A/N: Once again, thank you for all the comments and feedback. The comments make my day, I always look forward to hearing what you think about the story. I'm very, very excited for the new episode this evening (sorry to anyone living outside of the UK and the Republic of Ireland who might not be able to view it. Know that when it eventually comes to Netflix, it will be worth the wait - so far it has been a great season imo).
Otherwise, enjoy the new chapter!
nine
Soaked through to the bone from the downpour, Charlotte held my arms while her teeth chattered and her eyes flit around the hall of the house, her parted mouth snapping shut at the sight of Alfie atop the staircase, his expression left purposefully blank. Alfie had met Charlotte many times beforehand.
He looked at her now, though, watched my hands pull off her dampened coat and toss it aside. He followed the fall of that coat, followed the rise of my hands, the sweep of my thumbs against her cheeks, smoothing out those droplets from rain and tears alike. I tasted her salt; her sorrow, an aftertaste.
I turned and looked up at Alfie, half of his broad form cloaked in blackness from the lack of light in the hall, the other half illuminated in golden warmth from the candles in the bedroom, seeping outward.
Quietly, I said, "Alfie, could you please run Charlotte a bath?"
He was already slinking off toward the other bedroom. Although unused, it still had a bathroom and we had simply never bothered to fill it with more than the bedframe and mattress, along with bed-sheets that I hoped had not become stale. I turned and found her hands patting at the wallpaper as if she had never seen it in another place.
Croaking through her wobbling voice, she whispered, "Got it good here, you do, Willa."
I ignored the niggling guilt in my stomach which stirred at her words. "Come upstairs, Charlotte."
ii
Sinking into the bathtub, Charlotte let out a tired breath which released all the tension in her, so that it was caught up in the tendrils floating from the surface of the water and lost in condensation. I found myself looking at her stomach and breasts as if there might be some clue there; how far along is she, exactly?
I knew nothing about babes but had witnessed the birth of them in wet fields a couple of times before I left for London. I had seen the faces of women contorted in hideous trauma, legs parted for the hands of the old Gypsies to pull out some small creature with limbs held tight against itself, coated in thickened mucous and eyelids sealed shut in purple slickness. I had rarely held them. I saw them always bundled, sometimes held against a breast, other times bounced around on a lap.
"One month," she mumbled. "Maybe two months. I don't know. How do I know?"
I plucked a damp strand of hair from her forehead and pushed it aside. "I have only held babies fully grown, Charlotte. Where's George?"
"I looked for blood in my knickers," she said. "Like a mad woman, I looked for days and days. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't true. How could it happen to me?"
"Charlotte…"
I saw her hands aflutter before she became very still in the water. I was sitting behind her and the sight of her body now shriveled and blue from the cold of the rain reminded me of Josephine in a terrible way.
I felt my breathing become stuttered and tight, lungs constricted, so that I had to look away from her and hold my own hands against my chest to quell that spreading dampness there. I swallowed a bitterness which coated my gums, seeped into the nerves, each root overcome.
"Liverpool," she cried suddenly. "I went to his house. He lives in a lovely little red house on Clare Avenue. I used to dream of a house like that for us, y'know. His youngest sister answered the door. I asked for him – for George. She said he left for Liverpool."
"Had you told him already?"
She nodded. She stared at the little cluster of towels alongside her. "I told him the night before he left. I never thought he would – but he said –…"
She became very quiet. She scrunched her hands, over and over. I was not sure what she was holding, in her mind.
"I want it out," she said. "I want it out, Willa."
"You have to think carefully about this, Charlotte."
"I prayed for blood," she said. "I looked for it, prayed for it, like a mad woman…"
iii
Guiding Charlotte into the bedroom, I saw that Alfie had left out one of my nightgowns and a spare pair of slippers for her – along with a warmed mug of milk on the drawer, a slice of sweet bread alongside it. I tucked her into the bed-sheets and sat with her for a long time. I cradled her like I had cradled her when she was just a young girl in the old flat. I brushed through her hair, leaned my cheek against her head.
"Was it really that long ago, Charlotte, that we were just some kids working for Esther, eh?" I smiled, but it was held tight with sadness, that smile. "I'll take care of you now, like I took care of you then. I'll share my blankets with you like I did then, too. Nightgown and all."
I found her fast asleep already. I talked to her anyway.
iv
After a couple of minutes there, I carefully pulled away from her and settled her into the sheets by herself. I brushed out my skirts and went into the hall, shutting the door behind me. I took only a couple of steps before I realised that the hall light was still bright. I turned for the staircase and saw Alfie was still there at the bottom, by the door, as if he had never left it. Only he had this envelope in his hand, and he turned it this way and that. But I saw that it had already been opened.
"Alfie?" I called out softly.
"Is she asleep, love?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Go to bed yourself then, Willa. I'll be right there."
v
Standing in the bedroom, pulling off my skirts, I heard the shatter of glass in the kitchen.
vi
He came into the bedroom and said that he had accidentally dropped his drink. The envelope was not with him. I knew that he was keeping something to himself because there was nobody left to write to Alfie; all his soldier-friends had been blown away from him and those left often had no hands or never had the words or patience for letter-writing and his brother had been arrested once more and Ollie had no reason to send a letter when he could just come around the house or wait until we saw him at work and it was just us, really.
It was just us. I looked at him in the bed and wondered, who wrote to you, Alfie?
His eyes met mine in that moment. He heard the question, unspoken. He looked away.
I heard the shatter of glass again, though nothing else that I could see seemed to have fallen.
vii
Perched on the edge of our own mattress later that night, while Alfie slept behind me, I thought about kin; never had Johnny feigned that our kin could not do certain unsavoury things if required, like the breaking of bones and sawing of flesh. I had never quite considered really calling in favours from faraway family – until I sat there in the bedroom and convinced myself that I had kin in Liverpool who could find George, break his bones and saw his flesh. I could do it myself with the wrath which flushed through me in waves.
I heard the sleepiness in him and then the languid stretch of his arm held outward to find me and pull me against him; he patted around the curls and wrinkles of the sheets and his form shot upward, his rapid switch in demeanour drawing me from darker thoughts to look back at him, startled. His eyes, slowed by the dim light, looked about the bedroom and latched onto me, his shoulders dipping downward in – relief.
"What are you doin' down there, Willa?"
"Thinking," I answered.
"Oh, fuck," he groaned, flopping backward against the mattress. He held his arm over his face. "I never worry more in me life than when you tell me you're thinkin'."
"Is that right? Then what were you so worried about when you woke up, hm?"
His arm fell away from him, but his expression was not any more transparent than it had been before. "Sometimes I dream that you're not 'ere anymore."
"Do you look for me, then?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "Hm, yeah. I look for ya. Get up and walk 'round the 'ouse and wait for ya. Never do find ya. I open doors, close doors, move around the bedrooms and go into the kitchen until I –…"
I watched his lips move silently in the dark, after that. Softly, I asked, "Until what, Alfie?"
"Stupid fuckin' dream," he whispered, his hands reaching to root themselves in his scalp and pull at the strands, just to distract himself. He drew his hands along his face. "What were you thinkin' 'bout?"
"Charlotte," I answered. "George – how he never should have left her."
"But he did," Alfie said. "And it won't make no difference 'cause she's gonna get rid of it, anyway."
Struck mute by his bluntness, I stared at him in the blackness of the night. I had heard Charlotte say that she never wanted it, that it had been a mistake – but the words came from Alfie and somehow felt more real. He never tried to say it kindly. He said it in the same way that he told me about the rain outside before he brought me my coat or that he would rather skip his breakfast to be at the bakery sooner. He said it like that; it left me bereft, afloat in a vast sea which was far too tumultuous for me to swim through, dragged further and further outward into its depths.
He said, "I used to think that I would want a son, me."
I felt a tightness in my throat; we had never talked about children. I tried to hold a lightness in my tone which was not there, so that my words came out awkward and awash in trepidation. "A son, Alfie?"
His eyes had swelled in haziness. He was in a sea of his own, now. "I thought I wanted a son until the war came and I stopped wantin a son. I was countin' 'ow many other sons died out there in front o' me. I thought about all their mothers gettin' them little telegrams what tell you they're dead but don' tell you 'ow they went out. Makes a difference, that does, knowin' 'ow they went out. So, I thought I wanted a daughter, after that."
"Don't you still want one?"
"I 'eard that there were women in villages when soldiers from the other side started comin' in and – and assaultin' 'em, y'know, before our lot got there and started fightin' from the trenches. Women and – and girls, too. I 'eard about it from other soldiers who 'ad talked to the nurses while in the infirmary. I 'eard 'bout it from them 'cause no woman wanted to talk about it. Ashamed, they were. Cast out by their own people 'cause of it. Hm. I saw them girls what were taken in by the nurses me-self and I thought I couldn't take it, not if it were me own girl. No. Hm. Not a son. Not a daughter, neither."
"But the war is over, Alfie," I said quietly.
"And it'll come again," he mumbled. "I would rather fight me-self out there a thousand times over than 'ave me son do it, y'know. I'd do it all again to spare 'im. I'd rather that than me daughter see what men can do, hm. Even soldiers. Especially soldiers."
I was not sure just when it had happened, but the wetness in my eyes had spilled over onto rosy cheeks quickly wiped. He rooted his hands against his scalp again and pulled – pulled and pulled harder then, so that it frightened me. I scrambled forward to tug his hands away and hold them against me instead. He rested his head against my chest, breathing raggedly.
"I never wanted to tell you that," he said.
"It's okay, Alfie," I whispered into his hair. "You're supposed to be able to share these things –…"
"Let 'er be rid of it, Willa," he told me, his hands cupping my cheeks to look at him. "Don't persuade her otherwise, if that is what she decides. She knows what I do. She knows it. Neither son nor daughter. Not in this world."
I stared at him, unseeing.
viii
Bundling her coat around her, I leaned forward to kiss Charlotte between the wrinkle of her eyebrows drawn together in worry. I smoothed out the crinkles in her coat, tugged her scarf between the lapels, like Alfie had often done for me. She was embarrassed around him, after all that had happened.
I promised her that Alfie left for the bakery much earlier. He had left around dawn and I had told him that I would be there once I had walked with her to Heath Street. She wanted to meet with some woman; some strange, mystical woman who could – rid – her of it, this little dot in her stomach now swirling larger.
"I want to do it alone," Charlotte said. "I don't want you in there while I talk to her, Willa. I want to do it myself. I heard from another girl that she meets us first, asks us questions – to see we aren't trying to catch her out with the coppers, mind. Then she'll arrange the real date."
"Well, can I join you then? On that real date?"
"On that date," she nodded. "You can be there for me then, Willa."
ix
Sinking into the mud, I went to the wet fields with the girls buried there. I looked out at distant shrubs and trees beyond the fences, branches wrapping around the wooden frames and pulling them inward into the blackness. I cleaned out the old flowers, rotted and worn. I plucked the tired petals scattered around. I spoke with the girls. I never told Esther about Charlotte, even then.
I took the flowers from her plot.
I grabbed them harshly and threw him harshly, too. I let out a loud, echoing scream into the fields and felt it ripple outward across the earth, so that all people could hear it – the soldiers in those other countries, the women cast out, sons and daughters alike. I screamed and screamed until my throat ached and I was silent.
I threw the flowers down and walked out of the wet fields.
x
Turning into Bonnie Street, I had my hands stuffed into my pockets and my shoulders hunched against the wind which curled across the barrels and clapped against my skin. It was wet. It was always wet in London and always the cobbles glinted like black eyes, blinking in flashes of light from the reflection of the silver clouds hung low from the heavens.
I heard the thump of wooden crates hauled from trucks. I heard the clang of metal. I heard the shriek of tyres and the slam of doors before the pepper of gunfire; only I had never been a soldier and had never known the sound of that clacking recoil, that sound of bullets against metal doors and metal sheets, so much metal in that courtyard that all noise echoed around me and confused me. Blistering pain shrieked from my throat and soon in my right arm – it came from my stomach, too, ripped apart from bullets shot somewhere behind me.
I had been standing beneath the red-brick arch of the bakery.
I had been standing beneath it and I saw it yawn over me once I collapsed backward against the ground. I felt it swell around me, the wetness of it. There was blackness blended into the mud, the mud which squelched between my hands, pushing deeper into the sludge in an attempt to pull myself from the earth, separate myself from the wet soil. I thought of dogs shot in fields and I thought of the girls in the flat. I thought of Alfie somewhere in between.
And I thought, that blackness is my blood pouring from me now.
And I thought, I was born in soil like this. I am dying in soil like this.
xi
There was a man overhead. He blocked the clouds, and his hands scooped beneath my wounded throat to haul me upward. I waited for him to lift me further and find help. Only he plucked a cigarette from his lips and held it out before me, so that I could watch the flicker of its ash. He used his other hand, awkwardly curled beneath me, to lift my wrist and look at it. His eyes flashed to find mine.
How could it happen to me?
He said, "Sabini sends his regards."
He pressed the butt of the cigarette against my right wrist, where those blue veins were, and held it there until a blackened dot had fizzled into the skin. He stood and I fell from him.
xii
I fell from him and fell further still, fell into swirls of colour; electric blue, shocks of red, spun around and around. I felt as if I was in that dream that Alfie had had, stood in the house which flashed in those colours. I opened doors, closed doors. I walked into the kitchen to find him. I called out for him. I opened the door for the bathroom and found Josephine there, bloated and purple from the bathwater around her. She said, "Thanks, Willa."
I nodded at her and turned into the bedroom. The old Gypsies watched me while I did this, looked at me while I stood in the bedroom and called out for Alfie. They stood in the corner and watched me. Charlotte was sitting on the bed. She could not see the old Gypsies, but they could see her. I knew that.
So, I turned back into the bathroom and out into the hall, and I was by the front door. There was an envelope on the floor, but I walked away from it, toward the mirror instead. I saw myself there, in that mirror. I had a smudge of soil on my cheek which could not be wiped away no matter how much I scrubbed at it.
And I saw my mouth move, and it said, "You'll be all right, darlin' – because I'm 'ere, ain't I –…"
xiii
Drawn upward from the mud once more, I awaited the sizzling burn of a cigarette against my wrist but breathed the familiar scent of rum and mint mixed together. I was hauled against a strong chest, lifted from the earth, held beneath my legs and jumbled around so that all of my organs slipped around each other, never returned to the right place.
There was a cotton shirt in front of me, rubbing against my cheek. I knew it because it belonged to him and I had plucked every thread and stitched every button into that shirt. I made all his shirts. He never wore any other shirts than those that I had made him.
"You'll be all right, darlin'," he said. "Because I'm 'ere, ain't I-…"
xiv
The nurses plucked every thread and stitched every button; I was sewn together, cleaned first of those stray bullets embedded in the back of my right arm, which was slow and sluggish now, another pulled from the back left of my side, another had scraped the right side of my throat and left a heavy slash in the skin but it had not torn through it. I would have died, if it had.
I was in a bed with scratchy sheets and drugged so much that I could not dream anymore. I could only sit in the blueness of the room, isolated behind a thick curtain of white. My eyelids were sticky. There was a lot of noise in the hall. I heard Alfie shout. I peeled my eyelids apart to hear it – then my eardrums followed, in some disconnected fumble. I heard another shout. It was different, this time.
It was warm, familiar. It called out, "Willa Sykes!"
I started to weep; for it was weeping, quiet and soft, there was no shouting in it, just little sniffles and wet cheeks, wet from soil. I lifted a hand to wipe away that smudge but found nothing there. I wept because it was Johnny in the hall, it was Johnny who was warm and familiar and who burst through those doors and flung apart the curtains to find me.
Alfie was behind him. I saw him just before the curtains fluttered shut.
Johnny leaned frantically toward me, cupped my cheek. His eyes flit around me. He murmured in our tongue, clucked and soothed me in his own way. I looked behind him at the fold in the curtain. I saw Alfie's silhouette still there behind it, before it drained and disappeared entirely. I wept all the more.
"I don't understand what happened, Johnny," I whispered croakily. "I only walked to Bonnie Street – and there was all this noise –…"
He stroked my hair and held his forehead against mine for a moment before he pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed. I heard footsteps behind him and thought that perhaps Alfie might return. Instead, a nurse opened the curtains, her lips pursed tight. She barked, "Mr Dogs, as I have already sufficiently informed you, you cannot –…"
"You'd best fuck off out of this room fast," Johnny snapped, standing suddenly. "Before I call all my kin to come and wait in the hall like I have fuckin' waited! D'you want that, do ya? All of us, in here, in your precious fuckin' ward! No? Then leave us be!"
The nurse hesitated for a moment, as startled by his outburst as I was. Soon, she collected herself and mumbled an incoherent string of words before she scuttled out. Johnny breathed heavily, his eyes having watched her all the way out. Once she had left, he came back to me, sat on that bed with his hands held around mine. I had been so afraid, in that soil. I had seen blackness. I felt that fear now. Only it was smothered by confusion and he saw it in my stare, which never left his, never strayed.
"Tell me, Johnny."
"You were walkin' into Bonnie Street, aye," he explained slowly. "And from 'round the bend came a car which stopped behind ya and out came some Italians. Shot at anybody on that street, they did. Your fella heard it from the bakery, so he tells me. Came runnin' out, but weren't the Italians already long gone from that place. Left you there in the dirt. Left you bleedin' and –…"
I saw the ripple of fury rise in this throat and wished to hold it off a little bit longer. I asked, "Why the Italians, Johnny?"
"He started war with them, your fella," Johnny spat. "Just back from a war, and he wants another, the fuckin' ki-…"
"Don't call him that, Johnny." I lifted myself from the bed and gripped his hands. "Don't ever call him that, you hear me? I'll throw you out before that nurse can, if you say that word!"
I was trembling from the effort of holding myself up. Johnny panicked and rushed to gently push me back against the pillows, his expression shifted into that of remorse. He smoothed away the sweat which stained my forehead and nodded, his lips held in a tight line.
"Aye, chey, I won't say it. I didn't mean it, girl. I just want you safe, love," he whispered. His voice cracked and I cracked with it, more tears spilling out so that Johnny blurred into colour. Electric blue, shocks of red. "Had some choice words with him, I did, out in the hall. Told him you'd be back in Ireland by the time you could stand. I'd have all our kin there to help you heal, chey."
Somewhat amused, I asked, "And what did he have to say to that, then?"
"Mostly sounds, not quite words," Johnny mused. "Went for me throat, too. Animal he is, that fella."
"He has a name, Johnny. Alfie," I muttered tiredly. "And he always goes for the throat."
"I'll use his name when he shows me that he's worthy of it. Got you into this, he did. Did he tell you about this war with the Italians, chey?"
The silence which followed was his answer. I hated that he seemed pleased with the fact that he had guessed correctly.
"What good would it have done me?" I asked weakly, aware that I was grasping at straws. "They got me anyway, didn't they?"
I was very tired from speaking, tired from moving around in the bed. I felt myself slump against the pillows and the stroke of his thumb against my knuckles drew me into a delicious half-slumber.
"They did," he nodded. His words were filled with emotion, his hands shook in mine. "But you have that Gypsy blood, don't you, chey? Too strong for 'em. And when you wake, my love, I'll still be here, yeah? Okay, sweetheart. I remember when you were a wee girl, and you –…"
I did not hear the rest of it, not a word of those tales from when I was a wee girl.
xv
Floating in that other world that the old Gypsies spoke of, I dreamt of the flat that we had lived in on Bell Road and I dreamt of Butcher and all the men that had ever gone against him. I dreamt of Esther and all the men that she had bested – until she hadn't. I dreamt of the Italians, shrouded in a veil that meant I could not fully see them.
I only understood that they were there, in the same way that the old Gypsies had been in my dreams. Just before I woke again, I heard what Johnny had said outside the flat months beforehand: never enough to become top-dog for 'em. It takes a lot more to stay top-dog than it does to become it.
xvi
There was a gentle pressure on my wrist. I felt that first. I felt the starched whiteness of the room second, because it burned my tender eyes, dried-out from tears, and filled my mouth with cotton. All my limbs were too heavy to lift. I let him hold my wrist. I watched him from between a narrow slit of sight, because my eyelids were still dense and sticky, barely held open.
It was not Johnny there.
Johnny did not have that small strip of bare skin on his right cheek where the stubble never grew. Johnny did not have a tattoo on that little stretch of skin between his thumb and index. Johnny never said Willa in the same way that Alfie did, either.
"Willa, sweet'eart, can you 'ear me now, angel?"
"Supposed to be together, we are, Alfie," I slurred through lips which flapped like blubber, numbed from drugs. My eyelids spasmed, flickered open.
"We are," he rasped. His elbows were pressed into the mattress, hands clasped as if he had been in the midst of a prayer, but his eyes dipped low toward the tiled floor. "We are together."
"You told me that you can trust me," I whispered. "You said we could work together, Alf. But you couldn't tell me about the fucking Italians? That you started war with them? Johnny had to tell me, because you couldn't –…"
"I never fuckin' started it!" he yelled, slamming his hands against the bed, his chair shrieking against the tiles as he pushed himself backward. He heard himself. He understood where he was, who he was with, and sank back into the chair. "I never fuckin' started it. Darby Sabini fuckin' did. Sabini started it and I will fuckin' end it. I was gonna tell ya, Willa. You were busy with Charlotte, 'ad enough to worry about. But I was gonna tell ya."
"Oh, when you visited my grave, were you? Probably would have waited until they were lowering me into the ground before it crossed your mind to mention the fucking Italians, Alfie."
"Well, I wouldn't 'ave wanted to spoil such a lovely fuckin' reunion with all your kin, not after meetin' your fuckin' uncle – what a joy that was!"
"Very sorry that I couldn't have intervened, Alfie," I retorted.
"No."
"What?" I asked, blinking at his blank expression and how he shook his head. "What d'you mean, no?"
"No," he repeated. "No, this isn't 'ow I wanted it. I wanted you to wake up, because I was gonna tell you 'ow fuckin' scared I was, right, to see you out there bleedin', thought you were dead or dyin' or already gone from me. This was meant to be between myself and that fuckin' wop and 'e will fuckin' regret this, Willa. I wanted to tell you that I love you, I won't ever let 'em 'urt you – again, because it 'appened, didn't it, I let you down, I might as well 'ave 'eld that fuckin' gun me-self –…"
"Was it that envelope, Alfie?"
He paused and licked his lips. "It asked if I would like to have a drink with him, enjoy some Italian cigarettes."
"Did you respond?"
"Told 'im to shove the cigarettes up 'is fuckin' wop arse with all the other things 'e puts up there, didn't I?"
I stared at him, aware of the burn on my wrist from those same cigarettes, finally understanding the message. "So, that's why they burned me with a cigarette. I hope it wasn't the same one he put up his arse and all."
Despite the circumstances, we smiled at one another and I rubbed his cheek, took comfort in his stubble and how he returned the affection, leaning against my palm.
I was lost in thought, looking at him. I knew that the Italians would not quit. I had already been hit and the next time it might be Alfie, might be Ollie, might even be Charlotte. It was not enough to wait in this bed for the next bullet to come. I could not shrink from what Alfie was, either. I had embraced it. I had promised him that he could trust me, whether he had told me this or not. There would always be retaliations because there would always be men out there like Butcher, like Harry Reed, like Darby Sabini –…
Like Alfie Solomons.
Never enough to become it.
"Have you considered what you might do now?" I asked.
Alfie looked at me, eyebrows raised. "What?"
"Sabini must know you're here in the hospital with me, Alfie. He thinks you'll be here for a while. He thinks he's bought himself a couple of days. Show him that he was wrong to think he was safe, Alfie. Wrong to think that he had any time at all."
Alfie was watching me, his expression a rich blend of surprise and some sick delight, his lips quirking upward with each word.
It takes a lot more to stay top-dog than to become it.
"He got me with three bullets," I said steadily. "Now he deserves four shot right back at him, you understand? You find where it'll hurt him most and then you shoot. Hit him hard. Hit him with all you have and do not take a rest, either, Alfie."
"He's got pubs. He runs the races," Alfie replied. His eyes swirled with that same glow which often came after he had beaten someone; it was also the look that came from his arousal.
And I had to admit that I felt it, too.
"Take his alcohol. Use it to set his fucking pubs on fire. Kill his horses – or better yet, kill his best jockeys. Then bring me some pillows from the house, because these are useless," I muttered, slapping a hand at the flaccid pillow beneath me.
His smile dripped away into nothingness. He was solemn, his eyes dark. "I meant it, Willa. I thought you were dead."
"And what would you have done then?"
"Slaughtered him and every other Italian on this fuckin' earth."
"So, I'm not dead. But do it anyway."
