Thanks for the welcome back. Lovely comments - I do like a lol, but no, Ken is very much straighty one eighty. I have never published anything on another site, though I am aware that some of my stories have ended up in random places. Very strange, but also flattering. I'm heartened by the compliments to the descriptive bits because description is my Achilles heel, I tend to do pencil sketches rather than watercolours. And I always thought it was very unilateral of Anne to insist that Ken and Rilla were engaged after one kiss. By her own reckoning she would be practically married to Roy if that was the case, despite her insistence in The Blythes are Quoted that she and Roy never locked lips! I take that detail with a huge grain of salt considering dear Maud could never remember Shirley's age or the correct spelling of Gardner. And how glad I am about that! I'm absolutely certain that I've got some details wrong, but I hope in essentials the flavour is the same.
Love, k.
2
After the celebratory dinner, and as soon as their parents had retired for the night, Ken and Persis went up to the attic and shared a cigarette. Despite her previous denial, Persis had developed something of a habit after the horrors at Neuve Chapelle. She might just as easily have taken up day-drinking or shingled her golden hair. Smoking seemed far less ruinous by comparison, and Persis knew all about the lesser of two evils. Twenty million men had died on account of it.
"Doesn't seem right, that number, does it? Not when everyone we know who served in the war came home." She took a deep drag, and held it for a bit, before letting the next words go out with her smoke. "It makes me think there must be people out there who lost everyone they know just to even out the statistics."
"We know Walter and we lost him," said Ken.
"Yes, but not in the same way. With his poem being as famous as it is, he seems more present than ever before." She took a last drag and said, "I used to have a huge crush on him once."
"Persis, everyone did."
"They did? Oh." She flicked the cigarette out the window. "I thought I was the only one who noticed how splendid he was, because Jem was always the obvious choice."
"I didn't know you were looking to be caught."
"I didn't know you were ready for it either."
And just like that, the conversation veered very neatly to Rilla. Ken had forgotten how good women were at managing that. He hadn't been around many for a good long while.
"Well, it's what one does, isn't it. I am twenty-five," he said.
"I'm glad you're the one to bring up your age because I am trying to work out when you managed to woo Rilla Blythe when the last time you saw her, she would have been about fifteen."
It looked like it was going to be another one of those coming clean moments, Ken hadn't expected it to come again so soon. He bent his head and rolled another cigarette. Persis saw she had embarrassed him.
"I'm sure it all happened innocently enough, but that's how Rilla is too. She's so sheltered and sweet and small town and doesn't seem the type to change -"
"But that's the point," Ken said. "I like her because she is all those things. I liked her for it before the war and I like her even more for it now. Everyone is so bloody jaded these days."
"Like me, you mean?"
"Persis, you've never been jaded in your life. If you were, you would have lit up at the table tonight instead of hiding up here."
"Well, if I am hiding then you're hiding too!"
"Which is exactly what a brother and sister should do. It's proper, it's right, it makes sense, it's not trying to be something it's not –"
Persis was nodding as he spoke and then continued nodding because she had no idea what all those it's were supposed to signify. But Ken knew, he had clearly been thinking about this for some time.
"Surely that's what Walter meant in his poem, when he said to keep faith with our ideals…" Ken sighed and tucked the cigarette behind his ear. "Ah forget it, Willoughby explains it better than I ever could."
"Mmm," Persis closed the window and held out her hand so that Ken should know to help her down from the window ledge. "I wish I could develop a crush on him. He seems entirely crush-worthy, looking out for you the way that he has."
"I don't think he's quite realised the war has ended. I caught him polishing my boots at the quarantine station."
"Don't pretend you didn't enjoy that," Persis' laughter echoed down the stairs and into the second-floor landing. "Is he - is he here?" she whispered, "I would hate for him to overhear us."
"He's downstairs in the spare room."
"Oh drat, that means Papa approves of Willoughby too. I really do wish I could fall in love with him. After my crush on Walter, there would be a sort of poetic justice to it."
"Persis, just because Walter saved Willoughby's life it doesn't mean… well, it doesn't mean anything other than that."
"Oh yes it does!" They had reached her bedroom and she plucked the cigarette from behind her brother's ear and tucked it behind her own. "Why else would you let him tag along with you all the way to Rilla's house and play gooseberry at your romantic reunion?"
...