How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  “Heads down, Dai,” Cyfartha shouted, and they bound an arm about one another, and I eeled in between their shoulders, and heads down, they went through that crowd like flame through paper, and me treading on the bodies, and even on the faces, of those who would have stood to block the way.

  Full tilt we went into a husting of crates they had put there to have speeches on. The table and chair went over and the crates started to go over, for the crowd was dense and going back and back from the press of men shoving a way out of the hall.

  We were crushed against the rocking crates, but Cyfartha pulled himself up on the top of one and held it down, and put down a hand to help me, but somebody came toward him with a stool raised high to smash on his head and I shouted. I saw Cyfartha turn and duck as I fell back among the crowd, and when I stood up again, he was helping Dai to have a footing, and then he came for me.

  That was when the policemen came. I was up beside Cyfartha when I saw the silver spikes shining in their helmets. Dai saw them, too, and hit the sergeant a half-arm left that put him out flat, falling to the pavement, feet flying all shapes, and as the second went to hit him with his truncheon, a hook caught him in the round comfort of belly, and his mouth flew apart, and he fell in among the shouting crowd. Cyfartha had done something to the third one, and the fourth jumped down out of harm.

  But now police were clearing the crowd and Dai saw a danger of more jail and hooked his thumb at Cyfartha, and laid hold of me.

  “Come on,” he shouted. “Through a shop and out through the back way. Quick.”

  But I thought of Ceinwen and slipped away from Dai to the clearing space between me and the hall.

  “See you to-morrow, Dai,” I shouted, and jumped down, running fast for the side-door and missing a rush of men by inches. It was dark up there and no light, but the door was open and I went in.

  Two little rooms there were, but both empty, both warm from the bodies of those who had lived a little of their lives there, and from the candles that had marked the time in fallen grease.

  Then a match was struck, and I saw the caretaker, with the green baize of his apron torn down the middle, and looking as though the least I would be was a wizard, with a skull, and snakes coming from the eyes.

  “Who is it?” he said, and shaking to churn butter. “Dammo, man, you are standing like stiff from the coffin. Speak, man.”

  “Have you seen anybody here to-night?” I asked him. There is silly are the things you say in times like that.

  “Seen anybody?” he asked me. “Well, I will go to my death. Have I seen anybody? The whole five valleys have been in by here, hitting hell out of one another all night. Seen anybody? Is there anybody living who stayed home?”

  “I am sorry,” I said, “I was looking for a young girl.”

  “More shame to you,” he said, and lighting a bit of candle in a hole in the wall. “Young girls this time of night?”

  “She ran down this way when the fighting started,” I said.

  “O,” he said, and impatient with anger, “no time to talk about old girls. Have you seen my hall? A cattle pen, and a good week to clean it. I would like to have had my boots in the chops of a few of them.”

  “Did you see a girl,” I asked him, “with fair hair? Young she was, and with a smile.”

  “O,” he said, and pinched his eyes to sharpness, “a sweetheart, is it?”

  I nodded to him.

  “Yes,” he said, and nodding with his lips tight, “I remember. Mrs. Prettyjohn took her with her. They went in the coach.”

  “Where did they go?” I asked him, and a coldness busy in me.

  “Wherever they went,” he said, “and a riddance to rubbish, so help me senseless. No more actors here. None, from to-night. I have had a gut’s full and brimming. Good night, now.”

  “Good night,” I said, and went.

  Eh, dear. How cold it was over the mountain that night, inside and out.

  And a light in the kitchen, and the back door open, when I got home.

  “That you, Huw?” my father called, from the kitchen, and I stopped dead.

  “Yes, Dada,” I said.

  “Come you here,” he said, and I went in, closing and bolting the door, and taking plenty of time, wondering what had happened to put that note in his voice.

  “Have you been to the acting to-night?” he asked me, when I was in and standing before him.

  “Yes, Dada,” I said.

  “You would disgrace your mother and me in such a manner?” my father said, and thin with anger.

  “No disgrace, Dada,” I said.

  “Disgrace,” he said. “You dare to come home here, stinking with the smell and touch of them, and your brains polluted by their filth? Think shame to yourself.”

  “But, Dada,” I said, “only Shakespeare they did. No pollution.”

  “Pollution of Satan,” my father said. “Shall you have anything else from such a sink of corruption? Whores, cot-queans, and dandiprats to spread their wares before you? Think shame, Huw Morgan.”

  “I think shame that you should think of me like that, Dada,” I said.

  “I am glad to see a glimmer of decency in you, then,” my father said. “A splendid thing, to be stopped in the street by such as the son of Abishai Elias and told my son is in with bawds and toerags.”

  “I will see him later,” I said.

  “You will please to go outside and bathe from head to foot, first,” my father said, “and then you shall come inside and pray for the good of your soul. And if you go to such a den again, and I come to know of it, I will have you outside with the fists. Remember.”

  “Yes, Dada,” I said.

  “Bathe,” he said.

  And I bathed.

  Frozen I was, and paining with cold where the wind put his sharp old fingers through cracks and dug at me, and not even warm when I was dry, so the prayer was chopped in bits by restless teeth, and all my sense was in my pair of aching feet.

  A beautiful ending to a day I had wished for with rich longing.

  Longings, indeed.

  When Owen sent a telegram to say he was off to America with Gwilym, I longed to be with them. But when he wrote to say he had married Blodwen Evans, I longed for Ceinwen, to be married to her.

  That was a morning, with my mother crying and my father trying to tell her they had meant no harm marrying in a registrar’s office.

  “Just as good and binding as Chapel,” my father said.

  “They could have come home,” my mother said. “We are not good enough.”

  “O, nonsense, girl,” my father said. “Business, see, and sailing to America takes the time. He is a man in business now, with his own life to make. And no man is happy who is without a good wife.”

  “No good wives in an old office,” my mother said, and tears to fill pots.

  “Go on with you, girl,” my father said. “London is big, and the days are short. He could have done much worse than marry her in an office.”

  “Hisht, Gwilym,” my mother said. “What he did was only a bit above worst.”

  But she was quiet for days to come, and even the lilies of the valley from Blodwen’s bouquet, that she sent in a parcel, helped nothing. She was angry, and in pain, that her two boys should go away all the way to London and America, and no proper good-bye. And then to be married on top of that, again.

  “I said good-bye to them for London,” she said, “not America.”

  “Good-bye is good-bye,” my father said.

  “There is good-bye, and good-bye,” my mother said. “Would I send my two good boys all the way to America with only an old kiss and a couple of beef sandwiches and a bit of old cake? Good-bye, there is, and good-bye. And I was denied to say it. And I am their Mama.”

  “Good letters from them both,” my father said. “And from Blodwen it was lovely, indeed. A joy to read it.”

  “You shall have your joy and welcome,” my mother said. “You are easy to be satisfied. A bit of old paper w
ith pen and ink, and no matter if all your boys go down the Hill and off. Did I go to bed, and come from there with paper and ink, then?”

  “Hisht, girl,” my father said, and coming to be red. “Have quiet, now, is it?”

  “The day will come when you shall always find me quiet,” my mother said. “I hope you will have proper good-bye, indeed.”

  “O, Beth,” my father said, and going to her. “There is a nasty thing to say to me. It will come easier for you when Angharad comes home. Let it be quick.”

  Yes, let it be quick. Then, let the memory be quick to go.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SHE WAS CHANGED beyond the knowing, our Angharad.

  But I knew how she had been only when I saw her as she was.

  She was at Tyn-y-Coed, as mistress there, but never coming up to us. Never.

  The trap came over for my mother one Monday morning, and the groom gave her a letter. She read it, and gave it to my father for him to read while she went up to dress, dry in the eyes, but sharp in her movements as though to live at all was a test of patience.

  Bron came in to do the house and cook for us, and when my mother had gone, my father took his bucket up the mountain, and Bron clicked her tongue.

  “Trouble, trouble,” she said. “Poor Angharad.”

  “Why should Mama go over all that way?” I said. “Is Angharad tired in the legs?”

  “Not a word against Angharad will I stand to hear,” Bron said, and down went the kettle to spurt spitting steam on the oven top. “A good sweet girl and no pleasure in life.”

  “She is living in Tyn-y-Coed,” I said.

  “She should have been living in Gorphwysfa these years,” Bron said, and I went quiet in surprise, for she had never been so direct before.

  Gorphwysfa was the little house with the sea-shell porch.

  “I wonder does Mr. Gruffydd know she is back?” I asked her.

  “He will know soon enough,” she said. “There are tongues in plenty to tell him.”

  We were on afternoon shift that week, so there was no chance for me to go over to see Angharad, though my mother brought me back a set of pens and a book by Mr. Dickens, with her kind love. There is a lovely book it was, too, called Martin Chuzzlewit. I will have Mr. Dickens in with the others led by Dr. Johnson. I had his Mr. Pickwick later on. Eh, there is funny. I had my mother in fits, downstairs here, telling her about Snodgrass, and that other fool, old Winkle. And that fat old lump of a boy in the wheel-barrow, and Sam Weller with his v’s for w’s.

  But when I went to Tyn-y-Coed, the first day I had a chance, I was so stricken with the look of Angharad that I could barely speak with sense.

  White was in her hair, plain, even in the shadow of the room.

  A starvation of light in her eyes. A deadness, that not even her smile took the cross from. A withering of the low notes in her voice, so that her laugh was thin alto where before it had been rich contralto and a joyul sound to hear. A fretting of the fingers, she had, and the coming and going of an untidy little frown between her eyes, that made three ragged little lines there, like the crippled foot of a crow, so strange to her, for she had once been so still, so sure, so much at peace, yet all the time so quick with life.

  “Well, Huw,” she said, when I kissed her cheek.

  “Well,” I said.

  And we looked.

  Her hair was done all round her head, very pretty, with a small hat with flowers of blue. A blouse with pleats down the front of silk the colour of the yellow wallflower, and a long skirt darker, with a wide belt of blue the same as her hat, with a big oval silver buckle. And a little watch with a gold bow up by her heart, and one ring. A wedding ring.

  This girl used to wash pots in our back, and scrub the kitchen floor, and tickle my father’s neck for pennies and run down the Hill like a boy.

  This girl.

  This woman.

  Angharad.

  “I look ill and I should take care of myself,” she said. “Everybody coming in the house says so. So you say it, and I will rest quiet again.”

  “It is inside you,” I said.

  And we looked again.

  “There is big you have grown, Huw,” she said, with a move of the mouth and a look through the window, in a voice that had weights upon it.

  “You have been away long,” I said. “Do you remember when you used to give me a few little sweets to go to Sunday School?”

  “Huw, my little one,” she said, and tears were pink and shining. “And I used to have them back from you in class. Yes, I remember. There is shame.”

  “Not shame,” I said. “You liked a couple of sweets.”

  Now she was crying, but no move of her face. Just only crying.

  She put an arm about my shoulders, but she was looking through the window and her body was stiff, straight, no bending, no breaking, as though she shared a tiredness with me, as a traveller leans against a milestone that takes a little more from a long road.

  Then she shook her head and shut her eyes tight, and wiped them as though they were in the head of an enemy.

  “A fool I am,” she said. “Sit, Huw, and have to eat.”

  She went across the room to the bell like the old Angharad, and gave it a pull to set bells ringing in the forests of Russia.

  “Now then,” she said. “A bit of sense, for a change. Huw, you are coming from that old pit.”

  So much like my mother that I laughed out loud.

  “Eh,” she said, and a good smile, “there is lovely to hear a laugh, too.”

  “Come over to the house, girl,” I said. “You shall hear plenty, and have a few, too.”

  “I shall never come to the house, again, Huw,” she said, and I knew from the way she said it, without feeling, an opening of the mouth with one word after another on a string, all the same size and weight, that it was no use to ask why. A wasting of time.

  Then Mrs. Nicholas came in with the tray and the girl behind her with another tray.

  “Now then, Mrs. Evans,” she said, in her fat voice, and a smile about the nose, and sideways with the eyes. “Tea, is it?”

  “Thank you, Nicholas,” Angharad said, but different, like Blodwen, but even better. “Leave it. I will pour.”

  “O,” said Mrs. Nicholas, “you will pour, Mrs. Evans, is it? Of course, I have always had the pouring to do for other ladies. Thumbs off the plates, Enid.”

  And Enid got a knock with the keys over the back of the hand and sucked it, quick.

  “That will do, Nicholas,” Angharad said. “Not so handy with those keys, or I will have them from you. And I will pour.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Evans,” Mrs. Nicholas said, and made a little knee, with still the smile about her nose, “a new mistress is like new sheets, yes? Little bit stiff, but washings to come.”

  And out she went, in her roundness, and fatness, and blackness, and starting to hum at the door.

  “A bitch, that one,” I said.

  “Pedigree,” Angharad said, firm and sure. “I am sour to be near her.”

  “Send her away,” I said.

  “She has been with the Evans family for forty-seven years, sixty times every day she will tell you,” Angharad said. “I could never do it with a good heart. And she has done nothing to deserve it. The house is beautiful, and not a turn of the hand from me. Up all hours, she is, and very kind with a cup of tea, or smelling salts, and a cushion. But I could scream when she comes anywhere near me.”

  “A bitch,” I said.

  “A bitch,” said Angharad, and we laughed.

  “How are all the boys and girls we used to know?” she asked me. But I knew from the look of her, and the voice, that the question she wanted to ask was screaming itself red inside her.

  “Good,” I said. “Eunice and Eiluned Jenkins are married. Eunice is at home, and Eiluned has gone to London, to keep a dairy. Maldwyn Hughes has gone to be a doctor. Rhys Howell is in a solicitor’s office in Town and sending home ten shillings a week. Madog Powys is
in the tinplate works over the mountain. Owen got him there. Tegwen Beynon is married to Merddyn Jones’ son, and up at the farm.”

  What use to go on, when she was asking no questions. She was waiting for me to say it for her.

  “And Mr. Gruffydd is still first up and last to bed,” I said, and bending to put my plate on the floor not to see her face. But I saw her hand. “And he can still be heard from one end of the Valley to the other, too, and no strain.”

  Quiet.

  So quiet that you might even think you could hear the flowers having their little drops to drink.

  So quiet, that to crack a biscuit between the teeth, would seem as bad as making a noise in Chapel.

  “How is he, Huw?” she asked me.

  As though her lips were dry, and she wanted a drink of water.

  “Not as he was,” I said, and on purpose.

  Her eyes came big, and points were in them, sharp.

  “What is the matter with him?” she said. “Is he ill?”

  “Inside,” I said. “In his eyes and voice. Like you.”

  She got up and stood with a hand on the mantelpiece, and looked across the top of my head at the window. Nothing was in her face, but her eyes were terrible, terrible, terrible.

  “Go from here,” she said.

  And I went.

  Straight to Mr. Gruffydd I went, in the little house with the sea-shell porch, and found him reading in the room where we so often had shared tea. The furniture was a pleasure to see, now all in place, with a good carpet made by Old Mrs. Gethin and her daughter up at the farm by the waterfall on top of the mountain.

  “Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “am I disturbing?”

  “Come you in, my little one,” he said, and a smile.

  “Angharad is at Tyn-y-Coed,” I said.