The Wildest of Them All, peaky blinders

V. air of a child-old woman

❂

Darcy felt no nostalgia for her childhood, not for Naples, and not for Small Heath: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but she didn't recall having ever thought that the life she had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's all, she grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for her. Of course, she would have liked the nice manners that the teacher and the priest preached, but she felt that those ways were not suited to their neighborhood, even if you were a girl. The women fought among themselves more than the men, they pulled each other's hair, they hurt each other. To cause pain was a disease.

She, felt especially dissatisfied with her father. One time, when Darcy was little, nine...or ten, the whole Lane was shaking from the yelling of Arthur Shelby Sr and his daughter. From the window of number six came vulgar barking and the crash of broken objects. In appearance it was no different from what happened at other houses in town, when the mothers got angry because there wasn't enough money and fathers got angry because they had already spent the part of their wages they had given their wives. In reality, the difference was substantial. The other fathers were restrained even when they were angry, they became violent quietly, keeping their voices from exploding even if the veins on their necks swelled and their eyes were inflamed.

Mr Shelby instead yelled, threw things; his rage fed on itself, and he couldn't stop. In fact his wife's and his children's attempts to stop him increased his fury, and he ended up beating them. But as the boys became older,—especially Tommy—they learned to defend themselves, and their sisters who couldn't yet. Well, Ada, Darcy was something entirely different. So, when her brothers had gone to war, Mr Shelby came back, suddenly, as if he waited out their departure. And so, when Darcy angered him greatly—there was no one to save her, physically.

It was unclear what she did to enrage her already hot-tempered father, it was something to do with his absence, at a time when they needed him the most. The whole street echoed from his screaming, and Ada's begging too, but she—Darcy—kept on insulting her father. Years before that, he was disappearing from time to time, for weeks, for months, leaving his sister, Polly, Tommy, and Arthur to take care of the family. Ada was happy when he came back sometimes, but he angered Darcy, more than he angered anyone, maybe not more than he angered Tommy, but she was furious too.

And Darcy, as the man of the family, felt the responsibility to haul up Arthur Shelby Sr's unfinished job as a father.

She was at the age, when kids grew, filled out, became taller, but Darcy remained small and thin, she was light and delicate. Suddenly, the shouting stopped and a few seconds later she flew out the window, passed over the neighbor's head, and landed on the cobblestones. Everyone was stunned, on the Lane, even the ones looking out of their windows. Arthur Shelby Sr looked out, still screaming horrible threats at his daughter. He had thrown her like a thing, like an apple-core, like trash.