Chapter Text
The whole room buzzed with anxious, spinning thoughts as the eldest of the Birlings paced the room, his feet thumping the carpet rhythmically. His hand was scratching his stubbly chin, deep in thought. Probably wondering how he could pull this off as a joke, thought Sheila, as she surveyed his perpetual marching motion.
The past hour had been weighing heavily on her own conscience. More specifically the last ten minutes of it. The inspector had left in a whirl of socialist mystery and deceit, only to be followed by Gerald to uncloak him, and make a phone call to the infirmary. There was no Eva Smith… right? No report of a girl who had drunk any bleach, no deaths at all of that kind in months. Until… a few minutes ago. A girl, fresh in the infirmary, burning her insides out with bleach so the phone call had said. And an inspector would be coming in a short while, to ask some questions.
Hence Mr. Birling’s back and forth across the dining room, and the subtle tapping of Mrs. Birling’s foot quickly against the floor, making an anxious pattering sound. Eric and Gerald were huddled in against the whiskey stand as if it were the lungs supplying them air, occasionally exchanging surreptitious glances, but ever daring to speak for even a second, for chance they might interrupt Mr. Birling’s neverending purportless ramblings. And my God did he ramble, Sheila thought as she rose to her feet to tip a third - possibly fourth - glass of port. Since he had hung up with the infirmary, he had been spitting inconsequential garble at the rest of the room. Something about “cover our tracks” and “behave as normal”. It reminded Sheila somewhat of a military briefing, only the deep patriotism for one’s country was now being substituted by her father’s avarice for higher social standing.
“Put the port down, Sheila, you’ll end up too squiffy to talk,”
Sheila’s movements were halted by the clipped but noticeably wavering tone of her mother’s voice. She slowly lowered the decanter to the table and shuffled back to her seat wordlessly.
This made Mr. Birling pause his pacing, turn to the room and snap his fingers with almost cliche gusto,
“You’re right, Sybill. Of course, now - why didn’t I think…” his speech was suspended for a moment, before his eyebrows climbed an inch on his forehead.
“Now…” a nauseating smirk began to creep around his face, “there’s no reason at all that you… (with this, he scanned his eyes across Sheila, Eric, and Gerald in turn) …should have to speak to this new inspector nosing his way into our dinner. One disruption is quite enough for this family tonight, and I shan’t be allowing him to terrorize the minds of you lot with any more communist nonsense.”
Sheila watched as Gerald’s knuckles tightened around the whiskey decanter, until the blood left them and his skin bloomed white,
“And, ah-,” he laughed with a twinge of nervousness, “How should we go about - er - evading that line of questioning? I do believe it is somewhat unjust to withhold information from this sort of person.”
“Yes, do tell us,” Eric’s tone was much more sneering and cavillous, “How should we go about running away from the authorities, father?”
Upon hearing Mr. Birling make a few spluttering noises, he interjected,
“For someone who seems so sure he’s done nothing wrong, you seem awfully jumpy."
Gerald gave Eric a subtle but sharp nudge and a pointed stare, to which Eric abruptly shut his mouth. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of allowing Mr. Birling to continue talking.
“Now, Gerald, we are withholding absolutely nothing from these people,” Sheila noted that her father completely brushed past Eric’s question, “but unfortunately, some of us simply aren’t able to.”
Mr. Birling seemed to enjoy having command over the room again, as he paused for a moment, revelling in the attention of the four pairs of eyes surveying him with varying levels of curiosity and contempt.
“I see,” Gerald’s tone was ever more hesitant, “But… I believe we are all capable of… talking to this chap? I don’t see what harm it would do to clear the air, get all this out the way so we can just carry on with our evening.”
“Our evening has already been ruined,” Mrs. Birling said snidely.
Mr. Birling nodded toward his wife, “Quite right, Sybill. But don’t you worry Gerald, myself and my wife will get this out the way well enough. That next inspector will be gone within the half-hour of his arrival, I’ll guarantee you that.”
“And what of us?” Sheila found herself speaking up for the first time in the last while. She couldn’t stand to listen to everyone standing about bickering, but she hated her father’s pretentious mock-compelling speeches and failed witticism even more.
“Unfortunately,” Mr. Birling looked at her with one of his snooty and overprideful glances, “you three will be altogether too squiffy to speak to this inspector.”
With this, his eyes scanned the room with a gleeful tint, like he thought he was saying something unfathomably smart. He obviously wasn’t, but he continued anyway,
“Yes… when this chap comes over, we shall tell him of our earnest little celebration, and of how the younglings got a little too excitable with the port. Sheila got hysterical and Eric was stumbling a tad, that’s why we had to send you out with Gerald on a brief walk, sober you all up, let’s say. And regrettably they can’t answer a single question!”
Gerald gave Sheila a glance from the corner of the room, that exchanged a silent message between them. They would go, on the grounds that neither of them would rather cooped up with Mr. Birling. Sheila had another reason for wanting to leave too, but she kept this screwed up in the back of her head and didn't dare to project this idea to Gerald across the room. Sheila rose from her seat, dusted down her frock (as if Mrs. Birling would ever permit a single speck of dust to enter the house), and spread her falsest and most agreeable smile across her face,
“I think that’s a wonderful idea, daddy. I shall fetch my shoes, and the three of us will soon take a couple turns around the park. It would do us some good to get out… ease the tension and all that.”
“Exactly, Sheila, go get yourself ready,” Mr. Birling replied. Sheila tried not to be irked by how he still felt the need to command her around after she had just said she was going to do it already, so she marched briskly out of the room. She heard two pairs of footsteps follow after, and the dining room door clicked shut.
She was almost ready to leave, adorned in a fur coat that was arguably too warm for the hot spring night, and her most hardy boots, when she felt prying eyes on her back. She turned, to be met with Gerald’s stare again. He glanced at the door behind to check it was shut, and shuffled slightly closer to Sheila. Eric was a few meters away, his clumsy intoxicated fingers struggling with his shoe laces.
“Sheila,” there was a certain hard-set nature about Gerald’s expression that didn’t come about very often, and made Sheila turn very quiet and attentive, “Eric and I won’t accompany you on your walk, if that’s alright.”
“I…” This worked entirely in Sheila’s favour. She had planned to ditch the boys at the earliest opportunity, but Gerald being so willing to give up what he normally took as his god-given duty to protect her was somewhat unexpected.
“I know you want to find Eva.”
Shit. He was right, of course. She had been planning on it the whole time. Her expression confirmed everything that Gerald needed to know, and he began to speak with a voice so low that Sheila could scarcely hear it from half a meter away,
“That’s fine… I understand. You need closure of some sort, we all do. Mr. and Mrs. Birling don’t care much for what happened to this girl, the real girl we knew, but we do. Us two and Eric knew her better, we deserve to find out. If… if you find her,” Gerald’s voice broke here, and he paused for a moment to inhale a deep breath through his nose, “tell Dai- Eva… Tell her that I… Let her know of…oh - I don’t know, really. Just ask her to spare a thought for me, tell her I hope she’s okay.”
Sheila had to hold back a snort, “Oh, and now you’re siding with her? What happened to none of this being real? Was it not all just a ruse?”
“No, Sheila, it is not a ruse.” Gerald huffed indignantly at his emotional moment being cut off, “You know why I had to say that. Your father wouldn’t have let me stay for a moment longer had I not agreed with him instantaneously. I’m on thin ice as is, and siding with Eva would’ve stepped me further in trouble.”
“So?” Sheila was too frustrated to let up the fight at this excuse, “You secretly sympathize with Eva now? You’re saying all this like you’ve been some righteous working class chap this whole time, all wrapped up in the inspector’s socialism and love-thy-neighbour regime. I admit I’ve been selfish and stupid, but I know well enough to admit it, and I’m smart enough to change my ways to help these people, out loud. You, Gerald, only change when it suits you, and then expect me to believe that just because you love some other girl, that you’re suddenly embroiled in the struggles of everyone else, all these whores and cripples and chimneyboys and homosexuals-”
Eric fell backwards into the shoe cabinet with a sharp thud, and let out an amused snort. Gerald whipped his head around to glare at him, then donned his jacket and strode towards the door. He glanced back only once more, turning to Sheila,
“You said it yourself Sheila, we’ve all been embroiled in these struggles. Don’t act like I'm exempt, because you know I’m not. Good luck finding Eva.”
With this, he turned on his heel and left. Eric followed a few paces behind him, mumbling something about being embroiled and still fighting with his shoe.
Sheila stood for a moment in the hallway, the spring breeze from the door cooling her face and making her skin prickle. It was colder than she had thought, and later too. The promise of a longer day had been broken, and an early-drawn sunset had long dipped behind the tidy rows of houses in Brumley, to leave only a dark and drizzly road ahead. She puffed out a breath that clouded in front of her face, and then wafted away into the air of the night.
She stepped outside, her feet making a subtle splash in the puddle collecting at the foot of her doorstep, and began to walk towards the east of Brumley, where a promise of dingy back bedrooms and faux-extravagant bars lay in wait to draw her in.