The Hated Uniform

The knock did not repeat. In fact, there were no further sounds at all. Staring at the inside of that door, the metronome of her pulse counted minutes into each passing second. The door handle grew large and unfamiliar, the empty coats hooks pinning her like an insect. Still she waited, as the silence filled her lungs to drowning point, 'til she could bear it no longer. She grasped the handle and yanked the door open with none of the caution she felt. And there it was. On her doorstep. The hated uniform.

The pallor of his visage, the dark patches of his tunic that spoke of wounds neither new nor bound. Barely more than a boy, a handful more summers than her own son had seen. If even. A crumpled, broken marionette, draped in the cloth of the occupier.

Just 4 weeks since the same uniform had finally left her and her farm in peace. Ostracised from her community and with a baby in her belly. Pariah. What choice had she had? Yes, she had encouraged the commander's attention. How could she not. The squad would have passed her around like a rag-doll. 4 times he had taken her at her own kitchen table. 3 times, shoved her forward into that table and pushed her skirts to her waist. Each time, with her cheek pressed to smooth wood, he had taken nothing from her and she had given him nothing. She felt no shame or humiliation. Her body was not her. She knew she would simply endure. But the fourth time. The fourth time. She burned yet with the humiliation of the memory. As he had pressed her once again towards the same spot, she had turned towards him. One of the monsters. She had hiked her own skirts, and her thighs had greeted his broad hips willingly. She had given him everything, and had had taken it. And somehow she knew, that was the moment, as he spilled his warm strong seed in her belly, that she had taken his child. Of course there were nights thereafter. Many nights after that, as she found herself retiring to a bed with him in it. Nights of, sometimes increasingly eager, coupling. But it was that day at the table had left her with child. The bastard child of a wicked regime.

And then one morning they left, even more swiftly than they had arrived. The house and the farm buildings emptied in minutes as they fled the approaching front. Or perhaps raced towards it. She knew not. And cared not. She knew only that she hated them and wished them all dead. Men like these who had left her without her husband, and without her son. Violators. Invaders. Monsters.

And now one lay on her doorstep. Helpless in her power. She. She could. A dozen terrible deaths raced out from her head to her hands. But they could not pass her heart. So instead her strong arms pulled him in over the threshold and towards the warmth of the fireplace behind her. His tall body impossibly light in her grip, as she wondered at the madness of her actions.

****

His eyes flinched from their first light in 4 days. His wounds cleaned and bound, and not even the ash of his uniform remained in the fireplace. The last few telltale bits of metal buried in the farmyard. The morning sunshine and the window over the bed framed her stern face in a worthy halo as she turned it towards him. He had not even the energy to cast about in panic, but merely lay there. Blinking at her in confusion as she rose from her chair to fetch water and thin soup.

She had wondered how she would feel when he woke up. If he woke up. Would she regret her actions? Did she already? What if attacked her? Memories of such thoughts now made her smile a little. He had proved as meek as a kitten. And as weak as one too. And though she couldn't yet explain to herself why she had done it, she knew wholeheartedly she did not regret it. He was neither soldier nor enemy. Just a lost boy that the universe saw fit to lay at her doorstep.

By degrees his color returned and he started to sit up in bed. She understood him well enough to know he sought the satchel he'd been carrying. That had been the first thing she had torn from him that first afternoon, looking for some terrible thing to rekindle her hatred - a trinket of some crime committed or live stolen. Instead the pitiful bundle of letters from an anxious mother, the last postmarked more than 2 years before, separated him irrevocably from the uniform on his shoulders. She gave him the letters. Her feeling at the bright uncomplicated gratitude of his smile confused and embarrassed her.

Her dreams had been anxious for many months, but they paled in comparison to his. As his strength returned, the horrors of his past crowded more closely around his bed and his nightly struggles grew more fevered - he moaned and whined and trashed about like a panicked, injured colt. Eventually she took to murmuring comforts at his bedside, stroking his hair and sometimes cradling his head until the episodes passed. It seemed to help them both to sleep with less restlessness, and became habit for her at night. Like tending to a squalling child. So when she heard his moaning, and the squeak of his bed, she rose and shuffled over, expecting to find him asleep and struggling. But the moonlight revealed not a nightmare struggle but stomach and buttocks clenching as an eager stroke brought forth a spill of seed. Then immediately he lay still again, his strings once more cut. She stood there, afraid to move lest he see her. And unable to look away from the evidence that this was no boy in her house. Once she realized he had indeed fallen to a deep and dreamless sleep, she returned shakily to her own bed. Her old dreams found they had new and confusing company - the unwelcome imaginings of welcomed touches, of trust eagerly betrayed and comfort repurposed. But she found she had neither the energy nor the will to fight them.

Before marriage, and childbirth, and the years that came with each, she had not been the only pretty young girl in the village. But few would have argued she was less than first among equals. And neither the ensuing years, nor her instinctive, agrarian modesty ever did much to temper that truth. Especially now, as the flower of maternity bloomed in her. Beneath her simple garments, her movements still whispered of the comfort and vigor of a farm-honed figure, rounded by new life. All days but Easter and Christmastide found her dark locks sequestered by braid. But no construction of function and modesty could mask her blue eyes.

The first time she had saved his life, it had been her arms that did it, hauling him in. Though her heart played no small part. The second time, it was her eyes that saved him. And this time, aided by her wit.

New soldiers arrived, this time in the lighter hues of the liberators. Their arrival was inevitable, given her farm's location - it lay just upstream from where two tributaries join to form the main river, and thus commanded the last easily fordable crossing before the more rocky and mountainous terrain to the north. She was grateful to them, but she also knew they would hang him, or worse. The thought of another loss was more than she could bear. And it would be a loss. That otherwise shocking revelation did not even warrant guilty inspection in her mind when it appeared. It was simple true.

These soldiers were confident and well-fed, and secured the farm with practised efficiency. After momentary surprise, they scarcely gave a second thought to her mute son, toiling in the field behind the barn to thin the root vegetables. By his looks and his age, he was so clearly her son that it seems the deception would have succeed without her even thinking of it. But she had thought of it, weeks ago, and coached him to play the part well. That he had the same eyes as her, so rare in these parts, had raised for her again the question again of the mother she had never met and whence she hailed.

In week the soldiers were her guests, her maternal demeanour fussing around him was apparent and unforced. And it thankfully exposed none of the frenetic dreams full of touching, seizing, sliding, spurting that consumed her each night.

Her confusion about her feelings grew more intense once the soldiers moved on. She knew she thought of him almost as another son, but as she spied on his nightly ministrations, she wished the baby in her belly was his. And she wished even harder for the memory of him putting it there. If she beckoned him to her bed, that would be his station in the house thereafter. His strong back would be hers. His arms. His thick, wet seed. But she would be defiling him, this boy. Though thinking that did little to quench her. Rather it fed the fire further each day, as she looked upon him as both her son and husband, restored as one person.

There was neither resistance nor denial when, while pushing her gravid form past him in the farmhouse door one morning, she lifted her chin to his and kissed him. Not as a son, but as a lover. He kissed her back with the vigor of one hundred nights, and they stayed there, pressed to each other, til the baby kicked between them. A flush of shame raced across her face, but he held her with one strong arm as he placed his other hand gently on her belly. "I love you as you are." His accent grew lighter as his words grew softer "I will raise this child as my own, and bless it with a sibling before another summer is out". Her indignity at his presumption died before it took flight, as she realized his words were truth. This strong young man would claim her and seed her, and she would bear him any child God saw fit to gift them.

She flushed again, this time in excitement, as he unbuckled with unhurried ease. His youthful control and confidence faltered when she dropped gently to her knees and brought him to her mouth without preamble. Instantly she knew it was she who would be making him a man. The thought delighted her as she swirled her warm tongue from crest to base through the slick taste of his anticipation.

She had wanted her mouth to draw pleasure from his loins for months, as she watched his nightly thrusting. But today she wanted to seal their transgression more completely. So without rising entirely, she crawled on her hands and knees onto her bed, gathering her heavy skirts around her. He stood still frozen where she had left him, but looking on in awe. Smiling, she looked back at him over her shoulder as she spread her knees two handspans more apart and shamelessly presented herself to him. He needed no further signal or invitations but stepped in one movement from his coarse trousers and drew behind her. One of his hands softly stroked the side of her hanging belly even as the other drew her firmly back onto his manhood.

Sheathing this once-enemy turned almost-son within her, she could scarcely contain the sense of glorious, inevitable, inexcusable wrongness. The star-bright sensations it brought forth radiated from her centre to her outermost places. And even as her mind floated in this fugue of interweaving pleasures, she could feel her tight wetness clamping and convulsing on his member, coaxing him to concede and grant her dominion over his present desires and future progeny. She felt him grow suddenly larger within her, and the pouring of his surrender into her, completed her victory even as she came.

Watching him later prepare some food, she lay in bed, reaching beneath her belly to gently press his essence back inside her where it henceforth belonged. It would be just 5 days before their marriage was concluded down in the village. The ceremony was officiated with some reluctance, and the witnesses made little effort to conceal both snide remarks and judgemental glances. But neither bride nor groom paid heed to anyone but each other.

It would two more months before the child was born, and five more summers before the village truly accepted him. That, after the flood waters of the great storm receded and his work rebuilding and repairing won over even the most recalcitrant neighbors. His devoted and unselfconscious obeying of her direction in all things drew diminishing scorn and growing wonder from those who witnessed it. The farm thrived, as did their family. 20 years on, their two daughters and one son were renowned both for the kindness and handsomeness they had inherited. And nowhere more so, than in the village where their parents were admired and emulated in equal measure. The war, a distant memory.