Or does the mention of it, I wonder, drive a wedge under that tight-shut door, just enough to let in a thin smell of the steamings we shall live through before those who know us can go about with long faces to say we are dead. Sad, sad is the thought that we are in for a hiding in every round, and no chance to hit back, no hope of a win, fighting blind against a champion of champions, who plays with you on the end of a poking left, and in the last round puts you down with a right cross to kill.
There is something of sickness in the thought that you shall make up your mind to enjoy your hiding, and the consolation is only that you will never know the tasting of defeat. For while they are taking your clay from the ring, you are up and starting your fight somewhere else.
I heard the blood in Mr. Gruffydd’s voice, and searched libraries of words in hot seconds of emptiness only to give him comfort.
“Long time, sir,” I said.
“I shall be an old man,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Old,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and nothing done.”
“You have done much,” I said, with a loud voice, to try and make up for want of words just before. “Chapel, and sick, and everything, sir.”
“And everything,” he said, and laughed. “Thank you, Huw. Eh, dear. I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ever dreamed of, not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind. With truth. With the golden sound of the Word. But only a few heard the trumpet. Only a few understood. The rest of them put on black and sat in Chapel.”
“Is it wrong to do that, then, Mr. Gruffydd?” I asked him, and surprised out of voice.
“Why do you go to Chapel, Huw?” he asked me, still going on with his work.
“Because,” I said, and then I stopped. Why, indeed?
“Yes,” he said, and smiling. “Because you want to? Because you like coming? Because your mother and father come? Because your friends are there? Because it is proper to do on Sunday? Because there is nothing else to do? Because you like the singing? To hear me preach? Or because you would fear a visitation of fire during the week if you stayed away? Are you brought by fear or by love?”
“I’m a bit surprised, sir,” I said, and indeed, I was dry with it.
“The questioning of habit is fruitful of surprise,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “Would you fear a bolt of fire on your head, or some other dire punishment if you stayed away from Chapel without permission?”
“I would a bit, sir, I think,” I said.
“So would most of them,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “So they are brought to dress in black and flock to Chapel through fear. Horrible, superstitious fear. The vengeance of the Lord. The justice of God. They forget the love of Jesus Christ. They disregard His sacrifice. Death, fear, flames, horror and black clothes.”
“I have never heard you preach against any of them, sir,” I said to him.
“No, Huw,” he said. “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
“What shall we do, sir?” I asked him.
“O, Huw, my little one,” he said, and standing, putting the cloth from him, “what am I to say? Who am I to preach to other men? My sins are as great. Greater.”
And he went from the house, and I saw him tramping the road to the mountain with weary quickness and my feelings were under his feet.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
IVOR CAME OFF THE DAY SHIFT and told me to get ready to go to work the next morning with him. I was in sweats with excitement to get my clothes ready, but nobody said a word in the house. Not a word. But the way they all said nothing, said more than if they had all climbed up on the roof to shout it over the Valley.
Next morning at quarter to seven I called for him, and my mother came with me as far as the door, but with no more fuss than if I had been going to school. I had my can, and my side pocket was heavy with five candles.
“Ready?” Ivor asked me, and Bron gave him his can.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” said my mother. “Another one off, then.”
“Yes, Mama,” I said.
“Good-bye, now,” she said, and kissed me.
“Good-bye, Mama,” I said.
“Ivor,” my mother said, “look after him, NOW.”
“Yes, Mama,” he said. “Good-bye. And good-bye, Bron.”
“Good-bye,” said Bron, and a touch of a kiss for me.
And off we went, and my mother going quickly inside.
All the way down the Hill I had good mornings from the boys and girls, all looking at me with smiles as though to say wait, you, and you shall know you are alive in a couple of minutes. To the men, of course, I was only another boy starting to work, so only a few of them nodded, or gave me a tap on the back.
But going on to the pithead I had the same feelings as when I was in the boxing ring just before the fight was on. Something moving in the belly, and heat in the head, and lightness.
Dai Bando and Cyfartha were coming running to get in the cage when Ivor turned to go in, and me after him, looking back and hoping they would reach us in time. The cage was a box made of thick planks, bolted together on a steel frame, and the planks black with years of use, and the floor inches in dust, and sounding like a big drum.
Dai and Cyfartha squeezed in before the gateman locked up, and Dai saw me looking at him through the elbows of the man in front.
“O,” he said, and short with breath, “you, is it? A bit of work, now then?”
“Yes,” I said.
And the ground fell from underfoot, and we dropped, with a scream from the wind, into darkness, so dark that you thought you saw lights, and your knees were loose and bent.
Hundreds of times I went down, but I never got over the drop of the cage.
For moments you would swear you were blind. Then terror put sharp teeth in you.
For hour after hour we seemed to be there, waiting, and the air growing cold, but still dark, black, worse than night, and our feet barely touching the falling floor, until it felt as though we were standing in the middle of midnight with our knees bent ready to jump into morning.
Then the scream dropped and dropped, and the floor came firmer to the feet, the air was warmer and carried with it the salty stench of raw coal, and light came to us, and breath and savour of life to me, and gratitude, hotter than fire in me, for the gift of sight.
“Come you,” said Ivor, when the gateman opened up.
I followed him through the arched brick of the pit bottom parting, and down the main heading that was noisy with trains, and the singing of men working on them. The main heading was only wide enough for the trams to pass, with clearance for walking on both sides, and about nine feet high with lamps every few feet to give dirty yellow light.
We walked a good long way among crowds of other men until Ivor turned up a little hole in the wall, bent double.
“Come on,” he said, and smiling, “mind your head.”
Up this pitch-black little tunnel we crawled, head almost to knees, and then Ivor stopped, and threw his pick down.
“Right,” he said, and his voice coming like a roar in the dark. “Light your candles, and I will show you what is next.”
So off with our coats and waistcoats and shirts, and I lit a couple of candles and stuck them, in their iron holders, into the prop. There was so little air that the flames went to six inches with them, and pretty indeed.
“Now then,” Ivor said, “I will cut the coal, and you will push the lumps down the chute. Then go down and load all you find down there into my tram, is it?”
“Yes, Ivor,” I said.
“Right,” he said, and his pick punched deep into the seam.
So I started to work.
Ivor was a good workman, quick with his pick, untiring, and stopping only to move slag that fell when the coal was loosed. When he stopped, I stopped, but not to stop altogethe
r, for we banked the slag against the sides and packed it tight to act as a prop for the roof.
For hour after sweating hour, bent double, standing straight only when we were flat on our backs, we worked down there, with the dust of coal settling on us with a light touch that you could feel, as though the coal was putting fingers on you to warn you that he was only feeling you, now, but he would have you down there, underneath him, one day soon when you were looking the other way. I used to look at the shining black strip in the orange light of our two candles, and think to myself that this might be the mourning band of the earth, and us taking it from her to burn, and she looking at us with half-shut eyes, waiting to have a reckoning. But there was always a fear in me, down there, that I never lost.
I always seemed to hear a voice in the heavy quiet, beyond the punch, punch, punch of Ivor’s pick, and the rolling echoes of coal sliding down the chute. And I always thought I saw a face in the glitter of the coal face, and never mind how much Ivor cut from it, it always seemed to be there.
The muscles of the belly might feel to be tearing apart long before the end of the day, so bent we were. Ivor would kneel, lie on his side, stand sideways and bent, or on his back, with sweat making his skin into black silk, but never a pause, never a stop, till it was time for eating, or for a swill of tea to take dust from the throat.
I knew well, even on the first day, where Dai Bando had those muscles in the belly.
And, O, what joy to come up in the cool air of night after hot hours in the light of candles, light that crawled with dust that sometimes shone. Then I knew, and knew with thanksgiving, why we sat on doorsteps when the sun was out. Only to be quiet, and rest aches, looking at clean light, feeling the blessing of the sun, free, for a couple of hours, from the creeping touch of the fingers of coal.
Up the Hill, among the crowds on the shift, and passing boys I knew without a nod from them, and surprised, until I remembered the top skin of coal dust that covered me from head to foot and hid me from them.
But I felt a man in real truth, to be coming up among that crowd of men, sharing their tiredness, blacked by the same dust, knowing the sounds and the sights of the colliery as they did, thinking with the same mind, of them, with them, a part of them.
I bathed with Ivor in Bron’s back, for there were more than enough in ours already.
There is good to see the tubs ready and the buckets all lined up, steaming. Off with the clothes and leave them where they fall. One bucket over you to take off the worst, then a rub of soap, another bucket, more soap. Now you will see a bit of yourself, but the hands, and especially those little lines in the balls of the fingers, are hopeless. You shall scrub and scrub, but Mr. Coal will lie there and laugh at you. A good friend to man is water, indeed, but never friendlier than when he is running down your back, chasing coal dust off with a stick of soap.
Into the tub, then, to rub a white lather all over you and duck under the water, holding breath to feel the gentleness all round you, close as your own skin.
“Well,” said Bron, when I came up, “how is the old man, then?”
“Good,” I said, and keeping as much of myself under the tub edge as I could.
“Come you,” she said, and rolling her sleeves. “You are black down the back.”
And she took the brush and scrubbed my shoulders, and then lathered with her hands and swilled water over me, till I was glad I was me and not the floor of her kitchen. A worker was Bron.
“Have I got skin left by there?” I asked her, “because if I have, there is a miracle again.”
“Skin you have got,” she said, “but no pattern, thanks to me.”
Then Ivor came in, and bathed while I dried, and when I was dressed Bron came in again to scrub him, and I went down to the house.
“Well,” said my mother, with a frown and a smile, “you are ready for your dinner, are you?”
“Yes, Mama,” I said.
“Did you have it hard, my little one?” she asked me.
“No, Mama,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Sit, now, and eat plenty.”
When my father came in he pulled me by the ear and smiled at me.
“Solicitor’s office, to-morrow, eh?” he said. “No more colliery, is it?”
“Colliery will do, Dada,” I said.
“You will find out,” he said. “There is plenty of time, and plenty of coal.”
And in the years that passed, I found out, indeed.
I suppose I had been working a couple of months when I had a letter from Ceinwen, not from Ellis, but from a driver of one of her father’s coal carts. She asked me to meet her the next Saturday afternoon in the same place as that last time, by the milestone. She must have known how our shifts worked, too, and I found out that she had made it her business to know.
I had almost forgotten her. But then she came back to me fifty times as strong, and I never went to sleep without thinking of her, and wishing hot for Saturday.
But before that Saturday, Owen had a telegram from London and I helped him to pack his engine while Gwilym packed the tools, and then went to the station with them to see them on the train.
“Two to Paddington Station, please,” Owen said, and not a hair out of place.
“Paddington?” the booker said, with big eyes. “London, is it?”
“Yes,” said Owen, one eyebrow down and the other one up, and looking as though foot-long cigars would drop from his pockets any moment.
“Good God,” said the booker. “Off, now, again?”
“Yes,” said Owen, and scratching something off his cuff.
“Are you going with the volunteers?” the booker asked.
“What volunteers?” asked Owen.
“South Africa,” the booker said. “Those old Boers are hitting the eyes out of them, out there.”
“No odds to us,” Gwilym said. “Old Roberts will have them, and quick. Business, us.”
“Oh?” the booker said. “A bit of business, is it? What, now?”
“Ours,” said Owen. “And two tickets to Paddington, with your permission.”
“No offence,” the booker said. “Only asking a civil question, I was.”
“And having a civil answer,” Gwilym said. “Two tickets to bloody Paddington, and quick.”
We were walking up and down the platform like three lords for hours before the train came in, letting everybody see the Paddington labels on the bag, and looking at them very superior because they were only going a bit down the line, but we were off to London. I wished I was going, too, but I had quite as much of the game as my brothers, and perhaps more, for when the train went, I was able to wave to them till they turned the bend, and everybody looking at me when I went, and saying to each other that I was one of the Morgan boys and two of my brothers just off to London. There is a lovely music in the saying of the word.
But I had a letter in my pocket from Owen to Blodwen, to be given to her in secret. Only messengers of princes know how to feel so important as I felt that day.
Over to Tyn-y-Coed I went, and in to find Mrs. Nicholas putting asters in the copper jug on the hall table.
“Well,” she said, with something of sourness.
“Miss Evans, please,” I said.
“She have gone from the house,” she said, and started to hum.
“I will wait,” I said.
“Not with those boots on this floor,” she said. “It is with polish for the feet of gentry. Kitchen round the back.”
“I will be in front,” I said, and went out.
I saw Blodwen coming round the house with flowers in her arms, and with gloves and shears straight from the garden. There is pretty she looked in her big hat with flowers and roses, and red and yellow, in a bunch in her arms.
“Huw,” she said, and stopping, bent forward a bit, with a big smile. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Owen has gone to London,” I said, with quiet, so that any ears in the house might burst, but no matter. “Say noth
ing. He gave me this letter, and he said for you to say nothing, nothing to anybody.”
She gave me the flowers to hold, and opened the letter as though it was a job she could have done without. But then she read, and smiles came back twice as strong, and even some pink toward the end.
“O, Huw,” she said, with laugh, “how glad I am. Tell your mother, will you, that I shall be in London on Monday? A sudden call.”
“Good,” I said.
“And tell her,” she said, and the smile had gone, “if nobody else has, that Iestyn sails for South Africa in three weeks.”
“Is he a soldier, then?” I asked her, and nearly dead with surprise.
“Gracious, no,” she said. “Something to do with coal for the Navy. Now then, tea for Huw.”
“Yes, indeed,” I said, “and then back, quick. Night shift, me.”
“I have sworn to have you out of that pit, Huw,” she said. “And before you are much older. We shall see.”
We did, too.
But not as Blodwen thought, bless her heart.
“Yes,” my mother said, when I told her what Blodwen had said, “Angharad is coming home while he is away. Say nothing outside.”
Chapter Thirty
CEINWEN, then, on Saturday afternoon, and me in my best brown tweed, with a buttonhole of rose, red, with a smell like the mists of Paradise.
Here comes the trap, the old one, with the paint worn off, and grey with the weather, and the old mare smiling and lifting her big knees as awkwardly as ever she did.
And Ceinwen.
Standing up, waving the whip, in a dress of blue, and a long blue coat, and a big hat sitting on top of a rick of new hay. No plaits. No hair hanging loose. Up.
A woman.
But still the smile, and still the eyes, and O, still the kiss.
“Huw,” she said, and her face as though with a light inside it, and her voice coming fresh as from a thousand miles away, “there is grown you are, boy.”