How Green Was My Valley (55 page)

“No good wives in an old office,” my mother said, and tears to fill pots.

“Go on with you, girl,” my father said. “London is big, and the days are short. He
could have done much worse than marry her in an office.”

“Hisht, Gwilym,” my mother said. “What he did was only a bit above worst.”

But she was quiet for days to come, and even the lilies of the valley from Blodwen’s
bouquet, that she sent in a parcel, helped nothing. She was angry, and in pain, that
her two boys should go away all the way to London and America, and no proper good-bye.
And then to be married on top of that, again.

“I said good-bye to them for London,” she said, “not America.”

“Good-bye is good-bye,” my father said.

“There is good-bye, and good-bye,” my mother said. “Would I send my two good boys
all the way to America with only an old kiss and a couple of beef sandwiches and a
bit of old cake? Good-bye, there is, and good-bye. And I was denied to say it. And
I am their Mama.”

“Good letters from them both,” my father said. “And from Blodwen it was lovely, indeed.
A joy to read it.”

“You shall have your joy and welcome,” my mother said. “You are easy to be satisfied.
A bit of old paper with pen and ink, and no matter if all your boys go down the Hill
and off. Did I go to bed, and come from there with paper and ink, then?”

“Hisht, girl,” my father said, and coming to be red. “Have quiet, now, is it?”

“The day will come when you shall always find me quiet,” my mother said. “I hope you
will have proper good-bye, indeed.”

“O, Beth,” my father said, and going to her. “There is a nasty thing to say to me.
It will come easier for you when Angharad comes home. Let it be quick.”

Yes, let it be quick. Then, let the memory be quick to go.

Chapter Thirty-One

S
HE WAS CHANGED
beyond the knowing, our Angharad.

But I knew how she had been only when I saw her as she was.

She was at Tyn-y-Coed, as mistress there, but never coming up to us. Never.

The trap came over for my mother one Monday morning, and the groom gave her a letter.
She read it, and gave it to my father for him to read while she went up to dress,
dry in the eyes, but sharp in her movements as though to live at all was a test of
patience.

Bron came in to do the house and cook for us, and when my mother had gone, my father
took his bucket up the mountain, and Bron clicked her tongue.

“Trouble, trouble,” she said. “Poor Angharad.”

“Why should Mama go over all that way?” I said. “Is Angharad tired in the legs?”

“Not a word against Angharad will I stand to hear,” Bron said, and down went the kettle
to spurt spitting steam on the oven top. “A good sweet girl and no pleasure in life.”

“She is living in Tyn-y-Coed,” I said.

“She should have been living in Gorphwysfa these years,” Bron said, and I went quiet
in surprise, for she had never been so direct before.

Gorphwysfa was the little house with the sea-shell porch.

“I wonder does Mr. Gruffydd know she is back?” I asked her.

“He will know soon enough,” she said. “There are tongues in plenty to tell him.”

We were on afternoon shift that week, so there was no chance for me to go over to
see Angharad, though my mother brought me back a set of pens and a book by Mr. Dickens,
with her kind love. There is a lovely book it was, too, called
Martin Chuzzlewit
. I will have Mr. Dickens in with the others led by Dr. Johnson. I had his Mr. Pickwick
later on. Eh, there is funny. I had my mother in fits, downstairs here, telling her
about Snodgrass, and that other fool, old Winkle. And that fat old lump of a boy in
the wheel-barrow, and Sam Weller with his v’s for w’s.

But when I went to Tyn-y-Coed, the first day I had a chance, I was so stricken with
the look of Angharad that I could barely speak with sense.

White was in her hair, plain, even in the shadow of the room.

A starvation of light in her eyes. A deadness, that not even her smile took the cross
from. A withering of the low notes in her voice, so that her laugh was thin alto where
before it had been rich contralto and a joyul sound to hear. A fretting of the fingers,
she had, and the coming and going of an untidy little frown between her eyes, that
made three ragged little lines there, like the crippled foot of a crow, so strange
to her, for she had once been so still, so sure, so much at peace, yet all the time
so quick with life.

“Well, Huw,” she said, when I kissed her cheek.

“Well,” I said.

And we looked.

Her hair was done all round her head, very pretty, with a small hat with flowers of
blue. A blouse with pleats down the front of silk the colour of the yellow wallflower,
and a long skirt darker, with a wide belt of blue the same as her hat, with a big
oval silver buckle. And a little watch with a gold bow up by her heart, and one ring.
A wedding ring.

This girl used to wash pots in our back, and scrub the kitchen floor, and tickle my
father’s neck for pennies and run down the Hill like a boy.

This girl.

This woman.

Angharad.

“I look ill and I should take care of myself,” she said. “Everybody coming in the
house says so. So you say it, and I will rest quiet again.”

“It is inside you,” I said.

And we looked again.

“There is big you have grown, Huw,” she said, with a move of the mouth and a look
through the window, in a voice that had weights upon it.

“You have been away long,” I said. “Do you remember when you used to give me a few
little sweets to go to Sunday School?”

“Huw, my little one,” she said, and tears were pink and shining. “And I used to have
them back from you in class. Yes, I remember. There is shame.”

“Not shame,” I said. “You liked a couple of sweets.”

Now she was crying, but no move of her face. Just only crying.

She put an arm about my shoulders, but she was looking through the window and her
body was stiff, straight, no bending, no breaking, as though she shared a tiredness
with me, as a traveller leans against a milestone that takes a little more from a
long road.

Then she shook her head and shut her eyes tight, and wiped them as though they were
in the head of an enemy.

“A fool I am,” she said. “Sit, Huw, and have to eat.”

She went across the room to the bell like the old Angharad, and gave it a pull to
set bells ringing in the forests of Russia.

“Now then,” she said. “A bit of sense, for a change. Huw, you are coming from that
old pit.”

So much like my mother that I laughed out loud.

“Eh,” she said, and a good smile, “there is lovely to hear a laugh, too.”

“Come over to the house, girl,” I said. “You shall hear plenty, and have a few, too.”

“I shall never come to the house, again, Huw,” she said, and I knew from the way she
said it, without feeling, an opening of the mouth with one word after another on a
string, all the same size and weight, that it was no use to ask why. A wasting of
time.

Then Mrs. Nicholas came in with the tray and the girl behind her with another tray.

“Now then, Mrs. Evans,” she said, in her fat voice, and a smile about the nose, and
sideways with the eyes. “Tea, is it?”

“Thank you, Nicholas,” Angharad said, but different, like Blodwen, but even better.
“Leave it. I will pour.”

“O,” said Mrs. Nicholas, “you will pour, Mrs. Evans, is it? Of course, I have always
had the pouring to do for other ladies. Thumbs off the plates, Enid.”

And Enid got a knock with the keys over the back of the hand and sucked it, quick.

“That will do, Nicholas,” Angharad said. “Not so handy with those keys, or I will
have them from you. And I will pour.”

“Yes, Mrs. Evans,” Mrs. Nicholas said, and made a little knee, with still the smile
about her nose, “a new mistress is like new sheets, yes? Little bit stiff, but washings
to come.”

And out she went, in her roundness, and fatness, and blackness, and starting to hum
at the door.

“A bitch, that one,” I said.

“Pedigree,” Angharad said, firm and sure. “I am sour to be near her.”

“Send her away,” I said.

“She has been with the Evans family for forty-seven years, sixty times every day she
will tell you,” Angharad said. “I could never do it with a good heart. And she has
done nothing to deserve it. The house is beautiful, and not a turn of the hand from
me. Up all hours, she is, and very kind with a cup of tea, or smelling salts, and
a cushion. But I could scream when she comes anywhere near me.”

“A bitch,” I said.

“A bitch,” said Angharad, and we laughed.

“How are all the boys and girls we used to know?” she asked me. But I knew from the
look of her, and the voice, that the question she wanted to ask was screaming itself
red inside her.

“Good,” I said. “Eunice and Eiluned Jenkins are married. Eunice is at home, and Eiluned
has gone to London, to keep a dairy. Maldwyn Hughes has gone to be a doctor. Rhys
Howell is in a solicitor’s office in Town and sending home ten shillings a week. Madog
Powys is in the tinplate works over the mountain. Owen got him there. Tegwen Beynon
is married to Merddyn Jones’ son, and up at the farm.”

What use to go on, when she was asking no questions. She was waiting for me to say
it for her.

“And Mr. Gruffydd is still first up and last to bed,” I said, and bending to put my
plate on the floor not to see her face. But I saw her hand. “And he can still be heard
from one end of the Valley to the other, too, and no strain.”

Quiet.

So quiet that you might even think you could hear the flowers having their little
drops to drink.

So quiet, that to crack a biscuit between the teeth, would seem as bad as making a
noise in Chapel.

“How is he, Huw?” she asked me.

As though her lips were dry, and she wanted a drink of water.

“Not as he was,” I said, and on purpose.

Her eyes came big, and points were in them, sharp.

“What is the matter with him?” she said. “Is he ill?”

“Inside,” I said. “In his eyes and voice. Like you.”

She got up and stood with a hand on the mantelpiece, and looked across the top of
my head at the window. Nothing was in her face, but her eyes were terrible, terrible,
terrible.

“Go from here,” she said.

And I went.

Straight to Mr. Gruffydd I went, in the little house with the sea-shell porch, and
found him reading in the room where we so often had shared tea. The furniture was
a pleasure to see, now all in place, with a good carpet made by Old Mrs. Gethin and
her daughter up at the farm by the waterfall on top of the mountain.

“Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “am I disturbing?”

“Come you in, my little one,” he said, and a smile.

“Angharad is at Tyn-y-Coed,” I said.

He closed the book, slow, with steady hands.

“Yes,” he said.

“She is with sickness,” I said.

“Has she had a doctor?” he asked me, and something new in the voice.

“No,” I said. “Sickness of heart, it is.”

He put his hands flat on the table, and stood quickly, and his hands left greyness
on the shine of the table top.

“I can do nothing, Huw,” he said.

“You are a preacher, sir,” I said. “Come unto me all ye that are weary.”

“O, Huw,” he said.

Then there was quiet again, and while it was quiet, and while he stood with the knuckles
of his fists together, I went.

It was weeks after that when my mother told me that Angharad wanted to see me. I had
told my mother what had happened, every word, and she had said not a word. Not even
a click of the tongue. But I had special little bits for tea for long after.

I found her in the kitchen garden having beans from the scarlet runners. Long green
walls of them, there were, and Angharad in white among them.

“Well,” I said, behind her.

She gave me half a look over her shoulder, with her hands busy with the beans over
her head, and letting them drop into the basket without looking.

“Well,” she said, “there is a stranger you are.”

Gentle, with smiles, and her voice a bit lost among the leaves, and a good colour,
from pulling at the beans with her arms up.

There was a wall between us, of a stickiness, not to be seen, with steps on both sides,
but neither of us able to move our legs. Kind strangers, we were.

“Yes,” I said, “will I help you?”

“I am finished,” she said. “Let us go in the house.”

Down by the currant bushes she stopped to see if fly was in them, but when she had
looked at a couple of leaves she stood straight again.

“I am sorry I was nasty to you, Huw,” she said, with quickness, and some shake in
the voice, and looking at the bush.

“Not nasty,” I said, and without comfort, and wanting to run.

“Nasty,” she said, with more of strength, and quieter, as though she felt, with me,
the size of my hands, and my shame for them. They were everywhere but right. “I could
have killed myself when you had gone. Nasty I have been, to a lot of people, and no
fault of theirs. I was sorry, Huw, and I am sorry now.”

“It is nothing, girl,” I said, and more uncomfortable, and redder than she was coming
to be. There is a fool you feel when somebody is saying they are sorry for doing something
to you. It is worse than if you had done something yourself. So you are having the
worst of it twice, start and finish.

“Shall we kiss?” she asked me, and pulling her hat down with both hands, shy as a
wren, and very gentle.

“Yes,” I said, and kissed her chin, but she kissed me solid.

Then she blew out her breath with fat cheeks.

“Well, dammo,” she said. “It is out, at last, then.”

“What, now?” I asked her.

“Saying I was sorry,” she said, and with a laugh. “Practising for weeks I have been,
boy. And nothing I said, I was going to say.”