━━━━━━ ༻ 011 ༺ ━━━━━━
" The First Stamp Was Special "
HOPE COMES FROM UNEXPECTED places, in the strangest of ways. Tommy Shelby's hope came in the shape of a letter with a stamp no one recognised on their first glance. It was a letter that got lost amongst many other documents piling up on his desk, now fancier stock than five months ago. The income of the Shelby & Co. Limted has entered a steady climb since the Cheltenham Races passed onto them, and especially since the Alloways Liverpool transport started blossoming into their revenue its true value. Every now and again, Tommy would visit the stable, to remember and to feel a fragment of what he used to feel again; they were a true momenument of investment, stables he built for the twelve purebred horses Jacqueline Alloways' had given him for truly nothing at all. A priceless gift.
He owed a woman he had very little hope of ever seeing again the world; despite his own heart being with her, wherever she was, dead or alive, Tommy was immovable in his belief that he was indebted to her trust, to her generosity, to the purity of the love she granted him regardless of who they were and what they did — a love against all odds.
It was not for the lack of trying that Thomas Shelby had given up on his hope. For two months since the news of Jacqueline and her brothers being incarcerated reached Birmingham, he had pulled every single string he had, called in all the favors that could bring him any edge, even got a handful of his men to the states across the ocean to be his eyes and ears on the foreign land, but nothing. Not about her. Not about her brothers.
"Ladies in prison," Arthur had often been the plaguing downfall of Tommy's hope on the matter, each time he was meant with another dead end, "it ain't a good place to be nowhere in the word. They fuck us up, men, but women are easier to torture, to maim. And fuck, I pray that she's already dead, Tommy. Jackie's feisty, but she's small... I'd rather know her dead then the pupper of some brute. And this thing about no one knowing a thing about where she is being held... it doesn't smell good at all."
The despairing heights that Tommy reached in those months were starting to get awfully visible to everyone, to people that didn't even know him well enough to have access to such personal knowledge too. So slowly, but surely, he started swallowing Arthur's pills like medicine, gulping far too much alcohol than anyone ever should, only so he could accept the loss and move on.
He was a sore loser.
And to forget Jacqueline Alloways, Tommy would have to drink the whole world dry first.
It had been a lukewarm May day spent at his stables that he returned from that late evening. The plans he had after he poured himself a finger of whiskey in a clean glass were to sit down at his desk and finally tackle the mountain of documents that had piled up. About halfway through the pile, naturally, he reached an envelope whose stamp confused him as well. There was something about that confusion, in the dead of night, after three refills of his glass, that pushed his mind to remember everything about Jackie, everything he could — Tommy cursed himself so often since she left that he hadn't married her sooner, that he hadn't stayed with her the whole day or forced her to stay against all odds, but the hardest regret to live with was the one regarding how very little time he spent memorizing the smallest details of her features. Jackie's smile was a radiant ghost, her hair a fire he was scared to seek again in spiced ales, but there was more to her than that and he remembered, he felt, too little to do justice to the details without contour and her Renaissance perfection.
This was his torment after all: to remember her as something permanently out of reach.
And that envelope with an odd stamp that he held, resuscitated her memory in spite of the spirits he had burned at his sobriety with. Such a feat was worth his attention and perhaps even his care, as he cut the envelope open and revealed a letter of two pages length. Tommy couldn't exactly explain what about the stamp on the envelope had startled his heart, his soul and his mind alike into havoc, until he started reading...
MY DEAR HUSBAND TO BE,
My hand trembles as I write these lines and it might be the case that I have lost my dexterity since the last time I held a pen, but I would like to believe instead that I am simply nervous to reach out to you again, as there are so many things I wish to say and so little idea as to where I should start.
Perhaps I should start by degrees of importance with a fact that will affect the veracity of this letter in your eyes most likely: I cannot mention names. I cannot confirm my own name, but simply trust that you will know it's me. Though my time in the can had played a number on my famed paranoia, my faith in your remains.
So much has indeed happened, but to stick to my chosen scale of importance filtering these many thoughts I will continue with a merry topic: I want your worry days to be over, my love. I've spent very little time in the big house, you see. There were a lot of people who owed us some favors. It was dreadful business getting out and the trains out of the states down south are terrible, so are the boats.
When we arrived from Liverpool, the bracelets awaited us on the docks and apparently the coppers lifted my brother few days before as well, for remnants of smuggled merchandise found in the fire of one of the ships. Clearly planted evidence, but we never got a trial. Go figure. People like us never get a trial. They just tossed us in three different prisons, three different states and we were supposed to rot there for the rest of our lives. My younger brother had been sentenced to death sentence even. Getting him out of the bing, I have been told, had been quite the nasty business.
But we were out in no time, thanks to a friend contacted by all our men who were with us on the ship from Liverpool. I ordered them to stand down and let me handle it before I saw them bracelets, but it turns out a little charity paid off in the long run more than a gunfight would have right there on the docks.
I am with that friend now. Guatemala, is the country, that much I know I can say for now, before we are in the clear. It's so hot here that I feel like I might melt entirely on the stairs of this very house.
We haven't lost everything, per say... but it sure feels like it right now. I only have two ships left. One with you, if you still have it somewhere safe or in use, and one with me. Besides this letter I am writing now for you, I noted down from memory fragments of my old ledger. Contacts. Names. Addresses. Coordinates. Anything. My older brother believes he remembers some us well and this Guatemalan friend of ours, well, he's proof we ain't out of the game just yet.
By the time this letter reaches you, the plan is that I will be back on the sea.
I miss you like the lungs of a drowning man misses air, my love, but I cannot sail back to you. Not yet. Though we haven't lost everything... I feel we've lost too much. I don't like oweing my life to my "friend" here and despite my promise to export his tobacco, coffee chocolate to Europe (on a 80%, of all things), I must find a way to fuel the ship myself, without him.
It's pride. I know. Trust me, I know. It's all my brothers' been shouting about so please, just don't take their side on this. They took my home, my love. I can't go back to my house, to the hill on which I buried my mother. I can never see the halls on which I grew again unless I make enough money so they never deny me a single thing.
It's personal.
My brothers wouldn't understand. But I know you would.
There's one contact I remember clearly, one that by my calculations, should be within reach with the crew and the fuel that my ship already has... The final destination, however, I need you to know that without a doubt, it will be England. Though perhaps not Liverpool. It would be dangerous to anchor there again so soon.
Oh, my love... How I miss you. You may not have been here with me, but your hat has guarded me well. They allowed me to keep it in the women's prison, a foolish mistake from which I benefitted shamelessly. It is safe to say a concealed weapon comes in handy when surrounded by wolves. However, the hat had ceased caring your scent to early in my unexpected journey through this crueler parts of the world. I now cling blindly to a memory of your scent whose contour I have completely lost. I have dreamt of you so many nights — surrounded by fog, unable to see me, unable to reach you. I wish I could see you as clearly as that day I left... In fact, I wish I could just go back to thay day and stay a little longer in bed with you.
There in that moment, I have centered my heaven, you see. Like you've guarded me from that storm before, the memory of you held me through this mess as well.
But letters shouldn't be all about myself... I wonder about how you've been. There is no way for you to answer, but I wonder still: are you well? Are you healthy? Are you as wealthy as you have always wanted to be? Please, my love, tell me of my horses. Do they have names now? I wish I had a say in their naming, but no matter. Tell me their names. Tell me why you choose them such. And yes, I am aware I am writing questions on paper and that you will not spring out from underneath this ink to speak to me. I am aware, but all I can do now to survive is dream that when I look out this window, what I see in this warm garden is you, smiling, waiting to tell me all about our horses.
Are you still waiting, my love?
Since I am writing, you already know what I hope your answer will be.
YOURS TRULY,
YOUR SOON TO BE WIFE
"I'm waiting," Thomas Shelby mumbled, unable to hold back his tears and frankly having no reason to want to stop them from blurring his sight while reading her sign off. And he'll wait a thousand lifetimes if he had to in order to be reunited with her. But for now, the letter he placed tenderly back down on the table to hold his palm on top was hope, hope that they will meet again soon; it was a sign that last glass he drank was the last in a while, because at last, he had nothing in need of forgetting. Jacqueline Alloways was alive and the rings he wore on a chain around his neck finally had owners to belong to too.