Free Resistance by Owen Sheers Page B

“Over in Llanthony or down in Longtown. That barmaid at The New Inn. I thought it might be her.”
    Maggie gave Sarah a beseeching look. Come on, girl, help me now. Now you know. Help me with this. But Sarah’s eyes were also distant, staring out the window.
    “I’ll get some cake,” Maggie said, standing from her chair and wiping her eyes. “Why don’t you put the kettle on, Sarah? Mash us some more tea, bach?”
    It was well into the afternoon when the women left Maggie’s kitchen, each of them walking back to their farmhouses, loosened by the resonance of that pamphlet dropped onto the table like a pebble thrown into the still waters of their lives. Their husbands had not been who they thought they were. At least, not this last year. Or had it been for longer than that? They didn’t know. All they did know was that the men had left; that they had been left. That if “TheCountryman’s Diary” was anything to go by, the men had left the valley because of the invasion edging north from the southern coast. They had left to perform their duties, their secret duties. To sabotage, to kill (Sarah remembered the first time she’d seen Tom stick a pig, the resolute way he’d worked the knife into its throat …  insert an inch below the ear  …), and then to disappear. It was unthinkable. None of them were fighting men. William was in his late fifties and Hywel and Reg couldn’t have been far behind him. Malcolm walked with a limp, dragging his club foot like a ball and chain. Jack, Tom, and John were younger, it was true, but they’d been farmers all their lives. They’d hardly ever left the valley except for the market or the occasional farm sale. Sarah could count on one hand the nights Tom had spent away from the farm. They were not soldiers.
    And yet this is what the handbook would have them believe. This is what Maggie would have them believe, and that’s why they’d agreed to tell no one about this. No one. If their husbands had kept this secret from them, their wives, then they must keep that secret too. Until the men returned they’d say nothing of their going. They’d stay in the valley and keep the farms running. There was no need to leave. Between them there was plenty of food. Maggie’s cows produced enough milk for butter and cheese for all of them. The potatoes were newly dug and the Ministry hadn’t yet collected their share. They had enough salted pork and bacon hanging in their larders to see them through the winter. Some lamb too. It would still be hard work though. Impossible, maybe, to keep all the farms going as they should, to manage the flocks. Maggie, ever the organiser, was already working out a routine, a weekly diary of mutual help. But that was nothing new. The valley had always run on a basis of cooperation. Everyone gathered one another’s hay, picked one another’s potatoes. William lent his tractor whenever it was needed. Tools, implements, horses, ploughs, all of them were shared. The only difference now was that it was just the women who were left to handle them. But still, everything would be shared. The work and theresults of the work, everything. At least, everything that could be. This, this returning to empty homes, was something each of the women had to experience alone. The sitting in quiet rooms that were somehow quieter than yesterday when they knew their husbands were out in the fields. Turning your head to catch the shadow of a movement and finding nothing, again. The intimate silences of their loss, each unique and individual, shaped by the man who had gone, these each woman suffered alone. But it was best to go to their homes, that is what they’d decided. In case the men came back. In case they left a message. It was best to be there, where the men could find them.
    For Sarah that first day ended as it began. All the way back up the track to Upper Blaen, she heard the dogs and their chains. Scenting her approach they’d come out of their shelter and were