Resistance (34 page)

Through all of Maggie and William’s years together the yearling cobs had been the only part of their daily lives they’d really shared. The other chores and tasks on the farm had remained the territory of one or the other of them since their first day of marriage. Making the bread, butter, cream, keeping the chickens, feeding the pig and the fire: these were Maggie’s responsibilities. Milking the cows, looking after the flock, the vegetables, and the farm: these were William’s. Breeding cobs from a succession of working mares had been their only mutual interest and the only activity to which they’d devoted time that wasn’t directly related to keeping the farm going. Once they’d had some good results with a yearling in the local shows, the young horses would be sold on at a tidy profit, often much to William’s delight and Maggie’s regret.

This latest colt, Glyndwr Llwyd, was never meant to be. They’d agreed they were getting too old for breeding, that they’d had a good run at it and now, what with the turn in the war, it was best to rest on their laurels. But then one day William came home from market with the stud card Maggie held in her hand now. As she sat back
down at the table, she glanced at the door, remembering how he’d stood there that afternoon, one hand on the door frame, the other pulling the card from his waistcoat pocket.

“He’ll only be here a couple of days,” was all he’d said as he’d placed the card on the table as carefully as if it was made of bone china and might break at any minute.

Maggie was baking bread. She’d dusted off her hands on her apron, sat down where she was sitting now, and turned the card round to face her.

Season 1943
THE FAMOUS WELSH COB STALLION
CARDI LLWYD, 1665
Holder of Premium for Brecon and Radnor
.
Fee, £3. Tenant Farmers, £1 10s. Groom, 5s
.
Breeders: PARRY BROS., Llwynfynwent,
Llangwyryfon, Cards.

CARDI LLWYD is a beautiful Dark Dapple Dun Colour Cob, 12 years old, 15 hands high. He is one of the grand old Welsh type, now almost extinct; short to the ground; proper height and any amount of bone and substance; with such a look out; perfect temper, manners, and any amount of courage; and one of the finest goers in the country.

People who may not have the Stud Book at their command will be interested to know that investigation of this Pedigree reveals the possession of four strains of CYMRO LLWYD, probably the best of the many good horses that have contributed to the maintenance and improvement of the Welsh Cob.

Sire—Ceitho Welsh Flyer, 1080, W.S.B.

g. Sire—Caribaldi Comet II, 711, W.S.B.

g.g. Sire—Caribaldi Comet.

Dam—Gwyryfon Nancy, 8935, W.S.B., by Welsh Model, 620.

g. Dam—Gwyryfon Betty, 7141, by Trecefel King, by Grand Express.

g.g. Dam—Polly, by Satisfaction, by Welsh Jack.

g.g.g. Dam—Eiddwen Bess, by Eiddwen Express, by Express (Cotrell).

g.g.g.g. Dam—Fly, by Welsh Jack, by Cymro Llwyd.

Concerning the remarkable Pedigree behind CARDI LLWYD, one could write much, but for the time being I must confine myself to the general comment that it would be difficult to find a better combination of type, speed, and action, handed down by individuals of outstanding merit.

All Mares are absolutely at owner’s risk but the utmost care will be taken
.
All Mares tried by this Horse will be Charged for
.

“I thought we’d said no more, Will?” Maggie had said, still reading the card and trying to put an edge to her voice.

“Well, yes,” he’d replied, coming round behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “We did, didn’t we? But Cardi Llwyd? It’s not every day you get quality like that in the area.”

“You’ve been drinking.” He only ever squeezed her shoulders like that when he had.

“Just a couple with Watkins.” He moved round to sit beside her. “It was him as showed me the card. The stallion’s standing at his place, see?”

“I bet he is,” was all Maggie said under her breath.

“So, what d’you think? She’s in season, isn’t she?”

“Three pound,” Maggie said, looking up at him. “That’s a lot, Will.”

And that was when he’d let his mouth grow into a slow smile, deepening the crow’s feet at his eyes. As soon as Maggie had looked up, he’d known. Just a year later Glyndwr Llwyd, a fine-looking bay
dappled colt, unsteady on his big-kneed legs, was suckling from the mare, and William was gone.

“He won’t let it,” Sarah said, sitting back from looking over the poster again. “He won’t let him go.” She didn’t have to say Albrecht’s name for Maggie to know whom she was talking about. “You saw how he was about Bethan.”

Maggie kept looking out the window as if trying to make out a vague figure in the distance. Eventually she went over to the Rayburn and poured some more hot water over the elderflower in the bottom of her mug. “Oh, he will,” she said as she sipped at the hot drink, both her hands around it. “He’ll have to.”

June 8th

Maggie takes her yearling to the show tomorrow. She’s set on it. I was going to go with her but now she says it will be better if I stay. I’m not so sure but she’s set on that too now. You know what she can be like. She says it’s time. That we need to see how everything is going outside the valley
.

She’s right, Tom. We can’t go on like this for long. The lambs will have to go to market soon, if there is a market. Her cows need serving if we’re to have any milk. We have hardly any coal if it turns cold again. And then there is the dipping and shearing and hay coming up. It will be too much
.

I think it has been too much for Mary already. And maybe Menna. Mary’s reading the Bible all the time, to Menna and her two little ones when not to herself. Edith is fine. Maggie says it’s like they’re crossing over those two, Mary and Edith
.

I am still scared though, Tom. About Maggie going to the show tomorrow. Only thing makes me feel better is she might come back with news of you. I hope she does. It has been too long, Tom, and it’s all over now anyway
.

I put the first lambs on the hill this morning. The gorse out the back is in full flower. Every time I go round there I smell it. Like coconut
.

Stay safe, Tom. I hope soon I’ll be able to read these to you when we are together, instead of writing them when we are apart
.

Sarah

She placed the cap back on the pen, closed the accounts book, and put them both in the drawer of the dresser. The bottle of ink from which she filled the pen’s cartridge was already in there. Picking it out she tilted it to measure how much was left. It was almost empty, the deep blue liquid drained from the bottle just as she’d drained herself from these letters to Tom. It didn’t matter. The pages at the back of the accounts book had filled out over the months until now she was just a couple away from meeting the columns and figures of her previous life. She knew soon there would be no more room for the letters. Either inside the book or inside her.

W
hen Alex arrived at Maggie’s farm on the morning of the show, the sky above the Hatterall ridge, which had, just a few hours before, still borne the last indigo streaks of dawn, was already ripening into an early summer blue. Maggie was already in the yard, washing the colt. The cobblestones about the horse’s legs were polished dark by the water running off his flanks and flecked white between them where the soapy rivulets trickled down to the drain along the fence. Glyndwr’s coat shone like a chestnut freshly split from its shell. Maggie worked over him with a towel, rubbing it in big circular movements over the slabs of muscle across his shoulders and rump. The horse lifted his head as Alex approached, pulling his tether tight before lowering his muzzle again to the calf nuts lying in the German’s outstretched palm.

“Don’t give him those now, mun. You’ll only excite him,” Maggie said.

Alex smiled back at her, not understanding yet understanding at the same time. A swallow darted from under the eaves of the stable. Alex followed its flight as it banked and carved above them, the blades of its wings, the cut throat of its chest, quick against the morning sky.

“Here,” Maggie said, throwing him a pair of red bandages. “I’ve chalked his socks. Put these on him to keep them clean. We’ll be off soon enough now.”

Maggie had been right again. Albrecht had, eventually, agreed to Alex accompanying her to the show in Llanthony. At first he was
firmly resistant to the idea, reminding Maggie again of the consequences if their husbands, and therefore themselves, were linked to the insurgency in any way. But then Maggie had given him some facts and consequences of her own. The practicalities of keeping the farms going made it clear they could not continue with their isolation for much longer. At some point the seal on their estrangement from the world would have to be broken. Menna was already threatening to follow Bethan out of the Olchon and take her children back to the mining valleys. They were low on coal, and oil for the lamps. They would soon have no milk and therefore no cheese and butter. The lambs were to be slaughtered, the wool sold. In time someone was bound to come into the valley. Much better, surely, they choose when and how they make their contact with the world beyond? And anyway, Maggie told him, she’d be going to the show whatever he said. Unless of course the captain wanted to stop her by force.

In the end it was the poster that convinced him more than anything else. He recognised where it came in the arc of occupation. He’d seen similar posters during his time in Holland back in ’41. After months of nailing proclamations and orders to doorways and fence posts beginning with the word
Forbidden
and ending
On Pain of Death
, the administration would finally issue one like this.
By Permission of the Office of the Reich Sub-Area Commandant for the Western Region
; the benevolent new rulers allowing local traditions and customs to continue. It was a subtle sign of strength, one of the finer points of Nazi technique. Gather together, it said, continue as you did before all this. We have nothing to fear and neither do you. There is no need for concern. Nothing, you see, has really changed. At the show itself there would still be soldiers, but in the background. Small groups of young men in grey green serge hovering at the edges of the marquees and stock rings. A friendly faced guard standing alongside the local woman taking the entry fees at the gate. Later, maybe some of these young men would remove their jackets and heavy boots and, trousers rolled to their knees, take part in the sports. They would laugh, make eyes at the young girls, and
everything about them would say, “We are the same as you. It is nearly over now, this war. Let us be friends while we are thrown together.” Elsewhere on the show ground there would be stalls, even out here in the country: new women’s and mothers’ groups with slogans about “putting Britain back on its feet”; information desks about the opportunities of work in a new United Europe. Albrecht saw all of this in the yellow poster, quartered by creases where Sarah had folded it into her pocket. He recognised how it advertised much more than just the show. How it advertised victory too, a seal on the disruption of the war years. It was a sign that the world had moved on. “Why resist,” it said, “that which is already here? That which has only altered things for the better and brought you peace.”

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.