “Hisht, hisht,” my mother said, and frowning in the fire, with a hand pressing Angharad’s head into her shoulder. Then I moved and she looked up, angry.

  “Huw,” she said, and sharp, “go from here, boy.”

  “Yes, Mama,” I said.

  But my father was in the back with Iestyn, Ianto and Davy in the front with some men from the union, and nowhere else in the house to go but upstairs to bed. But I wanted my supper, so down I went to Bron’s, and found her sewing Ivor’s working flannels.

  “Well,” she said, and the old smile, “what, then, with a face like green gooseberries with you?”

  “Iestyn in the back with Dada,” I said, “Angharad in the kitchen with Mama. No peace in the house.”

  “She will do all she can to make him break off,” Bron said. “Poor Angharad, too. Still, there it is. Have you had supper?”

  “No, indeed,” I said. “And I am hungry.”

  “It is pity about you,” Bron said, but joking. “Come you, and I will make you a basin of broth, is it?”

  So we had supper together, for Ivor was on night shift, and lovely it was, too, only the leeks were a bit old, and the bacon was a little on the briny, and winter potatoes, of course, but still, with Bron to smile across the table, lovely.

  “Bron,” I said, and in a rush, not to have time to think to change my mind, “why would it do Nan Mardy good to see a shirt tail?”

  Bronwen stared and stared with her spoon spilling soup, and then she lifted her chin in shouting laughter. She had a beautiful laugh, full and deep, and generous in tone, but I was coming restless before she wiped her eyes.

  “Who told you?” she asked, and off she went again, eyes closed, mouth wide, teeth shining, on a higher note, as though she had just reached the best part of it, and me watching, ready to throw something, yet wanting to laugh with her.

  “Where, boy, where?” she asked me again, wiping her eyes and swallowing and finishing her laugh with big breaths.

  “Hwfa Williams,” I said, and not wanting to say anything, now. “He said it would do her good. I want to know why.”

  “You will understand one day, Huw, my little one,” she said. “Will you have more to eat?”

  “I will have an answer to the question,” I said.

  She looked at me from one eye to another, but I could find no meaning in her face.

  “Have you asked your father, Huw?” she asked me, very quiet.

  “Yes,” I said, “and he said to mind my business.”

  “I will speak to him,” Bron said, and got up as though the matter was at an end.

  “Why does everybody treat me like little Gareth?” I said, and got up, too. “Why will it do Nan Mardy good to look at a shirt tail? How do whores get money that should come to us?”

  “Hisht, Huw,” Bronwen said, with fright. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From Ianto,” I said, “but he told me he was sorry he said it in front of me.”

  “Huw,” Bronwen said, and very kind, “go you home to bed, and have no worry about such things. As you grow older, so things will come plainer and your brain stronger to meet them.”

  “I will find out from Tegwen Beynon,” I said. “She knows.”

  Bron was round the table and holding me by the collar in a moment.

  “Huw,” she said, stern and cold, “if you have words with that slut of a girl be careful to come nowhere near this house again. Now then, warning.”

  “I will, or I will be told,” I said. “I will know or I w
ill find out.”

  Bron put her arm round me and kissed my forehead.

  “If I tell your father of this,” she said, “he will strap you and you will go on your way just the same and God knows the harm. Have you asked Mr. Gruffydd?”

  “I could,” I said, “but I know my answer.”

  “If I knew I was doing right, I would tell you now,” she said, “but you are a boy, and I might be wrong. I will think it over for a day, is it?”

  “Right,” I said. “Thank you, Bron.”

  “Good night, now,” she said, and smiling her smile that was not a smile.

  “Good night, Bron,” I said, and kissed her quietly upon the mouth, and ran.

  There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss. It is strange because it mixes silliness with tragedy, and yet not strange because there is good reason for it. There is shaking by the hand. That should be enough. Yet a shaking of hands is not enough to give a vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand is too hard and too used to doing all things, with too little feeling and too far from the organs of taste and smell, and far from the brain, and the length of an arm from the heart. To rub a nose like the blacks, that we think is so silly, is better, but there is nothing good to the taste about the nose, only a piece of old bone pushing out of the face, and a nuisance in winter, but a friend before meals and in a garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do nothing, for if we come too near, they go crossed and everything comes twice to the sight without good from one or other.

  There is nothing to be done with the ear, so back we come to the mouth, and we kiss with the mouth because it is part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling red tenderness, to the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went, and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its silliness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.