How Green Was My Valley Page #4

Mr Evans. Your son has

my permission to speak to me.

Thank you, Morgan.

I'm very much obliged to you.

Yes, sir.

Good old Welsh blood, you know,

and all that sort of thing.

- I'm very much obliged, Morgan.

- Yes, sir.

Beth.

Come, come, come. My shoes. Get my shoes.

You, girl. Get up to your room. Have you

no modesty left in you? Get up there.

Get your hands out...

My shoes. Find the shoes.

Why don't you get yourjackets on?

Mr Morgan?

Sit down.

This is my wife, Mrs Morgan.

How do you do?

Mr Morgan, I've come to ask your permission

to speak to your daughter, Angharad.

These are my sons.

Yes. I know them.

God bless you.

You shouldn't be here.

I couldn't spend

another night without knowing.

What has happened? Is anything wrong?

- Wrong?

- You know what I mean.

Why have you changed towards me?

Why am I a stranger now?

Have I done anything?

No.

The blame is mine.

Your mother spoke to me after chapel.

She's happy to think

you'll be having plenty all of your days.

With lestyn Evans.

- You could do no better.

- I don't want him.

I want you.

Angharad?

I have spent nights too,

trying to think this out.

When I took up this work,

I knew what it meant.

It meant sacrifice and devotion.

It meant making it my whole life to the...

to the exclusion of everything else.

That I was perfectly willing to do.

But to share it with another...

Do you think I will

have you going threadbare,

depending on the charity

of others for your good meals?

Our children growing up in cast-off clothing,

and ourselves thanking God for

parenthood in a house full of bits?

No. I can bear with such a life

for the sake of my work,

but I think I'd start to kill if...

if I saw the white come to your hair

20 years before its time.

Why?

Why would you start to kill?

Are you a man or a saint?

I am no saint. But I have a duty towards you.

Let me do it.

Is there to be no singing for

my daughter's wedding, Dai Bando?

Now then. The bathtub holds 100 gallons.

"A" fills it at the rate of 20 gallons a minute,

and "B" at the rate of ten gallons a minute.

- Got that, Mr Morgan?

- Twenty and ten gallons. Yes, sir.

Now then. "C" is a hole that empties it

at the rate of five gallons a minute.

How long to fill the tub?

There is silly. Trying to fill

a bathtub full of holes, indeed.

A sum it is, girl. A sum.

A problem for the mind.

- For his examination into school.

- That old national school.

'Tis silly they are with their sums. Who

would pour water in a bathtub full of holes?

- Who would think of it? Only a madman.

- It is to see if the boy can calculate.

Figures, nothing else.

How many gallons, and how long.

In a bathtub full of holes.

Now I know why I have such a tribe of sons.

It is you, Beth Morgan, is the cause.

Look you, Mr Gruffydd.

Have you something else?

The decimal point.

The decimal...

The decimal point, then,

and peace to my house.

- Go and scratch.

- Well, it's getting late.

I've got to get along. We'll follow

the decimal point tomorrow night.

- Good night.

- Good night, Mrs Morgan.

Who is there that cannot look back

and remember his first day at a new school?

To go alone the long walk

over the hills to the next valley,

the first of my family to have

the privilege of attending a national school.

So you're the new boy?

- Yes, sir.

- You're late.

Yes, sir.

What a dirty little sweep it is.

Who are your people?

- Where are you from?

- Cwm Rhondda.

Cwm Rhondda?

A little genius from the coal pits.

And they expect me to make

a scholar of it. All right, come in.

Were you brought up in stables?

Well, shut the door.

Your boots are muddy.

They were clean when I left home.

You will address me as "sir",

or I'll put a stick about your back.

- Now sit down here.

- Yes, sir.

Come here, you dirty little sweep.

What have we here?

A pencil box.

Pretty, too.

You broke my pencil box.

Mervyn, stop it. You'll hurt him.

I fell on the mountain.

Did you win, Huw?

No.

Lanto.

- Fetch Dai Bando.

- Dai Bando, is it?

- Are you willing to go to school tomorrow?

- Yes, sir.

Good. You shall get a penny for every mark

on your face, sixpence for a bloody nose,

a shilling for a black eye,

two shillings for a broken nose.

Gwilym. Stop it. Fight again,

and when you come home, not a look

will you get from me, not a word.

Break your own nose, then. Break my heart

every time you go out of the house.

- A boy must fight, Beth.

- Fight?

Fight? Another beating like that,

he will walk home dead.

Beating? He's had no beating.

A hiding, yes, but no beating.

Give the boy time, it will be he

that's giving the beating, is it?

Dai Bando. Come into the house.

- Good evening, Mrs Morgan.

- Leave off your hat.

Dai Bando is going to teach you to box, Huw.

To fight first. Too many call themselves

boxers who are not even fighters.

- Boxing is an art, is it?

- It is, it is.

Go along with you, girl.

A cup of tea for the men.

- Tea?

- Tea?

No tea, Mrs Morgan.

In training, he is.

A glass of beer, if you please.

Baths full of holes.

And now prizefighters.

So our little coal miner has been

indulging in his favourite sport again?

- Mr Phillips, make a back. Make a back.

- I refuse, sir.

Mr Wells, make a back.

Here. Put this in between your teeth.

Bite it hard.

Well, the scholar.

- Huw, lad.

- Well, I will go to my death.

- Did you get that in school?

- He has cut you to the bone. Who was it?

- Mr Jonas, is it?

- We'll have a word with Mr Jonas.

- No.

- And why not?

- I broke the rule when I fought.

- There is no rule for that.

- But he warned me.

- Rubbish, boy. I'll...

Hush, Davy.

This is Huw's affair. He shall decide.

Say the word, lad, and we will

have the bones hot from his flesh.

No. Leave him alone.

I think our baby brother

is becoming quite a man.

These denominations are used

in measuring distances and...

- Yes?

- Right.

- Good morning, Mr...

- Jonas.

Mr Jonas. We have come

to the right place indeed.

What can I do for you?

A man is never too old to learn,

is it, Mr Jonas?

- No.

- I was in school myself once.

- But no great one for knowledge.

- Look here, what do you want?

Knowledge.

How would you go about taking

the measurement of a stick, Mr Jonas?

- By its length, of course.

- And how would you measure a man

who would use a stick on a boy

one third his size?

- Tell us.

- Now, you are good in the use of a stick.

But boxing is my subject, to the rules laid

down by the good Marquess of Queensberry.

God rest his soul.

And happy I am to pass on

my knowledge to you.

Mr Mottshill. Mr Mottshill.

All right, get him into position, now.

Look, to make a good boxer,

you must have a good right hand.

You see?

Now, that is how you will punish your man,

with a right and a left.

And put your soul into it, with...

The gentleman is talking to you.

- Raise him up.

- Come, come, come. Up, up, up.

Position again.

Could I have your attention, boys and girls?

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