Owen Sheers - Resistance

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.