As always, everything is L.M.M's -only this idea is mine.

Past Imperfect

In which Shirley collides with Walter; Walter butts heads with Di; and Di is floored by Carl and Shirley

Ingleside, dawn, August 6th, 1914

Walter put his hands to his lips, still remembering the touch of one boy when he collided with another.

"Aw-" Shirley exclaimed, rubbing the toe that had struck Walter's shin. "Why aren't you carrying a lamp?" Walter looked up at him as if to say that he was a fine one to talk, and leaned against the stairwell to nurse his own bruise. "And before you say anything," he continued, "you took ours with you, remember?"

The light. It was still under the window in the little room. Walter wondered briefly if he should go back, then slid down the wall and dropped on a step.

"Gee, Walt, didn't think I bumped you that hard-"

"I'm only tired-"

Shirley gave an exasperated humph, "Got more sleep than I did, I bet. After you sallied off Di burst in looking for you-"

Di? Walter frowned, and then sank further, remembering that his sister had given him one of their signals at the table last night. Whilst trying to coax Nan to eat more than a morsel of supper Di sent him a furtive look. Pulling on her ear and pointing upstairs; meaning tonight after everyone's asleep, then we can talk.

When their eldest brother announced his decision to enlist Walter knew that Di would have wanted nothing more than to follow him into the Valley and disappear for an hour or two. But Nan's anguish, the sound she had made as though part of her body had been ripped from her, there was nothing Di could do but give her sister something of herself. Yet when Walter spotted her linking arms with Jem and Nan as they made their way to the Manse he felt nothing so much as relief. He'd been pounded from all sides since the Piper had sounded his call, there had been no time to sleep let alone think. But as he lay in the bough of the chestnut tree his thoughts were not of Faith, or even Jem, and he definitely had not been thinking of Di. He hadn't considered her at all, he realised, and lately he'd been looking for reasons not to be where she was.

He bit his lip and shook his head impatiently. He was doing it again, thinking of other things when he should be thinking of Di. Clearly Di had been thinking about him. Was it possible she had kept looking for him, too?

"If you've finished lounging about in the poet style. Carl said he would wait, but you know Carl," Shirley said, nudging Walter in order to squeeze by. He descended two steps before receiving a sharp tug on the aviator's scarf he had taken to wearing.

"Did you tell her -did you tell Di where I was?" Walter asked him.

"Tell her yourself," Shirley replied, "she's still there waiting for you."

… … …

Di curled up behind the curtains of the window seat, the same one little Jem had fallen asleep on when Susan thought he'd run away to get tattooed. It was a perfect place to hide, the only place in Ingleside where one could be invisible. Though perhaps it was no longer necessary.

She had never felt more superfluous to this family. Each one caught up in their own tempest -excepting Shirley of course, one could always rely on good sense from him. She wished she'd thought to stay by his side yesterday and be spoiled by Susan. She'd been horribly hungry all day -the effects of all that champagne she supposed. When everyone else picked at their plates during dinner Di had to stop herself snatching their uneaten pies.

It had been hellish at the Manse. Di knew that her place was by Nan's side, but hadn't reckoned on Nan wanting to be with Faith. Of course she would. The two of them 'now shared the distinction of being broken hearted sweethearts' -as Mrs Norman Douglas put it. It seemed impossible that woman could be sister to an angel like Rosemary Meredith. For where she was all milk and honey, Ellen Douglas was better taken with your nose held and your eyes shut. Truth to tell, every Blythe would quietly confess to wanting to box her between her beetle brows at least once. But yesterday Di had to contain a snide little laugh, wondering if Nan wasn't luxuriating in her agony just the teensiest bit much, if Faith wasn't rather too aware of how her bright eyes and fervent expression made her even more beautiful.

These were the bitter thoughts which filled her head as she emptied every shelf in the Meredith's pantry for the busybodies and doomsayers who invaded the Manse that afternoon. Rosemary excused Nan after her tears splashed over yet another plate of curried egg sandwiches, and that was all the excuse Faith needed to get herself out of the kitchen, too. Una merely doubled her efforts. The way she kept slicing and buttering, brewing and boiling, never once taking a bite for herself. Di wished just once that Una wouldn't anticipate the trilling of the kettle's whistle so that she might scream aloud without anyone noticing.

Not until she returned to Ingleside could Di breathe again. It wasn't the thought of home so much as the thought of Walter that comforted her. The evening had been so fraught. Mother seemed to hum with an unexpressed fury, though this had been more to do with Dads than the war. Di knew the feeling and could have done with being wrapped in her father's arms herself. In the end it only seemed right that it was Di who cosseted her sister, encouraging her to take one more spoon of soup, brushing her hair over her pillow as she sang little nothings of the sea, the moon -anything but love or death. This turned out to be trickier than she first supposed, but it felt good to have something else to bend her thoughts to.

Knowing there was someone waiting up for her made Di feel her selfishness keenly. Walter was only upstairs in the rambling attic, whereas Jerry would be going off to the other side of the world. Well, the training camp at Quebec in the foreseeable, but still. Whatever love she once felt -or fancied she felt, she could hardly remember how it felt at all- could be nothing to what Nan felt for Jerry Meredith. What Faith felt for Jem. Their boys were going. For all she knew other boys might never get near it. But she did not know. Not that she had a right to. But it would ease her mind because it hurt. It hurt to hold it in, her own insignificant fears.

It didn't seem possible that Walter had forgotten her. Unfortunately for Shirley, Di's inability to comprehend the obvious meant that he was made to repeat it any number of times, and in the end had to go to the extraordinary effort of getting out of his rumpled cocoon and pulling back the covers of the bed next to him.

"Not here," he said, shortly, wondering if Di would expect him to flip the mattress up in a moment in case Walter was hiding there. He wouldn't have been entirely surprised if he was. Once, in their small days, he caught Walter trying to write upside down in order to find out if ideas would come to him quicker -all he got was a headache and a puddle of ink on the floor in the shape of a dragon that even Susan could not quell. "I know when I am bested, Mrs Doctor dear, I am not so proud as to not know that," she said, with more satisfaction than perhaps she wanted to show, as she eyed little Walter cutting strips for a new rug that now needed making.

Di stared at it, then at the floorboards, then at her feet -anywhere that would help her conceal from her little brother the tears that threatened to come.

"Silly me," she sniffed, "I must have misunderstood."

"Misheard, rather. The very first thing I said to you was check the little room-"

The little room, of course! Walter must have thought that's what she'd meant because that's where they always talked. He'd been so busy emptying it this morning that she had assumed... But no matter. She kissed Shirley hard on his sweet brown head -oof, sisters!- and tip-toed down the stairs.

… … …

"Morning, Di-aphanous," Walter said, lightly, nestling into the window seat. He plumped up a cushion and held it close against him, before swooping at Di for a kiss. She did not turn as he expected -well, hoped- she might and he pecked at a mouthful of her ruddy hair. "You're up early".

"That's what Nan said," Di said, looking out of the window instead of at him. "She said I was up early, when actually I hadn't even been to bed. Now you've said the same thing. I wonder why it is that no one notices what I do in this house."

"I notice, and Father-"

"When he's here," Di interjected. She pulled back strands of hair come loose from her braid so that Walter could see her small, pale face. The sky through the window was a dirty grey and it washed all the green from her eyes. "Did he punish you... for coming home so late?"

For a moment Walter thought she was asking the pear tree, whose tip-most leaves pattered against the pane. He was about to say as much then thought better of it. "Not as such, no... I mean, not yet." The most Father had given him was a cool look, the one that meant he intended Walter to stew on his misdeeds a good while longer.

"He punished me," Di said, she turned slightly but could not quite meet Walter's eyes.

"What did he say?" He was not in the least worried for himself, only wanting to kindle some sort of conversation.

"That I was forbidden from the next dance. I had to pretend that I cared, otherwise of course, he would have thought of another punishment."

"You are Di-abolical."

"Don't-"

"What, what is it, My-Di?" he reached for her hands balled up tight in her lap and touched her, briefly. Di looked at him with eyes that said, You have to ask?

"Well let us talk now." Walter scooped his knees to himself, tucking up under his nightshirt like a small boy. "So tell me true, how is it that the most glorious girl I know doesn't care if she goes to another dance?"

Di turned and faced him squarely. She thought she would burst with all the words she wanted to say to him, yet all she said was, "Do you?"

"What do you mean?" Walter asked her. So unexpected, so irrelevant was her question she might have been speaking another language.

"Do you care if you ever go to another dance?" she asked again, but did not pause to let him answer. "You don't, do you." Walter could only shrug with incomprehension and Di looked as if she meant to box him between the brows -beetled or not. "Alright, so tell me true. Did you ever want to dance with Faith?"

"What?" Walter croaked, "No -I... Faith is not permitted to dance."

"But if she was, Walter," Di continued, her voice all quiet patience, as though she was having to explain the past imperfect tense to one of her students. "If there was no Jem. Would you, did you, do you want to dance with Faith?"

"But Jem is here. And God willing he always will be. Faith and Jem belong together."

"The way Diana and Orion belong together?" Di flushed and pressed her head against the cool glass at the window. Outside the rising sun pricked through the leaves of the pear tree like a chain of constellations. "All those odes you composed to their eternal love. Did you really mean it -or were you just mocking?"

"Of course I meant them," Walter said, tenderly. Di peered at him. He had the oddest sensation of being observed and shifted uncomfortably trying to recall the opening phrase of 'Farewell Bright Hunter' -now how did it begin?

"And all your poems to Rosamond. You meant them too, I suppose."

"Ye-es..." The briefest scowl crossed Walter's face, though whether from Di's interrogating manner or his inability to conjure one line of her favourite poem, he wasn't sure. "That is, as far as one can find meaning in invention," he sounded like a dusty old professor, and smiled to himself when Di crossed her arms and huffed. "But Faith isn't Rosamond -not really," he said, as if he'd only now realised this. "Rosamond was a fantasy, a memory, a dream-"

"A pretence."

Walter felt his breath sucked out of him, Di's arrow had hit its mark, though he was not so used to her taking aim at him. "Whatever do you mean?"

"I saw you, Walter. At the tree tower. I saw you and I thought, No it couldn't be true. After all, I had been drinking and it was dark and I despised myself for thinking ill of you, for being so mistrustful when our brothers and sisters are being so brave. Then I went looking for you last night, I opened the door of the little room and I saw you again, saw the way you were looking-"

"I was sleeping!" Walter snapped, he leaped off the window seat, glaring at her.

Di wouldn't have it and met his gaze undaunted. "I know you, Walter Blythe, you never looked at Faith that way." Whenever he looked at Faith he had been wistful and shy, and Di had wanted to hug him, protectively. Last night she had seen something altogether different, so fierce and powerful that she blushed to remember it. "But I've known that look and I know what it means. You see, I wasn't pretending when I told you how I felt about- what happened at Over-Harbour. And you made me believe you felt the same way about Faith."

"I wasn't pretending, you don't understand-"

"No. I don't," Di cut in, "I told you everything, Walter. No one knows what I truly feel -what I felt, I mean -except for you."

"You're afraid, aren't you?" That's what this was really about, Di hadn't seen anything -there was nothing to see- she was only hurt that he'd let her down. Holding the hands of everyone else whilst holding in her own uncertainty. "You're thinking he might decide to enlist, too.

"He isn't eighteen yet," Di murmured, a deep red spotting her cheeks as it always did when she thought of how young he was, "I doubt his mother would sign an exemption. But his father would, I wouldn't put it past him to suggest the idea, himself. God forgive me but sometimes I would give anything to see that man's face the day he finds himself on the wrong side of St Peter's gate."

Walter tucked a stray wave behind her ear, remembering when he not had the strength to do more. The day Di fell against his pillow and revealed with sickened whispers what happened behind closed doors at the O'Ryan homestead. There had been nothing she could do. Nothing Walter could do but stroke her hair over and over till her breath came as soft as his hand. "We should have told Father, My-Di, I always wanted you to-"

"And when everybody asks how I came to see the bruises on his body?" she countered with swift fury; that Walter had evaded all her attempts to be open and yet expected it of her!

"I know it seems hard, but the truth-"

"What? The truth shall set ye free?" Di said, scornfully. "Will it set you free, Walter Blythe? Will you tell the truth to me?"

"There's nothing to tell," Walter replied, in a tone which meant the discussion so much as it involved him, was over. He nestled back into the window seat and began teasing out the tassels of a cushion. Di wanted to yank it from his pale poetic fingertips and fling it at his head. Instead she wrenched the curtains over the window -and over him- and stomped to the door.

"Well, so long then."

Walter popped his head through the curtain. His black hair mussed up comically, but Di had no smile for him this time. "Are we quarrelling, Di-chotomy?"

"I'm going," she declared, with a flip of her long red braid.

"Where?" Walter asked her, unable to hide his bemusement.

"Fishing!" and she slammed the door behind her.

… … …

Carl Meredith was scanning the dips and eddies of the pond when his eye caught sight of a vivid red coming through the trees. He shot up and patted down his sandy hair because his first thought -it embarrassed him with its quickness- was that it was Rilla Blythe. Why she should be the first thing that came to mind he couldn't quite conclude. She was the sort, as was her mother, to frighten all the trout away. And he was fairly sure her brother, casting his rod with an efficient flick at the other side of Mason's pond, would agree. Though he mightn't admit it -they were a clannish lot, those Blythes.

At any rate, his concentration was all over the shop now. He decided to make another attempt at untangling the line of his second rod which had snagged against the brush behind him, teasing out the knots while expecting at every moment to hear Rilla's lilting voice filling up the silence. After that aural assault he and Shirley might as well move further up the pond -and risk the wrath of Ig O'Ryan. A man so mean he would have wrapped his whole farm in that new fangled barbed wire if it meant he could put a stop to the no-good antics of boys like Carl and Shirley.

Carl grunted, his impatience and contempt as tangled as the fishing-line. Antics. Fishing took care and precision, one didn't catch a fish by simply dropping in a line and hoping. And Whopper trout had more than usual salvelinus smarts -he must have if he'd lived this long. So ancient, it was said Old Sandy's father hunted it when he was a laddie! That being so, Whopper trout belonged fair and square to the whole of the Glen whatever part the pond he happened to lurk in. And everyone, even no good Ig O'Ryan, would just have to lump it.

More often than not it was those unlucky enough to find themselves within reaching distance of Mr Ignatius O'Ryan -and his sinewy arms could stretch unnervingly far- who bore the lumps, bumps and bruises. Even Carl's father, who was a Minister and therefore had to find something Christian to say about him, called him a fellow of the lowest order -this when the man snatched Carl's butterfly net and whipped the backs of his legs with it. That night Carl had spent a good long while deciding whether it was gastropods or nematodes that Ig O'Ryan languished in.

He had just managed to loosen the line from the branch when he sensed something approach him with the measured stillness of a deer. Carl knew no such beast lurked about these parts, and that only one red-head could manage such stealth, so offered his greeting thus-

"Morning, Di Blythe,"

"Oh, Carl, when I had done everything to keep as quiet as I could."

"That's how I knew it was you," he grinned, looking up at her. There was nothing quiet about her hair, though Carl knew enough not to add that. He did not know much else about girls, but neither was he impatient to add to his knowledge. Like any good entomologist he trusted that sooner or later the beauty he sought would flutter to his finger -why waste good thinking time laying honey traps.

Di gave him a grateful smile and unrolled the small canvas square she had brought with her, and placed it on the dewy grass. So, she was to be here for a while, Carl deduced. Di sometimes came by and sat with Carl as he maintained his vigil by some burrow or nesting ground. He didn't mind so much, an extra pair of eyes often came in handy, especially sharpish green ones like hers. Maybe there was something to that, for his onetime fishing companion, the unfortunate son of Ig O'Ryan, had green eyes too. He had once gone to Di's school and must have been a favourite of hers because some days she wasn't half so interested in making an Albright knot as she was discovering what her old pupil was up to.

Di was in many ways the perfect girl. Only a little old for him, and her hair could stand with being a little more chestnut, her nose more freckled, her eyes the golden brown of lycaena phlaeas, coppery and shadowy by turns... He coughed and Shirley shot him a dark look from over the pond.

"Don't suppose you brought anything else in your satchel?" Carl said, dropping the line and winking one bright blue eye. "We ate our stash on the way down here."

"You astonish me," said Di. "That's the only reason you put up with a girl hanging round, isn't it? We always bring in fresh supplies."

"No-" Carl began, at about the same time that Shirley -who had scooted over on sight of the Edward VII coronation tin- said "Yesh," a slice of cold apple pie in his mouth.

When their tongues had licked the crumbs from their fingers and the sun the dewdrops from the grass, the boys began packing away their fishing gear with the unspoken understanding that it was time to move on.

"You want to risk it?" Carl said, pulsing jumpily on his haunches, thinking of how they could get to the O'Ryan side of the pond without ol' Ig spotting them.

"I'll say. Been itching to go there since yesterday."

"Itching? Shirley Blythe, since when have you been itching to get one of O'Ryan's big brown boots flung at your big brown head?"

"O'Ryan's enlisted, hasn't he. I took Jem and Jerry to the station and I saw him-"

"Sorry, what did you say, Shir?" Di had been down at the pond working a blackberry stain out from her skirt when she heard O'Ryan's name, and came scuttling up to know the worst. "You saw the O'Ryan boy at the station?"

"Not Gilbert O'Ryan. His father. He left the farm to join up."

"He's ancient. Must be nearly forty -will they take him, you think?" Carl asked, hopefully.

"I believe I'll stay here, anyhow," Di muttered. There had been a moment, oh and it was dazzling in its simplicity, when she imagined herself scaling the fence of the O'Ryan place and marching straight to his front door. But then what? Di couldn't answer that -didn't even know if she could make her feet move.

Carl and Shirley had no such problems and leaped in the air with boyish glee.

"Ding-dong, what a day! About time this war gave us something to celebrate -I mean it's the law of averages, isn't it?"

"More Newton, wouldn't you say. Every action has a reaction?"

"Which one is it, teacher?" Carl laughed, without the least interest in knowing the answer. She was a brick, that Di Blythe, so quiet now ol' Whopper would probably leap into her lap. "Thanks for the eats! We'll pass on your best to your old pupil if we see him. Good ol' O'Ryan, be good to catch up with him. Now his father's gone he might have time to go fishing again."

"Might have caught Whopper, himself," Shirley said, a wicked glint in his brown eyes.

Carl answered it with a swift kick to his rump, before scampering away through the brush before he received a Blythe sized boot to the same.

"Bye Di," Shirley called, "tell the Mothers I won't be home for dinner!"

If I can get my legs to carry me there, Di thought, weighed down with utter relief. Relief was supposed to make one lighter, yet what other feeling could it be? He hadn't enlisted, his father had, and that would mean that he could stay in the Glen as long as he wished. Farmers were exempt from enlisting -someone had to keep the troops fed. He was staying and he was safe. Safe from the mortars in Belgium and the fists of ol' Ig. He was safe. He was safe. He was safe, she rejoiced. Knowing all the while that her heavy heart was still very much in danger.

… … …

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