How Green Was My Valley (53 page)

But I had a letter in my pocket from Owen to Blodwen, to be given to her in secret.
Only messengers of princes know how to feel so important as I felt that day.

Over to Tyn-y-Coed I went, and in to find Mrs. Nicholas putting asters in the copper
jug on the hall table.

“Well,” she said, with something of sourness.

“Miss Evans, please,” I said.

“She have gone from the house,” she said, and started to hum.

“I will wait,” I said.

“Not with those boots on this floor,” she said. “It is with polish for the feet of
gentry. Kitchen round the back.”

“I will be in front,” I said, and went out.

I saw Blodwen coming round the house with flowers in her arms, and with gloves and
shears straight from the garden. There is pretty she looked in her big hat with flowers
and roses, and red and yellow, in a bunch in her arms.

“Huw,” she said, and stopping, bent forward a bit, with a big smile. “What a pleasant
surprise.”

“Owen has gone to London,” I said, with quiet, so that any ears in the house might
burst, but no matter. “Say nothing. He gave me this letter, and he said for you to
say nothing, nothing to anybody.”

She gave me the flowers to hold, and opened the letter as though it was a job she
could have done without. But then she read, and smiles came back twice as strong,
and even some pink toward the end.

“O, Huw,” she said, with laugh, “how glad I am. Tell your mother, will you, that I
shall be in London on Monday? A sudden call.”

“Good,” I said.

“And tell her,” she said, and the smile had gone, “if nobody else has, that Iestyn
sails for South Africa in three weeks.”

“Is he a soldier, then?” I asked her, and nearly dead with surprise.

“Gracious, no,” she said. “Something to do with coal for the Navy. Now then, tea for
Huw.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, “and then back, quick. Night shift, me.”

“I have sworn to have you out of that pit, Huw,” she said. “And before you are much
older. We shall see.”

We did, too.

But not as Blodwen thought, bless her heart.

“Yes,” my mother said, when I told her what Blodwen had said, “Angharad is coming
home while he is away. Say nothing outside.”

Chapter Thirty

C
EINWEN
, then, on Saturday afternoon, and me in my best brown tweed, with a buttonhole of
rose, red, with a smell like the mists of Paradise.

Here comes the trap, the old one, with the paint worn off, and grey with the weather,
and the old mare smiling and lifting her big knees as awkwardly as ever she did.

And Ceinwen.

Standing up, waving the whip, in a dress of blue, and a long blue coat, and a big
hat sitting on top of a rick of new hay. No plaits. No hair hanging loose. Up.

A woman.

But still the smile, and still the eyes, and O, still the kiss.

“Huw,” she said, and her face as though with a light inside it, and her voice coming
fresh as from a thousand miles away, “there is grown you are, boy.”

“Your hair is up,” I said.

“This long time,” she said. “Let us hide the trap, quickly.”

“And tie the mare,” I said. “No more slipping home to tell stories.”

“I nearly had my death through her,” she said.

“Did you have trouble that night?” I asked her.

“Trouble?” she said. “Good God, boy, I was strapped till I was in bed for days. But
they never found out about you.”

“I was coming over to see your father,” I said, with shame to put me in the ground.

“Good job you stayed home,” she said. “He had a gun waiting for you. Do you know why
I asked you to meet me to-day?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“I want you to take me to the Town Hall for the acting,” she said, and looking at
me with her head down, with her eyes only just to be seen under the brim of her hat,
with that in them to make me have my breath short, and turn quickly away.

“What acting?” I asked her, and going up in front of her so that she should not see
my face.

“The acting, boy,” she said. “The actors are coming to the Town Hall for two nights.
I will never be allowed to mention the word in the house, never mind to go by myself.
Mervyn would faint if I asked him and perhaps tell my father. Then he would lock me
in. And if I went by myself, perhaps they would stone me in the street.”

“Why do you want to go?” I asked her.

“O, Huw,” she said, and came close to me, like a little girl, with a pouting, and
her eyes blinking, but slow, and opening them wide, wide, to show them big and grey,
of a deep greyness, with a blessing of softness and something of tears and a smile
far down.

I turned from her, with the hammers striking the white hot steel in my middle, and
a fire withering my spine and sending tears to my eyes, with reason perished and sense
gone, and only sight left, but crippled, so that the greens
of
trees and grass were a mixing of green without shape, and in the ears, only the turmoil
of my blood, and from far away, her voice. You live within yourself as king when you
become a man.

“I want to be an actress,” she said.

“Why?” I asked her, and put reins about my voice.

“Because I want it,” she said. “No, why, only I want it. I am sick to the heart with
the coal yard and hands black with coal. I want to be an actress.”

“There will be no place at home for you when you go,” I said.

“No matter,” she said. “Not a tear would come if I never saw them again.”

“You will have a hard life,” I said. “And wicked people, too.”

“If Mr. Irving is wicked,” she said, “I will be wicked, too.”

“Who is he?” I asked her.

“Good God, boy,” she said, as though the mountain was going from under us, “who is
he? They are going mad to see him up there.”

“Where?” I asked her.

“In London,” she said.

“Are you going to London?” I asked her, and hoping with cold hope that she would say
no.

“Yes,” she said. “In time to come. They will come to the stage door for me, too. With
flowers.”

“When is the acting?” I asked her, hoping again that I would be safe in work down
below.

“Next Wednesday and Thursday, seven o’clock, fourpence, sixpence, and a shilling,”
she said. “And you will be in time, so no good to say you are working. I have got
a list of your shifts.”

“O,” I said, “making sure, were you?”

“I made well sure,” she said, and laughing. “Will you come? Say yes, Huw.”

How to say no, when she was saying yes in that voice, would tax the will of a shift
of prophets. No use to struggle for there was a laziness coming heavily upon me, and
all I wanted to do was stretch my muscles and lie near to breathe her scent, to be
near her mouth, in reach of the softness of her.

“Yes,” I said.

“O, Huw,” she said, and put an arm slowly about my neck and pulled me down to kiss
me, with strength that was savage, and sounds were in her throat, and round movements
tormented her body, and the grip of her fingers left bruises for days to come. And
I had a madness hot within me that was of the mouth and the fingers and the middle.
No man shall know what gods are working in him, then.

The mouth reaches for newer fruit that seems to be near, but never to be tasted. The
fingers are intent on searchings to soft places, but the senses are too far from their
tips and impatient of their fumblings. And at the middle where the arrow steel is
forged, there is a ruination of heat that seems to know, within itself, that coolness
will come, only in the hotter blood of woman. There is itch to find the pool, twistings
to be free to search, momental miracles of rich anointments, sweet splendours of immersion,
and an urgency of writhings to be nearer, and deeper, and closer. In that kissing
of the bloods there is a crowding of sense, when breathing is forgotten, muscle turns
to stone, and the spinal branch bends in the bowman’s hand as the singing string is
pulled to speed the arrow.

And in its flight it reaches to a rarer height than can be found in earth. An anthem
rages as a storm, with chanting in poetries that never knew a tongue, and loud, strange
music, and crackling fires of primal colours burst behind the sight-blind eyes and
myriads of blazing moons rise up to spin for ages in a new-born golden universe of
frankincense and myrrh.

Then the tight-drawn branch is weak, for the string has sung its song, and breath
comes back to empty lungs and a trembling to the limbs. Your eyes see plainly. The
trees are green, just the same as they were. No change has come. No bolts of fire.
No angels with a flaming sword. Yet this it was that left the Garden to weeds. I had
eaten of the Tree. Eve was still warm under me.

Yet still no bolt, no fire, no swords.

Only the song of a thrush, and the smell of green, and the peace of the mountain side.

And Ceinwen, lying quiet, with a trembling when she reached for breath, and making
sounds, then, like the fingers of the wind through the high notes of the harp, with
tears passing softly from the corners of her eyes, and her hair, fallen among the
grass in bright, curving coils that shone.

She opened her eyes and looked up at me, and she sighed a little bit, and a breath
got caught on the crag of a sob, and she swallowed deep to be rid of it.

“O, Huw,” she said, and put limp arms about me. “Sweetheart mine, what did you do?”

“I loved you,” I said.

“Glad I am I never knew,” she said. “Oh, glad I am the first is you. There will never
be another. Sweetheart mine, only you.”

“Peach blossom,” I said, and kissed her, and sat, to look down in the Valley.

How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun.

“Half-past six, Wednesday,” she said, when the mare was in the shafts and stamping.

“Right,” I said. “By the side of the Town Hall.”

She put the whip in her left hand and looked at me, and O, there was a dear shyness
in her that I had never seen before. Innocent you were, my Ceinwen, and innocent you
always were. You only were a woman.

“Well?” I said.

She looked down the road.

“Have you lost respect?” she asked me, with a smallness of voice.

I looked at the back of her head, and saw the pale, loose plaits of hair tucked underneath
her hat, with stray ends hanging down to the collar, and the sun making the net shine
and silvering her veil, and the lobe of her ear red and fat, and dust upon her shoulders.
A warmth sang out of her, and in her untidiness, and dustiness, and the bend of head
and the little fist upon the whip, I found her dear, dear to me.

“Respect for what?” I asked her.

“For me,” she said.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Well,” she said, “because you loved me.”

What shall a man say, to give a woman ease of mind in so sad a place, is something
hard to think of.

“Look,” I said, “if I could claw the soul from my body you should stamp on it with
nails and no sound from me. What is respect? Shall I touch my cap to you?”

“But I am wicked?” she asked me, with tears coming.

“God knows,” I said. “And nothing has been said from by there.”

“But, Huw,” she said, “do you think of me the same as you thought before?”

“O, Ceinwen,” I said, and kissed her with little kisses, “am I a rat with green teeth,
then? The minutes will go slow till half-past six on Wednesday. With you, I have seen
and heard beyond this life. Shall I think less or more of you because of it?”

“More,” she said, very pretty. “Please, please, please.”

“More,” I said.

“Good-bye, now,” she said, and up in the trap.

“Good-bye,” I said.

“O, Huw,” she said, and sat, hopeless.

“What, now?” I asked her.

“The coal yard,” she said. “Come and give me another good big kiss to last, is it?”

Up I went in the springy trap, and if I never move from by here, I kissed her to leave
a mark.

“Mm,” she said. “Good-bye, now.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

A lovely smile, and a crack of the whip, and a moving of blue in a blowing of dust.

Home, in a dream lived backwards, me.

Time moved on the end of Ivor’s pick all day on Wednesday. Punch, punch, punch, said
the pick, and I was savage glad to send the lumps roaring down the chute, hasty to
slide down in the smelly darkness and lift coal with the strength of giants into the
trams, and push them loaded along the rails and off. Every lump was a few moments
nearer her, every tram minutes less, each punch of the pick like the tick of a clock,
every lump out of the seam a foot nearer to her in a tunnel of time. But a long, long
old day, indeed.

But on top of the mountain, in my best grey suit, picking a few little flowers for
her, I remembered nothing of it, but I sang to make the birds sit quiet and tip their
heads and lift an eye. Good manners have the birds. If you are happy and your voice
goes high in a song, they will find seats to be near, and no noise in the finding,
and quietness till you have done.

The Town Hall was called Town Hall only because it was the only hall in the town.
Of bricks, but without thought. Many a farmer would have thought it shame to have
it for a barn. Good for the breeding of rats, the sticking of notices, and the sittings
of justices.

Ceinwen held my hand tight when we went in, and I was careful to have two shilling
ones near the door, in case. We waited till the place was full, but even then, we
only went to our seats when the caretaker put out the lamps, just before the curtain
was dragged open, and stuck, another drag, and stuck again, and a wait, and quiet
coming, and somebody behind the stage whispering that there was always this bloody
palaver with the rag, and another good pull, and then we were off, and Ceinwen squeezing
her shoulders from happiness.

Shakespeare we had, from members of the company, all doing a bit from the plays. Hamlet
had a cold in his nose, and so did Richard, and Macbeth, and Shylock. I am willing
to swear the same man played them all. But very good. Ophelia was fat, and so was
Cordelia, and Lady Macbeth, and Portia. But very good, too. And pretty, but a bit
fat. If she worked in a colliery God knows how she would have a bath. A good sit in
the river, I expect.