How Green Was My Valley

There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss. It is strange because it mixes silliness with tragedy, and yet not strange because there is good reason for it. There is shaking by the hand. That should be enough. Yet a shaking of hands is not enough to give a vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand is too hard and too used to doing all things, with too little feeling and too far from the organs of taste and smell, and far from the brain, and the length of an arm from the heart. To rub a nose like the blacks, that we think is so silly, is better, but there is nothing good to taste about the nose, only a piece of old bone pushing out of the face, and a nuisance in winter, but a friend before meals and in the garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do nothing, for if we come too near, they go crossed and everything comes twice to the sight without good from one or other.
There is nothing to be done with the ear, so back we come to the mouth, and we kiss with the mouth because it is part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling red tenderness, to the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went, and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its silliness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.

     She was looking at me, and smiling the old smile. And yet, while she smiled, and I smiled back, her mouth trembled and her smile began to go and in its going she came to blush, and her eyes changed, and her eyelids flickered shut. She was going redder and redder.
     And I began to blush, though for what, I cannot say, and the cup and saucer shook in my fist, and the cup rattled, so I put it down, but Bronwen was red, and still she sat, not moving, looking down into the sugar basin, and the silence grew so thick that perhaps a man might rest his weight against it and not make it break.
     "Go now then, Huw," she said, in a little voice that cracked to a whisper, in the throat.
     So I went, and shut the back door quietly, and stood to look up at the mountain that was blacker than the darkness, but no blacker than the misery of questions in my mind. Nothing had been said, nothing done, to cause such a happening. Yet there I stood, looking up at the mountain to borrow some of his peace, with the wind lively about me, and coldness blowing through me to take the place of the heat I had just left.
     But another heat was in me that now I felt, and putting my mind to this fresh burden, I found a risen newness pillared in my middle, yet, for all its newness, so much a part of me that no surprise I had, but only a quick, sharp, clear glorying that rose to a shouting might of song in every part of me, and I raised my arms and drew tight the muscles of my body, and as the blood within me thudded through my singing veins, a goldness opened wide before me, and I knew I had become of Men, a Man.
     Then the goldness passed, the cold pierced through, and doubt came down blacker than before, and misery with it, for quickly, as the vision came, so it went, and I was cold, shamed, and afraid, about their daily works, happy, having no care, thinking nothing of this mightiness within, mindful only of their bellies, their comforts, and their pockets.
     And I wanted to be as I had been yesterday, a boy again, without the heaviness of doubt, this pressing fear, this new treachery that lifted to realms of singing gold, and and in a little space, flung to pit of night.
     Courage came to me from the height of the mountain, and with it came the dignity of manhood, and knowledge of the Tree of Life, for now I was a branch, running with the vital blood, waiting in the darkness of the Garden for some unknown Eve to tempt me with the apple of her beauty that we might know our nakedness, and bring forth sons and daughters to magnify the Lord our God.
     I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me, those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father and all our fathers, and in front, to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.
     And their eyes were my eyes.
     As I felt, so they had felt, and were to fee, as then, so now, as to-morrow and for ever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning, and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son tok my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and is not yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, had in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the eternal Father.
     I was of them, they were of me, and in me, and I in all of them.
     "Huw," Ianto said, "why are you standing there, boy? Are you cracked?"
     "No," I said. "Watching the mountain, I was."
     "Well, come in and watch a couple of pots, will you?" he said. "The girls have gone from the house so we will have to do it or go starving."
     "Where is Ceridwen, then?" I asked him.
     "Getting married to-morrow," Ianto said, "and doing a bit of queening in the front room. Mama is in there, too, with the boys. And Bron has gone to meet Ivor."
     "She was in the house, now just," I said.
     "No," Ianto said. "I saw her go. All cloak and heels, she was, as though Ivor was king of Babylon. So we have got a tidy bit of work in the kitchen as an extra blessing, boy. To hell with the women. Never where you want them, or when."
     So into the kitchen to do some washing up, and put big potatoes in the hot coals with cheese and butter to roast, and make hot a couple of pans for the small fry, and the saucepans for the potch. Then to lay the tables, a job I have never liked. I do like to sit at a table properly laid, for I think the sight of knives and forks in their places, with glasses and the good furniture of eating, gives something more to the appetite, for your fingers have an itch to be using them. And nothing more I hate than a table laid without care. Stains on a cloth, or wrinkles, or a knife not in the straight, a fork turned aside, a spoon put the wrong way up, will have my thoughts in a knot until they are put right. But I would rather scrub a floor than lay a table, with the fetch and carry of handfuls of cutlery, and piles of plates, and glasses, and cruets, and laying a cloth so that too much is not on one side and too little on the other, and the pulling this way and that until you are ready to roll it into a ball and push it in the fire, for my mother starched her cloths, and polished her tables, and laying a cloth became an exercise in patience almost coming to a waste of time, though worth the trouble when done.
     Out to the back to mix the potch, then. All the vegetables were boiled slowly in their jackets, never allowed to bubble in boiling, for then the goodness is from them, and they are full of water, and a squash, tasteless to the mouth, without good smell, an offence to the eye, and an insult to the belly. Firm in the hand, skin them clean, and put them in a dish and mash with a heavy fork, with melted butter and the bruisings of mint, potatoes, swedes, carrots, parsnips, turnips and their tops, then chop small purple onions very fine, with a little head of parsley, and pick the leaves of small watercress from the stems, and mix together. The patch will be a creamy colour with something of pink, having a smell to tempt you to eat there and then, but wait until it has been in the hot oven for five minutes with a cover, so that the vegetables can mix in warm comfort together and become friendly, and the mint can go about his work, and for the cress to show his cunning, and for the goodness all about to soften the raw, ungentle nature of the onion.
     By that time the small fry are bouncing together in the hot butter drips, and coming browner every moment like children in the sun, and shining with joy to smel so good. As soon as they are the right, deep colour of brown, and still without cracks of heat, when the small sausages are the same colour all round, give them a turn of the fingers of thyme and sage, just a turn of the fingers, mix the panful well, and put all on a big, blue willow pattern dish.
     Bring the roast potatoes from the coals, and you will find the butter and cheese gone into them with as much pleasure as they will soon go into you, and rest them among green leaves of lettuce, and new radishes.
     Now call everybody quickly to the table, and eat plenty.
     There is good to see happy faces round a table full of good food. Indeed, for good sounds, I will put the song of knives and forks next to the song of man.
     My mother was the last to sit, as usual, and the first to notice an empty plate or an idle knife and fork. Her eyes were al over, seeing all, missing nothing, and on her plate the smallest meal of any, yet quick to scold of a morsel was left, or a third helping refused by one of us.