How Green Was My Valley (15 page)

“Well,” said my father, “if it is all the same to you, I will have the leg of that
goose if Beth will pass the plate.”

Mr. Gruffydd got up while we were all laughing, and went as close to Mr. Elias as
the crowd would allow, looking not at him, but into him. Fine eyes had Mr. Gruffydd,
and bright, sharp points to them like the needles poking from my mother’s apron front.

“Mr. Elias,” he said, “I am very sorry if you have been hurt in your good conscience,
by any conduct of mine, which you may have judged to be out of keeping with the time.
But you must not forget that the Man Himself attended at Cana, and also provided the
best wine. What do you find wrong in this meeting?”

Mr. Gruffydd’s quiet voice, so filling in the close space, sent everybody so still
and soundless that I could hear the water coming from the stream above the garden.

“If you do not know,” Elias said, in a voice that told very plainly that he did not,
“it is not my place to tell you. This is a holy day. That is enough.”

“It is far from enough,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “You have forced your way into this house
and you have been abusive, and you have chosen to take your authority from the Bible.
There are too many of your sort walking the earth. Now go, before I take you by the
neck and throw you. I will have a word with you in Chapel, sir.”

How could we have known, then, that what happened that night, so small, so foolish,
would be the cause of misery to us all. Elias never forgot that night. But his revenge
was the sweeter when he had chance to have it. Sweet it was, and greatly he relished
it, and every morsel of it he took.

But even of him I can think of with sorrow, now at this moment.

Those times, those people, even Mr. and Mrs. Elias, their son and daughters and their
shop, have gone. How can there be fury felt for things that are gone to dust.

Chapter Nine

H
ERE IN THIS QUIET HOUSE
I sit thinking back the structure of my life, building again that which has fallen.
It do seem to me that the life of man is merely a pattern scrawled on Time, with little
thought, little care, and no sense of design. Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer,
when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring
them from their misery into peace and contentment.

The slag heap is moving again.

I can hear it whispering to itself, and as it whispers, the walls of this brave little
house are girding themselves to withstand the assault. For months, more than I ever
thought it would have the courage to withstand, that great mound has borne down upon
these walls, this roof. And for those months the great bully has been beaten, for
in my father’s day men built well for they were craftsmen. Stout beams, honest blocks,
good work, and love for the job, all that is in this house.

But the slag heap moves, pressing on, down and down, over and all round this house
which was my father’s and my mother’s and now is mine. Soon, perhaps in an hour, the
house will be buried, and the slag heap will stretch from the top of the mountain
right down to the river in the Valley. Poor river, how beautiful you were, how gay
your song, how clear your green waters, how you enjoyed your play among the sleepy
rocks.

I shall always remember the day I saw you after I had been in bed so long.

That morning Mr. Gruffydd came to the house early and opened the door of the kitchen
so that the sun shone in all round him. Big he looked, and full of happy purpose.

“Good morning, Mrs. Morgan,” he said.

“Good morning, dear Mr. Gruffydd,” said my mother, in surprise. “There is good to
see you.”

“I have come for Huw,” he said, as though he was asking to take a loaf for old Mrs.
Llywarch.

“Huw?” my mother asked, and looked over the table at me with her eyebrows almost touching
this little blue cloth.

“Yes,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “this is the morning he has been waiting for.”

I looked at Mr. Gruffydd and knew. But my mother was still in fog with her.

“The daffodils are out, Mama,” I said.

“Oh, Huw,” my mother said, and put down the bread knife, and turned her head away.

“Where are your clothes, Huw?” he asked me, but quiet, and looking at my mother’s
back.

“Under my pillow, sir,” I said.

“Your pillow?” he said.

“For these months,” I said, “ready for to-day.”

“Come you, then,” he said, and smiling he was. “You shall bring back a posy fit for
a queen for your brave mother, is it?”

“Indeed I will,” I said, and back I pulled the pillow, and out came my clothes that
I had made ready ever since I had put my mind to the matter.

Pain there was, and a helpless feeling in all my bones, but I was determined to have
those clothes on. On they went, and no nonsense, though the stockings were big and
the trews too short, but I had grown and got thin, so it was no use to grumble.

There is a sight I must have looked when I put my legs out and stood up. But neither
Mr. Gruffydd nor my mother looked at me, so I was spared to blush and very thankful.

“Up on my back, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and bent his knees so that I could put my
arms about his neck. I shall never forget how shocked I was to find myself up on the
shoulders of a minister. It seemed wrong to be so familiar. But there I was, and carried
to the door.

“He will be back in two hours, Mrs. Morgan, my little one,” said Mr. Gruffydd.

“God bless you,” my mother said, and still not looking.

“Good-bye, our Mam,” I said, with my legs falling about at the back. “Get ready the
big pot for the daffodils. I will have an armful for you, and some for Bron.”

Outside, then, and through the blessed curtains of air, spun with morning mist and
sunshine, blown upon us by wind from the southeast and the draughts that played in
the Valley.

“Are you right, Huw?” Mr. Gruffydd asked me. “Am I too quick?”

“No indeed, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said. “Go, you.”

“Right,” he said. “Here is the road, and up by there are the daffodils. Tight, now.”

For the first few minutes I was shutting my eyes to get used to the sunshine, so raw
and pure and shining white. Then I got used to it and less tears came and I was able
to see without screwing up my eyes and having to blink.

The first thing I saw was the slag heap.

Big it had grown, and long, and black, without life or sign, lying along the bottom
of the Valley on both sides of the river. The green grass, and the reeds and the flowers,
all had gone, crushed beneath it. And every minute the burden grew, as cage after
cage screeched along the cables from the pit, bumped to a stop at the tipping pier,
and emptied dusty loads on the ridged, black, dirty back.

On our side of the Valley the heap reached to the front garden walls of the bottom
row of houses, and children from them were playing up and down the black slopes, screaming
and shouting, laughing in fun. On the other side of the river the chimney-pots of
the first row of houses could only just be seen above the sharp curving back of the
far heap, and all the time I was watching, the cable screeched and the cages tipped.
From the Britannia pit came a call on the hooter as the cages came up, as though to
remind the Valley to be ready for more filth as the work went on and on, year in and
year out.

“Is the pit allowed to do this to us, Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked him.

“Do what, my son?” Mr. Gruffydd asked.

“Put slag by here,” I said.

“Nowhere else to put it, my son,” he said. “Look up by there at the top of the mountain,
by the Glas Fryn. There are the daffodils, see.”

And indeed, there they were, with their green leaves a darker sharpness in the grass
about them, and the yellow blooms belling in the wind, up by the Glas Fryn and all
along the Valley, as far as I could turn my head to see.”

Gold may be found again, and men may know its madness again, but no one shall know
how I felt to see the goldness of daffodils growing up there that morning. The Glas
Fryn was the nearest place to our house where they grew. It was later that I pulled
bulbs to grow in our garden, but the garden was so small and the earth so blind with
dust from the slag that they gave up trying and died.

But that morning Mr. Gruffydd put me down among them all, close to them, where I could
take them in my hands to breathe the cool breath of them and give thanks to God.

Below us, the river ran sweet as ever, happy in the sun, but as soon as it met the
darkness between the sloping walls of slag it seemed to take fright and go spiritless,
smooth, black, without movement. And on the other side it came forth grey, and began
to hurry again, as though anxious to get away. But its banks were stained, and the
reeds and grasses that dressed it were hanging, and black, and sickly, ashamed of
their dirtiness, ready to die of shame, they seemed, and of sorrow for their dear
friend, the river.

“Will the salmon come up this year, Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked him.

He was quiet a moment, feeling for his pipe.

“I am told,” he said, “that no salmon have been seen these two years.”

“And no trout either, then?” I said.

“I am afraid not, Huw,” he said. “They cannot face that black stretch, there.”

“Good,” I said. “No one shall tell me again that fish have got no sense with them.
Pity, I do think, that more of us are not thinkers like the fish.”

“Collect your flowers, Huw,” he said. “Two hours I said to your Mama. She will be
waiting.”

There is pity that we cannot dig all round the growing flowers and take earth and
all with us. It is hurting to have to break the stems of blossoms and see them lose
their rich white blood only for the pleasure of putting them in a pot of water. Still,
I had promised, and there it was. So break them I did, an armful of them, and up on
Mr. Gruffydd’s back, and off home, down the mountain.

There is pleased were the people to see me, indeed. Every door was open, and as we
passed, the women ran out to wave to me and wish me well.

Up at our house, my mother was waiting with Bronwen and Angharad in the doorway.

“Well,” said my mother.

“Let me have him from you, Mr. Gruffydd,” Angharad said, and put her arms about my
waist, but I pushed her away.

“Go on with you, girl,” I said, “I am walking now.”

And walk I did, though a bit like an old spider with a drop too much in him. The wall
was my friend till I came to my father’s chair, and into that I fell.

“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and my mother was making noises under her breath.

“There is hungry I am,” I said.

“Wait you,” said my mother. “You shall have a breakfast like your father now this
minute. Cup of tea for Mr. Gruffydd, Angharad. You are standing there fast to the
floor, girl.”

Bronwen came in with the daffodils in the pots and beautiful she looked with the gold
shining into her face.

“Soon you shall take little Gareth for walks, is it, Huw?” she said, and pulling a
blossom out here, and pushing another in by there.

“No,” I said. “Soon I will be going to school and finishing and then down the pit
with Dada.”

“Why down the pit, Huw?” Mr. Gruffydd asked me. “Why not to school and college, then
university and then a doctor or a lawyer?”

“Yes,” said my mother. “Indeed that is beautiful. Dr. Huw Morgan, and your own house
and a lovely horse and trap. With a good black suit and a shirt with starch. Oh, there
is good, Huw, my little one. There is proud would I be.”

“I will not be a doctor, Mama,” I said. “Not six months ago and Dr. Richards said
I would never put my feet on the floor. This morning I went up on the mountain. Tomorrow
I will go and the next morning and all the mornings to come. I will not be a doctor.”

My mother gave Mr. Gruffydd his cup of tea, and started to hit sparks out of the fire,
so I knew she had plenty to say but holding it because of Mr. Gruffydd.

“Say what is in your mind, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, and smiling he was.

“There is a pack of obstinate donkeys I have got for boys,” my mother said, and angry,
too, turning to me and throwing the poker wherever it went. “Like old mules, they
are. If you say something that is good, no. If you say something that is bad, no.
Whatever you say, no. They are the ones who know. If Dr. Richards is an old fool,
does it mean that you cannot go to school and do better? Have sense, boy. You are
not old enough to talk.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and the bacon smelt so good it was sending spit bubbling in my
mouth.

“We shall see,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and he stood to go. “On Sunday, he shall come to
Chapel and sit in the choir. And he shall sing a solo. That will keep his mind awake
till then.”

“Oh, Mr. Gruffydd,” my mother said, “there is pleased Gwilym will be. Thank you, indeed.

“And no more talk of doctors or lawyers,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “There is more than enough
talking done by them without us wasting our time with them. To-morrow morning, Huw.”

“Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “and thank you.”

“God bless you, my son,” he said, and smiled at my mother and went.

Chapter Ten

W
ELL
,
I
disgraced myself for ever that Sunday I sang the solo, and I have never been sorry.

Every night of that week, as soon as my father was back from the pit and bathed and
a good supper inside him, he brought out the tuning-fork and practised with me. “Now
Thank We All Our God,” I sang, and before the first verse was over my father was in
tears with the music of it. And indeed I sang it because I meant it, not because it
was to be sung. Be without your legs for more than two years and then stand upright
to walk the earth again, and you will find your heart bleeding thanks with every step
you take.

On Sunday morning everybody was up early. When I looked out of the window while my
father was lighting the fire, I saw all the chimneys start rolling smoke almost together,
as though all had risen early to have a good seat.