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When they first meet, Una is ten years old. She is tired and lost and a million miles away in her own little world. Her dark blue eyes fall on him, and she knows . They are kindred spirits.
He seems to live in a world beyond what the other children can see. The kingdoms he dreams of seem to shine in his eyes, and Una sometimes gets the strange feeling that he is really an old, wise man inside that twelve-year-old’s youthful countenance.
They talk. They play. They dream together.
Una is 12 years old when she realises she loves him.
She is 12 years and 1 month old when she realises he’s in love with Faith.
Una is 12 years and 1 month and 1 day old when she decides that she will always love Walter, even if he will never love her back.
* * * * *
The Blythe and Meredith children grow, and things change. Jem gets Faith’s name on his wrist, and Walter has to pretend it doesn’t bother him. Una can see it though; the wistful look that crosses his face when Jem and Faith ‘make eyes’ at each other over dinner at Ingleside. Mrs Blythe pats his shoulder consolingly as she rises to fetch dessert, and Walter looks like the perfect picture of the tragic unrequited lover.
Una might find it funny if she weren’t so familiar with the feeling.
Rilla catches her eye, and Una can only hope that the younger girl has not noticed her staring at Walter.
* * * * *
They still meet—the Ingleside and the Manse brood—down in the Glen, though they are rapidly becoming too old for the games they once played. These days, there is far more courting than playing, though Una herself hides her fancy carefully from the others. Only Rilla seems to have noticed, but she has never spoken of it, for which Una is grateful. She has never been one for public declarations.
Una has become bolder than she once was, although she is still reserved and quiet. She has, however, begun to talk to Walter. She listens to his fancies when the others take no interest, and he sometimes encourages her in her studies. He laughs when she tells him of a cooking mishap (all Carl’s doing: he should have just killed the mouse rather than trying to befriend it!), and he looks up at her with those wonderful gray eyes, hidden behind his dark hair where it has fallen across his face.
His eyes flick to hers, then flit away easily.
She wishes she could do the same.
* * * * *
For all that Una has a soul-destroying crush on Walter, that doesn’t stop them from becoming friends. Come to think of it, they only seem to have grown closer as the years have progressed. She loves it when they talk, when he tells her about his dreams and she talks him about her hopes.
(All but one of her hopes, that is.)
Walter is quiet this evening. He is lost in thought, but those thoughts do not seem to be as agreeable as usual. For a long while, they simply sit in silence together, watching the sun setting through the trees. As the sky turns a dusky purple, Walter finally speaks.
‘Do you ever wonder where your soulmate is, Una?’
The question jolts her from her musing. She has no idea how to answer. Instead, she just turns to look at him. His dark hair is falling into his eyes, as it often does, and Una has to be careful not to let her fondness show too much on her face.
He sighs and continues, ‘It’s just…I knew that Faith and Jem were soulmates, but somehow it still hurts. And sometimes I’m so sure that my soulmate is here, but I just can’t seem to find her.’
Una’s heart clenches, but she manages to smile at him anyway. ‘I’m sure she is. You’ll find her one day, and when you do, it will be with perfect timing.’
He smiles at her. ‘I wish I had your optimism. You are quite the best girl in the Glen, and your soulmate will be lucky to have you. Don’t laugh….!’ (for Una had been unable to suppress her slightly hysterical laughter from the sheer ridiculousness and irony of this conversation), ‘I have never met any girl as kind and steadfast as you! You are fast becoming one of the dearest people in the whole world to me.’
Una is blushing hotly now, but hopes he cannot see it in the fading light. She turns away, to look back at the sunset and says quietly, ‘If my soulmate thinks half as well of me as you do, I should be very happy, I’m sure.’ She screws up her remaining courage and shuffles a little closer to him.
He slips an arm around her shoulder and squeezes. ‘That you will! And in the meantime, we are each other’s best chums. I really couldn’t hope for a better friend.’
Una hopes that he can’t hear her heart beating faster than normal as they lapse into comfortable silence once more.
* * * * *
War breaks out.
War seems like such a foreign concept, one that cannot possibly touch them here , but if Walter is to be believed, it will scar every one of them. Before she knows it, her brothers are talking of being in khaki, Rilla is setting up a Red Cross Society, and all anyone can seem to talk about is the war .
It doesn’t seem real to her until Jerry comes home one night in uniform.
She manages to hold herself together through dinner, but excuses herself swiftly afterwards. She’s out crying privately in Rainbow Valley when she hears soft footsteps behind her, and she feels the log she’s sitting on shift slightly. She looks up to find Walter holding out a handkerchief, like the true gentleman he is. She takes it.
‘Jerry signed up.’ Her voice is shakey.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘None of us do, Una. We can only pray that he’ll be safe.’
She tries to stop it, but the tears come thick and fast. Walter does not say anything further, but simply slips an arm around her shoulders and holds her. He stays there until her sobs begin to become more hiccups than tears, then watches the sunset in silence beside her.
Sometimes she thinks she’s beginning to come to terms with how much she loves him. Then she sees him again, and he does something like this , just being kind and patient and there , and it’s like she’s falling in love with him for the first time all over again.
Maybe, one day, he’ll return it.
Maybe.
* * * * *
Una continues to worry. She’s worried for her brothers and for Jem; she knows they’ll want to ‘do their bit’. But she worries more for Walter; what people are going to say about him if he doesn’t go, and what the war will do to him if he does.
She’s not sure if it’s him being killed or his soul being destroyed by the horrors of war that scares her more. But it’s going to be fine. She selfishly hopes he won’t enlist.
Surely, he won’t enlist.
* * * * *
Walter enlists.
Walter enlists, and Una is afraid that she might cry, might break down at the train station as she waves him off. That he might finally see how she loves him, just as he leaves.
She needn’t have worried; he is just as oblivious as ever.
She shakes his hand, determined not to betray herself, but it seems that Walter has other ideas. He bends to kiss her cheek, as a brother might; but Walter is not her brother, and they have never been this close before. She can feel her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest, and can only hope that no-one notices the look of longing that she is sure passes across her face. This will be how she remembers him, for those months that he is away in France. This is how she will think of him, until she sees him again.
Maybe, one day, they’ll be something. But today is not that day.
She manages to smile as the train leaves the platform, taking Walter with it.
* * * * *
Those first few months are terrible. Not in a terrifying, catastrophic way—instead, it’s a slow burning worry and aching longing eat away at Una’s insides, making her unsettled and distracted. As time passes, the burden begins to lessen. After all, if Walter has survived so far, perhaps he will make it through. She allows herself to hope.
Not to dream, though. That would be overly optimistic.
* * * * *
Walter writes to her. She always gets a tiny thrill when she sees a letter waiting for her upon arriving home from running errands or visiting Ingleside.
It doesn’t happen as often as she might hope.
But when it does, she steals away as soon as she can, down to the Glen, and reads.
He writes of the men he has seen die in front of him, and the dirt of the trenches. He writes of the sadness, the filth, and the rats. But he also writes reminiscences of Rainbow Valley, and paints pictures of the Glen with his words. And once, he writes about how much he misses her, how much he wants to see her face to face.
This is the last letter she ever receives from him.
* * * * *
Walter is dead.
Walter is dead .
Walter is dead and Una will never see him again.
* * * * *
Rilla gives her his final letter with tears in her eyes, though she’s trying not to show it. Dear, sweet Rilla. Walter would be so proud of his sister, if only he could see the young woman she’s becoming.
But he can’t see it. Because he’s gone.
Una is still numb, still trying to understand , trying to accept that he really is dead. It doesn’t seem quite real to her, that he could be gone forever.
That night, she sits among the trees in Rainbow Valley, reliving all the old memories. It seems to her that the place is teeming with ghosts. The ghosts of their younger selves, of those happier days…and Walter.
She wonders if he ever knew she loved him.
By moonlight she reads his last letter, and decides that he did. Maybe he never knew just how she loved him, but he knew that she cared. Maybe, if he had lived long enough, he might have seen just how.
But those dreams are futile now. She hopes that it was painless.
She hopes that he felt her beside him as he passed.
* * * * *
It is Una’s eighteenth birthday. She doesn’t know what to hope for. But she’s been dreaming for a long time, and even if Walter’s not here any longer….
Well, maybe. Maybe, they could have been something.
A sharp burning sensation sears across her wrist. She takes a moment to compose herself, closing her eyes as she takes a deep, shuddering breath.
She opens them, and looks.
A tear rolls down her cheek and lands on the black letters now emblazoned on her wrist.
* * * * *
The signalling cannon booms out across the gray wasteland. Walter barely hears it. His heart pounds in his ears as he leaps up over the top of his trench.
He barely makes it 10 faltering, muddy steps before the bullet pierces his side.
He falls to the ground, rolling into a ditch between duckboards and wire, a tiny dirt haven in a warzone. As he collapses, his watch falls from his pocket and pops open. A quarter to ten. He’s eighteen.
Through the haze of pain in his side, Walter registers a smaller stinging pain in his wrist. He fumbles with his sleeve, struggling to breathe as the pain from the bullet wound spreads up his torso. He reads the name in black on his wrist, and feels the tension leave his body, as he smiles for the last time.
The medics find him, hours later, still and silent, but with the stars in his eyes, a smile on his lips and the name ‘Una Meredith’ etched in black on his wrist.