How Green Was My Valley (57 page)

“They will charge royalty on the air above it, next,” Ianto said. “No royalties, none,
and our own trucks and engines, and railway staff, and a rental to the railway companies
for the use of their tracks all over the country. Then a fleet of coalers of our own
to take it out to the world. But out to the world only when every fire-place in the
country has got a splendid fire, every scuttle full, and every cellar loaded.”

“Who is to own all this?” my father asked him, and with steady pulling on his pipe,
and looking at the end of his slipper.

“The people,” Ianto said, in quiet, and pale, with a flame. “Only the people. God
made the earth for Man, not for some of the men.”

“Where will you have the money to buy it, my son?” my father asked him, still steady
with the pipe.

“God made the coal, Dada,” Ianto said. “But Man makes the money. Pity, indeed, if
God put His hand down through the clouds and gave us all a bill for the riches He
made for us and gave to us, free. What would happen, I wonder?”

“It is beyond me, Ianto,” my father said, and knocked out a full pipe in his worry.
“There seems to be truth in what you say, indeed. But the Bible and God are not in
the business of the pit. Only ledgers and Mammon. You will have it hard, my son. Hard,
indeed.”

“Good,” Ianto said. “It is only when men forget to fight for right that they fail.
There are plenty to fight for wrong. We will finish with the sliding scale first,
anyway. That will be a start.”

Night after night, all over the valleys, men met in hundreds to argue about the sliding
scale. Older men, like my father, who had earned a handful of sovereigns for a week’s
work, were blaming the younger men for the difference, and blind to argument. And
they clung to the sliding scale because it was at least a living.

Then Ianto was discharged from the colliery with Will Thomas and Mostyn Marudydd,
all three of them Union workers.

Men wanted to drop tools there and then, but Ianto kept them in. He wanted no hungry
children on his conscience, he said.

For weeks the three of them went about the pits to have work, but no, even though
they were skilled men, there were no places for them.

“They have sharpened their knives for you,” my father said. “You will never work in
the collieries again while you live.”

“Right you,” Ianto said, “I will go over to the ironworks tomorrow.”

“Is the Union too poor to pay you whole time?” my father asked him.

“What I do for the Union,” Ianto said, “is from the heart. Will you have it said of
me that I skulked into a job I made for myself?”

“But Ianto, my little one,” my father said, “somebody has got to do the job and be
paid for it.”

“Good,” said Ianto, “but not me.”

So over to the ironworks he went, and had a job labouring in the furnaces, and coming
back at night to work by the lamp. Four miles there, and four miles back, and a twelve-hour
day in between. A bath, and his dinner, and more work with the pen, or with the voice.

I was still with the blacksmith, but doing jobs underground for most of the time,
on trams that broke down, and blunted tools, and on all the little jobs that heat
and a hammer will mend.

I found little joy in working with iron, for it had no will of its own. A pump on
the bellows, a heat blown pale, and out comes your iron like a slave, ready to be
hit in any shape you please. In wood, you must work with care, and respect, and love.
For wood has soul and spirit, and is not at the mercy of triflers. One slip of your
chisel in carelessness or ignorance, one shave too many with your plane, and your
work is ruined, and fit only for burning.

But with iron, you shall beat and beat, and only an angriness of sparks, like the
spitting of a toad to answer you, and if you make a mistake, back on the fire with
it, a leaning on the bellows, and here it is again, poor spiritless stuff, ready to
be beaten again.

I went often to Town to fetch iron in strips from the forge there, when we were low
in stock, and held up on a job.

I was over there one market day, in the afternoon, in my working clothes and black
from the pit and feeling shamed to be walking among the people in case I spoilt their
good clothes.

The forge was near to the market hall, so that the farmers could pull up in the square
to unload, and trot their horses over to be shod where they could keep an eye out
for customers who might be waiting at their stalls to buy.

So the forge was always a busy place, on market day, full of laughing and voices,
and the grunting of bellows, and the hot whispers of fires, and the silver count of
hammers beating out the strokes for sweating sledge-hammer men and the stamping of
horses, a dull knocking of nails in hoofs, the fall of files on stone, impatient breath
of iron drowned in the cooling tank, and sharp to the nose with the frying of hoof
as the new blue shoe was fitted.

And outside, the little blue trap from Tyn-y-Coed, filled at the back with baskets,
and inside the forge, the bay mare, with her off hind stretched and held between the
knees of the smith.

I was looking at her and laughing to see the look in her eyes, whether to kick or
not, when I heard a voice I knew well.

“New shoes again,” Mrs. Nicholas was saying, with the smile carved about her nose,
to a farmer and his wife from the next valley. “But only to be expected, see. Out
all day, she is.”

“Are you having much work at Tyn-y-Coed, then, Mrs. Nicholas, my little one?” the
farmer’s wife asked her.

“Work never stopping,” said Mrs. Nicholas, and picking the fingers of her gloves.
“Come one, come the other, from morning till night.”

“Entertaining, young Mrs. Evans is, now I suppose?” the farmer said. “Old Evans kept
them away.”

“It will never surprise me to see the poor master rise up white from his grave one
of these days,” Mrs. Nicholas said. “Only the gravestone is keeping him down there
now, I will swear.”

“Gracious goodness, Mrs. Nicholas, my little one,” the farmer’s wife said, “what for,
now then?”

“What for?” Mrs. Nicholas said, with her hands up, and her eyes up, and the suffering
of eternity in her voice. “What is going on in the house, of course. Are you standing
there in your good little clothes and saying to my face you are knowing nothing about
it?”

“No,” said the farmer, and taking out his pipe, with his eyebrows up, and his wife
coming closer, and both leaning forward. “What, now then?”

“The only ones in the Five Valleys,” Mrs. Nicholas said, in grief. “Nobody else, only
you.”

“Good God, Mrs. Nicholas,” the farmer said, and looked at his wife, and they pulled
a mouth at each other, and looked again at Mrs. Nicholas as though she held their
hopes at the Bar. “What, now then?”

“Not for me to say,” Mrs. Nicholas said, and a shaking of the head, and a look at
the floor, as though she saw Old Evans lying there in his winding sheet, “only the
housekeeper I am, and forty-seven years, with odd, in the family, and living to curse
the day.”

“Well, well,” the farmer said, “there is terrible it is, whatever it is, is it?”

“Terrible, Mr. Davies, my little one?” Mrs. Nicholas said, with stiffness, through
a closed mouth, and a straightening of the back, and eyes gone dull to think of a
word, “Not the word. A collier’s daughter, Mrs. Davies, my little one, using best
china and lace tea cloths every day of the week. And that is only a bit of it. Fancy
me, you know. A ride in the trap, if you please, with a preacher every day.”

“With a preacher, Mrs. Nicholas?” Mrs. Davies said, in whispers.

“Who is he, then?” Mr. Davies asked her, with his hair in crawls with him.

“Who?” Mrs. Nicholas said. “Who is in the house every night till all hours? Who, are
you asking? Who, then? I am in bed, with my candle out.”

Mrs. Nicholas looked about, but took no notice of me, for I was black, and turned
into rock, and she bent to them and whispered, and I saw spit from her speech bright
in the air, and as she spoke, their mouths and eyes became round with smiling horror.

“Eh,” Mr. Davies said.

“O, Gracious God in Heaven,” said Mrs. Davies, in whispers, as though a fireball was
to be expected then and there.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Nicholas, and fat from duty done, “and how do I know he goes from
the house at night?”

The three of them looked at one another, and devils danced about them.

“And her poor boy of a husband out in Cape Town,” Mr. Davies said, “bleeding for his
country.”

“Wait you, Mr. Davies,” Mrs. Nicholas said, with her eyes shut as though her life
were going from her, and holding up her finger to make the sign of writing with a
pen, “only wait, you.”

“Well done,” said Mr. Davies, in Chapel voice, from the chest, and with sternness,
“thou good and faithful servant.”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Nicholas, my little one,” said Mrs. Davies in a voice that the
least Mrs. Nicholas had done was to save them all from the gallows. “Suffering you
are, now, but reward to come, is it?”

“O, I hope, I hope,” said Mrs. Nicholas, and a handkerchief coming to help with the
tears. “Poor, poor little Master Iestyn. A slut from a coal mine fouling his home,
and him thousands of miles away. O, dear, dear. Ach y fi.”

“Ach y fi, indeed,” Mrs. Davies said, and a pinkness of the face to be from there
and meet others. “In His keeping, you are, Mrs. Nicholas, my little one.”

I had to go from there then, blind and dumb, job forgotten, nothing in me. Empty,
I went, without even a word to Mrs. Nicholas. Yet, feeling nothing, I could have killed
her with no thought of to-morrow, but only sickness to touch the fat wrinkles of her
neck. But instead, I had the sense to go.

To Bronwen I went, and found her wiping Taliesin after his bath.

“Well,” she said, “there is early you are, boy. No bath is ready for you yet or anything.”

“No matter,” I said, and I told her, and her face was white as the towel when I finished.

“Eh,” she said, with tiredness, and closing her eyes, and holding Taliesin close to
her and lifting her head. “I do hope from my soul that the tongues of people will
be slower to hurt when my sons are grown to men, indeed. What good are they having
for it?”

“What are we to do?” I asked her.

“Tell Angharad,” she said, as though there was no argument.

“It will kill her,” I said.

“Better to come from us,” she said. “If that woman have written to Iestyn he will
be writing soon or perhaps coming home. That would be worse for her.”

“Is it true, then?” I asked her. “Is Mr. Gruffydd going over there till all hours?”

“Do I know?” she asked me, with straightness, and stopping to tie Taliesin’s napkin.
“Is it business of mine? Are you questioning it?”

“No,” I said, and lost inside me. “But I thought it was all lies.”

“That is not the point,” Bron said, “their business is their business. Nothing to
do with us, you, me, or anybody else on earth.”

“But, Bron,” I said, “he is a preacher.”

“And a man,” Bron said, “and Angharad is a woman. Well?”

“Is it right, then, Bron?” I asked her. “She is another man’s wife.”

She held Taliesin up and kissed him so that her mouth made a lovely roundness in his
fat little cheeks and he laughed just like a hen, with his breath coming backwards.

“How have you been looking at me these months?” she asked me, quick from the kiss,
with quietness, and with something of tears.

I looked down at my hands and saw the veins swollen in the blackness of grime, and
I knew a shame that had the edge of a razor cutting deep into me with a hurt that
made me want to scream.

“There is shamed I am, Bron,” I said.

“Shamed?” she said, and pushed breath from her nose with a sound of impatience, “of
being a man? Or being found out?”

“No,” I said, and the razor doing beautiful work inside me, “to give you extra trouble
in the mind.”

“You are talking nonsense, boy,” she said, and a kiss for Taliesin again. “Go you
and bathe. Then some dinner, and we will talk again.”

While I was having dinner, Bron was upstairs changing into her best, so when she was
ready I had finished.

“Now then,” she said, “will you go to Mr. Gruffydd while I go to Angharad? Or will
I go to Mr. Gruffydd?”

“You go to Angharad,” I said. “If I have my eyes on that black bitch I will strangle
her. But how shall I tell Mr. Gruffydd is something beyond me.”

“Say it out,” Bron said. “Just say. Then it is for him.”

“Right you,” I said.

“Good-bye, now,” she said, and came closer and smoothed back my hair, and smiled at
me with her teeth and her eyes in slits with shine in them. “O, Huw, there is a nasty
bump you have had, too. Did you think I was blind, boy?”

“No,” I said, “I knew you knew, but I thought no matter as long as nothing was said.”

She laughed out loud, and a lovely laugh had Bron, deep and from the chest.

“There is a funny old boy you are,” she said. “We will talk more when I come back,
is it?”

“Yes,” I said, and feeling worse than ever, shamed and angry, and sore in a place
I could feel but could not touch, as though I had fallen with my brains on a gravel
path, and scraped the skin off.

“See Mr. Gruffydd before you see Mama,” Bron said, “or she will see by your face that
something is sour with you and have it out of you, every word. Good-bye, now.”

“Good-bye,” I said, and we looked at each other, and I tried to keep from smiling
at her, to show that I was feeling serious, but nobody could see her eyes like that
and keep trouble inside them.

So I smiled, and Bron laughed again, with gentleness, and quietly shut the door.

I sat there till the light had gone, thinking about Bronwen and me, with still the
soreness, and plenty of sourness, and some of the shame. But the smile kept coming
back and spoiling it. I was coming to be in a sweat of anger with myself for being
such a fool as to tell Bronwen that I had thought all would be well if nothing was
said, and worse still, to remember her voice when she asked me how I had been looking
at her. I thought shame to have been such an animal. I called myself low names and
whipped myself raw, in thought, and tried to think of some punishment fit for me.