NOTE: this story has been long-since promised, but the new version of 'come right' is finally here! i have taken much too long to rewrite this and i sincerely apologize to my old readers for taking over a year? to upload this? i am so so sorry, but i think the wait was worth it because i am finally satisfied with the plot i have planned.
first and foremost, i want to give credit to Zed Minsky for inspiring the layout style of this chapter; i recently read their story 'alternate world' and it is a beautiful piece. i highly recommend that you go check them out!
i would like to note that this story will include canon themes from peaky blinders such as violence, swearing, and period-typical sexism. there will also be mentions of death and references to nightmares, as they are essential to this story. also i apologize that this chapter is very piecy, i wanted to sort of lay the groundwork here and in the next chapter. as the story goes on there will not be as much.
with all that said, i hope you enjoy this new rendition! if you have the time to leave any kind of feedback, it would be much appreciated.
𝔒𝔫𝔢:
They came to take the horses before summer gave its final farewell. Fog lapped at boots as they splashed and stomped and walked across acres of land that were not theirs to disturb; they formed a crescendo against the cobblestones, disrupted the peace that had been there before. There had still been puddles from a sudden swell of thunderclouds, rain that had long since fallen mixing with dirt and leaving globs of mud near the front of the stables that broke under these boots and broke into more globs and made more puddles.
Standing in one of the stalls herself, she heard the melody of shoe bottoms, the squash of mud underneath feet and had thought it was Douglas coming in with his boys for an early muck out as he always did in the warmth of the summer months, leading the horses to the pastures in the cool of early mornings and bringing them back into the stables when the sun peaked through the clouds and the heat settled in.
Some of the horses would role in those globs of mud or dry patches of dirt in the pastures and soil their coats, and her cousins would be left to wash them down until they were shiny and new, ready to spend hours in the gallops with her until their coats became soiled once more.
"Pardon me, miss."
But it had not been Douglas or his boys, or her cousins ready to wash soiled coats. She heard an English accent, turned to meet a green gaze.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"We're here for the horses, miss. By order of his Majesty, all horses and vehicles are to be impressed for public service."
She blinked. Her throat felt dry and she almost croaked, "Impressed?"
"Yes. To take them, miss. For the war." He spoke as if she had no recollection of that which was going on; it made her cheeks flush pink.
"I know what it means," she mumbled. She was not naive, what else could it be besides the war? . . . But what did the king need their horses for? Was he so lacking of his own steeds and his own automobiles that he meant to snatch theirs away like those who snatched stray dogs and other stray things?
"I just- . . ."
The screech of stall doors silenced her as it silenced the boots, bringing life to another chorus, one of dozing horses suddenly woken from their states of half-asleep and peace. Her mind went to one, in particular; his name was Polo, and she thought of how he would not be altogether too happy to be separated from his sanctuary.
"Miss . . ."
Dark curls brushed against her neck as she startled like the horses, having forgotten the man in front of her.
"I must insist," he said. "I cannot disregard my orders." He spoke tenderly, this man, not like those in uniforms who stomped their boots; and yet that was what he was.
Her hand instinctively rested on her beloved Rudy's neck. "I- I don't understand, why- . . ."
"Evie . . ."
The horses' whinnies quieted, doors no longer screeched. The tender-voiced man turned his head and the scuffling of boots surrendered to the commanding tap of a raven's head cane; he stepped aside to let Evie peer out into the long hall of the stable.
Her grandfather stood there, a tall shadow tidied up in a gray suit and a somber expression, trailed by the fog that lapped at his shiny, black shoes. "Let the lad in," he said.
𝔦𝔦:
Cheek brushing against a cotton drape, she looked down the length of the road on which dozens of their horses were lead away from the grounds, from their places of sanctuary and their fields where she watched them soil their coats and roll through globs of mud. The acres of grass where they would run and graze and rest, those fields were scarcely filled now, left to be dotted with the coats of ponies and colts that they could not take. The useless ones, she heard one man say.
She told them to be gentle with their horses, these men; to please, please be gentle, these men that stomped in with their boots and opened stalls without asking. Evie hated that they did not ask, that she had to hear them barge in and be told without warning that they were there to take the horses away . . . but why would they think to ask? They were abiding by orders, given permission by her grandfather's signature on a piece of parchment that said yes, they were allowed to come in there at dawn, to take their horses away before Douglas could let them out in the fields and before her cousins could wash them down.
Before some of them could even nibble at hay or grass or even wake from their sleep, he had already given these men permission; and as she leaned into the drape, fingers curling around the dyed fabric with memories of her Rudy, she thought of something: he hadn't told her. Early arrivals and quick explanations in the midst of choruses of boots and protesting horses aside, her grandfather never told her what he had done. He had just let her find out for herself.
𝔦𝔦𝔦:
They were not allowed to take "valuables", her grandfather said. Mares and prize winners, racehorses with worth to their name could not be taken into battle, into another field that was more dirt than grass and more blood than dirt; people would start a riot over the news of the death of a Diamond Jubilee or a Gay Crusader or of a stallion that was guaranteed to breed the next.
A riot, she thought. Well, if they can start a riot over Darby winners and prized ponies, then why can I not start a riot over my Rudy?
The tender-voiced man had taken him from her; he gave her a sweet smile and took him gently as she had asked, and she prayed to God Rudy would stay with that man.
𝔦𝔳:
Her father was in those fields, those bloody fields in France where he fought alongside her uncle and other uncles and other fathers and sons. If the horses were to be taken there, then at least they would be with him.
𝔳:
Mornings found themselves cold and unwelcoming, glass blurred with condensation and windowpanes creaking under the slaps of wind which did not show them or much of anything any mercy at all; it bit cruelly at the flowers she planted herself, at the ivy that twirled around brick walls and stall doors, at her cheeks and nose which blushed red. Leaves fell dead on the cobblestones, crunched under the stomp of her own boots, idle and echoing in the empty stable she would trail into as if expecting soft coats and nibbling muzzles to still be there.
Evie would catch herself waking up and dressing for a day in the gallops out of years of practiced discipline and would halt her movements with a start, the memory of Rudy and Polo and the whinnies of all the horses who were roused only to be taken from their comfort trickling back to the forefront of her mind. She would plop onto her bed and begin to weep because they no longer waited for her to come for them, for Douglas to set them free for a while and let them roll in dirt that would soil their coats and be washed away by her cousins.
They're gone. They're gone, they're gone, they're gone- . . .
She hoped they would be with more tender-voiced men because as the months clambered on, she learned they would be near bombs, shouts, gunfire, and more loud things that would startle them and scare them.
Please be gentle with them . . . please please, please.
𝔳𝔦:
Her grandfather had wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he took her away from the stomping boots and roused horses, said, "Not even us breeders can hide ours from the King."
𝔳𝔦𝔦:
And yet she hoped no more men would stomp with their boots and disturb their grounds to take more.
𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:
Evie watched from underneath her umbrella as her little brother grunted at his boots which fell into globs of mud with a squish, out with a squelch, over slippery piles of grass that had almost made him slip and fall facefirst into other globs of mud. The ponies liked to play with him, mischievous and giddy even when soaked under a drizzle that had once been a downpour, because he did not know how to catch them as she did and they enjoyed making him frustrated.
"For Christ's sake, get over 'ere you little devils!" Charlie shook a fist through the air in a fit of righteous anger she had never seen before, slipping and tripping and making it harder on himself while the little animals whinnied in a fit of glee. Hands muddy, he pushed himself up from where he had fallen in a whim of determination to catch the miniature horses, and sauntered on . . . though with just two steps forward, as careful as he was, he fell again and caked his clothes with mud.
Evie giggled behind her hand, bringing his attention over to her, for the sound had vexed him.
"Aye, laugh all you wan', but could ya do it out 'ere while yer helpin' me?"
She said, "No, I think I'll jus' stay 'ere and see 'ow you handle yourself."
It was his responsibility to look after the little ones, after all.
𝔦𝔵:
She liked to think Charlie was put in charge of the ponies that flit about and dotted the fields because they were just as mischievous as he could be, and to see them act so as he tripped along and caked himself in mud and felt his cheeks redden in righteous anger, would by-and-by change his own flippancy.
𝔵:
Doune House had been a place which housed her family for seven generations; she knew nothing but it, with its redeemed wood paneling and old brick exterior and the details that would go unnoticed under paintings of their prize-winning horses that lined the halls, details that she would find in the back of the bookcase in her grandfather's study. Ivy forever grew from the cobblestones in every nook, every window pane and cranny with cobwebs and cracks and remnants of things once there, no longer. It sat like a pinpoint in the middle of sprawling fields of which she gazed at through her windows- was swallowed by them, admired less than the land.
An old home, it was, coated in dust spores with limbs that creaked like her grandfather's and stood bathed in spots of yellowish light, because their windows looked more like stained glass and the rooms looked more like sanctuaries, curtains muting sunlight into a soft, orange glow that felt dreamy and made her sleepy. Every chair was cushioned, every hall was long; and since its creation, the house was intended to be for a family, for fire-lit nights and mornings subdued in pinks and yellows.
It made her wonder how anything sad or tragic could ever happen inside it.
𝔵𝔦:
A portrait hung by its lonesome over a gaping hearth in a room she never stepped into. As a child, she would hasten across carpeted floors and risk tripping over her feet to get by it, risk burning her elbows and her knees on harsh stitching because there was always a sense of dread that oozed from that room, and she could feel it, even then.
That portrait faced the doorway, and if it was open, the first thing she would see would be a painted pair of stark grey eyes, blended with blues and greens, and they bore into her in a way that crawled up her spine and raised her skin into gooseflesh; they were the eyes of an ancestor, the eyes of the one who founded their success, and her mother once said she looked just like her.
"Just like our dear Lady Sutton."
It was her mother's room, anyhow, where the portrait hung by its lonesome as she sat in there and read, fell asleep, woke with a crick in her neck in subdued hues of gray because the orange glow did not spill into this room.
Maybe that was why Evie hated it; in a house of cozy warmth and oranges, spotted light through stained glass and portraits of horses, amongst a collection of rooms that were swaddled, there was a one that was cold and stiff and gray. When her mother passed away, it was locked away with its painting and its dread.
𝔵𝔦𝔦:
A doctor declared her mother, Margaret, sickly on account of absurd amounts of stress and strain on the heart, heightened by medication that flared her senses and made her see things as if dreaming while still awake. It made her dream when the sun would peek through in spots of yellow, dream when their rooms of comfort succumbed to the dark and lost that orange glow.
And when she was awake, cheek brushed against the drapes, she would watch a girl walk across her own grave, hands digging into the earth she was returned to. Margaret knew that girl, in her haze of a dream-like consciousness, without ever meeting her, she knew. She knew her little Elizabeth.
𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦:
Evie never saw her, this girl who walked over her own grave, this girl who would have been her sister, but she pretended she did for her mother. She pretended she saw curls that matched her own twisted into twin braids, slumped over shoulders as hands dug into dirt; she pretended she saw it, boots trotting over this plot of ground where a baby had been buried, until her mother became too weak from the absurd amounts of stress and strain on her heart, heightened by medication that flared her senses and made her see things until she fell sick and breathed her last, and she was buried in another plot, next to the one where Elizabeth lay.
𝔵𝔦𝔳:
Evie dreamt of the both of them, after that, met in her dreams a sister she never had.
𝔵𝔳𝔦:
And when the horses were taken, she dreamt of them too.
𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦:
Douglas still came to their old relic of a house, even if there were very few horses for him to mind. He continued to march along for a morning's muck out as he did in the heat of the summer months, in the cold of the winter when the warmth was no longer there; especially when the warmth was no longer there. He would mind the stalls and mind the tack that sat in another room and collected dust, minded the ponies that escaped from Charlie's grasp, mischievous and giddy, mucking out abandoned stalls and bringing them into those. They were fine in their fields, but he wanted them to be warm.
When frost curled around the windowpanes and chill nipped at their noses, he would help her cover them in their blankets, these prize-winning, valuable horses and young steeds that were left who could not take the cold; these horses that were not so hardy as their Shetland ponies who endured the winds.
He worked until his hands were raw, sometimes, a lot of times. He worked himself and worked the boys that were left and made them stay until there was nothing to stay for, and then he would work some more by his lonesome, humming a tune to the horses that were still there in their comfort, a melody echoing in that big stable where boots stomped, where men came and took the rest.
She heard him sometimes, humming this tune, peaked from her window which displayed the stables, picture-perfect in its frame, and saw him working- still working -with a threadbare coat wrapped around him.
Evie thought to find him a new one, one that was not covered in patches and resewn spots and stretched thin from a-few-too-many rough winters. He had never had another in all the time she knew him, never thought to, because he often remarked on the patches and the resewn spots with a worry that made her wonder if he could even afford a new one.
He won't take it if I give it to him, she thought. In all his stubborn pride and urge to pay for everything that was his own, he would not if it was in her hands. She knew that; she went out of her way to make sure he wouldn't know she had paid for something that would be his, searched for one that would bear his likeness, and woke up early- earlier, before he would come and his boys would come after -to leave it in the stables where he would see it, hanging there with nothing but the horses he minded and the tack he cleaned.
And on that morning when the wind nipped her nose red and when horses roused in their blankets, had the stables been filled with his humming that day, it might have worked.
𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:
Douglas never came to the stables that day because he had been summoned to Stirling Castle, she learned, and was told to stay there for a while as the rest had done. They wanted to see if his heart was weak or one of his legs were funny, if he could march and if he could fight and if he could do what a soldier could do, like the ones that went off to France.
He isn't meant to go off to France, Evie thought with another feeling of dread; one that did not ooze from a room but nipped at her thoughts as the wind nipped at her nose. He's meant to stay here with us and the horses where he loves to be, helping Charlie and helping me and what will happen if he doesn't come back- . . .
She thought the same of her father and yet he had gone anyway, hugged her there on those cobblestones where their horses left them as he left them, as Douglas would leave them; and Evie worried she would dream of him and her father as she dreamt of the horses, her mother, her unborn sister. She wondered if she would see them walking over their own graves.
But she never wondered if Douglas would be cold because he took the coat she held for him as he left; he took it from her hands too, knew she had gotten it for him. He said he didn't care that it did not come from his own, he would need that coat.
𝔵𝔦𝔵:
She thought the war had taken enough yet here it came to take some more.
𝔵𝔵:
Stirling grew wild with its noise and its business becoming even noisier and even busier somehow with fewer people; she could hear it all the way from their acres of land and feel it in the winds that blew with no mercy for her or much of anything, anyone.
Her cousins lived on Broad Street, placed in the middle of this noise and this business; her aunt and her cousins May and Maggie were left to work as well as mind the house, among other things that kept them on their toes. Evie came to help them on days when Charlie did not fall in the mud trying to nab ponies and when her other cousins that were left could handle the other horses.
She weaved between the stalls where farmers brought their produce and their wares to sell them. She weaved between packs of children and mothers who chased after them or didn't mind them at all. She stepped into a shop that was filtered by curtains and had its own orange glow, busy, oh so busy, with three women flitting about as the ponies did.
Stirling was a market town, but market towns still needed clothes and socks and coats that kept them warm while they hauled their produce and came into the center to sell. Her aunt sowed a multitude of things, mended old, and had her help because her cousins could not do so much as sew a hole closed or create an inseam. Evie did so while they swept and folded and tucked away profits; she listened to their chatter and they listened to her dreams.
Maggie enjoyed her dreams, she liked to think, in the way children enjoyed stories of babies taken by the fairies because they didn't know any better. She liked to think Maggie knew better . . . but Maggie grew bored with her minding and sweeping and Evie soon came to realize Maggie had always been bored, had always wanted to give an excuse to do anything else, had always wanted to be rid of the shop and spend her days taking care of the beautiful creatures her cousin spent her days with.
"Lucky Ev," she would call her. "My blessed little cousin."
Evie had half a mind to scoff but always bit her tongue and swallowed it, because she knew there were certain things which occurred behind closed doors that you just did not tell kin.
𝔵𝔵𝔦:
Before her decision to go down the path of a trainer as opposed to the business and trade of a breeder, she was exposed to the knowledge of other things. She knew for a long while that that which contributed to her family's good fortune and success did not dwindle down to simple luck and skill as it had in its beginning. Before a race would begin, before an auction would commence, as a child who hid on the stairs, she would catch men in caps and scowls shake hands with her father, and see a gun or a blade peak out from underneath their coats. She would later see them at those races or those auctions and nod as if they had done what they were told, only to hear soon after that it was her father's horse that won or her father's horse that was sold for a handsome price.
Evie understood that these men did things for him, that they would tip the scales in his favor and help him maintain that which his family was known for in ways that were not good and honest. Her father did not listen to his father in the way she did. He did not pour his life into learning about breeding and training because he did not want to, and eventually she understood that too.
But she had not understood that these men that shook hands with him went as far as to beat and bruise and kill if it meant that he would win in some way until she saw one of them beaten and bruised and killed by another man. She saw one of them, there before her at the age of ten, and her mother had scowled and shook her fist in righteous anger towards her father. "Are you so thick in the head that you let your child see that? Christ, Alan, 'ave you no sense? No regard for our daughter's wellbeing? What will that do to her, seein' that man cut to pieces? Have you ever thought of anyone-. . ."
𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦:
Evie dared to think now that if her mother was still alive, would she scowl at her and shake her fist in righteous anger if she could see how her daughter was now the one who shook hands with men who wore caps and scowls and hid a knife or a gun behind their coat. She wondered if her mother would understand that what was once a method her father indulged in was the only card they had left.
𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦:
But the war had come and took those men in caps and scowls too, so what was the point in wondering?
𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔳:
For a long while, Evie dreamt of her mother and her sister without a thought. She dreamt what she dreamt and did nothing of it when light beckoned her eyes open and jolts of nothing or something rattled her spine and shook her into the consciousness of the day. She could scarcely recall what it was that painted itself in her mind when it first bloomed from that seed, that moment which etched itself into an alcove of her memories and cursed her with a never-ending scene . . . a repetition of the same dream which would return over and over, plague her slumber over and over.
There was a time when she began to welcome the dream as if it were an old friend, for the image never changed; her mother would take hold of Elizabeth's pale hand and they would walk across their graves towards her, smiling in a way that was warm, even if the warmth never quite reached her.
She might have even considered the dream a blessing, to have the memory of her family forever there with her, a veil of comfort.
But then her father left, the horses left; the veil was disrupted, torn to pieces, and the comfort of warm smiles changed into unsettling frowns, hollow cheeks, and lifeless gazes and that which made the urge to flee crawl up her spine . . . though she could not. Limbs reached for her and she could not move away from them; they grabbed her and relieved her of breath and said this is what she deserved, and all the while she would hear the horses cry out until it woke her, left her gasping for breath which she had thought was taken.
𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦:
And for a long while, she did nothing of it because who in the world could make her dreams go away?
𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦:
Evie could not be rid of her neverending dream until the sun stretched its arms over the horizon and beckoned her from it, freed her; though there had been a night when the limbs reached so far, faces frowned so much that she was startled from it, opened her eyes to silvery haze and found herself alone in the dark.
She stumbled from her bed and bumped into her bedside table where wearing letters from France fell and crunched under her bare feet. She walked blindly over creaky floorboards until she found some sense of consciousness, free from her disoriented state and far from her bed with her hand braced against the wall; and though she had not felt as if she had taken more than two steps, she found herself before the room which had been locked long ago, its door open and its dread oozing, prickling at her skin once more. She stared into it without a thought and met the eyes that plagued her childhood; and she shivered, for these eyes and this mouth and this face smiled, grabbed her without grabbing and said, "You deserve this."
𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:
And yet the door to that room had never been opened because her stumbling and her shivering had been a dream too. She had never left her bed, and she began to wonder if she was becoming like her mother, if she would soon begin to see things that Charlie would pretend to see for her.
𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔳:
Sometimes, most times, it was not like this. Oftentimes jolts of nothing or something would beckon her awake and she would think nothing of it. In her dreams, the limbs would not reach for her and the faces would remain stagnant, and the horses would stand there grazing, out of reach. Smiles adorn the faces of her mother, her sister, and they would walk towards her. And she could see them . . . and they could see her.