How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  But when we got to the court our solicitor was standing in the front, in the big hall that was dark with the rain outside, waiting for us with impatience, and shaking in the hands with anxiousness.

  “Settle with them,” he said, almost in whispers, and looking about to see if any were listening. “Be sensible, Mr. Morgan. They are powerful. They can take the case as far as the House of Lords if they want to, and break you on the way.”

  My father’s fists struck into Mr. Vaughan to hold him by the coat as a hawk strikes into a mouse.

  “Look,” he said, with splinters of glass in his voice, and his eyes two inches from the little green onions of Mr. Vaughan, “we have come here for a hearing after months. House of Lords or House of God, go in by there and start to make your case, before I will take the bones piecemeal from your carcass.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Vaughan, and swallowed a small town, and picked up his papers, and went in, with little steps, like a girl going to meet her other mother for the first time.

  A good, big place, the Court, with a smell of books, and ink made from powder, and soft coal smoke.

  Up on the high place was the Judge with a robe of blue and red, and grey hair to his shoulders very tidy, and looking as though he was willing to go to his grave before to hear any more of the silliness of men.

  Our case was called among the first, and a solicitor stood up to put the colliery case. Detail after detail was read out of Davy’s past life, about his activity as a firebrand, and his discharge, and the generosity of the colliery in having him back again through the good offices of his father.

  “What has this to do with the claim?” the Judge asked, as though clean sand had just been dusted on the floor of his mouth.

  Eh, dear.

  The question had everybody in fits down in front, with whispers and frowns, and little men running on tiptoe with pieces of paper one to another, and the Judge looking at the end of his pen over the top of his spectacles.

  “My clients claim,” the solicitor said, “that there is no basis for a claim. The man was paid the wage that he received, which we admit is below the minimum wage, because in the manager’s estimation he was incompetent. That estimation will be borne out by witnesses.”

  If you had seen my father’s face.

  Davy sat stone-still, arms folded, as man after man we knew well, went into the witness box and swore that Davy was an incompetent workman. And him sitting there, watching them.

  And Mr. Vaughan doing nothing, except a bit of a smile here and there to the solicitor on the colliery side.

  “Might we hear the claimant?” the Judge asked into the air, to nobody, as though he spoke to hear his voice.

  More running down in front, and Mr. Vaughan looking far from happy when he looked at Davy to take his place in the little box near the Judge.

  “How are you going to prove to the Court’s satisfaction,” the Judge said, direct at Davy, and I thought, with something of kindness, “that you are, in fact, a competent workman, and entitled to be paid the minimum wage allotted to that class of man?”

  Davy looked very good in his best black suit, indeed.

  “I have been working since I was twelve, Your Honour,” he said.

  The Judge’s greyness shook quickly from side to side, and his glasses flashed in the light of the lamps.

  “You may have worked for fifty years,” he said, “but still be lacking in competency. How can you prove your claim?”

  My father gave me a dig with his elbow that almost took me from the world with fright.

  “The dockets,” he said, in whispers, with fire burning high in his eyes. “The dockets, man. Where are they, with you?”

  Thank God for a lifetime of tidiness and order in the home, for every pay docket we had ever had was on the file, all of us, from the first week’s pay we had ever drawn.

  I stood up with the files heavy in my arms, and Davy’s eyes came off the Judge to look at me, for he had seen my movement, and all in Court heard me make a way through the benches toward the front.

  “What is this man doing?” the Judge asked.

  “My brother, Your Honour,” Davy said. “With proof of competency. Those are the amounts I have drawn every week since I started work.”

  One docket after another the Judge turned over, and for quiet minutes there was only the voice of crispness in paper to be heard.

  Then the Judge looked at Davy, and down at the solicitor.

  “Can anybody tell me,” he said, “how a man can earn three and four times, and even more than six times, as much as the amount of this claim, over a period of years in the same colliery, and still be held as an incompetent workman?”

  No answer from anybody, but the air going to shrivel about us.

  “Apparently not,” said the Judge. “In my view, on evidence provided by the company in its own pay dockets, the plaintiff establishes beyond doubt that he is a competent workman, and therefore is entitled to receive the minimum wage as provided under the agreement. The claim is allowed, with costs.”

  I am only sorry that we were not allowed to shake the Judge’s hand, and then dance on the desks.

  It was late before we had supper that night, for people were coming from all the other valleys to cheer my father and Davy, and shake their hands, and call them true men. My mother stood to watch, holding her chest with one hand and putting tucks in her apron with the other, pretending to smile.

  She knew, and my father knew, that there were two sides to every face.

  “Make your minds firm,” my father said to us, while my mother and Olwen were washing up. “To-day is the last of us in this Valley. If I am spared, I have got a couple more years’ work, and then finish, me. Ianto is in iron, and Huw is in wood. What will you do, Davy, my son?”

  “I will have my share of the box, Dada,” Davy said, “and I will go to New Zealand. Wyn’s father will come with us.”

  “You could go to your good brothers in the United States,” my father said, but with weakness in his voice, for he knew his answer.

  “New Zealand,” Davy said, with nothing in his voice or face.

  “Not charity, my son,” my father said. “But I will be happy to know you are close together. They are your brothers.”

  “New Zealand, Dada,” Davy said.

  “Good,” said my father.

  “Dada,” Ianto said, “I am going too, I am sorry to say.”

  In the dark pane of the window I saw my father shut his eyes.

  “You too, Ianto, my son?” he said, with stiffness. “To New Zealand, then?”

  “No, Dada,” Ianto said, and looking up at Davy’s jersey, “to Germany. There is a German over at the works there, now, and he says I could have a better job with him. So I will go. There is nothing in front of me here.”

  “Say nothing to your Mama,” my father said. “Let this day be over, first.”

  We sat still, looking at the floor, and the walls, and the furniture, but not at one another, and we dare not look at my father, for he was fighting rivers.

  “Shall we read a chapter, my sons?” he asked us, in a little while, and Davy was up quick to fetch the Book.

  “What shall we have, Dada?” he said, with the thickness of guilt and black leather ready on his knee, and his fingers hooked in the pages.

  “Isaiah, fifty-five,” my father said. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

  And while Davy read, my mother came to sit by my father, and Olwen sat on the floor with her arm on his knee, and her face on her arm, and his hand was on her head nearly hidden in her hair, and his other hand lay in my mother’s lap, with her hands tight about it.

  Chapter Forty

  IANTO AND DAVY went away together, for Ianto knew that two good-byes would be hard on my mother, and Germany sounded just as far as New Zealand to her.

  I crated all Davy’s furniture, an
d made boxes with baize linings for the crockery, but it was a job of sadness for me. Every tap of the hammer seemed to send him farther away.

  One morning they stood before my mother with their coats on their arms and their hats in their hands, and the clock telling them to leave home.

  “Well,” my mother said, and took off her apron to show her best black silk.

  “Well, Mama,” Ianto said, and smiling a big one, but having it hard with his voice.

  “Off, now, again then?” my mother said, smiling too, with her hands busy to puff the sleeves of her dress.

  “Yes, Mama,” Ianto said and rubbing his hat with the cuff of his coat, though Olwen had brushed it to smoothness only a minute before.

  “And you, Davy,” Mama said, with her hands quiet.

  “Yes, Mama,” Davy said, and putting another knot in his parcel of sandwiches and cake, looking at nobody.

  “Will you write?” Mama asked them, high.

  But they said nothing, and I looked out of the door and down the Hill.

  The kitchen was full of the speech of my mother’s eyes, but quiet except for the clock.

  “Well,” my father said. “Shall we have a move?”

  More quiet, and Olwen coming to cry.

  “Good-bye, Mama,” Ianto said.

  “Good-bye, Mama,” said Davy.

  But my mother had no good-bye for them, but only the sound of her kiss, the little sound her kisses made, that were dry upon the cheek.

  Ianto went first, and Davy after, and then my father, and the people on the Hill looked up at the mountain, and down at the pit, but not at them when they waved good-byes, for Ianto had his arm about Davy’s shoulder, and my father was standing in the middle of the street giving them a start, and a chance to button their coats.

  My mother went to sit on the stool by the fire with the work-basket close to her feet. She never mended socks before the peace of the afternoon, but she could never sit still and do nothing, so while her good boys went from her she sat to think of them, but I never saw her so round in the shoulders or slower to thread a needle.

  And Olwen piled the breakfast plates as though it was their fault her brothers were off down the Hill.

  With my atlas I tried to show my mother where her children had gone. I drew pencil lines from us to Owen and Gwilym across the Atlantic, and to Angharad down there in Cape Town, and to Davy in New Zealand, and to Ianto in Germany.

  She looked at the page with her head back as though it had a smell, and sideways with the eyes, holding the book with loose fingers, not anxious to see, distrustful of what she saw, and ready to stop her ears against what I was telling her. She wanted to listen to nothing, and see nothing that might bring to her more coldness of the heart than their going had given her.

  For she thought of them all as she thought of Ceridwen, only just over the mountain, to be seen any time of the day with only a good walk there and back.

  “What is this old spider, now then?” she asked me, and not even putting on her glasses to see.

  “One line from us to Owen and Gwil,” I said, pointing it for her. “Down here to Angharad. Over there to Ianto, and down by here to Davy and Wyn. You are like the Mother of a star, Mama. From this house, shining all that way across the continents and oceans.”

  “All that way,” my mother said. “Goodness gracious, boy, how far, then, if they can have it all on a little piece of paper?”

  “Only a map, it is, Beth,” my father said, and a wink to me to be quiet. “A picture, see, to show you where they are.”

  “They are in the house,” my mother said, flat. “And no old pictures, and spiders with a pencil, if you please.”

  “Yes, my lovely girl,” my father said, and I put my atlas away.

  It was a blessing that Ianto and Davy went then, for they would have been in trouble sure if they had waited for the end of the year.

  “It is coming, Huw,” my father said, as a man will look at a rain cloud and wonder if there is time to go back for his coat. “This time it will be worse than ever. I have told your mother to prepare for a bad winter. But thank God your good brothers are from here. I was always worried from my life in case they landed in jail.”

  I think my mother was glad, too, for that fear had always been near to her, and perhaps the relief that they had gone from the Valley in peace helped her in her dark days, when she was quiet, without words for us, and short with Olwen, and we knew that she mourned.

  Bron was a help at those times, for we never dared to say a word, but Bron could put an arm about her and tickle her, and make a good cup of tea, and put her in a chair, with talk about the boys and Angharad till the tears dropped and she smiled to remember, and then she was right for another couple of weeks.

  So the weeks went, but day by day the trouble was coming to be worse. Where there was one meeting, now there were a dozen, and not only at night but in the afternoons too, and toward the end, in the mornings.

  It was the subject-matter of the meetings that made me worry. Before, in the time of Mr. Gruffydd and my brothers, the meetings were called for a purpose and were orderly, with a subject defined and a vote to be taken on a show of hands.

  But then it seemed that anybody who could talk was sure of a hearing, whatever might be coming from his mouth, sense or not, and it was a surprise to me, that men I knew to be as hard in the head as the bole of an oak, would stand to listen.

  I was busy in my shop in the back yard from morning till night, making doors and window-frames and tables and chairs. I started small to have the time to work up a stock, so that I could use my time, later on, to make good furniture and perhaps panelling.

  Orders I had in plenty, though I would never touch coffins, and in that, lost many a fat job and thought it no matter. I never saw a reason for putting noble wood and good work about deadness and dropping it down a little pit.

  So, busy with my own job, I had little time to notice what was going on outside, and when I did, and worried, my work covered the worry and I forgot in the joy of using my shining tools, and thus the shock was greater.

  One Saturday Bronwen had a birthday and I thought I would take her to Town for an outing and buy something new in a box for her. We left the boys with my mother and took Olwen with us.

  Well, well.

  There is a time we had.

  There is good to take somebody you love on a trip to Town, for a smile is happy on the face, and even a little joke will bring a good laugh, but one with salt will have you in stitches.

  O, and a royal feeling it is to spend money without caring, and a prince I was that day. So between laughter and princeliness I had my day and lived it well, and found it much to my liking.

  People were stopping in the street to look at Bronwen and Olwen.

  “What is the matter then, Huw?” Bron asked me, with big eyes, and a little voice. “Dress, or what, is wrong with us?”

  “Nothing wrong, girl,” I said and feeling in my pride to be three of me, and twice as high. “Lovelier than Pharaoh’s daughters, you are, see. So go you, now.”

  “Go on with you, boy,” Bron said, pretending a frost of impatience, but a smile in the making behind her eyes, and watching people to see if Olwen was having more of the looks. If she had seen a man looking at her, she would have turned her nose to the skies and so put him in a bruise of blushes, but if she had seen him looking at Olwen she would have been hurt, and wondering if she had a bit of soot on her nose or too many years.

  A good, good laugh I had, to see them playing the game of Woman. A pretty game it is too, and men having quite as much of the fun when they have the courage to use their eyes. Women love to be looked at, though they will deny it with an oath, and men, the fools, will look up, look down, and blind themselves and have humped backs with looking at the pavement, or have twists in the neck from looking at something on either side, only not to look, or be thought looking at a woman. There is senseless, there is stupid and there is dull.

  For pleas
e to tell me what is better to look at than a lovely woman, and I will come from my dinner to see. And all women, never mind who, or what, have a loveliness of their own, so who will say that we must cover our eyes and see nothing only stones and sky, is one without good sense and feeling, an ingrate for the gift of vision, and barely half a man.

  Bronwen walked in front of me looking up at first-floor windows in the street, knowing only that eyes were on her, and coming to be a pincushion full of the spikes of sight.

  “I have got a name,” she said, when I told her not to mind the stares. “So please to mind your affairs. How would I feel if I looked at a shop and a man spoke?”

  “Would you have time to feel?” I asked her. “And would he?”

  “Trouble then,” she said, “and an end in a police-station. Leave it now. I will look when I want to, and when I want to, I shall look.”

  Strange that women always trouble for the worst that never happens. Not a man of all the hundreds we saw that day would have dared to say a word to her, even if she had looked back at him, for there was an air about Bronwen that shouted a warning to fools, that was plainer than a written sign.

  Too conscious of her womanhood she was, and ready to spoil her day by worrying over it.

  “There is silly you are, girl,” I said to her. “No matter about tongues at home, but only old eyes here, and you are running up a street with no enjoyment of it.”

  “I have yet to hear the words,” she said. “But these looks I can feel. Change places only for a minute.”

  “With gladness,” I said. “Only to give you comfort. They are looking because you are a new wonder, not often to be seen, and they will think of you in years to come. So you will live in many places at once, and always in beauty. Are you thankful?”

  “No,” she said, and then I saw that she was, but denying it because she was playing the game of Woman.

  Olwen was looking at Bron in hope that soon a slackness would come to her steps so that we might look at the shops, for about us were the things of dreams and all of an afternoon was in front of us.