Baker's Gonna Bake

Chapter 36

Alfie narrowed his eyes against the light that shone through the crack in the door of his new home, his cell.
He had to urinate in a hole in the corner and the smell of ammonia danced up his nostrils when the door swung open and created a draught.

"Get the fuck up then dirty Jew... got a visitor haven't ya!" The guard spat at him.

Alfie had resigned himself to the fact that Cora didn't want to know him and was expecting Bennet back again this afternoon with news on the investigation and his gathering of information to get him out. But it was only a couple of hours since he left, surely a meet with the peaky blinders wouldn't have been possible by now. Maybe it was his mother.

"Fancy little piece of flesh too I'd say Solomons." The guard said as he slowly attached the chain to Alfie's handcuffs and started to lead him onwards like a mutt towards the main stations.

"I mean she ain't got her globes on display but I can just tell she's hiding big fleshy ones under there, the kind that wobble when you fuck her six ways from Sunday whilst she's on her back" the man dug at Alfie's ribs and began to laugh.
"Maybe now you're banged up I ought to try a little taster on the way out, lift her skirts for a feel of that moist little lady-like cunny" he paused to see if Alfie would take the bait but he was met with silence apart from the sound of their boots on the stone floor as they walked.
"Young thing she is an' all. You not a bit old and crippled for the likes of her Solomons? Bet you can only take it belly up."

Alfie was breathing heavily and chewing his bottom lip. His heart was hammering and not because of the officers goading but because it was undoubtedly Cora that was visiting him. Who else could it be?

"That'll be John Limberts daughter you're talking of then?" Alfie said finally in retaliation, with a look that could kill a thousand men by making them jump in the Thames before he reached them and carried out his revenge. He bore the eyes under his frown right into the man's own and folded his lips so his beard jutted outwards from his neck.

The man's eyes then widened as they reached the door to the visiting station. Everyone knew the gangsters of the town, especially the tales of murder and violence committed by their vicious hands and working in the prison service he probably heard them day in day out. He coughed and spluttered about how he was just having a laugh and how he hadn't meant nothing by it, and Alfie would've indeed laughed at the man's arse hole falling out onto the floor if he hadn't been so sick with fucking nerves.

"Open the bastard door then" he said and the man fumbled with the keys to open it, getting the wrong one twice before he finally managed the task.

Alfie could see the slender figure she cut a few rows back. In fact the whole room around her blurred to insignificance and all he could see were her chestnut waves, half plaited with a crystal encrusted broach pinning them to the back of her head.
She was facing the other way and he was glad because he was sure his legs would have buckled and given out beneath him if he had to look into her brown eyes as he walked towards her. He wasn't entirely sure they wouldn't do that regardless, but he kept his eyes on her as they released his chain and signalled for him to take his seat.

He reached the table and thought about touching her on the shoulder as he approached, to let her know he was there, prepare her for the locking of their eyes but he didn't want to startle her either so he simply rounded the desk and heaved himself into the chair opposite her.

Their eyes did indeed lock. And then hers filled with the tears he hadn't been able to release since he was a child.

"Alfie...." she said, looking at his features with a look he couldn't fathom. It looked like love and pity and desire all mixed together. It didn't look like the hatred he had expected, the look of unrecognition or disgust. It was the same look she gave him the first time she saw him injured on his doorstep, the time she washed his wounds with cotton wool and let him take her virginity before confessing her love with her head on his chest and her body naked and soft in his bed.