Chapter 84
"Tommy," she said, her teeth gritted, "Give me that gun – I need to go shoot something."
He looked up to where she stood in his doorway, his eyes questioning her. She had that quiet, barely contained rage thrumming through her body, almost trembling with it.
"What's happened?"
She clenched her jaw and shook her head, blinking rapidly as if to stop tears from falling, "Just give me the gun. I'm going to Charlie's."
Well, at least she was going to Charlie's to shoot at targets in her anger - more than he could say for himself or his brothers half the time. It's all well and good having a gun but you won't feel nothing - not really - until you point it at a man, that was Arthur's take on it.
"Rosie – what's happened?" he repeated, speaking slowly, annunciating the words, getting to his feet, abandoning the list of possible opportunities Danny had sent him from London and giving her his whole attention.
She just looked at him, not giving him any response. He sighed, opened his drawer, pulled out the gun he'd been letting her use and shoved it in his pocket.
"Come on then, let's go."
She gave him another look.
"I'm not letting you go yourself when you're like this," he told her firmly, turning her round and putting a hand in her back, moving her through the shop and onto the street, flashing his eyes around, daring anyone to try and question what they were doing.
It was only half ten, she'd left just before nine.
"I don't need you to come," she eventually managed to spit out once they were on Watery Lane.
"Well you can go with me or you can not go at all," he replied.
"Tommy, I'm not a fucking child!" she growled, her words all said through her teeth, somewhere between hissing and spitting.
He gripped her upper arms and shook her a little, his worry manifesting in prickly frustration as it so often did, "I know you're not a child you little idiot but-"
"Don't you dare!" she shouted suddenly, causing a few heads to swivel in their direction, struggling in his grip, "Don't you dare call me an idiot. I'm not a fucking idiot, I'm not!"
He had obviously touched a raw wound without realising - she looked about to burst into tears and he gripped her even more tightly in response, "Alright, alright," he tried to soothe, "I'm sorry. You're not an idiot. You're my clever girl, alright?"
"Don't fucking patronise me either."
She really wasn't in the mood for being calmed down.
"I'm not fucking patronising you, you are clever, I'm confirming that I know you're clever –alright?" he said, keeping his voice low, holding her still, bending his head to try and meet her eye, though she tossed her own head and wouldn't look at him, "I'm sorry I called you an idiot, alright? I didn't mean it. I take it back. But what I do mean is that there's no way I'm leaving you alone when you're obviously this bothered about something – so, if you want to go to Charlie's, we can go together or we can stay here together – I don't care which it is, but it'll be both of us or neither of us, you hear me?"
She glared at him, and he loosened his grip on her a little, which she responded to by shaking her shoulders free of him altogether, then she turned and marched in the direction of his uncle's yard.
He straightened and watched her walk, the set of her shoulders, the way her nose was in the air. She was furious. But she was magnificent in it. He fought a smile that wanted to place itself on his lips at the sight of her, guessing she wouldn't respond well to it if she deigned to turn and look his way and see him at it, then followed after her.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Bang.
The glass smashed.
Bang.
The milk bottle mashed.
Bang.
The tin can went flying off the makeshift table.
Bang.
Another bottle - a whisky one this time - smashed.
Bang.
Smash.
Bang.
Crash.
She was good. Too good, almost for comfort.
Without looking at him she held the gun out to him, her arm taut and straight as if to keep him from coming too close.
"Reload it."
"Rosie…" he started, then trailed off.
There was a warning in his tone, but quite what he was trying to warn her of, he wasn't sure. He just didn't like it when she was like this, that rage bubbling under the surface, that frustration on her face and no words on her lips to explain them.
She didn't even glance at him as she repeated, her voice cool, "Reload it Tommy."
He took it from her and put more bullets in, then pressed it back into her hand. She took it wordlessly, raised it and shot through the ammunition quickly, firing at nothing until it was empty again. She held it to him and he snatched it, frowning.
She glanced at him, then focussed forward again before she spoke - that same contained, staccato voice, "Reload it Tommy."
"No."
"Thomas!"
"I'm not fucking reloading it," he snarled, "You just tell me what this is about."
"You just reload that gun like I've fucking told you too."
"You watch your tongue."
"Reload the fucking gun Thomas," she shouted, then, her voice going slightly desperate, "Please."
He shoved it in his pocket, took the few steps to close the distance between them and took her in his grip. She struggled, refusing to look at him.
"Rosalie - tell me, what the fuck is going on here?"
"Tommy just let me shoot at something, for God's sake," she replied, but her voice didn't have the same bite it had done.
"I'll reload it once you tell me what's going on," he bargained.
She sighed, looking over her shoulder, away from him, blinking furiously, "I'll get Charlie to reload it for me."
He snorted, "Charlie's made himself scarce for a reason Rosie - could see you had trouble written all over your face the minute you came marching in here."
She slumped a little and he took the chance to draw her closer to him, getting his arms further around her, holding her to him as opposed to trying to hold her still.
"Come on now," he murmured, squeezing her, rubbing a hand up and down the back of one of the new dresses she'd got in town - plainer than the dress from London, but a nicer cut on her than her school dresses of choice had been. He suspected, like the dress from Harrods, that it was supposedly old fashioned, the way it nipped in at her waist and neatly down her hips, but he didn't mind at all - it suited her.
"It's just me and you," he continued, "You tell me what's gone so wrong, eh? What did your man at the council say?"
"He didn't say fucking anything," she choked out, as if she was trying to speak without giving into any tears, her hands winding into the sleeves of his jacket, finally making their hold a two way thing, "Didn't even get to speak to him."
She pushed her face into him and he kissed her head, resting his chin on top of it, wondering what she meant. She hadn't even gotten to speak to the man and yet she was in this state. He opted to stay quiet, hoping she'd explain more of her own accord, not because he was pushing her to.
It took her a few minutes - and more than a few deep breaths - to get in control of herself and then she turned her face to the side, still pressed against him, to say, "Went to his office and he wasn't in - or maybe he was, I don't fucking know, but she told me he wasn't"
"Who did?"
"His secretary - looked me up and down and told me he wasn't in."
"And you gave up?"
"No," she said, shaking her head slightly - he got the impression if she hadn't been so upset she might have been more insulted at the insinuation -, "I asked if I could wait - or make an appointment. And she asked what I thought a man like him would want to speak to me for."
"A man like him?"
"That's what she said."
"And what did you say?"
"I said I'd been told to speak to him by the woman at the school, said about my exam results and showed her my plaque - fuck Tommy, I waved at her like a pathetic little kid trying to show her my drawing or something."
"Well then what happened?"
"She sneered at me and said Mr Arterton would have no need to speak to me, that if I thought I was getting in to speak to him without having a letter of recommendation and a university degree then I was an idiot."
She was silent for a moment and he let her be then prompted, "Right - and what did you say to that?"
"What was I supposed to say Tommy?"
He sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Truthfully, he wasn't sure what she was supposed to have said. If it had been him - well, some uppity secretary wouldn't have been bothering him, he'd have pulled a gun if need be and made himself comfortable in the man's office.
"Do you know what gets me the most? The fact that if I was a man and I'd said I needed an appointment she'd have made one with no questions about what it was regarding. Wouldn't have looked me up and down and made me explain myself to her."
"I doubt that's true," he said gently.
She scoffed, "You don't think it's true because you've never been a woman Tommy. That's the fucking worst of it, you know. Woman have finally forced their way into the system, but there are only so many spaces that have been made available for us and women see other women as a threat because of it. She couldn't possibly let me speak to him in case he decided to replace her with me, that was what was going on there. And if I had been a man - well, her job was probably safe then, eh? They've got women living in constant fear that what they've got will be taken away and instead of getting pissed off at the whole fucking thing, women just turn on each other. We're all so fucking busy trying to out do each other it keeps us from turning that energy onto the people who made the bloody system the way it is in the first place. Worse, we're doing their fucking jobs for them by upholding it!"
He didn't think what she said was true, but he believed that she believed it.
"Do you want more targets?" he asked, pulling the gun back out.
She shook her head, "No, I'm quite happy imagining her face."
He dug out the last of the bullets, "I find guns are often a good way of getting people to do what you want."
She regarded him, watched him load the weapon up and took it from him, aiming it forward and shooting it before she clarified, "You're saying if I go back in and hold a gun to her she'd get me an appointment."
"Something like that."
"I'm sure he'd really want to hire me after that."
"Doesn't need to be you that has the gun."
She pulled the trigger again, still not looking at him and then she sighed, dropping her arm.
"Tommy - I love you. So please don't take this the wrong way," she said, her voice quiet, "But I don't want to think of the council as being the type of place where your methods work. I want to work there because I want to believe in the work I could do there - because I want the work to be - god it sounds ridiculous - but I want the work to be good. I don't want to think of it as being a corruptible place. I want to think everyone who is there is there for the right reasons - and not because they had a gun. Does that make sense?"
She looked warily at him and he nodded wordlessly.
"Are you angry with me for saying that?"
He shook his head and she managed a tight smile, before she looked forward, raised her arm and shot again.
He wasn't angry with her, no. But, whilst he thought she should have been given her appointment to see the man without needing a gun, he could also tell she had worked the council up in her head to be better than it was. The council might not be full of people who got into it by having guns in their hands - but he knew the type of people it was full of. The same ones who had sent him and all the other boys he had gone off to war with over the top, blowing their whistles and counting people as numbers. Arterton, the man she had been trying to get to speak to was called, William Arterton.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Ah good, you're dressed," he said, coming into the kitchen on Wednesday morning.
"I'm not in the habit of sitting around naked you know," she replied with an arched eyebrow from where she was sitting at the table, the paper opened to the job advertisements.
"More's the pity," he told her, "Now, come on. And bring a copy of your exam certificate and that plaque they gave you."
"Come on where?"
"Just come on - I'm a busy man Miss jackson, don't have all day."
"What are you playing at Tommy?"
"You'll see."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Tommy - what are we doing here?" she asked, her mouth becoming a thin line as they approached the government building that the head of the social care department of the Birmingham City Council - and his secretary - operated from.
"We have an appointment."
"Tommy," she growled his name, "You better not have gone in there with a gun, for fuck's sake, I told you not to!"
"I didn't go in with a bloody gun," he told her, rolling his eyes.
He had a cheek, he knew, to roll his eyes at her. Technically, he had gone in with a gun. But it had stayed in his pocket.
"Truth is, you were right - that secretary gave me an appointment without asking me what it was I needed to see William Arterton about," he admitted.
She nodded, her face a mixture of disgust and grim satisfaction at having been right and a slight shock as she realised what he had done - that he had got her an audience with the man.
And it had been easy to do. Easier than he had thought. He had got the information on Arterton. The man had served - a general. Tommy had his own opinions about how corruptible the council was, and he was more than convinced she was going to get a shock at some point - but he hadn't wanted to be the one to give it to her. He had wanted to get her in front of the man without the use of violence or threats if he could. And so his plans had been to go in and claim he needed to see the old general about army business. But he hadn't even needed the lie. The pinch faced secretary had simpered and offered him this morning at eleven am, no questions asked.
"I wouldn't have minded some warning, you know," she told him, raising an eyebrow.
"You were prepared for Monday, I figured it would still be in your head two days later."
She took her eyes off him and looked at the building, her grip on her papers tight, "Thank you Tommy."
He wrapped an arm around her waist and squeezed, "I didn't do anything except get you past the cow on the desk, it's on you once we go through those doors."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The cow on the desk was there to greet them - and Tommy had to work not to let his joy spread across his face when he watched her jaw drop at the sight of Rosie walking in behind him.
"Thomas Shelby, you made me an eleven o'clock appointment for this morning," he told her.
"Yes Mr Shelby," she said slowly, her eyes moving between them, evidently trying to work it out and then, for her own clarification, "Are you both…?"
"Both going in together - yes," he nodded.
"I see," she nodded, chewed on her lip, then looked at Rosie and blurted, "And did you get my letter?"
"Your letter?" Rosie blinked back, as confused as he was.
"I remembered - Small Heath Upper School - from your plaque."
Rosie nodded blankly.
"I called the school, got your name and address," the woman said, keepin her voice low and speaking quickly, glancing at the frosted glass door behind her with William Arterton's name emblazoned on it, "I put a letter through your door on Monday night."
Rosie stared in confusion for a moment, then it dawned slowly on her and she said, awkwardly, "Oh. Well I don't live there anymore actually, I moved…"
"You two live together?" the woman asked in a sharp voice.
"Listen, sweetheart," Tommy said acidly, "I don't see that her living arrangements are anything to do with you."
He had barely exchanged a word with the woman when he said he needed an appointment. He'd been completed floored by her lack of fight when he had come in. In fact, he'd been half convinced the man had more than one secretary on the door and that Rosie had been dealing with someone else entirely. He could see now, they'd dealt with the same woman. Seemed to think Rosie's living arrangements were up for public consumption, as if it was anything to do with her, the uppity bitch. He was both glad he seemed to have wrong-footed her slightly by interjecting - and irritated to see for himself the difference, starkly, in the way this woman had reacted to him and to Rosie.
The secretary blinked at him, taken aback by his tone then, just as she swallowed and seemed to have gathered herself enough that she was ready to reply, the clock on her desk chimed.
"Well, I suppose I know I was right about you," she said, her voice cold, standing looking at Rosie, "It was a clever move, getting him to make the appointment. And it's done now."
She moved by them, smoothed down her dress and knocked softly on the glass pane, pushing the door open when the response came and standing just inside it, her silhouette visible against the glass.
"What do you reckon-" Tommy started to ask, but he was cut off when the door opened and she reappeared.
"Mr Arterton will see you now."
Thank you as always for reading along and commenting and messaging - it does make my day! Also, I have now been writing this for over a year, which is terrifying - if you'd told me last year when I picked this up as my lockdown distraction that I'd still be plugging away a year later I don't know if I'd ever have started tbh, but I'm very glad I did and very grateful to all of you who have spent this time with me!