How Green Was My Valley (50 page)

“It is my fault in the first place,” my father said, and very sad. “I told him to
fight, so there is it. But it is still disgrace.”

“No disgrace to leave the old place,” my mother said, “I have had my mind against
it from the start.”

“Expelled from school is disgrace,” my father said. “Right or wrong, disgrace. And
I had thought to have him a solicitor at the least.”

“He can still take the examinations,” Ivor said. “It says there is nothing to stop
him.”

“Send him to school in Town,” Davy said. “He can find good lodgings.”

“There are no good lodgings to be had on the earth,” my mother said, “except only
at home. So now then.”

“Let him take the examinations,” Owen said, “and see how he comes out. Then decide.”

“The decision is to be made to-night,” my father said, “and then kept. No use to go
from month to month. I want him to go in the law or doctoring or something good. He
has got a brain, so nothing is to stop him, there.”

“Ask him what he would like,” Bron said, looking at me.

“Well,” said my father.

“I will go down the colliery with you,” I said to him. “No examination and no doctoring
and no law.”

“Now then, for you,” said my mother.

“Better for you to be silent,” said my father. “Be guided, Huw.”

“The colliery,” I said, feeling the weight and points of all their eyes, and a window
opening inside me, “I will cut coal.”

“Just like the others,” said my father, “obstinate and stupid. You will take the examination,
boy, and pass it. University, then, and a good try for some respectable job, not coal
cutting.”

“What is not respectable about coal cutting?” my mother said, and her glasses coming
off in a sign of trouble. “Are you and his brothers a lot of old jail-birds, then?”

“O, Beth,” said my father, with tiredness closing his eyes, “leave it, now. I want
the boy to have the best. I want him to have a life that is free of the foolishness
we are having. Where he can be his own master in decency and quiet, and not pull one,
pull the other, master and men, all the time.”

“If he will grow to be a man as good as you and his good brothers,” my mother said,
“I will rest happy in the grave. Since when have you fallen out of love with the colliery?”

“Beth, Beth,” my father said, and anger coming, “I am thinking of the boy. It was
different in our time. There was good money and fairness and fair play for all. Not
like now. And I was never a scholar. He is. And he should put good gifts to good use.
What use to take brain down a coal mine?”

“O,” said my mother, sweet with ice, “so you are all a lot of old monkeys going from
the house, then? No brains at all. Well, well. And I am keeping a madhouse here. And
I am mad, too, I do suppose. And only one with sense in the family, and him sent from
a school I would think twice to keep pigs in.”

“Beth,” my father said, “it is his future I am worried for. Why should he be a miner
if he can be something else?”

“Why not?” my mother said. “There are men as good underground as on top, and perhaps
a bit better. If he wants to be a doctor, good. If he wants to be a solicitor, good.
If he wants to be something else, good. And if he wants to go to the collieries with
his Dada, I will kiss him, and say good.”

“He shall have himself to blame,” said my father, and looking at me. “And if I will
hear a word of complaining from him, I will hit him to the ground.”

“The colliery, Dada,” I said, “I will work.”

“Good, my little one,” my mother said.

“That is the settler, then,” my father said, and opened his hands wide. “He shall
wait till there is an opening. Then work.”

“Good,” said my mother.

“Good,” said my father, “I am going to get drunk.”

And while my mother cried, he went.

Mr. Gruffydd said nothing to me, for a wonder, about being expelled. Not a single
word. He only nodded his head, and looked up at the mountain.

“Have you said you were sorry to Mr. Jonas?” he asked me.

“No, sir,” I said, and surprised, for it was the last thing in the world I would do.

“Then go and say so,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and then come down to the house, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

So back over the mountain I went, into the other valley and found Mr. Jonas’ address
from the caretaker.

“Are you going over there to finish off the job?” he said.

“No,” I said, “only to say I am sorry.”

“Useless,” he said, and shaking his head, and scratching his leg. “You will never
get back in his good books by saying you are sorry.”

“Not for the sake of good books,” I said, and ready to go home straight and say nothing.

“Then what use to say sorry?” he asked, smiling with no laugh in it. “A waste of time,
good shoe leather, and no sense. To him, anyhow.”

“I will say I am sorry,” I said, “without advice.”

“You will end with a rope,” he shouted after me, all down the street, and I could
hear him telling people who I was.

There was a heaviness upon me as I thought of Time To Come, and I wondered if Mr.
Gruffydd had been a prophet when he said I would end on the gallows, for here was
another of the same opinion. Strange it is to think of Time To Come. I thought then,
as I walked through the streets of red brick houses to find Mrs. Jonas, of Time To
Come. I tried to think what I would be, and what I would be doing in ten, and twenty,
and thirty and forty years. But here I am, sitting on a bed, and still thinking of
Time To Come, and still as wise.

You never saw a house fit anybody as his house fitted Mr. Jonas. Of smooth red brick,
it was, built solid, and new, the colour of raw beef, without a blemish. A front door
with splendid bit of graining with brown and yellow paints, six little windows of
stained glass in the top half, a letter-box that was a yawn of brass, and in Church
Script on the fanlight, with the letters pushed up a bit to have room, Briercliffe.
A window that swole out of the house on the ground floor, with lace curtains, and
a flat window, then, over the door.

And for the first time I noticed that the front doors were all shut, right down the
street, even though it was a hot day.

I knocked, and the door opened with a noise to make you hold your teeth, and Mrs.
Jonas looked at me with her eyebrows up.

“Good afternoon,” I said, “I am Huw Morgan from the school.”

“Come to ask after Mr. Jonas-Sessions, is it?” she said, and very kind, but serious.
“Please to tell them he is still bad and very sore with him, but soon well again,
I hope.”

“I have come to say I am sorry,” I said, and watched a year of different feelings
come into her face and pass. Her hair was in a small knot on top of her head and curving
up from her face. A white blouse with a high neck and a brooch, and a black skirt
that pushed the hall mats out of place when she walked.

She looked, and I looked.

Then she took a good breath, and let it go.

“Come in,” she said, and held the door wider.

In I went, and again the noise from the door, and a push, and another good push, till
it was shut.

The smell inside, with curtains drawn and doors shut, was a bit like Chapel with helpings
of cabbage, Irish stew, yellow soap, and the breathings of many hangings of cloth
and pots of growing leaves, well soaked.

“Wait here,” she said, and went upstairs like the wind among grass, and opened a door
on the landing. I heard Mr. Jonas sharp in the voice, then quieter. She spoke for
minutes, and waited, and I waited, and the house waited, and the door made noises
in its sleep.

Then she came out and leaned over the stairs.

“Come you,” she said, “only for a minute, and a privilege, mind.”

So up I went, with seas running wild in my belly and hitting the breath out of me.
Inside the small room, dark with pulled curtains, and warm on the face, a fan of crinkled
paper in the fire-place, window shut, smells of carbolic and used bedclothes and hot
breath gone cool, and vinegar.

Mr. Jonas was sitting up with a bandage about his eyes and a muffler round his mouth,
a nightcap on his head and a sticking-plaster on his right-hand knuckles, that he
lifted for Mrs. Jonas to close the door.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you want a pardon, do you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am sorry for what I did, Mr. Jonas.”

“Not a bit of use to me,” he said. “You deserved expulsion, and I insisted on it or
I would have prosecuted you. Lick my boots and you shall have no pardon from me or
word to Mr. Motshill, either.”

“Not a pardon I want,” I said, “only to say I am sorry.”

“Look here,” he said, “I know your sort too well. Humbugs. A vice with all of you.
You humbug yourselves and you humbug others. But I know you. And I am sick of you.
Damned lot of cant.”

“I am sorry,” I said, for there was shaking in his voice not good to hear, and the
voice not strong as usual.

“Sorry, my God,” he said. “A hundred yards from the house and everybody in town will
hear you neighing. I had you brought up here just to tell you what I thought of you,
you gutter-bred rat. Now get out.”

He could have said anything to me and I would have said nothing back. I was so filled
with surprise to be called a humbug.

“Why am I a humbug, Mr. Jonas?” I asked him.

He was looking at me from under the bandage, with his head up. I could just see blue
hurt flesh, and I was sorrier than ever.

“Why?” he said, and sent breath from his nose with impatience. “As an illustration,
your school record. You deliberately tried to ruin my name with Mr. Motshill, and
since the devil is kind to his own, you were quite successful for a time. For a time.
It may be some consolation to you to know that I shall be teaching Standard Six again
when I return.”

“But why am I a humbug?” I asked him.

“Because you pretend to be what you are not,” he said, and in a temper to take the
voice from him. “But why should I expect anything else? After all, look at your background.
As I told Mr. Motshill, why be surprised? Coal miners. Living like hogs, with nothing
in life but beer and bruisers and using the Chapel as a blind. Welsh. Good God, what
a tribe.”

“But why am I a humbug, Mr. Jonas?” I asked him again.

“Get out,” he said, “you make a murderous attack on me presumably because I check
the use of jargon in school, and yet you have the audacity to question me in English.
Simon-pure humbug.”

“You started in English,” I said, “I thought you never spoke Welsh or I would speak
it to you.”

“Look here, Morgan,” he said, and shifting on his elbow, as though he would throw
me out as soon as finished, “there is no reason why I should talk to you like this,
and God knows why I should do it. But I want to tell you this before you go. Welsh
never was a language, but only a crude means of communication, between tribes of barbarians
stinking of woad. If you want to do yourself some good, stop troubling your tongue
with it.”

“Oh,” I said, and nothing else I could think of, except my mother and father and Bron.

“Yes,” he said, “oh, English. The language of the Queen and all nobility. Welsh. Good
God Almighty, the very word is given to robbers on race-courses.”

“But you are Welsh, Mr. Jonas,” I said.

“I had the misfortune to be born in the country,” he said.

“No mistake about that,” I said, and standing. “Welsh is in your voice and in your
speech, too, and hatred will never change them for you.”

“Get out,” he said, “get out at once.”

“I wish I could have the tongue of Dr. Johnson,” I said, “only for a minute. I would
hit you harder than I have with fists. You would never rise from your bed. I would
strike you dumb and paralyse you. I am not sorry for what I did. I wish I had done
more. I only came because Mr. Gruffydd asked me to.”

“Ruth,” he was shouting. “Ruthie.”

“Live in hell,” I said, “and when you are dead, go there.”

I was down the stairs quick, and Mrs. Jonas picking up her skirts to come up.

“What did you do to him?” she said, and pulled me by the arm.

“Nothing,” I said. “Only told him to live in hell.”

“What right have you got to tell a man to live in hell?” she asked me and ready to
fly at my face with her shaking fingers, “you wicked devil, you, putting him in pain
and then telling him to live in hell. Go you and live there before I will kill you.”

“Ruth who, were you, before to marry?” I asked her, and her mouth that was open to
say more closed again, and her eyes emptied, looking from side to side in wonder,
and a hand went to her cheek, and I felt the heat going from her.

“Morgan,” she said, in a small voice of surprise. “Ruth Morgan, I was. Why, then?”

“Good,” I said, and went from the house, with noise at the door again, and laughing
all the way down the street. Elijah was right that time, for I was neighing still,
up on top of the mountain.

“He was mistaken,” Mr. Gruffydd said, when I told him. “Welsh, they call us, from
the Saxon word waelisc, meaning a foreigner. About the race-course, I cannot tell
you. But if some of our fathers were a bit ready with their hands and quick in the
legs the English must blame themselves. Perhaps most of them never heard of the laws
they made against us. You cannot blame ignorant men. You might as well kick a dog
for not wishing good morning.”

“Why did Mr. Jonas call me a humbug, then?” I asked him.

“Sticks and stones shall break my bones,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “Mr. Jonas should look
home. Never trouble with people who call names, Huw. They are the infantile, the half-grown.
And a man has got to have an inner knowledge and experience of the science of humbug
before to honour another with the term. Remember, Huw. Be still, and know that I am
God. Worry about nothing, especially the tongues of others.”

“Why do you worry, Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked him, and hot with sorrow as soon as it was
out. His eyes carried loads of darkness, and he saw with tiredness, and with patience
that was willed, but not felt.