23

When Jane and Ifan Gruffydd heard that Twm was in France, it was a great blow to them. They had not imagined for one minute that he would have to go. They still believed that the War would be over before boys like Twm would have to go.

From then on, a cloud hung over their heads all the time, and they felt as if they were just waiting for it to burst. Somehow, they didn’t believe it was possible for the sun to chase the cloud away. Their worst agony was waiting for the postman to bring a letter. After receiving one they would be happy for a few days; then they would start to worry once more.

The mother made cakes, and sent parcels to France twice a week. That was the only thing she did in the week that she put her whole soul into, and it was a depressing thing for her to see her husband bringing cigarettes to include in the parcel, since he himself was so set against them. The neighbours did the same.

‘Since you’re sending a parcel, put these cigarettes in for Twm,’ they would say.

So they called by often, until their own children joined the army.

There was no work at all to be had in Moel Arian. The young and middle-aged men either joined the army or went to the munitions factories, or to work on the docks in Liverpool and other ports. Ifan Gruffydd would go and get work unloading cargoes from ships in Holyhead from time to time, and then he would return to do things on the farm. He was able to come home at weekends when he was working there. By now it was a blessing to have Eric with them. And the people who were left at home began to question themselves and each other about the meaning of it all. The world had often been harsh for them. They had suffered hardship and injustice in the quarries; oppression by masters and owners, the oppression of favouritism and corruption. They had seen their friends and children killed at work, but they had never had their children taken away from them to be killed in a war before. They tried to explain the thing in every way possible in the Sunday School now, since there was no quarry cabin to debate in any longer.

They did not believe at all by this time that the reason for the War was to right the wrong done to small countries, nor that this was the war to end all wars, nor that one country was to be blamed for it more than the others. But they did come to believe that there were people in every country who welcomed war, and that these people were using the sons of Moel Arian for their own advantage. These were ‘the bigwigs’, those same people who crushed them in the quarry, and who sucked their blood and turned it into gold for themselves. In the core of their being, they now believed that some were making money out of the War, as they made money out of their bodies in the quarries, and that these people sought to delay the end of the War. But they also knew, if their children refused to go, that they would be sure to come and fetch them and compel them to go.

The big problem for them in the Sunday School was why, if God existed, he did not intervene? Why did he allow the poor to suffer always? Just as there were shifts and changes in the wider world, so did their own opinions shift and change. Their faith in preachers and leaders was shaken. Preachers who had been like gods to them before now stood condemned by them because they were in favour of the War. Indeed, some stayed away from chapel for months because a preacher had talked of the righteousness of this War. In the same way, other preachers rose in their estimation for preaching its injustice. They were unanimous on one thing: the names of some famous political leaders began to stink to high heaven.

But the War went on. More and more boys came home in uniform, and news of deaths began to filter through.

In Tre Ffrwd, Owen was worrying as usual. The same things were going through his mind. He was thoroughly fed up with the daft, empty talk that he heard everywhere, even from people who were supposed to be clever. In that small, proud town he heard people talk about the glory of war and the boys’ valour, and they believed every word they read in the newspapers. It was true that they worked hard to send comfort parcels to the soldiers and to welcome them when they came home and so on, but the soft, empty talk and the stereotypical ideas they expressed endlessly were enough to send anyone completely mad. Their children came home from the training camps, and if they were officers they would turn their noses up at a man like Owen who dared to walk the streets still wearing his own civilian clothes. Owen thought it was all very well for those boys, the boys from the grammar Schools, who had been pampered throughout their lives, and had never known want; if they suffered hardship now, it was for the very first time in their lives. As for his own people, they had experienced hardship throughout their lives and, as if they hadn’t had enough, war came along like an unseen fist and crushed them into the ground. He had the urge to go up to the stiff, immaculate officers and tell them all this. But what would be the point? How could they, in the midst of their plenty, in the fertile valley of their lives, ever know or understand a little place like Moel Arian, with its thin crust of soil, which was too poor to keep cattle like theirs? What did they know of struggling to survive and snatching a living by force from a land of peat bog and clay? Though sometimes that land did produce a crop of brains.

Some of the female teachers in the School took to reproaching him for not joining up. He was too contemptuous of them to bother explaining that he had been excused for the present for reasons of ill health. The only thing that would make him join would be his feeling of solidarity with his friends and relatives who had already joined up. He felt that if they were suffering, he should be there suffering with them, not because of his sympathy with the War but because of his sympathy with the boys. This bothered him more and more as the letters came from Twm; not that his brother complained. The absence of complaint, when he knew that there was plenty of cause to complain, made him feel that he ought to go and share the suffering with Twm. And then he remembered about his parents at home. He knew very well how they were feeling there, and if he should join up, he knew how they would feel then. But the next minute he would feel that his responsibility towards Twm was greater.

In the School there was a young teacher called Ann Ellis, a girl from Meirionethshire. Owen had never exchanged more than a ‘Good Morning’ with her. She was exceptionally quiet, and some days she looked unbearably sad. One day she received a telegram which told her that her sweetheart had been killed in the War. When she came back after a few days, she looked like someone who had been ill for months. Owen wanted to go to her and tell her how sorry he was, but she walked past him and everyone else without saying a word.

Within a month a telegram came summoning Owen home, and there was no need for anyone to tell him why.

That morning, at the start of July, 1916, Jane Gruffydd was expecting a letter from Twm. She hadn’t received one for six days. She was very worried, but not overwhelmingly so, since his letters had been delayed like this before, and she had received two letters at once then. These days she couldn’t do anything except milk the cow and get Eric ready for School before the postman came, though sometimes he would be late. On this day he was late, or perhaps he had already gone by. Yet she continued to sit and wait instead of getting up and making a start on her work. No; there was his whistle by the gate to the lane, and she ran towards him gladly. But it wasn’t a letter from Twm, nor from any of her other children. It was a long letter with a government stamp on it.

‘Drat it,’ she said to herself, ‘here’s another old form to fill in with lots of questions. They must think we’ve got a thousand-acre farm.’

But when she opened it, she realized that it wasn’t that kind of document. These papers were in English. She saw Twm’s name on them and his army number, and there was another thick sheet of white paper with just a small bit of English on it.

She ran to the shop with the letter.

‘Richard Huws, here’s an old letter in English come. Can you tell me what it is? It’s something to do with Twm at any rate.’

The shopkeeper read it, and held it in his hand for a moment, saying nothing.

‘Sit down, Jane Gruffydd,’ he said, tenderly.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Nothing’s happened, has it?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it has,’ he said.

‘Is he still alive?’

‘No he isn’t, I’m afraid. Ann!’ he called from the shop into the kitchen, ‘bring a glass of water here now!’

‘Come through into the kitchen, Jane Gruffydd,’ said Ann, as she came and took her by the arm.

Later she went back with her to Ffridd Felen.

At that time Ifan was working for a few days on the haymaking at a farm not far away, where they started on the harvest earlier than in Moel Arian. When he saw a man crossing the field towards him, he knew instantly why he was being called home.

All the children arrived home before nightfall. The neighbours called and did the work that had to be done. Every kindness was shown. That night, after the door was closed on the last visitor, the children and their parents gathered together around the fire, feeling that was the way they should be on the night that the first gap had been made in the family.

As the mother put her head down on her pillow and tried to close her eyes on the pain, dozens of sad thoughts came into her mind. But amidst them all there darted one other: that she would no longer have to fear the sound of the postman coming the next day.