Chapter Five:
Beshert
Alfie Solomon's P.O.V
The first time Alfie heard the word Beshert it had been his father who had spoken it through a puff of smoke from his pipe, feet kicked up from a hard days labour and his dinner plate empty from his mother's cooking. He had said it fondly with a crease by his eye and a dimple by his mouth, and it had made his mother giggle as she cleared the table, made her cheeks flush that pretty pink that his father could still root out from her complexion as easy as plucking a shiny apple from a branch, despite their two-decade long marriage being far beyond the honeymoon phase.
Alfie was still a child when he learned what it meant by a Rabbi he had questioned, as all children did, curiously. Destiny, inevitable, the other half. According to the Talmud, forty days before a male child was born God announces whose daughter he would marry. The Gentile had another name for it, he supposed, less elegant and more clumsy on the tongue as it was.
Soulmate.
He was three and barely a toddler when Alfie discovered it was a load of fuckin' bollocks.
Beshert hadn't stopped the Tsarist forces from putting two bullets in his father's head and six between his mother's ribs and painting their living room walls in a spray of their conjoined blood when they were driven out of Moscow in 1891 on the orders of Alexander III.
The mob it had created wanted blood, and they had gotten their fare share of it that night, all seven pounds of Solomon flesh.
His grandmother Rania, who had hidden from the raid with a baby Alfie in the fuckin' broom closet under the stairs on his mother's last desperate plea, was suddenly his only family left. Her husband, her Beshert, had died in the expulsion too. Had his throat slit at the Polish crossing when his papers gave his Jewish name away to a band of roving loyalists.
Beshert, whatever it was, destiny, fate, fuckin' soulmate, it didn't do jack-shit, didn't protect nothin', didn't do nothin', didn't speak nothin'.
But do you know what did speak?
Money.
Alfie was ten, a fresh refugee off a wharf in London trying fast and hard to lose his Russian accent in a city that didn't like anything that wasn't the bloody 'Queens' English' when he first discovered that. With only his grandmother and himself left, and their cousins only just settling in America, too far away to help and too little of survivors to do much of anything, it had been up to him to get them bread and board and far away from any Russian sympathisers.
He'd started lowly, gaslighting for a few spare farthings, going around with a funny fuckin' stick twice the size of himself to light the lamps in the street, climbing poles and climbing signs and climbing in and out of trouble. He'd saved those farthings up and bought himself a shovel for coal shifting on the docks in Camden, now thirteen and double the breadth of other kids his age even then, which paid him shillings instead. Shillings turned to halfcrowns when he put the shovel down and picked up a HRH rifle when the Great War started.
Then Alfie got home, what little there was left, as so few of his fellow soldiers couldn't do, corpses strewn across Europe like confetti in the fuckin' wind, and no one wanted coal. No one wanted lit lamps. No one wanted a locksmith or a tailor or a bloody baker.
What they wanted was to forget their troubles.
Rum was an excellent way of doing so.
He'd sold his medals from the war as soon as he possibly could, and bought himself some shite distillery from a man in an alley, and the rest, well, that was fuckin' history, innit?
If money could speak, violence could scream.
Still, that day, walking with cane in hand down Regents street of London with their glitzy-ritzy houses all lined up in a pretty neat row, five of which contained Alfie's own clientele for the protection racket he had on the side, he thought of that word in what felt like the first time in years.
Beshert.
Alfie doesn't know what brings it on, what exactly it was that sparked his memory, and Alfie fuckin' hated remembering that time, the time before the running, the time before loss, it might have been the wife kissing her husband goodbye at the corner of the street, might have been the kid kicking a ball across the green, might have been fuckin' madness, really. Still, he remembers, he thinks it, and he moves on.
Probably lucky it didn't exist, right? Alfie couldn't imagine the unfortunate soul that would have been trapped tethered to him. The Mad Baker of London, a gangster with a limp and a piss poor temper and an itchy trigger finger. Hapless chit never stood a chance.
Rosh Hashanah would begin at five that evening, and with his work now squarely done with for the next week, and everybody in London smart enough not to contact him if they didn't want teeth and toenails missing until the end of the holiday, he was steadily making his way home.
"Why don't you live here, boss?"
Alfie slunk into the passenger side of his car, eyeing Noah, a recent recruit with green still in his blood behind the wheel who had been waiting to pick him up from his meeting.
Fuck, he missed Ollie. Ollie didn't ask stupid questions. Ollie didn't dither in the car when it was fuckin' raining. Ollie was also the only person Alfie trusted enough to go pick up his grandmother from Birmingham, and this 'Harry' she had been so adamant in bringing with her.
He hoped he brought them to the actual bakery Alfie owned, and not the 'bakery' warehouse where the rum was brewed. Ollie was at least that smart, Alfie thought.
Hoped.
"Nah."
Alfie grunted, slamming the door and enjoying the way the boy, some second cousin from his father's side, jumped nervously in his seat.
Small joys and all that.
"Take a good look around you, lad. Fuckin' mental around here, right? Everyone's fuckin' everyone's missus and peering over garden fences. The rich might have money, but they sure as fuck don't know how to keep their noses out of business. Nothin' to do around here but spit rumours. Drive me mental, it would. Nah, Camden's more my scene."
Alfie was lying in a way. He did it because it was fun, because it was something to do, because he did it so often he forgot, sometimes, how not to lie. Of course, he never would move around here. Too stuffy. Too restricted. Too fuckin'… London. Yet, he did sometimes, in the night when sleep was out of reach, which was becoming more often lately, think about other houses apart from the one above his bakery. Ones by the sea somewhere, with fresh air and sand and soft summers and spring green hills, far away from fat toads croaking on piles of gold or Italians waiting for him to slip or Shelby's driving him mad from half a country away.
Even sinners can dream.
He tells himself his dog, Cyril, would like it more there than here, this imaginary beach side resort consisting solely of himself and a shore, and that was the only reason Alfie thought of it at all.
He's lied so much; he half believes it himself.
"Now get a fuckin' move on before I start growing moss."
Alfie Solomon's P.O.V
The car was parked in the distance, down the road from the bakery, and as Alfie's own car rolls to a soft stop, engine spluttering to a quite mum, he knows Ollie is back with Raina.
And this elusive Harry his Grandmother kept writing about.
Another set of eyes to keep a hard watch on. Only the Almighty knew what Raina had told the boy, but Alfie doubted it was anything close to the reality. He'd inherited his prevarication of truth from somewhere, and no one, not one single living soul in all of Gods grand creation, could spin a yarn and a half-truth as quickly and as gracefully as Raina Solomons.
A fuckin' spider she was. Deadly as she was small. And, maybe, the closest thing to Alfie's heart.
He'd need to say thank you to this Harry lad if what Raina had told him was true. The boy had taken to a fist fight with a Shelby man for his Grandmother's bags, and now that was a debt he owed.
Alfie didn't take that lightly.
It also reminded him that he needed to get on the phone to fuckin' Tommy and threaten to ring his neck if he couldn't control his own men-
Alfie's cane thumped against the slab stone of the foot path as he ducked out the door, a familiar twinge of pain radiating down from his hip to his heel. The ghost of shrapnel haunting his joints.
"Fuck me, I'm getting old, aren't I? Need to start laying off the door-to-door services. Leave it to you sops to deal with. What else do I bloody pay you for?"
Alfie was getting old, and he was getting grumpy, and he was getting… Tired.
So fuckin' tired.
"Uh, driving. Guarding. Running to the docks to-"
"Alright, alright. I didn't expect a shopping list."
Ollie would have known that.
The door above the bakery jingled as he opened it, announcing his arrival like the shofar ringing in the Sabbath. Alfie doesn't have to walk in far to find Ollie standing at the counter, the apartments for living up the staircase to the left on the top three floors of the building.
"Where's the ol' crow then, aye?"
Ollie smiled in greeting, cap in hand.
"Upstairs sleeping. The drive took it out of Raina-"
There was a sudden clang of metal striking metal from the back rooms-
The kitchen.
Ollie winced, ringing his cap between anxious fingers.
"Uh, that's Harry. I tried to get 'em out of there and resting too-"
"What the fuck is he doing in my kitchens?"
Ollie dithered, caught in the crossfire.
"Well, you see, Harry's actually Harrie-"
Fuck it. Alfie didn't miss Ollie at all. Not one bit. Clearly the cold, rainy weather had gotten to more than his old war injuries.
Thundering through the shop towards the back, cane knocking boards as it would likely knock a head in the next few minutes, Alfie threw the door open just as Ollie dashed to his side, stuttering and stammering-
Alfie saw a burst of red first, like sunset in summer, the burnt gilt kind that turns dust to gold in the air, a mass of curls bouncing down a back. Little pieces came next. A streak of flour across a freckled cheek the colour of soft sand. The spark of an evergreen eye the same shade he imagined spring-time hills. The patter of small, bare feet, shoes kicked off in the corner. Small feet for a small frame, the person barely over five-foot, not even to his chin if they stood side by side or front to front.
He's struck terribly by that dream again, of the little house on the shore, and-
And there's a woman in his kitchen. A young woman, he's guessing no older than twenty, a bright young thing is in his kitchens, his kitchens, swanning about the place like she owned it. His dog, Cyril, was sleeping by her bare feet. Snoring away.
Alfie was almost impressed if he wasn't so dislocated by the sight, and maybe he's a little bit breathless by the rasp of his voice.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The woman blinked up from whisking eggs in a large bowl, and she glares at him.
Glares.
"Who the fuck am I? The person who's going to save this shit show, clearly."
She dashed the bowl onto the filled counter amongst baking trays laid out, tins buttered and waiting, dough rising under damp cloth. Alfie was hit with the smell of wildflowers and treacle, and something a little like honey.
The woman slung up a tray, wiggling it in his direction, and for a moment he thought she might just throw it at him.
"Do you know what these are supposed to be?"
What?
"Tart bases! Do they look like tart bases to you?"
What?
Ollie croaked from the door, behind Alfie's shoulder.
"Maria was trying her best-"
The woman scoffed and threw the tray back down, reaching for the utensil rack where she plucked up a-
Meat mallet.
"Yeah, well, now I have to fix this before Raina wakes up and sees the mess and realizes she's not going to have anything to eat for the next week. Did you get that flour, Ollie?"
Alfie heard Ollie shuffle behind him, a two-step tick of nervousness.
"I was going to go and get it but then I thought I should wait for-"
The mallet made an arch in the air, squared off edge gestured in Ollie's direction.
"I swear if you don't get me that flour in the next-"
She glanced over to the wall clock before her sights locked back onto the man at Alfie's back.
"Twenty minutes, I'm going to put you in a pie."
Ollie wavered; Ollie stammered-
Ollie patted Alfie's back and scrammed.
"Alfie meet Harry, Harry meet Alfie. Good luck."
And he was gone. Gone along with Alfie's sanity, and his breath, and surely any sense.
"You're Harry?"
The woman with the spring-time eyes and the sunset hair, Harry, turned around, dropped the mallet onto the counter, and went back to whisking as if Alfie wasn't even there. Alfie wasn't used to that. Having people turn on him. Normally when he walked into a room people looked and they kept looking.
They scowled yeah, they cringed, but they looked like one would if a tiger had prowled into your bathroom while you were enjoying some bubbles.
"No, I'm Margaret from down the road."
When Alfie didn't immediately answer, she rolled her eyes at him. Rolled her eyes.
"Of course I'm fuckin' Harry. Who else would I be?"
Eggs stiff and white, she relinquished the bowl, padded over to the coat hook by the oven and pulled down an apron.
An apron she promptly threw at him, his cane dropping to the floor with a thud so he could scrabble to catch it before it hit him in the fuckin' face.
"Don't just stand there and look pretty, big guy. Roll your sleeves up and get dusting with sugar. We have an hour before Raina wants waking up, she's expecting a feast, and that's exactly what we're going to give her."
Her accent was strong, lilting but light, some Celtic twist dancing in her voice like soaked sin, like apples in brandy, and Alfie… For once in his long, long life, he's speechless.
Beshert, he thought as he shirked off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and slung on the apron.
Fuck he mentally cursed as he pulled down a pan from the top shelf.
A.N: Hello? Anybody there? It's the ghost of fics long past! To be honest, it's been years since I've updated this, and I'll be surprised if anybody is left reading it lol, but in case there are the odd few I really am sorry for abandoning this story so long. I sort of got into my own head about it, became semi-obsessed with getting Alfie just right, and ended up deleting god knows how many renditions of this chapter because I thought I couldn't reach what I needed to, and publishing anything less would burn this whole story to the ground.
Then I thought fuck it. Writing fics are meant to be enjoyable, and so I tried to do that with this chapter. So that's what I did. Had a little fun with it, and if people are still reading this I hope you had a bit of fun reading it in return. It might not be perfect, Alfie might not be the ideal rendition here, but I tried, I smiled, and I hope you smiled at Ollie's good luck too.
I know this chapter is short, but I'm getting back into writing slowly but surely, and now that I've gone and gotten over myself in actually just writing something for this fic, I'm hoping to get a few more chapters out very soon for this story. So there shouldn't be much of a wait for the next one.
I do want to say a huge, HUGE thank you to everyone who left kind words in the wake of the long hiatus I took with this fic. Honestly, if it weren't for you guys's lovely reviews I'm not sure I would have kicked myself up the arse, shifted gear and come back to it. So thank you. This is for you, as badly written as it might be lol.
As always, thank you so much for taking the time out to read my mad scrawling's. I hope you all liked it, and if you can, don't forget to drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21