Chapter 102
She appeared soon enough, walking silently and slowly, her foot coming into view, almost testing the stair for creaks before she put her weight on it. It seemed she was planning a runner. He tried not to laugh to himself at the sudden comicness of it all.
She was about three or four steps from the top when she caught sight of him in the doorway and she sighed audibly, then walked down the rest of the stairs normally - no, not normally, he corrected himself, more heavily than usual, clunking down defiantly, coming to a stop at the bottom of them and glaring at him.
He raised an eyebrow, "Well?"
"Well what?"
She had put on one of her dresses, made herself look presentable. Had fixed her hair a little, even, he thought, might have powdered her face and run a touch of something across her lips and cheeks. He wondered if that was some kind of attempt to make him go easy on her, presenting herself in that soft, feminine way that she didn't often let anyone see. Or perhaps she had been gearing up to go to town, even if very little would be open on a Sunday, trying to make herself look like a high society woman who would turn up for tea and scones without a second thought. It was a contrast to the look in her eyes, to the stark snap of her voice, that soft femininity.
"I'm giving you the chance to explain your bloody self - and whatever this show Polly says you put on was," he growled, not letting himself be swayed by the prettiness of her.
"I don't feel I owe you any explanation, Thomas," she said icily.
He snorted, "You don't, eh? Let's get this clear - I'm having one. You can volunteer it now or I can wrangle it from you, but we both know it'll end with you giving me it."
"That's what you think!" she snapped, then strode by him into the kitchen.
He let her pass, keeping himself still, turning in the doorway to watch her as she returned to her dishes, her eyes flitting to…
"You even think about going out that door and when I go after you I'll lift that strap on my way out and apply it to your arse before I bring you back."
"I thought that wasn't for girls in your opinion."
"It's not, but you for I'll make an exception, my love," he told her, his voice dripping sarcasm.
She glared at him, "So you'd humiliate me the way you do Finn?"
He was a little taken aback, though he didn't show it, simply repeated, "Humiliate you?"
"Take me out in public and let anyone who is in the vicinity have a good laugh?"
"Your choice if you go out the door," he said, then, uncharacteristically, added the explanation, "And it's not done out the back to fucking humiliate anyone - it's done out there cause there's no bloody room to swing a strap in this tiny fuck of a house. It's always been done that way. Any kid around here who gets it with a strap gets it out the back, it is what it is."
"It's fucking barbaric."
"Not so barbaric they seem to learn any long term lessons from it," he bit out.
He knew she had been slightly unsure of the way the Shelbys had always done things. Hell, it wasn't just them, it was the way every family up and down Watery Lane, across all of Small Heath and, he'd be prepared to bet, the length and breadth of Birmingham did things - with the exception of her and Lily's home. Had always been, would always be. And hadn't that been proven by the fact she herself had turned the bab over her knee once they'd all come back from their trip to Sparkbrook? There were simply times no lack of cake or stern words would cut it, as far as he could see - and she'd agreed then. She'd agreed the time she'd gone to Charlie's and found out Lily and Katie had been down The Cut alone. So where was her sudden annoyance coming from?
"You're saying if we had a bigger house, you'd deal with him inside?" Rosie asked.
He wondered if she was latching on to the idea in an effort to distract him.
"Yes," he nodded shortly, not expanding, not getting himself drawn into the conversation, not letting her distract him.
He still noted the 'we' though, and appreciated it. She thought of them as a we, even when she was annoyed with him.
He had always felt, more often than he liked to admit, somewhat adrift. Whilst his brothers and his aunt more or less allowed him to lead them, that leadership meant it was an unspoken 'them' and 'him' arrangement. With Ada, they were definitely at odds now and, before, well then it had been them and him too - except it was her and Finn being the kids and him being the adult. And in the war, he had been the Sergeant Major. But he had been part of his tunnelling group. He had volunteered. Because they were all equal underground. And then he'd paid for that by being haunted with his dreams. It was as if even his fucking subconcious wanted him to regret the one time he'd been part of something, as if he didn't deserve to ever get to be part of something, like he was supposed to isolated and alone.
He had tried to tell himself it was a good thing. When he'd taken his soldier's minutes, made his plans and left his body - if he'd felt tethered to anything or anyone or any identity, he wouldn't have been able to. And it had got him through.
But she grounded him. Tethered him. Even when he had an itch in his hand that was only going to be scratched by turning her across his knee and reddening her arse for her, like she seemed so desperately to need in this particular bloody moment, she made him feel connected to something, to someone. To her and, through her, to Lily and even to Finn in a way he hadn't done before she'd come to number six. And, it seemed, even in this particular bloody moment, when she was having her tantrum, she wasn't denying her connection to him either.
Not that he was in any mood to get sentimental with her about it. Nor was she giving any hints she'd be remotely open to sentimentality right then.
"This place is fucking palatial compared to some," she told him.
He didn't know what she meant by that or where it had come from - another tactic, maybe? Another attempt at distracting him?
"Maybe so - but I'll be getting us out of it as soon as I can."
"Do you ever just think about living life without a bloody plan Thomas?"
"No."
She slammed down the dish she was drying, "Conniving little fuck."
He sucked in a breath, clenched his fist and exercised every inch of control he had not to stride across the room, bend her over the sink and blister her where she stood.
"What did you just say to me?" he growled once he was sure his throat was able to cope with words.
He got a vague sense of satisfaction as he watched her tremble - just the tiniest bit - but tremble nonetheless.
It didn't seem she was going to backtrack though, instead she jerked her chin up, swallowed and shouted, "I called you a conniving little fuck, Thomas Shelby, because you bloody well are!"
She had the sense to be scared. But not enough to stop her answering back. Unless...
It occurred to him then that she was baiting him.
She had been irritated - and irritating - before he'd gone to the yard the day before, but in a different way. Something had been even more off since he'd come back - when he'd noticed the work she'd said she was going to do hadn't been done. Whatever had happened with Polly, it had happened yesterday, he gathered, when he'd been at the yard. Whatever her show had been, it had been caused by something that had gotten under her skin.
And now she was pent up and upset about something and, he figured, probably needing a damn good cry and not bloody equipped to get herself where she needed to be emotionally to let that happen. Too many years of stopping herself from giving in were behind the bloody woman, and his heart broke a bit for her in that regard.
But she wasn't quite at peace with what she needed either. She had been, before, after she'd taken Lily over her own knee for the first time and she'd needed her release and he'd been able to get her there without too much fuss.
This time was different. She wasn't going to give in. She wanted a fight, he realised. Something in her…
He supposed he understood. He enjoyed when she gave him her obedience willingly. There was something quite touching in it. But there was something deep in him that took satisfaction in wrangling it from her, in overpowering her, in proving to her that she answered to him. It made sense then that perhaps there were corresponding parts in her. Like pieces of a jigsaw that would slot together to make a whole picture. Because, even in this particular bloody moment, they were a 'we.'
"I've told you before," he reminded her, his voice a hiss, "You'll speak respectfully to me."
"I've told you before - you'll earn it."
"You know who I am?"
She snorted, "Thomas Michael Shelby. Leader of the Peaky Blinders. Most feared criminal in Birmingham."
"That's right," he nodded, his voice so low it was barely audible, "So I don't have a history of earning, I've got a history of getting what I take. So you'd be best giving me that respect my girl, or I'll take it."
She flinched - whether at his words, his tone, his look or the combination of them all, he didn't know, but he was glad for it.
Then quite suddenly a dish was whizzing just by his face. He didn't break his eye contact with her as they both listened to it smash.
For half a second, nothing in the world moved - nothing breathed, nothing rustled, every atom stopped humming, every vibration stilled.
And then she made a dart and he made a dive, swinging an arm over her waist and yanking her along with him as she struggled.
"Let go of me! This instant Thomas! I mean it!" she shouted, pounding her fists on his arm.
"You've had too many liberties - you can give your orders to the rest of them with my bloody blessing, woman, but I'm about to give you a bloody good reminder of what'll happen when you think to disrespect me," he told her, keeping a firm hold on her, dragging her across the kitchen in the direction of the doors that linked the front room and it, "One that if you've got one ounce of fucking sense in you, you'll heed the next time you think to open that damn mouth of yours!"
She was struggling hard enough that it wasn't as easy a task as he might have thought it would be to take all five fucking foot of her in hand, so when the stairs that he ignored the majority of the time, the stairs that led to his mother's old bedroom, caught his eye on his way to the couch, he took the opportunity they presented. His left foot went to the second step, her body got thrown unceremoniously over his leg, winding her into a moment of submission, thankfully, and then his right hand raised and cracked down.
She kicked and wriggled as best she could, but he'd suspended her so that her toes were only just skimming the floor and she couldn't get any power behind her. She had to dangle where he'd placed her, his left hand on her waist, holding her there.
He didn't give the little wench any warm up, he landed twenty hard smacks across her, drawing shrieks and protests along the lines of, "Stop it! You're a brute, Thomas Shelby! Let go of me, let me up!" - all her words interspersed at first with grunts and very quickly with yelps.
He gave her a moment's respite as he dropped his hand to the fabric of her dress and yanked it up, gathering it at her waist.
"Tommy! No!" she moaned.
He noted the change from Thomas to Tommy and figured it was a good sign.
"You had your chance to talk freely, I told you I'd be getting your explanations from you and I'd be taking the respect I'm due," he growled, "And I told you last night you'd be answering for your attitude and you tried to avoid it. So you're well due a good reddening and there'll be no talking me out of it."
"Tommy!" she pleaded, drawing out his name, but for all she seemed a little more temperate, he knew if he let her up without making good on what he'd more or less promised her, she'd revert back to her tantrum within hours.
No, he resolved, he was going to get a proper bout of tears from her and ensure he had a contrite woman whose repressed emotions had finally been expressed and bloody well purged.
Besides, he had told her the night before that she'd answer for the way she'd been acting. She'd been let down enough. He wasn't going to let her down. Anything he said he was going to do for her, he'd see through - the good and bad. She'd said she felt safe with him. He was going to keep her feeling safe. Keep reassuring her that she could trust every word he said. That he'd keep every promise he made her.
His hand smacked down repeatedly, hard, across the seat of her underwear and across her bare thighs, his hand prints glowing red against the pale white of the redhead's celtic looking skin.
He had been prepared to stay there as long as he needed - but he'd expected what was needed to be longer than what seemed to be.
He was only ten or so swats in on his next round when she shrieked, "I'm sorry, Tommy, I'm sorry! I was being a bitch, I know, I'm sorry!"
Something in him didn't sit right with that, so he stilled his hand and said, "You were being disrespectful and fucking childish and you're getting your arse heated through for it. If I hear you calling yourself that again, there'll be a separate spanking - you understand?"
She nodded.
"Can't hear you."
"Yes," she said, her voice shaking a little, "I understand."
"Good girl," he told her, his rough voice at odds with the words, then he resumed the spanking he was in the middle of delivering.
"Ouch!" she squealed, caught seemingly by surprise at the recommencement, "Tommy - it hurts!"
"Meant to," he grunted.
"I'm sorry, honest, I'm sorry!" she shouted, sounding disconcertingly like Finn for a minute.
"So you bloody well should be."
"Tommy! I'll - ouch - I'll be good - I promise!"
"Aye, you bloody well will be, if you know what's good for you," he agreed.
Their back and forth continued in that vein until, quite suddenly and, what felt like quite quickly, she went quite limp, ceased her struggling and simply hung over his knee, sobbing.
He was tempted to end it there and then, but he gave her another couple of smacks, though far gentler ones than he'd given her thus far, before he laid his hand heavily on her upturned arse and rubbed it.
"Alright, that's my girl, get it cried out, eh?" he told her, patting her backside gently before getting a proper grip on her waist and using it to pull her up and to him.
She struggled to say something, gasping and choking a little.
He shushed her, "We'll be having words my darling girl, but there's plenty of time, eh? Just get all that smoke and mud that's in you all cleared out, then we'll talk."
She nodded into him, her arms going around him, fisting into the fabric of his waistcoat and holding as tightly as she could.
"I've got you, come on," he murmured, sliding a hand down to her tender arse and hoisting her up onto him, carrying her through to the living room and sitting on the sofa, putting her on his lap.
She didn't protest - just continued to cry into him, curling her body around him like a fetus in the womb. He didn't say much, just murmured various assurances that it was going to be alright, that she was alright, called her all of his various names for her - my darling girl, sweetheart, my little loli phabai.
"I'm sorry," she eventually said, her voice a little thick from the crying she'd so recently done, "I don't know why I do that."
"Do what?"
"Get like that. I get annoyed and I can't do anything about it or change what's annoying me, but it's like it takes over and if I can't resolve it I just act like a bitch with people who aren't anything to bloody do with it."
"Oi," he growled, landing a sharp swat on her thigh, eliciting a whine, "I told you - I'm not going to hear that. Anyone on the street used those words for you, I'd take a gun to them. I'm not going to stand for it coming from your own mouth."
"Fairly sure you've called me it before," she said, the corners of her mouth tilting up a little.
"If I have, that's cause I'm me and I'm the exception. No one else will be saying it."
"You're ridiculous."
"You're sitting on a hot backside as it is, you fancy going back over for more?" he demanded with a raised eyebrow.
She shook her head, more than just the corners of her mouth tilting up this time - she gave him a proper smile. God but she was far too happy for someone who'd just had her arse reddened - but still, happy was preferable to its opposite.
"Good, so just be a good little girl and do as you're told then, eh?"
"Yes sir," she said, saluting and batting her eyelashes.
"Oh don't think you're getting away with buttering me up and calling me some nice names my love," he told her, a little amused, "I'll be having that explanation from you."
"I told you Tommy," she muttered, focussing her eyes on the cushion, avoiding his, "I don't know why I act like that."
"From the sounds of it, I'd say it's because you can't change what you want to, then you're getting pent up and frustrated and you need some kind of release, so you act like a right little madam because you know I'll get you that release, at the cost of sitting comfortably for a while, sound about right?"
She shrugged, still not looking at him - but he saw a blush on her face that indicated it was the truth and, whether she liked it or not, she knew it to be so.
He'd known someone else who couldn't change things. Greta had wanted everything, her whole world, to be different. He'd been drawn to her and her way of seeing things, wanting things - it opened up worlds he'd never imagined to him. But he'd been a boy then. Thought her passion was sweet and endearing. Had held her when she'd been so angry she'd shake and cry in her frustration. But he hadn't really understood it.
Then he'd been the one who couldn't change things. Ordered about by the cavalry and men who thought themselves better than him because of how he spoke and where they'd been born.
It had given him a fresh perspective on it, a fresh desire for those worlds Greta had shown him.
Rosie had been so silent when he'd first come across her that part of him wanted to think he couldn't have known anything about her own views, her determination that women should be seen as equal, her unwillingness to accept that what had already been won for them was enough - her want for proper equality. And not just her want for equality because of her gender, but the way she understood how her Small Heath background, her class status, affected her and how it affected everyone, regardless of their gender. She saw the world he was going for and, whilst she didn't always share his vision, she understood.
But the fact she'd been young and a woman and working in a tobacco shop and presenting herself as she did - he was lying to kid himself he hadn't known she'd have a different viewpoint on everything. Maybe that was what had drawn him in in the first place, why he'd been so fascinated by her.
"So - what you wanting to change? And what was this show you put on about it?"
She sighed, still not looking at him, "You won't like it Tommy."
"Didn't imagine I would," he admitted.
He didn't have much of a soft spot for anything that upset her, if the truth be known.
"I've been begging Polly for months to let me see Ada, Tommy," she told him, her voice hesitant at first before she rushed, "I've been desperate to see her, going mad wondering how she is. I ask Polly all the time but there's something about seeing someone yourself that counts for more than hearing about them through someone else."
"I don't dispute that," he replied.
"Don't be angry Tommy, please. I just wanted to know she was alright, for my own peace of mind," she pleaded.
"I'm not angry at you wanting to see her. Fuck, I want to see her meself," he told her.
"Yeah - well, she didn't want to see either of us and they thought I'd lead you right to her, if she gave in to me," Rosie sighed.
A polite way of her pointing out that Ada wanted to see him even less than she wanted to see her.
"I take it she did? Give in to you, I mean?"
She nodded and his heart pounded with a hope and the potential for what it might mean that Ada might be softening.
"And will you?" he asked the question - unable to stop himself even as he realised he was putting her in, "Lead me right to her?"
"I couldn't even if I wanted to," she told him, "Polly took me all over Birmingham, made me close my eyes at bits and led me, spun me round, the whole bloody works. Swear if she'd thought she could get away with it she'd have marched me over with a bag on my head."
Pol knew him well enough to know what was necessary, then. He swore under his breath, cursing his aunt.
"So what happened then, when you saw her?"
She swallowed, then shook her head before she started crying again, "Oh God Tommy, you want to see it, see where she's living," she choked out through her sobs, "It's this horrible little basement, you go down these tiny narrow stairs and it's one room. Pipes all exposed and water marks all across the walls, no paper or anything on them. One window at street level, high above the bed, lets in a smidge of natural light. It's hideous Tommy, she'd be better in jail, it's not sanitary, it's not safe!"
Exactly what he'd expect of one of those little ratholes the communists kept to hide in. He hugged her tight. Rosie had experienced hardship others wouldn't, but her house had been her mother's workspace, it had been kept to look well. The dank holes that wanted men climbed into to hide from the world in, that was a new kind of horror for her.
"It's as I expected it would be for them," he told her, aware his words weren't comforting, but unable to refrain from pointing out to her that he had known all along what his sister would be facing, being with Freddie.
"I know you did," she nodded, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, "I know."
"So what happened?"
"I fucking lost it Tommy."
"Your show?"
She nodded, "I just looked at her and I know she's not that much younger than me, but she had no make up on, not all done up in her usual way and she just looked like a child all of a sudden."
That was how she always looked to him.
"It hit me, Tommy, it made me so angry - she's pregnant and she's there and she's so young. And she did that journey to London and you want to see the size of her Tommy, she looks like she's got a football shoved up her dress. There's no hiding it."
Her words rushed out and he understood them, understood her anger and her upset and her worry.
"So what did you say?"
"Oh Jesus - I shouted at her Tommy, I bloody shouted at her," Rosie told him, putting her hands on her face and shaking her head.
"Ah I wouldn't worry," he told her, rubbing her back, "If I was there I'd have done more than shout at her."
"She loves Freddie Tommy, that's the thing, she loves him and she thinks he loves her."
He held his breath for a second. It sounded - it sounded like Rosie was changing her opinion on Freddie…
"She thinks he loves her?" he prompted gently, after they'd sat in silence for a few moments.
The redhead nodded, "She does. And he says he does and maybe he does. But if he loved her properly, Tommy, he wouldn't keep her there, in that horrible, squalid, damp place. The smell of, Tom, the rot and the mould - it's in the air. If he loved her, he wouldn't keep her there anyway and especially not her and the baby. He wouldn't stay, if he loved her properly. He'd go somewhere and start new, provide for them, give them what they should have."
He wanted to kiss her until their lips were swollen and bruised then. She was singing from the same hymn sheet as him, finally. It had taken bloody long enough, but finally she saw what he did.
"That's what I've been saying," he nodded, shoving down his instincts, keeping himself stoic.
"I know, Tommy, that's partly why I got so angry - you were right and - and I didn't want you to be, I didn't. But you were."
"So that was your show, you shouted at her?"
Rosie nodded.
"Pol said it was in my honour."
"You were mentioned," Rosie said, avoiding his eye again.
He sighed, "Get it told. In full. What was said?"
"I was so angry I don't rightly know Tommy," she said, "I promise I'm not saying that to avoid telling you - I just saw red. But I was shouting at her about the state of the place and the state of her life and why doesn't she just come back home, and she said something about how nothing changes and how I'm still your loyal little lapdog."
"Sounds like you were my german shepherd," he commented, running a hand through her unruly hair, his heart quite full, even if it probably shouldn't be.
"I said something about how the last time she'd said that I'd been insulted, upset," she continued before trailing off.
"And this time?" he prompted.
"But this time I said yeah, I was loyal to you and in turn you were loyal to me. But she had been loyal to Freddie, and look where it had ended her. I said Freddie was too loyal to his cause. Said Freddie didn't love her properly if Freddie's loyalty wasn't to her, letting her rot away in that place rather than taking her away, starting afresh."
"I take it she didn't like that?"
"She slapped me straight across the face," Rosie said, "That Shelby temper came right out."
"You've as much a temper as the rest of us," he reminded her.
She gave a wry smile, "Polly got in the middle. She didn't need to - I was fuming but I wouldn't have hit her back, not when she's pregnant. Might have if she hadn't been, don't get me wrong, but not whilst she is."
"So that's why Polly's angry then."
"I might have fucked it up for Polly," Rosie said, looking worried, "Ada might refuse to see her now, since she brought me."
"She brought you because Ada said she could," Tommy reminded her, "Don't you worry."
"Polly's worried," she said, finally looking back up at him.
She was more settled than she had been, but now that the sniping was done with, now that the anger had been cleared, he could see the upset in her in its place.
"It'll be fine, Ada's proud and stubborn, but Polly's been on her side from the start and she's not stupid - Polly's put herself in the middle of me and Ada and now in the middle of you and Ada."
"Wish she could get in the middle of Freddie and Ada. Tommy - she must see what I do, mustn't she? In that shithole, I mean. She can't want Ada there either."
Polly would see it, that was the thing. But Polly had seen worse living conditions, harsher ones, had spent time on the road and in tents. Even with exposed pipes and water marks and no paper - it wouldn't be Polly's idea of a nice home but she wouldn't see it the way Rosie did.
He turned it over in his mind and she seemed to take his extended silence as some kind of judgement.
"I'm sorry," she said, slumping, "I should have done better, been better. I could have done more to try and bring her back if I'd kept my head."
He kissed the top of her head, "You know me," he told her, "Most of the time I think a good, sharp shock does the system wonders where kind words simply coddle the problems."
Rosie sighed, not seeming all that comforted by the statement.
"Besides," he went on, "No matter what anyone else has to say - I'm fucking touched. Hearing that you stood there and told them all you were loyal to me, when you knew they wouldn't thank you for saying it."
"But I am loyal to you," Rosie said, looking up at him in slight confusion, "And you are to me, aren't you?"
"Always," he nodded.
"Good," she nodded in return.
"But hearing you say it - imagining you saying it to them. God, I wish that was a show I had seen," he told her, placing his fingers under her chin to bring her face up to his, then kissing her, funnelling all his gratitude and love for her into it, kissing her in a way that would leave both their mouths swollen.