Resistance by Owen Sheers

Sarah had said, trying to sound as natural as possible but still unable to prevent her relief at seeing Maggie tinge her greeting.
    “William’s gone too.”
    She hadn’t even said hello.
    “What d’you mean?”
    “He’s not at the farm. Or in the fields. He’s gone. Like Tom.”
    Sarah laughed. “Tom hasn’t gone anywhere.”
    Maggie laid a hand on Sarah’s arm, just as she had again now with Menna. “Hasn’t he, bach?”
    Standing there in the bright, rain-polished yard, the two women had suddenly felt their ages upon them. Sarah felt like a girl again, that one word sending her back to her mother and her childhood. Back to when her brothers had left, when she never seemed to know the whole story and there was always something left to explain. Maggie, meanwhile, saw her own age reflected in Sarah’s younger face, in the deep furrow of confusion between her eyebrows, in all the unworry and unspent hope that was so evidently still welling within her. Why had Maggie felt none of that? Just the knowing, the dull, certain knowing of experience. She envied Sarah then, standing in that yard. But she pitied her too. She’d had hardly any distance to fall herself, but this young girl, she had the whole height of her hope. Maggie could still remember what that felt like. Just last year when her eldest was declared missing. When the telegram finally came confirming he was dead, she’d cursed herself for not coming down off that pillar of hope sooner. For not waking up earlier.
    “Why don’t we have a sit inside?”
    Sarah was still looking at her with an uncertain smile on her face. “Are you all right, Maggie?”
    “I’m fine, Sarah. It’s just I heard you calling. Just now. For Tom.”
    “Yes. I can’t find him. I don’t know where he’s got to.”
    “I know. That’s why I’ve come up. Let’s go inside, is it?”
    At first, when Maggie told Sarah what she thought might have happened to their husbands, Sarah refused to credit the idea at all. But then she thought of the bed, Tom’s outline, cold like it never was except maybe right in the depth of lambing when he’d been out all night. And she thought of his boots, both pairs missing. Of his silences this past week, deeper than usual. But there was still so much Maggie hadn’t explained. All she’d said was she thought this was to do with the invasion. That there would have been plans. Plans maybe they wouldn’t have known about. That Tom, William, and the others were some of the only men left. If something had to be set up, if something had to be organised, they’d be the ones to help with it. After all, who else knew this area as well as they did?
    “But why didn’t they tell us then?” Sarah had asked, feeling like that girl once more, tugging at the sleeve of her father, asking him to explain.
    Maggie didn’t know. In fact she didn’t know anything, she admitted. Nothing certain. She just knew. They’d all heard the wireless reports, hadn’t they? All of them had listened to the announcements from the BBC. Britain was being invaded. A massive counterattack is what the newsreader called it, speaking as calmly as if he were reporting that day’s business news. Britain was being invaded and the Germans were coming. Reinforcements flooding in from the victories on the collapsed Eastern Front. The Allies’ attempted invasion had been a disaster and now the Germans were staging their own. Chasing the ravaged Allied armies back across the Channel.
    They should have nothing to worry about here, though, that’s what Reverend Davies had told them. And the Home Guard officer who’d come round handing out the leaflets a week ago. “Disable all vehicles so only you can use them. Hide food stores and essential supplies. Offer no resistance but offer no help either.” He’d said these sentences in a flat tone, their intonations worn thin through repetition. But then he’d given Maggie a quick smile and briefly found his own voice again. “I