𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒, Caterina Cardinale cursed Tommy Shelby's entire existence, and the morning of their departure for London was one of such occasions.
While the morning sun was yet to emerge from behind the clouds, the said man barged into her room, throwing open the lacy curtains and demanding she presented herself in front of the house in an hour.
After having cursed his ancestors for producing such a figlio di puttana, Tommy was thrown out of the room narrowly dodging a heel heading straight for his head.
Not long after she accepted Tommys offer for a job at Shelby Company, Polly insisted on giving her Ada's old room at Watery Lane, a bit old and creaky but served its purpose just right.
It had been about time she got out of Lizzie's hair, for both her sake and the sake of her clients, though the two woman enjoyed each others company immensely and made their Thursday tea time a ritual.
Stepping out side and locking number 6. doors, she breathed in the crisp air, looking up and down the deserted street. Only Arthur stood waiting on the pavement.
"Whose clever idea was to take off so bloody early?"
Hearing her groggy grumbling, his head snapped in her direction, a wide grin spreading over his face.
"Kitty! You coming too?"
"Can't let you boys have all the fun." She smiled. Just as she said that Tommy turned the corner in his Fiat, the one he used for long distance driving, parking it in front of number 8, John and Esme's house.
"Aye why not, you can drink like a man." He agreed, slapping her shoulder for a good measure.
The two watched Tommy as he checked his watched, and once he counted the people on the pavement, leaned into the car and hooted the cars horn as loud as possible.
One of the windows on the house flew open and John appeared, still buttoning up his shirt.
"I'm coming!" He hollered, and they could hear the screams of rowdy children echoing through the house, out-voicing a desperate John trying to explain to them how papa is going to be gone for only a day or two and no they can't go with him to bloody fuckin London.
They would've laugh were they not irritated by the wait. Rummaging through his coat pocket Arthur took out a small glass bottle, the likes of which lined the walls of the chemists, and took a hearty swig. Both Tommy and Cat were confused with his action
"Seven o'clock, twelve o'clock and ten if I'm still sober. It's to calm me down." He passed the bottle to Tommy for inspection, the man looking at the small letters on the label.
"Polly took me to the doctor." He sheepishly admitted, watching Tommy unscrew the top and sniff the pungent whiff of the syrup.
Tommy looked up at him with disapproval. "Same stuff they used to give us in the trenches to stop us wanking."
"Polly said I need it for my temper. It slows me down."
His brother nodded gently, and then very deliberately poured the contents of the bottle into the gutter, the thick and syrupy liquid slowly trickling into the abyss. Theres no hiding of shame on Arthurs face as he begrudgingly accepts Tommys decision.
"Some things Polly doesn't understand. I need you fast, not slow." The tone of his voice left no room for discussion.
The front door finally flew open, procuring a small cheer from Cat.
"She wouldn't let go of my fucking leg." John grumbled, half angry, half embarrassed his brothers witnessed his daily scuffle with Esme. They already seemed to have labeled him henpecked.
"You're sure it was your leg?"
"Did you leave her your balls, for safekeeping?" Cat smiled innocently.
"Oh fuck off." He drawled, facing Thomas once his shirt was finally buttoned up. "She's against this Tom. She's got opinions."
"Nothing wrong with opinions, John."
"Unless the opinion is shit." Sang Cat, putting out the but of her cigarette with the sole of her shoe and climbing on the backseat.
With a flip of his wrist Tommy threw the now empty bottle of medicine into the bin, the bottle crashing on impact.
They pull down the roof of the car, letting the first rays of spring warm them as the car sped through the city, completely disregarding the safety limit.
"The Peaky boys are going on fucking holiday!" Arthur hollered, a beer bottle in hand swinging so wildly that Tommy and John had drag him down.
"Oi you mad bastard! Sit down!" Caterina barked at the tall man, holding her hat with one hand to keep it from flying off mid drive as Tommy practically raced to the open road.
*:･ﾟ♛･ﾟ:*
The rustling of golden bundles of wheat on the light breeze wormed a smile onto Caterina's face, for a moment transporting here somewhere far away. It also quite successfully blocked out the sound of boys pissing several feet away.
"You know what Tommy? Esme's bloody right. You can't beat the country."
"Shame we're with a car and not a horse. I can only imagine riding through these fields." She sighed dreamily. For all they worked with horses, she could hardly remember the last time she went out into the country and felt the wind flow through her hair.
"I want to live in the country as well." Arthur admitted, zipping up his pants, the three of them walking back to the car. "And I want to keep chickens."
Caterina leaned on the hood of the car, a cigarette lazily placed between her fingers. Midday sun kissed her face like a gentle lover, and she opened one eye to stare quizzically at the oldest Shelby. "What's with the bloody chickens?"
"Fucking chickens.." Tommy muttered disapprovingly. The business was thriving, on the brink of an expansion and all his brothers could think of is taking the easier road.
Sometimes he envied them, their privilege of thinking less and simply taking orders. It always fell onto him to pull the strings, put his neck on the chopping board to raise their family from the slums of Small Heath and into one of respect.
The Devil wouldn't let him rest at night, never mind settle for keeping chickens in the countryside, not while he breathed the poisoned air of Birmingham.
"My turn in the front." John called, heading for the passenger seat.
Cat slid the sunglasses down her nose to look at him in outrage. "No, it's not!"
"Yes it is."
"Bloody kids."
Tommy walked ahead to the booth of the car. It opened with an ominous creak and she spied an equally emotionless expression on his face.
"Arthur, John, come here."
It's unmistakably business in his tone and Arthur and John hesitated. Tommy produces three shovels and he offers one to Arthur. Arthur reacts and approaches. He looks inside the boot and John joins him...
Curiosity overruling her reason, Cat took a peak at the booth herself. A body of an unknown man is tied up in the back, his upper part visible and legs tied in a sack. Arthur staggered back in shock.
"Holy shit, Tommy." John whispered, turning to his older brother, now taking off and handing his suit jacket for Cat to hold, lest it got dirty while digging.
"Oh for fucks sake. Can we have one, just one outing without dead bodies?" The brunette complained.
Arthur and Cat crossed themselves more out of habit than of sudden religious epiphany.
"We need to bury him." Tommy pushed the shovels into his brothers hands, the two still rooted to the spot and staring at the dead body in the booth.
"Who the fuck is that?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask." He did not lie, in truth. All he knew was the man's name and the fact he was Irish.
Cat reached forward and flipped the dead mans collar on the other side. Just as she had presumed, a tiny pin in the shape of a lily was pinned to his shirt. "A Paddy. Nice work Thomas."
"It's Irish business, yes. I thought it best if I dealt with it on my own." Tommy slung his shovel over his shoulder.
"Come on, we did a thousand of these in France." Still, the boys hesitated.
"Grab his legs Arthur. John, grab his arms. That's an order."
John begrudgingly followed his brothers, a crestfallen expression on his face. He was looking forward to an outing with his brothers, and Cat, just to escape the madness of his children and wife. Just a day without changing nappies and hiding guns so the children couldn't find it, without Esme's bouts of jealousy and endless lines of numbers in the ledgers. "So we're not really going to London."
"Once we've buried him," Thomas promised. "The holiday begins."
Still leaning on the hood of Fiat again, keeping an alert eye on the road as the boys ventured deeper onto the field to dispose of the body.
"Right, I'll just wait here until you bury a dead body." Cat shook her head in disbelief, opting to rummage thorough her pockets for a pack of cigs. "A proper Shelby holiday. Fuckin' hell."
*:･ﾟ♛･ﾟ:*
ʟᴏɴᴅᴏɴ
There was a trouble on eight legs coming down the Charlotte Road, and it went by the name of Shelby.
As they neared the entrance to the Eden Club, the place they were supposed to have a drink and leave a message, Thomas checked on the rest of his entourage.
"You left your guns in the car, right?" Thomas threw a warning look to the rest of the company. Both brothers nodded but Cat feigned obliviousness, eyes flying everywhere so as not to make eye contact with him.
"Cat?"
"I'm not mad, I'm not going to pull a gun out in the middle of a club." She defended herself, shifting her dress slightly so it concealed the pistol hidden on her body. There was no way she would walk into Sabini's den unarmed, no matter what Tommy said.
It was a good thing indeed Tommy forbade his brothers to bring a weapon, because as soon as one of the doormen squeezed Arthur a little too hard while searching him for any unwanted object, the oldest Shelby brother reacted with a vicious snarl.
The doorman looked them up and down, mistrustful of their unusual appearance. "Where you boys and lady from?"
"From out of town."
"Say again?" He feigned not hearing them in hopes of catching their accents. A clever play, one Caterina was about to take advantage of.
Cat signalled the boys to let her speak, offering the doormen a rolled up pound note. "We've come from out of town. We heard this is the place to get Tokyo and pick up women."
She makes no attempt to hide her accent, the Italian lilt seeping into her words and rolling down her tongue. It would buy them an entrance but she was more than aware the doorman would soon enough slip to bosses to alert them of an Italian woman in a company of three Brummies.
Once they were let through John turned to her, confused. "What the fuck is Tokyo ?"
"You don't want to know." She concluded, patting his shoulder and stepping into another world entirely, one of wild, unhinged notes and no morals.
The women were another sort entirely — shocks of short, flappy dresses and sharp cut bobs, abundance of sequins and feathers spinning wildly until they blurred. The men, sharp and dressed to kill, with their eyelids painted in the same fashion as the women.
In the dark corners of the club they spot pretty girls pouring out white powder from their blue glass bottles, bending down to snort them and coming back up with dazed, euphoric expressions. Tokyo, the new drug on the market transformed the life of young elite, and if they're not snorting up the magic powder from their compact mirrors, they're fornicating behind the thick curtains around the room.
The booze was flowing like a golden waterfall. The air was thicker than smoke.
White girls and black men, white girls and Chinese men, Chinese girls and black men, black girls and white men. Never had they seen such diversity of races freely mingling.
They stopped on the threshold for a moment, taking in the wonders of the new, unknown world. Her blood drums in the new and exciting rhythm, bubbling, spurring her wish to simply sway in the wild manner of the skinny girls with glassy eyes.
"They call this Eden? More like Sodoma and Gomorra." Cat commented, watching as a man's pants were pulled down in the middle of a dance floor, his privates readily assaulted by another young man. It was a den of sin, for sure, and even the greatest sinners of Birmingham found themselves uncomfortable.
"What the bloody hell is that row?" Arthurs looked at the jazz band, made up entirely of black men, pumping out a frantic dance tune.
"It's what they call music these days." Said Tommy, heading for one of the empty tables on the lower level.
They would be blind not to notice the whispers and looks thrown at them as they walked, the people recognising them from the papers, the ominous stories circulating of a sinister gypsy gang turned businessmen. Of a woman with razor blades in her smile, vicious enough to turn her back on her own family and side with the devils.
Tommy signalled for the waiter, making sure to order in a loud and clear voice. "Irish whisky. Bottle."
"Fuck, half the Titanic are in here." Arthur whispered to his brothers as Tommy poured them each a drink.
Cat shifted slightly, hiding her mouth behind her full glass of whiskey. She nodded her head in the direction of well dressed men sitting at the bar, looking in their direction. "That's Darby Sabini's cousins."
John paled significantly. "Jesus Tommy, everybody in here is somebody..."
"Don't forget John, so are we." Cat kept his morale up. "If they've never heard of Peaky Blinders they sure as hell will after today."
"Just the lieutenants. Not the officers.." He reassured them, shoulders tense as he surveyed the people around them. He turned to Cat, leaning in slightly so she could hear him over the loud music.
"Still don't think it was smart of you to come here." Smiling at his protective tone, she sent him a confident smirk.
"I'm a big girl. Let Sabini know I've got the balls to piss on his territory."
Before they had the opportunity to drink their first glass, their table was approached by a finely dressed man with an anxious look on his face.
"Gentlemen, lady, there has been a mistake. I am afraid you will have to leave." He announced, though his tone was less than apologetic.
"We just bought a fucking bottle." Stated John, assertively.
The man pursed his lips, not appreciating having to explain the situation to them. "Some of the men here say they recognise you. From the racetracks in the north."
"Well, we don't recognise them." Tommy replied casually, downing his drink in one go.
"They say you have no business coming south of the line without prior agreement." The man continued, ignoring Tommy's insolent reply.
"And what line would that be?" Tommy challenged, the waiter looking around in fear now. The air around them was thick from the smoke and tension building up.
"They say this is provocation." Caterina snorted. Of course it is.
"Tell them we're on holiday."
The man leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "They say you are breaking the rules."
A strained silence passed between them, Tommys eyes dropping to Caterina's. The ticking time bomb was about to blow up in a matter of moments.
"Quali leggi, tesoro? " Her voice was slow, threatening, eyes shooting straight through the waiter.
"They say you are the Peaky Blinders."
Crash! As soon as those words were spoken a vine bottle flew over the heads and shattered the lamp in the middle of the table, shards of glass littering their surroundings like confetti.
The boys flipped their chairs, taking off their razored caps in order to fight the incoming men the old fashioned way, with fists and razors like they did years ago on the streets of Birmingham.
The battle would've been over even before it had begun, had the Shelby boys not been as tough as they were. Tommy and John held their ground well, fists flying and caps swinging left and right. But Arthur - oh Arthur - it was like seeing a wild animal released from captivity. The sheer amount of power he emanated, he had no control of, tearing through his challengers like an unforgiving wraith.
Immediately Caterina reached for the gun underneath her dress, pointing it straight at the man coming at her from the left.
Not having the patience to cock her gun, or to risk hitting the boys with a stray bullet, Cat brought her fist back and slammed it into her opponents nose. The man cursed, clutching his bleeding nose, stumbling and crashing into the table behind him.
Her knuckles were bleeding and pulsating from the impact and she didn't care — the high she felt from the adrenaline cursing through her veins was more powerful than any of the intoxicating drugs she could take. Fists pounding, hair long fallen out of the intricate style she made that morning, Caterina lost herself in the exquisite art of fighting until her lungs ached for more of the smoke laden air and her hands burned with equal fiery spite like her heart did.
For a fleeting moment she lets herself observe the battlefield around her and notices the way Thomas clutched his cap, swinging it around in the faces of Sabini's cousins, painting them a red smile. It was the first time Cat had seen him properly fight, getting immersed in the deadly dance like a skilled lover, passionate in his rage. In truth, in that very moment, she found him inexplicably beautiful. The way his hair sticked to his forehead, the muscles in his jaw kept clenching with every next punch he threw.
He was beautiful like Lucifer before damnation — only Thomas Shelby fell long time ago and the flames of Hell suited him just fine.
A gunshot ripped the air, stopping them mid action. The man that first served them pointed his shotgun at them, forcing them to step back in surrender.
"Stop! Step back."
"Get out."
On their way out, Tommy snatched the bottle he bought and swigs from it. The crowd of people parted as they went like the Red Sea, throwing vary glances at the violent foursome. He stopped at the last step, turning to look at the people in furious silence, some frightened, some openly making vengeful gestures.
"We came down here not to make enemies but to make new friends." He looks around the room, one hand wrapped around the neck of their bottle, the other one firmly around Caterina's waist.
"Those of you who are last will soon be first. Those who are downtrodden will rise up. You know where to find us."
Sharing one look over the hollow silence, Caterina and Arthur couldn't help but to crack a crooked smile, irrational laugh bubbling in the pits of their stomach. The crowd watched on in horror as their figures bent and gasped for air, gurgling with laughter, untameable animals covered in blood and cuts and torn clothes and laughing.
The four made their exit out of the club, their sinister laugh echoing through the empty streets of Fitzrovia. All they did was come to say hello, but it was one hello the city of London would not forget so easily.
*:･ﾟ♛･ﾟ:*
"I've lost another tooth Tommy. I'm going to have none left." John whined, lifting his upper lip to show them the gap that remained where his front tooth used to be.
Tommy simply pushed the bottle of whiskey they snagged from the club into his hands, prompting him to wash him mouth with a swig.
"Some fucking holiday this is."
"You clocked him pretty well." John told her admiringly, inspecting the bruises that had already formed on her knuckles.
"She fights dirty, innit luv?"
Reaching into his pocket, Thomas produced a white cotton tissue and poured some of the whiskey over it. "Wrap it up so it stops bleeding."
"Fuckin' hell it felt good." Cat breathed out, letting out a little laugh. She felt truly alive for the first time in months.
Arthur slapped her shoulder in a brotherly manner. "Nothing gets the blood flowing like a bit of a tuffle."
They laughed like lunatics, leaning against a wall under the gas light, trying to catch a breath of chilly night air.
"So. Are you all right without your fucking medicine Arthur?" Arthur grinned and nodded firmly.
"John? You all right? Or should I be asking that question to your wife?"
"No more talk of keeping chickens, all right?" Cat instructed, bloody tired of their constant tirade. Who'd trade this life of thrill and danger for the one filled with chickens and farms?
"I've got fifty quid here." Tommy waved a wad of money in front of them, promising a night of temptations and revelry.
"Let's go and paint the town."
*:･ﾟ♛･ﾟ:*
ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ's ɴᴏᴛᴇ
we should all aspire to write 4k words at 1 am although we have a philosophy essay due tomorrow
that's one of the things you should definitely not do in the quarantine