BETTER TO DIE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 197, 20 August 1940, Page 13

BETTER TO DIE

Short. Story

JA M not sure that anybody but Will Evans would have made the decision he did. And certainly, as things have worked out. he wasted his life, though even now that might not be his own opinion, because he loved his wife despite all her insincerities. He was a far better man than his son. Glyn, and should, have lived, not the bov, but he would have done anything for Betty Evans, even to giving his life as lie did in the end so that she still had a son for whom she could continue perpetually to kill the fatted calf.

The reason that I am reminded of the story is that, though Will Evans died three years ago, I see that the boy this week has at last got his deserts, tlie punishment that was coming to him, though when he comes out of prison I suppose his mother will still be there to tell hinj that he was not to blame. He has just been sentenced tor two months for fighting \yhen drunk and injuring an inoffensive farm labourer who slioukl have known better than to get in his way on a Saturday night, considering ■ his reputation. But the story really begins, I suppose, with the war.

Will Evans was nineteen then, one of those quiet, hard-working, honest boys you still find bringing out the slate from the Merioneth quarries with 110 other thought 111 their lives but their work, and, in Will's case, of supporting his aged mother. He was a bit bewildered by the war, but, feeling some urge.that could only become articulate with action, he joined up. His mother died the first year he was away, and there was really nothing to bring him back to the mountain village which had been his home, but when he was given convalescent leave for a slight wound there seemed nowhere else for him to go, so he turned up and hung ' aimlessly around. Betty Morgan, a shallow, sensuous little thing, thought him better •than nothing in a maleless village, and for some unknown reason Will fell in love with her. He was not much of a man to look at, and you would have thought Betty would have wanted the hard-living bully to keep her awake, not somebody slowly developing a sensibility as a result of the horror and mud of the trenches, somebody retiring within a shell of bewildered selfcommunion. But Betty let herself have a tentative affair with him and then agreed to marry him. though mostly, I suppose, because there was nobody else left and pensions were always within the realm of possibility.

To her considerable surprise, he came back at the end of the war and got work back in the slate quarries up the hill, a regular job which at least meant regular money, where some of the other men who came back couldn't find work at all.

But that somehow did not seem to satisfy her. It was all very well to have married a man who might not come back from the war when there were 110 other men about, but it was different living with him afterwards, living the quiet, peaceful sort of life he wanted, when all Betty's inclinations were for fun and the rough contacts with a more virile type. Glyn was born eighteen months after lie came back, and it was Betty's insistence on him being called Glyn that first started tongues in the village wagging. There was a Glyn Jones, who was said to have known her rather well, who had found" it convenient to take a job the

By SANFORD LOCK

other si tie of tlie county, but that was the one thing; that nobody ever dared mention in the presence of Will.

You see, he had a complete faith, not so much in Betty as in the natural integrity of married life. Always there hml been the perfect understanding with the mother he had kept, and in innate honesty made him grow up with the thought fixed firmly in his mind, not that anybody could be deliberately deceitful, but that nobody would deceive liim. As the years went on and. Betty's natural antipathy to his type produced a petulant irritation in her that- led to a slovenly running his home. Will drew more and more within the shell of selfcommunion that was the legacy of the war to him; until Betty began to try and stir him to anger or to break out in some way, by little pin pricks that eventually became definite deliberate attempts to spoil things for him. By the time Glyn was six, she was encouraging the child to disobey his father and was perpetually shielding him in deceits. But even tlien, if Will had had the sense to take his belt to her, things might have been different and the boy would have had a chance to grow uj> a reasonable man. Betty would at least have understood the meaning of the belt, and it would not have been too iatc to control 01 vn.

But Will did not. He let things drift perpetually trying to treat Betty as he thought all women should be treated, and for ever admitting, outwardly at any rate, that she alone should have control over Glyn. That being a mother's job.

Jt does not much matter what happened in the years that followed uutil Glyn was sixteen, Will was just a lodger in the cottage and Glyn did exactly as he pleased. So much so that it was surprising when he suddenly began work in the quarry with his father.

Nobody knew to this day how the accident happened, but there was a sudden crack where the two were working together, some roofing fell on Will and beat him to the ground, so that he stood on his hands and knees with his back arched, against the weight. Glyn was trapped on the inside and men outside heard his shout of fear. But Will managed to calm him somehow or other and made him crawl through the bare space beneath his belly while more roof piled up above him. Glyn got clear as other workmen came running, but he did not stop to pull his father clear, and the roof collapsed about Will.

He was dead when they dug him out, but old Pugb, the foreman, who knows more about slate formations than any man for miles around, gave it to ine as his opinion that Will could have saved liimself if lie had liked to at the sacrifice of Glyn. He added that Will must have known that too, because, lie said, I taught Will all I knew and he would have known.

There was a chipped fragment of slate in Will's hand when they found him, and some marks where, in his last feeble gasp, he seemed to have been scratching some sort of message while he was buried under the final fall. Pugh made the words out to be. "Better for me. to

Whether there should have been another word, the word "die," we shall never know. Most people would have preferred that Will had lived and not Glyn. Still, Will Evans made his own decision. And left Betty a son where she had no use for a husband.