Chapter 44

He had been going to take Lily and Rosie with him to stable the horse, but ultimately ended up doing it alone before he went back to collect them from John's house. Thanks to his detour to Charlie's, his brother had arrived home ahead of him and when Tommy ducked into the living room John was sat on the sofa, Katie and Alfie fighting for space on his lap whilst Jack had contented himself to sit on the floor at his feet, his head resting on John's legs.

Ada was on the seat next to John and, seeing her, Tommy wanted to feel adequately frustrated with her, enough so to pull her up off the sofa by her ear and demand to know where she had been that morning - but with her grey stockings below her knees like a child's, and the pink shade of her inadequate slip dress having something intrinsically infantile about it, he couldn't find it in him to do so. He'd deal with her later.

Rosie and Lily were sharing one of the single seats, George and Finn on the other.

"It's a bit late to start cooking dinner," he said, his eyes meeting Rosie's after he cleared his throat, ignoring everyone else.

She nodded.

"You want to come to the shop with me? Get fish and chips?"

She nodded again and began to slide Lily off her lap, who looked between them and asked, "Can I come?"

"No sweetheart, you stay here with John, eh?" he said.

She pouted, "Please Tommy?"

"If Lily takes her pram we could put the bags in it coming back," Rosie pointed out.

Her voice was tired and crackling. It was the first verbal thing she'd said to him all day and he got the notion from the croak of it that it was one of only a few verbal things she'd said to anyone all day.

His eyes glanced between the two sisters.

"Alright," he nodded.

He had no issue with the bab coming, he just figured Rosie would probably want her to be kept home for a while yet. But maybe she didn't want to be parted from her.

She took Lily's hand in hers and walked by him to the door.

"Get Arthur. And Uncle Charlie," Tommy ordered John, "We'll bring food for everyone, may as well eat in the shop."

John nodded up but didn't shift much on the sofa. Tommy was used to seeing John being run ragged by his lot, it was a change to see him being the one to hold them and offer comfort. Strange to see his little brother as the head of his own division of the Shelby clan. And he was proud of him, seeing him assume that role and knowing he could do it when necessary – but he just hoped John could find a woman again. His brother was good at hiding things with humour and letting things appear to roll off him, but Tommy knew John was the type who would always need someone. He was softer than Tommy was. And whilst he was less volatile than Arthur, he was less self-sufficient too. John had been at home, and then he'd had Martha. He had never learned to be alone. For his own part, Tommy wasn't hungry, but he knew John wouldn't really want to be alone tonight. Gathering them in the shop under the pretence of them all needing dinner was as good an excuse as any.

Tommy shut the door softly behind him, and they walked down the front of the street in silence, Rosie's hand in Lily's. The street wasn't as entirely lifeless as it had seemed earlier, but it was after seven o'clock and whilst men had begun to appear, hurrying to or from their chosen pub (if it was operating after the day's events), no children were out playing. The younger ones would usually have been pulled in by now, but the older kids would normally be kicking around for another hour or so, especially with the April evenings meaning the sun went down later. Kids and parents would lose track of time at this point, not yet far enough into the light evenings to have made the mental adjustments for what the light outside equated to on the clock. He remembered, as a small child, it must have been before he started school, or maybe just after, being put to his bed whilst the sun was still light out and tossing and turning at the injustice of it when he heard the balls being kicked around still outside and the other kids still playing. Being forced to stop and be still whilst the world churned on below his window. There would be no feeling of that going around tonight.

"Is it a good idea for her to walk with us?" Tommy asked Rosie quietly at this thought, noting the time and the fact Lily would usually by now have been bathed, had her dinner and be playing on the hearth with her own bedtime not looming too far off.

"She needs to eat anyway," Rosie said, not looking at him but shrugging her shoulders, "I'll let her lie in in the morning, I'm sure Polly will understand if she's too tired for church. Not like any of them are bathed anyway. And you know how everyone must be clean to visit the house of God."

There was a note of her usual sarcasm appearing at the end there, not her normal fully venomous bite complete with eye roll, but a mustering to something akin to it in her current seemingly exhausted state.

Tommy unlocked the door of number six and Rosie sent Lily in to get the pram, asking her to bring coats for them both too, since they'd gone to John's without them.

He understood – or thought he did anyway - the reason for sending the child on the errand when she turned to him just inside the door and said, her voice so quiet he barely heard it though he was stood right next to her, "Tommy," then looked down and bit her lip.

"Hey, hey, you're alright," he said, curving an arm around her.

She shook her head, her voice still closer to silence than speech, "It's not that. I mean, it's horrible to imagine what might have happened, but it didn't."

He kept his arm around her, wondering what she was trying to say.

She sighed, her eyes glancing to the door again. She clearly didn't want to be overheard, whatever it was. He could hear Polly and Lily in the kitchen, Lily explaining that she was taking her pram out to go get the dinner with them.

"Tommy are you calm?"

"Always," he answered, keeping his own tones low to match hers.

"That's a lie," she remarked, the fainted glimmer of a smirk haunting the corners of her mouth.

"I'm calm enough," he replied, kissing her forehead, "Your hair's getting longer than usual."

"Aye it's at my bloody limit," she remarked, rolling her eyes, then, stilling her face from its sudden expression, "Ada's been meant to help me cut it for weeks, but she's not been well."

He nodded, "It's nice though."

She shrugged, her face blanking over again until Lily came back into the front room, pushing the pram and beaming at them. There was a certain purity to a child's delight that he couldn't imagine his own face having ever conveyed, but Lily's blue eyes and sweet smile seemed designed to carry that radiance.

"There's the fanciest mother in Small Heath with her proper pram," Tommy said, eliciting a giggle from the child.

"Did you get our coats Lily?" Rosie asked, smiling gently.

Lily shook her head and turned to go again, disappearing back through the door she'd come from, heading into the shop to go up the stairs.

"I used to carry her about in a washing basket," Rosie told him, raising her eyes at the pram that had been left in front of them.

"You might not have been so fancy, but I know you're the best mother in Small Heath," Tommy replied, squeezing her waist with the arm that was around her still.

She didn't answer but glanced off to the side again.

"Come on, what's happening in that head of yours, eh?" he coaxed her.

He was keeping his voice quiet, adhering to her volume – but he knew at this register his voice was more of a growl and far from gentle. He cursed himself for it, but she, it seemed, knew him well enough that she didn't flinch from him.

"You are calm?" she asked again.

He nodded in response.

"Alright, well stay calm," she said, then added, "Please."

He raised an eyebrow, unsure of where this was heading. But she was making no attempt at removing his hand from around her, which eased his thoughts of the worst possibilities.

"It's Ada, Tommy. I don't know what happened today, but she wasn't-"

"She wasn't home this morning, I know," he nodded, laying his hand on her face and kissing her forehead again, trying to convey with his kiss how much it meant to him that she had told him, how much it meant to him that he could trust her, rely on her.

"How?" she asked, learning her head into his kiss, relief in her voice.

"Polly told me. Don't suppose you know where she was?"

She shook her head against him, "No. Someone came here this morning, banging on the shop door looking for you. Told us about what was going on, so I went upstairs and woke Lily up, went to wake Ada up but she wasn't there. I just had to get Lily ready and then I went down to John's. I'd have told you earlier, but I didn't want to say in front of all the kids, didn't want you losing your temper."

"I don't lose my temper," he murmured in her ear.

"Well if you had done I wouldn't have blamed you. I nearly did with her," Rosie replied, "I was so fucking angry with her for disappearing as soon as you were all out of town, and her not bloody well either."

He dropped more kisses on to her head, thanking her for telling him, holding her to him and, the weight evidently off her mind, her own arms snuck around the inside of his overcoat, circling around him in turn.

"I learned my bloody lesson, even if some people didn't," she muttered, "But please don't tell her I told you when Polly already did. I don't want her to hate me – and she already knows I don't agree with what she did. I think the idea of me squealing on her would drive her over the edge. I feel like a filthy pig for doing it."

"I promised you I'd keep you out of it as long as you came to me," he told her, then, pausing before he pushed, "Do you think it was Freddie she was with?"

"I don't know," came the reply, her words muffled as she kept her face pressed into him, "Ada moves quickly, wouldn't be surprised if it was someone completely new. But if it helps Tommy, I nearly lost my temper when I set eyes on her at first," she lifted her face from his chest and looked up at him, meeting his eyes as she continued, "I couldn't believe she'd take that hiding you gave her then sneak out again. But it might be for the best Tom, she was so shaken up… I think maybe seeing what that new Inspector is willing to do in search of communists might have hammered your words home, if they were losing their place in her head."

"This you trying to save her arse from being lit up?"

"I'll only question you if it's Lily's backside that's on the line and I don't agree with you. So you do what you see fit and you'll get no argument from me where Ada's concerned. But if I can offer some advice, I don't think it's necessary."

"You're a great soft pushover," he told her, placing his hands on her face and kissing her mouth, not caring in that moment if Polly decided to come through and see them or not, though he was thankful she didn't, "But I suppose you balance me – as tyrannical as I am."

She rolled her eyes but was stopped from replying by Lily appearing with the coats, passing Rosie hers and pulling her own on, taking her time fiddling with the buttons.

"Did you tell Polly we'll be back with dinner?" he crouched down and asked Lily, taking over the button fastening from the child, who nodded.

When the coat was done he stood back up and shouted through, "Won't be long Pol, John and his lot will be along soon with everyone else."

She came and stood in the kitchen doorway, something in her face telling him she knew fine well that he had been kissing Rosie in the living room, even if she hadn't seen it. They had been quiet, but Polly had senses that weren't entirely bound to being human, that much he was sure of. She didn't say anything though, just nodded and waved them off.

Lily began to yawn before they reached the shop and, on the way back, her pram, loaded up with dinner for the Shelby's, was being pushed by Rosie whilst Lily was up in his arms.

There were carnal ways he wanted Rosalie Jackson. Urges he had to spread her legs and fuck her senseless until she didn't know her own name, until she didn't know anything except his name which he'd make her pant and moan out over and over again. Every fucking time she bent over a table or a desk he wanted nothing more than to yank her dress up to her waist, push his knee in between hers to open her up and then take her like that, imagining his hands sinking in to her beautiful arse whilst he sunk into other places too. But whilst her soft, curved body satisfied him in so many vulgar fantasies, watching her push a pram, albeit one that was clearly too small for her to push entirely comfortably, whilst he carried Lily, made him want to open her legs and thrust himself deeply into her, slowly and sensually, made him want to make an offering of his body to her in worship of her, made him want to put a baby in her. He didn't believe in Polly's God, or heaven or hell. But if heaven was, in a fluid sense, about all types of goodness being combined in one place, rather than being only a place for virtuous goodness, then by all that was holy or unholy in the god damned world, Rosalie Jackson was his heaven.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"So, what we going to do Tom?" Arthur asked him through a mouthful of chips once they were sitting around the long tables in the shop, same as they had done at Christmas.

"We need to send him a message," John said, nodding.

"Could put something that might go off with a bang through the door of the police station," Arthur suggested, a light in his eyes.

Polly banged her fork down on the plate and snapped, "Will you two shut up and eat your dinner, there's kids at the table," her eyebrow in her hairline and her face foreboding.

Polly didn't like the kids being in the shop, she didn't like them being exposed to anything and she was always quick to dole out a spanking to any of them that she found trying to listen at doorways. Pol wanted the kids protected from what they did.

Tommy's eyes glanced to Lily, who was practically asleep at the table in between him and Rosie, then to Ada, who was pushing her food around her plate rather than eating it, to Katie and Alfie and Jack, who had, none too surreptitiously, scraped their chairs nearer John until they were practically all sitting on one long bench as opposed to four individual chairs, to George and Finn, who were doing their best to act like they were fine. They needed to be protected, of course they did. But they needed to be reassured too.

He shook his head, flicked his ash and placed his cigarette down in the tray, "No, let the kids hear this," he said, meeting Polly's glare dead on, "There'll be no bangs at the police station – at least not ones put there by us. They did what they did today to strike at us when we weren't there. To try and show that they think they're in charge. Well, that's just not the case. We run this place."

"Yeah!" John shouted, banging his fist on the table, bringing Alfie's head, which had fallen to his chest, back up.

"Small Heath is ours," he continued, eyeing each of them in turn, "Birmingham is fucking ours. Today, they threatened – Campbell threatened – what is ours. So tomorrow we threaten him with something bigger. No bombs, no guns, no knives. We show him we sit at the top table. We show him we're bigger than the street level shit he pulled today. Winston Churchill himself sent that man to Birmingham. So, we ignore him. Don't let him think we're bothered. We go above his head and speak to the other people at the top fucking table. We show him we're not playing at his fucking level. Tomorrow, we'll be having a little bonfire. And when Winston Churchill gets to hear about it, he'll come down on Campbell and Campbell won't even see it coming. And when his boss is bothering to tear strips off him because of what we have done, that man will know he has made a serious fucking error in underestimating the Peaky fucking Blinders."

There was a silence after he finished speaking, and he picked up the cigarette he had put down before he started and dragged on it slowly. He knew none of them really understood what he had said, but they would do as they were told, and they would trust him. And the kids would understand enough of the jist of it to know that their family was still in charge, that they weren't in danger. He kept his eyes ahead of him, focussing on the back wall, not looking round to meet the amber orbs he knew she had trained on him, drilling in to the side of his head.

"A bonfire, Tom?" Arthur eventually broke their silence by asking for clarification.

He nodded, not removing his cigarette to say, "Watery Lane, tomorrow night."

"It's Easter Sunday tomorrow Thomas," Polly told him, her voice sharp.

His eyes met hers again and he went to the effort of removing his cigarette before growling out, "Good. Jesus had an Easter rising. The IRA had an Easter rising. Now the Peaky Blinders will have a fucking Easter rising."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"You know the IRA's Easter Rising didn't really work out for them?" Rosie said to him later, standing in the doorway of the front room, having carried Lily to bed and waited till everyone else had left before reappearing.

"Their movement got a lot of support after it, when people saw how the British treated the fall out of it," he told her, sucking on his cigarette.

"Long term win at the cost of their leaders' lives."

He nodded, blew a stream of smoke and told her, "I've no intention of swinging."

"They were executed by firing squad."

"Well between you and Polly I've plenty of experience surviving those."

"Thomas!"

"What?" he snapped, more forcefully than he meant to.

She sighed and didn't answer verbally, but her eyes stayed trained on him. He stood and went to her.

"C'mere," he said, inwardly wincing at the roughness in his own voice as he pulled her to him.

He could usually separate what he did all day with the way he was when he was with her. But today should have been an easy day – he should have been to the fayre with his brothers, then come home to a happy house, listened to Lily tell him about what she had been up to and then eaten his usual home-cooked meal. Today shouldn't have been like this, and he couldn't seem to shake his ire at it.

The thing was, he was - if he was truthful about it, which he wouldn't be – scared. Scared at the idea of what could have happened to Lily and Rosie today if they'd been at their old home. Scared that Campbell was so ready to take advantage of the Peaky Blinders being gone even for a day at the fayre. Scared that Campbell had known he had backed them into a corner by saying they had been involved. Tommy wouldn't tell any of them so though, and he was lucky, generally, in that when he got scared, it manifested as anger. And he knew he was intimidating enough in a neutral stance for most people, his anger was… It was a sure path to people running from him. Or most people anyway.

It wasn't pleasant to look at though, he knew that, and no joy to be around. Arthur and John had banged the table in approval after his words about Easter risings. But he knew they were wary of him in his current state. That was why they hadn't pressed for any more information than what he'd given them. And Polly and Charlie had been silent. Ada had gone to her bed the minute John had stood and said he'd better start getting his own kids off.

Lily, he knew, hadn't understood what he had said – same as no one else had understood it really – but she could tell from his tone that he was serious. And yet, she didn't seem scared of him. She had climbed into his bloody lap after she'd eaten, dozed off there. He realised though, that she wasn't scared of him because Rosie hadn't given her any signs that she should be. Her sister trusted him and, ergo, so did she. As simple as that.

And Rosie – Rosie had appeared back down the stairs once she knew she had him to herself. Even after she'd seen his face and heard the roughness in his voice. She had come back to him.

"Tommy, you keep us safe," she said, her face looking up to his, her arms winding round his neck.

"I promise, I will make us safe," he told her, bringing him lips to hers.

She kissed him back for a moment, then pulled away, "Make us it is then," she said, nodding, unsmiling, "But you make yourself safe too Tommy. Lily needs you. This whole family needs you. It'll all fall apart without you, all of it. Everyone."

"And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Would you fall apart without me?" he asked her, his right hand leaving her waist and stroking itself lightly down her face, the pressure of his touch as tender as he wished he could make his voice in this moment, the calloused hands that touched her so tenderly as rough in themselves as every other part of him.

She smiled and leaned into his hand, turning her face to kiss it, her hands leaving his neck to enfold around his, holding it where she wanted it, so she could press her kiss to it without him shying away. Not that he would have.

"It's just interesting for me to know," he told her, realising she wasn't going to answer, attempting to turn the corners of his mouth up, attempting to make light, "Because I need you. I told you that. You are my strength, Rosie. I'd fall apart without you."

He hadn't really succeeded in making light.

She met his eyes and said, her voice barely above a whisper, "I said everyone, Tommy."

"And that includes you?"

"Yes," she admitted, though it seemed her throat almost wanted to close on the word and save her from saying it, "Yes, including me. I need you Tommy."

Wordlessly, he placed his war roughened hands on either side of her face, which had lowered itself through her admission, her chin closing to her chest though her eyes looked up to him and tugged it back upwards so that he could meet it on its journey, his lips on hers, drinking the sweet ambrosia that sustained him.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Whenever he had protested his being sent to bed as a child his mother had told him sleep was good for the soul. He hadn't always been accepting that something being good for his soul was a good enough reason to do it though, and it had often ended with her smacking and whacking him into the bed and standing with her hands on her hips in the doorway, an eyebrow raised at him to see if he would get back up for another round. It seemed though, that she had been right. After a long lie and a church free morning, Rosie seemed to have shaken off the day before.

She put a bacon roll down to him, the height difference of her standing and him sitting giving him a nicely presented opportunity to thank her by squeezing at her backside which she shook her head and rolled her eyes at - but did so with a smirk that let him know she liked his attentions to her rear as much as he liked paying them. His attentions sadly didn't go much further however, just as he was about to demand another one of the kisses he had fallen short on receiving the night before, in his own opinion, when she had broken off to say she was going to bed, Finn and Lily appeared down in their nightclothes, the smell of the frying clearly having crept up the stairs and roused them. Ada remained upstairs, whether asleep or awake, he didn't know. Rosie had planned for his sister not to appear though, and she speared some toast from the fire, buttered it and sent Lily up to Ada's room with it, instructing her to leave it inside the door if Ada didn't answer.

"Is Ada still not well?" Finn asked, sighing and rolling his eyes when Rosie asked him to take tea up to accompany the toast.

"Oi, do as you're told," Tommy said before Rosie could reply, nodding at the waiting tea.

Finn grumbled but went up with the tea, just as Lily appeared back down.

"Is Ada awake?" he asked.

"I don't think so," she said, shaking her head, "She didn't answer so I just pushed the door open and left the toast inside."

"She'll come down when she's ready," Rosie said, glancing at him.

He hadn't said anything to Ada the night before, but he imagined she assumed that Polly had dobbed her in with him for not being home. Whether Ada was upstairs because she was sick or sleeping or because she was avoiding him, he wasn't sure.

"I think Ada's crying," Finn announced on his return from taking the tea, "She's under her covers and making snivelling sounds."

Tommy sighed and stood up.

"I'll go to her," Rosie offered, but he shook his head.

"Let me, if she's waiting for me to appear and say Polly's told me then the waiting's worse than whatever consequences she thinks she's waiting on."

He wasn't sure if Ada was waiting for him or not when he pushed her door open and sat on her bed. Her covers were pulled over her head and she didn't shift when she felt his weight next to her. If she had been snivelling she had stopped now, but her breathing was heavy, like she had worn herself out with a good cry and needed to breathe deeply to get all that she'd expelled back.

"Ada, love, what's going on?" he asked, but she didn't answer and didn't extract herself from the sheets.

"You that upset about what happened yesterday?" he probed.

That was what he didn't get, that was why he'd thought she was more upset in waiting for him. Ada was fighter, much to his own chagrin most of the time. Sure, she had no bloody common sense, but, other than when she was making a fool of herself around boys, Ada wasn't easily trifled with. She was the ringleader of her own little group of girls and she'd been smacked in school plenty for answering back. Even as a kid she had been bossy – and whenever anyone made fun of her she'd come in and cry to him then, once she was done, go out and threaten them all with 'my brothers.' Ada was a Shelby woman, there was no doubt about it, used to getting her own way and having people be deferential to her because of the family she came from, even though she'd earned none of it on her own. If she'd been caught up in whatever had happened yesterday, he would have expected her usual reaction to be indignation that anyone would dare inconvenience her. Not to be still sobbing in her bed the next morning.

"I just don't feel well Tommy," came his sister's voice eventually.

"Still?" he asked, "Rosie said they gave you tablets for your iron, have you been taking them?"

He saw her head nod under the covers.

"Might need to get you back to the doctor," he said.

She didn't reply.

"Ada," he said, running his thumb over his lip, before continuing, "I know you weren't at home yesterday when it happened, even though I told you to be."

She didn't answer but she went very still under the covers, waiting for him to continue.

"Get out from under the fucking covers," he ordered, wanting to see her face before he made his decision.

She extracted herself slowly, her eyes not meeting his.

"Eyes on me," he told her, wondering what in hell it was in human nature that they all avoided looking at him whenever they thought they might be in trouble, forcing him to bark the same order over and over again.

She lifted her eyes slowly to him.

"Sit up."

She did, and it let him draw her to him a little, his arm going around her and her head going to his chest.

"I hope being caught up in that yesterday gave you a good reason not to disobey me again," he told her.

She nodded.

"Right, because I swear to god Ada, I don't know what else to do to get through to you. I stopped short of giving you that strap the last time because I thought I'd got it into your head for you, but then you go and disobey me as soon as my back's turned. I'm running out of options here for how I manage to make you do as you're told and keep you safe."

She started crying again, which he took for a sign of remorse, so he hugged her more tightly, "I'll let it go this once Ada, because I hope the consequences of disobeying me showed themselves enough that I don't need to back them up."

She didn't answer but he felt her nod into him.

"Alright, you're alright," he said, rubbing her back.

"You want to come downstairs? Rosie's done bacon?"

She shook her head.

"Ada," he asked, his stomach swooping, "You just got a fright yesterday, right? No one hurt you did they?"

She shook her head again.

"If anyone hurts you, you let me know - you know that, right?"

She nodded. She stayed with her head against him for a while before she pulled her knees up to her chest and removed herself from his arm, laying her head on her knees.

"Tommy, I don't feel well," she said, her voice small.

He didn't know what to do about that, especially on a Sunday.

"Do you want me to get Aunt Pol?"

"No."

"Rosie?"

"No."

"What do you want Ada?" he asked, unsure of what other options he had to offer her.

"I just want to sleep."

"Alright," he nodded and patted the back of her head, "I'll let you alone. You coming to our bonfire tonight?"

"I'll see how I feel," she answered.

He figured that was a no.

He stood and made his way to the door, but stopped just before he went out it, "Ada?"

She turned her face to meet his eyes.

"I know what I said to you – that there are places we can't reach. If you get caught with communists, or the IRA, if they prove you're connected to it, I can't get you out once you're in there, you realise that?"

She nodded.

He watched her face carefully as he spoke his next words.

"But if you were at a friend's house and they burst in on you and they can't link you to anything, they won't get to lay a finger on you, you understand? Even if they try and take you in, I will get you out. It's only communists or IRA that'll get referred right on before I can get in, eh? As long as you listen to me. As long as you do what you're told. I will protect you. The Peaky Blinders run this place. And I run the Peaky Blinders."

It was the first time he'd properly stated it, without being delicate around it.

She nodded, "I know."

Her face hadn't shifted much. It gave him hope. He was sure if she had been with Freddie that something would have flickered across her face – but nothing had. And she was still his baby sister, as much as she thought fifteen was too grown up for the title. He still knew how find guilt on her face, but there was none. Just the same upset there had been in her eyes since yesterday, just the same fright she had gotten. He hadn't chased it away with his words. He hadn't fully reassured her like the other kids had been reassured by his statement. But he was sure that she hadn't been with a communist yesterday morning. He was sure, he'd have seen it in her eyes if she had been.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Tommy was the type of man who liked to know as much as possible about everything. He could control things more easily the more he knew. Being at war – that had been hard for that part of him. It was why he'd volunteered as a clay kicker, figuring the tunnelling would keep him busy, keep his mind busy, more so than sitting around in the trenches day after day, waiting for and yet dreading the whistles being blown.

The thing was, news did reach them – but like most of the men in the trenches he was disenchanted with the civilian newspapers, their propaganda too hard to swallow when they were in the reality of what they were writing about. They didn't feel like the brave boys they kept being referred to as, they didn't think there was anything glorious about being up to their knees in shit and mud, waking up to find rats crawling on you. And news via letters from home, that could take so long to reach you that it was almost a waste of time for people to send it – though you poured over their words, no matter what they were – willing your mind to be consumed by them just so you could mentally leave where you were.

But one bit of news they had all watched with growing interest, especially when they could use soldiers with language skills to interpret how it was being reported in other papers, not just their British ones, was the Russia situation.

Their riots had started early 1917. The Russian people were starving, dying. The shortages weren't bearable. Polly wrote to him about what was going on at home – about the 'victory rations.' About the 'save wheat and help the fleet by eating less bread' posters. People in Britain were told that suffering their food shortages was a help to their men, to them, out on the front. He didn't see how sending Ada and Finn to bed hungry was helping him. None of them did. But the people of Britain, for the most part then, seemed to be swallowing it, feeling the national pride in their empty bellies that the government wanted them too. But the Russians weren't swallowing it, or maybe they weren't even being fed the same bullshit in the first place, he didn't know.

Their riots had ended with their Tsar abdicating and the Russian Provisional Government taking over. It had seemed to settle for a while then, but the provisional government couldn't fix their food shortages either and Lenin and his Bolsheviks had taken over towards the end of the year. The dates were hazy to him, the news was often old before they got it. Lenin signed a treaty with Germany in early 1918 and pulled Russia out of the war – and from there on all the news from Russia was about how much better it all was a communist state. Reading between the lines, Tommy reckoned that was as much bullshit as the idea of Ada and Finn eating less bread somehow bolstering up him and Arthur and John.

It was no wonder really, as they stayed in the fucking war whilst Russia went on to its seemingly new and bountiful existence, that the men in the trenches latched on to the idea that communism could be the way forward. But it was July 1918 that stuck out. That was when that conversation became prohibited. And they found out why Freddie, who was the most vocal about his thoughts, had got the butt of a gun to the back of the head for waxing lyrical about Lenin and why Tommy had been dragged out and told as Sergeant Major it was his duty to quash that kind of talk going forward, at the beginning of August.

The Bolsheviks, no longer content with imprisoning the Romanovs, had shot them all in July.

It had been a threat already as far as the papers had been concerned – but abdication could be conveyed as a choice. A leaving of his people, in a way that their beloved King George would never leave them. Being assassinated, that was harder to convey as anything other than what it was. And the idea that any British people might start thinking, whether the thoughts came to them as they shivered amongst the rats in trenches or in their own beds with their empty stomachs at home, that this was a path to be followed – that idea wasn't one the government could hold with.

And after the war had ended they had gone home to find it would take time for supply lines to start again and rations to end. To find the working conditions the same or worse than they had been. To find their women and children half-starved and with rickets and chilblains. And the government knew it. And it knew the Bolshevik's actions wouldn't be gone from the minds of the men they had promised they were sending through hell in defence of a great country. That was why some stolen guns had resulted in the dispatch of Campbell to Birmingham, after all. It was on all their minds still. Because they knew no one was buying the bullshit that this was a great country.

So, Tommy knew exactly what he was doing as he tossed another picture of the king onto his bonfire. He knew exactly what burning the king's likeness looked like.

Rosie had come out to begin with, Lily and the other kids had been excited watching the pyre be built and lit - George and Finn and some of their friends had even helped them bring the wood from Charlie's Yard to Watery Lane to set it up.

"You going to watch the fire later Lily?" Tommy had asked as she stood to the side, watching him arrange the wood and straw that he would light later.

She shook her head sadly, "Rosie says I can't have two late nights in a row."

"It'll be fun for them," he had told the redhead with a nudge once Lily wasn't watching them.

"She has plenty of fun," Rosie had responded, rolling her eyes and knowing exactly what he was about.

"Come on, she'll be the only kid who doesn't see it lit if you put her to bed."

"Well if I keep her up and she's a crabby little madam tomorrow you're not allowed to smack her for it when it's your fault," she relinquished.

He had agreed to her terms and Lily had stood with Katie and the rest of the kids as the flames ripped up through the fuel, their eyes hypnotised by it - not removing her gaze even as Rosie had yanked her back another couple of steps from where she stood, telling her there'd be no cake for a fortnight if she got any closer to the flames than that. Remembering Lily's inability to restrain herself around Monaghan Boy, Tommy had picked her up and opted to hold her himself.

But once it was going he had to pass her back to Rosie, reminding himself that their safety was the reason he had arranged this fire in the first place, that there was a message to be sent here.

As soon as Lily's eyes had drifted shut, Rosie had disappeared into the house with her, proclaiming they'd both seen enough of the fire even though the other kids – not just from Watery Lane but from all the surrounding streets, all the streets that had been affected by yesterday's raids, along with most of their parents, were still crowded around it.

But Rosie had heard him use the phone in the office to contact a Michael Levitt, a reporter from the Birmingham Evening Dispatch, whilst she made their Sunday roast in the kitchen. And she had been there when John had arrived with the first lot of portraits he'd procured on Tommy's orders. She had figured exactly what he was about, before any of the rest of them had and she had no intentions of risking her name or Lily's being mentioned, even in passing, in a newspaper.

Once she had gone in he had given the nod for Scudboat to head inside and make the call himself to the police station, reporting the bonfire. Making sure Campbell knew about it. And then he had sent Finn to The Garrison for their portrait of the king – he had been waiting till they had gone just in case its removal caused Grace appeared to investigate. But she didn't. Finn said Harry had been behind the bar, and Tommy had left it there, not pushing for further information. She might have been busy serving other customers, or she might have been off. He wondered if she was off for religious reasons, what with it being Easter Sunday. But of course, that was something Catholics and Protestants acknowledged so it didn't mean too much anyway. Polly had been huffily absent from the day's proceedings, locking herself in the church all day in her own devotions.

"Chuck 'em on boys," Tommy encouraged the growing crowd as more portraits made their way up to the front.

People were cheering as the portraits clattered onto the pyre, whether that was because they were sympathetic to the communist cause or because it felt like a way of slapping back at the authority that had broken in on them the day before though, he didn't know.

Arthur was supportive as always – he didn't have enough courage or understanding to openly dispute it – but he was unconvinced, nervous, opening a bottle with his teeth, spitting the cork in the flames and saying, "I hope to god you know what you're doing," his eyes on Tommy's face.

Tommy kept his eyes front, pretending not to notice Arthur's questioning look or Finn sneakily swigging from John's mug of beer whilst John threw portraits on the flames.

"Tommy," he heard Lovelock's voice and he turned, wondering if it meant Levitt had arrived. Which it did.

"You're Mr Shelby?" the man asked.

Tommy put his cigarette in his mouth before answering, "I am."

"You said I would be protected?" the man enquired, his middle class voice shaking a little as he took in the scene before him.

"You're protected," Tommy replied shortly.

"What's going on?" the man asked, his eyes lingering on the king's likeness turning to a blackened crisp before flicking them nervously back to Tommy.

"There are some things I want you to write down," Tommy told him, prompting the reporter to reach for his notebook, "Now, first of all – it's not that people round here are disloyal to the king, it's the opposite. Y'see we don't want our beloved king looking down and seeing the things that are being done to us, so we are taking down his pictures."

"But why are you burning them?" Levitt asked.

"We went through hell for our king," Tommy replied, his eyes on the fire, "Walked through the flames of war – write all this down – and now we're being attached in our own homes. These new coppers over from Belfast, breakin' into our homes and interfering with our women. We don't think our king would want to see that happening. So we are lighting fires to raise the alarm."

It took more than his usual required strength to keep his voice monotonic as he spoke, especially as he mentioned the idea of their women being interfered with, the idea of what might have happened still in his head.

This was his challenge: did their king and country care for them as they said they did - or not? Would King and country give them more reason to revolt by siding with the ones he proclaimed caused this unrest? No. No they would not. They wouldn't risk it. And from this one report Campbell would certainly find himself getting his wrists slapped. And if one report wasn't enough, he'd do it again until they were forced to arrest him and he'd give a more than monotonic reading of this speech in a court, where it would be reported on nationwide. He wasn't just any man. He was a solider, a Sergeant Major, he had won medals. He was a war hero, not a communist.

"May I ask you," the reporter said, asking permission to ask a question – like a good little public school boy, "In what capacity do you speak?"

"No capacity," Tommy replied, "I'm an ordinary man. I won gallantry medals at the Somme. I want you to write in your paper what's goin' on here."

The man looked like he wanted to ask something else, but Tommy knew he didn't have the guts to question him further, and he had said all he wanted the report to contain so he dismissed him, "Go on, go."

Like the well behaved middle class boy he was, the reporter went, leaving Tommy facing the flames, the heat rushing over him accompanied by a sense of calm. He had been scared in that he had underestimated Campbell's wits before. But now, he wasn't scared. Now he was in battle. Gauntlet thrown. And he'd see what happened between now and the meeting Campbell had proposed on Friday morning.

Thank you so much for all your responses to my AO3 question! A lot of people have confirmed that this platform censors a lot more than AO3, but at the moment I don't foresee anything massive going on in this story that would get censored so I am intending to continue posting on here regardless.

I think I will double post, which is what post people advised doing, on here and AO3, however I think I might use the time of doing that to maybe edit the story a little (I say edit knowing my 'editing' generally adds extra words rather than taking them away *facepalm*) before putting it on AO3 so I think it will take me a while before it's caught up with over there.

Although I don't think this story will be censored I do have some one shots and follow ups planned that might sit better on AO3, so when I do post over there I will leave the details of that here for anyone who wants to follow it over there instead.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to respond, I massively appreciate all your words of encouragement!