"ARTHUR. JOHN." she shrieked horrifically, thrashing against Arthur Shelby's grip as he hauled her in through the back doors of the pub John carefully following afterwards to shut and bolt the door with that impish grin. Even as furiously as she pounded her fists against Arthur's chest and arms the lumbering brute of a man it hardly seemed to bother him in the least. It came as no surprise, Maggie knew Arthur to make a sport of boxing and braving even the ugliest of men. Her attempts to fight back were no doubt feeble, but it didn't stop her rage from fuelling that adrenaline of hers.
"Mags, please-" Arthur tried to sooth as he released her and she tumbled into the bar due to her own stumbling. Maggie wasn't having any of it.
"Don't 'Mag's please' me, Arthur! Damn you Shelby boys, you can't just kidnap me!" she growled, balling her fists and exhaling sharply.
"I reckon we was savin' your skin, Maggie. You do know where you were, right?" John asked, stopping to smoothly exhale a puff of smoke from his mouth and nose before flicking the ash from his cigarette onto the floor. Maggie would have scolded him for it at another time but she was still fuming.
"Yes John," she took on a faux sweetness but her icy undertones overtook it entirely as she made no effort to conceal her venom, "I wasn't a lost bird today I know where I was."
"Then I reckon you know Tommy told you not to go there." Arthur poised, uncharacteristically timid. He didn't like arguing with Maggie and perhaps if she was in a better mood she wouldn't have responded to him so brashly.
"And I reckon you know Thomas isn't my caretaker. God knows why he seems to think he is." she cursed under her breath with a scowl. Maybe if he actually cared about her well being he'd tell her what was going on instead of treating her as a child, keeping secrets although she were to thick to figure out for herself what was going on.
"Oh come off it boys." she waved her hands in exasperation as they both fell silent, "Blue Caps run that street, right? It's barely noon and broad daylight! What are they going to do?"
"I don't know, Maggie." Thomas's deep rolling voice was in stark contrast to Maggie's currently shrill and annoyed one, "You're the one that had a run in with them in the streets last. Why don't you tell us what they'll do." he pointed out, so coldly that she felt it run up and down her spine and she was sure it wasn't because she adored his voice. No, not like this. She hated it when he talked to her like this.
"Ah what a surprise Mr. Shelby. You sent your brothers to come and fetch me back home. As if you've any right."
He almost lazily rolled his eyes, almost, as he turned and leaned on the side of the bar with his forearm, the other pushing the tail of his coat from his torso. Maggie knew this stance, this pose as he embodied his sarcasm and would wait patiently for her to spew her outrageous bit before coolly retorting back and making her feel like a fool. Which she had been, she already realized. No mistake, she was going to that part of Birmingham specifically for a pharmacist located there. Maggie had come to know the medical properties that Birmingham had to offer quickly, minimal as they were, and Mr. Fletchling on that street offered some reasonable prices for her and pleasant conversation to boot. Not something worth dying for of course, but Maggie was getting tired of the Shelby boys beating around the bush with her. Maggie thought they were past this after the incident and so now she had to make a point.
"Thomas. It has been months. I'm not talking about the attack," she didn't want him to think she thought time passed made her more safe, that wasn't what this was about, "and you lot haven't told me an inch about what goes on around here." she spoke softly. He expected her outrage, and she was outraged, but speaking quietly made incentive to listen closely. His cool gaze turned to her and he barely quirked a brow, under his eyes she held her breath and chewed on the inside of her cheek.
"F'you can't even stay put how can I tell you anything about what's going on?"
He said it to be mean. To punish her for going off like she did. Meeting his stare unwavering her lip trembled for just a breadth of a moment before she inhaled and exhaled slowly.
"You're daft, Thomas Shelby." she said lowly, accusingly.
"And you're getting on my nerves, McCrown."
"And what if I am? S'not like you would tell me anymore than you do if I wasn't!"
"You don't need to be involved." he looked off to a clouded window dismissively, shaking his head gently as he did, as if he really did know best. He'd said basically that same thing time and time again whenever this got brought up, even despite Polly's bickering with him about it all as well.
"Oh Thomas. I'd say I'm proper involved by now, you said so yourself. I am 'the one that had a run in with them in the streets last' if you'll recall. Or did you want me to tell you about it." Maggie spat back nearly his own words impulsively. John and Arthur had fallen silent as the grave between the spitting the pair of them were doing. Thomas's gaze had returned to Maggie's vengefully and she was unflinching beneath it. John knew when to keep his head down most days so it was Arthur that spoke next.
"Tommy..." he seeped in softly, as if somehow speaking his name this way would warrant his opinion more consideration, "She's got a point don't she... Maggie's been jus' as involved as she could be despite it all.."
The clashing between Peaky Blinders and Blue Caps had kept Maggie unreasonably busy. These boys lived a dangerous life for a place like Birmingham. Knife wounds and bullet holes were the worst and although they did come in fairly frequently, Maggie thankfully had to look after scrapes and cuts more often. Although someone had come in with a broken arm, Maggie wasn't sure how involved that was in actual gangster business.
Thomas's eyes flickered to Arthur without turning away from Maggie, giving her a moment to swallow the knot in her throat and take in some air quickly. Arthur was right, and it's what she was saying all along. After Maggie had been jumped in the streets Thomas promised he'd take care of it. Promised they wouldn't go in on uneven terms to that arranged meeting with the Blue Caps. True enough to his word, they burned down their pub and left a handful of men to go home to their wives with wider more gory smiles than they'd left home with that morning. They didn't call them Peaky Blinders for nothing.
As for the meeting that happened later that week Maggie didn't know exactly what went down except that whatever it was, it hadn't gone swimmingly. Of course she'd been fool enough to believe Tommy had meant he would communicate more with her. She didn't want to make decisions or even know all the details, God she really didn't need to know most of the details. But basic knowledge of what was happening instead of being kept in the dark was all she'd asked, and how she'd asked time and time again in the passing weeks.
He looked at her again after an agonizing amount of silence that probably hadn't even breached a full minute.
I know what you're scared of, she wanted to say. That her involvement would mean there was no turning back, that she was undoubtedly in as much danger as the rest of them. But to say so would outright betray his softness that all four of them here already knew that he was. And Maggie could never, so she tried earnestly to communicate it without speaking. He knew, she could tell he did. Because she was already involved and in danger, and he'd known that for a long while as well.
Because Magdalene McCrown had been putting herself in bad situations long before she had met Thomas Shelby.
The four of them were sitting in that small room with the door to shut out the rest of the pub and the tiny window that opened to the bar. The Garrison doors had been bolted shut so as not to be disturbed by any afternoon visitors as the Shelby boys spoke with Maggie about the happenings that Thomas had refused to let her in on. Naturally he spoke not a word, she could still sense some begrudging reluctance to participate, so John and Arthur were breaking it down over some whisky. She took a sip an sucked her lips back afterwards at the liquor. If it wasn't strong the boys didn't bother, and Maggie wasn't about to make a fuss about it.
"So you burned down their pub." she recalled, "That didn't bode well. Is that why the meeting went poorly?"
John snorted, and Maggie looked to him quizzically. When Arthur looked away and Thomas remained leaned back like a statue, the responsibility to explain had obviously landed on him.
"Nah." he sniffed, rubbing his nose, "Nah it was a disaster cause Arthur here got all uppity on us."
"They wasn't plannin' a civil conversation-" Arthur interjected defensively, his voice rising.
"None of it's civil, Arthur, we burned their pub to the ground an-"
"They weren't gonna-"
"Doesn't matter." Thomas said suddenly, calmly, as he leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the side of the table. "With what they want with Birmingham we were never going to come to good terms anyways. But what we got out of that meeting was a good look at the men who run that gang and that's all we needed."
"So what happens now? You've taken their pub away and Peaky Blinders have been pushing them back off the streets for weeks now. Won't they leave soon?" Maggie asked, careful to keep the hopeful highs from her voice for fear of not wanting to sound naive. Thomas shook his head slowly without looking at her, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows as if to say 'alas, you think they would.' But it was Arthur who explained it to her.
"Tha's what they'd be doin if they was smart." he chortled, "But we have guys who're tellin us they're still gettin some goods brought in. They're storin in a warehouse east from where their ruddy pub was."
"What good is alcohol and cigarettes if they don't have a pub..." she asked slowly, but Maggie already knew the answer. Getting a new pub up and running wouldn't be too big of a task, it was just a matter of getting it done under the nose of the Peaky Blinders.
"Doesn't matter." Thomas said once again sounding nearly identical to the first time he'd said it, "We know their shipment days, we know where they're storing it and we know who's in charge. We're going to bust the next shipment an' make sure they never get any business done in Birmingham ever again. And when they leave everyone will know the Peaky Blinders are more dangerous than the Blue Caps from the fuckin' north." he finished dryly, the curse falling from his mouth effortlessly. He sounded calm, not that he didn't always, but there was a sureness that put Maggie at east and brought a grin to John and Arthur's faces.
As always, Thomas had everything under control. He was two steps ahead and not only looking forward but back as well. His mind was always working, even now after they were no longer in the war he was still fighting his own once he'd come back home.
It made her feel guilty that she hadn't reached out to him sooner. Here she was trying to recover from the gunshots and gore back in London with her aunt, while Thomas was here practically living the same horrors and instead being entirely responsible for it all. Inhaling softly so she could exhale a shaky breath, Maggie tried to cool her nerves.
"Well now I know..." she tried to change the tone in the small room, "And was it so hard, Thomas Shelby?"
The lingering moment made her uncertain if he was going to respond negatively, watching him carefully as his expression was nearly unchanging as he eyed her over the rim of his glass when he finished taking a slug of his drink. The bottom of the cup hitting the table when he put it down surely seemed louder than it was, but she was greeted with a small twinge in the side of his jaw that flooded her with some relief for the first time that day.
"Excruciating, Mags."
(Note: It's been 84 years. Does anyone even read this stuff anymore. Lol)
