WELL, I disgraced myself for ever that Sunday I sang the solo, and I have never been sorry.
Every night of that week, as soon as my father was back from the pit and bathed and a good supper inside him, he brought out the tuning-fork and practised with me. “Now Thank We All Our God,” I sang, and before the first verse was over my father was in tears with the music of it. And indeed I sang it because I meant it, not because it was to be sung. Be without your legs for more than two years and then stand upright to walk the earth again, and you will find your heart bleeding thanks with every step you take.
On Sunday morning everybody was up early. When I looked out of the window while my father was lighting the fire, I saw all the chimneys start rolling smoke almost together, as though all had risen early to have a good seat.
We had cold breakfast as usual, but my mother boiled me an egg in the water made hot for little Gareth’s bath and excused her conscience by having a glass of cold water instead of her tea.
Down to the Chapel, then.
I went first with Angharad. Ceridwen, home for Sunday from the farm, with Gwilym, behind us, then Bronwen and Ivor, and then my father and mother.
And every door opening as we passed down, and men coming out in their best, and smiling and greeting, and the women in their best, some with the tall hats like my mother’s, and some with bonnets, like Bronwen’s and Angharad’s.
On the way down we passed other families like ours, but ours was one of the smallest. But if all the boys had been home, it would have been another tale.
Mr. Gruffydd was waiting outside the Chapel, shaking hands with all who went inside. He lifted me up and gave my sticks to my father.
“Up in the choir, you,” he said to me. “Are you in good voice with you?”
“Splendid,” said my father. “The tuning-fork has been useless all the week.”
“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Something good for God this morning, then.”
The Chapel was bigger than I had thought it, so used I was to our kitchen. White, and built solid, with a varnished wood gallery round the top, and a scrubbed floor you could have your meals from. At the other end from the door the pulpit rose high above the heads of the people, and below it a platform for the deacons and head men. To the right and left, four rows of seats, each raised higher than the one in front, for the choir, women on the left, men on the right. And a smell of best clothes, and polish, and inside old hymn books everywhere from top to bottom.
But I was put on the platform next to Dr. Richards, and there is shy and funny I did feel with all the people looking at me and smiling and whispering to one another. I thought it was my thin legs they were laughing at, and tried to put them round the chair legs, but I was so weak in my grip that I almost fell out and head first on the floor.
“Sit straight and put your feet flat,” Dr. Richards whispered to me, “or you will split your head on the floor. Once more like that and I will tie you with my braces.”
The hymn, then, and after that a prayer from Mr. Gruffydd. More hymns, and everybody singing strong and deep and marvellous on the beat, with the last two words of each verse falling upon us from the roof, and the pauses for breath filled in by the sounding glory of the tone just flown.
Then Mr. Gruffydd leaned over to look down at me, and I stood while Mrs. Tom Harries played the opening.
There is a fright you will have to stand up before lines of faces that have become wet and shaky through the nervous water in your eyes. Your mouth is dry, with sand on the tongue and in the throat, so that your breath comes hot and sore with you. Then it is time to sing and you have forgotten the words. Each one has grown a wheel and rolls away from you down into the pit of Forgot. You reach out for the welcome feel of words well remembered. If you could think of the first word, all the others will hurry to form behind it, and all will come threading through the needle eye in your mind, and you can put them to the tune and sing.
But the first word hides behind the bonnet of Mrs. Phillips the Glas Fryn, and although you are ready to go on your bended knees to have it safe in your mouth, that big feather hides it too well.
Three times Mrs. Tom Harries struck the notes; and then I opened my mouth to show them I was willing, and as though they had taken pity, back came the words and I threw my voice up to the back row of the gallery into the laps of the Prossers, who were bending double because the roof came down almost to the floor.
After Mr. Gruffydd gave his sermon, and then the collection, then another hymn and the blessing, and then we should have gone home.
But after the blessing, hardly anybody moved except young women and some of the unmarried elder women. My sisters and Bronwen went, and so did my mother, but all round me on the platform, deacons and those busy with Chapel business were putting chairs. Dr. Richards lifted me down to be ready for my father to help me outside, but before he could reach me, Mr. Parry the Colliery was on his feet and addressing the people, so I had to sit still and my father stayed where he was.
I thought it was the usual Chapel notices, but since they never trouble me, I spent a few minutes multiplying the number of the first hymn by the second and dividing by the third, an old game my brothers used to have with sixpence from my father for the quickest right answer, and fines for mistakes and slowness.
But then Mr. Parry turned his eyes so sternly and his voice was so sharp that the figures jerked from my head and I thought he was after me, but instead, I heard a girl crying behind me and then she passed by, and went up the steps to the platform.
A girl from the pits she was.
Tidy in her dress, not good, but very tidy, and a good little bonnet with her, and her poor face so red and risen with weeping that I could have gone to her straight to give her comfort.
“Adulteress,” Mr. Parry shouted, and all the men, young as well as old, nodded and said “Ha” or “Hmm” and some of them shook their heads and wrinkled their eyes and foreheads as though a shocking hurt had been done to them.
The priests and the scribes and the pharisees were in session, and bitterly enjoying themselves.
“Your lusts have found you out,” shouted Mr. Parry, and thump went his fist on the handrail, “and you have paid the price of all women like you. Your body was the trap of the Devil and you allowed temptation to visit you. Now you bring an illegitimate child into the world against the commandment of God. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Prayer is wasted on your sort and you are not fit to enter the House of God. You shall be cast forth into the outer darkness until you have learned your lesson. I am a jealous God, and the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Meillyn Lewis, do you admit your sin?”
Meillyn Lewis coughed terror into a sopping rag and made noises to say Yes, She Did.
“Do you wish to make peace with the Eternal Father?” Mr. Parry asked her.
Yes, Meillyn Lewis wished to make peace of any sort with anybody, even the Devil himself in a stink of sulphur, only to be out of that Chapel and running up the mountain away from those nodding heads and Ha’s and Hmm’s and the eyes of Mr. Parry and his voice.
“But before you make your peace you shall suffer punishment,” Mr. Parry said, dropping his voice down into the flower-pots, for at that level it did sound like the Last Trump, and indeed Mr. Parry knew it.
“Oh, there is sorry I am.” Meillyn Lewis bled into the rag. “Have pity. I will never do it again, God knows.”
“Taking the Name of God in vain,” Mr. Parry said, two tones up in surprise. “Be quiet, girl, and listen to your betters. You shall have nothing from the Father, and we are here to see to it.”
That is when I disgraced myself.
I can think of nothing that caused me to jump up and shout back at Mr. Parry. All I had learned was against such a thing, especially in Chapel, and my mother would have died to think of it. But such anger took me in the throat that the very air before me went red with it and I could hear my good heart doing its work double strong inside me to pump blood and give strength.
“Thou hypocrite,” I shouted up at him, and indeed surprised at my high voice. “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. But woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell? Behold your house is left unto you desolate.”
If you could see the face of Mr. Parry.
Then I was sorry.
Quickly, before Mr. Parry could close his mouth or shut his staring eyes, before Mr. Gruffydd moved, before I heard my father coming, I was sorry. For Mr. Parry was a good man, none better. He paid his men better than most, and gave plenty away to those who needed it, besides paying for the schooling of half the children in the Valley.
So like that, I was sorry, and my voice cracked in half and fell to pieces and the bits went to breath.
Then Mr. Parry shut his mouth with a sound you could hear, and Mr. Gruffydd came down from the pulpit very slowly, while the deacons and head men looked at each other and at Mr. Parry, and Mr. Parry stared at me, and my father ran up behind me and took me by the shoulder.
“You rascal,” he said, “you rascal. You would dare do such a thing.”
“Leave it now, Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and very gently. “Take the boy home and let nothing be said. There is no need to bring him to Chapel to-night, and this afternoon, take him up on the mountain. Huw,” he said to me, without feeling, “I will see you to-morrow morning.”
“Yes, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.
“Come, you,” said my father, and we went out in the pale, cool, sunny silence, but feeling the heat of the thoughts of those who sat so still. Not one head turned as we passed.
The people who had heard in the lobby looked at me and made a serious face at my father, and their lips moved to greet him but they said no words. It seemed that even speech was at an end, so great was my disgrace.
“Did I do wrong, Dada?” I asked my father, when we were a bit up the street.
“Wrong, my son?” he said, and stopped to look at me with surprise. “Wrong? For a bit of a boy to say such things to Mr. Parry? I am so ashamed I could dig a pit for myself and you, too.”
“But they were cruel to Meillyn Lewis,” I said.
“That is one thing,” said my father, “and the business of Mr. Parry and the deacons. Not for you.”
“But you are a deacon,” I said, “and every bit as much as Mr. Parry. But you were not sitting in the big seat? And why not?”
“Shut your mouth, and home to your dinner, my son,” said my father with weariness. “Eh, dear, what a nest of scorpions came from the back room there. Not one of you with thoughts for others. Always ready with the tongue. What will become of you is beyond me to tell.”
Up the Hill we went in quiet, and although curtains moved in windows, and I knew faces were looking out from the shadows in the open doorways, nobody came out, and nobody was in the street. Even the birds kept away from me, it seemed, and the sun was hot to make the quiet quieter.
So we went into our house and my father went into the kitchen to talk with my mother, and closed the door.
Angharad looked at me with her top teeth fast in her bottom lip, and fearful light in her eyes, and with much wagging of the head.
“Wait you till Mama hears,” she whispered.
“Who told you?” I asked her.
“Mrs. Prosser told Bron,” Angharad said, “and I was there.”
“What did Bron say?” I asked her.
“She sent me out of the house,” Angharad said. “And why should she? I heard the worst, anyhow.”
I sat down and felt a river of fright rushing through my stomach. I wondered what would be done to me. I had thoughts of the policeman coming from over the mountain to take me down to the jail. My father’s voice was deep from the kitchen, then it was quiet.
My mother came in to get plates from the cupboard. There was more pink in her face than usual, and I thought for a moment she was too angry to speak. But in the middle of reaching to get a plate she looked round at me and a smile was on her mouth and tears were in her eyes. Her skirts made circles with hurry as she ran to me and knelt with her arms about me, almost lifting me from the chair.
“Good,” she said. “Good, my little one. Your Mama is so glad, she could scream.”
My father came in and stood to put his hands in his pockets, helpless as helpless.
“Well, Beth,” he said, as though the air was going out of the world, “you are as bad as he is, girl.”
“Yes, Gwilym Morgan,” my mother said, up on her feet and going to the plates, “and you are as bad as that pack down by there.”
“There is a nice thing to say,” said my father. “No wonder. Now I know.”
“What, now?” asked my mother, stopping by him, both looking at each other, and neither of them a bit angry.
“Why I have got such a tribe of sons,” said my father. “It is you. That is the trouble. Beth Morgan is the cause.”
My mother looked at him and he looked back at my mother. And Mama smiled.
“Go and scratch,” she said, and went quickly to the Kitchen.
My father clucked his tongue and looked across at me, and the laugh in his eyes ran down the cuts in his cheeks and poured in his mouth.
“There is a family, we are,” he said. “Come and wash, my son, and let us eat.”