16

Ken was sitting on the step by the backdoor finishing his cigarette, Una was inside making some tea. She hadn't asked if he would like a cup, which pleased him somehow. He used to like it when women made a fuss of him, expected it even, but lately it was getting on his nerves.

She pushed the back door open, and it thwacked him in the back. He was down to his shirtsleeves, and the strip of bicycle tyre his father had tacked on the bottom of the door to keep out the drafts, cut a clean line through the tail of his khaki shirt.

Ken got up slowly, Una had already darted down the steps. She turned back to face him, another frown on her grave little face.

"I never realised you were so close. Did I get you?" she said.

Ken pulled the shirt over his head; his vest was hanging on the line flapping like a little ghost in the harbour winds. This meant Una saw it all, saw everything that perhaps only his lance corporal and sundry medics had seen before.

The scars on his chest no longer scared her. Her big brother Jerry had much the same, and her little brother Carl had much worse. Some of the men who filled the pews at church were missing arms and legs these days. Some said they still felt them, some said it still hurt.

It was Ken's physique that alarmed her, he was so much leaner than before. Like the dead Christ the Catholics preferred on their crosses: his skin stretched tight as though the one who made him flayed him first before painting skin over his muscles.

Ken was very brown though, there were even some freckles on his shoulders, and the colour seemed to go all the way down. Una saw that too, because Ken's body was fully twisted as he tried to examine himself and even peered into the back of his drawers.

"I don't think you did," he said, matter of factly. He swiped his hand over the diamond shaped dent above his buttocks then examined his fingers. "Nope, no blood."

"It doesn't hurt?"

He threw his shirt back on and did up a few buttons. "Can't feel a thing."

"That can't be right," Una was unconvinced. She knew how hard she had kicked that door. It needed two hands to wedge it open and she needed one hand to hold her tea.

"It's right enough," Ken nearly smiled. "I haven't been able to feel anything down there for ages."

"You mean it's numb?"

"Sure is," Ken said, he might have been talking about the weather. "The nerves in that region didn't heal up the way they were supposed to. I guess it was just the luck of the draw. I'm not much better than a eunuch, Una, I bet that will make you laugh."

He was enjoying this; she could tell he expected her to blush. And she was, she did, she could tell that too. But that didn't stop her lowering her eyes to inspect his nether regions just to make sure what he was saying was true. He had returned to the step now and sat with his legs wide open the way all men like to sit. Everything appeared to be present and correct, and she was vaguely familiar with the male anatomy even if it had never interested her before.

Una sipped her tea until her blush cooled and she could think of an appropriate reply. So, Ken Ford the lady-killer, the swaggering man about town, the absolute antithesis of everything Walter stood for, had no more lead in his pencil. She imagined some women would have shared a nasty snicker about that, but for some awful, unforeseen reason it almost made her cry.

There was no suitable reply she could make. Ken would have known that too, because whatever questions arose in her mind Una was already able to answer. Did Rilla know? Of course, she must, she had just agreed to marry him. Did Ken care? On balance it seemed he did not. Was there any procedure that could fix the problem? From the way he described his injury the entire ordeal was done and dusted. There was simply getting on with it now like the men who came back with half a leg had to do.

Thinking of those limbless fellows lead Una to say very quietly, "May I see the scar?"

Ken did not know why she would want to, nor could he say why he complied. He got to his feet again and lifted his shirt tail before turning his back to her.

"You can't miss it; it looks like someone stitched two hides together. At least my legs still work."

Una put her cup down on the step and ran her finger along the thick seam of puckering skin running parallel to the waist of his trousers. He didn't know she was doing this because he asked if she could see it yet, which meant he did not feel her at all.

How far did this numbness go, she wondered, as she drew her finger further up his spine. She got an answer before he spoke because gooseflesh bubbled over his skin.

Ken exhaled hard and tugged down his shirt. "Quite the monster, wouldn't you say?"

Una's fingers curled very tightly into her palm, like a snail hiding in its shell. But this fist had no outward destination, it was directed at the feelings that were threatening herself.

"What you look like doesn't matter," she said. "You came back, and so did Jerry and Carl and Jem. There's a lot to be thankful for… a lot. So don't - don't - don't go feeling sorry for yourself."

Ken turned and saw her little snail hands were shaking, and he gripped them in his own and held them tight because he couldn't bear for her to know he was shaking too.

"It's all right, Una, you can be angry, I've done my share of that myself. But he wouldn't want it, Walter wouldn't have wanted it, we must keep faith, remember…"

His voice was clear yet very soft, his grey eyes like the sky before a snow. The tenderness of his touch, the fineness of his frame, it was as if… As if he was living again and holding her in his arms.

It should have hurt, it should have felled her like a grievous blow, but Una felt nothing. One didn't have to go into battle to be numbed by the scars it caused.

She extricated her hands from his, if she'd had her washboard, she would have pressed it hard against her chest.

"You're right, he wouldn't have wanted it," she sniffed. "I best find Bruce. He'll be waiting on his tea."

...