This chapter features graphic war imagery, but nothing that L.M. Montgomery has not mentioned herself. As ever everything is hers, only this idea is mine.
-special acknowledgement of the story, But I don't know who you are, by The Peace for helping Walter Blythe make sense to me.
No Man's Land
T
In which Walter is lost in dreams; and Ken wakes up.
Ingleside, in the small hours of August 6th, 1914
The rifle is heavy in his arms and his fingers slip and shake. He is afraid to hold onto it, afraid of how it feels in his hands, though this is nothing to the fear he has of letting it go. His fingers tighten round the gun-barrel and he steps into darkness, pointing the bayonet outward as if he means it.
Others are wading through the mud and falling where they stand but nothing touches him. One boy falls in a heap to his right, he keeps walking. Another man crumples up at his feet, he walks on.
He reaches it now, a thick grey cut in the earth where young men cower with their rifles dropped and hands held high. They have faces like his brothers, like his friends, and their eyes are wide with terror. Not because of the weapon he carries. Because of his face. He is unbearably beautiful, with the shining grey eyes of an angel.
They fall to their knees and beg, "Muss es sein? Muss es sein?"
He stabs them all. He does not feel the weight of the rifle, he does not know where his arm stops and the blade begins. He pierces each one to the heart and they groan and murmur, sweat and plead as they fall in a pile at his feet.
"Muss es sein?" they cry out, "Muss es sein?"
"Es muss sein!" he screams at them, pushing the blade into their bodies again and again and again. "Es muss sein. Es muss sein. Es muss sein..."
"Walt? -Walter-"
Walter had the strangest sensation of being pulled into the world, and when he awoke there were wide grey eyes staring back at him. It was like being sliced open to see those eyes and he backed away and fell to the floor.
"Walter, it was a- Walter, are you quite alright? It was a dream, you were having a dream."
Walter rubbed his wrist which had taken the brunt of the fall, and noticed the soft braided rug under him. His palms were damp and he wiped them, before shakily standing up. Pulling at the night-shirt that stuck to his chest as though hating the feel of it touching him.
Ken rocked to his knees and slipped from the bed, approaching him like a small boy to a frightened animal. "Let me help you," he said, grasping at the hem of Walter's night-shirt and attempting to peel it off.
"What are you doing?" Walter said, staggering back in a panic. His heel struck hard against a chest of drawers that sat in a nook by the fireplace, and he stared at it with the look of a man who does not know where he is.
Yesterday there had been sketches and lithographs pinned to the chimney breast. Ink pots with candle ends, flowers and books crammed along the mantle. Walter had removed them all that morning, restoring them to the sprawling attic room he had once shared with Jem. Shirley was less motivated. Of course, returning to the little room would mean one less flight of stairs to manage whilst carrying all his banbury cakes -and one less mouth to share them with. But the thought of having to box up all his belongings took the shine off that. And when the call came for Jem that afternoon Walter, too, lost heart. By evening both boys found themselves tucked up under the eaves, and the apple-leaf quilts, in the attic. The little room remaining a strange blank -a no man's land- neither had wanted to sleep in.
Not that Walter could sleep. Though his body was weighed with exhaustion, he thrummed with beats of adrenalin which pumped through him relentlessly. He stared up at the papered ceiling, tried writing by the smallest glow of the lamp, even counted Shirley's breaths. Jem said he found it comforting -Walter wanted to shake him awake, demanding to know how he could sleep so easily. When he heard the scraping sound coming from downstairs he was at Shirley's bedside the next moment.
"Shir?"
"Mmmm, wha'..." his brother rumbled, groggily.
"Shir, listen, did you hear that -listen... That noise? Someone's trying to get in."
"Out prob'ly. Jem's always sneakin' off-"
"Jem's not here, remember? Listen... there it goes again, like someone trying not to make a noise-"
"They're doin' a better job than you. Go back to bed, Walt, I gotta get up in a few hours. Me 'n Carl gonna hunt for Whopper trout-" Shirley yawned, pulling his quilt over his head. "Besides," he said, from under the covers, "Monday'd have a fit if it was a stranger. Gotta be someone we know."
Someone we know. Walter grabbed the lamp and tip-toed downstairs.
"Ken?"
"Good evening, old thing," Ken grinned, stupidly. He was unlacing his shoes on the edge of the bed which sagged pitifully under his weight. Far more than it had ever sagged for him, Walter noticed. He carefully shut the door and wedged a blanket into the gap between it and the floor as a measure against any noise -and Susan Baker, who slept across the hall.
"Thought this was your room," Ken continued, as though it was the Blythes and not his own fine self who had displayed such blatant bad manners. He pulled off his tie and threw it at Walter before falling onto the bed, the bed-springs protesting noisily.
"Shhh," Walter whispered, sitting himself beside his friend with a practiced manoeuvre, and pulling his nightshirt over his knees.
"Damned inconvenient having such a whiny bed, I bet-"
"Not at all, that squeak was good company once," said Walter, setting the lamp on the floor, a knowing half smile on his lips as he recognised the faint tang of alcohol on Ken's breath. The keepers at the coach house wouldn't half miss him when he left. And they weren't the only ones.
He certainly had a way, this Kenneth Ford, and didn't he know it, flexing his limbs idly and making himself at home. Of course, the buttons of Ken's shirt would strain over his chest when he stretched like that, Walter only noticed it because his own muscles had wasted away with the fever. No one would think it to look at him now but there had been a time when Ken had met his match in Walter Blythe.
They had been seventeen when he finally managed to pin Ken to the ground. But there had been no sense of victory and he didn't crow the way he thought he might. He felt stricken, panicked -they weren't little boys anymore- and got off him without a word. When Ken clung to his ankles and tried to take him down Walter shook him off coldly, and said, 'Don't you think it's time we grew up.'
That year he left the midnight swims and the wrestling to his brothers, and wrote sixty-two poems to Rosamond. He and Ken would always have writing, and Walter discovered in writing he grew, in writing he mattered.
This didn't matter, Ken lying about in his bed. Yet his body would keep thrumming. His heart felt like it would fill his throat and he pulled at the collar of his night-shirt. It's just the war, it's Faith, it's Jem, it's ...it's... It is not this. This was nothing, this was fatigue, exhaustion... He was just so tired, he was so horribly tired.
"So, Mr Ford" he muttered, laying his head by his friend, the bed moaning as he shifted himself closer, "are you going to tell me what you're doing here?"
Not that it mattered, somehow nothing mattered now, and he closed his eyes and let Ken's voice go through him...
... ... ...
He felt sliced open, wet with blood, looking at Ken as if he was afraid of him. More than that, as if he hated him.
"I -I came through the window remember... You were having a dream, Walt, just a dream... I'm trying to help you -you're soaking wet." Ken made an effort to keep his words calm. Though he had to admit if someone interrupted them he would have felt more than a little relief, wishing he had more to give Walter than the usual careless quip. "I know very well what you look like, you know, you needn't act so prim and proper-"
"You think I'm prim- that I'm some prissy milksop?"
"What? No-"
"Because I write, because I dream, because I sweat?" he hissed.
"Everybody does that, Walter, don't think you're so special-" Ken attempted a laugh which dissolved immediately when he saw the contempt on Walter's face. His body, however, looked exhausted, trembling wretchedly under his sweat-drenched shirt. Ken placed his hands round Walter's arms and held them tight. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, Walt. It was a dream, just a dream. It's not real."
"Not real," said Walter, dully, the knots in his body slowly dissolving under Ken's fingers.
"No," Ken breathed with relief, shaking his head in the manner of a tutting aunt. "Now be reasonable and take this off," and swiftly pulled at Walter's night-shirt. It came off in one clean movement like a rabbit being skinned. He looks like one, too, Ken thought, when he saw Walter's body, he looks fifteen not twenty.
Walter turned abruptly, rummaging about in his chest of drawers and throwing on a clean night-shirt. Ken went back to the bed, settling on it the careful way Walter had. Though he could not keep in a small snicker as he watched his friend pull out a pair of underpants and shuffle into them awkwardly.
"You needn't wear them just because I am," he joked.
"That's all you're wearing," Walter said, "I don't recall you arriving at the window so sparely dressed."
"You were so infernally hot, it was like sleeping with a human furnace," Ken replied, he lay back, warily, and peered up at the ceiling. The pillow was damp against his neck, and he said, almost casually, as if they were discussing the comet shaped crack above him, "You -you are quite well, aren't you, Walt. The fever, I mean."
"Why, are you afraid you might catch something from me?"
Walter's eyes stared into Ken as if he wanted to bore holes all through him. Ken suddenly felt ridiculous sprawled out the way he was, and he reached for the trousers he had peeled off earlier and proceeded to untangle them. "Why are you so angry with me?" he asked, shoving his foot down his pant-leg. There was a familiar sharp pain as he flexed his foot, and he grimaced.
"Why are you here?" Walter snapped, "Surely you should be stealing through Rilla's window not mine."
"Hmmm, I might just do that." The bed jeered as Ken stood up but it wasn't funny anymore.
"You wouldn't."
Walter's eye's widened with hurt, disappointment and -was it, could it really be- jealousy? Ken had seen that look in any number of other men. But never in Walter. He was the least possessive, most decent hearted person he knew. Even with Faith he had never, not once, wanted to win that girl for his own, only to know what it was to love her. Ken gave up the buttoning of his shirt and rubbed his hands over his eyes in frustration. "Of course I wouldn't," he said.
Not for the first time he thought of Rilla Blythe curled up in the room next door, and all that bravado and banter eluded him. What was it about this girl that pierced him to the heart? Yes she was gorgeous and spirited and sweet, but she was more than that... No. She was less. She had yet to put that armour on, the one that weighed Ken down and kept him on a path he no longer cared about. What had she said that night on the sandbar, that he would have his chance to make it right again? Ken decided he would try, he would speak as plainly as he could. He swallowed hard and looked at Walter.
"Why are you so set on pushing us together?"
"Ken, you can hardly take your eyes off her."
Ken winced. It was true, yet it wasn't the truth. Walter was hiding something and Ken hated to see it. As we all hate in others what we hate in ourselves. "You're right, I should go," he tucked in his shirtfront, absently, and smoothed back his hair.
"To see Rilla?"
"Back to the Wests." Ken said, wearily. "I'm sorry I came, Walter. Believe what you like about your sister. I came here to see you."
He could not deny it was Rilla he'd been thinking of when he came here, and it was her room he looked up at longingly. But he never dreamed of throwing stones at her window -possibly because he half expected Gertrude Oliver to catch them in her teeth and spit them back at him. Instead he slouched pathetically on the Ingleside veranda, lost, ashamed and yes, the tiniest bit tipsy. And it was Walter he wanted then, it was Walter who would understand.
"Who else should I go to? Mim, Ethel Reese?" his own anger beginning to show itself. "You know, I never wanted that train to stop, tonight. When the boys got off at Charlottetown I would have given almost anything to go on and be taken far away... It was a mistake to go along with Jem and Jerry, I thought if I could tie myself to them that I could somehow be a part of it... But they're in another world now -and I can't follow. A stupid lame boy who can't catch up to that damned Piper."
Walter smiled, it was rumpled and unsure but it was there. "Please don't go," he said, simply.
Ken looked at his friend, amazed that the hot rush to leave had so suddenly deserted him. His ankle gave way and he dropped hard onto the bed, they both shared a look as the bed-springs screeched. "No, I don't suppose I'm going anywhere," he said, as much to himself as to Walter. "You'll have to put up with me tonight. I can go up to Jem's bed, if you like-"
"No, I mean, don't go... back to Toronto. Stay here for the remainder of the summer," Walter sat by Ken's side and fell back against the pillow, staring up at the comet still making its way across the ceiling. "The thought of all those well meaning Glen folk looking at me pityingly and thinking that I want to go with Jem. If you were here with me..."
Ken lay back next to him and listened, trying to envisage such a summer; long, hot and empty. Just the two of them and Rilla. Just Rilla and nothing else... He knew what would happen and felt his body burn again at the thought of her in the next room. He rolled away from Walter and curled his knees to his chest.
"What say we talk tomorrow, Walt, I am scuppered after your damned capers-"
"It was just a bad dream," Walter yawned, pulling the quilt over them both. "We all have them, you said so yourself-"
"A bad dream?" Ken turned to look at him briefly. "Funny, I thought you'd be mad for the 16th string quartet-"
"So I am."
"You were reciting the motif, you know, while you were asleep. 'Muss es sein', you said, as clear as you like. 'Muss es sein. Muss es sein...' Great God, Walter Blythe," Ken yawned, nestling his head by his friend, "only you would have a nightmare about Beethoven."
Walter watched him, absorbed wholly as he had been the night before; watching the way Ken closed his eyes, the way his body surrendered so easily to sleep. It did not seem strange, only natural and right that he should kiss him goodnight once more. His mouth brushed Ken's cheek, it was the softest, most fleeting of touches. The rough feel of his skin against Walter's lips like a match being struck.
He left the bed and went back to his old room.
… … …
This is from one of Beethoven's last compositions. There is a motif throughout the work which Beethoven described as asking the question 'Muss es sein?/Must it be?' And then answering it with 'Es muss sein/ It must be'.