How Green Was My Valley (12 page)

He would have said more, I suppose, but then my mother tapped on the bedroom floor
with her shoe. That was her sign that she wanted to speak to me. Every night, at this
time, she spoke to me, but if I had gone to sleep, we would speak in the morning,
so nothing was lost.

“Yes, Aunty Beth?” asked Marged, and making a sign to Owen.

“Is Huw sleeping?” my mother called down.

Owen turned toward the wall bed.

“Are you sleeping, boy?” he asked me, but so quiet that he would never have had me
awake if I had been sleeping. Then I was in a pumpkin jelly, not knowing whether to
say yes or no, because I wanted no black looks from either.

“Yes,” I said, but dull, as though I had been sleeping. So are liars made.

“Mama wants to talk to you,” said Owen.

“Yes, Mama,” I called, and they stood looking, hand in hand.

“How are you to-night, my little one?” my mother called back.

“Extra, Mama,” I said. “How are you?”

“Lovely, indeed,” my mother said. “Is your leg paining now?”

“No, Mama, thank you,” I said. “Dr. Richards is going to let me get up soon.”

“I will be up on Saturday,” my mother said, “so I will see you. Are you having plenty
to eat with Bronwen?”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“But Bronwen is not such a good cook as Mama, is she?” my mother asked me, and there
was such longing in her voice that I pretended to cough to have time to rid my throat
of the stone.

Without taking time, I saw the months of lying in bed and thinking of her house and
children under the care of another woman all go screeching through my mother’s mind.
Bronwen was a cook above good cooks and it seemed unfair to say that my mother was
better. But my mother was my mother and her voice was full of longing to know that
she was missed by us, that she was not forgotten, that she was still Mama, to be wished
for and welcomed. Even though a lie had to be said.

“No, indeed, Mama,” I said. “I often think of apple and ginger fool, and plum pie,
and meddlar trifle.”

“All of them you shall have,” my mother said, and the sureness in her voice would
make you smile to yourself. “Wait you till I am from this old bed, and you shall see
what those old pots shall cook. I am going mad here, thinking what I should be doing
instead of lying down and nursing this fat old lump of a girl.”

Lovely was my small sister, and Olwen was her name. She was often brought to play
on my bed while Bronwen and Angharad were making my mother comfortable upstairs, so
we were great friends from when she was born.

“Make her say bubbles, Mama,” I said, because she was good at bubbles, and if you
pressed her cheeks they blew off and broke in colours.

“Go on, boy,” my mother said, with laughing, “she is sleeping these hours. Go you
to sleep, now.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said. “Good night, then.”

“Good night, my little one,” my mother said. “Tell Marged not to put more on the fire.”

So it was, nearly every night. That night I remember well, for while we were speaking,
Owen and Marged went hand in hand on tiptoe through to the back, and they were still
there after my father came in with Ivor and Bronwen from the choir practice.

“Where is Marged?” asked Bronwen.

“In the back,” I said.

Marged came in looking red, and trying to have her breath without a struggle, as though
she had heard them come in, and run. I saw Bronwen look at her with that smile that
was not a smile, and go to the cupboard for the plates.

“I wonder should Owen have a fire out there,” Bronwen asked, and rattling plates.

“Yes, indeed,” Marged said. “It is shocking cold there, still.”

“O?” said Bronwen.

“He told me so,” said Marged, but too quickly.

“Never mind, girl,” Bronwen said, and gently. “There is no harm done to go in and
find out for yourself. Is there?”

“I have never been,” said Marged, looking at Bronwen with big eyes. “Not once.”

“Never mind if you have,” said Bronwen, smiling properly now. “No matter, girl. Put
the baking stone on, will you? I will make milk cakes for supper.”

When supper was ready and Owen was called in by Gwilym, you would never have thought
there could have been any feeling between Marged and him. He seemed not to notice
her, and he did not exist for her.

But I caught the looks they sent across the table while everybody was eating. Small,
quick looks, with everything they were thinking crushed into them, with enough heat
to cause blazing. They sat nearer to me than to the others, and since they thought
I was asleep they were careless of the gap in the curtains and the eyes that looked
from the shadow inside.

This it was that went so near to spoil my mother’s coming down that Saturday.

My father had made all sorts of surprises for her. He had the choir coming up the
Hill to sing outside the door, and the new preacher and the colliery manager and Dr.
Richards to tea, and all my uncles and aunts, and all Bronwen’s family, and I cannot
say how many more, never mind all the village.

Four harpists were coming from other valleys, and fiddlers, and a piano was brought
up from the Town, but I knew that afterwards it was going to Bronwen for a present
from my father and mother for the first grandchild, Gareth.

Then Idris John started to paint the house from top to bottom, inside and out, and
furniture, all new and elegant beyond words, came from Town with the piano.

If you had seen my mother’s face when she came in the house, you would have laughed
first and then wanted to cry. She had been carried on the mattress down to Bronwen’s
a couple of days before, to be out of the house for Idris to paint the bedrooms. But
she thought she was being taken away to have the wooden bedstead riveted, for it was
old, and it creaked to make you hold your teeth, and she had sworn to have an axe
up there and chop it up and throw it away through the back window for the fire, so
sour she was with it. There is a fool an old bedstead can be, too.

I had seen everything from the wall bed until it became time to move me, and then
Ivor carried me into the front room. There is beautiful all the new paper and paint
looked. The new furniture was in the houses next door, piled up in their front rooms
and passages waiting for Idris to finish and the girls to wash down.

When I was carried back next morning I knew the kitchen was ours only by the shape.
It was so changed with Idris and his brush.

The ceiling was white, with paint on smooth boards, and the walls were pale blue and
yellow with all the rough places and the cracks filled in.

My wall bed was so pretty in yellow it was a pleasure to go back in there and look
up at the sun shining upon it as though he was glad to have something his own colour
to land on and live with.

All that morning my sisters and Bronwen, and the women from the Hill, and my aunts
as they came, all washed and polished and scrubbed to have the house tidy for my mother.

My father was in and out of the kitchen every minute, giving things a little push,
or looking at half-made curtains, or frowning at piles of crockery on the floor, with
his fingers itching with him, as though impatient to do everything himself, there
and then, without waiting.

And when he looked round and found me watching him, he pulled his moustache as though
he was ashamed of his feeling, and looked down at the floor and up at me and winked,
then.

“Supervising I am, see, my son,” he said, and pulled his coat down at the back and
walked out funny to make me laugh.

Well, it was all ready, at last.

Hundreds of people there were outside. The choir came up in a crowd and I could hear
them singing as they walked up the Hill, beautiful indeed. Everybody joined in the
hymn, the girls cooking out in the back, and Bronwen and Angharad and the others with
me in the kitchen, and my aunts and uncles in the front room, and the women upstairs
hanging the last curtains.

Everywhere was singing, all over the house was singing, and outside the house was
alive with singing, and the very air was song.

My father brought the new preacher in to see me before my mother came from Bronwen’s,
and Mr. Nicholas, the colliery manager, and Dr. Richards stood in the doorway because
the kitchen was full up with girls and women, all cooking or cutting bread and butter.

“This is Huw, Mr. Gruffydd,” said my father. “Huw, this is the Reverend Mr. Merddyn
Gruffydd, the new preacher. Bow your head, my son.”

“Leave your head on the pillow,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, and he was looking
at me, and frowning. “Huw Morgan, never let that light go from your eyes. Never mind
how long you are here. Do you want to go out with the other boys?”

“Yes indeed, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.

“Are you sure you will go from here one day?” asked Mr. Gruffydd, smiling now.

“Yes,” I said. “I am, sir.”

“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “And not a doubt about it, never mind what all the doctors
have got to say.”

Of course, that was a cut for Dr. Richards, in fun, mind, so everybody laughed except
the doctor.

“The boy will be no better for those ideas, Mr. Gruffydd,” Dr. Richards said. “Nature
must take her course.”

“Nature,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, “is the handmaiden of the Lord. I do remember
that she was given orders on one or two occasions to hurry herself more than usual.
What has been done before can also be done again, though perhaps not so quickly, indeed.
Have you faith, Huw, my little one?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and I was on fire.

“Good,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, “you shall see the first daffodil out upon
the mountain. Will you?”

“Indeed I will sir,” I said, and his hand was cool on my forehead.

“God bless you, little Huw,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd. “I will come to see you
every day. Yes?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Thank you, sir,” my father said, and strange he was looking, but the Reverend Mr.
Gruffydd only shook his head and waved his hand and smiled at me before he went back
in the other room.

The kitchen was quiet when he went. Bronwen was looking after him with her hands all
flour with her and the other girls were nodding at one another and looking as though
something serious had happened.

“What is wrong, Bron?” I asked her.

“Nothing, boy,” said Bronwen, so I knew there was something. “There is a fine man
he is. There is crowds there will be at Chapel, now then.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Idris, and starting again on the potatoes. “He have had a
revival wherever he have been to preach.”

“Well, we can do with one here,” said Bronwen, and back she went to her cakes.

All this time there had been singing outside, but not all of them together except
for the choruses. But now, because my mother was coming, a shouting and cheering started
that made the very pots on the table shake together.

Quick as quick Bronwen and the others finished all they were doing and ran to be from
the kitchen when my mother came in.

There is a rush they made, with a rattle of bowls and a clashing cutlery, and all
of them trying to wipe down the table at once, and leaving it for something else,
and then finding everybody had left it half done, and all of them rushing back again
to do it properly, and picking up bits of peel and rubbing flour off the tiles, and
putting more coal on the fire, and bumping against one another and laughing, and the
cheering growing louder outside, and their faces going straight with them again, and
another rush to pat my bedclothes tidy and giving me smiles, and kisses from Bronwen
and Angharad, and then they had gone, with a click of the latch and a tapping on the
cobbles.

And there was left only the chickens on the spit, and the new furniture, and the cheering,
and me.

You will never know how silly is cheering until you lie on your back, and look up
at sunlight stretching itself on a bed of yellow paint, and try to do a bit of cheering
by yourself.

First you will make a noise in the same key in the back of your throat, but it will
sound as though you had an old fish bone by there, so you will try louder.

Then you cannot make up your mind whether it should be Hurray or Hooray or Hurrah
or just Ay, and carry the Ay on a few beats till you stop for your breath. If you
will have Ay, then you try it louder and louder until you are screaming at the top
of your voice, and in the middle of that comes a thought.

There is a fool you look, with your mouth wide open, and your throat hard with effort,
and your good voice wasting in Ay. For the sake of making a noise.

So I stopped cheering and listened for somebody coming in, and presently I heard the
front door open. Just then, I suppose because they had been told to watch for it,
the choir started to sing.

There is lovely after that senseless noise. In dignity and harmony, in rich beauty
rose their voices now employed in noble purpose. Glorious is the Voice of Man, and
sweet is the music of the harp.

I looked round quickly at the doorway and found my mother watching me with diamonds
in her eyes, and her hand to her mouth. Whether to laugh or cry, now.

“Huw,” she said. “Huw, my little one.”

No words would come from me, and I turned my head.

My mother came over to me and I heard her skirt sighing across the tiles, but when
she bent over me and saw me pulling faces, she began to pull a few, and then we looked
at each other and we started to laugh at the same time. There was nothing to cry about,
see, so there was no sense in crying.

“Wait you,” my mother said, and wiping my face, “there are some blackberry tarts coming
up the Hill now in a minute. Wait you.”

“Are you better, Mama?” I asked her.

“Better, boy?” my mother said, and laughing she was, now, with her. “Of course I am
better. Do I look better?”

“Your hair is white with you,” I said.

“The snow got into it,” she said. “You had your old cap on.”