Chapter 8
The what might have been? A stream of disappointment when things didn't happen the way you imagine them to be. There will always be what might have been, and the years he spent fighting for his country is one of his largest. It was easy to imagine how his life may have looked like without the war. But as time passed one can wonder if the idealistic dreams were what you really wanted in life.
Life and dreams are ever changing, at twenty, Ken thought he had it all figured out. Court for a two or three years and then marry his pretty island redhead and make a name for himself. The war had other plans.
The war changed all his plans and he was only beginning to realize that change can be a great thing. The war was still altering his life in a way he never imagined especially as November approached.
Armistice Day, a day where the whole country stood still for three minutes. It was the day to remember the war of all wars. How could there be another war after such a war? Many still remember the day. The day two years ago when the news came, when the entire nation rejoiced.
Families cried at the prospect of their remaining sons returning to them for good. The men in his platoon hollered at the news that came through the radio. The armistice was signed, they had won. It was over they could start sending the soldiers home.
For Ken, it was one of the hardest transitions in his life. Returning to Kenneth Ford and letting Captain Ford rest was harder than he ever thought. If it wasn't the nightmares, it was the constant rehashing of the war in his mind. It was the steady stream of letters wanting accounts of the war for history books.
He managed to hide away the prior year. Rilla had been at college, he ignored the calls and letters from fellow officers in the area. Instead, he drank away his sorrows as the clock chimed 11 am. Drunkenly saying cheers to the end of the war. This year instead, Rilla had somehow persuaded him to face his fears.
They weren't fears he objected when she asked him why he was hesitant. After she listened to him try to make an excuse at speaking at the ceremony. He still didn't completely understand her girlish tendency to romanticize his rank. Or the medals he may have gathered over those years.
"You can't change the past Ken," Rilla told him as he comes to sit back down after another phone call about the ceremony. She had curled on the sofa her school books scattered around her. "But you can educate and hope for a better future. Should we ever have children I pray to God that they will never have to live through such a thing. I will always be proud of you, but you can't hide your involvement with the war. You can't pretend that it never happened."
It was always hard to swallow the truth that Rilla always managed to tell him. Sometimes he wondered if she knew just how intelligent she was? How wise she could be when she wasn't even trying to be?
He spent so many hours, days trying to move on. Trying to live a normal life? All while wondering what his life would have been like if the war hadn't crashed the party at the lighthouse. Despite the damper on the evening. The memories of Rilla in her green dress with its garland of daisies around the waist. How he dearly wanted to kiss her that night. More than what was considered proper. She had changed over the course of the year. She had been a gangly fourteen-year-old who was still growing into her limbs when he last saw her. Suddenly she was there in front of him taller than her sisters and nearly as tall as her brothers. She was so pretty, he felt rather ashamed at his attraction to the kid. No- the young lady in front of him because he was her brother's friend.
How long would they have courted before he asked Dr. Blythe for permission to marry his daughter? What would the world be like for them without the war? An old fashioned marriage? Babies?
He wasn't sure if he liked the thought of not seeing Rilla in her element. The look of success when she read or understood something for the first time. What type of woman would she have become if there had been no war that would force her to grow up? Allowing her to care of a war baby?
He didn't want to imagine Rilla to be anything but who she was in this time and place as she sat on their sofa.
"What are you reading?" Ken asked her curiously as he noticed it was not a textbook in her hands. A rather strange sight to him, though the book looked oddly familiar. He couldn't place where he had seen before though.
"The Secret Garden," Rilla said after a moment passing it to show him it. "I do read occasionally you know," she added rolling her eyes after seeing the shock on his face. "This one tends to be a favourite of mine."
"Ahh," Ken hummed as he reached for the hardbound book. "I went to the bookstore looking for it, the clerk asked me if it was for a younger sibling." He smiled at the memory. "I replied, no it was a surprise for a young lady who was rather upset that her own copy went missing."
"I was rather surprised when it turned up," Rilla admitted. "We barely saw one another and you were rather distracted after the news of war broke out. Then the times you came to say goodbye and I wasn't there. Di relayed the message of 'Good-bye Spider, don't forget me in your maternal duties'. I was so insulted that you called me Spider, especially after you took to Walters nickname." Rilla shook her head sighing at her teenage self. "I had picked up the mail that day, so when I came home to find I had a package. One from you a few evenings before Christmas I was excited. I hurried up into my room before anyone could see it, hiding away to read your letter." She quietly as he flipped through the pages before pulling out the worn letter from the pages of her book. "I keep this one here, mostly because it was the safest place to hide it at the time."
Ken smiled softly as he gingerly took pulled out the letter. The ink had faded in spots but his memories of writing such a letter were still fresh in his mind.
"Dearest Rilla-my-Rilla
There is a fair bit of snow on the ground this winter in Toronto. Not as much as the Island but it is enough to make me wish for summer once more. Maybe its the memory of you tripping up the lighthouse steps. Those silver slippers mother had sent you the previous Christmas on your dainty feet. It was like you suddenly grew up without any of us knowing it.
I wished to say goodbye after you disappeared from the station when Jem went off. I looked for you but you were nowhere to be seen. Then every time I visited Ingleside, you were away to my disappointment.
I told Di to tell you goodbye, do not forget me while you were taking care of your charge. She looked at me strangely which made me feel rather guilty about my interest in her younger sister. So I jokingly added Spider, despite knowing how much you hate it. I knew it would let me off the hook with your sister who knows me too well to begin with.
So please forgive me for that Rilla-my-Rilla. I never would cause you pain willingly.
I hope you enjoy your present, please don't lose this one. I don't know when I will be able to get you a new one if you do.
My ankle is about as good as new. I'll be fit to join up in a couple of months more, Rilla-my-Rilla. It will be some feeling to get into khaki all right. Little Ken will be able to look the whole world in the face then and owe not any man. It's been rotten lately since I've been able to walk without limping.
People who don't know look at me as much as to say, 'Slacker!'
Well, they won't have the chance to look it much longer.
Yours Kenneth
"You were worried about what my family might have thought?" Rilla asked him for the first time. As she skimmed through the old letter herself.
"I was a little worried, being six years older than you. You just left the schoolroom, I was finishing college." Ken admitted. "I know the age difference wasn't that uncommon. I didn't help that I was worried about your brothers and even your father forbidding if they had found out. Of course, when Jem shipped out, he gave me a rather heady warning about breaking your heart. Shirley was too clueless to pick up on it. While Walter he just went with it with a smile and notion that he saw something that no one else did."
"Jem warned you?" Rilla mouth dropped at that information she had never known.
"Of course, I hadn't the greatest track record with the ladies. Everyone thought I was courting Ethel Reese back then. Or that is what she was hoping," Ken said solemnly before he chuckled. "Your brother had every right to be overprotective. I am sure he would have blown a gasket if he had seen how with behaved in our engagement?"
"Apparently he did," Rilla smirked to him before going on to explain when she saw his puzzled face. "'My brother is a snoop and found some the hidden photos and the pair of my pants. The ones that got lost underneath our bed when I changed one morning. Father alluded to a few things and Jem pieced things together. He put a rather indignant face when he caught me alone after our honeymoon. I put him in his place though."
"Well, that explains his intense glares," Ken ran his hand through his hair. "I should try and write," he looked towards his desk. "I just don't know what to even say at this thing"
"It will come," Rilla told him as she pulled at his tie to kiss him. "I have numerous amounts of faith in you."
"Oh? Do you?" Ken murmured, his hands pulling at her waist. Nibbling on her ear as his palms grazing the bare skin of her thighs where her skirt ridden up. "I can-," he started.
"Don't you dare finish that sentence Kenneth Ford," Rilla warned with a look but allowed him to sweep her into his arms.
The morning came too fast as he fastened the many buttons of his uniform. Pinned the medals he was awarded to his left breast. Rilla had dressed carefully in a dark green dress with black silk stockings and boots. Her red hair was pinned up with small waves she worked into after sleeping in pin curls.
He was on his fifth cigarette of the day. Not his best track record and he probably could smoke another two before they even got there. If anything he would kill for a stiff drink to get him through this day.
"Breathe Ken, just breathe and it will be all right," Rilla told him softly rubbing his back. She tried not to seem hurt as he shook his head and ducked out to the small balcony lighting another cigarette. This was something that he would never be ready for.
Three-quarters of Kingsport showed up for the Armistice Ceremony it seemed. Possibly even more as all the men fell into old routines of salutes and honourifics. Many showed up with wives and children. Others still in wheelchairs and other visible aids for surviving. Everyone was bundled up in their winter wear. Scarves blew in the wind, as the trumpets began their melody.
They listened intently to the introduction and what the day meant to their nation. Finally, after fifteen minutes, Ken heads up after being introduced. He turned to Rilla who straightened his hat and kissed his cheek for encouragement.
Slowly he walked to the makeshift podium. Taking deep breathes as he turned and placed his papers on the ledge.
"I stand here before everyone, a man who has a talent of words. Except words never come easily for me when it comes to the war. For three years, I fought in the war. Praying, hoping to survive when I saw my comrades be stricken down beside me. Later I saw my brave men come back injured, near death. Sometimes begging to put out of their misery as I was further away from the trenches. I couldn't understand why I had been promoted to Captain? Who was I any better, quicker than the other men I had fought beside?
Today we are here to honour the men who gave their lives for their country. When we have nothing but condolences to truly give back to the families who had lost them. War isn't pretty, war is exactly the world we use to describe it. War.
Still, after two years I still cannot fully comprehend what I went through. What we all went through during those years, wishing and praying to survive another day. How we longed for home when the letters and care packages arrived. The homesickness never left us alone.
We all carried photographs of our loved ones, we all cried in our sleep praying that it would soon all be over. Yet the night that treaty of Versailles was signed we cried for joy for the first time.
You see we may have fought for our country with honour. But it was the words and promises from loved ones that kept us going. You made us strive and overcome the enemy. We made have been the ones fighting for our lives. It was everyone one of you who made it possible for us to continue. Making it possible to live another day. Knowing you were all waiting for us to come home until the day some of us came home.
So why do I keep wondering what my life may have been like if there had been no war? Why do I ponder on what could have been? Yes, I might have married the girl of my dreams the second her father allowed it? I might even have a child on the way or one already?
Yet I see the woman she had become because of the war and the impact on the lives of our civilians. I see her achieving her dreams because the war gave her the confidence to try and make a difference in the world. Confidence to make her way in the world on her own terms. Confidence to embrace a broken man. A man who is trying to put himself back together each day at a time," Ken stopped and smiled down at her. His dress uniform had been freshly pressed for the occasion. After being retrieved from the depths of the closet where he kept it hidden away.
"War isn't glorious, but as I look at all the changes to the world around us I can breathe a little easier. Maybe it wasn't all for nothing, all the lives we lost. The ones we remember today wasn't all in vain? All we can do is move into a brighter future, and remember all that we fought for and what it achieved." Ken then saluted to the cenotaph before returning to Rilla's side. They watch as a young boy begin the first words of a poem. One they would hear each year until they were both gone from this world."
They stood for a moment of silence as Rilla held onto his arm trembling in her long winter dark Burgundy coat. Tears pouring down her eyes as looked at the monument. One that held all the names of the Kingsport men who had lost their lives. Much like the Four Winds had Walters name on it. He held onto her as she leaned into his body. They had made an agreement for them to appear only engaged for this public appearance. Only a select few people knew of their marriage in Kingsport. Today was no exception as there were students and professors watching them from afar.
The trumpets and drums started once more as young girls and boys placed wreaths on the cenotaph. They all stood in the silence of the cool fall weather. Remembering the past with the hope that it would never happen again.
Ken learned over the months that healing took time and knowledge to heal you actually needed to want heal. That healing meant you couldn't live in the past. He couldn't live wondering what could have been if the war never happened. The war happened and it changed any lives. It changed his life. A brief dream of a love-stricken fool, couldn't take precedence over the life he had now.
Life was different but it was also so much more than he ever imagined it could be.
I was doing some research for this chapter which had me rereading part of ROI and I noticed or realized I had forgotten a few things between the dance and Ken visiting before leaving for the front. Like he sent her a Christmas gift, or the face it was an entire year between the events! Were they writing to each other? Obviously, her parents had no idea about an attachment since Anne was given a shock over Ken's request for Rilla to not kiss other boys?
I also wondered just what her brothers may have thought about Ken sudden possible? Attraction to their baby sister? By my calculations, Ken is 6 years old, so when Rilla freshly fifteen, he was 20 turning 21. I know that age difference wasn't a huge issue back then…I mean hello Prissy and Mr. Phillips lol. But still, it has me wondering a bunch of things of how he felt possibly.
Canada didn't call Remembrance Day, Remembrance Day until the 1930s and it was celebrated the Monday of the week that 11th fell on.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and the insight into Ken's mental state and how far he has come since coming home.
I have the next few chapters planned I believe and I will be diving into a few topics I have already touched on. If there is anything you want to see from them, something I may have not thought about yet, let me know I may be able to work it in!
Tina
