Resistance: A Novel

by Owen Sheers

  The day was no lighter by the time Sarah was out in the yard, clumsy and heavy under layers of jackets and coats, a woollen scarf wrapped about her head, a sack over her shoulders. She fumbled with the dogs’ chains, her fingers thick under gloves. Taking Tom’s crook and a spade from the shed, she began walking down to the lower field where she and Maggie had herded the lambing ewes just weeks before. She was walking against the wind. The snow caught in her eyelashes, melting her vision. With each step her leg sunk up to the knee. When she pulled her boots back out again, she tinged her own footprints with red brown mud, like the edging of blood around a punctured bandage. The world had turned white, the twigs of the hedges fleshed out with inches of snow balanced along their upper sides. With every step forwards she had to push herself against the crook, up and on, walking within her own sphere of mist, the rest of the valley extinguished. The dogs went before her, leaping through the snow like salmon against the current of a stream. Despite the wind Sarah was soon sweating under her heavy clothes. Her breath came hard and fast as she cursed Tom for leaving her like this, quietly at first but then louder, letting the wind snatch the damning of her husband from her mouth.

  When she reached the field she knew immediately that at least a third of the flock was missing. Those that were left had bunched together at the far end where the snow was shallower. At the other end the wind had swept a massive drift over the height of the hedge. Fresh snow spun off its edge, sculpting a delicate curl like the blank page of an open book suspended in the breeze between turning and falling. That was where the other ewes would have been lying. Against the hedge, trying to find some shelter. And they were still there somewhere, trapped under the weight of drifted snow.

  Sarah waded through the field and began poking her crook into the drift. She’d only ever known this to happen once, and even then Tom had got to the ewes before they’d been completely covered. With William in the valley and Maggie’s radio, they’d never been taken unawares by the weather. Sarah didn’t know if she’d find the ewes alive or dead. Or even if she’d find them at all.

  She called to the dogs, shouting above the confusion of wind and flurried air. “Seren! Fly! Cumby now; cumby, girls!”

  The dogs bounded up to her, their coats flecked with snow, their breath steaming. Sarah ran her crook along the drift, “Cum’n girls, cum on now.” Fly was the first to climb onto the firmer snow at the base of the drift. She began trotting along its length, her nose low. Seren followed her and soon both dogs were pawing at the same patch, throwing the snow between their legs. Sarah joined them with the spade, digging until she saw a smudge of grey-white wool. Dropping the spade she dug with her hands instead, freeing the ewe’s front legs, scooping the packed snow from off its back and heaving it into the field. It was alive. Stunned and dumb with cold, but alive.

  In this way Sarah mined the ewes from the drift, the dogs scenting them out and her birthing them, their coats clogged with ice, into the morning’s thickening blizzard. Each one was worse than the last and Sarah knew she’d soon uncover a body of wool no longer panting for breath. Her face burnt with exhaustion and tears. She hated Tom. And she hated the other men too. For leaving, for running away. Over the past two months the loss of their husbands had been changing within all the women and Sarah was no exception. The questions, the hurt and fear had been gradually overshadowing her concern. She’d felt it altering every day, felt the vacuum of Tom’s missing curdle and calcify into something harder. This sudden blizzard had broken it open, but like an insect struggling from the case of its pupa, her grief had transformed, emerging bitter and injured into the cold light of day.

  After half an hour of finding, digging, and pulling the sheep from the snow, Sarah was too exhausted to be either surprised or scared when Albrecht and Alex emerged from the white-out behind her. The dogs signalled their arrival, standing on the drift, barking over her shoulder. Sarah turned in time to see them coming through the mist and snow, two ghosted bodies, their faces obscured with grey scarves. One of her knees was bent deep into the drift. Her left hand held the head of a ewe, gulping for breath. She remained like that until they were close to her. Albrecht bent to her ear, pulling the scarf from his mouth, flakes of snow melting against his glasses.

  “Where are they?” he asked, raising his voice over the wind. “How many more?”

  Sarah waved her free hand along the drift. “All along here. Follow the dogs.”

  Albrecht turned to speak to Alex, but he was already up beside the hedge, his legs covered to the hip, digging with a short-handled trench shovel. Seren barked beside him, her ears pricked and her thin ribs rising and falling under her wet coat.

  It was Albrecht who found the first dead ewe. He was digging with his hands, excavating around the animal’s back towards its head like an archaeologist uncovering a fossil. He knew before he saw its glassy eye that the sheep was dead. He’d seen enough death to recognise its pattern upon a body, human or not. Even so he pulled the animal free, bringing it sliding down the lower part of the drift, its stiff forelegs curled under its chest. Climbing out of the deeper snow he walked over to where Sarah was digging.

  “This one,” he said, bending close to her ear again and thumbing towards the ewe’s carcass. “It’s dead.”

  Sarah looked up at him, frowning. The scarf had slipped from her head and her dark hair hung in wet strands across her face. For the first time Albrecht noticed her eyes; the flecks of gold in the green of each iris.

  Alex shouted to Albrecht in German from further up the field. He too was dragging the lifeless body of a ewe out of the drift.

  “And that one,” Albrecht said to Sarah. “Also dead.”

  Sarah returned to the hole she was digging. Albrecht waded into the drift and together they threw back the snow until Sarah felt the soft give of a sheep’s muzzle. She cleared a space about the nostrils, and removing one of her gloves, held her bare palm before them. There was nothing.

  Albrecht was still clearing the snow from the ewe’s head, but now Sarah stopped him. “No, don’t,” she said, touching his arm. “The crow’ll only get the eyes.” With one sweep of her still-gloved hand she brought the freshly dug snow falling back over the hole, covering the velvet of the ewe’s dead face.

  “I’m sorry,” Albrecht said. Sarah didn’t respond but just sat back for a moment, sinking into the drift. Feeling the hard-soft snow both support and embrace her, she suddenly understood how the sheep could have done this. How they could lie here and let themselves slowly drown. A gentle death. A warm, bright, gentle death. An easy death. All she’d have to do was lie there. Stay still and let this white world swallow her whole. Let the snow knit her shroud, flake by flake, until there was nothing left to mark her presence except the slightest of tremors across the drift’s smooth surface as she allowed her last and longest breath to leave her.

  “Mrs. Lewis?” This time Albrecht shook Sarah’s shoulder. The snow was still falling heavily and it had already settled thickly on her head and her arms. Slowly, Sarah looked up at him, as if rising through a dream.

  “My sergeant says these two must be helped. They’ll die if they stay here.”

  Sarah turned to look at the two ewes lying on either side of the big German soldier. They were alive but they’d given up. The others they’d freed had, after a moment of shock, made their way over to the rest of the flock at the far end of the field. But these two were still slumped on the ground. Their sides heaved with breathing but through no will of their own. They were already dead, but that didn’t matter. She couldn’t lose any more.

  “Bring them t’the house,” Sarah said quietly, pushing herself out of the snow. Albrecht looked at her blankly, the flakes falling heavily between them. “Those two,” she said again louder, pointing to the sheep. “Bring ’em up t’the house.” She turned away from him and walked along the destroyed drift, pitted with their searching. At the far end Tom’s crook stuck out of the bank of snow like a question mark bereft of its question.
Sarah grasped it as she passed, heavy-stepping on towards Upper Blaen, calling the dogs after her. She looked back just once to see Alex, one ewe already over his shoulder, lifting the other onto Albrecht’s back. The German officer was bent over at the waist, one leg braced forward and his hands behind him. His uniform was soaked dark over his knees and clumps of snow clung around the cuffs of his sleeves. Stood like that he reminded Sarah of an illustration in one of her schoolbooks when she was a girl: Atlas crouched in anticipation, ready for the weight of the world to be set upon his shoulders.

  By the time Albrecht and Alex reached Upper Blaen Sarah had already stoked the fire and fed it with fresh wood and coal.

  “Put ’em there,” she said, pushing the table back to make room in front of the range. Alex laid one of the ewes on the flagstones as gently as if he was putting a child to bed, then took the other from off Albrecht’s back and laid it beside it. The two of them lay there, still numb and listless with cold. Alex said something in German to Albrecht.

  “A cloth? A towel?” Albrecht said.

  Sarah went into the porch and got an old flannel shirt Tom used for wrapping weak lambs in and gave it to Alex. Undoing his scarf and taking off his gloves, the big German sat down beside the sheep and began rubbing their necks and backs. A pool of water was already bleeding from under them as their frozen coats began to thaw.

  “He’s good with ’em,” Sarah said, not looking at Albrecht. “Knows what he’s doing.”

  “Alex grew up on a farm,” Albrecht said. On entering the kitchen his glasses had misted and now he was cleaning them on a corner of his shirt.

  Sarah sat down. Here they were again. In her house, in the kitchen. The enemy. The invading army. But it was different this time. As if the snow had shed them all of their history. She felt safe. For the first time in over a month, she felt safe.

  “You’re still here,” she said, looking up at Albrecht.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re still here,” she said again, looking at the red marks where his glasses had pressed over the bridge of his nose. “In the valley. You said two weeks before.”

  Albrecht glanced at Alex rubbing at the sheep with the old flannel shirt. He didn’t understand English. “Yes,” Albrecht said. “A dispatch rider came. We’re to stay for a little longer.”

  “How much?”

  Albrecht tried to smile but his face felt stiff and immobile with the cold. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mrs. Lewis.”

  Sarah looked back down at the sheep. “I should heat ’em some water.” She got up, collected a tin bucket from behind the door, and went out into the yard. When she came back in the bucket was half-filled with snow and her hair was shot with flakes. Albrecht was at the dresser, one hand holding the cover of the family Bible, the other turning its thin pages.

  “Pump’s frozen,” Sarah said, walking past him and hanging the bucket on a hook above the range.

  She sat down again and for a while none of them spoke. The only sounds were the falling of the coal in the grate, the hissing of the damp bucket above the fire, the wind at the window, and Alex, murmuring to the sheep in German.

  “It was Alex’s idea we came to help,” Albrecht said eventually. “When he saw the snow. He said you might need help.”

  Sarah looked out the window at the obscured world. He knew then. They all knew. Of course they did. You might need help. He may as well have just said it straight out. Because your husband isn’t here. Because your husband has gone. Sarah felt a trickle of fear run under her heart, like the returning voice of an old friend.

  “My patrol have gone to the other farms too,” Albrecht continued. “To help.”

  Sarah thought how that must have been. The German soldiers wading over the fields. Knocking at the doors, peering through windows. What would the others have done? What had Maggie done? Were the Germans standing in their kitchens now? Somehow she thought not.

  “D’they speak English too?” she asked.

  “No,” Albrecht said, “but I told them what to say. And I gave them notes.”

  Sarah nodded slowly. Menna couldn’t read.

  One of the ewes shifted its legs, dragging a hoof over the stone.

  “Where d’you learn yours?” Sarah said, looking back at Albrecht.

  “I lived here. Before the war. I was a student in Oxford and then in London.”

  Now it was Albrecht’s turn to look away through the white window.

  “You went to Oxford? The university?” Sarah said.

  Albrecht turned back to her. “Yes. For a year.” He was surprised by her question, by the knowledge it implied. He closed the Bible and leant against the dresser. “Did you go to school, Mrs. Lewis?”

  “Only ’til fourteen,” Sarah said, glancing at a framed certificate on the wall. “Then I had t’work.”

  Albrecht went over to the certificate and looked it over. It was faded but had been as lovingly framed and hung as an old master. He read from its typed print:

  Herefordshire County Council Education Committee

  ON LEAVING SCHOOL

  Dear Sarah

  FOURTEEN YEARS OF AGE—You have now passed your fourteenth birthday. It may be your intention to leave School, or you may have resolved to continue your studies for a time. In either case, here is a message of friendly counsel and good cheer.

  Great issues depend on this period in your life. Choices are being made now by which the course of your life for good or ill, for success or failure, is determined.

  There followed a number of sections, each bearing a paragraph of advice. Albrecht cast his eye between them, the sound of the wind rising hollow in the chimney behind him.

  THE GREAT CHOICE—The greatest of all choices is that between good and evil; whatever else you may be or do, strive to be good. Speak the truth always, whatever it cost you. Be courteous to everybody; to honour another is to honour yourself. Keep your temper. There is no harm in having a temper; the harm lies in losing it.

  YOUR CHARACTER—Your most precious possession is a pure character. Guard it closely. It is easily lost; it is terribly hard to regain.

  YOUR BODY—By fresh air, by cleanliness, by recreation, by regular habits, keep your body fit. Be temperate in all things. Beware of strong drink. Athletes in training abstain from alcohol, and surely it is our duty to be always at our fittest.

  YOUR MIND—Good books are “Kings’ Treasure.” Read only the best. The best of all books is the Bible. Read it daily; get to know it thoroughly. The reading of a few verses every morning or evening is the best of all tonics for mind and soul.

  NEVER BET OR GAMBLE—Gambling is an unhealthy striving to gain something without giving proper return for it. It is a great evil, destructive of character, disastrous in its consequences.

  Albrecht didn’t read any more. He didn’t like this certificate. Its tone of “friendly counsel” was tinged for him by the miles of printed rhetoric he’d seen fed to the children of the Reich. Moral directives. Orders that, given and followed enough times, would lead to the arrogance of that Gestapo officer in Oxford; to other fourteen-year-olds taking up guns and spitting at Jews. But that wasn’t the only reason this certificate left a bad taste in his mouth. Standing there, in that farmhouse kitchen in another country, he couldn’t shake the sense that somehow its vacuous advice was intended for him too, both advising and admonishing him at once.

  “Some good advice,” he said, turning away from the certificate and leaning against the edge of the dresser again. Sarah stood and fetched a wooden spoon to stir the melting snow in the bucket. Albrecht looked back at the certificate.

  “May I ask you about these names, Mrs. Lewis?”

  Sarah looked up at him, her eyes like the first night he’d seen her, fierce and fearful in her husband’s clothes.

  “Richards and Thomas,” Albrecht continued, tapping at the two signed signatures in the bottom right-hand corner. “These family names are also Christian names. Richard and Thomas?”
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  Sarah went back to stirring the snow, nodding in reply.

  “And yours too? Lewis? This can be a man’s Christian name?”

  Sarah nodded again. Her throat had gone dry. Why was he asking about their names? What did he want to know? What had she done, letting them come in the house? The snow was deep outside. Too deep for anyone to get here quickly. Even if they heard her cries at all.

  “I think it is common here. This type of family name?”

  Sarah sat back down at the table, her eyes still on the bucket of heating snow. Alex began turning one of the sheep, shifting it onto its other side.

  “I was wondering why that is,” Albrecht said more quietly, half to himself. The woman seemed to have stopped talking. He went over to look out of the window again, trying not to look too comfortable, too used to walking around a stranger’s house. But he’d done this so many times he couldn’t hide his familiarity with authority. He’d walked in too many strangers’ houses for the ease he’d so difficultly acquired to shed that simply.

  “It’s from the Welsh,” Sarah said suddenly, still keeping her eyes on the bucket. “When everyone spoke Welsh, a son was given the first name of his father. They passed it on so as they got to have long names.” She glanced towards the Bible on the dresser. “My mother’s grandfather still signed himself Hywel ap Thomas ap Dafydd. Son of Thomas, son of David.” She looked up at Albrecht. “When the English came they made it easier for them to understand. That’s why.”

  She remembered her mother telling her just this story one day when they were walking down through the fields from delivering milk and eggs to old Mrs. Roberts up the valley.

  Albrecht nodded. Her sudden talking had startled him. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you.” He’d only ever read of Welsh in his studies. “My family name too is a first name,” he continued. “Wolfram. Wolfram von Eschenbach was a medieval poet. From Bavaria. I think at some point my family took the name from him.”