A/N: I wrote this over a few hours and stayed up late to edit it, my eyes are falling out of my skull so if I missed something, very sorry but we're introducing a character I love very much in this show and I hope you all like her too...Thanks for all the feedback, it makes my day to read any messages or reviews! :)
sixteen
Vibrant ribbons of canary-yellow sunlight reached through the cotton curtains and sprinkled the rugs on the floorboards, stirring us from sleep with paper-eyelids flickered open against that harsh light. I felt him shift and awaited the first touch his hand around my arm to pull me toward him. Soon, it came; the warmth of his chest, moulded against the curve of my spines. His chin rested against my hair. I relished in the scratch of his stubble against my skin, the roughness of his fingertips drawn along my arms, settling there on bare skin.
Half-asleep, I turned toward those looming doors which led out onto our balcony, overlooking the ocean beneath. Last night, we had stayed there and watched its whitish curls of foam and froth swirl below our feet, licking at its own shoreline, its own cliffs; eroding itself, over and over.
Slowly, I traced his jawline, outlined his lashes and pressed my fingertips against his lips. He pretended to bite off my fingers, nibble at my wrists, turned into kisses peppered along my arms. His eyes trailed toward that black, rounded dot embedded in the back of my arm from a bullet wrenched out by nurses in white masks, hands gloved and foreign.
Gently, I touched those smaller patches of dried skin all along his forehead, fluttering from him in little shreds of white, those patches which had blossomed around his nape and just beneath his hairline.
Gripping his hair, I felt the heat of his bare skin on mine once he was pulled flush against my chest, felt his hands drift along the dip of my spine, as if the vertebrae were the chords of some instrument strummed beneath his languid fingers. I brushed against the golden flecks of his stubble with the tip of my nose, breathed the scent of him and finally kissed his lips.
In this dreamlike existence, I spoke against his skin and dared say, "Stay here. Leave behind that old life in London, it has never been worth its hassle. Tell Ollie that he can take it., it can all be his now – or he can sell it, for he will have children of his own to protect. Stay here, with me."
ii
Soon, it came; he untangled himself from me, lifted himself from our warmth. He stumbled toward those shutters and fastened the latch so that all the light was smothered, barely straining through the wooden slits. I watched him shift the suitcases and whistle for Cyril while I remained on that mattress with arms outstretched, until he came to summon me.
He wore an old shirt that I had made him, and he held his round black hat in his hands. His eyes had grown cold. The gold had been plucked from his stubble and it left him mean, for something had soured his mood.
"Willa," he called, "get a move on, yeah."
There was warning in his tone. I was resting against those pillows with my eyes latched onto his dark silhouette across the bedroom. I saw the flash of his eyes once I remained motionless, simply watching him. He stepped further into the bedroom. The suitcases sat by an idling car. Alfie had made that perfectly clear, because there was always an idling car in his peripheral. There was always motion for him; even in Margate.
"Whistle for me like you whistled for the dog, Alfie," I told him.
He sucked his lip between his teeth and bit down hard, his jaw set. "I'll sit in that car and wait for ya, Willa. But if you ain't out in an 'our, I'll take the dog and I'll fuckin' leave without ya, right –…" – he turned on his heel and marched out, so that his words echoed in the hall – "…and then you can follow the sound of my fuckin' whistlin' all the way back to London, can't ya?"
iii
In the car, he tried to place his hand over my thigh, but I curled away from him and looked out at the passing fields between those countryside towns with neat gardens and wells. London was there behind it all, hidden in a plume of blackened smoke which furled upward and festered in our lungs. Apart from myself, Ollie was just about the only other person who had witnessed these odd spells in Alfie that came in unexpected waves. Most people only ever saw glimpses of his humour or his temper, or some strange blend of both. Alfie had always had other feelings which brewed beneath the surface of his eyes. His own foam and froth lay around his pupils.
Blue moods, Ollie called them, because Alfie walks around as if the world is made of one colour and that colour is blue.
iv
In the hall of our house, I pulled off my coat and felt the sudden and hollow emptiness in my chest at the loss of Margate, because it had felt like a loss. I had withered at the sight of London and its alleyways, its streets and its squares like a map etched into my skin so that I felt at every turn, at every corner, at every aching crawl toward that familiar bleakness which never quite reached Ivor Square, spared from all that darkness in the city. Still, I had wanted Margate because I was afraid of what might come now that we had returned to our old town. I was afraid for him.
Behind me, he said, "Leave me be, Willa."
v
Slamming the door behind him, his blueness stuffed the kitchen to the brim. Cut off from him, its dense blueness seeped from that narrow slit around the door frame, and I stepped into the staleness of the living-room to escape it. I looked at its looming windows left unopened for the past two weeks, its curtains barely drawn.
I settled in an armchair and left them all like that, because I felt the first lick of blue myself, lashing at the tattered leather of my old boots and curling upward until all of me had been consumed in its coldness. I scrubbed a hand over my face and looked outward at those passing smudges of colour which dashed beyond our window, umbrellas held over expressions dropped low toward the cobbled streets, made of deep greens blended into fresh purples and smears of blackened paint, as if I stood in the vast halls of some gallery, observing.
Soon, it came: that harsh crackle of white noise from the kitchen which echoed into the house, startled its dust and frightened its furniture – frightened me with its sudden buzzes and ticking clicks, words thrown frantically into its fuzzed sound and tossed aside just as quickly.
If paper had been placed before me, a pencil left in my limp hand, then perhaps I could have sketched him in that kitchen even if I was not able to see him. I imagined him there, with chair drawn over those tiles toward the radio tucked in the corner of our kitchen, having rested his heaviness on that wooden frame with the dial turned until static bloomed loudest over all those other voices muted in all that other sound.
Shoulders hunched, elbows pressed into his thighs, he would lean forward and grasp his hair like I had done for him just that morning in Margate, before he pressed his right ear against the radio until it hurt him to hear all that crackling and popping – that drumming and snapping. Then and only then might he allow himself to smile in contentment because all other thoughts had been crushed in the riptide which crashed around his head and swept away all memories of trenches from the shoreline; eroding himself, over and over.
And I left him be.
vi
For a moment, I had been adrift in that ocean of static so much that I barely heard the faint tinkling of the telephone. I went into the hall, plucked the telephone from its cradle and placed it against my ear, thinking that it might be Ollie – and it was all right, if it was Ollie, because he might catch that harsh crackle from the other end, and he would understand all this blueness in our house.
Only it was not Ollie, but rather the feminine whisper of a smoker with rasping warmth in her tone. She said, "The tide is turning. Find Ada on Ripley Street tomorrow. Might be working, or she might be with her Communist pals. And chey - bring yourself a gun."
Then came silence. It was such a complete and all-consuming silence that it hit me suddenly and I fumbled with the telephone, spooked by the scuff of shoes behind me. I turned to find him stood at the threshold of the kitchen, because the radio had been switched off. He looked much better, in spite of all his blueness. His bruises had faded into yellowish stains and his hip fared better with a little sunshine soaked into his bones.
And still his hand always searched for that cane often left alongside him.
"Who was it, Willa?"
I swallowed, setting the telephone in its cradle. "Franny just called to ask if I might come with her on Friday to see Ruth and the other ladies."
Lodging itself between the rungs of my oesophagus, that lie was like some hideous lump from a disease and it bloomed larger and larger at the dip in his shoulders – because he believed me, and that was worse than all the rest of it.
He grumbled, "Be good for you, love. Jewish women make good biscuits and cake, hm, could bring me some when you come 'ome."
It was an olive-branch of an apology held out between us, and I knew that there was a lot worse to be said for certain soldiers in this country, especially those left behind in London. I had heard of wives beaten and bloodied, falsely taken for enemies in the first fuzzy moments after a nightmare. I had heard of husbands wandering into fields with guns in their pockets, raised against temples, painting the sunflowers in more than just blueness.
So, I went to him and I touched the lapels of his coat still on him, for he had not taken it off.I felt its dampness from the drizzle outside, slipping my hands beneath its shoulders to pull it from him. I draped it over the stand and felt his hands rest on my hips, pulling us together and swaying us from side to side, although there was no tune sung and no rhythm to explain his gentle movements.
Softly, I kissed his forehead and felt the wrinkles of his forehead smooth against my lips, felt his body sag against mine.
"Be good for you to make some more friends," he said. "Get out the 'ouse, away from the bakery."
"I happen to like the house and the bakery," I murmured, smiling.
In another slow spin, he turned us, his hand now grasped around mine and holding it aloft, while his other hand still held my hip. He hummed against my hair. "You just fancy the gentleman what owns that 'ouse and what runs that bakery, I should think."
"You think that, do you?" I replied. "You're a very presumptuous man, Alfie Solomons."
"Some call me that, yeah," he said. "Others just call me a cunt."
I burst into laughter. His lips twitched, but it never quite reached his eyes. We swayed around and around the hall. I leaned my cheek against his chest, and he rested his chin against my hair.
"Bet you wanted to call me that this mornin', didn't ya? Ruined Margate for ya, I did."
"I can't pretend to know or understand what you feel, Alfie," I told him, "But I know that France is just as real for you now as it was those first few days after you came back to England."
"More than France," he muttered. "More than France, in me 'ead. Got lots of things up 'ere, rattlin' in me skull. In Margate, I 'ad a dream –…"
I sensed his hesitation and looked up at him through my lashes, drinking in that discomfort which marred his handsome features. He never liked to talk about nightmares nor dreams – Gypsy talk, he called it, lacking that usual spite in his tone. Instead, he always displayed some strange wariness whenever it came to Gypsies and dreams. I believed in dreams and foresight, believed in feelings and moods, but Alfie thought himself more practical.
Yet both of us knew that if it was a Jewish woman who had told him the same thing that a Gypsy might have told him, he would have been more inclined to believe it.
If God wants you dead, Willa, he once said, 'e don't send a fuckin' goat in your dreams to tell ya, does 'e? 'e sends a fella 'round with a gun or a knife, and your throat bein' slit open should be enough of a fuckin' message for ya. Not some fuckin' riddle that a Gypsy will charge you five pounds to un-fuckin'-ravel.
It was just about the only time that I had laughed more than I had gotten angry with him for mocking Gypsy traditions, and even he had been surprised by it.
"What happened in the dream, Alf?" I prodded lightly, smoothing hair from his forehead, now lined in wrinkles from his furrowed brow.
"I dreamt that I was walkin' 'round a field in France, 'round all them soldiers left behind with letters for Mum still in their pockets," he answered absently, "and I saw a wreath in all that mud, withered and made of twigs. All its flowers had been pulled off. I saw 'em in the soil, them petals. And then I looked down at me own 'ands and realised that I was the one pluckin' 'em off in the first place. 'ad been all along."
From the kitchen behind us, I could hear the dripping of the faucet, not fully turned. It was a hard bead of water splattered against porcelain, resembling the heavy ticking of a clock. It grew steadily louder, louder and louder.
I was certain that Alfie could not hear it in the same way that I could hear it.
"I looked down at me legs, then," he continued, "…and saw that I was runnin' through snow, sinkin' into it, feelin' it right up to me thighs. I 'eard the sound of cloppin' 'ooves comin' from over the 'ills behind me, 'ills what weren't there before. There were Cossacks atop them 'ills with their 'orses, comin' for me. I was lookin' at my legs like I looked at me 'ands, like I weren't the one movin' 'em, but I was runnin' all the same. Chasin' me through the snow, they were, like – like me Mum was chased, 'unted like some animal in the wild. And that was what was 'appenin' to me, too. I knew it, without ever really thinkin' 'bout it."
I had not realised just how much my hands trembled until I held them against his chest, and he pressed his over mine to settle me. I felt his fear, as if he really was still running through that field from Cossacks over the hills, composed in some feverish dream. I was more disturbed by the hazy fog which clouded his eyes and which drew him deeper into a world of wreaths and petals.
Finally, he said, "I ran until there weren't nothin' more for me to do but turn 'round and face 'em. And I did. I turned right 'round, but all them Cossacks were gone – in their place, stood in all that snow, were all the soldiers what 'ad been on the ground before, just standin' there – starin' at me. Never sayin' nothin', not one word, but just – just watchin' me. They were all Jewish, Willa. I knew it somehow. No one said it, but I knew it, just like I could understand them without them sayin' nothin'."
The telephone rang once more, shooting through me and making me jolt in surprise. He squeezed my hands and then released me in order to reach for it. I felt the thudding of my heart at the prospect that it might be that sultry, rasping voice speaking to him, but felt lighter once he rolled his eyes at me, mouthing the words: Only Ollie.
I nodded, smiling weakly.
"Fuckin' 'ell, Ollie. I'll sort it tomorrow. What d'you want me to do, come down the bakery now? In me fuckin' underwear, I am," he muttered.
I raised an eyebrow at him, tilting my chin at his trousers and shirt.
He waved me off with one hand, trying to hear Ollie. "Margate? Well, it's Margate, mate. What can I say about it? Too many fuckin' seagulls tryin' to nick me fuckin' chips, innit. Could 'ave put a chapter in the 'oly Book 'bout Margate. They forgot to mention that when Satan fell, 'e fell right onto that beach in Margate, didn't 'e?
He winked at me and I rolled my eyes, climbing halfway up the staircase and leaning over the banister to watch him beneath me, hoping that he might finish soon and we could finally go to bed.
"Yeah, yeah. Glad to be back, I am. Knew the place would fall apart without me." He turned from me, distracted by whatever it was that Ollie was telling him on the other end. "Yeah, and you tell Franny that Willa will be there on Friday for Ruth's little shindig, yeah? No matter 'ow much she tries to wiggle out of it."
I felt that lump become heavier and heavier. It held me against the staircase and even once he hung up on his end, it was there, crushing me, consuming me. I swallowed through the pain of it and said, "Margate was Hell, was it?"
"Only said that so Ollie wouldn't try come and visit us once we move there, didn't I? Always thinkin' ahead, me," he retorted.
Somehow it brought me great joy to witness that puff in his chest and that focus in his eyes once Ollie had told him all that he had missed in the bakery while we were away. Ollie had read out an entire list of those things-to-do and it seemed to do Alfie the world of good to hear it, despite his feigned annoyance. And I thought about how much I had loathed our return to London, yet I had never been happier to see him happy.
That is love, I decided. The purest and most simple part of love; to want only for him to be happy. Even if it means choking on the fucking fumes of London and never really moving to stay in Margate, so long as it settles all that hurt in him to be here instead.
"Didn't wanna tell 'im neither," Alfie started, taking the first step onto the staircase. I sensed a sudden playfulness in him, coming from the crouch in his body and how he looked as if he might leap at me, a rush of very bizarre, very girly excitement sparked through me. "…that I 'ad quite the time with the most beautiful fuckin' woman in all of England. Never left our fuckin' bed, we did –…"
His hand stretched for my leg and I scooted my bottom up onto the next step behind me to escape him, thrilled by his grin. His blueness was left at the bottom of the stairs, cast aside like our gloves and hats had been, shed and left there while we climbed higher and higher.
"Only England?" I asked coyly.
I squeaked once his hand wrapped itself around my ankle and tugged me back down, my bottom smacking against the step. I leaned forward and nipped at his lower lip, dragging it between my teeth before I released it. He loomed over me and I felt his heat like I had felt it this morning in Margate and my head tipped back to let him touch and hold and love.
He gripped me under my legs and pulled me up and never did he listen if I warned him about his back, bringing us into the bedroom and pushing me onto our bed in his haste, tugging at my stockings, fiddling with the buckle of his belt. He crawled over me, caged me beneath him, aroused and more than happy to show it once he pressed himself against me, kissing at my throat.
"The whole fuckin' world," he corrected. "And all them other worlds beyond it."
vii
Clacking against the cobbled streets, my boots were wet and slick from the puddles left behind in that downpour that had lasted throughout the night. I had slept in while Alfie left for the bakery. I told him that I would unpack and deal with all the clothes, our washing and drying and chores. He had not thought too much about it, because he knew that I liked to sort his shirts and socks, the ones that I had made him. I liked our house to look its best even without visitors, because it was the only house that I had ever loved – ever called home, too.
In another sense, Ireland had been home once, too. It was those wagons that had brought us over dirt-roads, and it was the first scent of dew in those hazy mornings spent in a field with all my kin. But that had been a long time ago, before Esther and Bell Road. I often thought of Johnny and hoped that he was safe, wherever he was on this earth.
I touched the gun in my pocket and hoped the same for myself.
I had taken it from beneath the bedframe where Alfie had hidden it. He had guns hidden all around the house. He kept one at my bedside, too. I left that one in its place. I thought it might be the first one that he would notice if he came home earlier than he usually did. Alfie usually stayed at work well into the late hours, but it had taken him a while to leave this morning and I prayed it might delay him all the more, especially because it was his first day back at the bakery.
Turning onto Ripley Street, I was that it was mostly offices and a handful of flats dotted in between. I was not sure which one belonged to Ada, if any of them did, or if I was supposed to stand around and wait for her. So, I leaned against a wall and hoped that there were not many coppers around who might try and move me – or worse, if they worked for Sabini.
I knew that I had not told Alfie about that whispering voice because I had been quite certain of its owner. It was, of course, the same woman who wore more kohl around her eyes than even I did, whose pale lips parted only to speak in riddles and warnings, whose hands were always poised to hold a cigarette: Polly Gray.
Distantly, I had known her and watched her carefully in my childhood, for even then I had known that any person with an ounce of sense in them should have always kept Polly in their peripheral. I admired all her charm and wit – many a Gypsy man had fallen at the feet of Polly Gray, and she had only smiled and lifted her boot to push them further into the mud.
Yet Ada had only been a girl the last that I had seen her. There had been no charm and wit in her then, just skinned knees and laughter while we ran through the wildflowers with her brothers, before their drunken father had come and spoiled it. He had carted them back off to England, and that had been the end of it.
Tommy had mentioned that she was in London. I was mildly surprised by it. She had left behind her brothers and their supposed business. She had left behind Birmingham in its misery. I had once asked Alfie if he had ever visited Birmingham and he replied: Dante wrote that there were nine circles in 'ell, right. But 'e were wrong, weren't 'e, 'cause there's ten circles – the tenth one is Birming'am.
"Get the fuck off me!"
Glancing over the tops of cars, I saw men file from a building across the street from where I stood. A hard bolt of fear rippled through me and left me oddly liquid, my legs all funny and fumbling to move forward, my mouth dried out. I feared men that grabbed and tussled like those men did with the women held between them, hauling her toward an idling car – because there was always an idling car.
And I felt the stickiness of the gun in my hand, sticky from my sweating palm pressed against it.
And I saw that it was Ada in their arms.
And so I stepped forward.
I stepped forward and forward, until I looked down at my legs and saw them already moving – and I was lookin' at my legs like I looked at me 'ands, like I weren't the one movin' 'em, but I was runnin' all the same – and there was a terrible itchiness spreading along my wrist, setting me alight, an itchiness which came from the realisation that I had never properly shot a weapon, never wanted to shoot the wild hares out in the fields like my boy-cousins had done, never wanted to hurt another creature nor see its blood froth and foam, licking at me, upward and upward –…
I fired.
The recoil was sudden. The cracking bang of the gun startled me even more, so that I almost dropped the damned thing but held onto it anyway because all my bones had tightened, solidified, all my joints welded together. I saw shards of glass sprinkling the floor before I heard another shot. I realised, quite faintly, that I was not the one who shot the second time.
Dust blew from the bullet hole which sank into the wall alongside me, shimmering spots of white fluttering onto the footpath, like the white curtains had fluttered in Margate around the doors that led onto our balcony and looked out onto that great ocean.
I looked at it, that hole in the wall behind me. It had almost gone through my left hip. I would never have walked again if it had.
I remembered an arch yawning over me.
Turning back around, I saw that car race forward from Ripley Street onto Cheston Avenue, turning in a wild spin. I ran after it, in some stupid attempt to chase her, as if I might keep pace with a car whizzing away from me.
But I had seen hands reaching out for her like a jar in a pantry and I had seen her spoiled. I heard her let out the kind of screams that I had never been able to release when it happened to me in that same place with calls of kitten.
Perhaps that was the reason for which I ran after that car. I was much more out of the breath than I would have been years beforehand after all those times running from coppers with the girls behind me – more out of breath from our laughter at those furious coppers left behind a fence that they could not climb to catch us, from coppers who stumbled and fell in their useless attempts to squeeze through a gap in another fence like we could; breathless, too, from our ribcages being bruised so badly that we could not breathe too quickly or too much without stuttering gasps of pain coming out instead.
That came whenever we were caught.
You just have to make sure you never get caught, Esther once told me. And if you do, you just have to hope they don't kick hard enough to kill you this time.
I heard the crash before I saw it.
It happened on Cheston right before I turned onto its corner and saw the cars just ahead. I heard gunfire and momentarily ducked behind the wall, peeping out at the other men who emerged from the car which had crashed into the one that I had chased. I saw Ada, torn from all those men who had stolen her, and I rushed forward.
She kicked a man in a place that Alfie often called his Crown Jewels.
I heard her scream, "I am not a Shelby!"
Suddenly, I understood her presence here in London rather than that tenth circle of Hell that was Birmingham and I understood the call from Polly Gray all the more. She had said, the tide is turning. I suspected, then, that Tommy had underestimated the trouble he might have found when encroaching on London territory and some small, devilish part of me was more than delighted at the prospect of Tommy Shelby regretting his assumption that Alfie was on the losing side because he might now reconsider dimissing a partnership.
Jogging after her, I reached for her shoulder and barely dodged the vicious slap that followed once she spun on her heels, her cheeks painted in an indignant pink and her lips contorted in fury.
"I told you –…"
"I heard you. What do I call you, then, if not Shelby?"
Ada recognised me, I could tell. Her eyes drifted downward toward my boots and shot right to my face with only a minor ripple of shock, quickly suppressed and replaced with cool indifference. "Ada was always enough in the old days for you, wasn't it, Willa?"
Perhaps I had been wrong to assume that wit had not been in Ada during those days of girlhood. It had only been buried and brought out in womanhood, because Ada squared against me as if wanting the challenge of a good scrap between us. I also thought that, though she might have shirked the name Shelby, she had certainly not lost it in her mannerisms.
"Tommy sent you, did he?" she spat. "Oh, I should have fucking guessed! I knew you were in London. He had to send his little spy after me, eh? Another fucking spy!"
"Wasn't quite Tommy that sent me," I interrupted. "Unless his voice has become much more womanly since last I saw him."
Ada bit at her lips and looked very much like a frustrated child, crossing her arms. "Polly, then."
"Polly," I repeated. "But if you want the truth, Ada –…"
"No offense, Willa, but my days of expecting truth from this family are long over."
Somewhat annoyed with her, I continued, "I wasn't expecting any sort of bother. I thought I was just coming to find you – that was all I was told."
She looked behind me at those men still stood around the car who had saved her. Blinders, I realised, noting the dipped caps. They hovered far from her, hands over crotches, afraid of the wrath that might come from Ada regardless of her surname. There was more fear in them for her in her current state than they probably ever felt for Tommy.
If Alfie had blue moods, then Ada only had bright, shrieking moods of pure scarlet.
She had cooled just a little, enough that she remembered all her bruises and cuts. She lifted a hand to wipe a dribble of red from her chin, looking away from me with great reproach.
"Come back to mine, Ada," I pleaded. "Just for a couple of hours, until you're sure that your place is safe, yeah?"
"No. I bet anything Tommy will be there waiting for me, or Polly."
I watched her look out toward the green park ahead of us. She watched the couples entwined in loving embraces on those benches and I saw some bitterness float in her eyes, drowned out by sudden tears. She was worn from all that had happened to her, despite the fire still burning within her. I knew that it would take only a minor spark to set her off once more, because I recognised that tiredness that she was feeling, the same tiredness that I usually felt after a fight with Alfie.
I glanced down and saw her dress had been split, all its buttons popped off.
Between her breasts, there were marks from teeth sunk into her flesh.
I swallowed hard and looked at her again. "You know, I make clothes now, Ada. Well, not the best in all of London, but I like to make shirts. I can fix the buttons on your dress, if you'd like."
She looked down at herself as if she had not realised it. Hastily, she scooped the tattered fabric of her dress and pushed them together as if that might solve it, but the fabric flopped open uselessly once released.
"Would only charge you a pound per button," I added, smiling at her to soften it. "Oh, come on, Ada, give me a chance for some practice. I only ever make men's shirts, let me try a dress."
Still bubbling with spite, she said, "Last I heard, you make your living from robbing folks of their valuables."
"Last I heard, you became a Communist," I retorted. "So, I thought you'd be pleased with my stealing valuables. Only redistributing all that wealth to the poor, aren't I? Isn't that all your lot preach about, eh?"
Despite herself, she smiled. She rolled her eyes and bumped my shoulder with hers. "Always were quick, weren't you, Willa?"
"Not enough, if I shot at those fellas in your car without even thinking about my aim," I replied. "God, Alfie will kill me."
She raised an eyebrow. "Alfie Solomons?"
"You know him?"
"Heard of him," she corrected carefully, eyes flicking around my body again – studying me. "All right, then, Willa. You got me. I'll come with you – but I need to contact the woman looking after Karl, my son. Ask if she can't take him another two hours or so. I don't want –…" – she hesitated, chewing at her lip again – "I don't want him to see me like this, you know."
I knew she felt uncomfortable and exposed. "I'll put you in one of the shirts I make for the men. Just as bad if he sees you in that, eh?" I tried, taking her arm and placing it around mine. "The boy will wonder if his mother hasn't lost the plot, wearing one of my dodgy shirts."
"Lost it a long time ago," she replied. "Lost it the moment I came out a fucking Shelby."
"Ah, I thought we'd left that behind in Birmingham."
"Yeah, well," she muttered, scuffing the ground with her broken heel. "All those things left behind in Birmingham have a way of coming back to bite you on the fucking arse. Tommy is a prime fucking example."
Having witnessed all this, I had plotted it out in my mind that Tommy might come to Alfie if his sister was exposed in London. Looking at Ada now, with her lip pumping blood and her words so harsh, I wondered if I had already made a mistake in thinking that Tommy Shelby should come to London and make those same connections. I wondered if it even mattered, for there was nothing that could really prevent Thomas Shelby from taking his spot in London if he really wanted it.
I had leapt from a bridge with him as a child. I thought that I was about to do it again as a woman.
viii
Dabbing a ball of cotton against her mouth, watching its white colour dampen into a deep red, I cleaned her lips and pressed plasters against the cuts on her arms. I found a bigger plaster for that bite on her chest. I had told her that she could place it there if she preferred, but she had only sipped at the whiskey I put in front of her and shrugged her shoulders.
I had not asked any questions about Ada after I heard from Polly Gray, if only because I never had the time for it, not with Alfie around. I also knew that if I had asked around, it would only have reached him within the hour.
It might have been a mistake on my part, because I was more than unsettled by her pallor and how her bitterness was not fresh nor derived purely from this assault – not even from recent months with her brothers, I suspected. I assumed that this bitterness had been brewing for quite some time before that, maybe even since those days of wildflowers and skinned knees.
Her eyes glanced around the house, taking in the details of the wallpaper and the books in Hebrew that Alfie left about the house, occasionally plucking one from the pile to leaf through once her hands had been wiped of all dirt.
There had been gravel embedded in her palms, gravel which now scattered the table.
"I thought you were living in a kip," she said bluntly.
"Last you heard," I reminded her. "Lots of things have changed since then, Ada."
"Aye," she nodded. "Lots."
"What about you? Got your own place here in London, have you?"
"Tommy hasn't provided you with an entire Bible on my fucking life, hm?" she sniped.
"He did, but I never made it beyond the first page of Genesis," I shrugged. "Too fucking boring."
She snorted, smiling at me. "Well, Willa, I had love. Proper fucking love, too. Can you imagine that, for a Shelby?" – she caught my narrowed stare and rolled her eyes, a habit of hers – "Fine, a renounced Shelby. But I had it. And it was ruined, all because of this fucking blood running through my veins, the same blood that stains your kitchen table. Shelby blood, as much as I deny it. Tommy got in the way. Tommy always gets in the fucking way. And my lover died."
I thought the alcohol had much to do with her flimsy movements, her hand thrown outward as if to slap at some imagined form of Tommy beside her.
"And I brought my son – my son – to London to spare him all that misery in Birmingham. I don't want that life for him," she spat. "I never want him to come home plastered drunk like Arthur does, punching at his enemies from France that he imagines to be in his bedroom – and I don't want him to be like John, who thinks that happiness can be found only between a woman's legs – however many fucking children that might follow it –…"
Despite her frustration, I smiled to myself, fixing another plaster on her neck.
"And Tommy. God, Willa – I never want him to be like Tommy."
Her pale eyes were now dark and swirling from more than just whiskey.
"Tommy went to France," she whispered hoarsely. "But the fight that he carries out – the blood on his hands – it never started there. It came before the bombs. He used to be able to hide it, then, you see. Now, he doesn't even bother. He doesn't need to, for the world sees what he does and applauds him. Him and Polly, thick as thieves, using their Gypsy blood…"
She trailed off, drawing in a wounded breath.
"Are you ashamed to be of Gypsy blood, Ada?" I asked softly.
Viciously, her eyes looked around the room, almost pointing out every object around us, before finally her cold stare latched onto mine and she lifted a hand to reach out and touch the necklace that I wore; a golden necklace with a ruby at its centre, gifted to me by Alfie months beforehand, one of the most expensive gifts that he had ever given me.
She licked her lips, which were held in a cruel smile, and said, "Are you?"
She stood from her chair and grabbed her hat, storming out of the house.
