A/N: After I post this, I am going to watch the season five finale! Here's hoping it's a good one. Thanks as always for all feedback, whether it be through reviews or favourites! Always appreciated! Reminder: this story contains period-typical racism and violence, both sexual and physical.
thirteen
Resting against a countertop in the kitchen, clasping a steaming cup of tea between my hands, I heard the clatter of the letterbox and looked along the length of the hall to find an envelope pushed between its metal folds. Cyril lifted his muzzle from his lush throne made of rich cushions and soft bedding, before he lowered himself once more, his jowls crinkling upward so that his chocolate eyes blinked out from behind his wrinkles.
Alfie had told me the breeder had called Cyril a well-bred, well-trained beast prepared to sink his canines into the flesh to protect his owners. Alfie had been told a lot of things about Cyril and his supposed ferocity; Alfie then said that he had been sold a chocolate teapot for all the use Cyril offered him in terms of protection.
It never bothered me, though. I loved Cyril. I loved that he was all drool and softness.
Often, Cyril hauled his chubby rolls onto the couch and crushed my legs beneath him, panting into my face in hot, rolling breaths that had radiated the scent of meat. In the first month, he had pissed on three coats of mine, chewed the socks that I had made Alfie, eaten through the leather of his best shoes at the end of the bed, and left brown gifts on the lush rugs which coated the hall so that Alfie had to toss them all in a rubbish-tip. Cyril also liked his long walks in the evenings and the mere sound of the leash taken from its hook had him fumbling from his bed, barrelling toward me and knocking me over in his awkward lollop.
And I loved him.
Throughout those cold nights in which Alfie was not there, Cyril clambered onto the bed-sheets, buried me beneath his heaviness and slept alongside me. He never liked the shrill rattle of the doorbell, never liked mud on his paws and he absolutely loathed rain, our little chocolate teapot. I bought him fresh sausages from the poshest butcher-shop on the weekends, even if Alfie scrunched his nose at those slabs of meat that Cyril gobbled in slobbery chomps, thickened strips of drool wobbling from his mouth.
I had special blankets for him. I bought beds for him all around the house, even in the office, because he slept beside me there while I worked, too. Cyril followed me almost everywhere, until he spotted his bed and dropped there for a little while, awaiting his sausages and scratches.
Alfie said that the only competition he had ever faced had always come from Cyril; he loved me, too, that dog – followed me all around, he did, sat with me on the couch until I drifted off into half-formed dreams and Alfie came in from the bitter chill of night and shuffled us both upstairs into bed, Cyril plodding faithfully behind us. It was moments like that which were tame and domestic and made of utter bliss, because I had never had anything like that before.
In the old flat, I only had the stability of a couple of blankets on the floorboards, the promise of a more solid job in the factory rather than stealing around market-stalls for a couple more coins than usual, skulking into the flat at night purely because I feared the girls might not be fed or bathed if I was not there to ensure it.
I had only been a child when I lived in the wet fields. After that, I was treated like a woman and there was no softness and drool in womanhood before, only harsh slaps and smacks for speaking out of turn around Esther, no cuddles and calls of beloved chey from Johnny.
I had never been little after my ninth summer and I had hardly remembered what it was like after the tenth summer to not flinch from lifted fists or tremble from violent shouts. Alfie tried not to shout around the house. In the office, his temper was sometimes set off, and some wild thumps and roars followed, but not anywhere near me, if he could help it. Cyril never liked much noise, either.
And there was still that envelope in the hall, settled on the soft rug at the entrance.
From upstairs, Alfie asked, "Willa, where did ya put me socks with them blue lines 'round the top?"
"Bottom drawer," I called back, slipping around Cyril and strolling into the hall, stooping for the envelope.
I saw the looped, handwritten scrawl on its front and felt my stomach swirl, momentarily glancing up at the staircase as if Alfie might appear there, before I slowly peeled apart its seal and pulled out the letter. Its paper was crinkled, as if written between the bumps of a wagon rambling along a dirt road.
It had written by the hand of my cousin Shelta, but the words had been his own. It had been the bare bones of a letter with little formality, just a handful of questions around my health. In the final lines, he had written that he was in Birmingham, but he was about to return to Ireland, where his cousins told him the mountains were black, which meant that there was soon to be thunder and damp.
He wrote that perhaps that had been because Rosella had died the night beforehand, and she had always liked stormy weather.
Rosella was the mother of his children, therefore an aunt of sorts, but Rosella had been wild like some ferocious animal and no man had ever caught hold of her reins, not even Johnny – especially not Johnny. She had spun around him like those savage winds which swept over the mountains and downward into the wet fields, blew him backward into the soil and left him there while she continued onward without him.
Gypsy women are like that, Willa, Johnny wrote, like storms sweeping over mountains, brushing past their men unable to contain them; unwilling to contain them, because the graves do that for us, in the end. They will have a wagon ready for her in Tipperary, and I will go there soon to be with her. We want to do it beside your cousin Patrick. She was always close to him before he passed.
I will say goodbye to the last wind of her storm – always was a poet in my letters, I am. Never find these words when I speak out loud, though. Gypsy curse, I suppose. Perhaps that was what drew me and Rosella together in the first place.
But those days are finished, now, chey. I will go there soon to be with her. Perhaps I might find a Gypsy fellow for you while I am there, in sweet Tipperary. There was much talk after what happened, chey.
I will return and find you in London. Should my next few letters not reach you because of this war in our land, let me only say that I hope you are well and that you might consider coming to Ireland with me one day again. For all the war in our country, I still believe you would be safer with kin than you would be over there, despite what foreign voices might tell you. Do not let yourself be tethered when there are still storms to be had.
I must visit Birmingham first before I come to you. When I do, there are things that we will need to discuss. Until then, I will continue to think of you. Only say the word and I will come and fetch you.
Before I finish, I wanted to tell you that I received the letters you sent me a few weeks ago. I showed all your cousins and told them that you had written them all yourself. I keep them with me wherever this life takes me, Willa. I take them over the fields and mountains. I will bring them even further.
For my chey – with love always, Johnny.
ii
Folding the letter, I slumped against the staircase and settled on the bottom step, staring blankly ahead of myself. In those few months before my ninth summer, I remembered an afternoon spent climbing the ruins of an old castle which had been left without stone floors, only crumbling staircases in the form of spirals, and I leapt between open windows with boy-cousins of mine.
I had not yet known Esther and I had not yet known the art of theft, but there had been castles left abandoned decades beforehand and Johnny listed the surnames of all those dead folk whose families had once been rulers in those fields where now we placed our wagons.
Nestled in the countryside lanes of Tipperary, that castle had been; we climbed between the shattered remains of ruling families, dipping between arched entrances and scratching ourselves on ragged stones.
Like Elsie, he had been killed, that cousin of mine; left in a ditch, he had been. His name had been Patrick, and it had been a long time since I thought about him, only reminded by the mention of him in that letter.
I remembered the day of his death in particular because Johnny had ran through the fields to find us, splotched in reddened patches from his breathless terror. I saw him while suspended from a loosened pole from some imagined dungeon in our minds, saw him upside-down with a goofy smile plastered on my face, hands reaching out for him.
Johnny ripped me from that pole by the armpits, hauled me around and pushed me toward the wagons then loosened from the fields and set off onto dirt-roads. He had been killed the night beforehand, my cousin. He had been there all that day while our kin searched for him.
Johnny told me, your cousin was killed for his blood, Willa – the locals hurt him for his blood, blood which spilled into their ditches and their soil and which will bring them no fortune for it, now.
I became afraid of that, afterward; afraid of what it must be like to lay in a ditch at night, while kin called out for you in the fields nearby but never found you until the birds had already sung their morning songs.
The older cousins that I had told me that he had been killed because the locals never liked Gypsies and so they had strung him up by his own laces and left them there. Johnny had run himself ragged to find us, petrified that the locals had found us like they had found our cousin, that they had left us in ditches of our own.
I never told anyone about that, after my ninth summer. I was in England by the end of that year. I never told anybody because I wanted to pretend that Esther had been mistaken and I was not a Gypsy. I thought I might be killed for it, if I told them. And I was ashamed. Already, I was ashamed.
All that shame stuffed into a ditch and left there. I had not thought about that cousin of mine in a long time. In a way, he had never left that ditch even though they had burned him in a wagon and his soul had been let free because of it. Still, in my mind, that was where he was, where he had always been. I had not been able to understand that hatred when I was a child. I had not been able to understand blood. Not like how I understood it now.
Like Elsie, my cousin had been around sixteen then; around it, because Gypsies distrusted authorities and never registered the birth of babies, especially if the babe came out in a wagon – what town could be its home, if its feet had first touched soil unmarked, if the camp was set up somewhere between here and there?
I was somewhere around twenty-seven myself and that scared me something terrible, because Esther had always said that girls in our world never made it much beyond twenty-eight and Gypsies hardly ever saw more than was already decided for them by some other power, in some other world.
Rosella, the late wife and aunt of sorts, would have been around thirty. She had birthed three babes between herself and Johnny and now she was supposed to be burned in Tipperary with its rolling fields and dense forests, crops of trees where she had once been alive and well.
I was somewhere around twenty-seven. I was the last of all the girls who had lived in that flat on Bell Road. I had outlived that attempt on my life outside the bakery. I had survived that first month after my birth when the old Gypsies thought that the earth would surely take me back into its warmth, because I had skin stained in blue, lungs feeble and flaccid.
I was still here, because there were still storms to be had, and I always had a little more time, I told myself. I told myself that and I thought that perhaps that Esther had told herself that, too, that my cousin had told himself that, that Rosella had told herself that, that Elsie and Josephine and Charlotte and –…
I was the last of all the girls in the flat and I could taste copper on my tongue because of it.
iii
Plucking at the stubborn threads of a new shirt, I heard the footsteps in the hall and looked up to find Franny there with Ollie. Alfie sat across from me, plopping on his glasses to skim new papers freshly delivered that same morning. I watched Ollie wrap his sinewy arms around Franny and hold her close, stroking her hair. I smiled to myself and looked away only at the sound of Alfie clearing his throat in a harsh grunt.
"Nosey," he muttered, picking another paper from the pile.
"I am not nosey!" I huffed indignantly. "Just happy that Ollie and Franny found each other, is all."
Alfie scoffed and finally lifted his eyes to meet mine. "Too soft, you are, love."
There was a brief knock before Franny opened the door. Alfie swiftly stood from his chair, drawing her into his arms and pecking her cheek politely. Alfie had known Francine for many years, even before Ollie had ever taken the chance to ask her out and court her properly. Alfie claimed that Ollie only found his courage because Alfie had given him a speech, which always caused Ollie to roll his eyes, his cheeks turning a lovely shade of pink.
I stood and allowed her to wrap her arms around me, too. I had become accustomed to Franny and her frequent touches, little hugs and pecks at each greeting and each goodbye that followed. Alfie scooted back around his chair and held its arms before he glanced up and saw that Franny was watching him with narrowed eyes, clearly hinting for him to leave us alone for a little while.
"What?"
"I came to see Willa," Franny replied, her chin tilted high at the sight of his deadpan expression.
"And there she is behind ya, Fran. Miracle, ain't it?"
"Alfie."
His eyes shifted over to me and his willpower weakened. He stood to his full height and reached for his coat. I watched him grab his cane and put on his coat with aching slowness, stepping out into the hall with an exaggerated limp, grumbling, "Fine, fine. I know when I ain't wanted. Thrown out on me ear, out into that cold weather. If I catch a cold, on your 'ead be it, Franny."
Franny gripped the handle of the door and called out "Heaven forbid!" before she slammed it behind him, shaking her head and settling into the armchair across from his table. I walked around to his side of the table and sank into his chair, feeling his warmth lingering there. She peeled her scarf from around her throat and tucked it alongside her.
There was a beat of awkward silence in which I wondered why she seemed so restless and antsy in her movements.
"I'm pregnant, Willa," she said suddenly.
She lifted her shirt and showed me the swell of her stomach. I felt much like I had that hazy morning when I found Charlotte on my doorstep with a swell of her own; it was a mistake, Willa. I remembered how I had taken her into the house and warmed her bones, hugged her against me, soothed her worries and promised that I could take care of her. She had been in that old hike-your-skirts-and-lay-backward flat on Fetter Road by then, already for a couple of months. I had never known about it.
She had died before me. There was something unnatural in that, something that had to be righted.
"Don't cry, Willa," Franny choked through her smile, her eyes glassy and warm. "You've set me off now, you have…"
Slowly, I lifted a hand to touch my cheeks and found them damp, although I had not realised it. I had not known it. Oh, for all the things I had not known.
I was trembling and Franny swept around the table, took my hands in hers and pulled me against her chest to hold me. She was trembling too. She trembled from bliss and I trembled from something that felt like the last wind swept from a storm curling over the mountains, the last wind, blown through the thistles and weeds.
She held my against her stomach, held it there even when I flinched from it and thought of Charlotte in the bath, praying for blood.
"I'm afraid to tell Ollie," she whispered. "If my mother finds out before we marry –…"
I'll take care of you now, I had told Charlotte, like I took care of you then.
Franny continued onward about the community and yet I could only see that darkened flat on Fetter Road flickering on the wall behind her, like jerky flashes from a picture-film. I saw unfamiliar hands reaching out to Charlotte, hands that reached like hands in a pantry reached for blackberries crushed in jars, reached without caring for what was on the other end, not if it had warm flesh and breasts and parts unknown; and so what did it matter if her heartbeat stuttered and slowed from fear, anyway?
Had Charlotte been called kitten like I had been called kitten, once?
"I'm happy for you, Franny," I told her. I had to tell her something, for she had paused in her ramblings and noticed the distant fog in my stare. "It won't matter, what anybody else says. Only what Ollie says, only what you say."
She smiled, her beautiful eyes lined in bloodshot happiness. "I want to tell him tonight. I asked him to meet me at The Bell Quarter for dinner – would you meet me beforehand, Willa? I need the support. What if he turns me away, or he –…"
"He won't. Ollie isn't like that."
She watched me closely. "Are you all right, Willa?"
"Just – overwhelmed," I answered weakly. "There are Gypsies who can tell you what you will have, you know. Boy – girl – one baby, twins. All of it."
She grinned. "I want the surprise. One baby, twins, whatever it might be. I want it happy and healthy, Willa. That is all I want."
"Probably better. Gypsies can get it wrong, sometimes. They thought I would die before I was meant to," I told her. "But there is no such thing as dying before you're meant to, for Gypsies."
Franny pulled me against her chest once more, letting out a deep sigh. "We'll meet at Fulton Road this evening, yeah? I'll buy us a drink in The Chestnut Bar and then I'll meet Ollie. And I'll tell him, Willa. Tonight, I'll tell him," she swore. "I won't chicken out. I'll just have to tell him, and figure the rest out later."
"All right, Franny. I'll meet you there for six."
Once the door clapped shut behind her, I squeezed my eyes tight together to block out that film still spattered there on the walls, the flashes of Charlotte and her mistake, that little child in her stomach that had never touched soil like it was meant to, never reached around twenty-seven like I had, never –…
"Willa?"
Alfie filled the threshold with his bulky frame. He wore his coat and scarf, his cane held in his hand. I thought he looked handsome, stood there in that orange warmth. He looked younger, somehow. Softer.
And I loved him.
"Are you all right, treacle?"
I went to him and melted into his arms which he held out for me, let him cup my nape and rock us in that office as if we stood before a stage of musicians crooning some gentle tune just for us, swaying slowly to our own rhythm. I heard footsteps behind him, muffled against his coat.
"Alfie, there's another delivery in the yard," Ollie explained. "We need to –…"
"Fuck off, Ollie, yeah?" Alfie murmured.
"Fuck off," Ollie repeated, turning on his heels immediately. "Right. I'll sort it."
I thought of Franny. "Ollie deserves a raise, you know, Alf."
"A raise? What for? Sittin' on 'is arse and givin' me grief?"
"Well, you pay me quite well for it," I grinned, brushing out the wrinkles in his shirt.
"Very fuckin' cheeky. But I'll consider it."
Breathing in his scent, I smiled to myself and said, "I think you're the soft one, Alfie. Not me."
"Soft on you, Willa," he corrected. "And fuck if you don't know it, darlin'."
iv
The Chestnut Bar was this small pub with black walls and a garden dotted in tables, sitting just between the border of Italian and Jewish territory, with its patrons largely unattached to either side. I had spent most of the last few hours assuring Alfie that this little afternoon with Franny was an innocent outing between two friends and that the war with the Italians should not force me into confinement in the house, even if I wanted nothing more than to be with him and Cyril, curled up on the couch with warmth of the fireplace crackling in front of us.
Alfie had only relented on the condition that two Jewish lads accompanied me and sat outside the bar, armed and prepared for the slightest hint of an ambush to guide us out into the car waiting in the back-alley.
Nestled in the nook of the bar, Franny had been separated from the other patrons by a wooden divider which had a small window for drinks to be passed through. We stuck with a teapot between us, taking turns to pour out steaming lashes of tea and stirring sugar-cubes into our cups. I still thought about Charlotte, but I found myself more capable of concentrating on Franny and her words.
I tried not to think about Charlotte too much.
Instead, I tried to envision this nursery which Franny had already painted in her mind, the toys which scattered the floorboards, those first steps. I tried to imagine the dumbstruck expression which would surely come from Ollie once told about his child. I even imagined Alfie and his response – a kiss on the cheek for Franny, an overly-dramatic slap for Ollie on his shoulder before the lewd jokes would surely come, only to embarrass the lad, who Alfie cared for in his own way. He would offer him that raise a couple of weeks later. I knew that he would, and he would blame me for it, when really, he probably would have given it to him anyway, even if I had never mentioned it.
Alfie was good like that. He had a good heart, a warm soul. It was just the rubble from the war that had fallen upon him and which he could not fully shake off that made it seem as if only thin beams of light shone through him for others, but I saw his light. I saw him, rubble and all.
The small window shot open in a loud crack and the barman pushed through its small frame to shout, "Mrs Solomons, you need to –…"
There came the cracking of gunfire. I recognised them now. I felt the memory of bullets pepper my skin in some faint, hazy dream, as if I stood outside the bakery again, as if I watched its arch swoop over me as I fell. I felt Franny grip my hands in hers from fear.
The door of the nook swung open and there stood a pair of coppers; one spoke while the other remained silent. It was like that with coppers. I had learned that many years ago, in another place, in another street, but it was true here, too.
"You are Mrs Solomons, I presume?" the first copper droned.
I realised that the rest of the bar was quiet when before there had been chatter and laughter and the clinking of glasses. The earth had settled. It was silent, now, and I knew that there was not much that I could do, not with Franny there. So, I nodded, but held my lips in a tight purse in the hopes that these coppers might not notice my trembling hands.
I said, "I am."
"Your friend should step out for a moment."
I swallowed the blossoming lump in my throat. "I want her to stay with me."
"She steps out," the copper said, while the other remained mute, "…or we come in and take her out."
I saw blackness in his eyes and said, "Franny, out you go. I'll be with you soon, all right?"
"No, Willa, you –…"
I turned sharply toward her, bent against her ear and hissed, "Think of the baby."
Reluctantly, she stood from her seat. I watched her walk out of the nook, glancing behind at me. She mouthed, I'm sorry.
The nook was confined, tiny in its space. Somehow, without her, it loomed around me like a cage and I felt it closing in around me, as if its walls were collapsing and I was crushed beneath them. I focused on the flowerpots dotted along the windowsill and their spindly vines drooping over the seats in front of me, hearing the distant creak of the floorboards and the hum of some old song, its words foreign, unfamiliar –…
Italian.
Flickering toward the door, my stare latched onto a short, dark-haired man dressed in an expensive suit, pulling off his gloves with an exaggerated flourish. A man stood alongside him and collected the gloves as if he had just been handed precious jewels, bowing ever-so-slightly once finished.
The first man stepped into the nook, looked around it, and then sniffed before he stood in front of me.
He gripped my arms, pulled me toward him. He kissed me first on my right cheek, then my left, and then once more on the right. It took everything that I had not to recoil from him and scream, curl away from that hideous touch. He sat and his position crushed the vines of the flowerpots, ruined by his back pressed against the seat. He lifted his chin and looked at me as if I was made of the same dirt which sat around those roots behind him.
Then he clicked his fingers and the window behind me opened, a fresh teapot slid into the nook by a different barman, for it seemed that ours had long since been hauled away. I heard faint murmurs from the Italian men standing outside the nook, surrounding it, and I knew that it was Darby Sabini sat in front of me.
I watched him pull a cigarette from his pocket, pausing to flick his eyes up at me.
"Do you mind, Mrs Solomons?"
I shook my head. "Not at all."
His eyes lingered on the burn-mark on my wrist from those same cigarettes that he now pulled out, placing one against his lips and returning the others to his pocket. "Always gasping for one, I am. I find myself wanting them even in more in times of great change – and the world has changed, hasn't it, Mrs Solomons? The Jews and the Italians on top of London. Now who would have seen that coming, only a few years ago?"
He took the teapot and poured out cups of tea for the both of us. The fumes of his cigarette curled around the fine glass and swirled upward toward me so that I could breathe his fury.
"Giovanni Ricci was a very good man," he continued. His moustache, black and greasy, rippled above his lips with each word, like some sentient creature. "Imagine my horror and surprise to find him dumped outside my street with his throat slit. Very upsetting for the neighbours, you understand."
"Imagine my horror and surprise," I replied, "…after being shot by Ricci in the first place, Mr Sabini."
He smiled; it was slick and wet and made of repulsion. He lifted his teacup and a small droplet of tea fell, plopping onto his shirt. Suddenly, he threw the cup and it shattered against the wall, making me jump and flinch from him. He screamed in Italian, screamed so loudly that his lackeys opened the door with guns trained between us, eyes flitting about for the threat. Sabini roared at them, too, and dismissed them with a wave of his hands.
I felt as if my stomach had fallen out and lay between us on the floor.
"My apologies," he murmured, stretching for a napkin and dabbing at the stain. "I should find myself a good seamstress, perhaps one who could make my shirts. I hear there are plenty of those available in London, these days."
I looked into his eyes. "There are very many indeed, Mr Sabini. If you were looking for any recommendations, I would be more than happy to supply them. There used to be a good place on Chester Street, but then the pub beside it burned down in an unfortunate accident, and they couldn't reopen. Too afraid to reopen, I heard."
That stung him, because Chester Street was property of the Italians and that pub which had burned down was set alight by Alfie himself after I had been shot – the fire had reached the shops around it, including an Italian seamstress's premises. Sabini peeled apart his lips, lips which stuck against his gums in some hideous caricature of a smile.
"I'm sure you know many good seamstresses, but not ones that the Italians would be willing to use. You see, Italians have a certain – standard that the Jews do not possess. The Jews will work with anyone, if the price is right. Even with those of unfavourable blood."
"Gypsy blood, Mr Sabini?" I asked, feigning ignorance.
The scale was tipping between us, lifting upward on one side, falling flat on the other.
He drew another puff of his cigarette. "If there is one thing that the Jews, the Italians, and the Gypsies share –… - his nose crinkled again, his disgust seeping from his pores – "…it is a sense of tradition. That is something we can agree on, isn't it, Mrs Solomons?"
He repeated this false surname so much that I knew it was a provocation and certainly a mockery of both myself and Alfie, even if he was not here to bear witness to it himself. I knew my vulnerability in this place. I knew that the boys who had been sent with me were already dead, probably even before they had realised the Italians were all around them in the same way that they were around me now.
I nodded tersely. "I suppose we can agree on that."
"And if there is a difference between the Jews, the Italians, and the Gypsies, Mrs Solomons," he drawled, "…then it would be that only the Italians have made any real contribution to the betterment of man – the arts, literature, culture – it all comes from us. What did the Jews give us? Nothing much. Funny hats and a reluctance to eat pork and fucking shellfish, perhaps. And the Gypsies? Disease and illiteracy."
"Oh, not only that, Mr Sabini," I corrected. "The Italians also showed us how pitifully an Italian man depends on his mother to take care of him even once fully grown. What do they call it? A mamma's boy? Are you like that, Mr Sabini? Still suckling from Mamma?"
Sabini did not smile this time. He took his cigarette and ground it into his napkin. "Did Solomons allow you to be here alone, hm? Very foolish of him, I should think."
"Oh, I should think," I nodded, "…that you're confusing the Italians and the Jews, Mr Sabini. Italian men might control their women and tell them what to do, but Gypsies and Jews know better. Their women have more…power. Like a storm, their women."
I stared into his eyes and saw the flicker of pure and bitter hatred; the same hatred that had left my cousin dead in a ditch all those years ago.
"More power?" he repeated with a hum and a nod of his head. His fingers tapped a stuttered rhythm against the table. "You must feel very powerful now that you're surrounded by your enemies."
Dramatically, I blinked and glanced around myself. "Why, Mr Sabini, I only see you before me. And you are not my enemy. An enemy is required to induce, even if one is reluctant to admit it, a sense of respect. And looking at you now, Mr Sabini, I can certainly confirm that you are not my enemy."
I smiled at him, baring canines.
Staring at me with that same blackened hatred swirling in his eyes, he was motionless for a couple of seconds, lips still curled against his gums and his fingertips now stiff from rigor-mortis, his pallor corpse-like and rotten. Then, he licked his lips and burst from his seat to scream in Italian. The door sprung open and his lackeys finally swept into the nook, gripping me around the arms and hauling me out from that tiny space. I felt a hand snake into my hair and push me forward into a half-bent stance while I was carted out.
It was a copper that held me, I knew. I saw his leather shoes; those shoes had cracked my ribs, before.
I was lifted at the waist for all my struggles and I looked around me to find those two boys slumped at the car, skulls cracked open from the slice of a bullet. I breathed in a wild froth of spittle and fear, now. I saw that I was being taken toward an alleyway and I kicked and kicked. I was thrown into that damp, wet bleakness in the alleyway and immediately I swept back up on my feet to bolt from it, looking for a fence or staircase that I could climb, frantic and trapped like some wild animal, some – …
It was a punch in the chest that stilled me. Another in the stomach, until blood filled my mouth and I spat it out from lips lost in a wild spasm. I was kicked all around, and it had been such a long time since a copper had dared touch me that I had forgotten what the harsh crack of leather against skin felt like, what the black swell of their uniforms around me looked like, blended together, until all the world seemed to be made of coppers and uniforms and the flash of badges in a dim light.
I was picked up and placed against the wall; placed there, with a knee held between my legs for balance because I slumped forward – a hand clamped around my chin and lifted that, too, to draw my swollen eyelids and squinting eyes toward the snarling face of a copper.
"Oh, you are a pretty one," he crooned. "For a pikey, you sure are fuckin' pretty. That's always the pity with your people, innit? Sometimes your women look good on the outside, but only hold the fuckin' clap on the inside."
"If they have it, it's only because you gave it to them," I spat, words slurring together. "I know what you coppers do –…"
"What's that, kitten? Do speak up," he barked, slapping at my cheek. "You know what we do, do you? Shall I remind you? Shall I show you again, sweetheart? Bet you'd enjoy it, you would – your type tries to pretend, but I know what you like –…"
He held me at the throat and leaned forward, gripped me tight so that I could not turn away from him, my body jerking in wild convulsions. He pressed his lips against mine and I pulled back and bit him. I bit down hard, and he howled at the sudden gush of blood from his tattered lip, because I simply refused to release him even once he slapped and slapped at me. I only drew away from him once I needed to breathe myself, and I saw that wounded string of flesh pulled from his lip and I grinned through a mouthful of blood.
His hand scrambled for his gun and I felt it barrel press against my temple.
"I'm gonna spatter your brains on this wall," he said, "and only your fuckin' kike will miss you."
"Release her," another voice called out.
I watched that torn flesh swing once the copper turned his head toward the other end of the alley, his eyes ablaze. I knew that the other person who had spoken was Italian from the accent and the glimpse of an expensive suit in my peripheral.
"She tore my fuckin' lip off!" the copper screamed.
"Then you should know better than to get close to a Gypsy," the other man said. "Like rabid fucking dogs, these Gypsies."
I was dropped against the dirt of the alleyway and there came another kick for good measure. All my bones had been taken from me, it felt like, so that I was made of liquid against that ground, pooled in a puddle of redness which came from me. I watched footsteps leave the alleyway but could not hear them because of an awful ringing in my right eardrum, a constant rattle that made me clutch my hands against my head and curl from the sound.
Sabini had left me alive, if not a little more damaged than I had been, and although I was relieved – I knew that it meant there was something more that he wanted to do, for I could feel the noose around my neck, lifting me upward, letting my legs dangle beneath me. He had planned more than this, I knew that much.
I just didn't know how much more.
Smacking against the wet, cobbled street, I heard his shoes first and felt his arms scooping around me second; Ollie had held me many times, but this time, I was too limp to help him, and he struggled to pull me to the car idling on the street behind him. He whistled for the Jewish lads to help, and through the squint in my eye, I saw them hesitate to touch me.
"Mr Solomons said –…" one man mumbled, his hands motioning toward me uselessly.
"And I'm saying, if you don't fucking help her now, Alfie will break your fucking necks with his bare hands," Ollie spat back.
"Where's Franny?" I slurred.
My blood drooled onto his shirt and stained it. I reached mindlessly for the stains and thought of how Sabini had accidentally spilled tea on himself. I could not control the roll of my eyeballs, thrown upward toward the heavens and swivelled downward toward the ground, and there was still that aching rattle in my eardrum.
"Safe," he answered.
"Are you telling the truth?" I asked. "Alfie lied before, when I was last hurt, because Charlotte was already dead. Did he tell you that, Ollie?"
When I was last hurt; the words echoed between us and his jaw was set in a tight grimace, pity and remorse filling his features.
Ollie held the door of the car open with his leg stretched out, attempting to pull me in with him while another man hauled my legs up. "I'm telling you the truth," he answered, his teeth gritted from the effort. "And he did tell me that, too, when it happened."
"Tells you more than he tells me, I bet," I mumbled.
I felt an odd, loose sensation in my mouth and reached into its wet, blood-filled darkness to pull out a tooth from the back left-hand side. It fell onto the floor of the car and Ollie fell backward against the seat, breathing hard, panic in his eyes.
"Christ, Willa," he wheezed. "Oh, Christ –…"
I looked at him in a daze and saw that his left eye was swollen in purple. He could hardly see through it. I looked down at his body and saw his right arm was curled against his chest, as if he could not quite stretch it, but he had worked through the agony to pull me into this car and for that I placed my hand over his and said, "Thank you, Ollie."
Ollie nodded, his lips trembling.
I whispered, "He called me kitten before he tried to kiss me, Ollie."
A dampness spread from my chest and I snorted out blood from my nostrils, before my eyes rolled up and I dropped for good.
v
Springing from my mattress, I scrambled for light in the blackness of our bedroom, hands wildly patting around for the lamp. I felt something warm shift around beside me and in my scrambled thoughts, I assumed it was Alfie, but Alfie never had a tail or floppy ears that I had noticed before. Instead, it was Cyril, pushing from the bed-sheets to press his muzzle into my face and lapping at me with his tongue. Bruised and tender, I tried to move him away from me with gentle murmurs to soothe him, scratching at his ears just how he liked.
"Alfie?" I called out, my voice laced in terror. "Alfie!"
The bedroom-door flung open and I rushed to pull myself from the bed so that I could run to him like I had in the office. Only I saw the small, slim frame of a woman in the blinding orange light of the hallway and I fell against the bed, distraught, slumping against the floor.
"Where is he, Franny?"
She brushed away tears. "They arrested him. The coppers – Sabini's been paying them. T-They work for him now. They raided the bakery and arrested Alfie – they beat him, Willa. Hauled him off and beat my Ollie when he tried to stop them. They said they're going to kill him."
And there it was; the taste of copper on my tongue had come true.
