How Green Was My Valley (67 page)

Every hour the crowd got more dangerous, for the leaders could do nothing, the owners
would do nothing, the Government did nothing, and in the meantime, the soldiers marched
up and down in handfuls, and the police walked about in fifties, and having it stiff
wherever they showed their heads, and windows were smashed and shops were looted,
and honest men were stopped from doing what they had a mind to do, by gangs of boys,
who had been given eight years of free education, and were still unable to use their
minds.

They were outside all day, shouting, throwing, and you must live in front of it to
know the sadness of it.

Cattle, to be herded, as with dogs, from gate to gate.

One afternoon we heard a bigger shout outside, and ran to the door to unlock it.

Olwen was trying to fight her way through to us, and with hands on her to tear her
cloak and grip her hair.

Out we went with firebars and slices, and into the cattle, and see them run, with
a couple on the ground to have a lesson.

“There is a fool of a girl, you are,” I said.

“The horses,” she was crying, “the horses.”

“What, the horses?” I asked her, and ready to hit.

“They are down there in the stables,” she said, with tears thick, “hungry and thirsty,
they are.”

“Good God,” Cyfartha said, “forgotten them, I had.”

“Howell has been trying to have a truce to bring them all to the surface,” she said.
“They are nearly all up in the other pits, but not here. Dada has just come home from
a meeting to tell us, so down I came quick.”

“Cyfartha,” I said, “I will ask the cattle for help.”

“Good,” he said. “I will have the cage up the top, ready.”

Out I went to the crowd, and stones coming to breathe past me.

“Listen,” I shouted to them, “the ponies are down there and nobody to give them comfort.
Who will come to help?”

“Let them stay,” somebody shouted. “Nobody is troubling for us.”

But, fair play, the cattle had a voice of pity, and it was deep. Then men began to
come forward, and when I had twenty, I had enough. Over to the pit-top we went, and
down in the cage.

Well, if you had seen the little horses when they saw us. Like children, they were,
ready to sit down at a party, and with just as much noise. All the lights were out
down there, and candles were all we had, but the ponies were so full with joy that
they pushed against us with their noses, and rubbed their necks, and so put our candles
out, and swearing coming high, then, to find matches and light up again.

But the ponies knew the way to the cages, like cats, for darkness was friendly to
them, and up we went, cage after cage of them, and all shouting to be going on top
to grass.

Eh, dear.

If you had seen those ponies running when we let them loose. Blind they were, but
they knew that the mountain had only kindness for them and nothing for them to trip
on or trap to bring them low.

If only we could all have been as happy.

My father was going from one pit to another in the district to inspect underground
and taking his life as a gift to do it for men were ready to kill anybody going to
work for the owners.

I knew my father had gone down the pit that had been Iestyn’s, for he had told me
he was going that morning, and to expect him to come up our shaft after a walk right
the way through underground. The pumps were keeping the water down as far as we knew,
for the gauges showed normal, but he wanted to be sure.

So, while the cattle were shouting and throwing, and leaders on both sides were arguing
and being offended, and men were worrying about such matters as wives and children,
my father was underground, with rats and flood-water, and darkness for companions,
with his eyes sharp for danger to the livelihood of men.

We heard nothing from him all day, and the afternoon went dark for evening, and still
nothing.

“Huw,” Cyfartha said, “come you here, boy.”

He was over by the gauges, looking up at the glass, with his piece of waste to his
mouth.

“Well?” I said, and looked at the level.

The black was rising, to tell of water in the pit, and more than the pumps could send
out.

“I am going down,” Cyfartha said, and lines in his face. “There is fouling down there.”

“And my father,” I said.

“Perhaps he came up the other end,” Cyfartha said. “Give me an hour.”

“Right,” I said, and we shook hands, and I went to the winding-house to tell Iorweth
to lower the cage, then over to the crowd that was waiting for police to show themselves.

“The pit is flooding,” I shouted to them. “Any volunteers to go down?”

But the men who wanted to come were afraid in case they were beaten in the streets
later, or had their homes wrecked while they were down.

“You are cutting your own throats,” I said to them. “If the strike ends to-morrow
you will have weeks of waiting while they take water from the levels. More waiting,
more idleness, more going without.”

“Come closer,” somebody shouted, “and we will cut your throat and send your guts to
Churchill.”

More shouting from the crowd, and a move forward, with stones falling. Nothing could
be done with them.

I went back to the boiler-house.

I knew that my mother would be worrying up at home, and I thought with shame of the
days I had been in the boiler-house with not a word to her, but only by messages in
other mouths. Of all other things we think, but seldom of the comfort of our mothers.

So I waited until police reliefs came, and while the crowd was busy with them, I ran
down the banking to the river bed and up as far as the village, at the back of the
Three Bells, and in through the side door.

“Dai,” I said, “Cyfartha has gone down by himself to see if there is flooding.”

“O?” he said, and went on playing patience. “Is there news of your good father yet?”

“No,” I said, “I am going up to the house to see my mother, now just. Perhaps Cyfartha
has met trouble, Dai.”

“My respects to your good mother,” he said, “and call in here on the way back, is
it? I will have a couple of the boys here.”

“Right,” I said, and I could hear him shouting half-way up the Hill.

Fire-light was red on our curtains in the back, but Bron’s kitchen was dark, no smoke
was coming from the chimney, and Gareth’s wooden engine was hiding its colours in
the evening by the back door. That was strange, for the engine should have been inside
long before, and the wash-house full of smells for supper, and Bron singing in the
kitchen.

You know a loneliness and a quiet at such times.

“Mama,” I said, half-way through our back, “are you here?”

“Where else, then?” she asked me, from my father’s chair by the fire. “Is he with
you?”

“No,” I said, and knew that she meant my father and was in terror for him, though
in her voice was a slow carelessness that she had put there to try and assure herself
and blind me. But I knew when I kissed her, and felt her shaking. And she was sitting
in darkness, in my father’s chair.

“Will you have to eat, my little one?” she asked me, and that was wrong, too, for
she had made no move before to ask.

“No, Mama,” I said, “only come up for a kiss, I have.”

“Your Dada has been gone since this morning, Huw,” she said, and I put an arm about
her, and O, a pity that was a century of fire passed through me to feel her littleness,
and to think of the men and women who had taken life from out of her.

“Yes, Mama,” I said. “So you are sitting in the dark to wait.”

“No,” she said, and staring wide in the fire, “I was in the wash-house peeling potatoes,
and Ivor came.”

The kitchen went black about me, and my jaws were tight with fear for her and for
myself.

“You have worried too much, Mama,” I said, but not in the voice that I knew.

“Do I know my own son?” my mother asked me, with quiet, and with a certainty of utterance
that silenced me. “Ivor, I saw, and I smiled at him, and he smiled at me, and nodded
his head.”

The plates on the dresser laughed in the fire-light and the wind put his lips to the
chimney-pot and blew a little tune.

My mother looked at me and tried to smile, but her face was slack with weakness, and
her mouth kept pulling in jerks that were ugly.

“I wonder what has come to your Dada?” she said, and her voice was like her mouth.

“I am going down now to see,” I said, and got up. “Is Bronwen out?”

“She is down at Iestyn’s pit,” my mother said. “She went with Olwen, this afternoon,
to take dry clothes for him.”

“But he was coming up through our shaft,” I said.

“He was too long underground,” she said, “so they went to Iestyn’s pit in case he
came back up there. The crowd was too big down the bottom, here.”

“They should never have left the house,” I said.

“It was something for them to do,” she said, and then she was crying, but not with
tears.

“Mama,” I said, “no more thinking like this, is it? You are in darkness and frightened.
Come you, now. A light, and a cup of tea, quick.”

“Leave me,” she said, and I never heard her sterner. “Go to your father.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and kissed her, and went from the house, and ran down the Hill
to the Three Bells.

Dai was with the boys all in their working clothes and Dai’s cleaner than any, sharp
with creases from the cupboard shelves, and tight for him. They all had a glass and
Dai gave me one that was three fingers deep with brandy.

“Come you, Huw,” he said, “a health. To two good ones underground. Drink with love.”

We drank, and Dai seemed to have drunk only tea, but I was still coughing when we
were down among the crowd at the pit-top, with Dai holding my arm, and fisting with
his right, and the rest of us using picks and shovels to have a clear way. Over to
the cage we went, with police making a baton charge from the boiler-house to keep
the crowd from us.

“Have anybody come up?” Dai asked the sergeant.

“No,” the sergeant said, “and the water-gauge is still rising in there.”

“Right,” said Dai, and holding on to me until we were in the cage, “there is good
to be in my clothes, and ready for work again. Not a button to meet on my trews, see,
and string to keep me tidy round the middle. I have got a belly like a sow through
sitting to swill in that old bar.”

The cage swung gently, not quite on the bottom level, for the water was up to the
waist, and we stopped it where it would rest dry, and jumped, one by one, into a black
stillness of quiet ice, walking through to the pumps as though chained at the ankles.
One of the pumps was damaged, but the other looked to be sound, and we started to
work on them till the engineers gave a signal up to the surface.

Good, it was, to hear the voice of them, and to know that the waters were beaten.

“They had a good try, whoever it was,” the engineer said. “No time to finish, thank
God in His Goodness. There must have been more than a couple.”

“Cyfartha must have caught somebody at it,” Dai said. “You will find the rat in the
water, here. But where is Cyfartha?”

“I wonder did he chase the others?” Gomer said.

“No surprise to me,” Dai said. “Let us find him. You have got the eyes. Come, you.”

So into the main we went, with candles high, and splashing at the rats, with water
to the chest in places, and to the knees later. Then we came to the trouble.

The roof had fallen. Props had been weakened, and the pressure of water had torn away
cogs as though made of paper.

“O, God,” Dai said, and feeling the rock with his hands, “is he under this?”

“Is my father?” I said, and seeing my mother plain beside me.

“Come on,” Dai said, “into it.”

Into it, yes, into it.

With fright chewing holes in me, and my mouth dry, and trembling, I went at it with
the pick, and Dai doing the work of three beside me.

We had to smash through that dead weight of stone and clay, and carry it rock by rock
and spadeful by spadeful out of our way, knowing that somewhere inside it my father
or Cyfartha might be lying hurt, or dying, or dead.

As we worked we prayed, and between the prayers, we cursed the heavy, dead, stupid
hardness of the stone and the thick, lifeless clay, and then prayed each time we strained
to lever a bit of rock that some sign would be given to us that we were near.

But we had to work carefully for the roof was soft and with low rumbles to warn us
that more would come down on top of us if we put a pick too far or a shovel too high.

When we tired, others took our places, and when they were dropping, three more, until
our turn came again, but all the time we were taking rocks away, or piling clay and
muck. To the knees in water, and bent, for there was only four feet of head room and
knowing we must work fast, but held back because of the danger of a fall to make our
work a waste of time.

The candles began to go, and a man went back for more, and something to drink, for
we were dying down there, so hot it was, so filled with dust, and a scum of dust thick
on the water, and mud to the calves, and water rising fast as we worked downwards.

Dai was thick with mud, and throwing rocks from him as fast as he could have his hands
on them, with a curse for each one, and his mouth in a wide line of hate, and his
eyes mad through shining black muck, using the pick now, and nobody able to go near
because of its bite, and throwing it down to pull out more rock, and toss it behind
him, careless where it went as long as it was not in front.

Hour after hour we were down there, and with every yard, air getting colder and stiffening
us, and the water rising to freeze us about the waist, until life was only a dig,
and a pull, and a carry and drop, and a crawl back, and a dig and a pull and carry
and drop, and a crawl back again.

And muscle screaming please to rest, if only to straighten the shouting back, or stretch
the torn palms of the hands.