GOING 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.”
“Look you,” my father said to Mrs. Jenkins, “no more baths. Have you got something else?”
“Decimals, Mr. Morgan,” said Mrs. Tom, “but he is strong in those.”
“Decimals,” said my father, “and peace in my house, for the love of God.”
“Hisht,” Mama said.
Decimals, then. And the look on my mother’s face when the decimal point started his travels up and down the line was something to see.
In bed that night I heard my mother come upstairs and speak to Angharad, and then my father came up with the lamp, and left their door open a bit to hear the clock.
“Gwil,” my mother said, “who is in charge of this decimal point?”
“Who?” my father said, and flap went his braces on the cupboard door.
“Decimal point,” my mother said, “this thing Huw has got downstairs.”
“More of this again, now,” my father said, and laugh strong in his voice. “Look, Beth, my little one, leave it, now. Or else it will be morning and us fit for Bedlam, both.”
“But what is it?” my mother said. “Why is a small boy allowed to know and I am such a fool?”
“Beth, Beth, Beth,” my father said, “bless your sweet face, there are things for boys and things for girls. Decimal point makes fractions out of a whole. Instead of saying one and a half, you say one point five. Because five is half of ten, a one and a nought. The one is a whole one and nought is nothing. Now you are wiser.”
Minutes went, and only the sound of clothes coming off and somebody late walking up the hill outside.
“But whose is it?” my mother said, as though a gate had been loosed. “Does it belong to somebody?”
“Well, Beth,” my father said, “there is silly. Why should it belong to somebody? It is a decimal point, a dot on the paper. How can an ink dot belong to somebody?”
“Then who knows what is to be done with it?” my mother asked. “Multiply by ten, move the point, add a nought.”
“No, girl,” Dada said, “not add a nought. That is division. Multiplying, move the point down. Dividing, move the point up.”
“Go on with you,” Mama said, “it can stop where it is. I would like to know who found it out, anyhow.”
“The French, I think,” my father said, “and leave it now, will you?”
“Well, no wonder,” my mother said, and glad to blame someone, see. “Those old Frenchies, is it? If I had known that, the book would never have come inside the house.”
“O, Beth,” said Dada, “there is an old beauty you are. Go now, before I will push you on the floor.”
“Frenchie, indeed,” my mother said, “and decimal points, move up and down. Like monkeys. With Frenchies and old baths full of holes, what will come to the boy?”
“A scholarship,” said my father, “that is what I would like.”
“Scholarship? Well, I hope so, indeed,” my mother said, for the sound of the word was like the name of an anthem. “What the world is coming to, I cannot tell you.”
“Sleep, now then,” my father said, “not for you to worry about the world, is it? Think of the old Queen with a Jubilee of worry to think about, and be thankful.”
“I wonder does she know about this decimal point?” my mother said.
“Oh, hell open and crack,” said my father, and out went the lamp. “The poor old lady is asleep these hours. Let us follow. Good night, now.”
“Go and scratch,” said Mama.
I started off to school at a quarter to seven next morning with my pencil-box and books in a bag on my back, and a tin box full of food to swing in my hand. Up the mountain with a little rain to wet my face, but most of the wind held back by the trees until I got to the top, and then it could have blown me all the way down again.
The town looked even worse than it had, with big grey clouds hanging down between the tops of the mountains, and a mist dragging across the roof-tops, and yellow smoke from the furnaces thick over there. The school I could see easily, with three long roofs of slate among all the houses, and a few trees near it. And the river running grey with dirt, and the rocks in it black.
The streets were quiet, only a few traps and wains out, and a milk wagon going to the station with all the churns grumbling together as they bumped on the cobbles.
School, then.
A few boys were playing in the yard when I got there, but I waited until they had run down to the other end before I went in the door. The same smell of chalk, that I hate to this day, and quiet. So I went all round the hall to look at the pictures, some painted, but most of them drawn and painted by scholars, and very good, too, and the roll of honour with names in gold.
The door opened, and I learned how Mr. Motshill opened doors, by kicking first with the toe, and then pushing with the shoulder, a double bump, one loud, one softer, because he saw little.
“Well,” he said, when he saw me, “what is it?”
“I have come to join school,” I said.
“Speak English,” he said. “What is it you want?”
“To join school,” I said, in English.
“Much better,” said Mr. Motshill. “You were here yesterday, were you not?”
“Yes,” I said, “and here are my references.”
“Sit there until I send for you,” he said, and I sat.
The bell was rung outside for some minutes, and teachers began to come in, shaking rain from their coats and hats, and nodding to one another, not speaking because of the bell, five men, two women, and both the women old and thin, in black. The boys and girls came in by two and two, and lined up with their backs to me, but plenty turned to have a look at me, some of the boys to pull faces, and a couple to laugh and dig the one next to them to turn round to me and laugh too.
Mr. Motshill came from his room to stand on the platform where one of the women was sitting by the piano. He stood looking at them for a moment, very solemn, and then put his hand to his face, with some of his fingers round his jaw, and his first finger upright between his eyebrows.
“Let us pray,” he said, in that voice of his, but on a higher note like tragic poetry. “Our Father,” he started, and the children all said the prayer with him, most of them making their own time, and Mr. Motshill raising his voice at the start of each line to over-ride them and have them with him. But no use. They were well in front at the end, and some had opened their eyes before he was at Glory be.
He opened his eyes and looked up, pious and with feeling.
“Let us lift our voices in a hymn,” he said, and turned to nod his head to Miss Cash, shutting his eyes on the downward bend, and opening them coming up, all slow, and as though he was hurting with goodness. Miss Cash nodded too, at the piano, and lifted her hands to play, with her fingers stretched and the little ones a bit crooked, and touched a couple of bass chords, with two notes sour, and one missed.
“O,” sang Mr. Motshill, in a couple of keys, and then sliding to find the note, “Ah. Take your note, Ah.”
“Ah,” sang the boys and girls, with mouths like buttonholes, no tone, no depth, and no heart.
“Rock of ages cleft for me,” sang Mr. Motshill and Miss Cash played any notes near her fingers, and pulled a face for every note wrong, while the boys and girls rambled at will.
“To your classrooms,” said Mr. Motshill, “dismiss.”
Some lines turned one way, some another, and all tramping hard on the floor and glad to make noise, the classes marched out. Mr. Motshill stood until the last were almost gone, and then got down to go to his room. But half-way there he seemed to remember me, and turned.
“Come along, come along,” he said. “You will be given a paper by Mr. Tyser, and then we shall know exactly what to do with you.”
Big bump, little bump, through another door, and into a classroom. Mr. Tyser always looked tired. A good little man, no harm in him, but at wits’ end in dealing with noisy fools of boys.
“Mr. Tyser,” said Mr. Motshill, “this is Morgan. I have already had to check him for using Welsh. Give him the senior paper and see what he can do with it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Tyser. “Come along, Morgan. Sit here.”
I sat and quickly got up to pull a bent pen-nib out of myself. The boys behind were looking blank at the blackboard, with their arms folded, pictures, indeed.
“Did you put this here?” I asked one of them.
Red as summer roses Mervyn Phillips looked at me, and James Herriot looked, too.
“Did you speak, Morgan?” Mr. Tyser asked, with surprise.
“Yes,” I said.
“Kindly use the English tongue in future,” said Mr. Tyser, “or there will be trouble.”
“I will see you in the playground,” Mervyn Phillips whispered to me. “I will punch your head from your shoulders.”
“Right, you,” I said.
Mr. Tyser gave me the papers, one arithmetic, one grammar and composition, one religion, and a history and geography, and I took out my pencils and books, and made a lovely show on top of the desk.
If they had put silk ribbons about those papers they could have done me no greater favour, for I waltzed through, and it was good indeed to see the pleasure in Mr. Tyser’s face when he looked through them.
“You write a beautiful hand, Morgan,” he said. “Who has been teaching you before this?”
“Mrs. Tom Jenkins,” I said, and everybody had a little laugh into their hands, that sort of laugh that makes you want to take burning iron and put in their eyes. “And my brothers and my sisters-in-law.”
“It is a great pity,” Mr. Tyser said, “that Mrs. Tom Jenkins was not invited to direct the education of some of these young ladies and gentlemen. What did Mrs. Jenkins do if you were lazy and rude, Morgan?”
“The strap,” I said, “and no dinner, and a note home.”
“Come with me,” he said, and I went.
Outside he put his hand on my shoulder and looked down at me.
“You are not a cripple, are you, Morgan?” he asked, and very kind.
“No,” I said. “Thin about the legs, I am, but not a cripple.”
“I am very glad,” he said. “Come along.”
Down to Mr. Motshill’s room, knock at the door, and Mr. Motshill saying to come, and inside to a bare room, with grey light coming in on a table piled with papers and books, books on shelves and on the floor, and a couple of scratched leather chairs with bow legs, and a picture of the Queen as a young woman, very pretty, with a small crown and lace. And Mr. Motshill just come from sleep and tasting his mouth, and finding it little to his liking.
“Mr. Motshill,” Mr. Tyser said, but so different, as though he were afraid for his life, in a little bit of a voice, and not looking up at all, “I am afraid Morgan is too advanced for Standard Four. Standard Six is the lowest possible standard, sir, if you will permit me to say so.”
“Show me the papers,” said Mr. Motshill, and reached across to snatch them away, looking at them with flicks of the eyes from side to side, and turning over the pages in haste so that they were torn at the top.
“New brooms sweep clean,” he said to me. “Standard Six, then. Take him to Mr. Jonas.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mr. Tyser said, and we went out.
“Shall I get my pencil-box and books?” I asked him.
“Get them by all means,” Mr. Tyser said, as different again, “and when you come out, knock on the next door but one, there.”
I went in to Standard Four room and across to my desk, looking at nobody, but they were looking at me in that quiet that seems to stretch, when you know something has happened to concern you.
There was my desk, shifted a bit, and the two boys who had been sitting on the end gone now to sit in the desk in front, and the sun looking his brightest through the window and alive on the desk top to show me why.
My pencil-box was in three pieces. The pencils were all cut, and dirty with grit from rolling on the floor. Ink was on my books, and wet in the grooves of the box. Drawing pen, ruler, nibs, pens, all broken or chipped, and dirty.
I know well the feeling of murder.
It is hot, too hot to keep inside, and it rises to the head, and burns as it goes, making the throat dry, so that breath comes in jerks and with a low noise. Trembling takes you, and the eyes fill, but not with tears, and a cloud comes before your sight, and in the darkness there is a torment to take flesh in the fingers and tear until the blood spurts, or to take a knife and plunge until the point blunts, or to take a weapon and smash until strength has gone, to pound, to stab, to strangle, to pulp, to kill, kill, kill. O, I know well the feeling.
But soon comes a calm, and though you tremble still, there is no more room inside for more feeling. You live as one dead, and for no good reason you want to cry.
And as I looked at my little box, I tried hard to hold the tears, I prayed to hold the tears, but the dear little box with scratches on the patterned lid and ink and grit all over it, and all its riches in ruins, one by one I saw them bleeding their own blood with unjust wounds, and I cried for them.
There is a terrible feeling when your head is in your arms and your knees sharp on the floor, and sob, sob, sob, and laughing going on all round you. You call yourself names, you are so shamed that you feel sight should be taken from you, yet there you kneel, and the more names you call yourself, the more shame you feel, the worse becomes the sobbing, until you are not sure whether your tears are in sorrow at what has happened to you, or rage at yourself for being such a fool.
And then the tears stop. Not a drop more would come if knives were put in you.
So I picked up the broken trays and tried to fit them together. There was no harm in that little box. A hundred years before, a craftsman in wood had put love into his job for all men to see in that little pattern of grained woods on the lid and round the sides. There was no need for him to spend those hours, for the box was made, but that pattern was his kiss of love, and I could see his hands passing over its smoothness, feeling its weight, having joy from the look and feel of it, and slow to let it pass into the hands of a buyer. I could see Mr. Gruffydd’s grandfather having it, and passing it to his son, and then Mr. Gruffydd himself, and I knew how they had felt for it, for so I felt myself.
Solomon never felt for his storehouse as I felt for that little box, and three men before me. To have pens, and pencils, and the tools of writing all your own, to see them and feel them in your fingers ready to do anything you tell them, to have them in a little house fit for them as good friends of yours, such is sweet pleasure, indeed, and never ending. For you open gently and take what you want, and careful in closing again, and you look at it before you start your work, and all the time a happy fullness inside you that sometimes will make you put out your hand to touch it as though to bless, so good you feel with it. God bless the craftsmen who give their fellow men such feelings even out of pieces of wood.
I dried the ink on the books and inside the box, knowing well what my mother would say to my handkerchief, but careless, and put them back in my bag and went to the door. Still they were laughing, but not in comfort, for they feared I was going to tell. Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.
“I will fight you all one by one,” I said, “but nobody will be told about this.”
“Go now,” Mervyn Phillips said, “before I will empty red ink on you.”
“No matter,” I said, “I will fight you all, and you first.”
Outside I went, and Mr. Tyser was standing in the door of Standard Six, talking to Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions, but Mr. Jonas for short in school, and him I saw with my heart falling inside me.
Sandy coming to ginger was Mr. Jonas, and small and pale in the eyes, with that look in them to warn you he had the tongue of a mountain adder, to be careful in what you said, or he would twist every word of it for you.
“What a long time you took, Morgan,” Mr. Tyser said.
“Perhaps he is used to taking his time,” said Mr. Jonas, and smiling with his lips going back over his teeth to look as though he had nothing in his mouth but tongue. He spoke English with pain, making his words to sound more English than the English. Pity it is that a beautiful language should be at the mercy of such. Dr. Samuel Johnson would have had a word to say to him, and I told him so, but that was later.
“Have you been crying, Morgan?” Mr. Tyser asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “but no matter.”
“What a dirty little sweep it is,” Mr. Jonas said, still smiling, and pulling from my pocket my handkerchief all ink and dust.
“It was clean when I came from the house this morning,” I said, and pulled it from him. “The dirt is from that room in by there.”
“You will address me as sir,” said Mr. Jonas with no smile, “or I will put a stick about you. Inside and sit down, on the instant.”
And as I passed he made a slap at my head but I ducked and went to my place in the fourth row where a boy had moved up for me.
Mr. Jonas closed the door and came to stand in front of me.
“We have with us an intellectual giant,” he said, still looking at me and smiling as the boys and girls smiled with him, “so we must all bend the knee. We shall now presume to test his knowledge in algebra, and on the result we shall know whether we may live in the same room with him, or petition the Commons for a special building.”
Plenty of the boys and some of the girls made no sign they had heard, but most of them tried to laugh more than the joke was worth to try and keep on the credit side of that tongue.
Four quadratic equations he gave me, but Mr. Gruffydd and Davy had drilled me too well. They were simple to me. But Mr. Jonas never lost his smile.
“A model scholar,” he said, and looking closely at the book. “But your books are in a dreadful state, and your hands are filthy. If you are thinking of becoming a scholar at this school you will have to adopt a more civilized way of living. You must tell your mother that if you arrive in such a state to-morrow morning you will be sent home. Your dirty coal mining ways are not wanted here.”
From that moment I was the enemy of Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions. There was nothing he could teach me, for my mind was against him, and all he taught. I answered him nothing, but I looked.
“Insolence will gain you nothing,” he said, and threw the book down to bend the corners. “Pay attention to what I say, and write ‘civilization is the highest aim of human kind’ one hundred times before you leave to-day.”
And while he taught the others algebra, I sat.
For nearly a year, I sat.
His voice passed over me like the voice of the wind at a school-treat, there, but never noticed.
I sat.
There was a break at eleven o’clock, and we all went out to the playground to eat what we had brought with us. As soon as I came from the door, Mervyn Phillips pulled me by the arm.
“Fight me, will you?” he said, and the others all round us. “Come you, then.”
He was a head above me, and big, the son of a coal merchant in the town, used to lifting sacks, and strong because of it.
But it was not a fight we had, for there were too many boys about us and no room. It was like a bad scrum, with the hookers missing. I had two good punches at him, and he had one at me on the side of the head, but then the weight of them pulled me down and there was nothing I could do in the press but guard my head from their boots. What would have happened I cannot tell, but I felt it all stop and the boys easing and standing away, and when I stood up against the wall, Mr. Motshill was looking at me from a side window.
“Which boy started on you, Morgan?” he said. “I will make an example of him. There shall be no ruffians in this school.”
“I said I would fight them,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “Mr. Jonas told me you were inclined to the rougher style of living. Understand me, then. If I catch you fighting anywhere near the boundaries of this school, I shall thrash you and expel you. As for you others,” he said to the boys, “kindly remember that you attend here to qualify for responsible positions in life. You are the self-respecting citizens of the future. Remember it, and revise your conduct accordingly.”
It was a good job for me that Ellis the Post was in the Square when I came from school, outside the hotel where my mother had told me to wait for him, or I would have been rolled in the mud. He cracked his whip above them, and snapped the lash in rings on the ground while I climbed up on the driver’s seat, not another breath in me.
“These town boys are like little rats,” said Ellis, coming up and taking the reins, “never one to one, but always a hundred and more to one. Why did they chase you?”
“New boy,” I said.
“We will see about it,” Ellis said. “They would have killed you, man.”
“Say nothing,” I said, “or my mother will be worried and more trouble, then.”
“Right,” he said, “but I will wait for you every night by there, is it?”
So every night, except for a few times, I went with Ellis the Post round the long way home, on the road that ran round the mountain and followed the river. Lovely it was to sit behind Mari the mare, and breathe the smells of the mountain, and greet people in the road, and wave to people in the houses, sometimes stopping to give them a letter or a parcel, or a bit of news, for of course Ellis knew all that went on in and out of the Valley.
When I got home that night I went in Bron’s first, to wash my face and hands, but nothing would take the bruises from cheeks and eyes, and a cut lip is a cut lip. Bron was out and so was Ivor so I was spared to tell a second tale.
When I came in my mother put her hands to her face and looked at me with a scream in her eyes, but nothing came from her mouth.
“What have you done, boy?” Angharad said, looking closer and trying to feel. “Are you hurting?”
“I fell on the mountain,” I said. “No hurt, only stiff.”
“Go to the doctor with him,” my mother said. “Fighting, not mountain, him. Wait till his father sees him.”
“Shall I have tea first?” I asked her. “Not hurt I am, only touched.”
“National School,” said my mother. “Wait till I see your father, only just you wait.”
“I only want a poultice, Mama,” I said, “but I would like a cup of tea first.”
“A cup of tea you shall have, my little one,” my mother said, and took my hot face in her hands, with her thumbs over my eyes, cool, and making plain the heat of blood under my skin. “How many fists made these marks? Your brothers were always in fights, but not one of them had a face like this. Go down to Bowen and ask him for a piece of steak with the blood in it, Angharad.”
Then Bron came in and screamed, and ran to put her arms about me.
“Huw, my little one,” she said, and crying, “who was it? Tell me and I will strangle him. I will go down now and strangle him.”
“Wait till his father comes in,” my mother said, and nearly crying, too, “I will tell him. National Schools.”
And down went the poker with a noise to send the cat from the house, belly to floor and the white tip of his tail like a shooting star.
There is good a cup of tea is when you are feeling low. Thin, and plenty of milk, and brown sugar in the crystal, in a big cup so that when your mouth is used to the heat you can drink instead of sipping. Every part of you inside you that seems to have gone to sleep comes lively again. A good friend of mine is a cup of tea, indeed.
When Angharad came back with the steak, Bron put it on and tied it in place with a cloth, and I went out in the back to give Owen’s engine a clean. So I was from the house when my father came back, but not so far that I missed my mother’s voice. Then the back door opened.
“Huw,” my father said, “come you here, my son.”
He was black from the colliery, so Angharad took off the cloth and he held the lamp to see my face.
“One good black eye and half another,” he said, and wanting to touch but keeping his hands away. “A couple of fair ones on his cheeks, but no cuts except his lip. Good. But when I have bathed I will look at your nose. Go now, and finish what you are doing.”
Then Davy and Ivor came out to see, and then Ianto, but none of them said anything, only asking if I hurt. But I had sixpence from all of them, and a couple of sweets from Angharad, so I was well off.
In I went after my father had finished his supper, and he looked at my nose and tried to feel if it was broken, but there was nothing wrong except swelling.
“Hot water every half-hour,” said my father, “and hot and cold one after another. In a couple of days there will be nothing there.”
“That National School will be far from there if I will have a bit of gunpowder,” my mother said.
“Hisht, girl,” my father said, “the boy will have worse than that before he will lie in his piece of ground. Are you willing to go back there to-morrow, my son?”
“Yes, Dada,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Now, look you here, Huw, my son. You are growing to be a man. It is a man’s place to take punishment and give back more than he takes if there is a head on him. But sometimes he will have to take a hiding in the first ten rounds to give a bigger hiding in the next ten. But if you must have a hiding, make up your mind to a hiding. Have your hiding and learn from it. It is one thing to have a hiding, but quite another to be beaten. Never be beaten, boy. A hiding, yes, but never beaten. Come for more. Come always for more. And come for more until you are giving the hiding. Is it?”
“Yes, Dada,” I said.
“Come you, then,” my father said, and got up, and went to the box, and brought it to the table. “From to-night you shall have a penny for every mark on your face, a shilling for a black eye, sixpence for a nose bleed, two shillings for a broken nose, and a penny for every mark on your knuckles or on your fore-arms and body. Your money-box is richer this night by three shillings and sixpence. Now come you out in the back.”
“Gwilym,” my mother said, with tears on the move, “leave him, now. He has had enough for one day. Another fight and he will be dead.”
“So long as he shall die with his blood in front of him,” my father said, “I will lift my head. A boy shall learn to fight, or let him put skirts about his knees. This boy has never been taught to fight, but he shall have his first lesson to-night. We will see if the National Schools can beat a Morgan.”
Out in the back, my father took off his coat and rolled his sleeves while Ianto and Davy pulled the engine away and Ivor cleared the floor.
“Now,” said my father, “a good straight left is the bully’s downfall. That is lesson one from the book. Like this.”
My father stood straight, head and eyes turned to the left, with his left foot pointing the way he was looking in line with his half-bent left arm, and the thumb closed over the fingers of the fist, back of his hand down, and held nearly on a level with his chin, but always just below and between his eyes, with his right foot pointing right, and his right arm bent across his chest with the fist not touching, but almost over the heart.
“Now,” he said, and up and down on tip-toe, and moving his arms in a spar, “stand like this, easy, ready and loose all over. Let me see it with you.”
So I was taught to fight.
That night I learnt how to stand, to give, and to slip, a punch.
“The best fighter is that one who will slip under a punch and give two in return,” said my father. “When you can do that, you shall say you have started boxing. Too many call themselves boxers who are not even entitled to call themselves fighters. Look you, now.”
He showed me by hitting at Ivor, and having one on the chin and one in the chest, and both so quick it puzzled the eye to see. Then Ivor and Davy showed a left, a left slipped, and a right cross.
“That is to teach a lesson,” my father said. “When a man makes you take off your coat, make up your mind to teach him a lesson. A right cross, properly given, is a good lesson and very often the end of a fight. Every time he comes in, the left to teach him. When he goes back from the left, give him a couple more by following up. Then bring the right to the space between the breast bones to bring his head down, and as it comes down, your left to steady him, and your good right to his chin. And on with your coat, then, and off home.”
Angharad put her head in the window and Davy pretended to punch, and she shouted because her head was fast in the small space and her hair falling about her, making it worse.
“Mr. Gruffydd is in the house,” she shouted, and the boys trying to pull her head out. “Will you crack my skull, David Morgan?”
“Too hard,” Davy said. “Only a girl would put her old head in such a little place. Is there a door or are you blind?”
“I was looking through the window, fool,” Angharad said. “Would I see anything through a door?”
“Your nose will have you in the toils, young woman,” my father said. “Break the window and take it from her pin money.”
“O, Dada,” Angharad said, trying to look through her hair, and trying hard to cry, but laughing instead, “there is nasty you are to me. These old boys can do what they like but we shall have nothing only hard words and take it from her pin money. Huw has had more for his punches than I have had for six weeks. I wish I had been born an old boy. I would have punches all day, indeed.”
“Leave her there,” my father said, “and let her think over what she has said.”
So poor Angharad was left with her head in the window, trying to cry, but laughing instead, and Davy pinched her bottom as he passed, but he got such a kick that he was limping all night with him.
“Well, Huw,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “some trouble with the Philistines, then?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“How did this pencil-box come home like this?” Mr. Gruffydd asked me. “I asked you to take care of it.”
“From the way he came home,” my father said, “I wonder he had sense to bring it with him.”
“Let Huw answer, Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Property must not be broken like this without some action taken to stop it happening twice. Huw had it in his care. He was not to blame. Who was?”
“Those who left their marks on him,” said my father.
“I was out of the room when it was done, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, “but I said I would fight all of them, and I will. So they shall have their payment for it, whoever they were.”
“Kennel-sweepings,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and only kennel-sweepings could smash a little box like this. I am in a mind to cut myself a handful of twigs and go down there to-morrow and take the skin off their backs.”
“Good,” said my mother, “and burn the old place up.”
“Hisht, girl,” said my father. “Better to let Huw fight his own way, Mr. Gruffydd. I am just as able to go down there, and God help them if I did. But it is Huw’s fight. Not ours.”
“It is our fight, Mr. Morgan,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and putting the box on the table. “Huw can teach them he is better with his fists, but he will never teach them the sanctity of property. The vandal is taught physical fear by superior violence, but he cannot be taught to think.”
“Will twigs do any better?” asked my father, and pulling on his pipe not to smile.
“Far better than fists,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and starting to laugh, “for fists are between man and man. But twigs and reason are the universal law, good for all men. Fists will teach you to fight better if you have heart and head, and your fists will teach other men to let you have your share of the road in peace. But twigs and a talk will teach you to think and live better. And that is why I am in a mind to go down there to-morrow morning.”
“I am going to mend the box, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said. “There will be no signs when I have done with it. Like new, indeed.”
“Come you, then,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “It makes me sick in the heart to see it like this.”
Outside in the back we went, with lamps, and poor Angharad still with her head stuck in the window.
“Who is this?” Mr. Gruffydd asked, with the lamp high to see.
“Angharad,” I said.
Mr. Gruffydd smoothed the hair from her eyes and she looked up at him, with the light of the lamp throwing gold upon her.
I knew she was laughing, but she looked as though she were crying, with golden tears unsteady in her eyes, and her eyes gone lovely blue to call for pity, big, and round, like a little girl wanting to be carried, and turning down her mouth, only a little not to be ugly, and a tremble in the chin, and with hair almost the colour of a new penny about her face and hanging down three feet, with stray ones shining like the strings of a harp across her eyes and down her cheeks.
Mr. Gruffydd looked at her and I saw his face move, but how it moved there is no saying. He put down the lamp and took the bar above her neck in one hand.
“Say if I hurt,” he said, but Angharad shook her head.
He put his feet flat after making little moves to find the right hold, and then with one pull he tore the bar and the top of the frame clean out of its place, nails, screws, and all.
“Now then,” he said to me, not looking at Angharad, “you mend the box and I will mend the window.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Gruffydd,” Angharad said, looking in where the window had been, and feeling her neck. “There is strong you are.”
“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “I will have the pincers after you, Huw, my son.”
Sandpaper took the ink stains from the bare white wood on the inside of the box, and made it white as a sheet again, but only with hard rubbing and patience at the corners. A new screw for the pivot, and a splice for the second tray, and my box was together again, but still chipped on the outside and scratched on the lid. That was another job altogether. Small pieces of wood, so small they were hard to see, I put in all the chips, and the scratches I filled in with splinters of the same colour as the woods in the pattern. Indeed, when I had finished there was nothing to show that the little box had come to harm. But I knew, and Mr. Gruffydd knew, and so did his father and grandfather, for there were little marks all over it that had never been there, and should never have been there, the marks of little wounds that would never heal. For wood is jealous of its age, and quick to make a new-comer feel its place.
Mr. Gruffydd had been watching, for quite a long time, but I knew nothing of it until I had finished and put the box in a clean place to look at it, and then looked at him and found him sitting on the bench and smiling.
“You are a carpenter, Huw,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Did you finish the window?”
“Well, indeed,” he said, “do you think I would let a boy beat me? Look by there.”
A fine job of the window Mr. Gruffydd had made, every bit as good as Clydach Howell the millwright could have done, with joins you could see only if you knew where to look, and the nails and screws gone to nowhere but still there.
“There is a carpenter you are, too, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said, and meant.
“You shall say that when I have made the furniture for my new house,” Mr. Gruffydd said.
“Shall I help you, sir?” I asked him, for always I had wanted to make good furniture for the house.
“No one if not you, my son,” he said. “Is your face hurting now?”
“I had forgotten,” I said, and indeed I had.
Then Angharad called me to open the door, and came in with tea, and laver bread, and butter and milk cheese, and lettuce and cresses.
“Mama said to eat while you are working,” she said, “but if you have finished please to come to the house. And if you will have beer instead of tea, there is plenty, and Dada says it is cold from the jar and good enough to drink to the Queen in.”
“I will drink to the Queen,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and in the house. Give me the tray.”
Mr. Gruffydd lifted the load from Angharad, and she stood to put some plates in place that had slipped, and touched a cup to bring the handle to its proper place, and put a spoon here, and a fork there, and the salt pot over between the milk-jug and teapot, and all the time Mr. Gruffydd looked down at her head, because he knew, and I knew, there was no need for any of it.
“Now then,” she said, and looked up at Mr. Gruffydd, smiling.
She was going to say more but she stopped and her smile went, and she looked, and a dullness passed across her eyes, not a dullness of darkness, but a dullness of light, and all the time Mr. Gruffydd looked down at her straight, and then she blinked and pretended it was the lamp and put her hand to her eyes and turned away.
“There is strong that old lamp is,” she said. “Go you, Huw. It is late, boy.”
In the house I went, and Mr. Gruffydd behind, and my father coming to take the tray from him.
“What next?” he said, in surprise. “They will have you scrubbing a floor in a minute, wait you.”
“Many a floor I have scrubbed, too,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Did I hear we were going to drink the health of the Queen.”
“Poured and waiting,” said my father. “Tea is good in its place, but a good swallow of beer is good, too. This my wife made, see, and you will never taste better in your life. Huw, a cup full.”
“Up high, then,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “I give you Her Britannic Majesty, our Royal mother, and may her crown rest lightly. Gentlemen, Victoria.”
“Victoria,” said we all, and the beer went down beautiful, indeed.
“Now, supper,” said my mother, coming from the fire with the pan, “and eat plenty. Huw, bed.”
“Yes, Mama,” I said, and gave good night to them all. Angharad came upstairs to put the last of the hot and cold water poultice on my face, and when she had finished, she put a little handful of sweets on the chair by the bed.
“For school,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Has Mr. Gruffydd ever said anything to you about me?” she asked me, but quickly, as though she had thought long before saying it, and anxious not to think she had said it, or even thought it.
“No,” I said. “Nothing. About what, then?”
“No matter,” she said, quickly again, and looking down at me but not seeing me, for there was a smile in her eyes and heat in her face and her breath was quick but quiet. “If he does, will you tell me, boy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Good night, now.”
I saw her face as she bent to blow out the candle with her mouth in the shape of a kiss, still the smile in the eyes, but now as a mother will look at her child that cries in the arms of another woman, softer, and with more of want.
Not one of the boys had a word to say to me on the second day at school, though they looked at me with their hands over their mouths not to laugh. I was a picture, indeed, yellow and blue with bruises, and swollen about the eyes and nose. But no matter, I made sure of the boys who laughed, and added them to the list of boys I had made sure to have at the end of my fists.
Mr. Motshill stopped me after prayers and the hymn and asked me where I had the injury.
“Fighting,” I said.
“You see what fighting brings you,” he said. “Far better to behave yourself. Am I to expect a visit from your parents?”
“No,” I said. “My father said it was my fight.”
“Oh,” he said, and took off his glasses to give them a polish, and winked his eyes over my head. “If you feel unwell during the day, go over to Mrs. Motshill at the school house and lie down.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Remember this, Morgan,” he said, and put his hand on my shoulder, “I am here to help you. I want you to win a scholarship to Oxford University. You have it within your power. But your fists will only hinder you. Be warned, and work hard.”
Why is it that kindness, even from a harsh man, brings tears to the eyes, I wonder. But there it is. When I went in Standard Six room, Mr. Jonas saw me trying to wipe my eyes and on went the smile, and down went my heart inside me again.
“Well, upon my soul,” he said, in his English that was too English, “it is crying.”
He came to stand near me, and look me up and down.
“Evidently its mother took my message to heart,” he said. “Let me see your nose-rag.”
I took out my handkerchief.
“Surprise on surprise,” he said, while I looked at him. “Perhaps that hammering will teach you that your ways are not ours. There is no wonder that civilized men look down upon Welshmen as savages. I shudder to think of your kind growing up. However, I shall endeavour to do my utmost with you, helped by a stick. Remember that. And keep your eyes off me, you insolent little blackguard.”
Then he started to teach history, and I sat.
I think he took a hatred for me because he felt that I distrusted him, and it hurt to think that a boy would not have him at his value of himself, for he liked to think he was much bigger than he was, so his self pride troubled him, and made him vicious.
But his greatest trouble was his Welsh blood, so ashamed he was of it, and so hard he tried to cover it.
Nothing that was of Wales or the Welsh was any good or had any goodness in his eyes. For him, even in his teachings, the science of history had a gap between the Acts of the Apostles and the Domesday Book. That Norman bastard, who skinned the snout on the good sands of the south, who sired an English aristocracy, was godfather to Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions.
If he remembered Rome, it was only as a place where Nero burnt Christians. He tried to forget that his fathers laboured with the sword through centuries to keep Roman feet off their roads, and he was willing to forget that Rome broke its back, and Vikings, Danes, and Goths broke their hearts, only trying to keep his fathers from fighting for what was their own, and if his fathers failed it was not because their fighting spirit had gone from them, but because the flower of them had fallen in battle, and their women could not bear males enough to fill the ranks.
Of such, Mr. Elijah Jonas-Sessions was ashamed.
And the day we had it out I remember well, for it was the day of my first fight, just after Dilys Pritchard died.