Owen Sheers - Resistance

Sarah, still confused and shocked by Maggie’s decision, had also watched the pair leave, leaning against the sill of the narrow window on the landing outside her bedroom. Maggie was riding the mare while Alex followed behind, leading the colt. The red bandages around the horse’s hocks flashed on and off as they picked their way through the patches of scree and waist-high bracken. From this distance Alex could easily have been one of Maggie’s missing sons. He wore one of William’s caps, a rough herringbone jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, and a white shirt that, although spotless and stiff when she’d taken it from the wardrobe, Maggie had newly starched for the event. His boots were still his battered Wehrmacht-issue ones, but he carried another pair in a bag slung over his shoulder. They were laceless ankle boots that Reg had hardly ever worn, removing their wooden trees for no more than a handful of weddings and funerals. They were smart and light and although half a size too small, perfect for running the colt at the show.

By the time Sarah came out of Upper Blaen to feed the hens, Maggie and Alex were almost at the top of the ridge. She watched them rise, vague and indistinct against the greens and browns of the slope. When she bent to the hen house then looked up again, she lost them. She scanned the hillside for movement but only caught them again when they crested the ridge. For a moment they were silhouetted there against the pale sky, their heads at the same height despite Maggie being on horseback, before walking on and disappearing over the horizon.

The cool morning warmed into a beautiful day, almost cloudless but for a few high puffs of loose vapour. There hadn’t been much wind these past months and the apple blossom on the trees down by the river was already turning into the buds of new fruit. Sarah rode Bess up onto the hill to check the flock. It was smaller now, after the winter, even with the addition of the new lambs. Those that had survived, however, were growing big and strong on the spring grass on which they and the ewes grazed hungrily. Higher up on the top the wire grass swept blond over the plateau, patched with dark shallow peat pits, wisps of cotton grass and swathes of bilberry bushes hummocking into the distance. Riding back down the slope Sarah saw again the beauty of the Olchon as she had that first time when Tom had driven her into the valley on his father’s pony and trap one spring evening seven years ago. Throughout the rest of the day, however, her mind was not in the Olchon valley but in Llanthony, where, in the fields beside the priory, she knew Maggie and Alex were meeting the world again. She was restless and couldn’t settle to anything. Just after lunch Gernot arrived at her door with an eel he’d caught in the river. He seemed relaxed, light with life, despite his missing Bethan, and blissfully unaware of what might have been happening at that very moment, just over the ridge; of what terrible news Maggie might have been hearing as they stood there at her door in the midday sun. Sarah thanked Gernot and watched him leave, ruffling Fly’s head as he passed through the yard and on down the track. Taking the eel inside, she sprinkled it with salt then began carefully peeling back, inch by inch, the slick dark skin, exposing the white flesh beneath.

Albrecht sometimes called in the early afternoon but when he still hadn’t arrived by two o’clock, Sarah went over to Mary’s instead and then on to The Firs, where she took Tudor and Emma off Menna’s hands while their mother washed their clothes and prepared their supper. By five o’clock she was walking back along the valley’s eastern wall, glancing up as often as she could at the opposite slope. She’d done the calculations. Maggie would have had to register Glyndwr for the class no later than eleven. The yearlings were usually early, say around one o’clock at the latest. The route back up from Llanthony was steep. So give them two hours in all from the start of the class, maybe three if it had been a large entry. That meant they should be coming back over into the valley around five, around now. Sarah looked up at the Hatterall, hoping to see their silhouettes again on its ridge. But there was nothing. Maybe they’d won the class? In which case there was no doubt Maggie would have stayed for the parade and the final judging. William had only ever won the champion of champions at a local show once. If she had then it would be nearer seven, eight even, before they’d be back in the Olchon.

In the end it was around six o’clock, as Sarah was coming round from the coal store at the back of the house, that she saw them, the colt’s bandages flashing red again in the lowering light. They were far down the slope, almost at Maggie’s farm. Sarah couldn’t wait. Leaving the coal bucket in the porch, she grabbed her coat off the back of the door and started down the track, her heart suspended within her ribs as delicately as the pocket of air between the bars of a spirit level. Fly and Seren, surprised by Sarah’s sudden leaving, rose from where they’d been lying in the open shed, shook the loose straw from their bodies, and trotted down the track after her.

By the time Sarah reached Maggie’s farm Alex had already left. Sarah couldn’t find Maggie either. Perhaps she’d gone with him to The Court for some reason? But then she heard Maggie’s voice, muffled and low, coming from within the stable in the corner of the yard.

“Stupid bugger. How d’you manage that?”

“Maggie?” Sarah said as she approached the stable. “That you?”

Looking over the half-door she could just make her out in the darkness, crouching on the floor beside the colt’s off-hind leg.

“Got right worked up he did,” Maggie said, a wad of cloth between her teeth. “Caught himself on the way down. Even with the bloody bandages on an’ all.” She took the cloth from between her teeth, dipped it in a bowl of warm water at her side, and gently ran a corner of it down the length of the cut on Glyndwr’s hock.

Sarah stood at the door, waiting for Maggie to offer something else, but she just kept on dabbing at the cut, muttering the odd word under her breath, more to herself than to Sarah.

“Well?” Sarah said eventually. “What happened, Maggie? At the show?”

Maggie looked at her from where she crouched, swilled the cloth in the bowl of water, then stood up, wringing it dry over the bed of straw. Glyndwr tore a mouthful of hay from a rack on the wall and chewed on it rhythmically. Maggie walked up to the door so Sarah could see her face. She was smiling.

“Oh, he ran well, bach,” she said, running her hand down Glyndwr’s neck. “Really well. He’s a beautiful mover. The boy did him proud.” She leant against the top of the half-door, still looking at Glyndwr. “Watkins had a lovely colt in, mind, another one thrown by Cardi Llwyd. Least he was beat by his own brother, I s’pose.” She turned back to Sarah. “An’ a couple of others. Fourth in the end. Just out of the colours. Never mind, eh?” She patted the horse’s neck a couple of times.

Sarah could feel her heart beating against the wood of the stable door. Couldn’t Maggie feel it too? The steady hammer of it passing through her ribs and skin into the thin, knotted planks. “That’s good,” she said, quietly nodding her head. “But what about everything else? Who d’you see?” Her breath was tight in her throat. She paused and gave the colt a rub on his nose. He bucked his head under her touch. “What was it like ?” she said, pulling her hand away from Glyndwr’s searching mouth.

Maggie let out a heavy sigh, then looked down at the piece of cloth as she folded it into tighter and tighter squares. “Oh,” she said. “Not much different, really. Some soldiers there, of course, but apart from that it was like as always, more or less.” She smiled again, still looking down at her hands. “Think most folk thought we’d copped it over the winter.”