Resistance: A Novel

by Owen Sheers

  Albrecht had known for some time that what Maggie said was true. Ever since the first days of the thaw. However much he may have wished it otherwise, he recognised they could not continue like this. He hoped it would last through the summer, through the diversions of shearing and hay-making, when the help of him and his men would be vital for the women. And maybe it still would. Maybe those letters he’d returned would be enough. But if the old woman was determined to go now, then so be it. She would not be stopped, and perhaps she was right; perhaps the time was already upon them. It was impossible to tell from intermittent radio reports alone. He could only be sure by testing the waters of the real world outside this valley, however much that might put them at risk. The world of hunger, boredom, resentments, fear, greed, and need. And that, in the end, was why he’d allowed Alex to appear at Maggie’s yard that morning. To run her colt, the colt Alex himself had come to love, but also to act as a barometer for Albrecht and the rest of the patrol. To take the measure of the pressures in that real world beyond the valley and gauge whether they could risk entering the erratic flow of its currents once more.

  There were conditions. Maggie must enter her class, compete, and then leave. There was no need for Alex to appear until the showing itself. Indeed, until the colts were run, Maggie could handle the horse on her own. Alex must not speak to anyone. There was little danger of any of the units at the show recognising him, but the consequences of a German soldier dressed in a farmer’s clothes arriving with a local woman were obvious. It would be a disaster, for both Maggie and Alex. They would be seen as a collaborator and a deserter. For the duration of their time out of the valley, therefore, Alex would be “Arthur,” a mute cousin of William’s returned from the army to help on the farm. The residue of shell shock was the reason for his silence. When Albrecht heard himself outlining this scenario, he couldn’t help but feel ridiculous. Would anyone really believe such a story? Maggie seemed to think they would. She understood the consequences of Alex being found out and there was a forthrightness in her manner that eventually convinced Albrecht too. Even so, it was with a level of anxiety he hadn’t experienced in months that Albrecht watched the two of them leave Maggie’s farm that morning. They were no more than two specks against the hillside, and not much clearer through Steiner’s binoculars. But still Albrecht had watched them from the slope high above The Court, following their distant progress as closely as if they were a battalion of soldiers marching off to battle.

  Sarah, still confused and shocked by Maggie’s decision, had also watched the pair leave, leaning against the sill of the narrow window on the landing outside her bedroom. Maggie was riding the mare while Alex followed behind, leading the colt. The red bandages around the horse’s hocks flashed on and off as they picked their way through the patches of scree and waist-high bracken. From this distance Alex could easily have been one of Maggie’s missing sons. He wore one of William’s caps, a rough herringbone jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, and a white shirt that, although spotless and stiff when she’d taken it from the wardrobe, Maggie had newly starched for the event. His boots were still his battered Wehrmacht-issue ones, but he carried another pair in a bag slung over his shoulder. They were laceless ankle boots that Reg had hardly ever worn, removing their wooden trees for no more than a handful of weddings and funerals. They were smart and light and although half a size too small, perfect for running the colt at the show.

  By the time Sarah came out of Upper Blaen to feed the hens, Maggie and Alex were almost at the top of the ridge. She watched them rise, vague and indistinct against the greens and browns of the slope. When she bent to the hen house then looked up again, she lost them. She scanned the hillside for movement but only caught them again when they crested the ridge. For a moment they were silhouetted there against the pale sky, their heads at the same height despite Maggie being on horseback, before walking on and disappearing over the horizon.

  The cool morning warmed into a beautiful day, almost cloudless but for a few high puffs of loose vapour. There hadn’t been much wind these past months and the apple blossom on the trees down by the river was already turning into the buds of new fruit. Sarah rode Bess up onto the hill to check the flock. It was smaller now, after the winter, even with the addition of the new lambs. Those that had survived, however, were growing big and strong on the spring grass on which they and the ewes grazed hungrily. Higher up on the top the wire grass swept blond over the plateau, patched with dark shallow peat pits, wisps of cotton grass and swathes of bilberry bushes hummocking into the distance. Riding back down the slope Sarah saw again the beauty of the Olchon as she had that first time when Tom had driven her into the valley on his father’s pony and trap one spring evening seven years ago. Throughout the rest of the day, however, her mind was not in the Olchon valley but in Llanthony, where, in the fields beside the priory, she knew Maggie and Alex were meeting the world again. She was restless and couldn’t settle to anything. Just after lunch Gernot arrived at her door with an eel he’d caught in the river. He seemed relaxed, light with life, despite his missing Bethan, and blissfully unaware of what might have been happening at that very moment, just over the ridge; of what terrible news Maggie might have been hearing as they stood there at her door in the midday sun. Sarah thanked Gernot and watched him leave, ruffling Fly’s head as he passed through the yard and on down the track. Taking the eel inside, she sprinkled it with salt then began carefully peeling back, inch by inch, the slick dark skin, exposing the white flesh beneath.

  Albrecht sometimes called in the early afternoon but when he still hadn’t arrived by two o’clock, Sarah went over to Mary’s instead and then on to The Firs, where she took Tudor and Emma off Menna’s hands while their mother washed their clothes and prepared their supper. By five o’clock she was walking back along the valley’s eastern wall, glancing up as often as she could at the opposite slope. She’d done the calculations. Maggie would have had to register Glyndwr for the class no later than eleven. The yearlings were usually early, say around one o’clock at the latest. The route back up from Llanthony was steep. So give them two hours in all from the start of the class, maybe three if it had been a large entry. That meant they should be coming back over into the valley around five, around now. Sarah looked up at the Hatterall, hoping to see their silhouettes again on its ridge. But there was nothing. Maybe they’d won the class? In which case there was no doubt Maggie would have stayed for the parade and the final judging. William had only ever won the champion of champions at a local show once. If she had then it would be nearer seven, eight even, before they’d be back in the Olchon.

  In the end it was around six o’clock, as Sarah was coming round from the coal store at the back of the house, that she saw them, the colt’s bandages flashing red again in the lowering light. They were far down the slope, almost at Maggie’s farm. Sarah couldn’t wait. Leaving the coal bucket in the porch, she grabbed her coat off the back of the door and started down the track, her heart suspended within her ribs as delicately as the pocket of air between the bars of a spirit level. Fly and Seren, surprised by Sarah’s sudden leaving, rose from where they’d been lying in the open shed, shook the loose straw from their bodies, and trotted down the track after her.

  By the time Sarah reached Maggie’s farm Alex had already left. Sarah couldn’t find Maggie either. Perhaps she’d gone with him to The Court for some reason? But then she heard Maggie’s voice, muffled and low, coming from within the stable in the corner of the yard.

  “Stupid bugger. How d’you manage that?”

  “Maggie?” Sarah said as she approached the stable. “That you?”

  Looking over the half-door she could just make her out in the darkness, crouching on the floor beside the colt’s off-hind leg.

  “Got right worked up he did,” Maggie said, a wad of cloth between her teeth. “Caught himself on the way down. Even with the bloody bandages on an’ all.” She took the cloth from between her teeth, dipped it in a bowl of warm water at h
er side, and gently ran a corner of it down the length of the cut on Glyndwr’s hock.

  Sarah stood at the door, waiting for Maggie to offer something else, but she just kept on dabbing at the cut, muttering the odd word under her breath, more to herself than to Sarah.

  “Well?” Sarah said eventually. “What happened, Maggie? At the show?”

  Maggie looked at her from where she crouched, swilled the cloth in the bowl of water, then stood up, wringing it dry over the bed of straw. Glyndwr tore a mouthful of hay from a rack on the wall and chewed on it rhythmically. Maggie walked up to the door so Sarah could see her face. She was smiling.

  “Oh, he ran well, bach,” she said, running her hand down Glyndwr’s neck. “Really well. He’s a beautiful mover. The boy did him proud.” She leant against the top of the half-door, still looking at Glyndwr. “Watkins had a lovely colt in, mind, another one thrown by Cardi Llwyd. Least he was beat by his own brother, I s’pose.” She turned back to Sarah. “An’ a couple of others. Fourth in the end. Just out of the colours. Never mind, eh?” She patted the horse’s neck a couple of times.

  Sarah could feel her heart beating against the wood of the stable door. Couldn’t Maggie feel it too? The steady hammer of it passing through her ribs and skin into the thin, knotted planks. “That’s good,” she said, quietly nodding her head. “But what about everything else? Who d’you see?” Her breath was tight in her throat. She paused and gave the colt a rub on his nose. He bucked his head under her touch. “What was it like?” she said, pulling her hand away from Glyndwr’s searching mouth.

  Maggie let out a heavy sigh, then looked down at the piece of cloth as she folded it into tighter and tighter squares. “Oh,” she said. “Not much different, really. Some soldiers there, of course, but apart from that it was like as always, more or less.” She smiled again, still looking down at her hands. “Think most folk thought we’d copped it over the winter.”

  “Were they surprised, then?” Sarah said. “T’see you, I mean?”

  Maggie looked back up at her then beyond to the darkening ridge. The sky above it was deepening again, slowly bruising towards dusk. It was still light but she could just make out the first stars. “It’s been a hard time of it, bach, that’s for sure,” she said. “Think people have had their own worries without botherin’ about us.”

  Sarah couldn’t hold back any longer. “But what about Tom and William, Maggie? Did you hear anything?”

  Maggie looked back at Sarah, at the deep crease of the frown between her eyebrows. “No, bach,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t.” She sighed heavily again. “I told them Will couldn’t run the colt himself because he was over here working. Getting back after the winter. None of them so much as bat an eyelid.”

  Sarah’s pulse throbbed in her head and she tasted the bitter tang of bile at the back of her throat.

  “I did see Helen Roberts, though,” Maggie continued, as if they’d just been passing the time with general gossip. “From over Hay? Said she’d seen Bethan in town. She’s doing fine, helping her aunt with the shop, she is.” Maggie paused but Sarah had turned away from her, her back against the door. Where was she going? Maggie wondered. Where would the girl go once the hope was gone?

  “I asked Helen t’tell Bethan to come back over for a bit if she could,” Maggie continued. “Said it’d do her mother some good t’see her.”

  Sarah knew what Maggie meant by this. She’d seen it herself when she’d called that afternoon. Mary was a boat loosening from its moorings. She needed Bethan there. They all needed her there. To anchor her mother, to stop her drifting away from them completely.

  Maggie reached out and laid a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Look, let’s talk about this in the morning, is it?” She felt Sarah flinch under her touch. “I’m done in, girl. Let me get this fixed an’ I’ll come up tomorrow. We can talk it over proper then.”

  Sarah turned round to look at Maggie. She didn’t know her anymore. There was something missing, as if she’d left a part of herself over the ridge in Llanthony. Maybe she was loosening like Mary. Maybe she’d already gone.

  “It’s best, bach,” Maggie said, forcing a smile. “Get some rest yourself now.”

  Sarah left Maggie’s yard feeling as if the last threads of hope had been winnowed from within her. Calling the two dogs after her, she turned back up the lane towards Upper Blaen. All about her the trees were electric with the birds’ evensong, marking the passing of another day. As the incline of the lane rose up the valley, she saw the moon through the lower branches, rising over the Black Hill. It was a full moon, just like the one that had shone over the men’s departure; a clean disc of pitted white, bright with the light of their own dying day.

  Back in her yard Maggie fetched a bottle of disinfectant from the shed, then returned to the stable and the colt. Tipping the open bottle to the corner of the folded cloth, she began cleaning the cut again, telling Glyndwr to “shhh now, shhh,” and stroking his flank above her with her free hand. The cut was deep with fragments of stone in it; the horse must have caught himself on one of the many slabs of sandstone that littered the valley walls. She worked the cloth firmly into the cut, edging it under the loose skin at the sides. Glyndwr flinched, lifting his hoof off the ground every time she touched the wound, but Maggie wanted to make sure. She didn’t want any proud flesh. A badly healed scar on a yearling as good as this would be such a shame. William would never forgive her.

  When she’d finished treating the wound, she began unwinding the bandages from his other legs. As she knelt to undo the knot of the bandage tied around one of his forelegs, he nuzzled the top of her head, nibbling at her hair with his lips. “Get off with you,” Maggie said, gently pushing him away with one hand while still fumbling with the knot with her other. She couldn’t seem to get it undone. It was pulled as tight as an unripe berry; her fingers felt clumsy and thick and the knot itself kept blurring and distorting in her vision, however many times she blinked away the tears from her eyes.

  Maggie had lied, but it wasn’t what she’d said to Sarah that made her cry as she crouched beside the colt in the stable. It was everything she hadn’t.

  How the women in the secretary’s tent had looked at her when she’d walked in; as if they were looking at a ghost.

  How pale they went.

  How, although the show looked like every other she’d been to, it was totally different.

  How people’s faces were strained at the edges, taut across their brows and temples.

  How there were so many she didn’t know, and so many she did who weren’t there.

  How one of those women from the tent, Edna Kelly, had followed her out and called her name after her.

  How Maggie had turned to see that expression still ghosting Edna’s face and how Edna’s eyes had welled as she stood there, one hand held to her chest, the other on Maggie’s shoulder.

  How Edna had asked tentatively after William and how Maggie had lied to her too, saying he was on the farm, working.

  And then how she’d had to stand there in front of Edna, the show turning about them, the announcer’s clipped voice rising through the Tannoy, as she told Maggie how relieved she was; how there were so many rumours now you never knew what to believe; how she knew she’d been right; how she’d said to her husband, “William Jones would never be caught up in all that, not him.” How she’d never believed it when they’d said it was him brought off the railway line. How (leaning closer now) those lot had it coming anyway; she didn’t understand why they couldn’t let it rest. How she’d never liked a mess and say what you like, at least the Jerries have put a stop to some of that.

  How after Edna had gone back to the secretary’s tent, giving her a squeeze of the arm as she left, Maggie’d had to walk away through the show, with Edna’s words and all they’d implied swirling through her head.

  How she’d seen groups of soldiers at the edges of the rings and hanging around the stalls selling cakes and small jars of sweets.
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  How she’d felt again the fear and anger of that first night when Albrecht came knocking at her door with his pistol in his hand.

  How Glyndwr was the best in his class by far, with the most perfect confirmation, carriage, and paces.

  How Alex had slipped into the ring from nowhere, big and quiet and gentle.

  How William would have been so proud to see the colt run like that, all power and muscle, a barely contained wildness simmering under the sheen of a deep bay coat, a flowing mane, and four flashing, white-socked hooves.

  How somehow the judges had known about Alex, and that was why, when Maggie took the colt back from him, they’d left her circling long after they’d called the others in.

  How she’d led Glyndwr around that ring, his head tossing, his hooves stamping, three more times before they’d eventually told her to take her place at the end of the line.

  How when they finally left the ring, the crowd had parted about them without a word.

  How she’d felt their anger, tense on the air.

  How they were wrong.

  How what she’d done was not, as they thought, an act of collaboration, but an act of love; her last for the husband of thirty years who’d so suddenly left her life, silently and without warning as she’d slept one night last September.

  June 9th

  Maggie came back with no news. What does that mean, Tom? It could mean nothing I know. But it doesn’t. To me it means everything. Am I writing to a ghost, Tom? Are you never coming back? After all this time. I don’t know what to do.

  George lay on his stomach at the edge of the coppice, the morning sun filtering through the leaves above him, warming his back and neck in patches that shifted with the breeze. The rifle case lay beside him. It still smelt of the manure heap, years-old animal shit impacted in the grooves around the two steel latches. He looked through the telescopic sight at the farmhouse below, moving the unsteady crosshairs slowly over its roof, across the yard and back again. He hoped this was the right farm. Watkins had already had a skinful by the time he’d got to him yesterday, celebrating his wins in two different classes. Then George had had to buy him another beer to keep him talking, so when Watkins finally told him where to find Maggie Jones’s place, he’d barely been able to understand him. This farm below, though, it looked like the right one. It was certainly in the right part of the valley and there were no others near it. He just had to wait, that was all.