A/N: hello everyone! i'm back with another chapter. i wanted to explain that there is smut in this chapter, very minor and not a long section at all. if you want to skip that stuff, it's at the end of willa and alfie discussing this marriage toward the first half of the story. in addition, as mentioned on the archive version of this story, i chose not to do a catholic or jewish wedding in the end which becomes clear in this chapter. i think i would butcher it and offend both sides in the end, plus religion was never the main theme of this, so it is not my main focus - alfie and willa are lol. anyway, thanks for all the feedback! :)


twenty-one


Sewing a thin line of thread around the cuff of a new shirt, I could not help but think only of those voices which floated from the other end of the basement. It was a blend of gruff murmurs and sudden shouts which made me wince and bounce my boots against the floorboards, my glasses slipping from the bridge of my nose and hastily pushed upward once more. I heard the heavy groan of the latch lifted from those doors at the end of the hall, the clap of hands, the footsteps which followed. Then I glimpsed the inky silhouette of Gypsies passing through the hall before the door of the office swung open in a wild clatter.

There stood Kelly Lee with his black cap lowered over his face, his expression cast from an iron fury that marred his handsome features.

He stepped forward and the floorboards cried beneath each step. I quietened my sewing-machine and felt its rattling din hush into nothingness. I was made mute from his blackened stare, for his eyes were that of coal, much like mine, but those harsh shades came not from natural colour but rather a deepened sense of remorse and something more.

In our tongue, he told me, "Johnny has shaken the hand of your Jew – it has been settled now. You are to be his wife."

I shifted in my seat, the rush of euphoria swelling from my fingertips upward into my arms, all around my chest and into my heart, so that it beat all the faster and set my blood alight. Only Kelly Lee had taken another step forward and it shushed that thunderous flutter of my soul beneath my rib-cage and it cooled my fiery blood, because his mouth had furrowed around Jew in such a cruel manner that it wounded me. It had never bothered me that Alfie was Jewish. I had always loved him, and his faith had only been another part of him, unfolded.

And I knew that Kelly Lee hated the simplicity in that.

"Then I would like for you to attend the ceremony," I replied politely. "Your kin in London, too –…"

"Oh, I can ask them," he retorted bitterly. "But d'you think they'd come and sit in a fuckin' synagogue?"

I stood from my seat with an iciness in my movements that soon forced him to straighten his spine and swallow, his eyes looking toward the floorboards for just a brief moment before he dared drink in my dark stare; for we had the same colouring, now, all coal and something more.

"It will not be held in a synagogue, if that pleases you, Kelly Lee," I snarked. "It will be held in a registry office and we will hold our own ceremonies after it."

He let out this horrid laugh, held between a scoff and a shuddered gasp of breath. "A fucking registry? The man can't even let you be in a fucking church, is that it?"

I bristled but soon steadied myself. "I love that man. I have always loved that man. Church, synagogue, register – I wish to marry him, and it does not matter where it happens for us. It was only Johnny who had the power to deny it."

"And if he had?" Kelly asked. "If he had denied it, d'you not see that your man would have forced him to accept it? D'you not see that you would have been married whether your man had followed our rules or not?"

"He followed our rules by asking Johnny."

"After the proposal! He never asked him for permission to propose to you, to allow any other man –…"

His lips formed words left unheard; only the sounds seemed to float toward me, somehow made tangible, so that all the letters slipped around me in a jumbled swirl and I could pluck them from air and arrange them for him – he had wanted to be that suitor, he had wanted that chance for permission that might truly have been given because there was a hierarchy which came from the soil, things which had to be followed. Johnny sat in the place of my father at that table. He had spat on his own palm and shook hands with the man that I wanted to marry.

And I thought that that killed Kelly all the more, for he had long since known that Johnny had the choice to spit on the floorboards instead and turn Alfie away because of the bad blood that existed between them, turn him away for his faith like most Gypsies had anticipated – and he would have walked out of there alive, because he had been surrounded by kin as part of the arrangement to even sit with Alfie at all. If Johnny had wanted it, then he could have forced me to take another man chosen for his stature and blood; a man whose surname might have been Lee, after all.

"He is not of our world, Willa. He mocks our traditions, scoffs at our beliefs. But he expects you to take on his own. What can he bring you, hm? Happiness? Is that what he tells you? He is not a man driven by love!"

I looked him over, his tall frame with shoulders hunched in misery. "Is that what you are, Kelly Lee? A man driven by love?"

He licked his lips and his eyes became glassy. "I would understand you better. I would not change you."

"We were children playing in a field," I retorted irritably. "You realise that, don't you? I mean, we hardly understood marriage – we put those rings on because we were playing a game."

Kelly was quiet for a moment, pinching his nostrils together to hold in some harsh snort before he spun for the door and that I thought that this might end, but he turned right back and splayed his hands against my table, leaned forward.

"He shot you, that man. He might not have held that gun, but he put you in the hospital and he will do it again. He will do it until the only other fucking place that he can put you in is a fucking grave, Willa! All the Gypsies know it. Granny looked into the branches of the sycamore trees and told me that she saw –…"

"She probably saw an owl," I snorted. "So, what did that great owl tell her, hm? What did those rustling branches reveal to her, Kelly? Did they tell her that even after all these years, that I have only ever wanted fifteen children and a caravan in Bonny Glen with you?"

He recoiled from me, eyes widened from hurt. I had slipped back into English, too upset to think clearly in our tongue, a language that I rarely had the opportunity to use and which meant I had become rusty and weak in it. I think he knew it. I think he thought it proved a point. I felt the familiar flame of tears behind my eyes and reached to wipe away those which fell in heavy trickles along my cheeks.

He said lowly, "Your Jew would have said something like that. He would have mocked the things that we know and how we know them. D'you feel better for it now, hm? Having laughed at your own people?"

"You have done nothing but insult him," I mumbled, crossing my arms over my chest. I was embarrassed by what I had said, but I had felt pushed to defend myself and Alfie. "You never bother to call him by his name. Only Jew. Did you think about how that made him feel?"

"Feel?" he repeated, his features twisted in revulsion. "That man feels nothing but fucking greed for the money that Tommy Shelby can provide him, that a hundred dead bodies beneath his fucking boots can provide him, what you can provide him – …"

He sank his hand into the material that I had tucked beneath the needle of the sewing-machine, which I had used especially for Alfie and this marriage, because I had made his shirts for years now. I had stitched it so carefully around the collar, measured each cuff and sleeve, lovingly pressed a pocket on his chest and felt as if I had kissed each stitch with my own lips through that machine which hummed beneath my hands. I knew his measurements more than I knew my own, knew every inch of him. It meant more to me than this man could have understood.

And Kelly Lee tore it upwards, so that the fabric caught on the needle and ripped in his rage, flopping uselessly from his grip.

"D'you know what will happen to you, d'you? Oh, he will make you happy for the first few months – he will bring you jewels and nice clothes and he will have you in that house what beats some fucking caravan in Bonny Glen. But d'you know what, Willa – one day you will look around at all its furniture and all the riches he gave you along with it and you will wonder how it's still so fucking empty all the time - and then you will ask yourself if you should have wanted your fifteen children and a husband what would understand your ways and take care of you and protect you rather than put a fucking bullet in you just to push himself all the higher in this London game by balancing himself on your fucking corpse to do it!"

He stopped, his mouth coated in a slick layer of spittle that he wiped from his chin with his coat. He was hearing his own words spoken back to himself by some distant echo and it rattled him through him, flattened out his shoulders and smoothed that furrow in his brow. He collected himself, plucked all pieces of his wrath from the floor.

"Willa," he started. "Willa, I never meant to upset you like this. I only wanted to talk to you – to make you see sense before he ruins you."

I was trembling like froth and foam in a great ocean, lapping beneath my feet, swirling upward in whitish gulps. "Please, get out," I whispered.

The silence which had laid itself between us was sentient, I thought, because it stretched over our bodies like a blanket and smothered us. Kelly stepped around the table, arms raised in surrender, his expression made of remorse and something more. I panicked all the more because I was trapped between the table and that cabinet behind me, filled with papers and pens and countless rolls of material. I felt that blanket open my mouth and push itself inside; it dried out my mouth and furled along my throat, soaked up its wetness and left me stuffed in a dense pressure that made it hard to push my chest out at all, so that each breath came out rushed and stuttered.

"I think you oughta listen to 'er, mate."

Blinking rapidly, I cleared the bleary smudge which coated my eyes like pulling open our curtains in our bedroom each morning and taking in the street, seeing clearly each cobble and puddle there. Only now I saw that it was Alfie stood at the threshold of the office with his cane and his knuckles turned white around it, his eyes unreadable.

Kelly Lee never broke his stare from mine but he did move backward, skirting around the table, his hands still held upward to reassure me of his intentions all the while Alfie watched. Then, Kelly Lee cracked the bones of his neck in an odd roll of his shoulders and turned to face this man whom I had always loved; and it seemed to shatter him all the more to do it.

Finally, still in our tongue, Kelly Lee spoke to me without looking back at me. He said, "If you ever do find yourself in that house what he buys for ye, Willa, and you fear its emptiness – you need only look for me in Bonny Glenn."

Although he might not have understood the sounds, Alfie simmered in his tension, his jaw wound tightly and his hands gripping that cane as if he imagined it to be the throat of Kelly Lee crushed between his hands. He remained there, in that threshold, until Kelly Lee approached him and there came a terrifying moment in which I was not certain that Alfie would shift aside for him, so darkly did those men watch each other.

"Alfie," I whispered, my eyes flitting between them.

Slowly, Alfie dragged his stare to find me in the warmth of our office, with its lamps smouldering, before he looked over at his table with its papers held in tight bundles. He swallowed thickly and I glimpsed that heavy coldness in him, which had come that night he had beaten Nathaniel after he had called me all those names, that same bleak greyish light which found itself in his eyes, festering there.

Alfie stepped aside and the room seemed to deflate as if he had been the cork in a bottle of fizzing champagne popped open. Kelly Lee looked between us once more and then stormed into the hall, his coattails whipping behind him. Mutely, I watched him frame disappear between the thick cracks in the frosted windowpanes, swallowed into the blackness of the hall. I felt as if I had reached inside my mouth and tugged on that folded blanket, pulled out its length, dropped it on the floorboards between us. I shuddered from it, felt those tremors dissipate and yet still my hands were shaky until Alfie held them and kissed my knuckles.

His gaze dropped to look at my wrists but peered into the gap between them, noting that tattered material there, unspooled. He knew that I had wanted to sew this shirt for him with the best and richest fabric that he had ever bought, so he plucked it from its curled state and that same coldness flushed through him.

Wrapped in nausea, a faint realisation rolled through me and I thought, if this had been any other night and I was not here with him, Alfie would have killed that man. He would have murdered him and put him beneath the floorboards upon which we now stand.

Frantically, I took the shirt from him, jolted by some spasms in my arms, so that I patted at the piles of thread around the table and pricked myself from needles poked between each spool. Alfie caught my wrists and pressed his lips against my temple, curling his arms around me.

"I can mend it," I told him.

"I know, love."

He was very quiet and so much calmer than he had been that it relaxed me, too, but still I could only think about how I had mocked Kelly Lee and his grandmother, which hurt more than I wanted. I had felt cornered, surrounded. I was always poised between the Gypsies and the Jews, forced to defend both of them, forced to separate them before harsh, intense moments like tonight.

"I just wanted it to look nice for you."

"I know. I know." He sighed, stepping away from me and leaning against the table. "But frankly, darlin', I could marry ya in one of them sacks what we use for flour and the only thing that would matter is that piece o' paper what says we're married, innit?"

"Well," I mumbled, toying with his fingers. "I think you might frighten off the guests if you wore that."

"Watch it, you," he smirked. "Or I might just do a runner 'fore the ceremony."

I laughed, all those dark feelings from Kelly Lee slipping into some faint place. "Johnny would hunt you down if you even thought about it."

Alfie blew a raspberry between his lips, shaking his head. "D'you know, if Tom weren't in there, right, I thought your uncle might 'ave fucked off altogether them first few minutes we sat there. 'e made it perfectly clear that 'e don't want you convertin' for me."

"Does that bother you?"

"Willa, if it were such a big fuckin' problem for me, I would've asked you to do it a long time ago," he smiled, "and I ain't asked, 'cause I know what it means to ya to be Gypsy, yeah? And if you asked me if I would move to some fuckin' field, yeah, and sit there in the rain and misery with Kelly fuckin' Lee – what I'm tryin' to say, love, in me own roundabout way, is that if I ain't changin' nothin', then why should you? Kelly fuckin' Lee, eh –…"

"He had a point."

Alfie guffawed, his eyes narrowing. "You what?"

I looked at those lamps which fuzzed and bloomed behind him, like great big sunflowers. "Kelly spoke of dreams and foresight and I mocked him for it. And he looked at me like I was –…"

"Like you was what?"

"Unrecognisable," I answered, releasing a slow breath. "Or just a traitor. When I only wanted him to leave me alone."

"D'you want this marriage, Willa?"

Startled, I looked at him through my lashes from his lowered stance. I felt my chest clench in pain, pain that he must have felt too, for he sighed; and it was all sighs between us tonight, when I missed that sweet sense of euphoria once Kelly told me that Johnny had allowed the proposal. I wished I had held onto it longer, savoured it, kept it within myself like some treasure.

"I have never wanted anything more in all my life, Alfie."

He watched me, his eyes warm and soft for me. "I'm gonna marry ya, Willa Sykes, and it don't matter if we do it Jewish-like or Gypsy, yeah? 'Cause I don't care 'bout none o' that. I only care that them papers say that you are Mrs Solomons, darlin'."

He jumped from his seat, caught my arms and forced one hand on his shoulder, the other on his hip, the same hip that had always brought him so many problems. I let out a laugh at his sudden playfulness, bopping us this way and that around the office. He kissed my jawline, my collarbone, lingering at the mounds of my breasts, holding himself there for a moment, before his hand loosely grasped my throat and he tilted my chin up.

He looked the same way that he often did when he prayed; his eyes were focused on my skin as if he saw Holy words etched upon each line and dip of my body, because he had memorised me how he memorised those long-winded paragraphs about punishment and redemption, whispered between his lips each night, and it felt as if he had found what he sought after once he nudged open my legs with his own, let me feel his hardness against my inner-thigh and heard the soft moan which left me.

His hands scrunched the fabric of my skirts, pulled them up against my thighs so that I was left bare and he could touch me, touching like we had never been allowed to hold each other before and we had become famished and crazed from a savage hunger for each other. He fumbled with his belt which quickly dropped to the floorboards, cracking with a heavy thud that echoed my heartbeat. I felt my own slickness while he palmed at me, circled me with his fingertips, tracing that pattern which stirred and shocked me and which he had always known, right before he parted pages to push himself into me.

He held one arm around my waist, for I had tilted backward from the sheer fullness of him and the languid manner in which he rolled his hips forward, seeking that rhythm which soon came for him. He thrust into me even more, lifting me to lick at my breasts and knead them beneath his hands, suckling in a way that made me tremble. I felt our sweat and breaths swirl together when he straightened, pulling me closer to him, letting my lips kissing at the hollows of his collarbone, upward toward his throat and all around his jaw coated in that wiry stubble, catching myself on it, so that all sensations blended into some great crescendo and I scrunched his hair in my hands, held him tight, rocked with him.

I saw flashes of those sunflowers behind him when he moved all the faster. Ever so lightly, his left hand ghosted my throat once more until he gripped it and pushed his fingertips into those gentle dips just beneath my jaw; the pressure made my eyes roll backward and I thought it was terribly sick of me to think of all those other men he had strangled in his life, but I liked it whenever Alfie took control.

I knew that he liked it, too, how I had reacted to him. I felt it in heaviness of his body curled around mine, pushing deeper and deeper until I fell apart, my legs shaking, breasts lifting from the rapid nature of my breathing. He followed soon afterward, and I revelled in the low groan that came from him, his hand still around my throat, felt him twitch inside of me before he pulled out and I missed the fullness of him.

For a little while, we stayed together, unmoving. Then, slowly, he pulled down my skirts and he grabbed our coats and surrounded me in warmth, tucking my arm around his and leading us toward the car that waited for us. In that same car, he held me like he always did, rested against his chest, talking with that gruff, rumbly voice of his about all the things that would happen tomorrow with the wedding, about my beautiful dress, about the party afterward. I had never known a man like I had known Alfie. I had never known a man like I had known him.

And so I tried not think about what might have been whispered to Kelly Lee's grandmother through the branches of that sycamore tree.


ii

Ada had come around seven with an armful of bags and a scowl on her face, mumbling that Tommy had visited her just that morning and it had soured her for the hour which had followed. It was that hour, unfortunately, which cut into the preparation for the ceremony and which meant she plopped all her things onto our bed with particular vigour. I glanced across the bedroom through the mirror in front of me and almost laughed at the expression that Franny wore as she watched Ada, her eyebrows raised and her lip worried between her teeth. I stood and swept toward Ada, catching her by the shoulders and turning her firmly around toward Franny.

"Ada, love," I announced. "This is Franny. Franny, Ada."

"Pleasure to meet you, Ada," Franny smiled amicably.

Ada let out a neutral hum and nodded, her arms crossed over her chest. I squeezed her shoulders tightly and she yelped, smacking my arm. She glared at me, then glimpsed my hardened stare laid upon her. She rolled her eyes like a petulant child and turned properly to Franny. She held out her hand and looked just as surprised as I had the first day that I met Franny, because the woman opened her arms and curled them around Ada.

"Right," Ada said uselessly. "Well, better get on with it."

"Very kind way to start off my wedding, Ada."

"You can blame Tommy for that. Always thinks he knows best."

"Usually does," I replied, grinning at how she spun around and looked as if she might smack my arm all over again.

"Is Tommy your husband?" Franny asked.

Ada let out a very loud snort of disgust. "Any woman mad enough to marry him would want a separation shortly after." She saw that Fran was still confused and added, "My brother. Pain in my backside since the day I was born – he knows it, too."

"Will he come to the party afterward?" I asked her, amused.

"I should hope not," she spat. "But he says that he will, if he manages to take care of some business first. Knowing Tommy, if we hear an explosion or witness a murder, then that business has been taken care of."

Franny looked surprised at her bluntness, because I was usually very reserved about what Alfie did and what Franny did know about the business came from simply being around the bakery or picking up on smaller things from Ollie. Even Ollie himself knew that it was best not to speak too much on matters of the bakery. Alfie had a lot of rules about rum and bread. Still, Franny tried to be polite.

She offered a weak smile and said, "Oh, right. Is your brother in the rum business like Alfie, then?"

Ada threw her a withered glance. "There is not a vice on this earth that Tommy has not dabbled in. The devil would have cleaner hands than my fucking brother."

There was a knocking against the bedroom door that spared Franny from the wrath of Ada Shelby – or rather, Thorne – and Franny looked all the more relieved to rush over and answer it. Alfie stepped into the room with his usual gait, scratching at his stubble beneath the questioning stares of the women around him, seeming uncomfortable. Ada had only met Alfie when he answered the door and she seemed to look at him then with that usual sharpness in her eyes, noting details that others might have glossed over.

"Uh, I would like to speak with Willa, if that's all right, ladies," he grumbled.

Franny glanced at Ada. "Of course, Alfie."

Franny walked out into the hall with her usual diligence, but Ada hovered for a moment longer, looking at Alfie. Then, finally, she nodded and passed him coolly. I would have given anything to peek into her thoughts like looking through the window of a shop. Ada was a lot like Tommy in how she studied people around her, however much she would have hated to hear it.

Alfie cleared his throat once Ada and Franny had left. "Right, Willa – I want to put your veil on."

I stared at him. "I need the dress on, first, Alf."

"Yeah, I know. But it – it can be a tradition for us, yeah, and I know we ain't goin' into traditions and all that 'cause it would start another fuckin' war with my people and yours, yeah, and your lot got all them rituals on their side, y'know, scatterin' locks o' me 'air on some cow-shit and cursin' me for the rest o' me days. But I wanted to ask ya if you would let me do it, before the weddin'."

I smiled at the unusual nervousness in him, deciding not to scold him for his jokes about the Gypsies. I had tried to understand that there was nothing off-limits for Alfie when it came to jokes, and sometimes the only way that he could express himself was through a snipe at some group or another.

I tried not to think about that look in Kelly Lee's eyes all the same.

"Alfie, I would love for you to do that."

"And there was another thing, yeah," he mumbled. "Right, well, I ain't done it the proper way. I ain't 'ad it done up the way we do it at Jewish weddings or nowt, but I wanted to do for it ya, y'know, like a little – well, a promise, innit?"

Confused, I watched as he approached me and fell onto his knees in front of me, his hand reaching into the pocket of his shirt and pulling out a sheet of paper, so delicate that I was almost afraid to touch it, smoothing out its creases and drinking in its intricate petals and flowers shaped around its words written in Hebrew, spreading out into the trees grown all around.

"We call it a ketubah, which is like a contract," he explained gently, "between the groom and 'is bride, 'cause the groom is meant to write all them things what 'e promises to provide for 'is wife, right, like food and clothin' and sex and – well, usually, you ain't fucked before the weddin' 'cause your bride is meant to –…"

Alfie must have heard himself and backtracked quickly, wincing at himself.

"What was that, Alfie?" I asked coyly, smirking at his discomfort. "You're making an awful face."

"Yeah, well, some o' your Gypsies cousins must 'ave already used that cow-shit to curse me good lucks in that case, eh? Anyway, I'm meant to write all the things that I want for you – for us, yeah. It ain't official like, don't do nothin' for us but show you that I – that I want it to be good for us, Willa, y'know. I want you to be 'appy with me, love."

I felt the rise of tears and quickly swallowed them, smiling at him and holding that paper so gently in my hands, afraid to ruin it.

"And I know you can't read all them funny letters, but I taught you to read before so I can teach you to read 'ebrew, someday," he continued, his hand resting on my knee. "But I can tell you what it does say now, eh? I said that I would provide an 'ouse, love, all them things what the rabbi thought would be best to start out with. And I wrote the rest o' it by me-self, 'cause it's only meant for you and me."

I figured that he was speaking so calmly and soothingly purely because I was emotional, my voice choked from it, and Alfie was just as soft on the inside, even if he denied it.

"And it tells you down 'ere," he continued, "that I won't ever leave ya, that I will always be loyal to ya – that means no shaggin' other birds or nothin', but they got nicer words for it in 'ebrew than us, so I put it that way, didn't I? And I said that I would never toss you out for them cold feet o' yours when we're in bed, and I would always be the one to take Cyril out for a piss, and I would do the dishes for ya on Mondays, Thursdays, maybe Fridays –…"

I burst into laughter, pushing at his shoulder. "You did not write that!"

"I bloody well did, you can call the rabbi down if you don't believe me," he replied. "Right, next part, I said that I would take care o' ya if ya were sick the same way I take care o' ya when you're on your trotters and doin' well. Said I would never let anyone talk down to ya. I want you to know that I'll keep ya safe, I'll always provide for ya, protect ya, like. And when you're blue again, darlin', I'll be blue with ya, and we'll go through it together."

He smiled, and it was the most honest and endearing smile that had ever come from him, and it was all meant for me. He looked only at me like that. He had only ever looked at me like that.

"I would do a lot o' things for you, Willa, what I can't put into words in any o' the languages what I know. Ain't enough meanin' in them words in 'ebrew, and English is even worse. So, I'll settle by showin' ya, won't I, durin' our marriage?"

The tears came out even if I had tried to slow them, but he had spoken so sincerely that I felt that euphoria again, leaning forward to hug him against me, gripping him tightly. I had never known a man like him, that had always been the truth. But I knew that I never wanted to know another. I believed that he had always been mine even in those hazy times when we had worked in the factory, and he had probably accepted it faster than I had, because I had been so afraid to admit that I liked him – loved him, too, much later. I knew what he meant, for the Gypsies had long since told me about it; words that were meant for feelings which humans had known for centuries but had never been able to name.

When he pulled away, I glimpsed the wonky pattern of his buttons on his shirt and my eyes widened, my hands gripping his arms to hold him still. "Alfie, is that the very first shirt that I made you?"

"Hm?" he glanced down, feigning indifference. "Oh, yeah, it is."

"You're wearing it?"

"Very observant, Willa, love."

I scoffed at him, rolling my eyes. "I meant you're wearing it today – for the wedding?"

"Yeah, I am. I'll wear the other one that you made me after the weddin' is over, all right? But this one means the most, don't it, the very first one?"

I looked down at this contract and I realised that I had never felt that hot, thundering warmth in my chest for anybody in my life except for him. I had loved a lot of people; Elsie, Charlotte, Johnny. I had just never loved them in the same way that I loved Alfie – totally and completely, so that it felt natural to think of him before all else. I never had much family, only ever really counted Johnny for blood and cousins like Tommy floated out there on some faraway plain, not really considered more than an acquaintance who happened to share blood somewhere along the line. Even for this ceremony, most of the guests were Jewish or related to the business more than him.

But there was a great comfort to be found in knowing that Alfie was tied to me through more than just blood; or maybe it was that he was all the blood and feelings and soul that existed in me, in many ways.

"I have promises for you too, Alf," I smiled. "I promise all the things that you did – I will love you, take care of you, protect you –…"

"Protect me, eh, the size o' ya," he huffed. "Couldn't fight off a cold, you."

"And," I said, drawing out the word to shush him, "I won't get mad at you when you complain about my cold feet, because I know that you will complain, no matter what this contract says. I will take Cyril out to pee only on Mondays, Thursdays, maybe Fridays –…"

"Now you are bein' sacrilegious, right – mockin' me contract what I made for ya."

"And," I continued again, "I would never shag another man –…"

"Too fuckin' right," he muttered.

"I will carry every burden that you do, Alfie. Whatever you cannot tell another soul, you can tell me," I said.

"I know. I always knew that, love."

"And I will be blue with you," I told him finally. "I'll be blue and all those other colours with you, every day that we have together."


iii

The wedding itself was more formal than most. There were no chiming bells or a long stride down an aisle, though Johnny had looped his arm with mine and stood outside that office with me as if there would be, his own eyes curiously wet and his cheeks red. I snickered at him and he quickly muttered that it was just damp weather that had made him weepy. I stared ahead at that looming mahogany door in front of me, behind which Alfie waited for me, and it was not the same as a church, it was not the same as some great affair with hymns and pews.

But I had never imagined any of that, because I had never imagined any of this.

All that time in girlhood, and not once had I ever thought much about love and weddings. I had seen the Gypsies married and sent off in carts, saw hands held and lips pressed together, but I never put myself there in that place with them, never imagined myself as a bride, never imagined myself as a wife. I had never thought of what might become of me beyond that flat on Bell Road, because Esther had always said that girls in our world never made it much beyond twenty-eight.

And there I was, twenty-nine or something more; bride and wife and far beyond Bell Road, all at once.

"You look beautiful, Willa," Johnny spoke softly beside me. "You always were radiant, girl. Everyone said it to me, y'know – you watch out, Johnny, eh, your girl will be a heartbreaker for all men –…"

"Seems they got it wrong, eh? Only one, for me," I grinned. I fixed the lapels of his jacket, touched that tweed and felt nostalgic for it, the fabric of the patches on his elbows reminding me of how he had held me as a little girl and balanced me on his arm. I was overwhelmed by a strong swell of love and worry for Johnny, the same worry which filled each brush and graze and word spoken through tears and tenderness between us. "Thank you for accepting his proposal, Johnny. He is a good man, you know."

"There are no good men in our world," Johnny replied, his eyes lost in a distant fog. "But there are men who are only good to those who matter to them – your man falls into that category for me and I can only ask for that."

"Johnny –…"

"I looked at it me-self, chey. I thought of how he had stayed with you in the hospital. I spoke with him then and I saw regret in the way he held himself. I knew that he would do what he could to prevent anythin' like that from happenin' again. He could fail – but sure, so could Tommy in his own right. But most of all, chey, I know that you are happy with him. Happy in the way that I never made you. Happy in the way that my mistakes never allowed you to be."

His throat bobbed and his gaze dropped, his shoulders trembling from his conviction. I threw my arms around him, hugged him closely against me and felt the strength of him, felt all those hard years of labour which had worn away at him and made his flesh tougher and more rugged than most. He had the body of a Gypsy man who had made his way through a life that had only ever thrown obstacles at him, and for that I looked at him in a fresh light.

"I love you, Johnny."

I had never told another man that I loved him other than Alfie, but there had never been a lot of them in my life, not a lot of permanent people at all.

The door opened and I saw him there in its parting, a white sliver of light spreading over him from those windows behind him, that wonky shirt that I had made all those years beforehand on him now, and it took all of me not to cry already. I never thought that it was meant for me, those things within that room. I had not imagined myself as that bride or wife, never thought much about love and things beyond twenty-eight.

But there it was, held in that room before me.

It was there in the signing of those papers and rings exchanged, there in the gleam of his eyes which shone much like Johnny's had in the hall, and mine which filled with tears never held back. I saw it there in the tremor of his hands, the soft way that he swallowed when it was all finished and he knew that I was Mrs Solomons after all, with only Ollie and Johnny there to witness that name spoken for the first time with papers to prove it, but I had been that woman for a long time. I had worn that title for longer than I had ever realised.

I knew that he had meant everything that he had written in that contract because he had been doing those things ever since we had first met; and there had been some failures between us, some subtle shifts in meaning, but he had always been mine.

And there were so many ways to say I love you that could come in Hebrew or English or all those other languages in between. But he settled with a little phrase that said it all, for us.

He leaned forward and said, "Every colour, Willa."


iv

Drunk from that same euphoria, sitting in the car, I told him, "I want that great big house with you Alfie, so we can look out at the ocean every morning and count the seagulls – and a chandelier, yeah, one great big chandelier for us – and a gramophone, a proper one. And I want us away from London, away from the bakery. We can paint every room ourselves, Alf – and we need a bed for Cyril, need him comfortable –…"

I glanced over at him and found him watching me, his lips lifted into this warm smile. He said nothing, but I knew what he meant, anyway.


v

The hotel was the poshest that I had ever seen, its marbled floors sweeping into walls of pure white, all toward dangling chandeliers like those we had spoken about in the car. The party had been planned quickly, but there was not one hotel in London who had tried to refuse once they found out the name on the billing. I was not blind to the Jewish men who stood at the doors and who lined the halls with wary eyes watching those strangers not part of the celebrations, because the party itself would be held in a reception room at the very end of a long hall. I found Ada there with Franny and it seemed that the women had warmed to each other, chatting closely.

"You see, Franny," I called out to her, "she isn't all bad, is she? Even for a Shelby."

I thought it was all the more telling once Ada did not correct me. She drew me into her arms and laughed. "I told her – it was only Tommy who –…" – her eyes ghosted behind me and her tone became flat – "…ah, fuck."

Surprised, I looked along the length of the hall to find Arthur Shelby at the end with his arms held out, a bright grin on his face. Behind him, Tommy tossed a cigarette aside and John took off his cap, striding forward with great purpose and ignoring all those curious glances from other people stood around them. I spotted a lanky boy between them, seeming out of place and looking around as if he knew it. I figured that that was Finn, who had only been a babe the last that I had heard of him.

Arthur looked much better than he had the last time that I had seen him. He wore a posh suit, his hair slicked back, his skin fresher and his eyes more focused than they had been. I was not afraid of him as much when he reached his arms around me, held me close against him. He was much more gentle, too, no slamming pats on the back or tight squeezes that left me breathless and wounded.

I hugged John and Tommy, then looked at Finn, who had his hands stuffed into his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward, looking all the part of a teenager forced to attend a family event that bored him, but who was too polite to do more than suffer through it.

I knew that Tommy had probably brought him to London with the promise of more exciting things, like the kind of vices that Ada had spoken about earlier. So, I hugged him like I had hugged his brothers and leaned close to his ear to whisper, "I can at least slip you some alcohol, eh, Finn?"

"Oi, Willa, step away from the lad, eh?" Arthur called out loudly. "Married woman, you are now, and our Finn is on the lookout for a London girl of 'is own, ain't ya, Finny boy?"

"I'm not too sure the Jewish girls in attendance would want this greasy mop," John mused, slapping at Finn. "Can you read the Torah, eh, Finn?"

"The what?"

"You might learn tonight," Tommy said calmly. "Don't say we don't ever bring you on educational trips."

Only a handful of the Lee family had appeared. I was relieved that Kelly Lee had not shown up to simmer in his darkness, but Mitchell had arrived with a Gypsy woman of his own, Maggie Ward, who drank more than all the men at her table and held it better than them, too. The Jewish sat on one side, grouped with some partners who worked with Alfie, along with a couple of other associates who aligned with neither side.

I watched Tommy look them over, like a housecat with a mouse already dead in its mouth but looking only for fresher blood. I wondered if this had not just been some part of a plan for his place in London. Still, he stayed with the Gypsies, blended into the Lee crowd and sipped at his drink all night, even danced with Ada once a whiskey had loosened her scowl.

Then came Maggie Ward, who stepped onto the large spaced reserved for dancing, and she threw out her arms in a wild shimmy before she twisted and turned, stomping her boots against the floorboards and shaking her hips before she began her first leap around the place, her hair unfurled from its clip. I glanced over at those who had come mostly for Alfie and saw some surprised expressions, but Maggie burst toward me, uncaring.

In our language, she said, "Come and dance, Willa!"

I had allowed Alfie to lead us in short, muted waltzes but I had still not danced in a long time – not the dance of Gypsies. I felt her warm grip around my hand and I thought of all that happened that day; of those who were not here to witness those things which had come for me after twenty-eight, neither Charlotte nor Esther nor any other girl buried out in those fields with them. Gypsy Girl had died with them. The sycamore trees that told Kelly Lee and his grandmother things which swirled in my stomach and I wanted them out like I wanted Gypsy Girl out and I wanted Esther and all those other bad things out, so I took her hand more firmly and let her lead the first dance.

She threw her whole body into her dance, used every limb and every inch of her for movement, spun and spun until the room melted into blends of beige and white, glittering shards of gold scattered in between. I was breathless with her, laughing so hard at the wildness of her, and I felt the roots of an older life return to me, like they had been spun from the floorboards between us, upward around our ankles and into us, pushing forth each jump and leap, each kick and shimmy.

I saw her eyes lined in kohl and saw mine reflected within them, felt her bracelets rattle like our bones did with each crack of our boots against the ground, felt our language come from her lips like a prayer that I had forgotten.

And it was somewhere between those spins that I saw Alfie, who watched me as if he saw those same sunflowers that I had seen earlier, as if they had sprouted from my mouth and filled the room; because that had always been how it had, when our spoken words in Hebrew and English could not sufficiently describe love in the way that we felt it, and the only thing left for us was colour.