Owen Sheers - Resistance

“Were they surprised, then?” Sarah said. “T’see you, I mean?”

Maggie looked back up at her then beyond to the darkening ridge. The sky above it was deepening again, slowly bruising towards dusk. It was still light but she could just make out the first stars. “It’s been a hard time of it, bach, that’s for sure,” she said. “Think people have had their own worries without botherin’ about us.”

Sarah couldn’t hold back any longer. “But what about Tom and William, Maggie? Did you hear anything?”

Maggie looked back at Sarah, at the deep crease of the frown between her eyebrows. “No, bach,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t.” She sighed heavily again. “I told them Will couldn’t run the colt himself because he was over here working. Getting back after the winter. None of them so much as bat an eyelid.”

Sarah’s pulse throbbed in her head and she tasted the bitter tang of bile at the back of her throat.

“I did see Helen Roberts, though,” Maggie continued, as if they’d just been passing the time with general gossip. “From over Hay? Said she’d seen Bethan in town. She’s doing fine, helping her aunt with the shop, she is.” Maggie paused but Sarah had turned away from her, her back against the door. Where was she going? Maggie wondered. Where would the girl go once the hope was gone?

“I asked Helen t’tell Bethan to come back over for a bit if she could,” Maggie continued. “Said it’d do her mother some good t’see her.”

Sarah knew what Maggie meant by this. She’d seen it herself when she’d called that afternoon. Mary was a boat loosening from its moorings. She needed Bethan there. They all needed her there. To anchor her mother, to stop her drifting away from them completely.

Maggie reached out and laid a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Look, let’s talk about this in the morning, is it?” She felt Sarah flinch under her touch. “I’m done in, girl. Let me get this fixed an’ I’ll come up tomorrow. We can talk it over proper then.”

Sarah turned round to look at Maggie. She didn’t know her anymore. There was something missing, as if she’d left a part of herself over the ridge in Llanthony. Maybe she was loosening like Mary. Maybe she’d already gone.

“It’s best, bach,” Maggie said, forcing a smile. “Get some rest yourself now.”

Sarah left Maggie’s yard feeling as if the last threads of hope had been winnowed from within her. Calling the two dogs after her, she turned back up the lane towards Upper Blaen. All about her the trees were electric with the birds’ evensong, marking the passing of another day. As the incline of the lane rose up the valley, she saw the moon through the lower branches, rising over the Black Hill. It was a full moon, just like the one that had shone over the men’s departure; a clean disc of pitted white, bright with the light of their own dying day.

Back in her yard Maggie fetched a bottle of disinfectant from the shed, then returned to the stable and the colt. Tipping the open bottle to the corner of the folded cloth, she began cleaning the cut again, telling Glyndwr to “shhh now, shhh,” and stroking his flank above her with her free hand. The cut was deep with fragments of stone in it; the horse must have caught himself on one of the many slabs of sandstone that littered the valley walls. She worked the cloth firmly into the cut, edging it under the loose skin at the sides. Glyndwr flinched, lifting his hoof off the ground every time she touched the wound, but Maggie wanted to make sure. She didn’t want any proud flesh. A badly healed scar on a yearling as good as this would be such a shame. William would never forgive her.

When she’d finished treating the wound, she began unwinding the bandages from his other legs. As she knelt to undo the knot of the bandage tied around one of his forelegs, he nuzzled the top of her head, nibbling at her hair with his lips. “Get off with you,” Maggie said, gently pushing him away with one hand while still fumbling with the knot with her other. She couldn’t seem to get it undone. It was pulled as tight as an unripe berry; her fingers felt clumsy and thick and the knot itself kept blurring and distorting in her vision, however many times she blinked away the tears from her eyes.

Maggie had lied, but it wasn’t what she’d said to Sarah that made her cry as she crouched beside the colt in the stable. It was everything she hadn’t.

How the women in the secretary’s tent had looked at her when she’d walked in; as if they were looking at a ghost.

How pale they went.

How, although the show looked like every other she’d been to, it was totally different.

How people’s faces were strained at the edges, taut across their brows and temples.

How there were so many she didn’t know, and so many she did who weren’t there.

How one of those women from the tent, Edna Kelly, had followed her out and called her name after her.

How Maggie had turned to see that expression still ghosting Edna’s face and how Edna’s eyes had welled as she stood there, one hand held to her chest, the other on Maggie’s shoulder.

How Edna had asked tentatively after William and how Maggie had lied to her too, saying he was on the farm, working.

And then how she’d had to stand there in front of Edna, the show turning about them, the announcer’s clipped voice rising through the Tannoy, as she told Maggie how relieved she was; how there were so many rumours now you never knew what to believe; how she knew she’d been right; how she’d said to her husband, “William Jones would never be caught up in all that, not him.” How she’d never believed it when they’d said it was him brought off the railway line. How (leaning closer now) those lot had it coming anyway; she didn’t understand why they couldn’t let it rest. How she’d never liked a mess and say what you like, at least the Jerries have put a stop to some of that.

How after Edna had gone back to the secretary’s tent, giving her a squeeze of the arm as she left, Maggie’d had to walk away through the show, with Edna’s words and all they’d implied swirling through her head.

How she’d seen groups of soldiers at the edges of the rings and hanging around the stalls selling cakes and small jars of sweets.

How she’d felt again the fear and anger of that first night when Albrecht came knocking at her door with his pistol in his hand.

How Glyndwr was the best in his class by far, with the most perfect confirmation, carriage, and paces.

How Alex had slipped into the ring from nowhere, big and quiet and gentle.

How William would have been so proud to see the colt run like that, all power and muscle, a barely contained wildness simmering under the sheen of a deep bay coat, a flowing mane, and four flashing, white-socked hooves.

How somehow the judges had known about Alex, and that was why, when Maggie took the colt back from him, they’d left her circling long after they’d called the others in.

How she’d led Glyndwr around that ring, his head tossing, his hooves stamping, three more times before they’d eventually told her to take her place at the end of the line.

How when they finally left the ring, the crowd had parted about them without a word.

How she’d felt their anger, tense on the air.

How they were wrong.

How what she’d done was not, as they thought, an act of collaboration, but an act of love; her last for the husband of thirty years who’d so suddenly left her life, silently and without warning as she’d slept one night last September.

Maggie came back with no news. What does that mean, Tom? It could mean nothing I know. But it doesn’t. To me it means everything. Am I writing to a ghost, Tom? Are you never coming back? After all this time. I don’t know what to do .