Free How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

know, talking and moving, making
     the little sounds you know, doing the little actions you know, all of it happening
     in the dark and yet so clear in your mind that you could laugh, and you ask yourself
     what is the need of people themselves when only their voices and little sounds are
     enough.
    I could hear Davy throwing back his hair before he spoke, because his hair made a
     soft whish and his chair creaked. Gwilym I knew because his throat made a bumpy sound
     when he swallowed. Owen always rubbed his forehead and pulled his ear. I suppose there
     is no sound for that, yet I heard it and knew what he was doing.
    But though I knew my father was there, I heard nothing from him, although I knew his
     sounds well. Yet I knew he was there, and even though Davy and Owen had made no sounds
     at all, I would have known they were there. There is a sort of hot stillness which
     you can feel, and yet it is not hot, nor is it still, but it will have you on edge
     and make you hot if you think about it. This feeling I always had for my father, and
     it was in my brothers, too.
    This feeling it was that made the wall bed like an oven to me, and started me sweating
     till the drops were running down my cheeks into my ears.
    They had broth for supper, but I suppose I slept through that, though I was sure I
     could hear all they said in a sort of underneath manner, like the sheets underneath
     me, that I never felt unless I thought of them.
    My father it was who woke me up properly, even though he spoke very quietly, as though
     Mama had made a sign to the bed that I was in there and sleeping. Several ways he
     had of clearing his throat, and well I knew them. He had one way for singing, one
     way for speaking in Chapel, one way for reading the Bible, and another for reading
     anything else, except a story book, and that was different again. But he had a special
     way of doing it when he had something to say that was serious.
    That was how he woke me up.
    “Davy,” he said, “you are the eldest here, and to you I will talk.”
    “Yes, Dada,” said Davy, and I knew his eyes would be watching my father in the shadow
     of his hair.
    “I asked you to leave this house,” my father said, “because I thought I was doing
     the best. I thought you were a bad influence on the other boys. But I found that the
     others were as bad as you, and even a baby like Huw was going out of the house at
     night. That is not the way a house should live, and I said so. I have that authority
     because I am your father.”
    “I will never question that, Dada,” said Davy.
    “Good,” said my father. “It was hurting me to have to do it. I am proud of my family,
     and I am proud to think that you are prepared to make sacrifice for what you think
     is right. It is good to suffer in order that men should be better off, but take care
     that what you are doing is right and not half-right. My sense is against what you
     are doing. If you were right, you would not have had such a disgraceful meeting up
     there to-day. There would have been a different spirit. But that is not what I want
     to say. I would not have asked you in the house again if your mother had not begged
     me, and I only said I would because she told me you were living with pigs. I will
     have you make a sacrifice and I will have you suffer. It will do you good. But no
     man ever made himself more useful to himself or his fellow men by living in filth
     and dirt, and I am surprised that a son of mine would allow it.”
    “They were lodgings, Dada,” said Davy, moving in his chair, “and we could get nowhere
     else. By the time we had finished work and collected the men, there was little time.”
    “Where there is little time,” my father said, “there is little use. Leave it, now.
     I will have Mrs. Beynon spoken to. As for you, as I said, your mother told me about
     it, and I said I would have you back. But only on one condition.”
    There was quietness for a time.
    That hot, still