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If he were a better man, Tommy Shelby knows he would love Lizzie Stark.
It isn’t because of her profession that he doesn’t love her. Lord knows he’s not one to judge; the number of prostitutes he’s slept with and the parts of himself he’s sold. Besides, that life is long behind her now, and if Tommy Shelby believes in anything, it’s that a woman should be able to make a new life as much as a man. They’ve all been given their chances for redemption, and Lizzie Stark has grasped hers with both hands.
He can admire her for that.
It isn’t even because of Grace. There was a moment, somewhere between the fall of a sparkling sapphire necklace, and the feel of the earth that he threw onto Grace’s coffin, that he felt a very real chance he might never love again. It was possible that the feeling was broken, torn with cruel clawed hands away from his very soul, leaving nothing but ragged edges and fluttering skin. Like the lacerations he’d seen in men torn apart by shells, all grotesque twisted flesh and gaping sockets.
He knows now, that isn’t true. Grudgingly he’s allowed the love he feels for Charlie to seep into his heart and meld the torn edges together. He can love. Someday he will. Just not now, and never for Lizzie Stark.
He can explain it to May, because he knows he has to. He tells her by the side of the canal when he sends her home, and he tells her by the ornate and expensive shrubbery of her gardens before she lays down her coat then lays down upon it. “You know, you must know, I don’t love you.”
She gives him a smile that she tries to make brave but comes across instead as hopelessly sad. “Of course I know, Tommy Shelby, this has never been about that.”
Practical, sensible May, who can’t make herself hate him, no matter how much he knows that would help her. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
There’s a flash of something that’s almost anger in her eyes. “Don’t pretend you care, Tommy Shelby.”
Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps he doesn’t care. He lays her down on the earth, and feels momentarily glad that she’s underneath, where the stones and gravel rub through and the soil is cold and unyielding. It isn’t the first time he’s taken her. It isn’t the last.
He wants to explain it to Lizzie, but somehow the words and the desire to say them dry up in his throat. He wants to love her; wonderful, comfortable Lizzie, who he’s smart enough to realise he doesn’t deserve. Part of him also wants to hurt her, to make her leave because he knows he doesn’t deserve her. Not telling her is a fantastically constructed act of self-harm, stretching it out longer and tighter like a piece of elastic in the knowledge that when it finally snaps it’ll hurt.
Sometimes he aches with how much he wants to love her. It’s part of the elaborate persona that he’s building for himself as an upstanding member of the community. He knows that to the outside world she’ll always be a whore, and he’ll always be a tinker – if they could face that together they could build themselves tall. John was right, she’s great with children and he knows Charlie adores her. They could live together in the big house, in comfortable domesticity with Charlie and Ruby running around together in the garden. Everything he’s ever wanted; safety, security, family, all wrapped up in one blissful painting streaked in autumn tones of russet and gold.
Maybe that, in the end, is why he can’t love her.
There’s a certain madness in the trenches that takes hold of men who’ve spent too long waiting for the next bullet to come. It manifests in paranoia and superstition, the terror of the unknown and uncontrolled so great that they’re willing to do anything, even the most violent and self-destructive things, just to gain certainty. There’s something in that, Tommy feels, which drives his inability to love Lizzie Stark. To fall for Lizzie would mean a perpetual waiting for something to go wrong, for the next shoe to drop. He might be scratching his own name into a bullet, but so long as he keeps hold of it he doesn’t have to worry it’ll come firing at him out of a gun.
“Are you going to marry her?” Ada asks bluntly, seven months into Lizzie’s pregnancy.
“Who?” Tommy asks, as if he doesn’t know.
“How many are there?” Ada responds tartly, giving him the look that only an irritated sister can give. “Lizzie Stark of course. Or are you happy for your daughter to be born a bastard?”
“Girls aren’t bastards.” Tommy replies.
Ada’s look is withering. “This one will be. Are you going to marry her?”
“No.” Tommy answers to the paperwork on his desk. Even in the silence he can hear her disapproval. “I can’t marry Lizzie, Ada. I can’t. I don’t love her.”
“She loves you.”
“And that’s why I can’t.”
The election keeps him occupied. Jessie Eden keeps him busy. He distracts himself from his own feelings and lets Ada and Polly attend the childbirth. He appears the next day, carrying a bunch of flowers with a cheque discretely tucked inside. Lizzie looks tired, her hair lank and unwashed, body hunched and wrapped in ungainly skirts, baby Ruby a tiny bundle nestled in the crook of her arm.
Tommy thinks she’s never looked more beautiful. The smile she gives him is radiant and he’s almost tempted to propose right there and then. He wonders if he could pretend, like he used to for May, like he does for Jessie Eden. But never Lizzie, because she would know, and he would know, and the knowledge would lie between them like a corpse, bloated and ugly.
He reaches down to kiss baby Ruby on the forehead, then Lizzie on the cheek. “She’s ours Lizzie. Mine and yours. She’ll be a Shelby.”
It’s the least he can give her. The most he can offer.
That night he wines and dines Jessie Eden. With the after-image of Lizzie’s smile fading in his memory he plays a kind compassionate lover, focused on Jessie and Jessie alone. He lets the knowledge of the deception swell inside him, filling him up with bitterness and crookedness. He’s no great man, no people’s hero, just a gutter-bred whore, fucking for a living and stealing for a song.
When he walks down the steps of the town hall as an elected MP, Lizzie hands him baby Ruby and he tucks his arm around her with a smile for the ever-waiting camera. And just for a moment, Tommy Shelby feels like a better man.