Owen Sheers - Resistance

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.”

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 said 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.