How Green Was My Valley (25 page)

Half-way down in the darkness of trees I heard her screaming again, but it only made
me travel faster, and farther down by the first lot of rocks I saw Gwilym with some
men carrying lanterns, all beating the briars, and some of them pushing the lamps
under the hedges. I shouted until I was almost into them, but the wind was out of
me, and Gwilym dropped his lantern to run and meet me when the other men shouted.

He and most of them started up the mountain ahead, with me on the shoulders of a big
collier who was straight from the pit, no bath, black, and smelling of coal and strong
tobacco. We were at the top almost as soon as the others, because I knew the way,
and Gwil and his men came up on the wrong side of the rock, and had to run all the
way round to where the fire was burning.

Up over the edge and out on the flat we ran, and across to the fire. The two men who
were there first started to shout and ran into showers of sparks, beating with their
caps and jumping back again. Gwil came round and stopped, staring, and then screamed,
and ran to go in the flames, but the other men held him away, and they fought with
him to hold him down.

More men were all round the fire trying to stamp it out and getting in my way. Then
they stood clear of the heat as we came closer, and I could see.

Marged was lying in the fire, and burning, with smoke.

I slipped from the collier’s shoulders and looked away, up at the sky, and down in
the dark of the Valley. Behind me the shouts, and Gwil crying, and a bubbling among
the snapping of burning wood, and boots stamping the ground, and the wind humming
to the fire.

I walked away, in no hurry, but just walking, down the path and home, thinking nothing
and seeing little. I went in round the back, in the quiet, and saw the light where
Owen was working, and went in to him. His face was wet with sweat, but his eyes were
bright with smiles as he looked up at me, and back to the engine.

“Come on, boy,” he said, “missing the best of it, you are, man. Give me the number
three, now, quick.”

I gave him the tool from its place in the rack and thought of poor Marged and started
to cry, but Owen was too busy on the engine to notice.

“Now, then,” he said, “you prime her, and I will start her. Huw, my little one, you
are helping to make history. Hold on, now.”

He put the crank handle in, and I stood above the funnel, with the tin of spirit ready
to pour in.

“Right, you,” he said.

In I poured the spirit, and tears dropped with it, but Owen was winding and winding,
with the engine waking up at every turn. And now it fired, and fired again, and Owen
turned no longer but pulled the handle clear, and looked as though to make it run
by his will. Quick as quick the firing came until it was in a storm of firing, shaking
the place under my feet, making me clench my jaws.

The engine was going. After years, it was going.

Owen looked and looked and then threw the crank to the roof and started to dance with
his knees bent high, shouting, but barely to be heard.

The door slammed back and my father came in with his eyes wide, going from Owen to
the engine, and my mother and Bron behind with some of the people next door, all surprised
and some of them afraid, speechless in the noise. My father looked at me, smiling,
but I was crying and nothing would stop me.

I could see Marged so plain in the fire.

My mother ran across to me, pushing Owen and telling him to stop the engine, and my
father lifted me over the heat of it, and carried me into the kitchen. But my mother
took me from him and held me in her lap by the fire, and I felt her strength about
me and her kiss upon my forehead, and her voice with love.

“There, my little one,” she was saying, “too far for you with that big basket. Your
Dada was coming to look for you, now just. And there you were in that old place making
all that noise, and your Mama worried in case you were lost on the mountain.”

“Mama,” I said, with tears nothing would stop, “Marged is burning.”

My mother looked up at my father and his eyes changed.

“What is that you are saying, my son?” he said, and came to kneel by me.

“Marged is burning,” I said, “and they have got Gwil on the ground, crying.”

“O, God,” my mother said, “go you, Gwil, quickly. Owen, go for the boys to follow
Dada. Angharad, go you for the doctor.”

Then I had broth, and went to sleep.

For weeks our house was quiet. Owen and Gwil went away, nobody knew where, and my
mother was worried pale for them. The doctor came and wrote down what I told him of
that night, and that was the last I heard of it. Marged was never spoken of in the
house after that, but I often thought of her.

School for me came up one night, when my father had come back in the house after looking
at Owen’s engine, still in the back, but kept clean and shining by me.

“If you were able to go to Town every day,” he said to me, “you would go to school
to-morrow morning. Wasting your time on a machine like that.”

“Where is the boy to go?” my mother said. “Weeks, now, I have been asking, but no
notice.”

“He shall go over the mountain to the National School,” my father said, “till the
one is built here. Not very far for him and much better than hanging about the house.”

“National School?” my mother said. “No son of mine is going to a National School.
There is a thing to say.”

“Then where is the boy going?” my father asked her. “The others could walk and look
after themselves, and no trouble.”

“Are you going to blame him for his weakness?” my mother said, “because if you are,
you had better say it to me, first.”

“Go on, girl,” my father said. “Not that, I meant. If he is not going over the mountain,
where is he going?”

“Has he got to go to school?” my mother said.

“Well, Beth,” my father said, and standing up as though strangers were in the house,
“how will he make a way for himself without good schooling?”

“There is something about the National School I will never like,” my mother said,
“but if that is all there is, very well. National School.”

So next morning Bron took me over the mountain to the National School. The way we
went was not one we took often, and in all my life before I had only been in that
valley twice, for it was where the iron works were, with even more dirt over there
than on our side.

The town over there was getting bigger every day, and rows upon rows of houses were
building, and plenty were being lived in without a road or even a good path to them.
Public houses were on every corner, almost, and most of them full even so early as
we were, but there were some tidy little chapels in building and built, so somebody
was awake over there. Bron liked the look of the shops, and so did I, for they were
bigger, and more in them than the little couple we had, so we had a walk round before
we went to find the school.

Chapter Sixteen

G
OING IN TO A NEW SCHOOL
is a lot worse than drawing teeth, I am sure. That morning I would have given anything
to grow wings and be a dragon fly, or anything without a tongue and hands. But Bron
was with me so I could do nothing only follow behind, past the yellow-rick, long,
low, big-narrow-windowed school building to the doors, and go in to the dark with
her. Inside it smelt of chalk.

Mr. Motshill was English, a tall man, thin in the leg, high of collar, and with long
fair whiskers on both sides of his face, and a bald head, and no moustache.

He came out of his room as we went in.

“Are you looking for someone?” he asked her, in English, and as though his throat
had a cord about it pulled tight.

“Yes,” Bron said, “this is my brother-in-law. His parents want him to join the school
here.”

Then Mr. Motshill asked questions. Who was my father, and what did he do, how much
could he afford, and things like that. Bron answered civil with a face like a white
cloud, but I knew that if she had caught my eye we would have shouted laughing like
fools, and that would have settled school.

“Well, Master Morgan,” Mr. Motshill said to me, with a big lump of my cheek between
his fingers and thumb, and bending over me so that I could smell the snuff on him,
“shall we take you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Very well,” he said. “To-morrow morning, with copies of references, fees, and fees
to cover books, and bring pencils and pens with you. You will be examined as to the
present state of your education, and remanded for a class. Fourteen eighteens?”

His face flew down at me and his voice blew in my ears. His eyes were big near mine
and his glasses made them smaller. A lot of little red paths in them, too.

There was no sense in a question like that, for we had played figures ever since I
could remember, and the tables I had known almost from the time I could walk.

So I told him, and he stood up, but slowly.

“Yes,” he said, as though he had made a discovery, “yes. But say it in English, you
understand. You are to instruct his parents,” he said to Bron, “that he must on no
account be allowed to speak that jargon in or out of school. English, please, at all
times. Good morning.”

And off he went, leaving Bron and me in the hall. From down at the far room, children
were chanting arithmetic tables in a sing-song. I could tell where they were from
the sound and length of it. Bron looked down the hall at Mr. Motshill going round
the corner, and turned about sharp, walking out and slamming the doors in a stamping
temper.

“What is the matter, Bron?” I asked her.

“You heard what he said, boy,” Bron said, “to speak in English. What will your Dada
say? You shall never go to that school. You shall see.”

“More trouble in the house, now then,” I said.

“What trouble, boy?” Bron asked me, in the middle of the street, and people looking
at her because she was lovely.

“Mama and Dada,” I said. “Dada will say no school, and Mama will say you and your
old National School, and I will still be about the house all day. But if nothing is
said about speaking English, I can go to school and nobody wiser, and Mama and Dada
in peace, see.”

Bron looked down at me with her hands on her hips, then looking at her shoe, and then
at me.

“Right you, old man,” Bron said, and gave me a kiss. “School, then. But if you let
that old slug by there make you speak English when you want to speak Welsh, tell me.
That is all. Just tell me.”

“What will you do?” I said, to see her face.

“Do?” Bron said, and her mouth came together and her eyes went to slits. “I will put
him upside down on his old desk and hit the flap on his old head.”

“Good,” I said, and we were laughing, to think of his thin legs waving, “let us have
toffee, is it?”

So up the mountain we went back home with our faces swollen with toffee we used to
have, called stickjaw, and laughing loud at nothing very much because the sun was
shining and we were happy.

The rest of the day I was going up and down for references, one from Mr. Evans the
Colliery, one from Dr. Richards, one from Mr. Silas Owen, solicitor, and one from
Mr. Gruffydd.

“Well, Huw,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “to school at last, then?”

“Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.

“Good,” he said, “and learn. Learn anything. Here is a pencil-box for you. It was
mine and my father’s, and his father’s. Go you, now, because I am busy. But come you
to-morrow night and tell me about the first day, is it?”

“Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, and took the letter home, with the pencil-box in front
of me. There is a beautiful box it was, too.

About eighteen inches long, and three wide, with a top that slid off, and a piece
cut out for your thumb to press it through the groove. On the top tray, three lovely
red pencils, new, and without the marks of teeth, with sharp points, and two pens
green, with brass holders for nibs, and at the end a little pit for a piece of rubber.
The top tray was fast on a pivot, and you pushed it round to come to the second tray,
with five more lovely pencils, three yellows, and a red and a blue. Under that one,
another then, with dividers, a compass, a ruler, a box for nibs and drawing-pins,
a couple of ivory angles, a drawing pen, and crayons. And all so good you wished it
had more trays again underneath. Nothing so pretty as good pencils, and I do think
the feel of a long pencil in your fingers is as good to the taste as something to
eat.

That night Mrs. Tom Jenkins came up to give me a polish in sums, written and mental.
My father and mother, Ivor and Bron, and Davy were all round the table listening,
and everybody quiet, pretending not to look.

We were doing very well, up to the kind of sum when a bath is filling at the rate
of so many gallons and two holes are letting the water out, and please to say how
long will it take to fill the bath, when my mother put down the socks she was darning
and clicked her tongue in impatience.

“What is the matter?” my father asked her.

“That old National School,” my mother said. “There is silly the sums are with them.
Filling up an old bath with holes in it, indeed. Who would be such a fool?”

“A sum it is, girl,” my father said. “A sum. A problem for the mind. Nothing to do
with the National School, either.”

“Filling the boy with old nonsense,” Mama said.

“Not nonsense, Beth,” my father said, to soothe, quietly, “a sum, it is. The water
pours in and takes so long. It pours out and takes so long. How long to fill? That
is all.”

“But who would pour water in an old bath with holes?” my mother said. “Who would think
to do it, but a lunatic?”

“Well, devil fly off,” my father said, and put down his book to look at the ceiling.
“It is to see if the boy can calculate, girl. Figures, nothing else. How many gallons
and how long.”

“In a bath full of holes,” Mama said, and rolled the sock in a ball and threw it in
the basket, and it fell out, and she threw it back in twice as hard. “If he went to
school in trews full of holes, we should hear about it. But an old bath can be so
full with holes as a sieve and nobody taking notice.”