Our valley was going black, and the slag heap had grown so much it was half-way along to our house. Young I was and small I was, but young or small I knew it was wrong, and I said so to my father.
“Yes, Huw,” he said, and stopped to look. “I told them years ago to start underground, but nobody would listen. Now, there are more important things to think about. That is something that will have to be done when you are grown up. There will be plenty for you to do, indeed.”
When we passed through the village nearly all the women were outside waiting to hear what the men were doing up on the mountain. My father took his cap off to wish the time of day down by the Chapel to old Mrs. Rhys the Mill, and he held it in his hand all the way up to the house, because all that way he was wished by everybody.
My mother was sitting alone when we came in, and she seemed to have got over her distress, but the house was quiet, with that sort of stillness that a cat will have when it is waiting to jump with its back in a curl.
My father looked at my mother and said nothing, knowing her, but he made a sign to me to be silent before he went to change his boots. I went to the cupboard to get my slate, and while I was rubbing it clean my father came in.
Then my mother moved, and my father faced her.
“Gwilym,” she said, “Angharad has gone.”
“Oh,” my father said. “Where is she?”
“Down with the Beynons, I think,” my mother said.
“Wait you,” said my father. “I will have a word with her.”
When he had gone, my mother asked me to fill the kettle and give the fire a couple of shovels of coal, and when I had done, she called me.
“Huw,” she said, “how are you going to grow up, I wonder?”
“Well,” I said, “however it is, I will never leave this house for one, unless you send me from here, Mama.”
“I hope that will be the truth, Huw,” my mother said, looking right through me. “If any more of my family go from me, I will be sorry I ever had babies.”
“Well,” I said, “why did you have them, Mama?”
“Gracious goodness me, boy,” my mother laughed. “Go from here, now. Why, indeed. To keep my hands in water and my face to the fire, perhaps.”
But that question started me asking questions about babies, and nobody seemed to know, and if they did, they kept it to themselves. There is strange that a man will act as though money was being lost to tell the truth in such a matter. But that came after.
You should have seen my mother when my father came back with Angharad. There is pleased she was, and so gentle to put her in the corner chair and take her coat from her. Angharad was quiet and still full of thought, but she was clear in her mind and it was certain she had not been forced to come back. My father went straight out to the back to wash, and came in to shut the door of the next room to do his writing. During that time nothing was said, but I had toasted four rounds of bread which my mother put on the end of the fork as piece after piece was browned.
There is good dripping toast is by the fire in the evening. Good jelly dripping and crusty, home-baked bread, with the mealy savour of ripe wheat roundly in your mouth and under your teeth, roasted sweet and crisp and deep brown, and covered with little pockets where the dripping will hide and melt and shine in the light, deep down inside, ready to run when your teeth bite in. Butter is good, too, mind. But I will have my butter with plain bread and butter, cut in the long slice, and I will say of its kind, there is nothing you will have better, especially if the butter is an hour out of the churn and spread tidy.
“Angharad,” my mother said, “what did Dada say?”
“He said he was sorry if he had done anything wrong, Mama,” Angharad said, “and to tell him why I wanted to leave him.”
“Well?” my mother asked, and very surprised she was.
“I said I wanted to look after the boys because Mrs. Beynon is too fond of her bottle,” said Angharad.
“Angharad,” my mother said, holding up her hands. “What next then?”
“It is true, Mama,” Angharad said, and tears coming to sparkle in the fire-light. “Did you see our Davy with a big hole in his stocking here to-day?”
“Yes, my girl,” my mother said, “I did. And Gwilym is bringing them all up here to-night for me to mend.”
“I brought them with me,” said Angharad, “and I brought a couple of shirts, too. If you will want rags for the boots, Mama, go you and see the sheets on Davy’s bed.”
My mother was still and so quiet, with her plate on her knee and her eyes big and staring into the fire.
“Oh, God,” she said, “I will have my boys from there to-night if I will leave this house myself.”
She put her plate down on the fender and got up to go to the door of the next room.
“Give Huw his tea, Angharad,” she said, in a high voice. Then she opened the door and went in.
It was quiet in the kitchen, so that we could hear my father talking low to my mother, and her saying back to to him, but the door was so thick we could hear nothing of the words.
“Did you go up the mountain, now just?” Angharad asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “and Dada tried to tell the men, but they shouted at him.”
“Were the boys up there?” she asked.
“All of them,” I said, “but nobody was for Dada.”
“Right too,” said Angharad.
“Are you against Dada, too?” I asked her.
“Yes, indeed I am,” Angharad said, “though not him, but what he is trying to make them do.”
“What is that, then?” I asked her.
“Well, if it will have you any wiser,” said Angharad, with impatience, “he is trying to make them pray for what they want instead of going together and making the old owners give them it.”
“Why is Dada wrong, then?” I asked her, after I had thought about it.
“Be quiet, boy, and eat your toast,” Angharad said. “You are making enough noise with your old teeth to have the house down.”
“But why is Dada wrong?” I asked her.
“Because you will have nothing through prayer, boy,” Angharad said. “I have had nothing yet, and nobody else has, either. Look at Mrs. Mostyn the Grove. Everybody did pray for her and yet she went with her baby as well.”
My mother came out just then, and started to pour tea for my father.
“Angharad,” she said, and taking the cup in the next room, “go down to Mrs. Beynon’s and get the boys’ things, will you? Tell her I will pay my owings on Monday morning myself.”
“Yes, Mama,” said Angharad, and ran out through the back, clapping her hands and singing.
When my mother came out she pointed to the wall bed.
“You will sleep down here in the future, Huw,” she said, “and the boys shall have the back room to themselves. You are too small to be up there now they are all men, with them.”
And from that day to last night I have never slept anywhere else, except for the time when I lived in Bron’s.
When the boys came home that night I was in bed with the curtains drawn, so I could hear all that was said, though I was so sleepy I kept falling off and waking up with a jump.
They all came in together as though they had feared to come in one by one. There is funny it is to lie in the dark listening to people you know, talking and moving, making the little sounds you know, doing the little actions you know, all of it happening in the dark and yet so clear in your mind that you could laugh, and you ask yourself what is the need of people themselves when only their voices and little sounds are enough.
I could hear Davy throwing back his hair before he spoke, because his hair made a soft whish and his chair creaked. Gwilym I knew because his throat made a bumpy sound when he swallowed. Owen always rubbed his forehead and pulled his ear. I suppose there is no sound for that, yet I heard it and knew what he was doing.
But though I knew my father was there, I heard nothing from him, although I knew h
is sounds well. Yet I knew he was there, and even though Davy and Owen had made no sounds at all, I would have known they were there. There is a sort of hot stillness which you can feel, and yet it is not hot, nor is it still, but it will have you on edge and make you hot if you think about it. This feeling I always had for my father, and it was in my brothers, too.
This feeling it was that made the wall bed like an oven to me, and started me sweating till the drops were running down my cheeks into my ears.
They had broth for supper, but I suppose I slept through that, though I was sure I could hear all they said in a sort of underneath manner, like the sheets underneath me, that I never felt unless I thought of them.
My father it was who woke me up properly, even though he spoke very quietly, as though Mama had made a sign to the bed that I was in there and sleeping. Several ways he had of clearing his throat, and well I knew them. He had one way for singing, one way for speaking in Chapel, one way for reading the Bible, and another for reading anything else, except a story book, and that was different again. But he had a special way of doing it when he had something to say that was serious.
That was how he woke me up.
“Davy,” he said, “you are the eldest here, and to you I will talk.”
“Yes, Dada,” said Davy, and I knew his eyes would be watching my father in the shadow of his hair.
“I asked you to leave this house,” my father said, “because I thought I was doing the best. I thought you were a bad influence on the other boys. But I found that the others were as bad as you, and even a baby like Huw was going out of the house at night. That is not the way a house should live, and I said so. I have that authority because I am your father.”
“I will never question that, Dada,” said Davy.
“Good,” said my father. “It was hurting me to have to do it. I am proud of my family, and I am proud to think that you are prepared to make sacrifice for what you think is right. It is good to suffer in order that men should be better off, but take care that what you are doing is right and not half-right. My sense is against what you are doing. If you were right, you would not have had such a disgraceful meeting up there to-day. There would have been a different spirit. But that is not what I want to say. I would not have asked you in the house again if your mother had not begged me, and I only said I would because she told me you were living with pigs. I will have you make a sacrifice and I will have you suffer. It will do you good. But no man ever made himself more useful to himself or his fellow men by living in filth and dirt, and I am surprised that a son of mine would allow it.”
“They were lodgings, Dada,” said Davy, moving in his chair, “and we could get nowhere else. By the time we had finished work and collected the men, there was little time.”
“Where there is little time,” my father said, “there is little use. Leave it, now. I will have Mrs. Beynon spoken to. As for you, as I said, your mother told me about it, and I said I would have you back. But only on one condition.”
There was quietness for a time.
That hot, still feeling grew and grew till I thought I would burst.
“What is that, Dada?” asked Davy.
“We are all to be lodgers here,” said my father.
I could hear from the sounds that my brothers were all sitting up and staring at my father, and I could feel the pale straining.
“But, Dada,” said Davy, “how are you a lodger?”
“Because I am staying here,” said my father. “But I am not a father because I have no authority. No man shall say he is father of a house unless his word is to be obeyed. Mine is not, so I am not a father, but somebody paying for his keep. I am a lodger, and so are you and the boys, and your mother will look after you and me. That is all.”
“Dada,” Davy said, “I am sorry for this. I wish I could make you think as I do, only to understand.”
“It is too late to-night even to wish, Davy,” said my father. “Tomorrow is Sunday and early Chapel. Good night all.”
“Good night, Dada,” said Davy, and the other boys said with him, but quiet, as though they were so surprised they had lost their tongues.
“So now then, Davy,” said my mother, after my father had gone up.
“Yes, Mama,” said Davy, “I know.”
“Good,” said my mother, “and when you go up, throw that old shirt down. You, Owen and Gwilym, too.”
“Yes, Mama,” said the boys.
“And no words round the table,” said my mother. “If I am the boarding-house keeper I will have things my way.”
“O, Mama,” Davy said, and I am sure he kissed her. “I am for early Chapel, too. Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, Mama,” said the boys.
“Good night,” said my mother. “One more day in that sock, Davy, and you would be showing your legs. There is disgrace.”
“You should see Owen’s, Mama,” said Gwilym. “One more step and you would see the back of his neck, indeed.”
“Shut up, man,” said Owen.
I am glad my mother was so happy going up to bed.
Chapter Six
AFTER THAT there was peace in the house for a time, though I was too small to have the whole picture. I only know what I saw and heard, and I have often wished I had seen and heard more than I did. But there is nothing worse than a small boy with a sharp nose and a loose tongue, and thank goodness I was never that.
The family sat down to meals just the same, but there was a different feeling in the room always. Even when Bronwen came in it was not quite what it had been. We all seemed afraid to say what was in our minds, I suppose for fear it might start trouble. So instead of the laughing and joking there had been, you would have thought there was a preacher at the table with us.
Davy was still going up on the mountain and the boys were going with him, and coming back with him, openly now, not through the window but in and out of the front door. At that time Davy was meeting men of other valleys and coming to an agreement about forming a union of them all, so that if one lot came out on a complaint, they would all come out and put the coalfield at a standstill.
Just as it happens now, so they were planning then. And after weeks of work, Davy got what he wanted. After that it spread like fire over all the valleys. All the younger men were in, but the older men like my father would have nothing to do with it.
Davy argued with my father for hours, but he had to give up in the end. He knew he would have won most of the older men if my father had given way, and that is why he tried so hard.
“No, Davy,” my father said one night. “Never will I put pen to it. I am a man and I will deal with my own problems my way. I want no help from anybody.”
“But, Dada,” Davy said, “you were spokesman at the last strike. What is the difference?”
“A great deal, Davy,” said my father. “We knew what we all wanted and we were able to point to it. It affected all of us, and I happened to be chosen to speak.”
“But that is all we want to do,” said Davy. “We put our demands and back them up with unanimous support.”
“That is the trouble,” said my father. “You are a crowd of bits of boys all in the thing for what you will get. Demands, you call them. Well, I am against demands of any kind. You cannot reason with demand, and where there is no reason, there is no sense. As for your support, whatever you call it, some long word, what is the use of it?”
“Unanimous, Dada,” said Davy. “It means altogether. And the use is to make the owners give us fair terms.”
“Unanimous,” said my father, saying it carefully. “Yes. It do sound what it is. A collection of dull monkeys who cannot think for themselves. And the people who speak for them will have tongues a yard long and nothing else inside their heads. All the space will be taken to coil up their tongues. I have met them.”
“I shall be one of them, Dada,” said Davy.
“I wonder,” said my father. “At all events, I shall not. That is final.”
; “There will come a day, Dada,” said Davy, “when you will have to.”
“When that day comes, Davy,” said my father, “I will think about it again.”
Ivor was with my father from the start. Nothing Davy would say could move him, and that caused trouble between them. Davy even stopped speaking to Bronwen because of it.
So indeed for a time we were a happy lot there, with my father acting like a lodger, and my brothers doing everything they could to make him be a father, and my mother trying all ways to keep them together.
The owners must have found out that my father was against the union idea, because as soon as old Mr. Rhys the Superintendent died, my father was offered his job, and, of course, he took it. Being superintendent made my father next to the manager, and put up his pay, and made him one of the most important men in the village.
But at the same time the men began to think he had gone in with the owners, and that talk hurt him more than his trouble with Davy. He hated to think that anybody would suspect him of being disloyal, especially to the men, but there was no way he could fight the talk because it was never said in the open.
He often spoke to my mother at night and I heard every word. My mother was always ready to try to make him happy again, but it was not from her that he wanted it. It was from the men, and there was no way of reaching them, because they never came to him now as they used to. He noticed the change from the moment his name was put on the board.
For the first few days the men passed him without greeting, except to touch their caps civil. But when it passed into two days and more and then a week, and still the men were not speaking to him except about matters of work, he began to know that he was distrusted. As though he was to blame for being made Superintendent.
Mama spoke to Davy about it, when she found that nobody would listen to Ivor.
“Davy,” she said, “what is this about your father?”
“Well, Mama,” said Davy, and he knew, of course, what my mother meant. “It is this. It is very strange Dada was chosen for Super when everybody knows he is my father.”