A/N: Thanks for the feedback! I hope you enjoy this new chapter :) Please let me know what you think!
twenty-four
Lounging in the shimmering pink light of dawn, I scrunched low in my armchair and looked out across the roofs of the buildings around us. I wondered about the life that had led Jack Murphy to where he now stood. It had seemed so insignificant, that narrow sliver of space left behind by the Italians, whose roots had become splintered. One branch went with Sabini and another slithered off with newer, younger bosses. It was common, Alfie said, because men like Murphy looked at London much like starving dogs who fought one another for the smallest shred of meat dropped between them; and that meat was territory in London.
Tommy had forgotten about London in a sea of grief, which swept him toward rocky shores and battered him with each passing thought of Grace. I had known those shores myself. I had felt each sharp and jagged edge at the sight of a postman with a telegram walking toward me during the war. I had swallowed mouthfuls of blood and touched unseen bruises from a leap into that same sea.
Yet Alfie slept beneath the rich sheets of the bed behind my armchair and Grace had long since been buried. She slept in wood. She slept in porcelain. Tommy never slept at all.
But it had been like that for him before Grace had died, too.
I placed the pad of my thumb against my lips and looked at Alfie while he shifted around in his blankets. Even in slumber, he often searched for me with his brows furrowed and his mouth held in a frown. His flat palm smacked against the creases of my half of the bed, his face rolled into my pillows as if he sought out my scent lingering there, before he jolted forward like he always did when he realised that I was not there with him.
He still had that dream in which he wandered the rooms of a house that was not there anymore. He looked for me between those tight gaps between wardrobe and chair, found dust in those tiny nooks of black between books on a shelf, never found.
His eyelids fluttered and fought against the sunlight which streamed through the curtains in front of me.
"Willa?" he called.
I smiled to myself, warmed by his worry. "Right here, Alf."
He mumbled words which fell between the pillows. I dangled my bare legs over the arm of my chair and looked back out at those buildings with rectangular windows lined in slick black frames and whose panels were coated in blinds that made those passing shadows behind them seem like a pantomime of characters; a thin, reedy silhouette which crossed from one frame and leapt into another, in which a fatter blob lifted limbs and they became blurred together, then separated. I dreamt of the lives held behind those frames.
The blinds of one frame sprung open and I stared into the pale, angular face of a woman. She flew from sight before I could really catch her.
He had promised that Margate would be ours within two years. I let my head fall backward with a gentle thump against the padding of my armchair and tasted those sugary pools in my mouth from tufts of cotton-candy plucked from cones bought on a pier. I was afraid that Alfie had never meant it and that he had spat out that number only because he wanted to placate me. I worried that two years would come faster than he had anticipated, and he would soon drop little hints that meant he wanted to avoid it.
I knew him from all those sketches of him that I had drawn out in my head during the war. I knew him even better after all those years after it, in which I had had time to colour inside his lines and flesh out those little details that I had learned about him.
And I knew his mind even more.
Before there could be Margate, though, there was still Jack Murphy. Alfie had risen sometime that night to sit in this same armchair and only returned to bed once he had settled on some great plan, but he had mumbled that it was better to discuss it in the morning. I had been full of sleep and half-formed dreams. I had let him pull me against his chest rather than really question him.
I watched those blinds unfurl to reveal brief flashes of faces soon lost in the frames all while I thought about Jack Murphy and I felt unsettled because of it, as if he knew that I thought of him in that exact moment, as if he had sensed it somehow.
As if he stood in that building across from ours and unfurled his blind, but never moved from the frame, and let me look into his pale face, smiling still.
Soft pelt butted at my hand and I startled at the tongue which soon lashed at my wrist until I realised that Cyril had scooted himself against the arm of my chair. I lightly clicked for him to come around to my legs, which he did awkwardly and with his usual funny lollop, settling there between my knees with his drooping face gazing up at me. I bent to peck his forehead and whispered sweet little words to him about how much we loved him. I had asked for a breakfast with lots of sausages this morning just for him – the drool which poured from him told me that he had known that his breakfast would be here soon even if I had not murmured it right into his ear.
Cyril had seemingly recovered from what had happened in the house. He thought only about sausages in the mornings and big bowls of slop in the evenings. Between that, he settled into the cushions of the sofa or the pillows of the bed and slept there for hours. Sometimes, if brought for walks, he simply dropped onto the footpath and ignored all tugs at his leash or curses from Alfie, preferring to blink around lazily at the people who passed him by with their own pups and dogs. He had never been too bothered about walks, our Cyril. He much preferred his afternoon naps.
"Two years, Cyril," I told him softly. "I can get you a great big sofa of your own in Margate. We can sit and eat our sausages together in the mornings and then walk out onto the pier. Or I can drag you by your leash if you're being particularly lazy. And I can drag Alfie, too. You can eat all my fish and chips if you'd like. Just two years, sweetheart! We can do that, eh?"
ii
Alfie had all his men held in the basement for his big speech, which I heard only in small chunks. I played with Elijah in the office, bounced him on my lap and let him shuffle around the papers on the table. Somehow, in just a couple of months, he had become much heavier and it took a lot to haul him onto my cocked hip or lap like I had always done since he was a baby and Franny had first asked if he might look after him.
He shifted and dug his small shoes into my stomach by accident, holding a pen in his fist and shaking it wildly in excitement. I smiled and traced his rosy cheeks with my fingers, brushing my nose against his own little button-nose, snickering at his giggles.
Like Ollie, he was quiet and reserved until he really knew somebody. Then, he became more like Franny.
And I had loved him from the first moment that I had held him. I loved him even more every other time since then that I had been able to hold him, even if Alfie had watched with a worried frown. I had always loved him. I melted whenever he said my name, softened with each giggle that escaped him whenever I swept him into my arms or each soft breath exhaled when he slept against my chest, felt a rush of warmth if I ever made him laugh or smile.
He threw his own small, chubby arms around my neck and burrowed into my skin. He turned and flopped down onto my legs, looking for Cyril whose bulky form was stretched alongside me. Elijah bent and rubbed his palm across Cyril with a shriek of laughter, because he had always found something funny about Cyril. He liked to grasp his floppy ears and hold them out like the wings of an airplane, but I had warned him to be gentle. I held him against my chest and bent low to let him play with our dog.
"Cyril is very lazy," I told him, smiling. "He likes to sleep."
"Sleep," he repeated. "Cyril!"
Lazily, Cyril rolled sideways and blinked at us both. I rolled my eyes at him. "Come on, Cyril. Wake up for Elijah!"
"Up!" Elijah giggled. "Up, Cyril!"
Cyril blinked again, then dropped back onto the floorboards, eyes closed.
"He pretends he can't hear us, Elijah," I said. "He thinks if he closes his eyes, we can't see him, either."
Elijah stared at the dog, his scrunched fist held over his mouth. He seemed deep in thought and I found it quite adorable, because he looked very much like Ollie. He had the same dark brows pinched together and his mouth pursed in a little pout. I brushed aside his hair from his face and looked up at the sound of the handle rattling.
Alfie came into the room. He nodded at me and his eyes lingered on Elijah in my arms.
Alfie worried just like he always did. He had never forgotten the night that I had disappeared on him and spent hours tucked in a bathtub with a bottle of rum in my hand. He thought about it each time that he saw Elijah around me. He soon stuffed those worries into some darkened part of himself and shuffled forward, tossing his cane aside and running his hands through his hair.
Bouncing Elijah up and down on my knee, I asked, "How was it, Alf?"
"The lads know what they're meant to do."
Alfie never talked properly if Elijah was around. He alluded to certain aspects of the bakery and he coated his words in a friendlier tone that passed right over the little boy who played with the buttons on my blouse. But I caught that furrow in the lines around his mouth, the curl of his shoulder blades drawn tight as he approached me. I knew that he had planned to send his men out into the streets to retaliate against Jack Murphy, but it seemed to do little to ease his strain. I hoped that Ollie might finish with his final orders to the men and collect Elijah, because Alfie looked worn and I wanted to speak with him without little ears listening.
Behind him, there were shouts and thumps. The staircase screamed from thundering boots. Through the windowpane, I watched our men thrown against the ground and I heard the heavy thud of a weapon smacked on bare flesh; it was that dull thud which reminded me of a countertop and a hand scrunched in my hair.
And I thought that Jack Murphy had sent his men to kill us all right then and there, in the openness of the bakery.
I clutched Elijah against my chest and stood, my mouth filled in liquid pools that tasted nothing like that sugar I had imagined earlier. Instead, it burned my tongue and sizzled against my gums. Frantically, I looked to Alfie and saw that he held himself much more steadily, his eyes fixated on those shadows which danced and spun behind the glass like figurines from one of Elijah's little music-boxes. I watched him smooth out his cuffs and crack the bones of his hands. He walked those few slow steps toward the table and placed himself between us and the door.
"Alfie?" I whispered. "Are those Jack's men?"
I felt soft puffs of warm air against the hollow of my collarbone. Elijah had pressed his head in the crook of my neck, tucked his chin downward and held one small hand over the top buttons of my blouse, the same buttons that he had played with earlier. He was perfectly still, but he whispered, "Mummy?"
My heart clenched. I held him tightly, one arm looped around his legs and bottom to balance him on my hip, the other held over his hair to comfort him. "Elijah, sweetheart, your Mummy will be here soon, all right? We'll call her and she'll come and pick you up. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Morosely, he nodded. But I felt his uncertainty like I felt his weight in my arms.
"Those are coppers out there," Alfie said suddenly.
"Coppers?" I repeated, inching toward him.
"Stay where you are, Willa," he said. "And if they don't take Ollie, then 'e will sort me out – and if they take 'im, you call Fran. Tell 'er to call Nachman, she knows who 'e is –…"
The door cracked open from the force of the coppers behind it, seeping into the room like a flood of dark, black water swirling toward us, crashing over us. I stumbled backward against the cabinet and felt its sharp edge line my spine, because the coppers gripped Alfie around his arms and pulled him forward and I thought that they had only wanted him – but the next copper pushed around him and I realised that he wanted me, too.
Alfie had been limp, at first. He had accepted his arrest even if it made little sense. He had paid off all coppers in Camden Town for months on end, ever since Tommy had first arranged it. It had almost seemed too surreal for him to be arrested, because I had never seen him held like that by coppers, as if he was any other criminal – any other gangster from around these parts.
But then he saw that the coppers came toward me, saw their hands reach to grip me and tear Elijah from me, and he bucked like an animal, so suddenly and so forcefully, that the first copper who had come for me soon split away to control him.
One copper held him from behind, tried to hold his arms at his sides and another strangled him by his throat, but the last copper who had left my side pulled out a baton and lashed at his legs.
I lost sight of him once foreign hands tried to touch Elijah and I twisted away from him, curled myself around him and tried not to let him be torn from my arms. I felt the copper's painful hold on my arms tighten even more, trying to wrench him from me, but I felt Elijah's small fists sink into my blouse in his fear, heard his frightened wails in my ears like a constant echo that drowned out all other sound. The dampness which spread on my throat came from his tears blended in those which dripped from my own cheeks.
I was terrified that he would be taken like the children that the Gypsies had once talked about, ripped away and thrown out for adoption by the coppers.
And more than anything, I was afraid that Franny and Ollie would lose their only son because I had not been strong enough.
The ringing in my ears dimmed; I heard Cyril snarl and snap. I screamed at the copper who dared raise a baton at my dog as if he might smack him and my wild, glistening eyes saw Alfie behind them. He struggled with those coppers who held him and roared back at the ones surrounding me, shouting, "You get off 'er! Get your fuckin' 'ands off my fuckin' wife, or I'll fuckin' kill all of ya! Don't touch the boy, you leave 'im –…"
"Give him to me!" a copper snarled at me. "Damned pikey bitch –…"
I felt the hard crack of that baton against my own legs, against my arms, lashed at any part of me that was exposed. Another copper sank his arms around mine and tore Elijah away. I rushed forward immediately to take him back, devastated by his ruddy cheeks, his mouth held wide in a scream as his small hands reached for me. A copper stepped between us and slapped me so violently that I crashed into the cabinet and sank against it in a daze, spinning in my own skull, all thoughts chopped and whirred from the hit.
I tried to stand and grab Elijah, but one copper snatched my arm and twisted it painfully, threw me back against the cabinet and seemed to delight in my wild scramble to push him away from me. He leaned much too close, his lips almost against mine and I grunted against his weight pressing into my back, my eyes looking around madly for Elijah still held by the other copper behind us.
"I heard from a friend that you liked to bite," he cooed into my ear. "Tore his lip off, you did. So, I told him that I would let you know just how I felt about that."
His hand flattened around my hair, squeezed it tight, and then slammed my cheek into the corner of the cabinet.
I swam through flowering patterns of colour all around me, from the orange light of the lamps crackling into the warm mahogany of the table, to the blistering white of the papers and the soft red leather of the sofa. I coughed. Blood stained my lips from where I had bitten into my cheek, though I had not realised it. I slumped on the floorboards and felt my eyelids flutter like the wings of a butterfly; rapidly, so that all the world flashed around me in brief, sporadic glimpses of the office before black chopped through my vision.
I saw leather shoes step into the room. I heard Cyril rumble with a low growl. I reached for him blindly, felt his fur beneath my palm and stroked him to calm him down. He bumped against my legs.
"Did I tell you to hit her?"
"Mr Murphy, she attacked a good friend of ours," one copper said. "A colleague."
"And tell me, is he my colleague? Is he my good friend?"
"N-No."
"Then hand her the child and leave."
Even if his name had not been spoken, I would have known it was Jack from the smoothness of his voice and the casual manner in which he took the chair on the other side of the table. I felt one copper lift me onto Alfie's chair. Elijah was placed in my lap. Immediately, he latched onto me, curled his arms around my throat and his legs bent awkwardly around my waist, terrified. My cheek was swollen, my left eyelid tender and bruised.
I looked at Jack, who settled in his chair with his arms clasped in his lap, one leg crossed over the other.
"Just a short while ago, I sat in this very chair with your husband, Mrs Solomons. I spoke with him about modernisation in London. Fascinating term, isn't it? In other words, it simply means that the world will always move on with or without you. And you either move with it, or it moves you."
He clucked his tongue and reached into his pocket. I shifted, turning Elijah away from him, thinking that he held a knife or a gun in his pocket. He raised his hands in surrender. Slowly, very slowly, he inched his hand toward his pocket again and pulled out a handkerchief which he then tossed to me. I tasted fresh blood trickling onto my lips and understood that I had a nosebleed.
I moved Elijah onto my right side and took the cloth, scrunching it against my nose. Jack watched me all the while and then said, "I wish they hadn't done that. I never told them to touch you or the boy. I was unaware of any prior bias on their part toward you for hurting their – colleague, was it?"
Spitefully, I threw the handkerchief right back at him; its white folds soaked into redness.
He licked his lips. "May I call you by your first name, eh? Formality seems beyond us, now."
I felt cornered by him. I thought it best not to tempt any more rash actions, not while Elijah still sat on my lap. So, I nodded.
"As I said, Willa," he resumed, "I spoke with your husband, but I knew he had not understood the finer points of what I was trying to tell him. But you – well, I think you would understand just fine."
"Where did they take him?" I croaked.
"Not very far. I only wanted him out of the way – just while we spoke, Willa. After that, he can return to you and the boy. Is he yours?"
Jack had changed his tone into this soft, warm murmur as he looked at Elijah. The boy quickly turned his head and Jack smiled even more. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyebrows pulled into an annoyingly open and gentle expression.
But I could only breathe the scent of copper and mahogany, so his efforts were wasted.
"No," I replied tersely.
Jack hummed. "Well, he is cute. I love kids, me. I have nephews and nieces of my own, you know. Spoil them rotten, I do. I would do anything to keep them safe. Wouldn't you?"
Again, I could only nod. I was so unsettled by him that I felt there was not much more to do. I wanted to see Alfie, too.
"Right. I want to be honest with you, Willa. I told Alfie that the Titanic group wanted a good portion of what was left behind by Sabini. Alfie was not very hospitable to our arrival – too close to Camden Town for his liking, he said, but he made a great big riddle out of it. He likes to talk, your husband. Much more than you seem to. Now, I was happy to cut a proper deal with him. You get this half, I get this half – like kids on a playground, you know? You can play on this side, but I can play on this side. It just seems your husband does not like to play at all."
Elijah moved. He looked at Cyril, who remained in his usual spot by my boots. He sniffled and turned away. I rubbed his back soothingly, caressing his hair.
Jack followed the movement of my hand for a moment. Eventually, he looked directly at me and said, "I figured that we could change our rules. Kids do that in playgrounds, too. They forget about sides. So, that was what happened with your house. It was not my idea, not even something that I really wanted to do. But this was about showing how things go when you try to play fair, but the other kid doesn't want to. Alfie didn't want to, Willa. And so the rules changed for him."
I swallowed, my eyes flitting behind him. I looked at the orange lamps whose colour smeared outward from the hot, barbed spike of tears behind my eyes.
"And the coppers?" I asked, staring into his eyes.
Jack smiled. "With an old bakery like this, Willa, you should really be wary of old, rusting pipes. They can cause all sorts of leaks, you know. Even one little leak can lead to an awful lot of rot in your walls. Could take down the foundation of your whole empire, if you let it."
If I had not been balancing Elijah against me, I might have fallen apart at his words. We had never distrusted the men who worked here. Alfie had only ever chosen men from families that he knew – always Jewish, always familiar, always loyal.
"So, what do you think I'm going to do, Jack? Tell Alfie to hand over your part of the playground?"
"I expect you to tell Alfie that he is acting foolishly," he replied. "And that no one can stay at the top for too long before it all topples over."
Whispered from somewhere behind me, I heard its echoes ripple over me: it's never enough to become top-dog for 'em – it takes a lot more to stay top-dog than it does to become it, darlin'.
"And if I don't tell him, what happens then?"
Jack shrugged his shoulders. "Then, I do not ask for half. I do not even ask for the whole piece. I take it."
"There are more out there than just us," I spat at him. "Other men who own other parts –…"
"Sabini has been kicked off the playground and Thomas Shelby is too busy looking around the grassy side for a place to bury his wife," Jack interrupted. "And I am sure Alfie does not want to look with him, Willa."
Cold, heavy fear ran along my throat as if I had swallowed it; it pooled in my stomach and sat there as if it formed a stone, so that I became too heavy, unable to pull myself from that chair ever again. I was trapped there, trapped by him and trapped by his stare.
"I prefer not to involve women and children," he added. "But sometimes, that is nothing something in my control. So, Willa, I beg of you – don't wait around to die."
Jack stood, looming on the other side of the table like a spectre who stretched further and further upward until he seemed unending, eternal, made of whiteness and terror. He fixed the buttons of his coat, looking over me so coldly that his eyes seemed to peer through me.
"I will ask for your husband to be brought to that lovely hotel of yours," he told me. "Room 203. Quite a beautiful view from that bedroom, eh? Can see all sorts, there. Watch for peeping-Toms, eh, in those flats across from yours. Never know who's watching these days, do you?"
I trembled and dropped my eyes, drinking in the scarred criss-cross scratches on our floorboards.
"It was a pleasure to speak again, you know. I do hope that you see more sense than your husband ever did. Goodbye, Willa. Goodbye, Elijah."
Slinking from the office, Jack was swallowed into the windowpanes, his black outline blended into the cold blue lights out there. I was totally motionless, my hands still held around Elijah, staring blankly ahead. Out in the workroom, there was a sudden rush of noise from the men who stood and moved around, who pushed aside crashed barrels and who called out for those left behind by the coppers. And still I sat there.
Because I had never told him Elijah's name, not directly. But he knew all the same.
iii
Numbly, I thought about how he had suggested that somebody in the bakery had betrayed Alfie to him; our leaking pipe. I was afraid to say it aloud, afraid to even consider it. But Jack knew a lot of things about us. I had not realised how exposed we were and yet I knew very little about Jack other than what he chose to tell me, or those little details which slipped from Alfie. Jack was a blurred shape in my peripheral that slowly approached closer and closer with each blink until he surrounded me, until he stole my sight and smothered my breath.
It had become dark outside a little while ago, and now it felt dark where I sat, too.
And I knew that nobody around us now could be trusted. It had always been Alfie and I – us, intertwined.
But I thought of those who drifted further, and my hand reached for the telephone, torn from its cradle. I knew that he was out in the black fields, but I knew that he would come if called. I dialled the only number that I had for him and hoped that he might still be there on the other end, summoned by the tinny rattle of a telephone in a box on the side of the road.
It was not him. It was another cousin, who called another cousin, who called another until it seemed that all of Ireland had been shaken from slumber to hear a telephone sing into the wind and draw them out from their beds.
He spoke calmly and surely. "I'm here, chey. Like I always told you that I would be."
I cried, first. I told him the truth, second.
And he listened while I held a child who was not mine in my arms and he said, "Two days, chey."
iv
Furiously, Franny swept into the hotel room and hauled Elijah into her arms, smothered him in kisses, checked over his arms and legs as if Ollie had not already done so. Ollie had appeared an hour beforehand. He had been dropped off a couple of blocks from the hotel and told to walk to the rest of it, but he had not seen Alfie since they had been taken out of the bakery together. He had not suffered any bruises, though his shirt was coated in dirt from where he had been thrown around in the backyard. I watched him stand by the sofa, looking forlornly at his family.
"Fran," he began, "we never expected –…"
"Don't you say a word!" she spat. "I know very well who Jack Murphy is, Ollie. I hear the rumours just like you do. If Alfie knew –…"
"He never knew," I interrupted swiftly. "Alfie loves Elijah, he would never put him in any danger."
"Alfie is the danger! He feeds off it – he enjoys it! And my son could have been – he could have –…"
Franny sobbed, sinking her face into the collar of Elijah's blue coat. Gently, Ollie came around the sofa and placed a hand on her shoulder. Seeing that she did not slap him or throw him off, he dared bend and take her in his arms.
"I never want him in that bakery again," Franny hiccupped. "And I never want Alfie near him –…"
"Franny, please," I begged. "He never knew that Jack would take over the coppers. He would do anything to –…"
"You say that all the time," she retorted. "You always say that Alfie would do anything to keep Elijah safe. What, like he kept you safe from Sabini? Before you got shot? Are you really that blind, Willa? Really that stupid?"
I had not been called stupid in a very long time, but it stung as much as it had every time that Esther had said it when I was a child. It stung just as much, if not a little more, because I cared about Franny a lot more than I had ever cared about Esther.
Through the dull, throbbing pain in my chest, I looked at Ollie. He looked away.
I was alone.
Elijah wrapped his arms around her legs, and she hardened even more, scooping him into her arms.
"You might not have a child of your own, Willa," she said, "but I know you care about my son just as much as if he was your own blood. I only wish you had the same care for yourself. To think what that man could have done to you –…"
"Franny," Ollie mumbled, looking miserable and awkward as he stood between us.
"No, Ollie! Someone has to say it! What kind of life is it – with Alfie and this bakery –…"
"Enough people say it," I replied. I was very tired, so tired that it came out in my voice and I crashed against the sofa, rubbing at my eyes.
"But you pretend not to hear."
"Cyril!" Elijah called out. He clapped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes. He remembered how Cyril liked to feign sleep to ignore us, as if he could not hear. I smiled and it only set off Franny all the more.
"Ollie, we're leaving. Now."
"Listen, Franny –…"
"If Alfie Solomons causes the death of your son, will you still stand around and do his bidding for him? Does Alfie need you more than your own child, hm?"
Frustrated, Ollie snatched his coat from the sofa beside me and stormed for the door. Franny watched him, eyes aflame. Ollie opened our door and there stood Alfie, dishevelled and seeming more exhausted than wounded or hurt. It was completely silent for a few moments as they stared each other down. Then, Ollie walked around him, marching down the hall. Franny followed behind him, making sure to pause and glare at Alfie before she, too, rushed away.
And it was just us.
Because it was only us. It had always been just us.
He closed the door behind him. I watched him walk closer and closer until he could touch me, and then he unravelled and fell into my chest and became part of me, another limb, as if we had been forged from the same metal. But Alfie was not cold like metal – he was soft and pliant and he moved when I pulled him onto the sofa with me. I checked his skin, those parts not flecked in dryness and patchy scales. I found he was unharmed, apart from some purple bruising on his legs and a ring of swollen red around his right socket from a punch.
And his fingertips rushed over my skin for bruising, too, touched my socket because we mirrored each other.
"Did 'e 'urt you, angel? Did 'e touch ya?"
"No, Alf. I'm all right."
"I'll kill 'im," he said. "I'll kill all o' 'em."
"Someone in the bakery worked with him."
Alfie drew in a stuttered breath. "Fuck. And 'e paid the coppers more than I ever did. Work for 'im, now."
"He knew who Elijah was. He had made that little comment about his name before – but he knew this time, Alf. He knew the number of our hotel room, too. Even suggested someone watches us."
"Fucking 'ell," Alfie muttered. "Fuck."
"He wanted to talk to me alone. But I think it was more than that. I think he just wanted to show that could – he could talk to me, he could do whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. He just could."
Alfie fell onto the couch alongside me. His hand took mine, held it tightly. I breathed more easily, then.
Two years had not seemed so far away this morning. It had seemed tedious and off-putting, but possible – possible in a way that it was not anymore, not after this afternoon. And when I blinked my eyelids in that butterfly manner, like I had in the office after I had been slapped, I saw chopped sheets of black and streaks of Jack sat across from me in-between, clasping his hands on his lap and smiling serenely back at me.
And those two years had somehow become streaked in that same blackness until it ruined the whole reel, swallowed it whole, and there were no chunks of anything else that I could see.
And if there was another Jack Murphy in our life, then two years would become four and four would become six and Margate would never become anything more than something we used to dream about, a long time ago.
"Franny 'ates me guts, then," he mumbled.
"Give her time," I said. I sighed and lay my head back against my seat, looking at the glittering chandelier overhead. "She was scared. She heard her son was in a room with Jack Murphy. What was she supposed to feel?"
Weakly, he said, "I would do anythin' for that lad, Willa. I'd do anythin' to keep 'im safe. I would do anythin' to keep you safe, too, darlin'."
I felt those shards of gold sparkling over me blear outward, just like the orange lamps in the office had done earlier. "I know, Alf. I know."
"Don't cry, Willa. Please, love."
I saw gold and only gold.
v
Alfie held me even tighter that night. I had drawn the curtains, sealed together, but not before my gaze had lingered on those flats across from ours, peering into those photograph-frames, into alternate worlds. He stroked my hair and he talked about that house of ours, two years from now, with tiled floors in one room, wooden floorboards in another. It had become a game of ours, somewhere along the line, to name the things that we wanted in our new house.
It was nice to pretend, if only for a little while.
"Blue walls in the bathroom," he whispered. "And a great big white bathtub, with them funny claws on the bottom. Made o' gold."
"White curtains in the living-room," I replied. "Makes it look brighter. Spacious."
"Paint the front door red or black?"
"Blue," I said. "Like the ocean. And a guest bedroom for Franny and Ollie, and another for Elijah, when they visit."
"If Franny don't try an' drown me in the ocean when you ain't lookin', mind."
"And I want one window to be like those windows in churches –…"
"What, like them mosaic windows?"
"Right by our blue front door," I smiled, my lips pressed against his arm wrapped around me.
"Don't forget me massage parlour."
I snorted. "Heaven forbid we forget that."
"Oi, very important, that."
I was quiet again. "We should have a library," I said eventually. "All your books took up all the space in our old living-room."
"I take offense to that."
"I could start my own collection."
"A blue door with mosaic windows 'round it," Alfie murmured. "Blue like the ocean. White curtains and a room just for all our books. Our bathroom, our bathtub with its funny…"
I drifted off to sleep; his words composed my dream, in which I walked around a house made of all those little things that we had talked about.
And I looked at a newspaper on the table and saw its date and I saw.
vi
In the morning, I threw open the curtains and looked at that building across from ours just like I had done the night before. I took in every window, stared into every frame with blinds peeled open. I looked for pale faces, watching. I wanted them to know that I watched them like they watched me.
Then, I walked into the dining-room of the suite. I found him there, sipping at his tea, feeding Cyril little scraps of toast torn apart for him. I approached him with steel in my spine. His eye was still swollen and so was mine, another wound added to the patchwork of others made over our whole lives.
And it had been a long time since we had simply accepted it.
"Alfie," I announced.
Slowly, his eyes rose from his teacup and he looked almost apprehensive. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, Willa?"
"I thought of a plan that might help us with Jack, and I made a call," I said. "And you will listen to that plan, because you have nothing else. You might not like it. You might even try to go around me. But Gypsies have always been fortunate to have foresight on their side, and I have foreseen many things for Jack Murphy."
Alfie stared at me, then glanced down at Cyril as if the dog might have added something in his place, because he was speechless for once.
"I want Margate and I want it in two years," I continued. "And I won't allow a man like Jack Murphy take it from us. If your goal was to make as much money as possible before then so that we can live comfortably – well, then, Jack gets in the way of that. He will not take what we have. He won't even take the half that he first asked for, because we earned it. If he thinks he can threaten you – threaten us and our friends, while I still breathe – he has underestimated me."
I inhaled sharply.
"Jack thinks he's on top, that he's bested us because he has some rat in our bakery working for him, whispering into his ear, and now he has the coppers on his side, too. Well, no one stays on top forever. Someone has to topple, Alfie. And it will not be us."
His teaspoon slipped from his hand and splashed into his tea. He looked at it in surprise, as if he had forgotten where he even was.
"You write down everything that I said last night, Alfie Solomons. Blue door, mosaic windows – because it will be ours in two years. Is that understood?"
Alfie cleared his throat. "Yes – Yes, love. Understood."
I nodded, turning for the living-room.
"Uh, Willa?"
I glanced behind, watching him stand from his seat to walk around the table and approach me, seeming flustered. I furrowed my eyebrows at his odd expression, then felt a rush of shock when he scooped me into his arms and hauled me toward the bedroom. He peppered my throat in fervent kisses, pulled at the buttons of my blouse. I was more than confused by his arousal, his hand reaching behind to close the bedroom door.
"You are fuckin' divine," he whispered into my ear. "Like scripture, that was. Sacred. Prophetic."
vii
In the throes of his affection, I saw slices of black mixed into glittering shards of gold; I saw Jack Murphy choking on mouthfuls of blood in-between and that was more divine than anything I could have formed in words.
