The Pureblood Prince
39
The Catastrophe Before The Storm
Tobias had had another sleepless night. No matter what he said, his wife refused to believe that this was the worst he had ever felt. His body was failing him, Sev kept popping up in the strangest places, Eileen wasn't speaking to him, and he still owed hundreds of pounds to the gangster who had once torched their house in the past.
Life was splendid.
It didn't make it better that he was currently speaking to said gangster on the phone, in the most subdued way that he could while his wife slept upstairs after her shift.
"A week! Just give me a week!" Tobias whispered and shouted at the same time. His eyes drifted toward Eileen's handbag that was hanging from the doorknob; as they did do, he felt like strangling himself with the cord. "It's only twenty pounds more for Christ's sake."
"If I waited fer everyone, Snape, I'd be as much of a poor fuck as you" the muffled voice of Parker crackled over the other end.
"Jus…" Tobias couldn't tear his eyes away from her bag. It was making his heart pound out of his chest. If he could just do this one more time, just once… all of their problems would go away in an instant – he was sure of it. But the lack of the drinking over the past month or so was making him see things clearer. He couldn't do it. "Just give me a week, please…"
"How about this…" the voice crackled after a few seconds of silence. "I give yeh – out of the goodness of my heart – until tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" Tobias echoed raucously, flinching at his own voice. "Tomorrow?" he repeated, but this time with a whisper. "Twenty pieces of brass means that much to yeh?"
"Twenty pounds, twenty pence, it don't matter what: it's my money, and if yeh don't have it by tomorrow I'll be back to pay a visit to yer missus and this time I won't be so reserved."
"You FUCKING touch her again and a billion pounds'll be the last thing on yer mind!" Toby roared, the thought of attempting to be quite had all but leapt out of the window… so much so that he failed to notice the footsteps slowly coming down the stairs.
"Well, we'll see, won't we?" was the last thing Toby heard before the phone went click.
"Ungh!" Tobias clenched his fist around the phone in fury before hurling it across the room, where it landed amongst a pile of Ei's books. He turned away from the damned thing, only to be confronted with the scowling face of his wife in the doorway.
"Having fun?" she asked.
"Just someone from work –" he shrugged off.
"Please," Eileen implored with a raised black eyebrow. "As far as I can remember, no-one from the mill has touched me before. Which is funny, because I don't think you will be touched ever again either. How was Parker, by the way?"
"It weren't him."
"For God's sake, Tobias."
"HE WAS FUCKING FABULOUS. Is that all? Can you piss off to bed now and leave me think?" Another migraine was on the horizon, he was sure.
"That's what I was trying to do before!" Ei countered. "I was perfectly sleepy before I heard that that toothless bastard is coming back here to lay his hands on me tomorrow!"
"And yeh can't fucking stop him, then? What kind of witch are you anyway? Magick us up some money for once!"
"I have told you over and over for twenty eight years – I physically cannot transfigure money. Gawp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration."
"Yeah, yeah, so you've been saying!"
"So I've always wanted to live like this, have I?"
"Go to bed and shut yer big trap!"
Ei opened her mouth to continue the verbal jousting, before obviously thinking better of it. She swallowed whatever insult was on her tongue, huffed and stormed away. Tobias watched her leaving and rubbed his sweaty brow. What did he want – did he want Parker back here tomorrow while Ei was all on her own or did he want him to leave them alone forever by doing this one, horrible little thing for the last time?
I mean, why doesn't she just give me the money anyway? Then he'd go away permanently. The selfish…
It was what he needed to tell himself to be able to reach into her bag again and pull out her wallet.
"What are you doing?"
Hearing Eileen's voice from the top of the stairs alone was enough to make the bag appear blazing hot, as if someone had dropped a pile of hot coals into its pockets. He let it go with violent force.
"Eh?" Toby asked, knowing he was appearing far too casual for someone caught red-handed. She flew down the stairs with an almost supernatural force.
"Your hand," Eileen stated, pronouncing every word slowly and deadly, about in inch to his face, "was in my handbag."
"I needed some tissues."
"Don't lie to me."
"Don't read my mind!"
"Argh!" with one swift movement Eileen had pushed him onto the floor – a combination of adrenalin and Tobias's weakened physical state. "You – you – worthless piece of space! You've been stealing from your own wife to pay off another worthless piece of space you owe drug money to?"
"I was doing it to keep yeh safe from him!" Tobias objected from the floor. "Why didn't yeh just give me the money and then this problem wouldn't have gotten so big in the first place!"
"DON'T YOU DARE, DON'T YOU DARE BLAME ME FOR THIS!". He had never seen her so livid, so void of restraint - like she always was whenever Severus was in the house. Spit was flying from her mouth as she towered over him like some crazed banshee. "That was our money! Our money to eat, to keep us clothed! Not to pay off your addictions! I work my fingers to the bones just to stop us from living on the streets and you go and blow it on booze and fuck knows what! I can't even look at you…"
She rubbed her hand across her forehead and stumbled into the kitchen. When Tobias finally managed to push himself up from the floor and follow her, he found her bent over the kitchen sink. Her breast-length black hair completely sheltered her face – but from the way her shoulders were quivering, he could tell she was crying. A silent cry.
"Ei…" Toby started, but he did not know how was going to finish. "I hated myself for doing it, I did. I hate myself for everything I do to yeh but –"
"So many 'buts' Tobias," Eileen whispered. "All I've heard since we first met is excuses."
"But…" he dared to continue, "I just… I just wanted to get rid of him! You know what happened last time! Why couldn't yeh just help me out!"
The black hair whipped across her wet face and he saw her full fury flourishing. "I WAS helping you out by keeping the damn house on my measly pittance! You may not realise that we actually need to pay the bills and the mortgage and keep ourselves fed and warm while you're staggering around the alleyways at the back of the pub, but I do. I'm the only one in this house who does! If it wasn't for me, the three of us would have been on the streets years ago."
Tobias couldn't take her heightened emotions any longer – not with the migraine that was currently bubbling up in his frontal lobe. "Bullshit. Yeh and Sev would have been fine, yeh could've marched back in to that mansion of yours any time yeh wanted. I would've had to fend for myself."
Eileen gave a harsh laugh. "Doesn't that prove that you have no idea what I've gone through with those people? Even if they did welcome me back with open arms, I would've never left you! I loved you more than all the money and comfort the world could offer me!"
It should have been a touching sentiment, something on the way to a ceasefire… but there was something in it that niggled him.
"You loved me?"
"I hate you."
That, he was used to. He just wasn't used to hearing her use the word love in the past tense and it genuinely frightened him.
"I've had enough of this!" No matter how in the wrong he felt, Toby knew that if he rose to her level of anger, then perhaps she would soften to him like she so often had done in the past. "Bills and food could have waited, but if yeh want Parker to break in and throw yeh around and break my legs because of your damned stubbornness – then so be it!"
As he turned, the sound of crashing crockery radiated throughout the kitchen. For a moment he threw his hands above his head as he thought the most obvious target of her rage would have been the back of his skull; but he soon realised that she had merely thrown the leftovers from their dinner on the floor.
"Turning this whole thing around on me now, are we? You've had enough? The cheek of… sometimes I think I should have thrown you down the stairs a little harder, then perhaps I'd get some peace."
"Ah, just shut-up for once woman. I'll sleep on the couch." He turned away from her and made to stay out her way for the rest of the night, but something stopped him. That last bit of information… quite intrigued him. Toby turned back and the look on her face told him all he needed to know.
"Thrown me… down the stairs?"
"I didn't – it was a figure of speech – I didn't –" she was backing away toward the backdoor which, to him, was a clear indicator of guilt.
"Hrm… ain't a figure of speech I've heard before, throwing someone's husband down the stairs, landing him in hospital, lying about it and putting the blame all on him and all…"
"Toby…"
"Poor gullible Toby…" once again pure rage had got the better of him. He reached out and grabbed her shoulders with both hands. He shook her so much as he spoke that some of her tears were actually hitting his face. "I knew it, I knew it. All that pandering to my every need when I came home from the hospital was guilt! Or were yeh just waitin' for the next best moment to poison me, eh?! TO THINK I WAS WORRIED ABOUT PROTECTING YOU!"
"You frightened me," she stammered through the shaking "you make my magic unpredictable – uncontrollable – Toby –" Eileen's already delicate body was crumbling in his hands but he could not contain himself.
"You're going to break my shoulder!" she wept.
"Says the potential murderess! Jus' throw me against the ceiling like yeh did before! Come on! … COME ON THEN!"
But instead of being met with some undetectable, mystical force – he was hit in the face with a ball of spit. The unexpectedness of the act was enough to make him release her from his grip; he swept his sticky face with his palm and gazed at it for a while, the anger that had previously began to bubble and fizz inside his stomach finally reached tipping point. He bared his teeth wrathfully, took the damp hand and lunged it at her face. It collided with her nose and cheekbone with what felt like the force of a thousand boulders, considering her slight bone structure. Eileen's head ricocheted against the doorframe behind her and she fell to the floor in a silent, bleeding heap.
"Why'd yeh make me do these things, Ei?" Toby pleaded with her, towering over her body like a vulture debating whether to devour its prey now or wait until it became fully immobile. "Eh? Do yeh like me hating myself more than I hate the devil himself? I told yeh to hurt me when yeh had the chance."
Fighting against his own tears, he shoved out the same hand that he had momentarily struck her with to help her stand up from the floor. Usually she would have taken it, but this time she skirted away on the kitchen floor; when she managed to make it into the lounge she had regained enough strength to stand on her own. She was hyperventilating violently; blood was gushing from her nose and getting tangled into the ends of her hair.
"Where are yeh going?" Toby demanded as he observed her figure running from him and up the stairs. Stupid question, he thought right after he said it, she's going to lock herself in the bathroom as she always does. Toby wiped his eyes harshly and plonked down on the couch with his pounding head in his hands, feeling absolutely nauseous.
What he didn't expect was to see his wife emerge from upstairs so quickly after she had ventured up there. In her arms she was carrying an old brown carrycase that they kept shoved at the end of their wardrobe – clothes were dropping everywhere as she frantically dragged the large thing down the stairs and into the hallway.
"Where are yeh going?" he demanded now much more strongly, panic rising in his chest. Was she going to go to the police? Toby ran down the hallway and met her at the door, where he clamped onto her wrist with a pincer-like grip.
"Don't touch me." She demanded without looking at him. She waited for him to release his grip as if she had all the confidence in the world that he would.
"Not until yeh tell me where yer going!" Toby begged. "I don't blame yeh for wanting to get away for a while, but just let me know where yeh'll be…"
He winced when she turned to look at him with bloodshot eyes – they were filled with a sadness that he never seen before… her eyes had been sad for years now, but this was sadness on an almost ethereal level. When she opened her mouth to speak, he could see the blood from her nose had run its way down around her teeth. It was then that the tears he had kept locked within him for so many years started to flow.
"I'm finished with you," she whispered without anger, without love, without any emotion at all. "You've taken all of my strength. I can't fight you anymore. Deal with Parker and the rest of your problems on your own."
"Eileen… please…" he pleaded like a boy. "You know I love yeh, we always get through these things!"
She nodded, but did not reply. Instead she merely instructed once more: "let go of me, Toby."
"No! I need you, Ei, please..."
With what seemed like her final bought of strength, Eileen twisted her wrist and managed to finally wriggle out of his hold. One final glance into his eyes and she disappeared out of the door and into the foggy night. If he hadn't been so completely devastated, Tobias would have thought that her poised and mysterious departure from him suited her. If it wasn't for what he had done to her, she would have looked beautiful.
He tried to stumble after her but his vision was obscured by the dense fog and his migraine. He fell upon the front door so harshly that the pane struggled under his weight and split right up the centre, whereupon it smashed into hundreds of pieces; glass scattered itself from the entrance onto the street before him. He slid down the length of the door frame and remained there, sitting, for quite some time, not knowing what he should do, not knowing how he should do it. It must have all been just some horrible dream; he would wake up in a few seconds and his wife… the only person he had ever really loved… would be curled up right next to him in their bed, her face and body clean and without bruises.
As the minutes ticked by, however, it became apparent that this was not so; he barely managed to crawl onto the couch under the weight of his physical and emotional burdens. He decided that he would remain here either until Eileen came back, or he died.
Her or nothing. Eileen or a life not worth living. As it always had been.
Eileen stumbled down Spinners End – the small heels on her shoes getting stuck between the cobblestones, making her lose her balance as they did so. It was foggy and lightly drizzling, which was somewhat an advantage to her as it shielded her from any immediate strangers that may have been hanging around. She looked up into the sky and let the rain trickle down her nose; perhaps it was just strong enough to wash off the drying blood. It would also blend with her tears. She had no idea where she was going. She was, for the first time, homeless. And as dismal as that sounded – it was better than having that home.
She soon decided to ditch the bag that she was carrying behind her like some pitiable house elf…. Her clothes were probably worth five pounds at most and in her impassioned state she hadn't packed anything weather-suitable anyway. She found a large tin bin on the street corner and chucked the whole damned thing over the top of the rim. Now there was only her and the only possession her gut told her to grab in the heat of the moment… which was currently getting very wet in her crossed arms.
Eileen cursed and slipped her old textbook underneath her top. The ink mustn't smudge. There was vital information in its pages, she was sure. She needed to talk someone about it, but what person would listen to her? What world would welcome her back now? She hadn't felt like she could call herself Witch for decades now… and neither was she Muggle. She was a nothing, really… she couldn't even Apparate because she no longer had a wand. It had been broken just like her body had.
But the book continued to burn against her skin. Eileen knew she had to do something about it, and she knew the answer was not here, not in the Muggle world.
As if waiting for her mind to come to that conclusion, a sharp white light appeared in the corner of her eye. Within seconds, a triple-decker purple bus had pulled up out of nothingness and stopped within a meter of running her down. A chubby woman in a shabby bus conductors uniform appeared behind the sliding doors, her dirty blonde hair spilling out from her hat like a fallen bowl of spaghetti. She reached out and offered the more distraught looking woman a hand.
"Where to, my dear?" she queried.