How Green Was My Valley (42 page)

“Why?” I asked her.

“Why, why, why,” Bron said, and laughing. “Always why, from the old man. Because of
the look of him, boy.”

“Well,” I said, stupid as a brush, “I see nothing wrong with him, Bron. He is the
same, to-day as yesterday.”

“Empty he is, boy,” Bron said. “Empty as a split pea pod, and it will come back on
us, you shall see.

I remembered the afternoons, the wood, the tools, the foot-rule, the teas, and the
smell of hot glue.

“Angharad, then,” I said, “is it?”

“Tea,” said Bronwen, “and no stains on the cloth if you please. O, Huw, think. To-morrow
I will wear my new costume. There is good. I would go to sleep now and wake in time
to put it on.”

“And my long trews, too,” I said.

“Yes,” Bron said. “A man you are now.”

She was looking at me, and smiling the old smile. And yet, while she smiled, and I
smiled back, her mouth trembled and her smile began to go and in its going she came
to blush, and her eyes changed, and her eyelids flickered shut. She was going redder
and redder.

And I began to blush, though for what, I cannot say, and the cup and saucer shook
in my fist, and the cup rattled, so I put it down, but still Bronwen was red, and
still she sat, not moving, looking down into the sugar basin, and the silence grew
so thick that perhaps a man might rest his weight against it and not make it break.

“Go now, then, Huw,” she said, in a little voice that cracked to a whisper, in the
throat.

So I went, and shut the back door quietly, and stood to look up at the mountain that
was blacker than the darkness, but no blacker than the misery of questions in my mind.
Nothing had been said, nothing done, to cause such a happening. Yet there I stood,
looking up at the mountain to borrow some of his peace, with the wind lively about
me, and coldness blowing through me to take the place of the heat I had just left.

But another heat was in me that now I felt, and putting my mind to this fresh burden,
I found a risen newness pillared in my middle, yet, for all its newness, so much a
part of me that no surprise I had, but only a quick, sharp, clear glorying that rose
to a shouting might of song in every part of me, and I raised my arms and drew tight
the muscles of my body, and as the blood within me thudded through my singing veins,
a goldness opened wide before me, and I knew I had become of Men, a Man.

Then the goldness passed, the cold pierced through, and doubt came down blacker than
before, and misery with it, for quickly, as the vision came, so it went, and I was
cold, shamed, and afraid, watching the sounding darkness and wondering how men could
go about their daily works, happy, having no care, thinking nothing of this mightiness
within, mindful only of their bellies, their comforts, and their pockets.

And I wanted to be as I had been yesterday, a boy again, without the heaviness of
doubt, this pressing fear, this new treachery that lifted to realms of singing gold,
and in a little space, flung to pits of night.

Courage come to me from the height of the mountain, and with it came the dignity of
manhood, and knowledge of the Tree of Life, for now I was a branch, running with the
vital blood, waiting in the darkness of the Garden for some unknown Eve to tempt me
with the apple of her beauty, that we might know our nakedness, and bring forth sons
and daughters to magnify the Lord our God.

I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me, those who are to come. I looked
back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front, to see
my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.

And their eyes were my eyes.

As I felt, so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as to-morrow and for
ever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning, and no
end, and the hand of his father grasped my father’s hand, and his hand was in mine,
and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched
from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and is not yet, raised their hands to show the
link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, had in the Image,
fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the eternal Father.

I was of them, they were of me, and in me, and I in all of them.

“Huw,” Ianto said, “why are you standing there, boy? Are you cracked?”

“No,” I said. “Watching the mountain, I was.”

“Well, come in and watch a couple of pots, will you?” he said. “The girls have gone
from the house so we will have to do it or go starving.”

“Where is Ceridwen, then?” I asked him.

“Getting married to-morrow,” Ianto said, “and doing a bit of queening in the front
room. Mama is in there, too, with the boys. And Bron has gone to meet Ivor.”

“She was in the house, now just,” I said.

“No,” Ianto said. “I saw her go. All cloak and heels, she was, as though Ivor was
king of Babylon. So we have got a tidy bit of work in the kitchen as an extra blessing,
boy. To hell with the women. Never where you want them, or when.”

So into the kitchen to do some washing up, and put big potatoes in the hot coals with
cheese and butter to roast, and make hot a couple of pans for the small fry, and the
saucepans for the potch. Then to lay the tables, a job I have never liked. I do like
to sit at a table properly laid, for I think the sight of knives and forks in their
places, with glasses and the good furniture of eating, gives something more to the
appetite, for your fingers have an itch to be using them. And nothing more I hate
than a table laid without care. Stains on a cloth, or wrinkles, or a knife not in
the straight, a fork turned aside, a spoon put the wrong way up, will have my thoughts
in a knot until they are put right. But I would rather scrub a floor than lay a table,
with the fetch and carry of handfuls of cutlery, and piles of plates, and glasses,
and cruets, and laying a cloth so that too much is not on one side and too little
on the other, and the pulling this way and that until you are ready to roll it into
a ball and push it in the fire, for my mother starched her cloths, and polished her
tables, and laying a cloth became an exercise in patience almost coming to a waste
of time, though worth the trouble when done.

Out to the back to mix the potch, then. All the vegetables were boiled slowly in their
jackets, never allowed to bubble in boiling, for then the goodness is from them, and
they are full of water, and a squash, tasteless to the mouth, without good smell,
an offence to the eye, and an insult to the belly. Firm in the hand, skin them clean,
and put them in a dish and mash with a heavy fork, with melted butter and the bruisings
of mint, potatoes, swedes, carrots, parsnips, turnips and their tops, then chop small
purple onions very fine, with a little head of parsley, and pick the leaves of small
watercress from the stems, and mix together. The potch will be a creamy colour with
something of pink, having a smell to tempt you to eat there and then, but wait until
it has been in the hot oven for five minutes with a cover, so that the vegetables
can mix in warm comfort together and become friendly, and the mint can go about his
work, and for the cress to show his cunning, and for the goodness all about to soften
the raw, ungentle nature of the onion.

By that time the small fry are bouncing together in the hot butter drips, and coming
browner every moment like children in the sun, and shining with joy to smell so good.
As soon as they are the right, deep colour of brown, and still without cracks of heat,
when the small sausages are the same colour all round, give them a turn of the fingers
of thyme and sage, just a turn of the fingers, mix the panful well, and put all on
a big, blue willow pattern dish.

Bring the roast potatoes from the coals, and you will find the butter and cheese gone
into them with as much pleasure as they will soon go into you, and rest them among
green leaves of lettuce, and new radishes.

Now call everybody quickly to the table, and eat plenty.

There is good to see happy faces round a table full of good food. Indeed, for good
sounds, I will put the song of knives and forks next to the song of man.

My mother was the last to sit, as usual, and the first to notice an empty plate or
an idle knife and fork. Her eyes were all over, seeing all, missing nothing, and on
her plate the smallest meal of any, yet quick to scold if a morsel was left, or a
third helping refused by one of us.

“Did you have good dinners in London?” my mother asked Owen.

“No, Mama,” Owen said. “We went to cook shops most of the days.”

“Roast beef and mashed,” Gwilym said, “with cabbage and Yorkshire, and jam pudding,
cup of tea, sevenpence.”

“Sevenpence?” my mother said, in a whisper. “Goodness me, boy, were you rolling in
money?”

“No,” Owen said, “but it is dear in London.”

“Are you going back, Owen?” Ianto asked him.

“No, indeed,” Owen said. “If Mama and Dada will have me back.”

“This is home to you,” my father said.

“Glad to have a good sleep, I will be,” Gwilym said. “Nothing but night work the last
month and no sleep last night or the night before.”

“So what will you do, my sons?” my father asked.

“Down the pit,” said Owen.

“Yes, yes,” Gwilym said. “And happy to be back after that old tunnel.”

“Working in a tunnel, Owen?” Ianto asked him. “Which one then?”

“They are making an underground railway for London,” Owen said. “But no planning to
it. They will make fools of themselves in time to come.”

“I suppose you told a foreman that,” my father said, loading his pipe and smiling.

“Owen was the foreman,” Gwilym said, “and he told the surveyor.”

“Eh, dear,” my father said. “So you had the sack?”

“Not for that,” Owen said. “He was rude to me, so I had to instruct him in courtesy.”

“Ah,” said my father, “then, it was, you had the sack, is it?”

“No,” Gwilym said, “the surveyor had the sack. Owen had a rise in his wages and a
bigger gang. I had the sack.”

“O,” said my father, “you had the sack, did you? Why?”

“Wages and conditions for the men,” said Gwilym, very hang-dog and talking to his
plate. “I started a Union. They found out when we joined the Dockers parade, but I
told them to go to hell. But one night I called a meeting after work, and the boss
came in and I was sacked on the spot. So Owen left, too. No need. Then we saw Iestyn’s
notice about the wedding, and the bit in the paper about Davy and Wyn, and we said
Home.”

“John Burns and Cunninghame Graham are getting things done, then?” Davy asked.

“The best Union of the lot, now,” Owen said. “And there is a man is John Burns. What
is going on down here?”

“Anything but what is sense,” Ianto said. “Sliding scale, that is all you will hear.
The fools say that sliding scale wages allow them steady work. They cannot be got
to look at figures. Nobody will look at the royalties going to butterbellies and lordlings.”

“Why not?” asked Owen. He was broader, blacker in the beard, shorter and curlier in
the hair, but the same strong grey eye. “The men of the valleys are not fools.”

“No,” said Davy. “Not fools, but too damned well behaved.”

“I will thank you not to use any language inside the house,” my father said. “Please
to remember that we made a bargain with the owners on sliding scale. It is for us
to honour it. So be silent about your Union. Plenty of time for it when you find yourself
cheated.”

“Now, now,” my mother said, “no more words. Did you go to Chapel in London, Owen?”

“Yes, indeed we did, Mama,” Owen said. “Every single Sunday.”

“Castle Street,” Gwilym said, “and good too. The choir is singing before the Queen
soon.”

“There is beautiful,” my mother said, and smiling at us, but not seeing any of us.
“Singing before the good little Queen. I would think their voices might come to be
like angels to sing for her. Pray day and night to be in good voice for her, I would.”

“When is the Eisteddfod, now?” Owen asked.

“Six weeks,” said my father. “Ivor is in with his choir.”

“Choir?” Gwilym said, with big eyes. “Ivor? Since when, Dada?”

“Weeks, now,” said my father. “And I shall look to see all of us standing in it, too.
Davy is soloist.”

“How many in the choir?” asked Gwilym, laughing. “If I will see Ivor waving a piece
of stick, it will be my death. Twenty-five all told?”

“One thousand, three hundred and fifty male voices,” my father said, and suddenly
the room was still. “Such mightiness has not been heard since the Coming of the Dove.”

“Bigger than Caradog?” Owen said, and hummed in surprise. “We heard good choirs at
Crystal Palace, too. But the tenors were no good.”

“Tin trumpets,” Gwilym said. “Mice could shout louder.”

“Wait till you hear our tenors,” my father said. “Gabriel have put aside his trumpet
in shame.”

“I will enjoy to open my lungs again,” Owen said. “But where is Mr. Gruffydd?”

“Working,” I said. “He will be glad to see you to-morrow, he told me to tell you.”

“O,” said Owen, and looked at my mother, and we were all quiet again.

“Dada,” Gwilym said, “how is it Angharad came to marry young Evans? Was she senseless?”

“Why senseless?” my father said, in quiet, looking at his pipe, and my mother making
a face at Gwilym and making it straight again when my father looked up at her.

“Well,” Owen said, “he was always a lout.”

“A purse-proud ninny, him,” said Gwilym. “And no better for a bit of Oxford, either.”

“He is your brother-in-law, now, at all events,” said my father, “and Angharad has
made a good marriage. She will never want, neither will her children.”

“I hope he does something about his property when he comes back,” Ianto said. “Old
Evans could do what he did because he spoke his men’s language. They will stand no
nonsense from this one, though.”

“There is a petition going in this week,” said Davy.