by Owen Sheers
Gernot had closed his eyes again, the last of the evening light playing under his lids in bursts of orange fragments, just as it had across his vision that day he’d climbed the hill to find Bethan waiting for him beside the thorn tree. When he opened them again it was in time to see the pony’s legs passing his head. One of her hind hooves caught the back of the opposite foreleg with every step, punctuating the steady rhythm of her walk with the faintest of metronome ticks. He turned his head slightly and the pony’s legs swiped their shadows across his face as the tick, tick of her overreach passed by his ear, then faded away as Bethan led her back onto the track that dropped down towards the valley’s head. As she led the pony on down the slope away from Gernot, a pair of crows circled above her, cawing and tumbling in the last amber light of the day.
Sarah was sitting alone in Maggie’s kitchen with William’s shotgun loaded on the table before her. Maggie lay asleep upstairs, her pale cheeks sunken, breathing thinly through her open mouth. It seemed as if she’d aged years since last night when Sarah had watched her treat the colt’s cut in the stable. As soon as she’d seen her like this, looking small and fragile in the sidecar of the motorbike, she’d handed the note Albrecht had written back to Sebald and, closing the door of Upper Blaen behind her, told him to take them both to Maggie’s farm. Eventually Sebald had understood her, and with Sarah mounting the motorbike behind him, he’d driven them back down the rough track, Seren and Fly straining on their chains, barking behind them.
It had been much harder, once they’d settled Maggie in her bed, to persuade Sebald to leave them completely. But Sarah had pleaded with him; he couldn’t stay, not now, not after what had happened. Something in her expression, a note of desperation in her voice must have finally connected with him. “Ja, ja,” he’d said, nodding his head and picking up his rifle from beside the door. “Ich verstehe.” Sarah stood in the hallway with her back to the door and listened as the motorbike engine gunned into life then faded out of the yard and on down the lane.
Since then Sarah had been alone with just her confused thoughts for company. She’d checked on Maggie regularly, given her water when she could, but the woman she knew was no longer there. For the rest of the day she’d sat downstairs in the kitchen and waited, for what, she didn’t know.
Sarah felt she was to blame. Someone had shot the colt. Someone from outside the valley, and because of what had happened at the show. But Maggie would not have known about the show if Sarah hadn’t brought that poster back from the priory and shown her. She hadn’t even needed to go down to the priory; they could have filled the water bottle in the streams. But she’d had to get away from Albrecht, that was why she’d gone. For her own sake, she’d had to get away from him then, and she’d had to see the chapel and the priory too. Not just see them either, but touch them, smell them. That chapel was where she’d married Tom and she’d hoped, she supposed, that the place would still hold a resonance of that day. That somehow, standing within its bare walls, looking up again at the high, simple windows, she would have been able to gather the echoes of how she’d felt then; Tom’s forearm contracting under her touch, the smell of starch on his collar, and the wind picking at her veil. But she’d found no memory and heard no echo other than her own footfalls over the worn gravestones laid in the flagstone floor. All she’d brought back with her was that poster, taken from the chapel’s notice board, which had led to this: Maggie lying upstairs, no more than a husk of herself, and her, sitting in the kitchen as the day darkened at its window, not knowing whether to be terrified or joyful at her husband’s possible return.
As Sarah lit one of Maggie’s oil lamps, she heard Maggie’s two dogs moving outside, their chains dragging on the cobblestones of the yard. They began barking, the younger bitch’s thin yelps over the older bitch’s less regular, deeper growls. She replaced the glass chimney over the wick and the flame grew inside, its illumination expanding and growing within the lamp. Standing there, motionless with the lamp in her hands, she listened hard. She could hear faint footsteps getting louder, quick footsteps, then the front gate opening and closing. Someone was coming into the yard. The dogs settled as the footsteps approached. Sarah put the lamp on the table then reached for the shotgun and went out to stand at the back of the hallway, pointing the gun at the closed front door. The hallway was dark. Whoever opened the door wouldn’t see her straightaway. She would have a second, maybe more, to decide.
At first, when Albrecht stepped into the hall, Sarah didn’t recognise him. She’d grown used to seeing him almost every day, but not like this. For the past few months he’d been wearing clothes from The Court like the rest of the patrol. Now, however, he stood before her wearing the same full uniform as he’d worn that night when she’d first mistaken his footsteps for the tread of her husband. The bulky leather holster of his pistol hung at his hip and his tunic was undone, as were the upper buttons of his shirt beneath. His hands were stained with earth and soil.
“Sarah?” he said, peering into the dark. She lowered the shotgun and stepped forward so he could see her. “Sarah,” he said again, coming quickly towards her and taking hold of her shoulders. “We must leave.”
Albrecht had never once questioned his decision to guard the women in the wake of the colt’s shooting. If their situation was known, then surely they were in danger as much from the British insurgents as from the Gestapo and the German army. So when he got back to Mary’s house, he hadn’t expected her to tell him coldly that she’d asked Gernot to leave, or when he returned to The Court that he’d find Sarah had asked the same of Sebald. “They don’t want us near them,” Sebald had explained to him. “Surely you can understand that? If their husbands are coming back, we’re the last people they want protecting them.”
Sarah went back into the kitchen and Albrecht followed her. She sat down, putting the shotgun on the table while he went to the window and looked out anxiously at the gathering night. He turned back to her and leant against its sill. “It’s Steiner,” he said with a sigh. He looked exhausted; a vein at his temple pulsed under his skin as he spoke and his hands were trembling. “He’s taken the radio. He’s contacting the local command unit.”
Sarah sat very still, taking in what this meant. “What will he tell them?” she said eventually, drawing the lamp closer to her across the table.
Albrecht ran his fingers through his hair, leaving a streak of mud across his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said, sighing heavily again and shaking his head. “Report insurgent activity? Give them our position? Ask for reinforcements?” Suddenly he laughed, brief and shallow. “Report an officer unfit for duty perhaps?”
He looked back out the window, searching for points of torchlight, listening for the crunch of boots on the lane. This was his fault, he should have seen it coming. When Gernot hadn’t returned, Steiner had got anxious. He’d wanted to go out and look for his friend. But Albrecht didn’t let him go. He hadn’t wanted to let the young soldier out of his sight. He’d wanted to follow the plan he’d made the night before. Well, now Steiner had made the choice for him. He didn’t blame him. Everything was fraying and unravelling and all of them must look to save themselves now, however they could. Steiner had been clever. This would go well for him at the court martial, reporting the discovery of an insurgency cell. And couldn’t Albrecht have stopped him if he’d really wanted to? Couldn’t he have drawn his pistol and aimed it at Steiner’s back as he’d scrambled up the slope behind The Court? Or couldn’t he even have caught up with him? Steiner was, after all, carrying the heavy radio pack. But he hadn’t. He’d just followed him instead, and when Steiner did eventually pause to look down the slope, Albrecht had stopped too and looked back up at him. For a moment they’d remained like that, a mirror image of their positions on that day when Albrecht had first persuaded Steiner to walk with him to the top of the hill. They didn’t say anything and they didn’t have to. In those few seconds both men saw and knew each other more clearly than ever before. And that wa
s why when Steiner turned and carried on up the hill Albrecht didn’t follow him again, but just watched him shrink away out of sight instead before continuing himself, running not up, but along the slope towards the head of the valley and Maggie’s farm.
“Was it them?” Sarah said, trying not to become panicked by Albrecht’s behaviour.
Albrecht looked at her, frowning as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”
“Was it Tom?” she said more clearly. “Was it Tom an’ the others who killed Maggie’s yearling?”
“No,” Albrecht said emphatically, shaking his head again. “No, it couldn’t have been. Not here.”
“How d’you know?”
He didn’t know, but that didn’t matter anymore. Leaving the valley, that was all that mattered now. He came and sat down at the table beside her. “Sarah,” he said, speaking more slowly, the muscle tensing at the hinge of his jaw. “Do you understand what I said just now? Steiner has radioed out. They will send soldiers, a whole company perhaps. The Gestapo will come with them. If we stay here, they will kill us.” He paused, lowering his head so she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “We will die.”
Sarah looked into Albrecht’s face as he stared back at her intently. There were spots of dried mud on his glasses. His eyes behind their lenses were bloodshot, making the pale blue of his irises darker than she knew they were. His face was taut and drawn. He was frightened, she saw that now. More frightened, perhaps, than she was herself.
“You know I can’t leave,” she said at last.
Albrecht looked down at the table. When he looked back up at her it was with an expression of such incredulity it seemed to border upon contempt. “You would really rather stay here and die than leave and live?” he said, annunciating each word slowly and clearly. “What for? For who are you making this sacrifice? For your husband who left you?”
Sarah looked away from him, a sudden anger rising in her chest like the flame that had risen in the oil lamp. He’d never spoken to her like this before and she hated him for it; hated him because she knew he was right. There was nothing left for her here. Maggie was gone. They’d all held on for as long as they could, survived however they could, but the men had not come back. And now it was too late. Even if they did return, she knew it was too late.
Albrecht reached across the table and took her hand. “The world is changing,” he said more gently. “Nothing will be the same again. But it will get better. This will stop one day. And when it does, you can live as you wish again, maybe even come back here to the valley. But for now, if you stay, you will have no future. You will not be able to return. If you stay here you will have no life to live.”
Sarah withdrew her hand from under his. “Where’d we go?” she said, still looking away from him and speaking so quietly that Albrecht could barely hear her.
“West, to the coast,” he said without hesitation. “And then to Ireland. And then, if we can, maybe to America.”
Her head was light and throbbing and the room seemed unsteady about her. If what he said was true, then she had no choice. In the space of one day and night everything had changed completely. She had waited, for months she had waited, but now it was the end. It was over.
“All right,” she said quietly, frowning into the table and nodding her head. “I’ll go.”
Albrecht smiled at her and took her hand again. “It is the right thing to do,” he said urgently, squeezing her fingers in his. “We will be safe, don’t worry.” He stood up, still holding her hand, scraping the chair behind him over the flagstones. “But we must go immediately.”
“What about the others?” Sarah said, still sitting at the table.
“I’ve sent them notes. To warn them.”
“An’ the map? What about the map?”
Albrecht let her fingers slip from his grip and went over to the window again. She saw his reflection in its pane as he looked out over the darkening view. “The map,” he said, still looking out at the hills and nodding. “Yes, they will get the map. But there is nothing we can do about that.” He turned back and came towards her, offering her his hand again. “We must go, now,” he said. Sarah looked at his outstretched hand, at the pale blue veins crossing at his wrist. Eventually she lifted her own and took it, feeling his scholar’s fingers close about her palm as he led her out of the kitchen into the hallway.
They were almost at the front door when Albrecht stopped suddenly, cursing under his breath. “My uniform,” he said, looking down at his open tunic. “I need some clothes.” Letting go of Sarah’s hand he strode towards the stairs at the back of the hallway, the heels of his boots clicking over the flagstones.
“No,” Sarah said from behind him. He stopped, halfway up the stairway. “William’s won’t do. He’s too small.” Albrecht turned to look at her and for a moment they stood there like that: Albrecht paused on the stairs, one hand on the banister, and Sarah standing in the hallway framed in the dim rectangle of light cast through the open kitchen door. “I’ll bring you some,” she said at last, holding his gaze. “Some of Tom’s.”
Albrecht came down the stairs and walked back along the hallway towards her. He couldn’t travel beyond the valley in his uniform, but he didn’t have the time to go back to Upper Blaen with Sarah either. It was, however, him and not Sarah the patrol would come looking for.
“It’s all right,” Sarah said quietly, laying a hand on his arm as he reached her. “I’ll be quick, an’ I need to get some things anyway.”
Albrecht held her by the shoulders once again. “Thank you, Sarah,” he said. “I know this isn’t easy.” He didn’t want to let her out of his sight. He was scared he would lose her now, just when they were so close. But she seemed calm, as if in making her decision she’d settled herself or, he dared to let himself think, as if her decision had already been made long before he reached her tonight.
“Where shall I meet you?” he said.
Sarah looked down at the floor for a moment, biting her lip, before looking back up at him. “Landor’s ruin,” she said. “In the cellar. Wait for me there.”
Albrecht smoothed a strand of loose hair away from her face. “Be quick. Bring a lantern but don’t use it tonight.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” she said, looking up into his face and seeing again the fear running under his features. He wore an expression of intense searching, as if he were looking for her on a distant hillside and not standing so close she could see her reflection in his glasses, her own face ghosted over his eyes. Sarah looked up at this reflection and tried to recognise the woman looking down at her, tried to see herself clearly, but she couldn’t. As Albrecht bent his head towards her, she watched herself slide away and evaporate up the lenses of his glasses, disappearing completely as his forehead touched hers. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “Be careful,” he said to her. “Please be careful.”
“Go,” she whispered, drawing her head away from his. “You must go now.”
Sarah stayed standing in the hallway for several minutes after Albrecht left. She listened to Maggie’s dogs bark again as he passed, and then to his footsteps fading out of the yard and down the lane. Eventually she roused herself and went to the foot of the stairs. She wanted to say good-bye to Maggie, but then she thought better of it. She must do nothing that might shake her resolve. Better to leave quickly, as if she were coming back tomorrow. So turning away from the stairs she walked down the dim hallway and opened the front door, closing it carefully behind her, as if she might wake whichever god had stopped watching over her.
Sarah moved through the rooms of Upper Blaen quickly and efficiently by the light of a single oil lamp. As she went from room to room she placed a few items in an old canvas bag she used to carry into market: the accounts book, her pen, her wedding photograph, a box of matches. She tried not to linger anywhere for too long in the fear that a familiar object or a certain corner of the house would snag on her memory and unpick her decision. But Albrecht had been right. She was calm,
strangely settled, and focused. She had, after all the months of waiting, reached an end. After so much not knowing, she was waiting no longer. All her life she’d been left. By her brothers when they’d argued with her father; by the poet in the summer of her ninth year; by Mrs. Thomas her teacher; by her elderly parents; and lastly by Tom, suddenly and with no warning one night last September. She didn’t want to be left any longer, so she was going, she was leaving the valley, Upper Blaen, all of it behind her.
As she closed the front door, Fly and Seren emerged from their shelter in the yard. She tried to ignore them, but as she walked down the track they barked after her, their thin chains rattling over the cobblestones, just as they had the morning they’d woken her to the cold impression of Tom’s absent body.
She was almost at the bottom of the track when she turned round and walked back up to the house. Going around into the larder she unhooked two sides of bacon from the ceiling, then took them into the shed in the yard. Coming back out she placed a piece of bacon in front of each dog. “Good girls,” she said as they sniffed at the meat and began to eat, pinning the slices to the ground with their paws.
As Sarah crossed the valley she saw the windows of The Court were lit, as were several of the windows at Mary’s. The birds had stopped singing and the valley was silent. The sun had gone down, but the sky was not yet dark and threads of light, deep mauves and indigos, still streaked across the deepening grey. The curves of the lane were traced out before her by banks of cowslip on either side, thick in the hedgerows and glowing dimly white in the gathering dark.
