How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  “O,” Bron said, and moved her head, “Ivor was strong, I suppose. And I was afraid. Eleven years older than you, I am. You are young. And you think beyond me.”

  “But why afraid?” I said.

  She looked at me with calmness, and I saw my mother in her.

  “Have you been with a girl, Huw?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who?” she asked me, and looking again in the fire.

  I was quiet, for I was unready to break the peace of the world I had found up on the mountain.

  “Ceinwen Phillips,” she said, as though I had answered.

  I said nothing.

  “O, Huw,” she said, and put her arm about me. “There is sorry I am.”

  “Why?” I asked her.

  “Why, why, why,” she said, and with laugh. “All your life, why. This time because it is pain to think of innocence in ruin.”

  “But I found it beautiful beyond life,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled, and O, to see Bronwen smile. “Beautiful, indeed. Ivor said the same to me.”

  “That is why we cannot marry,” I said, and stood up. “Ivor found his world with you. Shall I bring strangeness to you, and trample where he lives still? Let the law be wise.”

  “But, Huw,” she said, with something of hurt, “what is this world Ivor had, then?”

  “The one we find with a woman,” I said, but in shame to speak of it, because in words it sounded foolish. Ordinary things like teapots may be talked about because we know them and they are solid under the hand. But to talk of the world that is hidden in every woman is a journey of pain, for the words are not in use to tell of it, and to use the words that are is only a hopping on uneven crutches.

  “What world is it, Huw?” she asked me, and sat up straight to hear.

  “O, Bron,” I said, “I only know it is with me. Only for a little we live, and feel ourselves truly alive, with truth, then the Angel with a flaming sword comes to slash us out. Beauty and music, there is. I am a fool.”

  “No, indeed,” she said, and gentle. “But I also have a world, is it? And I will have whoever I say to share it. Ivor it was, first, because I said Ivor and nobody else. You, it would have been second, if I had said yes. But neither of you if I had said no.”

  So Bronwen showed me more of the strength of woman, which is stronger than fists and muscles and male shoutings. For now, instead of thinking about her as guardian of a world denied to me, and foreign to me because it belonged to another, I was made to think of her in truth and verity as owner and possessor, with right of denial and sanction over all, as equal sharer, and with right to say who and when, according to her will and none other.

  And she was bigger in my eyes, with more of respect, for she had responsibility and I had none. Her strength had kept me from her, her will had prevented me, her spirit had triumphed. Mine was the emptiness of one who waits at gates locked beyond his vision, flattering himself that he waits at an open fairway out of respect, not to disturb, and then, essaying entry, marches forward with boldness only to break his nose upon the unseen steel.

  The world I had shared with Ceinwen was as much her own as mine, and the world Ivor had known was Bronwen’s as much as his. It was a death to me to think of Ceinwen as possessor, and with right to allow another man to share.

  But if I had the right to think of the world with Bron, there was no reason to deny the right to Ceinwen of sharing with another man.

  I died, but I lived again.

  “Huw,” Bronwen said, “did you think of children?”

  “What children?” I asked her, as though pulled from darkness.

  “Children,” Bron said, and gentle, watching me as though with pity. “Ivor had two sons.”

  Still I was dense, for there are times when the mind is far away, and words are only a tracing of sound, meaningless.

  “Gareth and Taliesin,” I said, “and fine boys, indeed. They would laugh to have me for a father, or even foster-father.”

  “But supposing you were a father, Huw,” she said, “what, then?”

  So surprised I was that she laughed at me.

  “Do you expect to find this world of yours,” she asked me, “without to become a father?”

  “O God, Bron,” I said, and a coldness coming to make me shake and freeze inside the brain. I could feel the pinch of whiteness in my face, and in my ears the voice of Mr. Gruffydd. “Ceinwein.”

  She looked at me straight, and the lines in her forehead and above her eyes smoothed out as though a hand had passed across.

  “Have you heard?” she asked me.

  “I have asked plenty of times,” I said, and with soreness in the throat, “but she has gone. I never once thought. Never once these years. There is a swine I am. There is a swine.”

  “But just now, see, a world of beauty and music,” she said, “then, a swine.”

  “A responsibility,” I said, hearing a deep voice, “in beauty and majesty beyond words.”

  “Mr. Gruffydd,” she said, simple, quick.

  “He told me,” I said, “and I forgot. Witlessness, he said. Good God, Bron, what is the matter with us that we act like fools instead of men?”

  “The beauty and music,” she said, and looking in the fire again. “It is a call, Huw. And some are not strong.”

  “Do you feel it, Bron?” I asked her.

  She smiled at the fire, and was quiet, and her fingers turned and turned her wedding ring.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I looked at the kettle, to have rest from the mysteries piling one on the other, for he was black with work, and puffing fat cheeks, ready to go about his business any moment of the day, with a will and always at his best, wanting only a drop of water, a little fire, and he would boil and blow and spit like a good one.

  I envied him his simple life, and then was ashamed again, for I was a man, with responsibility, though with little thought for it, and he only a kettle, yet doing his job and living his life, a kettle, nothing but a kettle, born in the image of a kettle, pretending to be nothing else, and on his mark every moment, to carry out his responsibilities as a kettle.

  But I was born in the image of God, a man, creator, with power of life and death, a father, blessed with the gift of the seed of Adam, a sower of seed, to bring forth generations of new lives.

  This I was, and envying a kettle.

  “There is strange to talk like this,” she said. “I would have blushed to burn a little while ago. Now it is nothing. But glad I am your mother is from here. She would think little of me, indeed.”

  “I will think more of you,” I said, and kissed her cheek, “and you will marry Matt Harries, is it?”

  “I will think,” she said, and got up to get the tea caddy. “The boys will have nothing to do with him. And so kind to them he is, too.”

  “Jealous, they are,” I said.

  She looked sideways at me, smiling, and then I was coming to blush again, and ready to hit my head on the door for being such a fool.

  “Are you jealous, Huw?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Sure?” she asked me.

  “Sure,” I said, for I could feel Ivor warm about us, and all round Bron, and the thought of him steady beside her filled me high with pity. For gone though he might be, she still was blessed by him, for he was about her, near to her, part of her, with her in and out of sleep, and to think of putting a kiss upon her, then, with anything more than the love of the heart was a hollowing, deep disgust.

  “How do you know?” she asked, with a bit of hurt, as though I was not giving her respect. “Am I ugly, then?”

  “O, Bron,” I said, and went to her, but she turned her back, that was straight as boards, slim, a perfection of rest for a right arm, “not ugly, only sacred, you are. So plain it is now. How could I be jealous? If I was a fool with you, what would be the end? I would cut my throat from shame.”

  “Why would you be a fool, and where is t
he shame?” she asked me, cold, resting her hands on the caddy, and staring wide at me. “Am I somebody from the gutter?”

  I looked at her for long, trying to find the words, but they sounded so hurtful that I feared to open my mouth.

  “Look, Bron,” I said. “One man, one woman, is it?”

  “Yes,” she said, but ready to say no.

  “Ivor and you,” I said. “He has gone, but you are here. Yet, for me, he is still with you. You and he are one. To see you is to see him. To touch you is to touch him. To think of you is to think of him. He is about you like lavender. His hands touched you, his mouth kissed you. He was with you and used your flesh for his sons. Where is there place for me?”

  “But, Good God in Heaven,” Bronwen said, and whiter than I had ever seen her, and staring to put you in fear, “am I a belonging, then? Bronwen Morgan I am, but the Morgan only because I said so. Ivor is still Ivor with me, and our sons upstairs to tell you so. But what right have you to make me property? Am I an old den of house, then, with a sign outside? Stop to think like a fool, man, and have a cup of tea.”

  Well.

  I shut my mouth, and had my cup of tea, silent, thinking, watching Bron, but unwilling to talk again, for it was like a tangling of ropes that one moment you think you have got straight, and the next is a despair of knots to try patience and drive you mad. I think I felt a bit of hurt, too, that my fine feelings had been kicked in the ash tub, where they belonged, no doubt.

  “I will marry nobody,” Bron said, with quiet. “And that will settle it. But no more nonsense, is it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, and lit her candle. “Good night, now.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  I sat, and she went upstairs lightly as she always had, and across the landing to the front bedroom.

  For the first time I heard the key turn stiff and sore in the door.

  Dai Bando never hit a man harder.

  Eh, dear.

  For long after that, the feeling was between us again, but this time not happily as it had been before, but with more of resentment, until I thought I would have to leave the house only to have peace for us both.

  A horrible feeling, it is, to know you are a burden in body and spirit to somebody dear to you.

  Matt Harries cured it, and quick.

  Fair hair, he had, curly, and parted with neatness, and a good moustache the colour of his hair, always pulled tidy but never greasy. A good grey eye, he had, too, that looked at you straight and with deepness not to be denied.

  “Huw,” he said, one day out in the back here, “shall I say something?”

  “What, now?” I said, and into my pockets for a bit of pencil.

  He was handling a chip of mahogany, pulling bits off, and watching the wind have them.

  “You will have to hold the temper,” he said, and the greyness of his eyes sober upon me.

  “What, then?” I asked him, and stood to face him.

  “Bronwen,” he said, but quiet, as though in shame to say the name.

  “Well?” I said, coming to be impatient.

  “There is talk,” he said, with tongs pulling the words from him.

  “O,” I said. “For what?”

  “You,” he said, and a spinning quietness came to draw tight about us.

  “Me, what?” I asked him, but somebody else talking.

  “You and Bron,” he said, but with pleading and softly. “I know it is all lies, Huw. But there you are. They say Gomer and me are out because you are in.”

  “Who have you heard?” I asked him.

  “My mother told me,” Matt said, “and she had it in the market weeks and weeks since. She was out of patience with me, and it came out, sudden, see.”

  There is blind we are at times in our lives, sometimes over years and years.

  How I could have imagined Bron and me could live in the same house day in and day out for years on end, both of us grown, with only two boys in the house beside us, and go free of the evil of people’s minds, well, there, I cannot tell.

  I must have been mad all the time.

  For people with little sewage systems in their minds are only waiting for a man to live in the same house as a woman, and then starts the stench, and the bigger the system, the more the stench, until it is wonder that they are not rotten from the poison, and ready for their graves.

  “Keep your ears open,” I said, “and I will keep mine. And if he is a man, Christ help him. If it is a woman, we shall see.”

  I went straight and told Bron, and she smiled, a bit at first, and then, full on her face, the old, old smile that only Bron could smile.

  “I knew, boy,” she said. “For months. Years.”

  “You knew?” I asked her, “and no word to me?”

  “Did I want a murder, then?” she said, and laughing. “No, boy. Let them talk. They are not even worth spit.”

  “You are worth more than spit to me,” I said.

  “What harm?” she said. “I am still as I was. You are still as you were. Talk, that is all it is. Nothing more to do, so talk.”

  “Let me catch anybody,” I said. “I will tear the tongues from their throats.”

  “Leave it, now,” she said, and a hand on my arm, very pretty in the eyes.

  So I kissed her, and went out, and up on top of the mountain to have peace, for I had a grudge that was savage with heat against everybody, and only up on top there, where it was green, and high, and blue, and quiet, with only the winds to come at you, was a place of rest, where the unkindness of man for man could be forgotten, and I could wait for God to send calm and wisdom, and O, a blessed ease.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  UP THERE IT WAS, on that day, that I knew teeth of fear.

  I was coming back, empty of anger, and ready to let tongues have their way, when I saw men working to put up tipping piers from the colliery to the top of the mountain directly behind our house, and all the other houses on the Hill.

  “Good day, Lewis,” I said to the foreman. “What is this, then?”

  “Slag tip,” he said. “Up the top here.”

  “But it will roll down on top of us,” I said.

  “In time to come, I suppose,” he said, but not taking much notice. “Years, yet.”

  “Years?” I said. “They have got no right. Those are our homes down there.”

  “Go on, man,” he said. “Where the hell will the slag go, then? If you want to work, the slag must come out. If it comes out it must have a place to go. So there, you, and here it is.”

  No use to blame him.

  Useless to curse the men, or their work, or the steel struts they were bolting together to carry deadness to the mountain.

  I went to see my father, but he only nodded and wiped his glasses.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We must do something, Dada,” I said. “Quick.”

  “What?” he asked me, with quiet. “The slag must go somewhere. They can only do the best they can. If they keep it underground as they used to do, it will have to come from the wages of the men. While they are piling slag, they cannot be cutting coal. One of the two. So the mountain it is, for the sake of wages.”

  “Who sold the land?” I asked him. “Jones the Chapel?”

  “No,” he said, “he sold it long ago.”

  “Who, then?” I asked him. “If we know we might get him to sell to all of us on the Hill.”

  My father smiled and scratched his head.

  “Go and see Abishai Elias,” he said. “He is the owner. Or was. It belongs to the colliery, now. So does all the mountain land, excepting only our land on the Hill.”

  “A hiding without a fight,” I said.

  “Yes,” my father said. “For the women and children. Leave it, my son.”

  I almost hated my father, then, but I saw what he was afraid of doing and I had sympathy, for however hard we fought, we must be beaten by empty bellies. The rights of man are poor things beside the e
yes of hungry children. Their hurts are keener than the soreness of injustice.

  But then Davy had more trouble, and our minds were busy with him until he was out of it. By that time the tip was built and working, and we could only look up at it with our hands on our hips and curse it, and hope for the hate of Satan to fall on old Elias.

  Davy had been back only a few weeks when it happened. My father had spoken for him to start work in his pit, and down he went, gladly, and Wyn was happier than she had been for years, for she was tired of going from one place to another, and wanted a home, and for once in his life he listened to her.

  One morning I met him coming up the Hill off the night shift, and even under his dust I could see his anger.

  “What, now?” I asked him.

  “They have paid me short,” he said. “Working to the waist in water all week, with the boy, and short to-day.”

  “How about the minimum?” I asked him.

  “They said no,” he said. “But I will have a reckoning.”

  He was not allowed to join the shift on Monday because he had written a letter to the manager.

  “Right,” said my father. “Let us have a solicitor, and put them in Court. Or the men will come out and more trouble.”

  Over the mountain we went, and found a solicitor, a young man, not very happy to take the case because he had thoughts for the future, and he knew, and we knew, that the colliery could starve him out.

  “Right you are,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

  We left it, and the days and weeks went, with appearances in Court before justices, and commissioners for oaths, and swearings of affidavits, and all the drawn-out painfulness of law cases.

  And money going out, and going out, and going out.

  “Never mind, my son,” my father said to Davy. “If it costs the last sovereign, the last stick, and the last brick of this house, we will have them before a Judge. And all their slipperiness shall not avail them in the day of judgment. There was a bargain struck, and they shall keep it as we have done.”

  The day of the hearing came, and notices were given to Davy with the arms of the King upon them.

  “At last,” my father said, and pointed with his pipe to the arms. “Here is a sign, see. As the devil loves the cross, so do rogues love this. Now you shall see another bolting of swine.”