How Green Was My Valley (28 page)

Angharad put her head in the window and Davy pretended to punch, and she shouted because
her head was fast in the small space and her hair falling about her, making it worse.

“Mr. Gruffydd is in the house,” she shouted, and the boys trying to pull her head
out. “Will you crack my skull, David Morgan?”

“Too hard,” Davy said. “Only a girl would put her old head in such a little place.
Is there a door or are you blind?”

“I was looking through the window, fool,” Angharad said. “Would I see anything through
a door?”

“Your nose will have you in the toils, young woman,” my father said. “Break the window
and take it from her pin money.”

“O, Dada,” Angharad said, trying to look through her hair, and trying hard to cry,
but laughing instead, “there is nasty you are to me. These old boys can do what they
like but we shall have nothing only hard words and take it from her pin money. Huw
has had more for his punches than I have had for six weeks. I wish I had been born
an old boy. I would have punches all day, indeed.”

“Leave her there,” my father said, “and let her think over what she has said.”

So poor Angharad was left with her head in the window, trying to cry, but laughing
instead, and Davy pinched her bottom as he passed, but he got such a kick that he
was limping all night with him.

“Well, Huw,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “some trouble with the Philistines, then?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“How did this pencil-box come home like this?” Mr. Gruffydd asked me. “I asked you
to take care of it.”

“From the way he came home,” my father said, “I wonder he had sense to bring it with
him.”

“Let Huw answer, Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Property must not be broken like
this without some action taken to stop it happening twice. Huw had it in his care.
He was not to blame. Who was?”

“Those who left their marks on him,” said my father.

“I was out of the room when it was done, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “but I said I would
fight all of them, and I will. So they shall have their payment for it, whoever they
were.”

“Kennel-sweepings,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and only kennel-sweepings could smash a little
box like this. I am in a mind to cut myself a handful of twigs and go down there to-morrow
and take the skin off their backs.”

“Good,” said my mother, “and burn the old place up.”

“Hisht, girl,” said my father. “Better to let Huw fight his own way, Mr. Gruffydd.
I am just as able to go down there, and God help them if I did. But it is Huw’s fight.
Not ours.”

“It is our fight, Mr. Morgan,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and putting the box on the table.
“Huw can teach them he is better with his fists, but he will never teach them the
sanctity of property. The vandal is taught physical fear by superior violence, but
he cannot be taught to think.”

“Will twigs do any better?” asked my father, and pulling on his pipe not to smile.

“Far better than fists,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and starting to laugh, “for fists are
between man and man. But twigs and reason are the universal law, good for all men.
Fists will teach you to fight better if you have heart and head, and your fists will
teach other men to let you have your share of the road in peace. But twigs and a talk
will teach you to think and live better. And that is why I am in a mind to go down
there to-morrow morning.”

“I am going to mend the box, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said. “There will be no signs when I
have done with it. Like new, indeed.”

“Come you, then,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “It makes me sick in the heart to see it like
this.”

Outside in the back we went, with lamps, and poor Angharad still with her head stuck
in the window.

“Who is this?” Mr. Gruffydd asked, with the lamp high to see.

“Angharad,” I said.

Mr. Gruffydd smoothed the hair from her eyes and she looked up at him, with the light
of the lamp throwing gold upon her.

I knew she was laughing, but she looked as though she were crying, with golden tears
unsteady in her eyes, and her eyes gone lovely blue to call for pity, big, and round,
like a little girl wanting to be carried, and turning down her mouth, only a little
not to be ugly, and a tremble in the chin, and with hair almost the colour of a new
penny about her face and hanging down three feet, with stray ones shining like the
strings of a harp across her eyes and down her cheeks.

Mr. Gruffydd looked at her and I saw his face move, but how it moved there is no saying.
He put down the lamp and took the bar above her neck in one hand.

“Say if I hurt,” he said, but Angharad shook her head.

He put his feet flat after making little moves to find the right hold, and then with
one pull he tore the bar and the top of the frame clean out of its place, nails, screws,
and all.

“Now then,” he said to me, not looking at Angharad, “you mend the box and I will mend
the window.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Thank you, Mr. Gruffydd,” Angharad said, looking in where the window had been, and
feeling her neck. “There is strong you are.”

“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “I will have the pincers after you, Huw, my son.”

Sandpaper took the ink stains from the bare white wood on the inside of the box, and
made it white as a sheet again, but only with hard rubbing and patience at the corners.
A new screw for the pivot, and a splice for the second tray, and my box was together
again, but still chipped on the outside and scratched on the lid. That was another
job altogether. Small pieces of wood, so small they were hard to see, I put in all
the chips, and the scratches I filled in with splinters of the same colour as the
woods in the pattern. Indeed, when I had finished there was nothing to show that the
little box had come to harm. But I knew, and Mr. Gruffydd knew, and so did his father
and grandfather, for there were little marks all over it that had never been there,
and should never have been there, the marks of little wounds that would never heal.
For wood is jealous of its age, and quick to make a new-comer feel its place.

Mr. Gruffydd had been watching, for quite a long time, but I knew nothing of it until
I had finished and put the box in a clean place to look at it, and then looked at
him and found him sitting on the bench and smiling.

“You are a carpenter, Huw,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Did you finish the window?”

“Well, indeed,” he said, “do you think I would let a boy beat me? Look by there.”

A fine job of the window Mr. Gruffydd had made, every bit as good as Clydach Howell
the millwright could have done, with joins you could see only if you knew where to
look, and the nails and screws gone to nowhere but still there.

“There is a carpenter you are, too, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, and meant.

“You shall say that when I have made the furniture for my new house,” Mr. Gruffydd
said.

“Shall I help you, sir?” I asked him, for always I had wanted to make good furniture
for the house.

“No one if not you, my son,” he said. “Is your face hurting now?”

“I had forgotten,” I said, and indeed I had.

Then Angharad called me to open the door, and came in with tea, and laver bread, and
butter and milk cheese, and lettuce and cresses.

“Mama said to eat while you are working,” she said, “but if you have finished please
to come to the house. And if you will have beer instead of tea, there is plenty, and
Dada says it is cold from the jar and good enough to drink to the Queen in.”

“I will drink to the Queen,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and in the house. Give me the tray.”

Mr. Gruffydd lifted the load from Angharad, and she stood to put some plates in place
that had slipped, and touched a cup to bring the handle to its proper place, and put
a spoon here, and a fork there, and the salt pot over between the milk-jug and teapot,
and all the time Mr. Gruffydd looked down at her head, because he knew, and I knew,
there was no need for any of it.

“Now then,” she said, and looked up at Mr. Gruffydd, smiling.

She was going to say more but she stopped and her smile went, and she looked, and
a dullness passed across her eyes, not a dullness of darkness, but a dullness of light,
and all the time Mr. Gruffydd looked down at her straight, and then she blinked and
pretended it was the lamp and put her hand to her eyes and turned away.

“There is strong that old lamp is,” she said. “Go you, Huw. It is late, boy.”

In the house I went, and Mr. Gruffydd behind, and my father coming to take the tray
from him.

“What next?” he said, in surprise. “They will have you scrubbing a floor in a minute,
wait you.”

“Many a floor I have scrubbed, too,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Did I hear we were going
to drink the health of the Queen.”

“Poured and waiting,” said my father. “Tea is good in its place, but a good swallow
of beer is good, too. This my wife made, see, and you will never taste better in your
life. Huw, a cup full.”

“Up high, then,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “I give you Her Britannic Majesty, our Royal mother,
and may her crown rest lightly. Gentlemen, Victoria.”

“Victoria,” said we all, and the beer went down beautiful, indeed.

“Now, supper,” said my mother, coming from the fire with the pan, “and eat plenty.
Huw, bed.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and gave good night to them all. Angharad came upstairs to put
the last of the hot and cold water poultice on my face, and when she had finished,
she put a little handful of sweets on the chair by the bed.

“For school,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Has Mr. Gruffydd ever said anything to you about me?” she asked me, but quickly,
as though she had thought long before saying it, and anxious not to think she had
said it, or even thought it.

“No,” I said. “Nothing. About what, then?”

“No matter,” she said, quickly again, and looking down at me but not seeing me, for
there was a smile in her eyes and heat in her face and her breath was quick but quiet.
“If he does, will you tell me, boy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Good night, now.”

I saw her face as she bent to blow out the candle with her mouth in the shape of a
kiss, still the smile in the eyes, but now as a mother will look at her child that
cries in the arms of another woman, softer, and with more of want.

Not one of the boys had a word to say to me on the second day at school, though they
looked at me with their hands over their mouths not to laugh. I was a picture, indeed,
yellow and blue with bruises, and swollen about the eyes and nose. But no matter,
I made sure of the boys who laughed, and added them to the list of boys I had made
sure to have at the end of my fists.

Mr. Motshill stopped me after prayers and the hymn and asked me where I had the injury.

“Fighting,” I said.

“You see what fighting brings you,” he said. “Far better to behave yourself. Am I
to expect a visit from your parents?”

“No,” I said. “My father said it was my fight.”

“Oh,” he said, and took off his glasses to give them a polish, and winked his eyes
over my head. “If you feel unwell during the day, go over to Mrs. Motshill at the
school house and lie down.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Remember this, Morgan,” he said, and put his hand on my shoulder, “I am here to help
you. I want you to win a scholarship to Oxford University. You have it within your
power. But your fists will only hinder you. Be warned, and work hard.”

Why is it that kindness, even from a harsh man, brings tears to the eyes, I wonder.
But there it is. When I went in Standard Six room, Mr. Jonas saw me trying to wipe
my eyes and on went the smile, and down went my heart inside me again.

“Well, upon my soul,” he said, in his English that was too English, “it is crying.”

He came to stand near me, and look me up and down.

“Evidently its mother took my message to heart,” he said. “Let me see your nose-rag.”

I took out my handkerchief.

“Surprise on surprise,” he said, while I looked at him. “Perhaps that hammering will
teach you that your ways are not ours. There is no wonder that civilized men look
down upon Welshmen as savages. I shudder to think of your kind growing up. However,
I shall endeavour to do my utmost with you, helped by a stick. Remember that. And
keep your eyes off me, you insolent little blackguard.”

Then he started to teach history, and I sat.

I think he took a hatred for me because he felt that I distrusted him, and it hurt
to think that a boy would not have him at his value of himself, for he liked to think
he was much bigger than he was, so his self pride troubled him, and made him vicious.

But his greatest trouble was his Welsh blood, so ashamed he was of it, and so hard
he tried to cover it.

Nothing that was of Wales or the Welsh was any good or had any goodness in his eyes.
For him, even in his teachings, the science of history had a gap between the Acts
of the Apostles and the Domesday Book. That Norman bastard, who skinned the snout
on the good sands of the south, who sired an English aristocracy, was godfather to
Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions.

If he remembered Rome, it was only as a place where Nero burnt Christians. He tried
to forget that his fathers laboured with the sword through centuries to keep Roman
feet off their roads, and he was willing to forget that Rome broke its back, and Vikings,
Danes, and Goths broke their hearts, only trying to keep his fathers from fighting
for what was their own, and if his fathers failed it was not because their fighting
spirit had gone from them, but because the flower of them had fallen in battle, and
their women could not bear males enough to fill the ranks.

Of such, Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions was ashamed.

And the day we had it out I remember well, for it was the day of my first fight, just
after Dilys Pritchard died.

Chapter Seventeen

“I
AM THE RESURRECTION
and the Life,” said Mr. Gruffydd in his voice that was the voice of a man, noble
of depth and beauty.