by Owen Sheers
The dogs, let loose of their chains, wove and slipped about her as she walked up the slope across the lower paddock and through the coppiced wood behind the farm. The extra hours of restraint had charged them with a frantic energy and they raced ahead of her, ears flat, before doubling back, their sorrowful eyes looking up at hers, their heads low and their coats slickly black in the dappled sunlight. Sarah, in contrast, felt her legs heavy and awkward beneath her. She took the slope with more pace, pressing the heels of her palms into her thighs with each step. Twice she found herself stopping to rest against the trunk of a tree. She was twenty-six years old, worked every day and was usually through this wood before she knew it, but this morning it was as if one of the dogs’ chains had snagged around her feet and was dragging her back down the hill with every step she took.
Ten minutes of this stop-start walking brought her out of the wood and across their upper land until she stood on the edge of the top field where the cultivated valley gave to the hill, the mapped countries of bracken tapering to meet the sheep-cropped grass. She sat down with this bracken at her back. Picking at a few fronds, already rusting at their tips, she looked out over the valley.
When Sarah was a girl her mother had once described this range of long hills as a giant outstretched hand. It wasn’t an original description—Sarah had often heard people refer to the “Black Mountains Hand”—but then her mother was a cautious woman who’d rarely said anything that hadn’t been tested in the voice of someone else first. She’d had a deep fondness, a belief almost, in such figurative language. As she got older these phrases became her handholds, a semiotic map by which she navigated her way through the days, weeks, and seasons. Her mother had died two years ago, but Sarah had inherited this map, and she still found herself repeating her sayings nearly every day. This weather for example. Despite the high mackerel clouds and the brightness of the day a soft rain had begun to fall, folds of moisture turning the air milky. “The devil’s beating his wife today,” that’s how her mother would have translated such weather; one hand on her hip, nodding at the view out the kitchen window, “Yes, my girl,” she’d say, turning to Sarah at her side, “the devil’s beating his wife for sure.” Sarah had never understood what connection there could be between these autumn showers and the devil beating his wife, but she knew what her mother meant. There was something odd about this kind of rain, as if the calibration of the seasons had slipped, become unbalanced. Something unnatural about it, something wrong.
She looked out over the valley, hoping to see Tom somewhere in the view. But there was nothing. The whole valley was still, much stiller than it should have been at this time of day. William Jones usually had his tractor out by now. It was the first and only one in the valley and he was always finding an excuse to use it, petrol rationing or not. But she couldn’t see it anywhere in his fields. Or hear it. Viewed through the gauze of the sunlit rain the valley looked like a painted landscape.
Sarah called the dogs. “Fly! Seren! Cumby!”
Fly came and sat nervously at her side. Sarah stroked her, drawing a hand across her head, over her ears, and down her damp neck. She could feel the dog’s muscles bunched tightly over the bone.
“Shh, cwtch ci,” she said, trying to relax her.
Maybe Tom had gone into town. But what for? They’d been told not to hoard or stock up on supplies, and they had everything they needed on the farm anyway. She still couldn’t remember anything of last night; why was that? She tried to picture herself in the house. She remembered cooking their meal. She’d burnt her calf on the oven door. She could still feel the tightness of the burn mark under her woollen stocking. They’d taken tea by the fire in the front room. Tom hadn’t spoken much, but then he often didn’t.
Fly slipped away from under her hand and trotted over the field to find Seren. Sarah watched her go then looked out at the valley once more, as if by looking hard enough she could conjure Tom from its fields and trees. Drawing a deep breath, she called his name into the morning air.
“Tom!”
Her voice echoed off the facing valley wall and immediately she felt stupid, childish, calling for him like that. The dogs pricked their ears and began running back up the slope towards her, their tongues hanging out the side of their mouths. She listened, but there was just the fading of her own voice and then the sticky breaths of Seren and Fly panting on either side of her. She stood to rise above the sound of them and called for Tom again, straining to hear a reply beyond her own echo. But again there was nothing. Just the intermittent bleat of a ewe, a blackbird mining its notes in a nearby tree, and underscoring everything, the distant rustle of the river running its course through the valley below.
Tom didn’t hear Sarah call for him but Maggie Jones did. She was standing in a field beside the river, one hand resting on the angular rump of a cow, when she heard Sarah shout from higher up the valley. Like Sarah she too was out looking for her husband. She’d checked the barn and the outhouses, the toolshed, but found no trace of him. The tractor was still in the yard, fresh soil stuck to the cleats of its wheels, but William was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t worried. There was always work to be done somewhere on the farm. But then she came to the field by the river and found the cows. The three of them and their calves were crowded around the gate that opened onto the lane, licking at their nostrils, their breath steaming in the cold morning air. Their unmilked udders swung heavily between their legs.
In thirty years of marriage, Maggie had never known William to leave the cows unmilked. His father had been a dairy farmer and William had inherited his habit, if not his herd. Through sickness, holidays, bad weather, even on the morning of their wedding day, he’d been up with the dawn to usher them through the lane to the milking shed, then back again two hours later. A jostling, shitting, pissing ebb and flow you could set your watch by, as regular as any tidal chart.
Lifting the gate off its latch, she shouldered the two heifers at the front back a few steps, their hooves sucking in the mud as she pushed through to look over the rest of the field. It was empty. She sighed. She’d have to do the cows herself. She’d planned to go into Llanvoy this morning, and take some butter up to Edith. There were potatoes to be dug. But now she’d have to do the milking. William knew her back was playing up. Where the hell was he? She tried another sigh, heavier this time, but it was no use, her irritation lacked conviction. A more worrying thought was welling beneath it, draining her exasperation of its usual energy. She looked out at the open field again, retracing the last few days as she did; things William had said, things he hadn’t. The thought welled larger in her mind. She tried dismissing the possibility as ridiculous. William simply wouldn’t do that and she would surely have known about it if he did. But then Maggie heard Sarah call for Tom, her voice carried down the valley on the still air. It was all the confirmation she needed, and standing there among the cows with their swollen udders the thought broke within her. She knew with a terrible and sudden certainty that her husband wasn’t just up on the hill checking the sheep or out in the fields patching a hedge. She should have known as soon as she’d seen the cows, she realised that now. Known that wherever William had gone he wasn’t coming back.
“You stupid bugger,” she said under her breath, hitting the flank of the cow beside her with the heel of her fist. “You daft, stupid bugger William Jones.” The cow shifted its weight and she felt its hip joint move under her hand. She rested her forearm along its back and her head upon her arm. “At your age. You bloody stupid bugger.” The trees beside the river blurred and multiplied in her vision. She blinked and brought them back into focus. Sarah’s voice filtered down to her a second time, calling for Tom again. She looked up the hill in her direction. It was a beautiful day, a blue sky despite the light rain, the berries clustered red and thick in the hawthorn. Just a few high clouds. Up on the hill Sarah called a third time. The cows would have to wait. Everything would have to wait. Maggie pushed her way back through the small herd, opened
the gate, and, closing it behind her, started walking up the lane towards Upper Blaen. She’s still young, she told herself as she went, still a girl really. She’d have to break this to her gently. But she wouldn’t lie to her either, she promised herself that. To lie to Sarah would be the worst thing she could do, to tell her it was going to be all right. Because it wasn’t, Maggie knew that now. She’d heard the news on the wireless these past days. It wasn’t going to be all right. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be; they could still be prepared, they could still carry on, however long the men were away.
Fourteen days.
“Fourteen days of activity. You can expect around fourteen days from the invasion date. Still up for it?”
That’s what Tommy Atkins had said. He’d made it clear what he meant too; what would happen after the “activity” ended. Fourteen days before you’re caught, tortured, and shot, that’s what he was saying. George Bowen shifted in his narrow bed. He came out in a cold sweat every time he thought of it. According to the papers the first landing craft beached at Dover eight days ago. Just six days then, was that it? He counted them off on his hand under the bedclothes, opening a finger from his fist for each day of the week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Next Monday then. Or maybe Tuesday if he was lucky. His turn to “perish in the common ruin.” That’s how Churchill had put it on the wireless last week: “perish in the common ruin rather than fail or falter in your duty.” But what if he did fail or falter? What if he didn’t do his duty? What would happen then?
He turned over again. He was still wearing his clothes and his boots lay beside the bed where he’d kicked them off just hours before. He’d taken to sleeping like this ever since it started again, so he could be up quickly when his father shouted for him from the bottom of the stairs. He was often too tired to get undressed anyway.
Fourteen days. Two weeks. But Atkins had said that four years ago. He was planning for a different invasion altogether then. So perhaps it wouldn’t be the same this time. Things were different now, weren’t they? Perhaps it would be sooner. Or maybe later. After all he hadn’t seen a thing yet, other than some of their own troop movements and the activities of the Home Guard. But there had been lots of messages. For the last four nights in a row he’d been to all three drop points. The loose stone at the church; the plank in the barn door; the split tennis ball in the yew bole. Every night he’d been all over his patch and he knew others had too. The wireless operators had been at their stations day in, day out. So it was close, no doubt about it.
According to one message he’d taken last night the operational patrols had already left. He tried to imagine them slipping from under the covers, their wives’ sleep-breathing, warm and slow in the dark bedrooms. The men creeping down the stairs, pulling on their regulation dungarees and picking up their rucksacks from the hiding places. Then turning their backs on their homes and walking up into the hills, ink black against the stars. So yes, it was close now. They’d be here soon. At last, after four years, it was happening.
For George this had all begun eight months after his seventeenth birthday. Like every boy in the area he’d received a call-up for a services medical in Newport. It was July, the long hot summer of 1940. The beaches were packed with sunbathers. The contrails of dog-fighting planes etched smoke patterns against the blue skies of the southern coast. George’s mother had made him wear a suit to the medical, and when he’d arrived at the building opposite County Hall he was sweating heavily after the walk from the station. He registered at the entrance and then a sergeant led him and seventy other boys into a large room with desks where he told them to take a seat. In front of them, an officer informed them, was a short educational test. “You have twenty minutes, gentlemen. Begin.”
The sun was glaring through the windows high in the wall and at first George found it hard to concentrate in the flat heat of the room. Once he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, however, he’d started to enjoy the test, unlike most of the boys around him who crouched over their papers, frowning into their desks. He finished the test before the twenty minutes were up. After checking over his answers he sat back and looked over the bent heads of his companions, patches of pink sunburnt skin showing through the close-cropped hair on the back of their necks. Seeing them like that, sitting in regimented lines, he couldn’t help wondering what lay ahead for all of them. He thought of the casualty lists he’d seen, the reports from Dunkirk and other news from France. Some of these boys would join the army, some the RAF, others the navy. Some would be sent down the mines, others into the factories. One thing was for sure, by this time next year, if things carried on as they were, some of them would be dead. All of them perhaps, including himself.
After the test had come the medical, a surly army doctor who’d told him to undress and examined him as his father might a ram or a horse he was buying at the market. Then, along with a few other boys, he’d been sent to wait outside a room in a windowless corridor deeper in the building. A fan thrummed on the ceiling and the sound of faraway doors opening and closing echoed along the exposed pipes running the length of the walls. It was much cooler here than in the testing room, and as he waited George leant his head against the painted stone to feel the relief of its touch against his neck. Eventually a clerk called his name and directed him into a small office. An older man with grey hair and heavy eyelids stood from behind a desk, shook George’s hand, and introduced himself as Colonel Hughes. The colonel told him he’d done well in the educational test—very well. He asked him a few basic questions, about his schooling, where he lived. Then, licking his thumb, he looked back down at his papers for a moment, holding the corner of one page off the table, before telling him that was all. Someone would visit him in a few days’ time, but that was all for now. “Thank you, Mr. Bowen,” he said without looking up. It was the first time anyone had ever called him Mr. Bowen, and when George boarded the train for Abergavenny an hour later, he felt significantly older than when he’d stepped off it that morning.
He’d seen the fishing flies first, flashing in the sun. There were so many of them George thought the man was wearing some kind of polished steel helmet. But as he got closer, he saw they were fishing flies pinned tightly together on a flat tweed cap, their bright yellow and red feathers trembling in the breeze.
“Mr. Bowen?” the man called out as he walked across the field.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, good.” He held out his hand as he approached. “Tommy Atkins.” He smiled, raising his eyebrows as if to acknowledge the sobriquet. George leant his scythe against the hedge and, wiping his fingers against his trousers, shook the man’s hand. He was taller than George, in his early forties with a taut angular face. The kind of man who’d look comfortable with a shotgun broken over one arm and a brace of pheasants over the other.
“Hot work,” Atkins said, nodding towards the scythe.
“Yes, sir. All this bracken has to be cleared. And in the next field. We’ll be ploughing it up soon. Ministry orders.”
“Yes, of course, of course. Need every scrap we can get, don’t we?”
He spoke casually but George was unnerved by the way he looked him straight in the eye, as if his voice and his vision were unconnected.
A skylark ascended from the field behind them, drilling its song through the heavy summer air. Atkins broke his stare to watch it rise, shielding his eyes with his hand. George followed his gaze, trying to locate the tiny bird against the sky, but it was already too high.
“You were expecting me, Mr. Bowen, weren’t you?” Atkins said, taking off his jacket and sitting on a tree stump beside the hedge. “Colonel Hughes said someone would come and visit you?”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
“Well, that’s me.” He paused and folded his jacket across his knee. “I’ll get straight to the point, Mr. Bowen. I’m a British Intelligence officer. I’ve come to see you because you scored very highly on your test the other day. You’re a c
lever lad. We think you could be of great service to your country.”
George opened his mouth to speak, but Atkins held up his hand to stop him.
“What I’m going to propose to you may sound unusual, but I assure you I’m serious. Before I go any further, however, I’ll need a promise of your complete discretion. As I’m sure you understand, everything I tell you is strictly confidential.”
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a small black Bible.
“We can’t have any signing of papers with this business, I’m afraid, so I’m going to have to ask you to swear on this instead.” He held out the Bible. George looked at it, both his hands dug deep in his pockets.
“If you have no objection, Mr. Bowen?”
George looked down at him, this man who called himself Tommy Atkins. He thought of the Ministry of Information posters he’d seen at the railway station. “Vigilance at all times.” “Loose talk costs lives.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but how do I know who you are? That you are who you say you are? Shouldn’t you show me some identification?”
Atkins looked down at his feet for a moment, then back up at George, nodding his head. “I suppose I should, Mr. Bowen, I suppose I should. But really, what’s the use of me showing you some papers? Easiest thing in the world to forge, you know that. Never trust someone’s identification, Mr. Bowen, never. Please, sit down.” He gestured to the ground in front of him as if showing George to a chair in his office. George remained standing by his scythe. Atkins’s smile tightened. He looked out over the patchwork of summer fields and sighed. In the distance a horse and cart were making halting progress between a pattern of haystacks in the field opposite them. A team of men followed, pitching the loose hay up into the cart, their voices caught in snatches on the light breeze. A darker expression passed over his face, the brief shadow of a thought. He took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of the freshly cut bracken at his feet.