Chapter Text
“Dinner’s on!” Ada calls. Tommy hears Karl’s feet rushing down the hall.
“Am I goin’ deaf or did I not hear ye washin’ up, Karl?” Then the dragging sound of his feet changing course.
Tommy smiles to himself at the predictable patterns in the lives of his family, patterns that remind him they are something other than planets drifting past each other in the dark of space.
He takes off his glasses and lays them on the desk, massaging the sides of his nose where the frames left their imprint. Ada appears in the doorway. “Aren’t you going to sit down with us, Tommy?”
He shakes his head and gestures at a pile of papers. “Too much work and not enough appetite, Ada.”
“I’m letting you hide out from Lizzie’s wrath here, least you can do is make an appearance at the dinner table every once in a while.”
“Nothing promotes warm family feeling like a visit from Tommy Shelby, OBE, is that it?” He smiles wryly.
Ada sighs and smiles. “Dunno why I bother with you, Tom.” She turns her back, and Tommy’s contrived smile falls. He slips his glasses back on.
The glasses are just pretense anyway, because the words in front of him blur and slide around the page like a puddle of spilled whiskey. Whiskey, incidentally, is precisely what made Lizzie banish him in the first place. He’d been too drunk to make it up the stairs, and she told him to get away from their children or else she’d shoot him. (Fair enough.)
He’d called Ada and she’d half-walked, half-carried him into the car and then into a spare room at her flat. He woke up stripped to the waist with a puddle of his own sick on his trousers. He handed her a thousand pound to pour out all the alcohol in the place (“Keep your money, Tom, I weren’t going to let you drink anyway.”)
The predictable headache started that night. He called Arthur and had all business calls rerouted to Ada’s house. He’d sworn off drink before, more to prove a point than anything else, and he knew it only got worse from here. Soon came the restlessness: he paced until his feet wore pale spots in his sister’s lush carpet. Then the shakiness and the sweating, and he sat beside the telephone, gritting his teeth to summon the strength to remain upright, a cold cloth at the ready to dab at his damp, feverish forehead. Luckily, it was the week after Christmas, and not much business needed doing. A few calls with factory foremen, making sure Johnny Dogs was overseeing the gin business. (Johnny, for his part, could tell something was off, but was either too Christmas-drunk to ask or too used to receiving non-answers to press him.)
Ada comes in and leaves glasses of water while he’s sleeping. Twice or three times a night he jerks awake, sweating and panting or vomiting bile over the side of the bed. One night, he hears Karl and Ada leave and start the car, headed for Aunt Pol’s: must be New Year’s.
(Well, here’s to a good year.)
Now, he’s back on his feet, sequestered in a remote room surrounded by books and pretending to do paperwork. What he really wants is to put his head down right there on the desk and sleep for maybe a fortnight. Instead, he puts his coat on and gets in the car.
The smell of coal coke and horse shit greets him: sweet home Birmingham. The sun has slipped below the horizon, but the air is dirtied blue-grey with smoke. It is never quite dark and never quite bright here. He should go to his office, but something like habit takes him to the Garrison. (His sister wouldn’t approve, he knows. If he’d announced his departure, she would have given him that look that says “You may be smart, Tommy Shelby, but you’re also quite stupid.” And maybe she’s right.)
No one’s there, not even the barkeep, who Arthur had probably given the night off after a successful New Year’s Eve. There is something eerie about the pub when it’s empty. The chairs are up on the tables, the dust dancing in the shafts of watery grey moonlight. But then again, everything seems a bit strange right now— he’s not used to being sober at night. He remembers his crusade: to prove he could control himself, that he didn’t need to drink. Happy New Year, indeed. Tommy sighs and stares at a bottle of rum behind the bar as though it were taunting him.
Anger suddenly overtakes him, building to a high, keening whine like a broken automobile engine. Before he’s fully aware of it, he whips his gun out of his coat and shoots the bottle. He sees the glass bend to the will of the bullet, watches it shatter then fly in every direction as though in slow motion. The liquor inside goes splashing, like blood out of a body torn to shreds by a landmine. He feels a few drops hit his face.
He hears clattering upstairs. The electric lights flick on.
“Oi!” someone yells. Before he sees him, he hears the telltale sound of a gun cocking. He whirls around (panting, eyes dilated and wild) toward the sound, pointing his pistol at whoever was headed down the stairs.
It’s just Michael, shirtless under an untied robe. And, a few paces behind him, a blonde wearing Michael’s shirt, comically large on her tiny frame. Tommy lowers his gun, shaken back to reality at the sight of his cousin. He resumes breathing.
Cooly, as though nothing had happened, he greets his cousin. “Good evening, Michael. Good evening, Miss…?”
“Emma.” The blonde, wide-eyed and scared, supplies.
“Good evening, Emma.” Tommy says.
Michael turns to her, whispers a few words and offers a few pound out of his robe pocket for a cab. She looks from Thomas to Michael, sensing there was a problem afoot, probably related to the Peaky Blinders, and definitely not something she wanted to be involved in. She grabs the cash, then gets her coat off the rack and makes a hasty exit.
Michael, still bewildered, places his gun on the bar. “Is there a reason you’re shooting up the merchandise, Tom?”
“Is there a reason you’re sleeping in the flat above our pub?” He replies, still aloof.
“Asked you first.” Michael says, tying his robe.
Tommy takes a cigarette out of its case, runs it along his lower lip before clamping his lips around it and lighting up. He scratches an eyebrow idly with his thumb as he exhales. “Just a bit of fun, Michael. Just a bit of fun.”
Michael’s brow furrows. “You need a touch a’ snow, Tom? I’ve got some upstairs.”
“No, no.” Tom places a hand on Michael’s arm as though to steady himself. The gesture is absentminded and surprisingly vulnerable.
“When’s the last time you ate something?”
He searches his memory. “Two days.”
“I’ll take you to mine, make you some toast and tea.” He puts a steadying hand on Tommy’s back.
He shakes his head vaguely. “Not hungry.” He’s not lying: his appetite had vanished.
“C’mon. Even the Great Tommy Shelby needs food.”
Hm. The Great Tommy Shelby.