Resistance (39 page)

“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 was 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.

The full moon of the previous night was partly obscured by cloud so Sarah found it hard work climbing the slope on the other side of the valley without a torch or a lantern to guide her. The bracken was thick and every time she lost the path her legs got caught up in the tangle of its stems. Eventually she rose high enough above Maggie’s farm to begin walking along the western wall towards the valley’s mouth. As she passed above The Court, she paused and looked down at the thin rectangles of light cast from its windows across the orchard and vegetable garden. She could just
make out some voices from inside, but nothing else. Then she saw Alex, standing at the front of the house, looking up towards the valley’s head, motionless in the faint moonlight as if it had cast him into stone.

It took Sarah another half hour of scrambling over the scree to reach the cleft in the Red Darren. Even in the deepening night she could make it out as she approached; a dark slit tapering up the face of the cliff looming silver grey above her. She paused at the entrance to catch her breath and take off her coat. She was sweating from the climb, strands of loose hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Reaching behind the boulder she found Albrecht’s torch then walked into the shadow of the crevice. Once she was deep enough inside, she turned the torch on. As before it looked as if the split in the rock ended before her in a sheer wall of moss-streaked stone but on reaching this stone she saw again the wooden struts and brattice leading deeper into the man-made cavity scooped from the soft sandstone of the hill. Edging herself through the narrow gap, she came out into the hollow, the torch beam lighting up the jagged damp walls before landing upon the smoother folds and pleats of the sacking cloth and tarpaulin.