Resistance (6 page)

As if to confirm this thought another Panzer division came rumbling round the corner past the cottage accompanied again by more infantry. All of them were heading north, towards the capital. Albrecht turned and watched the sullen progression of the tanks once more. A dog, a scruffy Jack Russell, had appeared from somewhere. It leant back on its haunches and barked and snarled at the feet of the passing soldiers. One of them swung a lazy kick at its head and missed. Another, a few rows later, threw it the bitten end of a piece of salami. The dog snatched it from the air and lay down to chew on it, keeping one wary eye on the passing soldiers. French salami, bought just a few days ago, thrown to an English dog. Once again the speed of all this overtook Albrecht. The speed and momentum of this spiralling, unnatural world he had somehow found himself caught up in, like a man woken from a coma into a life no longer his.

“O
f course they’ll be back. Don’t talk nonsense.”

Maggie spoke over her shoulder, still fussing with the kettle steaming from its spout on the front hob of her Rayburn. This was their third pot of tea. The other women murmured in agreement, nodding their heads at Mary, who sat at the end of the table, an anxious frown slanting over her eyes. Mary, who had finally said what they’d all been thinking. Maggie went back to the kettle, wrapping a cloth round its handle and lifting it in a smooth movement from the hob onto the sideboard. Just as William had got the first tractor in the valley so Maggie had got the first Rayburn, and she moved about it with the authority of a captain at the bridge of a ship. Sarah sipped at her tepid tea. One bird ticked away irregularly outside Maggie’s kitchen window like a one-finger typist taking the minutes of the day. It was left to Menna Probert, the other younger woman in the room, to break the silence.

“I don’t understand it. Jack’s got a whole field of mangels t’do this morning. He wouldn’t just leave that.”

Maggie glanced at Sarah. No, Menna didn’t understand, and Maggie was beginning to lose her patience. Bringing the pot of new tea to the table she sat down beside the younger woman, put her hand on her arm, and tried once more. And again all of them listened as Maggie attempted to explain the impossible to Menna, as she tried to paint a picture of an altered world sitting there in her kitchen that looked so familiar, so unchanged and unchangeable that it challenged every word she spoke.

When Sarah had got back from looking for Tom on the hill, she’d found Maggie waiting for her in the cobblestoned yard. The dogs had got to her first and were sniffing round her legs. Maggie ruffled their heads, shielding her eyes with one hand as she looked up at Sarah.

“Hello, Maggie,” Sarah had said, trying to sound as natural as possible but still unable to prevent her relief at seeing Maggie tinge her greeting.

“William’s gone too.”

She hadn’t even said hello.

“What d’you mean?”

“He’s not at the farm. Or in the fields. He’s gone. Like Tom.”

Sarah laughed. “Tom hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Maggie laid a hand on Sarah’s arm, just as she had again now with Menna. “Hasn’t he, bach?”

Standing there in the bright, rain-polished yard, the two women had suddenly felt their ages upon them. Sarah felt like a girl again, that one word sending her back to her mother and her childhood. Back to when her brothers had left, when she never seemed to know the whole story and there was always something left to explain. Maggie, meanwhile, saw her own age reflected in Sarah’s younger face, in the deep furrow of confusion between her eyebrows, in all the unworry and unspent hope that was so evidently still welling within her. Why had Maggie felt none of that? Just the knowing, the dull, certain knowing of experience. She envied Sarah then, standing in that yard. But she pitied her too. She’d had hardly any distance to fall herself, but this young girl, she had the whole height of her hope. Maggie could still remember what that felt like. Just last year when her eldest was declared missing. When the telegram finally came confirming he was dead, she’d cursed herself for not coming down off that pillar of hope sooner. For not waking up earlier.

“Why don’t we have a sit inside?”

Sarah was still looking at her with an uncertain smile on her face. “Are you all right, Maggie?”

“I’m fine, Sarah. It’s just I heard you calling. Just now. For Tom.”

“Yes. I can’t find him. I don’t know where he’s got to.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve come up. Let’s go inside, is it?”

At first, when Maggie told Sarah what she thought might have happened to their husbands, Sarah refused to credit the idea at all. But then she thought of the bed, Tom’s outline, cold like it never was except maybe right in the depth of lambing when he’d been out all night. And she thought of his boots, both pairs missing. Of his silences this past week, deeper than usual. But there was still so much Maggie hadn’t explained. All she’d said was she thought this was to do with the invasion. That there would have been plans. Plans maybe they wouldn’t have known about. That Tom, William, and the others were some of the only men left. If something had to be set up, if something had to be organised, they’d be the ones to help with it. After all, who else knew this area as well as they did?

“But why didn’t they tell us then?” Sarah had asked, feeling like that girl once more, tugging at the sleeve of her father, asking him to explain.

Maggie didn’t know. In fact she didn’t know anything, she admitted. Nothing certain. She just knew. They’d all heard the wireless reports, hadn’t they? All of them had listened to the announcements from the BBC. Britain was being invaded. A massive counterattack is what the newsreader called it, speaking as calmly as if he were reporting that day’s business news. Britain was being invaded and the Germans were coming. Reinforcements flooding in from the victories on the collapsed Eastern Front. The Allies’ attempted invasion had been a disaster and now the Germans were staging their own. Chasing the ravaged Allied armies back across the Channel.

They should have nothing to worry about here, though, that’s what Reverend Davies had told them. And the Home Guard officer who’d come round handing out the leaflets a week ago. “Disable all vehicles so only you can use them. Hide food stores and essential supplies. Offer no resistance but offer no help either.” He’d said these sentences in a flat tone, their intonations worn thin through repetition. But then he’d given Maggie a quick smile and briefly found his own voice again. “I wouldn’t worry too much, though, Mrs. Jones.
Really. There’s no way Churchill’ll let them past the beaches. And even if he did, well, to be honest, I doubt you’d see a Jerry up a valley like this.”

And now Tom and William were gone. And some of the others too, she’d bet. “So it has to be something to do with what’s happened, doesn’t it?” Maggie said, looking hard into Sarah’s eyes. She was looking for the start of that fall, the connection of possibility and reality, the gear change from doubt to concern. They’d known each other ever since Sarah came into the valley four years ago. Maggie was Sarah’s nearest neighbour. They’d soon become friends, although always along the axis of their ages. Always Maggie leading, playing the role of the mother, the aunt.

Sarah looked down at the old wooden table, traced the swirls and eddies of the knots in the wood. “Like fingerprints,” her mother would have said. “Fingerprints in the wood from those gone before.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, Maggie, Tom wouldn’t go anywhere without telling me first. He just wouldn’t.”

Maggie sighed. She wouldn’t fall. God bless her, she wouldn’t fall.

“Let’s go an’ call on Mary,” she said, ignoring Sarah’s refusal to address the idea. “And then we’ll see if Jack’s down at The Firs.”

Sarah looked up at Maggie as if she were speaking another language and for a moment it made Maggie feel foolish. Was she jumping ahead? Was the girl right?

“It’s best we check,” she said at last, “and then we’ll know, won’t we?”

They’d found Mary Griffiths feeding her chickens at the back of the farmhouse. She’d sent her daughter, Bethan, out on the pony to look for her husband, Hywel. She wasn’t back yet. Mary had noticed Hywel’s winter coats weren’t hanging in the spare bedroom where they usually were. Both Bethan and her mother had overslept that morning and hadn’t been awake for long.

Mary had two sons in the war, one of them in Intelligence, as
she often told people. She was proud, but their absence these past four years had eroded her previously pretty face, leaving it worn with missing and marked with a perpetual frown. Sarah recognised Maggie’s deference to Mary’s fragility. She said nothing of the fears she’d expressed to Sarah. Just that William and Tom had gone off somewhere and they’d wondered if Hywel had seen them. No doubt he’d be back soon. If he had, could she send Bethan over and let them know?

So they’d left Mary throwing handfuls of seed to her chickens, their urgent beaks drilling around her feet, the cockerel standing tall to stretch his wings and shake his blood red wattle and comb.

They’d walked down the slope from Mary’s farm, through a lower field, and across the river, fording it where Jack Probert had thrown in a number of large rocks to create a pattern of makeshift stepping-stones. Then they’d climbed back up the slope, through the trees where a few early mushrooms were showing brilliant white and stubby in the grass, and up onto the track that cut into the side of the valley. As they walked along it towards The Firs, they spoke of other things than what had brought them out on this morning walk. The Home Service’s morning announcement, the withdrawal from Eastbourne, the wandering tomcat that had left Maggie with a litter of kittens to deal with. Anything other than where their husbands might be at that moment.

At The Firs, Menna Probert was busy with her two young children, three-year-old Tudor, whom she held balanced on one hip as she answered the door, and one-year-old Emma, who lay crying somewhere in the darkened farmhouse behind her. Maggie and Sarah didn’t go in. They didn’t have to. Menna answered the door talking, her voice rising up the hallway towards them.

“About time too. Where’ve you been? Your tea’s cold now and I’ve put the cake back in.…” She opened the door. “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were Jack,” she said, shifting Tudor another notch higher on her hip. “Has his hands full sometimes. Can’t get to the handle.”

Back in the house Emma filled her lungs behind her mother and launched into another rising scale of cries. Menna winced and frowned over her shoulder into the hallway. Again Maggie said nothing more than ask if she’d seen William or Tom about. No? Well, not to worry, she said, stroking and pinching at Tudor the same way she might pet a dog or one of her horses. If she saw Jack she’d tell him his tea was cold. And she’d bring some of those old toys of her boys round for Tudor. She’d been meaning to for ages. No, of course she would, no trouble. She didn’t really want them around the house anyway.

They’d left The Firs, Emma’s cries dulling behind them as her mother closed the door of the farmhouse, and walked back down onto the track. If they turned right it would lead them all the way back to Upper Blaen. Turn left and it led out towards the mouth of the valley, gradually becoming a lane as it emerged from under the shadow of the slope and only evolving into a proper tarred road eight or nine miles further on, once it was free of the valley altogether.

Maggie was quiet as they walked away from The Firs. She picked leaves from the hedge and kept her head down as if looking for something in the soft rutted mud beneath her feet. The blackberries were beginning to ripen, swelling from tight red clusters into claret dark bunches. Sarah wanted to stop and pull at the ripest ones, but Maggie’s pace had quickened and she was walking ahead. Sarah jogged a couple of strides to draw level with her.

“So, what d’you think?”

Maggie stopped in the lane. The light rain had passed and the sun through the leaves dappled across her face, making her squint when the breeze shifted the shadows from her eyes.

“I think I was right, Sarah, that’s what I think. They’re up t’something. All of them. They’ve gone somewhere. The bloody fools,” she added with a shake of her head.

“But where’d they go? The leaflets all say stay put. And the radio. And they can’t leave the farms for long, can they?”

“I don’t know, bach. You’re right, they can’t leave the farms for
long.” Maggie paused, looking back down at her feet. “But they’ve left us, haven’t they?”

Sarah shook her head again, the notch between her eyebrows deepening. “They haven’t ‘left’ us. They’ve just gone somewhere. They’ll be back soon enough. I know Tom, he won’t be gone for long.”

“An’ I know William,” Maggie said, looking back up at Sarah. “He’s never left the cows unmilked. Never. He’s been milking cows every morning since he was a lad. An’ he’s never done anything I didn’t know about first.”

Maggie made this last assertion with some pride, and Sarah wondered if this wasn’t all just about her unease at being usurped by William, who, it was true, rarely moved from the house without Maggie’s blessing or knowledge.