Resistance: A Novel

by Owen Sheers

  He should tell that young lieutenant in Pandy, though. He may not have found an operational base like the one outside Oxford, but he’d stumbled upon the next best thing. The families. The homes. The standard SS and Gestapo tools of revenge and discovery. Again he’d seen it all across Europe. Hit the insurgents where it hurt them most. At their hearths and in their hearts.

  But not yet. He wouldn’t tell that pale, shaken lieutenant vowing revenge just yet. He’d do what he came here to do first. Find what he’d been sent to look for, work, for once, outside the Wehrmacht bureaucracy, without interruption. Then, once they were done, he’d let the lieutenant know. That way he wouldn’t have to be here when it happened. When another soldier came through that kitchen door behind him and didn’t holster his pistol or lower his machine gun. He thought of the men he’d seen marched out onto the village green outside Oxford. How they’d folded and fallen as if their skeletons had been whipped from out of them. Then he saw the same scene again, playing it over in his mind’s eye with a new cast made of the women he’d met today. The worn, worried-looking one. The ignorant, confused young mother. The old stubborn one, and now this last scared, feral young wife wearing her husband’s clothes. He closed his eyes tightly for a few seconds and walked, guided only by the crunching, splashing sounds of Alex’s boots on the muddy track before him. He wouldn’t imagine that again. He couldn’t. Not everything was his fault or the consequence of his actions. He knew that, but he still had to learn it. After all this time this was still something he had to remind himself of, rather than something he just accepted, like the cough in his chest or the lice in the seams of his shirts. It would all happen anyway. Of course it would. Of course. It was always bound to happen as soon as their husbands left them. As soon as they turned their backs on these farms and walked into the war. It was them, their husbands, who had killed these women. Not him.

  As they dropped down into the valley and onto the lane, the trees on either side leant to meet each other, forming a fragile tunnel over their heads, the moon held in their latticework of bare branches and twigs. They walked on silently, Alex and Otto still swinging their guns left and right, right and left. Albrecht looked at Alex’s broad back and for his sake tried to think like a soldier again. He mustn’t be complacent. What else should they be careful of? The women? The women themselves? Would they be any trouble? No, he didn’t think so. Not these women. Elsewhere he might have had cause for concern. In Russia, for example, they’d all learnt quickly enough to be as wary of the wives as the husbands. But these women? No, it wasn’t the same here. This was a backward valley, a dead-end, isolated slice of life embedded in the clefts of the hills. Even the information he’d gathered in the last village indicated these hill women were considered a breed apart, outsiders.

  “Well, they’uh a quiet lot, tha’s foshaw. ‘Ide behin’ th’edge if they see yer, they do.”

  Albrecht had found it difficult to understand the man he’d interviewed and not just because of his split and swollen lip. They spoke quickly in this part of the country, running their words together like shunting cattle trucks behind a braking train. He was unfamiliar with the accent too. It wasn’t Welsh as such, but wasn’t English either, the words slipping on either side of the border just as their towns and villages did. No “r’s” in the speech at all from what he could gather (he thought again of the telegram that had started all this, the faded R’s ghosting the text), and a habit of asking questions as negative statements. “You’re not going up there, are you? Haven’t got any chocolate, have you?” Still, by listening hard and filtering through the anomalies, he’d got an idea of what he could expect in the valley. How many farms and who was in them. The Olchon was an outpost, even in the eyes of the village of Longtown, itself considered remote by the people of Pandy, which was in turn thought of as provincial in Abergavenny. And so on all the way back to London. A sliding scale of outlivers, outsiders. And now here they were at the end of it. There was no one else beyond here to call an outsider, no other settlement that even these farmers could look upon as being beyond the outskirts of usual living. There were just the hills, a great bald, pleated barricade of earth, rock, heather, and bracken, rising up to the peat-pocked expanses of the plateaus before eventually descending again into another country altogether.

  “Ahh!” Alex breathed in deeply, stamping his boots on the flagstones of The Court’s covered porch. “Roast pork! God! I haven’t smelt roast pork for years!” He pushed open the door into the living room and stood in its frame, the lamplight casting his shadow behind him, an elongated shard of darkness connecting with the night. With his hands hanging at his sides, he sucked in the warm air through his nose.

  “You’d better believe it, farm boy!” Gernot shouted from the kitchen. “Pork like you’ve never tasted! Private Ehrhardt 624687 at your service. The best field cook in this whole fucking army!”

  “Field cook?” Sebald said from an armchair by the fireplace. “I don’t think so, private. This doesn’t count as field cooking.”

  Albrecht went and stood in front of the fire and began unbuttoning his tunic. Sebald looked up at him, his alert face more relaxed than Albrecht was used to seeing it. “Well?”

  Albrecht shook his head. “Not a man in the valley. We’ll post a watch through the night. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  Sebald nodded slowly and sighed. Leaning his head back he closed his eyes. “And how about you? Smell that pork Ehrhardt’s working on?”

  Albrecht shook his head again. “No. Nothing.”

  “Ah well,” Alex said, coming back down the stairs and laying a hand on Albrecht’s shoulder as he passed. “We’ll just have to enjoy it for you, don’t you worry.”

  The piece of shrapnel from the roadside bomb may have ricocheted off Albrecht’s helmet but it had still left its mark. When Albrecht came round he’d seen Sebald’s face peering down at him, he’d felt the damp ground at his back, the blades of grass at his neck, and he’d heard the grind of traffic, the shouting of men’s voices, even the crackling of the flames licking around the shell of the truck. But he hadn’t been able to smell the smoke from the burning tyres or the singed tint of seared flesh. And when Sebald gave him a precious block of dark chocolate, he may as well have been eating wood. However much he chewed on it, however much he turned it round in his mouth, he couldn’t discover the confectionery’s bittersweet tang. The shrapnel had numbed his world.

  Albrecht sat down heavily in the armchair opposite Sebald and looked about the room. It was well furnished. Better than anything else he’d seen in the valley today. A big fireplace, old heirloom books on the shelves, a well-equipped kitchen in which Gernot and Alex now argued over the cooking pots, and even a well-tended vegetable garden out back. Upstairs the bedrooms were generous and the beds soft. Albrecht had been told that an old man lived here with his two sons. Well, if that was true, then they’d kept the place as well as if they’d had a woman in the house. Although it had obviously been empty for a while, it hadn’t taken long for them to stoke the fire and breathe life back into the building. For the second time on their journey they’d arrived in a rare heaven. After the years of field living, sleeping in dugouts, on wooden plank beds, in foxholes, a place like this was a utopian dream. It made Albrecht feel clumsy, awkward, as if they were a pack of stray animals that had wandered into an empty palace. Their boots, their weapons, their talk, they all seemed too modern and harsh for this ancient farmhouse. Too fleeting. But like his men Albrecht was relishing the chance to enjoy the comfort The Court offered, to once again experience the touch of civilised living, despite his blunted senses, which had left him feeling less human than ever. Now they’d come to the end of their travels, he was also looking forward to beginning that other journey, to setting out on the real quest he’d come all this way to fulfil. Because the map was here, somewhere, that’s what all the information indicated. Somewhere in this deep notch of a valley, hidden in its stones and trees and crevices. He thought of
the folded maps in his kit bag upstairs, the intercepted communication, the code-breaker’s version stapled behind it. Tomorrow he’d start looking, begin translating those maps into these hills and fields. Then, by the time he’d found it, all this might be over. Just a week perhaps, maybe two until the British finally accepted what they should have seen back in ’41. After five years it would finally come to an end, and all of them could stop being soldiers. They could leave the army, leave the war behind them, and go back to their homes, or at least what was left of them.

  As Albrecht settled back into Reg’s armchair and listened to the logs shift and collapse over themselves in the fire, Sarah was closing the door of Upper Blaen and making her way out into the night. She wore a sack about her shoulders for extra warmth, its corners bunched in her fist below her throat. In her other hand she carried Tom’s shotgun, its polished wooden stock slick against her fingers, a pair of cartridges nestled in the breech. As she walked and half-ran down the track, she felt the wild skittering of her heart against her knuckles.

  It had been so quick that at first she’d hardly been able to believe it had happened. Had he really been there? A German soldier standing there in her kitchen? She hadn’t seen a man for over a month, and his shape, his movements, his smell had all seemed so alien she wondered whether her tired mind was playing tricks on her. But then she’d gone to the dresser and picked up her wedding photograph, holding it to the candlelight. And yes, there, right across her own face, was the imprint of the soldier’s thumb; a thin autumnal web, a new veil to replace the one she’d thrown back to let Tom kiss her in the chapel. Desperately she’d rubbed at the glass with her shirtsleeve, smearing the thumbprint over Tom’s suit, her dress. She rubbed it again until it had gone, all gone. She sat down, breathing fast. Her mind hadn’t been playing tricks. He’d been here (what was his name? What did he say? She could only remember the first part, Wolf … Wolf …) and there were others too. A pack of wolves. In the valley, at The Court. They were here and they couldn’t be rubbed away like a thumbprint over a photograph.

  Coming to the end of the track, Sarah turned right onto the lane. She would go to Maggie, check she was all right. Maggie would know what to do. Maggie would have an answer, a solution.

  The sound of her nail-shod boots seemed impossibly loud. She wanted to be able to float over the ground, leave no mark, slip through the valley unheard, unseen. But as it was she felt she was being louder, more clumsy than ever. The stamp of her tread, the rustle of Tom’s oversized shirt, the rasping of the sacking cloth. The familiar lane developed eyes and her blood pulsed in her ears.

  But what if Maggie didn’t know what to do? After all, she’d been wrong about the Germans, hadn’t she? She’d said they wouldn’t come this far, that they wouldn’t come here. And yet here was exactly where they were. In her house, in her kitchen, in the valley. Maggie had been wrong.

  Sarah strode on, wishing for a cloud to cover the moon, to choke the lane with night. The ice puddles crackled under her feet, punctuating the rhythm of her thoughts. Maggie had been wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The word recoiled back at her with every step she took, each repetition carving further into whatever substance had calcified within her these past months, paring away a hollow within her ribs. She wanted it all to be different. She wanted to turn back the clock to that night before the men left, and she wanted Tom back more than ever. To counter that word, to fill the space creeping up through the whole of her body, leaving her heart suspended in its own beat, her head afloat from her neck. She wanted Tom back to reassert the world, to stroke her head like he did when the bomber crashed up on the bluff. To hold her and tell her, “Shh, bach, shh now, it’s all right. It’s goin’ to be fine. Just fine.”

  NOVEMBER 1944–MARCH 1945

  November 3rd

  There are six of them, Tom. Maggie went over to The Court this morning and saw them. She says as we shouldn’t worry. That they’re here for some piece of work and then they will go. But what work could they have here? Mary is frightened rigid. She hasn’t let Bethan out of the house all day.

  Maggie said it’s true. All round here is occupied, everywhere. I took Bess up on the hill today to check on the flock. It’s hard to believe it from up there. Nothing looked any different. No change in anything.

  There was a wild herd up by the flushes. They had a couple of foals. One of the colts came close. He made me think of when you rode one last year, steering it with your hands over its eyes. That seems so long ago now, Tom, but it was just last summer. I do wish I knew you were safe. Did you know they were coming? Is that why you went? Maggie said it was to make us safer, and I can see how that might be now.

  It’s getting colder. There’s a change in the clouds like new weather might be coming in. Maggie’s meadow grass is getting short. She gave her cows the first of her hay today. She says we’ll tup soon enough. Next week most like. It was lucky William and Hywel got their rams over early this year.

  The hazelnuts are ripening and the rooks up on the slope are louder than ever.

  Sarah dug her fingers deep into the ewe’s wool and gripped two handfuls, one just below the neck, the other over the rump. Pushing a knee into the animal’s hindquarters, she heaved it backwards and sideways, tipping it off its feet towards her. The ewe shook its head and gave a thin bleat, trying to free itself from Sarah’s grip. She felt her cramped fingers weakening, slipping through the waxy wool. Letting go with her left hand, she caught the ewe at its neck. It bleated again and she felt the vibration of its throat across her fingers as with a final pull backwards she brought the animal to rest, up-ended between her legs. The ewe was panting, its small tongue poking out the side of its mouth, its slit nostrils damp and flaring with every breath. “I know how you feel, girl,” Sarah said as she moved to make way for Maggie, already bustling in beside her. Sarah stood back, breathing heavily herself, and watched as Maggie took one of the animal’s forelegs and got to work on its hooves with a rusty pair of shears. Its struggle lost, the ewe’s head fell loosely to the side, coming to rest in the hollow of Maggie’s apron stretched across her open knees. “An’ the next,” Maggie said simply as she lifted the other foreleg and began trimming the curling hoof, flexing the shears with short, twanging snaps of the blades.

  They’d been doing this all morning. Working in a hurdle pen in Maggie’s meadow below the farm, preparing the ewes for tupping. Maggie’s ram was already in the next field, the tupping pad strapped to its chest. As it grazed, moving between the patches of richer grass, strands of the pad’s blue dye brushed the tallest blades, tracing an elliptical trail through the meadow.

  They didn’t have to be doing this. They could have just let the ewes into the field. They would have been fine, Sarah was sure of it. But Maggie wanted to treat their feet first, check for foot rot, cut back the hooves. William would have demanded this, she explained, so why shouldn’t they do it just as if he were here? There were lots of reasons why they shouldn’t, but Sarah didn’t mention any of them. She simply agreed and set to catching the ewes and turning them for Maggie, who’d hold them between her knees, snapping away with the shears or dousing their rot with a livid purple disinfectant, pumped from what looked like a beaten old genie lamp.

  Sarah was getting down to the younger ewes now. They were stronger and faster and had, so far, managed to evade her. As she moved towards them, they shoaled away from her. One reared onto the back of another, showing the whites of its eyes. Their breath steamed from their noses, misting above the confusion of wool, tails, and small black faces. Crouching lower she approached the shifting current of bodies and made a lunge, catching one with both hands gripped in the wool over its rump. The ewe pulled on, taking Sarah with it. Her boots slipped in the churned mud and sheep shit. She found her footing again, but the sheep still struggled and bucked under her hands. She tried to get a firmer grip, but as she loosened her fingers the ewe pulled away harder, squirming like a trout hooked on the end of a line. “You bugger!” Sarah sai
d through her teeth as she tried to bring the animal closer to her body.

  Then suddenly Maggie was with her, grabbing at the sheep’s neck and forelegs.

  “For God’s sake, girl, jus’ turn it!”

  “Maggie, your back …” Sarah began, worried Maggie would hurt herself. But it was too late. Maggie was already heaving at the struggling sheep and so Sarah pulled with her until it lay tipped back, its pink-teated stomach rising and falling between them.

  “Hold ’er there,” Maggie said, grabbing a foreleg and angling the hoof’s edge between the blades of the shears. She began cutting away furiously. Twice Sarah noticed she cut too close, nicking the skin and drawing blood. She seemed in a sudden tumult of grim energy. Looking up from the sheep, Sarah saw why. There, just over the winter-thinned hedge at the end of the field, were the faces of two of the German soldiers, watching them from the lane. One of them wore a steel helmet with that curious step at the back, the other a soft peaked cap. Sarah recognised this second man as the officer who’d called at Upper Blaen a week before. She caught his eye for a second before Maggie spoke to her again, her voice strained.

  “Sarah! Go get the next. An’ make sure you catch ’er proper, mind.”

  Sarah understood what Maggie meant. Her arms were tired, hanging light as ribbons from her shoulders, and her fingers were cold and stiff. But when she caught the next ewe, she held it tightly, the wool coming through her fists like spurts of smoke between her knuckles. With one quick motion she swung it onto its rump. Maggie was already coming towards her, flexing the shears, the blades clean of rust along their edges where they’d slid against each other for years.