A/N: thank you for all the lovely reviews and feedback! time for some more shelby action and fluff and of course my usual dose of angst because what would my stories be without suffering huh
eighteen
Holding the handle of the bathroom door, I took a deep breath and pulled it open, stepping out into the bedroom and blinking in the sudden clarity of its warm ruby-red colour; it filled the creases of the bed-sheets, breathed its gentle hue across the pages of his Bible spread over his lap, his lips parted to recite paragraphs that he had long since memorised. Often, I lay alongside him with arms held beneath my head like a pillow, turned onto my left side to listen while he spoke in Hebrew, which lulled me into sleep if only because I never understood the words. He sat there now, his mouth shaping around sounds that meant nothing for me and everything for him.
Gypsies rarely looked beyond the clouds like Alfie did, toward some veiled spectre there. Gypsies felt the soil beneath bare feet, but he had never understood my beliefs around the soil and how it sorted all that existed in the world, and I had never thought much about things beyond the clouds.
Filled with an unusual shyness around him, I took slow steps across the bedroom to settle before him, careful not to crush his legs beneath me, smoothing out the creases in the sheets with my fingertips. I had not been timid around Alfie since that distant time in which Butcher and Esther had stood upon some imagined throne, spent on snow with nostrils coated in blood from continuous snorts. I had been afraid to touch him then. I had tried fruitlessly not to look at him, tried not to laugh at his jokes in a useless attempt to seem aloof and uninterested – and look where that led us.
Slowly, his eyes lifted from the pages and he saw what had made my cheeks flush in a redness masked by this ruby light all around us, and his lips stilled in speech. The Holy Book was momentarily forgotten. He raised his hand to stroke at my cheek, finally touching the golden rims of the glasses that he bought me – those glasses which had caused all this trepidation in me, bashful and afraid to admit that I needed them.
I had never known my age for certain, often mumbling that it was now somewhere around twenty-nine, maybe thirty and for that I always suffered from confused expressions in return. Ollie had once asked, but how do you not know your age?
The old Gypsies had spoken of children snatched by authorities, sold off to richer families who resided in supposed suburban bliss. Those children had been stripped of heritage and duped about their blood until drawn out through darker vices; Gypsies bore heavy souls, and it came out in things like the sort of blue moods that Alfie had.
The Gypsies thought that paperwork meant the authorities knew where to find them, so that meant that dates of birth and dates of death blended into the same days of the year as all others. Other Gypsies had never learned to read or write like I had – nobody had written the date of my birth nor the death of my mother and father. Both had blended into the soil.
But I had understood it tonight: I was twenty-nine or something more.
Slowly, I had trailed my fingertips along those gentle lines around my mouth, made from laughter. Alfie had etched each of those lines with his humour. I had trickled along those fainter crinkles which came around the edge of my eyes from smiles. I had touched my frown through the furrow in my brow, those three dense dips in my skin that pinched my eyebrows together in worry. I had plucked at my hair in a frantic search for silver, but I had been spared there.
As if she stood alongside me, examining my lines herself, I heard Esther say: girls in our world never make it much beyond twenty-eight.
Even more, I still had to squint at myself because I had long since worn away my eyesight from long nights spent over shirts in an office with dim light or nights in the old flat on Bell Road, labouring to pluck initials from handkerchiefs – that was what forced me to put on the glasses in the first place and wear them in front of Alfie.
"They look lovely on you," Alfie murmured. "Proper smart, like you write columns in a newspaper."
It drew a fond smile from him, the scoff that I let out, and he caught my hands before I could fully pull off those glasses and place them on the bedside table. His hands cupped mine before his left hand dipped and his thumb swept across my cheek in a delicate stroke. I was sure that he felt the fire which burned beneath my skin from his touch and from this odd sense of exposure in the glasses, as if he saw me more than he ever had before. Even in the nude, I had not felt so open and bare.
Because now I was twenty-nine or something more.
"Better for your eyes, love," he told me, "all them shirts ain't doin' you no good, are they? I told Ollie to get you a proper lamp at your table – should be there tomorrow for you, and if it ain't, then I'll use me own lamp to wallop Ollie 'round the 'ead. And I told you that I think you look beautiful in 'em. The fella what sold me 'em told me they were the newest on the market, best quality and that – told 'im I'd be chewin' on fuckin' coal for the next few weeks, wouldn't be able to afford a fuckin' loaf o' bread after payin' for 'em – but I'd give you me own fuckin' eyes if they weren't as fucked –…"
Alfie rambled onward, all jokes and soft touches; some strange sensation washed over me while I took in his words with a fond smile of my own, and that sensation felt much like that first hug from his arms after he had finally returned from France or that lovely lavender scent which coated the pillows after a wash or those absent-minded caresses that came from him on late nights spent on the sofa curled against one another, the hot lashes of warmth from the fireplace crackling in front of us, the dense weight of Cyril against my feet. It felt much like that, to look at him then.
It passed in its own pace and I never leaned forward to kiss him or silence him at all, but rather scooted over onto my side of the bed, shuffling my pillows around. Carefully, he took the glasses from me and placed them with his Bible on the bedside table before he reached for the lamp.
"Do you think Ollie will make jokes about them?" I giggled, feeling his breath against my arm while he shuffled me against him. I rested against his chest and felt it rumble with his words now coated in a tired rasp.
"If Ollie says one fuckin' word 'bout them to ya, then 'e would need a pair 'imself after I knock 'is thick skull all 'round the bakery."
I laughed at him. "Thank you, Alfie."
"For knockin' Ollie 'round? Thought you liked the lad."
"For the glasses." I paused. "And for knocking him around, if he does say anything."
"S'why you keep me around, innit? Do nothin' else, me."
"Oh, here we go," I groaned, attempting to roll away from him.
He caught me at the waist. "I'm just sayin', right, that I ain't all brawn, y'know – got feelings in 'ere, me, but nobody sees 'em, do they – oh, that's just Alfie, the big fella with all the muscles –…"
"No one says that. They say you're an arsehole."
"And 'is missus just orders 'im about the gaff," he continued, "'cause she's the real brains behind it all."
"Well, you got something right for once."
"Cheeky mare."
From the hall, we heard a familiar whine and scratch. Alfie and I remained very still. Even in the dark, I caught the flash of his eyes looking to find mine, his eyebrows raised hopefully. I scoffed and pulled at the blankets to tug them closer around me.
"Not a chance, Alfie."
He cursed immediately, falling from his side of the bed. "That fuckin' dog – never needs a piss when I take 'im out before bed – minute I get me trotters up, 'e wants a wee in the fuckin' garden – and 'er Majesty won't get out of bed at all, too pampered –…"
"What was that, Alfie?"
He pulled a coat from the chair and slung it over himself. Feigning a loving smile, he turned back and crooned, "Oh, nothin', darlin', love of my fuckin' life – I only said you should get your rest, I'll take the dog out, don't you worry."
"Sounded like grumbling to me," I called back, grinning.
"Grumblin'? From me? Never. Always obligin', me. 'appy to take the dog out in the dead o' fuckin' night and freeze me arse off while 'e sniffs 'round the gaff lookin' for a spot what suits 'im."
"Do hurry then, Alf. The bed is so warm."
He opened the door to the hall, but turned back again, raising a hand to point at me. "You're doing it tomorrow night if Cyril starts 'is whingin'."
"You say that every night."
He looked at me, lips pursed, hand dropping to his side. "Fuck, I do say that every night, don' I? And 'ere I am in me slippers."
I laughed so hard at his deadpan expression before the door clapped shut behind him that I was certain it would add another line, one deeper and more pronounced than all the others, but it didn't bother me as much as it had in the bathroom.
Because there I was, twenty-nine or something more, and happier than I had ever been in all that other time left unaccounted.
ii
Slinking around the tables in a restaurant made of golden trimmings and large chandeliers overhead, I marvelled at the Shelby family in London. Their name had been whispered in alleyways and mentioned in pubs, spreading through the tenements and even around Charterhouse in its maddened frenzy. Thomas Shelby had destroyed the Eden Club and cracked the bones of quite a few Italians in his first month here – and there he sat right in the middle of it all, pale eyes slowly drawn all around the room until he found me in its swollen crowd, and he stood from his chair to welcome me with an unusual peck on each cheek, before he settled back against his seat and raised his glass toward me.
Catlike in his observations, Tommy watched while I took off my coat, its cuffs and collar lined in rich black fur, a nearby waiter stepping forward it to take it from me. I took the chair directly across from Tommy and felt an odd sense of pushing into another verbal battlefield with him, because he drew his cigarette from his pocket and patted it against his lips before he reached for his lighter. He took his first puff, opened his lips to speak – and was cut off by the fumbling of two men who bumped against our table and collapsed onto the seats on either side of us.
Startled, it took a moment for me to realise that these two men were his brothers. Arthur sat on my left with his brown hair flopping against his forehead, drawing in a deep, snorting breath through his nose before he slammed his palm flat against the table and roared at a waiter for a whiskey. I looked at John on my right and watched his wandering eyes follow the plump bottoms of passing women, his lips turning upward.
John still looked youthful, not quite like Arthur who seemed much older and more spent on snow, quite frankly. I knew the tremble of his hands because I had seen that same tremble in Butcher and Esther. I saw his nostrils twitch and his eyes fill with paranoia once he looked about the room, narrowed in suspicion at those who dared pass around Tommy in particular.
Finally, I looked at Tommy himself once more and found that he had never looked away from me. He blew a thick puff of smoke from between his lips and raised one eyebrow as if he wanted to know what I thought – I would have told him, too, had Arthur not snorted in that unsettling manner before his eyes turned and he saw me there alongside them.
I awaited some kind of recognition, perhaps a peck on the cheek like I had received from Tommy, but there came only a blank stare before he drawled, "Now, why didn't anyone fuckin' tell me, right, that the most beautiful women in this fuckin' country are 'ere in London, eh? 'Cause you, love, you're a right fuckin' jewel, you are."
Scrunching my lips to smother laughter, I turned to Tommy who only lifted his hand to order three more whiskeys. He glanced at me and I shook my head. I had never had alcohol and looking at Arthur Shelby only convinced me all the more that I should avoid it.
"Fuck off, Arthur," John muttered, dragging his hand along his face and blowing out his lips. His eyes were bloodshot, I noticed, as if he had spent the night gulping the same whiskey that was then placed before him by the waiter. "Who says she's interested in you, anyway?"
His eyes flashed to mine, smirking.
"Willa Sykes," Tommy announced. "I am sure you remember Arthur and John. If memory serves, the last time that you saw John, he pissed himself after he was thrown from a horse."
I had not actually remembered that at all, but it explained his absence from that jump off the bridge all those years beforehand. I saw how Tommy revelled in the slow realisation which dawned across his brothers' faces, their mouths becoming slack and wide, looking at one another, whiskeys momentarily forgotten.
"Fuck." Arthur sloshed more whiskey on himself, looking at his lap. "Oh, fuck –…"
"Would you believe, Willa," Tommy drawled onward, his cold eyes ghosting over the crowd, "that Shelby Company Limited has recently introduced equality between its male and female workers? Shocking, isn't it? But we try to lead good examples, don't we?"
"Willa Sykes?" John repeated. "You're fuckin' kiddin' me. What 'appened to you? Last I 'eard, you was workin' for that one – what was 'er name –…"
"Esther," I answered. "That ended a long time ago, John."
"Fuck," Arthur said again, making my eyes swivel toward him instead. "Willa, love, y'know I didn't mean nothin' by it, eh? Only messin' around, me and John. Tommy never mentioned you comin' to see us, never even said you was in London."
"Is that right?" I glanced at Tommy in amusement.
"That is right," he hummed. "Thought I might surprise my dear old brothers."
"Surprise us you fuckin' well did, Tom," Arthur huffed. "Give us an 'ug, Willa, come 'ere –…"
Surprised, I stood and let Arthur wrap his arms around me, hugging me tightly – so tightly that it hurt. He shook me a little, slapping my shoulders painfully hard. He snorted again, drew in a deep breath and collapsed in his chair. I thought that he had taken a line of snow before he had sat with us.
Judging from that dark stare in Tommy as he watched us, I assumed that he thought the same thing.
His eyes lingered on his brother for a few moments afterward, too. Arthur seemed to sense it and kept his own eyes fixated on the table as if nervous to look anywhere else.
"Willa helped arrange the deal with Alfie Solomons," Tommy explained. "Billy Kitchen will be here by tomorrow with his boys and we can get started."
"Cause for a celebration," Arthur slurred, lifting a limp hand to summon another waiter.
Blooming from the bottom of my stomach, I felt an unease when I watched Arthur. He spasmed around his face as if he could not control his own features. His hands constantly patted against the white tablecloth in a frantic rhythm that nobody could follow, not even himself. He smiled at me in slow drips, like he could not hold up the corners of his mouth for long enough, so that one side slouched a little more than the other.
But it was his eyes that disturbed me most of all – he could not look at me for more than a second, his gaze so unfocused that he looked through me, into worlds unknown.
Tommy bordered some dangerous line in his temper, I could tell. His fingertips tapped out the rhythm that Arthur could not maintain, his mouth curled upward in a scowl whenever his brother moved too suddenly or startled the people around him. John looked oddly subdued, as if he could feel that simmering tension just like I could. He looked at his shoes, sipped at his whiskey and slouched back in his seat, playing out some imagined indifference. Only he licked his lips far too much and pulled at the collar of his shirt for it to be believable.
"I heard you married Esme, John," I started kindly. "Kelly and Mitchell Lee told me about it."
"I did, yeah," he nodded.
"Is she here in London, too?"
Arthur let out an ugly snort. "Fuckin' firecracker, Esme – as if John could tell 'er where to fuckin' go, she'd string 'im up by the balls. Still in Birming'am, she is."
I caught the glare that John shot him. I settled on some bland words that might appease both of them, because Arthur lifted his whiskey and tipped it at his brother, smiling at him without any humour.
"Shame," I said, "I was hoping to see her."
Loudly, Arthur slammed his glass against the table. "Well, that's simple, ain't it, Willa? You come to us! Down to Birming'am, show you all the old places. Get Ada back down, too."
He rambled onward, his words blurred together into a confused mush that became harder and harder to decipher. I knew that he was lost in his own world, because there was little chance of Ada taking some dreamlike, idyllic trip to Birmingham with her brothers – along with me, stuck between them all – and even Tommy knew it for he crushed his cigarette against the ashtray with particular loathing in his expression.
While Arthur rambled, a young waiter passed behind me and around toward his side of the table, but Arthur pushed his chair back in one of his jerky movements and knocked into the man whose tray then tumbled and spilled all over my lap. It was a maddened flurry of motion around me, the shock of cold liquid seeping through my skirts and soaking my skin and the rush of apologies from the waiter before Arthur simply attacked him.
I felt bizarrely separated from it for just a brief moment, because Arthur gripped the man at his lapels and smacked him against the table right in front of me, snatching him at the scalp and thumping him over and over again against the plates and cutlery which cut at his skin. I heard the screams and shouts all around me in an echoed tunnel directed at me but somehow not quite hitting me, for that tinny whistle had started in my eardrum again.
"Apologise to 'er!" Arthur roared. "What were you fuckin' doin' anyway, ya fuckin' –…"
His skin was stained in a beetroot colour and veins protruded from his forehead in harsh bulges, his lips foaming in spittle. I stood from the table, pushing backward. Arthur scared me, petrified me, especially when his hand reached out blindly for a knife on the tablecloth that I had not even noticed until he lifted it.
I saw it gleam in the golden light of the restaurant before he brought it down, slashing right through the cheek of this man still screaming and screaming, legs kicking wildly behind him. I thought I saw the man's tongue through the slit of skin, a flash of blubber and pink, flopped around.
John scrambled around the table and caught Arthur at the shoulders, hauling him backward.
Quivering, Arthur collapsed against the ground and held his head in his hands before he looked around himself and saw the frightened eyes watching him. He stood again, shoved John away and screamed at those people stood huddled together.
"You watchin' me like I'm some fuckin' freak, eh, some fuckin' freak – fuck you, fuck all of you, you fuckin' –…"
After this entire affair had simmered into Arthur throwing his arms around at people, shouting vaguely at them, Tommy appeared. I had forgotten him somehow, my stunned eyes following him as he clapped his hands against Arthur's cheeks and stroked his hair from his face, leaning close to speak to him. I hardly heard the words over that whistle in my eardrum, crackling louder and louder the more that I watched the room around me. He shushed his brother, spoke to him like he was a horse that had been spooked.
He spoke to him like he was an animal, frightened and corralled.
Staggering toward me, Arthur lowered his eyes in shame. I wanted to step away from him, but my legs were not quite mine anymore. Instead, I stared at him as he approached, terribly aware of the harsh thumping of my heart against my chest.
Gruffly, he rasped, "Are you all right, Willa? D'you wanna borrow me coat, yeah, 'til you can clean up your clothes proper like?"
I swallowed a lump in my throat and looked back at Tommy, who made no motion at all as to what I should do. So, I spoke very softly and said, "It's all right, Arthur. Just a little bit damp, is all. Had much worse, haven't I?"
He nodded, childlike in his movements now. "Just damp, yeah. S'all right, then, just damp. Will I walk you 'ome?"
That was all the more bizarre and I knew because of how John glanced at his brother, confused.
"There's a car outside for me," I explained gently. I spoke so carefully, never in a shout, because there was still a lingering madness behind his stare, frozen on the carpet and never raised to meet mine. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "Would you like a lift somewhere, Arthur?"
"You're all right, love," he wheezed. "Just – gonna go back to me 'otel and 'ave a lie-down. Feelin' tired, me. Gonna wait for Tommy and John, I am."
"I'll walk you out, Willa," Tommy stated, sweeping around his brother and walking ahead with the tails of his coat fluttering behind him. He whistled for another waiter who stared at him in shock for a moment before he jumped and realised that Tommy wanted my coat to be brought out from the back-room.
"It was nice seeing you John, Arthur," I mumbled awkwardly.
Behind him, the waiter lifted his scarred face from the floor and let out a long, agonised wail.
iii
Sitting in the car with my hand held against my mouth, I felt the first trickle of tears that came out in a sudden rush; my hands shook, my heart still fluttered. I had been badly frightened by Arthur, disturbed by him and his furious temper which seemed even worse than Alfie's had ever been. He had switched so suddenly that I had barely even been able to comprehend it.
I had seen the spurt of blood that followed the slitting of skin and saw it pour onto the table in heavy pools of red. I had seen his tongue.
I tried to remember just what Tommy had been doing when it all happened. I had not taken much notice of him, only realised that John had swept around to control his brother. I smoothed my palms against my cheeks and tried my hardest to remember.
It came to me out of the blue: Tommy had not done anything but lean backward in his seat to avoid blood dripping on his suit.
iv
Suddenly, I was terrified that I had just made the worst mistake of my life by bringing the Shelbys to London.
v
Rattling around my eardrum, that whistle had not dimmed even by the time that I had reached the yard of the bakery. I took out some cash from my purse and passed it over to Caleb who mumbled his gratitude. I suppose he had noticed that I was unsettled, but he had decided not to mention it, seeming distracted himself. I walked through the mud of the yard and nodded toward the lads who greeted me, feeling much safer in the confines of the basement of the bakery, especially once Cyril peeped out from his spot beneath the staircase and followed me into the office.
Alfie sat with a mountain of paperwork scattered all over his table. He never glanced up from his scrawling against the paper he had before him. I dropped onto the chair in front of his desk, rubbing at my forehead tiredly.
"In the Bible, right," he said, "there is a perfect description o' what comes to bad men once they kick the bucket, yeah? But I think, yeah, that 'ell ain't a bunch of little devils what poke your arse – it's paperwork and more paper-fuckin'-work…"
Cyril rested at my feet, his heavy frame stretched out over my boots. I reached to scratch at his belly, since he had given enough hints by lifting his paws and whining pitifully. I looked down at him, smiling when his mouth stretched in what looked like a lazy grin of his own, drool dripping onto the wooden floorboards.
"Right, then," Alfie said suddenly, drawing my attention. He dropped his pen and looped his fingers together, resting his chin on them. "What's wrong with ya?"
I laughed softly, shrugging my shoulders. "What d'you mean, Alf?"
"You met with Tommy fuckin' Shelby – what could be right with ya, after that?" he muttered, leaning back against his chair and throwing his boots up onto the table, soiling all those papers he had been working on before I came into the office. He seemed unbothered by it. "Nice of 'im, weren't it, to send a letter requestin' your presence."
"Wanted to give his 'dear old brothers' a nice surprise," I nodded, rubbing at Cyril's drooping muzzle.
"You don't like surprises."
"Neither do you."
He hummed. "And what 'appened?"
"I thought you had your spies following me around," I grinned.
"Oh, I did," he replied. "But you got 'ere before 'em, so I'll ask you instead."
I was not entirely sure if he meant it or not, but I figured that Alfie would learn about it sooner rather than later and I would rather have been the one to explain it in a way that might not set off his temper. I stood and came around to his side of the table, perched myself on the edge of it. I took his hands and let out a deep sigh.
"That's always a good sign, innit," he smiled. "When someone's 'bout to tell you somethin' and they let out a great big sigh like that."
He poked my stomach and I laughed, shoving his hand away. "I met Tommy, all right. And he had not lied about his brothers coming along – he just hadn't told them that I would be there, is all. I think Arthur had a different idea until he recognised me. Well, John and Arthur soon realised that they knew me – had known me a long time ago, too – and…"
"What d'you mean?"
I blinked, confused. "About what?"
"'Arthur 'ad a different idea', you said. What d'you mean by that?"
"He thought I had been paid by Tommy, y'know, like a wh-…" I cut off, knowing that it would upset him more. "It isn't important, Alfie. You're focusing on the wrong bloody part already."
"Right," he huffed grumpily.
I rolled my eyes. I pinched at his cheeks, snorting when he refused to let me force him into a smile by pinching at his skin. "Oh, Alf. It was a mistake. Arthur hasn't seen me in years and even when we were kids, I never saw him much. He's from Birmingham, if you remember! He only came to Ireland for his holidays. But we tried to talk about normal things. Esme, John's wife, she's kin."
"Oh, add another to the list," he groaned. "More kin. Fuckin' beamin' me, only gets better when one of your lot come out the woodwork, makes me life a fuckin' dream."
It was hard to maintain a straight face around Alfie. He made me laugh quite easily and I knew he took great pleasure in it – it had gotten him out of a few arguments with me before.
"A waiter dropped some drinks on me, Alf," I explained slowly. "And Arthur just – he lost it. He had the waiter against the table, and he sliced his cheek open with a knife – and Tommy sat there, while John tried to get him off."
Alfie rested his hand on my thigh and rubbed slow circles into my skin. His eyes were glazed. "Did Arthur do anythin' to ya?"
"No."
"Then we move on from it."
I stared at him. "Really?"
He nodded, but he reached around me for a piece of paper and squinted at it without his glasses. "Yeah, really."
"You don't think that was – I don't know, a bad sign?"
"Signs," he muttered. "Gypsies and their fuckin' signs, eh? And what does this sign tell us, eh? That Arthur ain't got all 'is marbles in 'is skull? Hm. I 'eard as much about 'im."
"You heard it. And never mentioned it."
"Yeah, didn't mention it. Like you didn't mention meetin' Tom in the first place."
"Alfie!" I groaned. "I apologised. I told you –…"
"Yeah, yeah, deepest apologies an' all that," he hummed. "But don't you think it was wise o' Tommy not to step in, hm?"
"Why would it be?"
"There are other gangs in London other than the Jews and the Italians, Willa," he retorted, throwing me a sharp look. "Ain't just us that Tommy is workin' with – or against, for the Italians. So, what does it 'urt 'im if people 'esitate to come after Tom if they think 'is brother goes 'round slittin' open the cheeks o' waiters what dropped water on a cousin, eh?"
"But Arthur isn't well, Alf, not in his head."
"Went to France, didn't 'e? Sounds like 'alf the soldiers what came back, to me. Likes 'is snow, too, I 'eard. Snorts most o' the blow in London."
"I noticed."
I looked away from Alfie, worried, wondering if Tommy would really allow his brother to suffer so much just for a slice of London. Arthur had seemed so frantic, his eyes always darting around for threats that seemed invisible to me.
"You're thinkin' that you fucked up, somehow."
I watched him, biting at my lip to hold in the barrage of fear that I never wanted to spill out. I settled for a much shorter, "Maybe. He was like an animal, Alf. I wasn't sure when he would stop – if he would stop."
"You seen me do worse," Alfie said. His words surprised me and he knew it, because he made sure to look into my eyes.
"I know. I know it isn't fair to think that of Arthur. But I was frightened of him. Tommy took a risk, letting Arthur stay in London instead of John."
"Strategy, I told ya. Tommy knows what looks better for 'im – a brother with a few screws missin' what can scare off the first round o' competition 'fore the Italians. Tommy ain't a fuckin' dummy, Willa. 'e got the brains in that fam'ly."
"You still haven't met Polly Gray," I grinned at him.
"Oh, no – no more fuckin' kin, I'm tellin' ya. You tell me you got one more fuckin' cousin, one more fuckin' aunt or uncle from some side o' the fam'ly – I'm not listenin'. Your fam'ly tree ends 'ere, Willa. Ain't been nothin' but grief."
I laughed. "Well, you still have to introduce me to your side properly, Alf. You have a nephew and I haven't even met him."
"All the fuckin' better," he muttered lowly. "Better off just you and me, darlin' – I don't want no one else in this fuckin' –…"
Ringing loudly between us, the telephone rattled in its cradle and Alfie reached for it. He held it against his ear, letting it slide against his shoulder to balance it. His hand still held my thigh. I watched his expression stay curiously blank while the telephone crackled on the other end.
Finally, he said, "Hm. Yeah. Got it. Very good. Right. Hm? Oh, yeah. Will do. All right."
He set it back in its cradle and rested his hands against his stomach, pursing his lips.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "What?"
He looked at me innocently and repeated, "What?"
"Alfie –…"
"Oh, was Ollie on the 'orn, there."
I waited expectantly and then slapped his arm.
"Ow – fuckin' 'ell, Willa, for such a small fuckin' thing you got some strength when you're mad – it was Ollie, all right," he huffed. But his lips twitched, and he smiled despite his efforts. "Just wanted to tell me that Franny went and 'ad the sprog this evenin'. Won't make it in tomorrow, I suppose. Always findin' excuses to skip a day o' work, our Ollie."
Leaping off the table, I threw my arms around him in excitement and felt him grab my waist to steady us. I pulled away and quickly rushed to grab my coat, throwing my scarf haphazardly around my neck. Cyril lolloped after me and I cursed, spinning on my heel to tell Alfie that we needed to drop him at the house first, but I stopped in my tracks once I saw that Alfie had returned to his seat, sifting through papers.
"What are you doing?"
"Gotta finish up 'ere, Willa."
"No, you don't. We're going to the hospital! I want to see Franny and Ollie – I want to hear if he gave it some terrible name, because I heard the suggestions Ollie was making. Might have been the horror of them that set off Franny in the first place."
"You wanna see the sprog."
I threw my arms out, exasperated. "I just told you – Alfie, what is wrong with you?"
"You might want one, after you see it."
I paused, taken aback. "We talked about this, Alf."
"Not proper."
"Don't do this now. Don't ruin their moment by making it about us, starting a fight over some stupid –…"
"But it ain't stupid, is it? You might want 'em, one day. And I ain't sure that I do, not with – the way this life goes. Willa, I ain't pretendin' with ya. You got shot. You think I could take that if it was our child 'it too, eh?"
I had opened the door into the hall and felt its coldness seeping into the office, spoiling its warmth and laughter. I fixed my scarf around my throat. I said, "I understood what I was signing up for, Alfie. I never had the sort of life that afforded the luxury of safety before I met you, either. You know that and I know that."
He was looking at me very seriously, not a hint of humour in him anymore. "Kelly Lee could offer it."
"Alfie, I have had enough of this nonsense with Kelly Lee! How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want to be with that man, that nothing could change my mind about it –…"
"That's not what I mean, Willa. I meant that 'e could give you that – that stuff that I am not sure we'd ever 'ave. What Franny and Ollie 'ave now."
Children, he meant. Children, the word that he could not bring himself to say.
Tightly, I muttered, "Get your scarf and coat, Alfie."
Marching out into the hall, I felt the cool chill of the evening sweeping across us and I begged him to follow, begged him not to speak of it any further. Cyril came along with me, his paws thumping against the wooden floorboards. I turned toward the staircase and glanced behind myself, my body limp with relief once he stepped out from the office and closed it behind him. I wanted no more talk of babies from him nor word of Kelly Lee and what could have been.
I never wanted it, because I knew what Alfie meant: because you are twenty-nine or something more, and there might not be much time for it in the future.
vi
Resting against the pillows, Franny looked pale and tired, but she had this gentle smile on her face that reminded me of Margate, somehow. She drifted off into a heavy slumber after we had arrived and I left large gifts at the bottom of her bed, filled with little toys and outfits, along with some small socks that I had made myself. Ollie had taken one look at them and wrapped his arms around me, taking me by surprise in how his eyes glistened and he had held onto those socks the longest. He had stepped into the hall with Alfie, who had clapped his arms around him, too. Alfie, despite any denial, was very soft on Ollie. He had always been soft on him.
I saw the small crib that was set alongside Franny and heard the gentle noises there from a small bundle wrapped in a downy blanket. I thought of Charlotte and the babe that she might have had when I glimpsed those small fists thrown about and heard little gurgles.
I was afraid to hold him.
Because it was him, not it – not some chey whose parents had not lived long enough to know him, not some chey passed onto foreign hands in a foreign country, not some chey who had stitched herself a patchwork quilt of kin because she had never known them properly to have anything better.
Franny had told me that I could hold him before she had nodded off and I looked at her now. I wanted to ask her how I was meant to hold him without hurting him – without passing on these pieces of me that had been put into that patchwork, without filling him with the same blueness that sometimes filled me, and which had plagued Alfie ever since he stepped into the trenches. I was scared to hold him. I thought that my hands alone would spoil him.
So, I sat alongside him instead. I peered down at him and watched him wiggle and writhe beneath his blankets.
"You don't like to be contained either, do you?" I whispered to him. "All those blankets around you, you want to be out of them, free to move as you like, eh?"
He made little noises which softened some hardened parts of me, moved them all around and filled the spots in-between with a heavy sense of love and sadness blended together. He lifted his hand, so small and so fragile with those dense reddened lines on his palm, and I dared touch my finger against it. His skin was soft and delicate, but he curled his small hand around my finger and squeezed so hard, with all the strength that he had been given by God – and he seemed to smile with just his gums, his lips stretched, legs in a wild kick outward and outward, bouncing against his bedding.
I had never told Alfie that I was afraid that there was something in me which had been broken a long time ago – or maybe it had never worked at all, because we had been together many times, for so many years, and never had I fallen pregnant. He never talked about it. Perhaps he never even thought about it, because he had not allowed himself to dream of babies for us. He stuffed those thoughts away, buried them beneath Margate.
My throat was filled with something hot and painful, not quite a lump but something heavier. I knew, now, why Alfie had not wanted me to see him, had not wanted me to be near him.
I reached for him, even with all my fears, because he had reached for me and I could not let him stay there alone. I scooped an arm beneath his blankets and held him up against my chest to cradle him.
And I dared pretend, for just a little while.
