How Green Was My Valley (54 page)

Plenty of clapping from the front for a small girl who played Juliet, and then put
on grey hair and spoke the lines of the old nurse. Roars of laughing, even when he
was saying nothing, for Falstaff, who was having trouble with a pillow stuffed underneath
his tunic. I could see the stripes on it.

Then a drama, by the entire company, Falstaff said to us, of actors straight from
Drury Lane and the Grand Theatre, Milan, and any doubts of his veracity, please to
see the management, and thanking us for our kind attention and beg to remain our most
obliged, and respectful. His name was Mr. Raymonde Ffoulkes.

“There is elegant,” Ceinwen said, in whispers, and near to a faint with joy to be
there, but so serious she felt with the acting, that she might have been in Chapel.

We got into something, then, about a lighthouse, and everybody going mad because no
light was in it, and a big ship coming home from Cape Town, full of wounded soldiers
and beautiful nurses. Falstaff was the lighthouse keeper and Ophelia was his daughter,
she in long tails of hair that she pulled with grief, or whatever it was, and he with
his hand to his forehead, and stamping up and down to put the candles out in the stage
lights, and a long taper coming from the sides, each time, to light them up again.
We would have had more interest if we could have had a look at the lighthouse or the
ship, but they were out in the sides, and we had to think we saw the villain in the
rowing boat. He had put the light out, Falstaff said, because his half-brother, who
had been wounded in the war, was coming home to claim his inheritance, but if he drowned,
there would be only one claimant to the title and estates. So out went the light,
and quick, no matter about wounded soldiers and a fig for beautiful nurses.

Then Falstaff went for the Royal Navy.

Swimming.

Then the villain came on, spitting on his hands from rowing, and wiping sweat from
the work, and shivering in the storm, never mind that I had to loose my hand from
Ceinwen’s because they were so wet with hotness. Hissing we were, and holloaing to
blow him back in the water again, but never mind, what did he do but pitch in to Ophelia
and give her a couple of good ones and put her out, and every man in the hall on his
feet with his coat half off, and ready to go up there and pick marrow hot from his
hip bones. And Ophelia lying flat in the middle of the stage like a bundle of washing.

“I would like him to do that to me,” Ceinwen said, with sweetness and close in my
ear, “only just once. I would kick the drums from his ears, son of the devil’s own
dam, he is.”

But then, before the Royal Navy had chance to show himself, there was sound of a hymn
from outside, and a hitting on doors, and shouts, with alleluias and swearing mixed,
with a hushing of hishts from those in the hall, and scrapings of feet and scoldings
of chairs, but the hymn was louder, from hundreds, and the shouts not to be denied.

“Come you,” I said, and pulled Ceinwen out into the lobby.

“O, Huw,” she said, “is it more trouble for me?”

“For me, too,” I said. “Wait you.”

In the little hall Falstaff was sweeping coppers and silver into a leather bag and
very quick about it, too. The double doors were rocking under kicks and the pressure
of shoulders. The shutters in two windows were having the attentions of crowbars and
one of them burst as Falstaff flew back along the passage to the back of the stage,
with holes in both his stockings and a slipper that flapped.

“Come on,” I said, “follow him down the passage. I will stay and see nobody comes
after you.”

She kissed me, a moment, nothing, the blowing of a feather, not even the opening of
a bud in the time of man. Yet in that moment I lived again our time together, but
though I saw and felt the things of earth so clearly, that other world that I had
seen, that other music I had heard, that universe that I had created of myself, that
was my own, was far, far beyond me, and I yearned to know it, and have it again, wide
and strange and beautiful, about me.

Off she went, and I turned to watch the door.

Then I saw Dai Bando and Cyfartha Lewis coming out in the hall, and looking at the
door that was bulging now, and cracking in the panels. With them were other men, all
crowding out to see what the noise was about.

“Dai,” I said, and touched his arm. “How about the back way?”

“Well, indeed to God,” he said, and smiling to show his tooth, “there is good to see
you, boy. Have you been having a pennyworth of this rum shanks in by here?”

“Yes,” I said, “what is the crowd outside for?”

“Chapel,” he said. “There was a hell of a row because they let the actors have this
place. The chapels were holding special prayer meetings to-night against it. Raising
hell out there, look. Eh, Cyfartha?”

“And likely to be a tidy bit more in by here, Dai, my little one,” Cyfartha said,
and buttoning back his cuffs. “So I will clear my decks, like that one in by there.”

“Let us go through the back,” I said.

“I am going out the front,” Dai said, and pulled his bowler hat on tight. “I have
paid money like a Christian. I went in and sat like two Christians and I am going
out, as I came in, through the front, like a Christian. Eh, Cyfartha?”

“Christians, both, Dai,” Cyfartha said. “Front, us.”

“Will I come with you?” I asked Dai, with planks falling from the door and faces to
be seen outside.

“Come on, boy,” Dai said. “Come between us. When my right is busy with a chin, please
to put the good toe of your boot to their shins, eh, Cyfartha?”

“But gentle, Huw,” Cyfartha said, and very solemn. “Gentle, not to hurt. If you break
a bone, see, a weight it is to the conscience. A pity, indeed.”

“Ready now,” said Dai, and buttoning his coat, and a coldness coming to make his eyes
pale. Frightening to see, for I remembered the muscle that in clothes looked nothing.

Then they were in, pressed headlong by the crowd outside, and a shout went up from
inside and out, and faces were on top of us, hot and red, with staring eyes, and mouths
wide with shouting about hell and sinners and the devil.

Dai’s fists swung one, two, and two men fell sideways, senseless, under the feet of
the crowd. Cyfartha hit his lovely long left flat upon the nose of a tall young man
in a square bowler hat. The hat went to the roof. I never saw where the tall young
man went. A fat blackcoat with ginger side whiskers had a fist in Dai’s coat collar.
Dai’s head came up sharp under blackcoat’s jaw, and I saw it slip out of place. Brown
cap had come to fist Dai a good one on the ear. I kicked for touch in the middle of
his shin and as his teeth clicked in pain, Dai’s elbow came up to knock a couple out.

Then the lamp fell as a billet of wood hit it, and we were in raging darkness.

A hand gripped me like the Devil’s tongs, and carried me in a forward rush to the
door where the sky showed lighter than the darkness of the lobby. Black heads were
moving there with crowds more down the steps outside, but with Dai on one side, and
Cyfartha on the other, using heads and elbows, fists, knees, and boots, with screams
of pain and sharp flat hits of fists on flesh, and gross knocks of boots on bones,
and the grunts of strength used full, we came to cooler air, but still squeezed close
in the shouting crowd, and having their breath in the face, and the smell of them
with tobacco and sweat.

“Heads down, Dai,” Cyfartha shouted, and they bound an arm about one another, and
I eeled in between their shoulders, and heads down, they went through that crowd like
flame through paper, and me treading on the bodies, and even on the faces, of those
who would have stood to block the way.

Full tilt we went into a husting of crates they had put there to have speeches on.
The table and chair went over and the crates started to go over, for the crowd was
dense and going back and back from the press of men shoving a way out of the hall.

We were crushed against the rocking crates, but Cyfartha pulled himself up on the
top of one and held it down, and put down a hand to help me, but somebody came toward
him with a stool raised high to smash on his head and I shouted. I saw Cyfartha turn
and duck as I fell back among the crowd, and when I stood up again, he was helping
Dai to have a footing, and then he came for me.

That was when the policemen came. I was up beside Cyfartha when I saw the silver spikes
shining in their helmets. Dai saw them, too, and hit the sergeant a half-arm left
that put him out flat, falling to the pavement, feet flying all shapes, and as the
second went to hit him with his truncheon, a hook caught him in the round comfort
of belly, and his mouth flew apart, and he fell in among the shouting crowd. Cyfartha
had done something to the third one, and the fourth jumped down out of harm.

But now police were clearing the crowd and Dai saw a danger of more jail and hooked
his thumb at Cyfartha, and laid hold of me.

“Come on,” he shouted. “Through a shop and out through the back way. Quick.”

But I thought of Ceinwen and slipped away from Dai to the clearing space between me
and the hall.

“See you to-morrow, Dai,” I shouted, and jumped down, running fast for the side-door
and missing a rush of men by inches. It was dark up there and no light, but the door
was open and I went in.

Two little rooms there were, but both empty, both warm from the bodies of those who
had lived a little of their lives there, and from the candles that had marked the
time in fallen grease.

Then a match was struck, and I saw the caretaker, with the green baize of his apron
torn down the middle, and looking as though the least I would be was a wizard, with
a skull, and snakes coming from the eyes.

“Who is it?” he said, and shaking to churn butter. “Dammo, man, you are standing like
stiff from the coffin. Speak, man.”

“Have you seen anybody here to-night?” I asked him. There is silly are the things
you say in times like that.

“Seen anybody?” he asked me. “Well, I will go to my death. Have I seen anybody? The
whole five valleys have been in by here, hitting hell out of one another all night.
Seen anybody? Is there anybody living who stayed home?”

“I am sorry,” I said, “I was looking for a young girl.”

“More shame to you,” he said, and lighting a bit of candle in a hole in the wall.
“Young girls this time of night?”

“She ran down this way when the fighting started,” I said.

“O,” he said, and impatient with anger, “no time to talk about old girls. Have you
seen my hall? A cattle pen, and a good week to clean it. I would like to have had
my boots in the chops of a few of them.”

“Did you see a girl,” I asked him, “with fair hair? Young she was, and with a smile.”

“O,” he said, and pinched his eyes to sharpness, “a sweetheart, is it?”

I nodded to him.

“Yes,” he said, and nodding with his lips tight, “I remember. Mrs. Prettyjohn took
her with her. They went in the coach.”

“Where did they go?” I asked him, and a coldness busy in me.

“Wherever they went,” he said, “and a riddance to rubbish, so help me senseless. No
more actors here. None, from to-night. I have had a gut’s full and brimming. Good
night, now.”

“Good night,” I said, and went.

Eh, dear. How cold it was over the mountain that night, inside and out.

And a light in the kitchen, and the back door open, when I got home.

“That you, Huw?” my father called, from the kitchen, and I stopped dead.

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“Come you here,” he said, and I went in, closing and bolting the door, and taking
plenty of time, wondering what had happened to put that note in his voice.

“Have you been to the acting to-night?” he asked me, when I was in and standing before
him.

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“You would disgrace your mother and me in such a manner?” my father said, and thin
with anger.

“No disgrace, Dada,” I said.

“Disgrace,” he said. “You dare to come home here, stinking with the smell and touch
of them, and your brains polluted by their filth? Think shame to yourself.”

“But, Dada,” I said, “only Shakespeare they did. No pollution.”

“Pollution of Satan,” my father said. “Shall you have anything else from such a sink
of corruption? Whores, cot-queans, and dandiprats to spread their wares before you?
Think shame, Huw Morgan.”

“I think shame that you should think of me like that, Dada,” I said.

“I am glad to see a glimmer of decency in you, then,” my father said. “A splendid
thing, to be stopped in the street by such as the son of Abishai Elias and told my
son is in with bawds and toerags.”

“I will see him later,” I said.

“You will please to go outside and bathe from head to foot, first,” my father said,
“and then you shall come inside and pray for the good of your soul. And if you go
to such a den again, and I come to know of it, I will have you outside with the fists.
Remember.”

“Yes, Dada,” I said.

“Bathe,” he said.

And I bathed.

Frozen I was, and paining with cold where the wind put his sharp old fingers through
cracks and dug at me, and not even warm when I was dry, so the prayer was chopped
in bits by restless teeth, and all my sense was in my pair of aching feet.

A beautiful ending to a day I had wished for with rich longing.

Longings, indeed.

When Owen sent a telegram to say he was off to America with Gwilym, I longed to be
with them. But when he wrote to say he had married Blodwen Evans, I longed for Ceinwen,
to be married to her.

That was a morning, with my mother crying and my father trying to tell her they had
meant no harm marrying in a registrar’s office.

“Just as good and binding as Chapel,” my father said.

“They could have come home,” my mother said. “We are not good enough.”

“O, nonsense, girl,” my father said. “Business, see, and sailing to America takes
the time. He is a man in business now, with his own life to make. And no man is happy
who is without a good wife.”