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Rilla had a proper writing desk in the sitting room. A wedding gift from Persis, it was beautiful and well-formed, fashionable and agreeable, the perfect reflection of Ken's sister, and Rilla did love it as she loved her sister-in-law. From her seat at the desk, she could turn her head and look out the front window at the street outside their Toronto flat, see motorcars and pedestrians passing with children and groceries and dogs. The scenery helped immensely when she was obliged to write cheerful letters to her mother and father and to Nan and Di and Faith; the people she could see passing by her window reminded her of things she had seen that would be amusing to the letter's recipient.
Nonetheless, Rilla sat in the bedroom's deep window seat, her writing paper held against a book propped up on her bent knees. The window was her favorite part of the flat, the thing that had made her hug Ken and kiss his cheek when he showed it to her, and she had spent hours stitching up the perfect cushion for it, thick cotton batting covered in red and gold fabric that glowed in the morning sun when Rilla opened the curtains. Through the window, Rilla could see the public park that lay past the tiny back garden she and Ken shared with the older couple who lived in the flat below.
The trees and bright patches of flowers reminded her of home, of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley, and some mornings that sight filled her with joy. Other times, afternoons such as this when she sat trying to compose an honest letter to her mother, the reminder of the distance between this big city she barely knew and the small town that was still the home of her heart made her struggle not to weep.
And she wouldn't let herself weep because surely even in her twenty years she had been through many more difficult things. She loved Ken, and if some days she felt like she hardly knew him better than the city that was so new to her, she reminded herself that she'd known him all her life. He'd been Walter's chum as long as she could remember, playing with the Blythes and the Merediths every summer when his family came to stay in Glen St. Mary. And he'd followed the Piper's call to France; he'd fought and come back home to marry her, so she would not weep.
As Rilla sat with her pencil poised between her fingers, she stared at the paper that read only, "Dearest Mother," and tried to imagine how to tell her mother that sometimes, in the night, it was Ken who wept instead.
The clock in the sitting room chimed four, and Rilla realized that she had spent hours in contemplation of her blank page. If she was going to try the new pork chop recipe she'd clipped from the Ladies' Weekly, she'd need to start work right away. With a sigh, she set aside her pencil and paper and rose from the window seat. She had yet to master the fickle ways of the flat's oven, but she was determined to prevail.
~~~
The spring night was only slightly cool, and Rilla was warm enough under the sheet and cotton bedspread, but she still rolled closer to Ken, close enough that she could put her hand on his chest and feel the warmth of his skin through the thin cotton of his pajamas. Even after a few months of marriage, it was so strange to be able to lie with him like that, to lie with her husband. Rilla had always had her own narrow bed to sleep in, but on cold nights she had crawled in with Nan and Di, or with Mother if Father was out doctoring. Nan would kick sometimes and Mother would climb out of bed through the night to check on any strange sound in the house, but otherwise they all slept peacefully, the hush of night like a thick woolen blanket over all of Ingleside.
Ken was different in nearly every way. His body was broad and long and narrow-hipped, firm angles and the scrape of his evening stubble against her forehead. As strong as his body was, his sleep was a fragile thing. He would drift off before Rilla most nights, worn out from long hours working in the courts building and nudged toward sleep by a good meal and an hour or two of reading in the sitting room. Rilla would curl up against him and inhale his scent, the one that was beginning to be as familiar to her as the sweetgrass fragrance of the linens at Ingleside.
Some evenings in the sitting room, Rilla felt that they were little more than two strangers, for all that Ken had been part of the background of her life for as long as she could remember. The air then felt as stiff as her new dresses cut for city life rather than simple Island fashion, and Rilla would close her eyes and think about slipping outside and running down the street to the little park, taking off her shoes and stockings and dancing through the grass heavy as it was with evening dew. But she wanted to be the kind of wife Ken deserved, not a wild girl from the provinces, so she kept her seat and wrote her sociable notes and read short stories about people with lives far more interesting than her own.
In bed, at least, they were not strangers. Tired as he always was in the evening, Ken had never lost the soldier's habit of rising early, and in the pale light of early morning they often explored each other's bodies, taking liberties of touch that Rilla could have barely imagined only a few months earlier. When he was touching her skin, Ken's hands never trembled, and when she touched him he might cry out, but never in pain or in fear.
Rilla slept, her head pillowed on Ken's shoulder, and near dawn she woke to ragged gasps of air puffing against the side of her face. She pushed herself up and looked over to meet Ken's eyes, open wide but staring blindly at something she could never see. A small, strangled sound escaped his throat at the end of his breaths, and Rilla bit her lip, wondering if it wouldn't be the kindest thing to just let him finish his dream and move on to better sleep. But she couldn't; wherever he was in his mind, she didn't have the strength to leave him there.
She put her hand in the middle of his chest and shook him lightly, almost as if he were Jims, almost as if she were just waking him from a little nap. "Ken," she said, taking care to keep her voice soft and steady. "Ken, it's okay." Often he would wake up at that, wake and go to the washroom before coming back to the bedroom for his dressing gown and slippers. He would sit at the dining table studying a crossword, remote as the mountaintop in the Japanese painting he treasured from his childhood.
But he didn't wake. He stared at the ceiling with his wide, dry eyes, and on each breath he made a keening sound like a wounded creature. She shook him harder, but he only shrank away from her touch, eyes wider. Rilla closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to watch him fear her. It was insupportable, it was impossible to listen to him one more moment, and she summoned up inside herself the way her father's voice had sounded when he was trying to be very stern. She thought of Ken in his uniform, his name--her name now--pinned to the khaki.
"Captain Ford!"
He woke up with a huge gasp, his eyes staring at her now instead of some phantom memory, and then he turned away, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He made to rise, but Rilla put her hands on his shoulders. "Ken," she said, feeling the muscle and bone under her palms tremble, "please stay." He bent over then, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and he wept, a storm of emotion that soon subsided into unsteady but deepening breaths.
"I'm sorry, my Rilla," he whispered without turning to look at her.
"I love you," she said, moving to sit next to him on the side of the bed. "You don't need to be made of stone for that to be true."
He put his hand on her lap and found her hand, entwining their fingers together. "Many days I wish I were."
Rilla silenced all of the arguments in her head and simply squeezed Ken's hand in hers. She turned just enough to face him, pressing her knees to his, and reached up her free hand to cup his cheek. She traced her thumb over the raised scar on his cheek, and he closed his eyes at the touch. "Is--is this what you dream about?"
He chuffed out a small laugh, despite the redness remaining in his eyes. "No, my dear. My grand scar came from an accidental meeting with the sharp lid off a tin of meat. The cut started to go sour, but it cleared up and back to my men I went with this as a reminder of my clumsiness."
Rilla was quiet for a moment, her hand still on Ken's cheek. "C-can you tell me what--"
He wrapped his fingers gently around her wrist and tugged her hand down to rest on his lap. "No. I don't want--" He looked away and then looked back at Rilla with sad eyes. "I know you're no child, that you've seen unpleasant things while you and the other girls kept things together here at home. But some things--I wish I didn't have them in my mind, and I won't put them in yours." Rilla drew a breath to protest but he shook his head. "I will not, my Rilla."
"What can I do, then?"
"Having you beside me is what I fought to come home for, and you give me that every day. I don't think there's anything else I can ask for."
Unbidden, the thought of having grass under her feet and the sky over her head returned to Rilla. She gently pulled her hands from Ken's and stood up. "Will you come outside with me?"
"In the dark?"
Rilla pulled her robe on over her nightgown and tied the belt snugly before handing Ken his dressing gown. "All the better for nobody to see us in our nightclothes."
"Indeed," Ken agreed, sounding dubious. Still, he followed her down the narrow back stairs, silent as thieves to avoid waking up the neighbors, and through the door to the small yard. The sky was pale with approaching dawn, and the wet grass under Rilla's feet sent a thrill of cold through her. She turned to see Ken looking up at the dark windows of the neighboring houses, and she took his hand to draw him out to the middle of the yard.
She put his right hand on her waist and held his other hand up above her shoulder and began moving her feet in a simple dance, grass blades tickling under her toes.
"You are mad," Ken whispered in her ear.
"Breathe," she said and did so herself, inhaling the clean morning air with a hint of new spring flowers. Ken closed his eyes and relaxed, falling into rhythm with her. "Remember this. Try to remember this instead."
He smiled, the slight crease of dimples showing in his cheeks, and as the sky brightened with dawn they danced to no music at all. Rilla thought again that she had no idea how she would write to her mother about any of this, but Ken's hands were on her and his feet were brushing against hers on the damp and dirty ground. Some things, she thought, don't need to be translated into words.