A WHISKEY AND A SMOKE | CHAPTER 02
W: NURSE JOB IN THE 20'S, ALCOHOL, MENTION OF THE GREAT WAR, SLOW BURN.
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CHAPTER 02 - GARRISON NIGHT
MARGARET'S POV
Birmingham had already learned to test me when I had the will to open my eyes after a full night of shallow sleep and too many thoughts.
It began before breakfast with Mrs. Hodge knocking on my door like the house was on fire.
“Nurse Allen.”
I opened my eyes to a room still half-dark, throat dry, body heavy in that mean way poor sleep leaves behind. For one confused second, I thought I had been back in London. Then the chimneys beyond the window came into focus, black against a bruised morning sky.
Birmingham.
“Nurse Allen,” Mrs. Hodge repeated through the door. “You’ll be late if you mean to lie there contemplating the ceiling.”
“I’m awake,” I called with a voice that sounded like I had swallowed ash.
“That remains to be proven.” She replied.
Her footsteps moved away.
I lay still for another few seconds and listened to the house. Floorboards, pipes, a woman coughing below, a kettle beginning its complaint in the kitchen. No gunshots, or shouting. No men calling for stretcher-bearers.
A civilized morning, then.
My journal sat open on the desk where I had left it. The last line stared at me from across the room.
I wondered, as Birmingham dragged me under, whether that had been my first lie in this city.
I closed it before I could read anything else.
There was little dignity in the way I washed that morning. Cold water with soap that smelled faintly of lye. My hair pinned tighter than comfort allowed because tired hands made careless nurses, and careless nurses killed people. I dressed in my uniform by candlelight, checked my cuffs, then placed Charles’s photograph face-down in the drawer of the desk.
I stood there afterward with my hand still on the handle.
“Forgive me,” I whispered.
Then I shut the drawer and went downstairs.
Mrs. Hodge gave me porridge, tea, and a look that suggested she knew exactly how little I had slept.
“You’ll eat,” she stated.
“I intended to.”
“Intentions are for girls who faint before noon.”
“I don’t faint.”
“See that you don’t.”
I ate because she watched me until I did. The porridge had lumps in it and the tea was too bloody strong, which made both useful. By the time I stepped into the street, my stomach was warm and my head had stopped floating quite so far from my shoulders.
The city looked uglier in the early light. Honest, perhaps. Without darkness to smooth the edges, Birmingham showed its soot stains, its broken cobbles, its men with red eyes and women already carrying baskets too heavy for one arm. Smoke rolled low between buildings. The factory whistles sounded before the church bells did.
I found the hospital without getting lost this time. That felt like a private victory.
Mary was waiting near the nurses’ entrance with a cigarette tucked behind one ear and a piece of bread in her mouth.
“You look terrible,” she said pointing to my face.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
I looked down with no intention to lie to her “Briefly.”
“That means no.”
“It means briefly.” I repeated it.
She gave me a look, then tore the bread in half and handed me the smaller piece.
“I ate already.”
“I didn’t ask.” Her smile suggested she was having fun with me now.
I took it anyway.
Edith appeared behind her, already in uniform, cap perfect, face composed into its usual dissatisfaction with the world. “You’re both blocking the door.”
Mary stepped aside. “Nurse Allen slept briefly.”
“Most of us do.”
“She means not at all, by the way.” Mary grinned.
Edith looked at me properly. Her gaze paused on the shadows beneath my eyes but did not linger in a way that humiliated me. “Don’t cut bandages with those hands if they start shaking.”
“They won’t.”
“That wasn’t pride asking. That was instruction.”
I held her gaze. “They won’t.” I said more firmly.
She nodded once. “Good.”
The day began hard and did not soften.
Receiving was a different beast from women’s surgical. Louder and faster somehow. Less patient with the illusion of order. Men came in from factories with crushed fingers, burns, cuts, coughing fits, broken ribs from falls they claimed were accidents and bruises whose shapes told better stories. A boy of fifteen arrived with a hand sliced open from a machine belt, trying not to cry while his supervisor complained about lost time. An old woman was carried in by her daughter with pneumonia thick in her lungs. Two policemen brought a drunk whose scalp had split against the pavement, and he sang while Mary held him still.
Ten in the morning, I had blood under one thumbnail despite scrubbing hard enough to sting.
Noon, Matron Hawthorne had watched me set a splint, dress a burn, and calm a child by letting her count my buttons while Edith cleaned grit from her knee.
By two, I had stopped being new.
Or perhaps I had stopped caring whether anyone thought I was.
A man came in near half past three with a gash across his forearm and an attitude large enough to require its own bed.
He was broad, red-faced, and sweating through his shirt, with two other men half-carrying, half-dragging him into receiving. Blood had soaked the towel wrapped around his arm. It dripped onto the floor in dark spots that would be my problem later if no orderly reached it first.
“Doctor,” he barked the moment he saw me.
I stepped toward him. “Sit down.”
“I said doctor.”
“I heard you. Sit down.” My voice came out sharp.
His friends laughed under their breath. The man did not.
“Where’s the doctor?”
“Busy.”
“I’m not having a woman sew me up.”
Mary, standing behind me with a basin, went very still in that dangerous way cheerful women sometimes did before they committed violence.
I held out my hand. “Let me see your arm.”
He pulled it back. “Are you deaf?”
“No.”
“Then fetch me a doctor.”
I looked at the towel, the angle of his wrist, the blood still coming too freely but not pulsing. “You’ve cut through skin and muscle. You’re bleeding steadily, which means you either let me look at it now or you keep sitting there making speeches until you’re weak enough to stop arguing. Your choice.”
His face darkened at my words.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” His sweaty face broke into an anger loud enough for him to bark those words.
“Nurse Allen.”
“That supposed to mean something?”
“It will if you lose use of that hand because you were too proud to be treated by someone wearing an apron.”
One of his friends snorted. The patient turned on him.
“You think it’s funny?”
“I think you’re bleeding on your boot, Frank.”
Frank looked down.
He was, in fact, bleeding on his boot.
I held out my hand again.
He stared at me for several seconds. Men like him made an art of taking up space. Shoulders wide, jaw forward, voice built for rooms where nobody told them no. I had known soldiers like that. Officers too. They were usually the loudest until the wound began to hurt properly, or the fear of loosing a limb struck them.
At last, he shoved his arm toward me.
“There,” he snapped. “Happy?”
“I’m rarely happy during work hours.”
Mary made a small choking sound behind me.
I unwrapped the towel.
The wound opened ugly and deep across the outside of his forearm, ragged at one end where whatever cut him had torn rather than sliced. Glass, perhaps, or metal. It needed cleaning, exploring, stitching. Painful work if done properly.
“That’ll need sewing,” I said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Get a doctor.”
“A doctor will say it needs sewing, then either do it worse than me or ask me to do half of it while he takes credit.”
Mary turned away sharply. Her shoulders shook.
Frank looked between us. “You mouthy for a nurse.”
“You’re observant for a man losing blood.”
That time his friend laughed outright.
Frank glared at him, then at me. “Do it, then.”
“Mary, carbolic, suture tray, clean cloths, please.”
“Already coming.”
I cleaned the wound while Frank cursed so creatively that even Edith looked impressed when she passed by the doorway.
“Hold still,” I said.
“It bloody hurts.” Frank said as if asking for mercy.
“It will hurt more if you keep jerking away.”
“You enjoying this?”
I kept my eyes on his arm while speaking to him “Not particularly.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
I glanced up at him now. “If I were enjoying it, you’d know.”
For the first time, Frank shut his big mouth. His friends exchanged a look. Mary lowered her face over the tray, lips pressed together.
Stitching flesh was simple once one accepted the brutality of it. Needle through skin, pull, tie, repeat. Make the edges meet cleanly, give the body a chance to remember itself whole. I had done it in candlelight, in mud, in rooms where men screamed, in tents where flies gathered faster than prayers.
Frank watched the needle go in once, then looked at the ceiling and did not look down again.
“You served?” he asked after a minute, voice tighter now.
“Yes.”
“France?”
I made a humming sound also saying yes. His jaw worked.
The room changed around that confirmation, as it often did. France had a way of making even foolish men reconsider the shape of a woman. Some respected it. Some others resented it. Most did not know what to do with the thought of us there, sleeves rolled, hands inside wounds, listening to boys die for a country that would later tell its nurses to be grateful for orderly employment.
Frank swallowed. “My brother didn’t come back.”
I tied another stitch with my heart going colder at his words. “I’m sorry.”
“He was twenty.”
I paused long enough to meet his eyes. “A lot of them were.”
The hardness in his face cracked a little. Not enough to make him gentle, but enough to make him human.
I finished the last stitch and wrapped the arm with clean gauze. “Keep it dry. Come back if the redness spreads, if you develop fever, or if pus forms. Do you know what pus looks like?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“You refused treatment from a nurse while bleeding onto your own boot. I prefer to check.”
Mary made another sound repressing a laugh. Frank stared at me, then gave a short laugh despite himself. “Christ.”
“Close enough. Keep it elevated tonight.”
He stood, flexed his fingers when I told him to, and seemed annoyed that they still worked.
At the door, he stopped and looked back.
“You did that well.”
“I know.”
His mouth twitched. “Right.”
After he left, Mary leaned against the counter and laughed until Edith told her she was useless.
Matron Hawthorne appeared shortly after, because of course she did. I had learned already that the woman could sense disorder through walls.
“Nurse Allen.”
“Yes, Matron.”
“Did you tell a patient a doctor would stitch worse than you?”
I wiped down the tray with deliberate care. “I may have suggested a range of possible outcomes.”
Mary coughed.
Matron looked at her, and suddenly the nurse by my side became fascinated by the floor.
Then Matron turned back to me. “Was the wound properly cleaned?”
“Yes, Matron.”
“Stitches even?”
“Yes.”
“Patient retained full movement?” Her left eyebrow shot up.
“Yes, Matron.”
“Then be less entertaining next time.”
“Yes Ma'am.”
She left without another word.
Mary leaned close. “That means she’s proud.”
“If that woman is ever proud, I imagine birds fall dead from the sky.”
Edith, passing with a stack of forms, said, “Only small ones.”
***
The days found their shape after that.
Hospital. Boarding house. Poor sleep. Work again.
I learned the corridors by sound before sight. Which floorboard creaked near the supply room. Which bell meant urgency and which meant Mrs. Barlow just wanted tea. Which doctor walked as if the building owed him respect. Which orderlies could be trusted with a patient in pain and which needed to be watched. I learned Mary sang under her breath when changing bed linens. Edith kept peppermint lozenges in her pocket and pretended they were medicinal when children cried. Matron Hawthorne could appear silently behind anyone doing anything wrong, an ability I suspected came from years of disappointment sharpened into instinct.
Birmingham learned me too.
Patients began asking for the London nurse, though some said it like accusation and some like hope. Frank returned twice for dressing changes and never once asked for a doctor. Mrs. Barlow announced to anyone within hearing that I was “too thin and too sharp, but useful.” Clara Evans’s infection began to settle after a few days. Mrs. Ellis survived surgery, feverish and weak, but alive enough to curse softly when Mary tried to feed her broth.
I slept in fragments.
The city would quiet, my body would fail at last, and then some sound would tear through the thin walls of Mrs. Hodge’s boarding house. A shout, or a slammed door. A man laughing too loudly in the street followed by a motorcar backfiring. Sometimes there were gunshots. Far off most nights. Close enough on others that even Mrs. Hodge paused in the hallway with her candle held still.
I smoked more than I admitted to anyone.
My journal filled.
19th March, 1921. Birmingham coughs in its sleep.
21st March, 1921. Mary says I look less like I’m planning my escape. Edith says this is because I now look too tired to manage one.
22nd March, 1921. Charles would have been twenty-six next month. I remembered while dressing a burn on a child’s hand and had to ask Mary to pass me gauze twice because I could not remember the word.
24th March, 1921. John Shelby has not appeared again. This seems wise of him.
I told myself I did not look for flat caps when walking past certain streets.
Then, on a Thursday evening after nearly two weeks of work, Mary threw my coat at me.
I was sitting in the changing room, rubbing the heel of my hand into the knot at the back of my neck while Edith untied her apron beside me. The day had been long, wet, and full of infected lungs. My head hurt from carbolic and too little sleep.
“Put that on,” Mary said.
I caught the coat before it hit the floor. “Why?”
“Because we’re going out.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even ask where.”
“I found it unnecessary.”
Edith smiled faintly at her locker.
Mary planted both hands on her hips. “You cannot go from hospital to boarding house to hospital until you die.”
“That sounds efficient.”
“That sounds miserable.”
“I’m fond of routine.”
“You’re fond of hiding inside it.”
I looked at her.
Mary’s expression softened, though she did not apologize. I suspected she was the sort who saved apologies for actual wounds.
“It’s one drink,” she said. “Maybe two if the first doesn’t kill us. Harrison and Peter from cleaning are coming.”
“That is meant to persuade me?”
“They’re harmless.”
“Men described as harmless rarely are.”
“Harrison’s so nervous around women he apologised to a mop yesterday. Peter thinks charm means having both eyebrows intact. You’ll be safe.”
Edith closed her locker. “She’s going to keep asking.”
“I know.”
“She once asked Matron to come dancing.”
Mary lifted her chin. “And one day she’ll say yes.”
“The day after judgment.”
“Fine.” Mary looked at me again. “Come out because I’m asking, because you’ve earned an evening where nobody bleeds on you, and because if I have to listen to Harrison talk about floor polish without another woman beside me, I may commit a crime.”
I sighed.
Mary smiled before I answered. “That’s yes.”
“That was air leaving my body.”
“That’s how yes begins.”
I should have refused. I knew that. My room waited with its candle, its desk, its photograph turned face-down because some nights I could not bear Charles looking young while I got older without him. My books waited. My journal waited. A cigarette by the window waited.
I was tired of things waiting.
“One drink,” I said.
Mary clapped once.
Edith looked at me as if I had chosen poorly, though not without sympathy. “Don’t let her order anything sweet. She has no judgment.”
“I have joy,” Mary said.
“You have a fondness for syrup.”
“Same thing after dark.”
We left the hospital as the evening settled thick over the streets. Rain had fallen earlier and left the cobbles slick. Lamps glowed in puddles. Men in work clothes moved toward pubs in small groups, hunched and hungry for warmth, beer, noise, anything that let the day loosen its grip on their backs.
Harrison and Peter were waiting near the side gate.
I had seen them often enough in corridors, pushing buckets, scrubbing floors, carrying away the evidence of illness with the quiet dignity of men paid poorly for work no hospital could survive without. Harrison was tall and narrow, with sandy hair, ears that turned red when Mary said his name, and hands chapped from soap. Peter was shorter, dark-eyed, and handsome in a way he seemed painfully aware of. He leaned against the gate as if posing for a portrait nobody had commissioned.
“Nurses,” Peter said, sweeping off his cap.
Mary looked at him. “Don’t start.”
“I was being polite.”
“You were being theatrical.”
Harrison smiled at me nervously. “Evening, Nurse Allen.”
“Margaret, if we’re outside the hospital.”
His ears reddened at once. “Margaret. Right.”
Peter’s gaze moved over me, curious but not vulgar enough to make me regret coming. “London nurse joins us at last.”
“For one drink.”
“That’s how many good evenings start.”
“It is also how many mistakes start.”
He grinned. “Depends on the drink.”
Mary hooked her arm through mine before I could reconsider. “Come on. Garrison’s not far.”
“The Garrison?” I asked.
Harrison glanced at Mary.
I felt it. The small exchange. The way Peter looked down the street and then back with too much casualness.
Mary kept walking. “It’s a pub.”
“There are many pubs.” I tried with my voice small.
“This one’s lively.”
“That’s an evasive answer.” Peter noticed it
“It’s local.”
“Mary.”
She sighed. “I know what you're thinking. It’s Shelby.”
My steps slowed.
Peter, walking backward ahead of us, lifted both hands. “Harmless if you don’t owe money.”
“That’s the standard?” I asked.
“In Small Heath, yes.”
Mary squeezed my arm. “We can go elsewhere.”
I thought of John Shelby outside the hospital gates, tipping his cap as if he had not belonged to a family people lowered their voices to name.
“No,” I said. “The Garrison is fine.”
Mary looked at me with open suspicion. “That sounded too brave.”
“I’m told Birmingham doesn’t reward softness.”
“That was Matron. She says things like that because she eats nails for breakfast.”
We turned another corner, and the Garrison came into view.
It was warmer-looking than the street deserved. Amber light spilled from its windows onto the wet pavement, cut by moving shadows inside. The sign above the door was simple letters spelling its name. Laughter rolled out each time someone entered or left, along with smoke, beer, and a burst of piano that stumbled into song before being swallowed by voices.
At first glance, it looked harmless.
That was the most dangerous thing about it.
Inside, heat struck my face. The pub was crowded, thick with men in caps and women with flushed cheeks, factory workers, bookmakers, girls laughing too loudly, old men hunched over pints as if each glass held a private treaty. Cigarette smoke hung low enough to sting the eyes. Somewhere near the back, a piano fought for survival beneath singing voices.
Mary guided us to the bar with the confidence of someone who knew where to place her feet in any room.
Harry, the barman, according to Peter’s whisper, looked us over and gave Mary a nod.
“Usual?”
“Not tonight.” Mary turned to me. “What are you drinking?”
I looked at the bottles behind the bar. “Whiskey.”
Peter’s brows went up. “Straight in, then.”
“Irish,” I said to the barman. “Please.”
Harry’s mouth twitched. “You hear that, boys? London wants her drink the best way.”
A few men at the bar glanced over.
I looked at Harry. “London can hear as well.”
Mary made a small strangled sound beside me. Harry laughed and reached for a bottle. “Irish it is.”
The glass came small, the whiskey gold and sharp-smelling. I lifted it, breathed once, and took a mouthful.
It burned beautifully.
My eyes watered as I refused to cough.
Peter watched with admiration. “Bloody hell.”
Mary patted my arm. “There’s a girl.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“There’s a woman, then.”
Harrison, who had ordered beer and seemed unsure whether to hold it or apologize for it, leaned close enough to be heard over the noise. “Do you like Birmingham any better now?”
I glanced around. A man shouted at the piano player. Someone laughed near the fireplace. A woman in a green dress slapped a hand away from her waist without missing a note of whatever song she was singing.
“I like the whiskey.”
“That’s a start.”
Peter rested one elbow on the bar. “And the company?”
“The company has yet to prove themselves.”
He grinned, emboldened. “You always this hard to impress?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’d hate easy work.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Peter, she stitched a man’s arm while insulting him last week. Don’t start battles you can’t afford.”
“I’m not starting a battle. I’m offering peace.”
“With your face?” Harrison muttered.
Peter looked wounded. “My face has done well for me.”
“Your face got you slapped by Annie from laundry.”
“She misunderstood me.”
“She understood enough.”
For the first time that evening, I laughed without catching myself first. The sound left me before I could inspect it. Small, surprised, entirely mine.
Mary looked pleased enough to be irritating.
“There she is,” she said.
“I was here already.”
“No. That was the hospital version.”
“There are versions?”
“At least four.”
“That seems excessive.”
Peter leaned closer. “What’s this version called?”
“Tired,” I said.
“Pretty name.”
Harrison laughed into his beer.
The whiskey settled warm in my stomach. I had not realized how cold I had been until that heat began to spread. Around us, the pub loosened in degrees. Men sang with arms thrown over shoulders. A woman danced between two tables, skirt swaying, cheeks pink. Coins clattered. Glasses struck wood. The whole room breathed smoke and noise and something close to life.
I had forgotten pubs could feel like that.
Before France, Charles and I had gone dancing once in London. He had stepped on my foot twice and blamed the floor both times. I had laughed so hard my side hurt. He had looked at me afterward as if the sight of me happy had startled him.
The memory came, but gently for once.
I took another sip of whiskey.
Peter noticed the shift. “Do you dance, Margaret Allen?”
Mary groaned. “Don’t.”
I looked at him. “Rarely.”
“That’s almost yes.”
“Everyone in Birmingham hears what they want, it's impressive, truly.”
“Only way to survive.” He held out his hand. “One song.”
“No.” I said hiding behind my whiskey.
“One terrible song.”
“No.”
“One half-terrible song.”
Harrison shook his head. “Leave the woman be.”
Mary watched me carefully, perhaps expecting refusal, perhaps hoping I would surprise her.
The piano changed tune. Something quicker. Rough at the edges, easy enough for drunk feet to follow.
I looked at Peter’s hand.
A sensible woman would refuse. A grieving woman might refuse. A nurse who had slept poorly and worked herself to the bone all week should certainly refuse.
I placed my glass on the bar.
“One song,” I said.
Peter’s face lit up. “I knew London had mercy.”
“Don’t waste it.”
He led me into the cleared space near the piano, where three couples were already moving with more enthusiasm than grace. Peter could dance better than I expected. He held me correctly, close enough for the music, not close enough to make a point of it. I let him turn me once, then again, skirt brushing my calves.
For a few minutes, I allowed the room to blur.
Not disappear. I knew better than to ask that much from whiskey and music. But blur, yes. The hospital loosened from my shoulders. Mrs. Hodge’s room grew smaller in the distance. France retreated to some corner where it could watch without speaking. I followed Peter’s steps, corrected him once when he nearly led me into a chair, and laughed when he bowed in apology with ridiculous seriousness.
“There,” he said over the music. “You can have fun.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Secret’s safe.”
“It won’t be if you keep looking so proud.”
He spun me a little too sharply.
I stepped back, caught myself, and collided against someone solid.
A hand closed around my elbow. Firm, quick, and just enough to steady me, not enough to restrain.
“Careful,” a familiar voice said.
I turned.
John Shelby smiled down at me.
Of course he did.
The pub seemed to tilt its attention before anyone moved. It was subtle at first. A conversation near the bar thinning out, or a pair of men at the table behind John sitting a little straighter. Mary’s face across the room changing so fast it almost frightened me.
John’s hand remained at my elbow.
I looked at it.
He let go at once and lifted both hands. “Didn’t want you falling.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“And dancing with Peter from cleaning part of your plan?”
Peter, still beside me, went stiff enough to count as furniture. Coward.
“You know Peter?” I asked.
John’s grin widened. “Everyone knows Peter.”
Peter swallowed. “Evening, John.”
“Peter.”
There was no threat in the way John said it. That made it worse, somehow. The absence of threat had its own authority.
Two men stood behind him.
The first was broad, older, with a moustache and a face flushed from drink or temper. His eyes moved over me with open irritation, taking in the uniform coat beneath my evening one, my London posture, Peter’s hand hovering uselessly nearby. Arthur, I guessed before anyone said his name. Mary had warned me in pieces. Worse when drunk.
He looked as though he was never very far from it.
The second man stood half a step back, and the room changed around him.
He did not need to be the tallest. He was not the loudest. He did not push forward or smile like John. He simply stood there in a dark suit and flat cap, cigarette between his fingers, pale eyes fixed on me with an attention so complete it felt almost physical.
Thomas Shelby.
I knew before John turned his head.
“Tommy,” John said, and there was something in his voice now. Amusement, yes, but caution threaded through it. “This is the London nurse.”
Thomas Shelby’s gaze did not move from mine.
“The one from the station,” he said.
His voice was quiet.
That was the first thing I noticed. In a room built from shouting, he made quiet do the work.
My pulse gave one hard beat.
I hated that.
“The station has many people in it,” I said.
John laughed under his breath.
Tommy took a drag from his cigarette, eyes still on me. “Not many arrive and insult my brother before tea.”
“I didn’t know he was your brother.”
“Would that have changed anything?”
“No.”
John laughed properly then. “Told you.”
Arthur’s mouth twisted. “She’s got a tongue on her.”
I looked at him. “I was born with one.”
Mary appeared at my side before Arthur could answer, breathless without looking like she had hurried.
“There you are,” she said brightly, too brightly. “Margaret, I think we ought to get back. Early shift tomorrow, remember?”
“I remember.”
Her hand touched my wrist in warning.
Peter stepped away as though grateful to be released from the center of the room.
John looked at Mary. “Nurse Doyle.”
“John Shelby.”
“You keeping her out of trouble?”
“I’m trying to.”
“I don’t require keeping,” I said.
Mary’s fingers tightened once.
Tommy’s eyes flicked to her hand on my wrist, then back to me. He noticed everything. I felt that at once and disliked how quickly I knew it.
“You work at the hospital,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Matron Hawthorne still terrifying everyone?”
“Only those with sense.”
A faint movement touched his mouth. Almost a smile, if one were charitable.
Arthur snorted. “You always answer back?”
“When spoken to.”
“That’s answer enough.”
I turned to him fully. “Then you may stop speaking.”
The air changed, as if I committed a crime. Even John went still.
Mary whispered my name in warning, “Margaret.”
Arthur’s face darkened all at once. “You know who you’re talking to?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But Mary has been trying to educate me.”
John rubbed a hand over his mouth, poorly hiding amusement.
Tommy did not laugh. He watched me like one might watch a match burn close to spilled spirit.
“I’m Arthur Shelby,” the older man said.
“Margaret Allen.”
“I didn’t fucking ask.” Arthur snared as he took one step forward.
Tommy spoke before Mary could drag me bodily toward the door.
“Arthur.”
One word. Low and full of authority.
Arthur stopped.
It was not obedience exactly. It was habit sharpened by family and command. He looked at Tommy, jaw working tight, then stepped back with a curse under his breath.
Tommy’s gaze returned to me. “You’re brave for someone new to Small Heath.”
“I’m tired. People often mistake the two.”
There. That faint almost-smile again.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Tired.”
“Yes.”
“Then why come to the Garrison?”
I could have said Mary asked me. I could have said I only came for one drink, or that I did not know the place belonged to his family, though by then I suspected every chair and shadow in it had some tie to the Shelby name.
Instead, I looked around the pub. Saw the smoke, tables, the men pretending not to listen to our exchange, and the women watching with sharper eyes than any of them. The piano player holding his hands above the keys, uncertain whether music was allowed to continue.
“Because hospitals are full of the dying,” I said. “I wanted a room full of people pretending they aren’t.”
All three brothers had a different reaction to my words. John’s expression shifted into understanding. Arthur’s irritation faltered for half a second, confused by honesty where insult should have been.
Tommy grew very still.
His eyes did something then. Lowered, briefly, to the glass of whiskey I had left at the bar. Back to my face, just past the tiredness, perhaps. Past the sharpness I always show. Men looked at women all the time, but this was not quite that. He looked as if he was reading the cost of every word and finding the numbers familiar.
“You served,” he said.
“I nursed.”
“In France.”
“Yes.”
The pub around us was too loud and too quiet at once.
Mary’s hand left my wrist. Maybe because she trusted me, or maybe because she knew pulling me away now would make things worse.
Tommy lowered his cigarette. “Then you’ve earned your whiskey.”
“I paid for it.”
“I didn’t say you hadn’t.”
Strong personalities met strangely. That was my thought, sudden and clear. Some people argued to overpower. Some other argued to test the walls. Thomas Shelby, from what little I could see, did neither. He placed a sentence down and waited to see whether I stepped around it or cut through.
I did not yet know what that made him.
Dangerous seemed too simple.
Peter, poor man, cleared his throat. “We were only dancing.”
Arthur looked at him. “No one asked you.”
Peter shut his mouth immediately.
I glanced at him, then at Arthur. “He was just stating the fact.”
Arthur blinked. “What?”
“We were dancing. He asked, I agreed. Nobody committed a crime unless dancing has become illegal in Birmingham since I arrived.”
John let out a delighted sound. “Christ, Tommy, can we keep her?”
Mary closed her eyes.
Tommy looked at John. “No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Something warm and ridiculous sparked under my ribs. Amusement, mixed with the whiskey and lack of sleep.
“Wise,” I said. “I’m expensive to maintain.”
John grinned. “Knew it.”
Arthur muttered, “This is fucking stupid.”
Mary seized the opening. “Right. We’re leaving.”
“Already?” John asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s had half a drink.”
“She has an early shift.”
Tommy looked at my almost untouched whiskey on the bar. “Finish it.”
Mary stiffened by my side and I looked at him.
It was not quite an order. Too quiet for that. Too sure of itself to be anything else.
“I don’t take instruction off duty,” I said.
His eyes held mine.
“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you do.”
Then he stepped to the bar, picked up my glass, and brought it to me.
He simply held it out with the same expression he wore the whole night.
The room watched.
So did I.
His fingers were clean but scarred faintly along the knuckles. His cuff sat neat beneath his jacket. The cigarette smoke clung to him, but beneath it was another scent, soap perhaps, whiskey, cold air from outside. His eyes were paler up close. Blue, yes, though blue felt insufficient. There were men who wore their wounds loudly. Thomas Shelby kept his behind stillness, and for some reason that unsettled me more.
I took the glass from him without letting our fingers touch.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome, Margaret Allen.”
My name in his mouth sounded different than when John said it. Less teasing, more deliberate. As if he had placed it somewhere in his mind already and meant to remember where.
“You know everyone around here?” I asked.
“Most.”
“And those you don’t?”
“I learn.”
Air left me in the form of a small laugh “That sounds exhausting.”
“It has uses.” Thomas' eyes stayed glued to mine.
“I imagine it does.”
Arthur watched us with open dislike now. John watched as if he had discovered a new form of entertainment. Mary watched with the expression of a woman calculating how many exits stood between me and disaster.
I drank the rest of the whiskey.
All of it.
It burned hotter this time, or that was only because Thomas Shelby stood close enough to notice whether I flinched.
I didn’t.
His mouth moved again. There and gone. “Irish aye?!”
“The best kind. Harry has a talent.”
“Harry pours what he’s told.”
“Useful man.”
“Sometimes.”
I handed the empty glass to the bar without looking away from Tommy. “Good evening, Mr. Shelby.”
John made a small noise at the formality of it.
Tommy inclined his head. “Nurse Allen.”
Mary caught my arm then, less warning now and more necessity, and pulled me toward the door before I could say anything else unwise.
Harrison and Peter followed fast. Peter looked as though he had aged three years during one song. Harrison kept glancing over his shoulder.
The cold outside struck me across the face.
I welcomed it.
Mary did not speak until we were half a street away from the Garrison. Then she stopped, turned to me, and pressed both hands over her own mouth as if holding in either laughter or a scream.
“What?” I asked.
She dropped her hands. “What?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Margaret.”
“Yes?”
“You told Arthur Shelby to stop speaking.”
“He was unpleasant.”
“You told Arthur Shelby to stop speaking.” She repeated as if it was any different from the first time.
“So you’ve said.”
Peter, behind us, let out a nervous laugh. “I thought he was going to knock me through the piano.”
“Why would he knock you through the piano?” I asked.
“Because I was standing closest.”
“That’s poor reasoning.”
“That’s Arthur.”
Harrison shook his head slowly. “Tommy stopped him.”
Mary looked at me when Harrison said it.
I looked back.
The street seemed colder now. The whiskey sat in my blood, warm and bold, making my fingers tingle inside my gloves.
“He seems very used to stopping him,” I said.
“He is,” Mary replied.
“And John?”
“John likes trouble.”
“So he likes himself then.”
Peter laughed before fear could stop him.
Mary pointed a finger at me. “You are going to get yourself killed with that mouth.”
“Possibly. Though at least Birmingham will have been warned.”
She stared at me a second longer, then laughed despite herself. The sound cracked the tension enough for all of us to begin walking again.
But I could still feel the Garrison behind me.
That room with thick smoke. That pale gaze fixed on mine with unsettling patience.
Thomas Shelby had known my name before I offered it. He knew the hospital, knew Matron Hawthorne, knew enough of me to say I had served before I wished to speak of it. Mary had said he owned enough of the men walking the streets. I felt that truth tonight.
Perhaps some men did not need to own a place in order to make it answer when they entered.
At Mrs. Hodge’s door, Mary turned to me with a look that had lost most of its laughter.
“Promise me something.”
“I dislike promising before I know the terms.”
“Try.”
I waited.
“If John speaks to you again, be careful. If Arthur speaks to you, find me. If Tommy speaks to you...” She paused.
The pause said more than the warning.
“If Thomas Shelby speaks to me?” I asked.
Mary’s eyes searched mine. “Remember he does nothing without deciding why first.”
The whiskey warmth faded a little.
I nodded.
Mary seemed unsatisfied, but she let me go.
Upstairs, my room was cold and exactly as I had left it. Charles’s photograph lay face-down in the drawer. My journal waited on the desk. The city muttered outside the window, softer tonight, though no kinder.
I removed my gloves slowly.
My hands were steady.
I lit a cigarette and opened the window either way. Smoke drifted into Birmingham’s smoke until mine became impossible to separate from the rest of it.
After a while, I sat and opened the journal.
26th March, 1921.
Went to the Garrison with Mary, Harrison, and Peter. Drank Irish whiskey. Danced once. Met John Shelby again. Met Arthur Shelby and lived, despite speaking unwisely.
I paused, pen hovering above the page.
Then I wrote:
Met Thomas Shelby.
The line looked bare.
I stared at it for some time.
There were many things I could have added. Quiet voice. Pale eyes. Dangerous stillness. Knows too much. Watches as if waiting for the blood to show through the bandage.
Instead, I wrote only one more sentence.
I think Mary is frightened of him.
I closed the journal before I could add that I was not sure I was.
Outside, somewhere in Small Heath, a man laughed, a door slammed, and the night carried on with all its ordinary violence.
I finished my cigarette by the window.
Sleep did not come easily.
It rarely did.
But when I finally lay down, the last thing I saw before closing my eyes was not France. It was not Charles, though guilt came soft and sharp at the edges when I admitted it.
It was Thomas Shelby standing in smoke, holding out my whiskey as if he already knew I would take it.
THOMAS POV
John was right, she was stunning and stubborn all at once. So Thomas watched her from across the room quietly.
That was the first mistake most men made about him. They assumed he only noticed what he looked at directly. They assumed quiet meant absence. They mistook stillness for disinterest, and by the time they realised stillness could be a blade held flat against the palm, it was usually too late to stop bleeding.
He had seen her at the bar first.
London coat. Nurse’s posture. Gloves still on though the Garrison had enough heat and smoke inside to soften paint. She stood with Mary Doyle and the two hospital cleaners, Harrison and Peter, as if she had agreed to come and already regretted the public nature of the decision. Her hair was pinned with care, though a few darker strands had escaped around her face from the damp outside. Her skin held the tired pallor of someone sleeping badly and refusing to discuss it. Her mouth was made for refusing things.
And then she ordered whiskey.
Irish. Just like his.
Tommy had been standing near the side door with Arthur and John, speaking to a man from Camden about a shipment of cigarettes and the cost of moving men through London without troubling the wrong police sergeant. He had kept half an ear on the conversation and the rest on the pub, as usual. The Garrison was useful because men forgot who might be listening once drink loosened their teeth.
Then Harry the barman laughed and said something to her.
Tommy looked over.
The woman looked back at Harry with no smile at all and answered him as if every man in the pub was a schoolboy daring her to blink.
John had snorted into his glass.
“That’s her,” he said. “The nurse from the station.”
Arthur barely looked. “What nurse?”
“The one I told you about.”
Arthur drank, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You tell us about a lot of women, Johnny boy.”
“Not like this one.”
Tommy’s eyes stayed on her.
She took the whiskey and drank it as if the burn was something she knew how to use. It hit her. He saw it in the faint tightening around her eyes, the stillness at her throat. She did not cough. Pride, then. Or practice. Perhaps both.
“What’s her name?” Tommy asked.
John smiled at him. “Margaret, London girl, served in France.”
“You got all that walking her to the hospital?”
“Got more than that.”
Arthur made a noise. “Course you did.”
“She was lost.”
“Was she really?” Tommy asked quietly.
John looked at him. “Kind of”
“Because women like that don’t admit when they are.”
John’s smile widened. “You’d like her.”
Tommy lifted his cigarette and took a slow drag. “I know.”
Arthur looked between them, irritated already and not sure why. “We working or watching John’s new nurse?”
“We’re working,” Tommy said.
He returned his attention to the man from Camden, listened to three more minutes of prices, risk, routes, and promises. He spoke little. Asked two questions. Corrected one figure. Decided the man was either careless or lying, and either way would need watching.
Still, his eyes found her again.
Peter from cleaning was leaning too close now, smiling with all the confidence of a man who had never had to bury a friend in mud. Margaret answered him with a dry mouth and a colder gaze, yet she did not step away. Mary watched the exchange with the look of a woman standing beside an open flame and hoping the curtains did not catch.
Then Peter asked her to dance.
Tommy knew because her face changed.
Only a little.
The refusal came first. He saw that in her shoulders, in the set of her chin, in the hand that hovered near the glass as if work might still call her back if she reached for it. Then something loosened. A tired woman choosing one small bit of danger because the safer room had become unbearable.
She placed the glass down.
One song, he read from the movement of her lips.
John leaned near Tommy’s shoulder. “Told you.”
Tommy said nothing.
She danced better than Peter deserved.
That was his next thought, and it arrived with enough force to annoy him.
Margaret did not dance as if she wanted the room to admire her. She danced like someone remembering a body she had neglected. Her steps were careful at first, then surer. Peter turned her too quickly once and she corrected the movement with a look that made him laugh and lower his head as if apologising to royalty. Her skirt moved around her calves. Her cheeks took on a little colour from whiskey and heat.
Beautiful, Tommy thought.
The word came clean and unwelcome.
He had seen beautiful women before. He had had them look at him across pubs, parlours, betting rooms, racecourses. He had known beauty in expensive fabric and cheap perfume, in Irish green eyes behind a bar, in silk gloves hiding trembling fingers. Beauty rarely surprised him anymore. Men with money and violence saw too much of it offered at the wrong price.
This was different enough to disturb him.
Margaret Allen was beautiful in a way that seemed unbothered by whether he noticed. Green, tired eyes. A mouth too sharp to be sweet. A face shaped by grief before age had had the courtesy to get there first. She held herself together with pins and nerve, and Tommy knew, with the sudden certainty he trusted more than evidence, that if those pins were ever removed she would come apart silently.
That interested him.
Silence always did.
Peter spun her wrong.
She stepped back, heel catching against the uneven floor, and collided with John before she could fall. John steadied her by the elbow.
The room noticed because John was John.
Then the room noticed because Thomas Shelby moved.
He did not move far. He only stepped in behind his brother with Arthur on his left, and the noise nearest them thinned at once. Men looked into their glasses. A woman near the piano turned her head, then pretended to be invested in her cigarette. The piano player softened his hands over the keys, uncertain.
Margaret turned and saw John.
No fear first.
That made Tommy want to smile.
“Careful,” John said. “Didn’t want you falling.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she answered.
“And dancing with Peter from cleaning part of your plan?”
“You know Peter?”
She was quick. Not showy with her words. Not performing wit for approval. Her words came edged because she had learned somewhere that edges kept hands away.
Then John turned with a grin meant entirely to irritate. “Tommy, this is the London nurse.”
Margaret’s eyes came to him.
There it was.
The small, live thing in the air.
Tommy had felt it before in battle, though that was a poor comparison and he hated that his mind reached for France so quickly. He had felt it when a shell landed close enough to steal the sound from the world before the blast came rushing back. A pause. A charge. The body understanding before the mind had bothered with language.
She looked at him as if she knew he was dangerous and had decided danger was too common to impress her.
“The one from the station,” Tommy said.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “The station has many people in it.”
John laughed under his breath. Arthur shifted beside Tommy, already disliking her because she had not lowered her gaze.
Tommy took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke leave slow.
“Not many arrive and insult my brother before tea.”
“I didn’t know he was your brother.”
“Would that have changed anything?”
“No.”
John enjoyed that too much. Arthur did not enjoy it at all.
“She’s got a tongue on her,” Arthur said.
Margaret looked at Arthur. “I was born with one.”
Tommy felt John go still. Felt the pub go still with him.
Arthur could take a joke when drunk, depending on the man making it and the hour of night. He did not like unfamiliar women making him feel stupid in his own pub. His anger had been too close to the surface since France and closer still since the business began growing beyond what Arthur could beat into obedience with his fists.
Tommy watched Margaret watch him.
She knew enough to understand Arthur was a threat. And she did not step back.
That was courage or exhaustion. Tommy suspected she had a great deal of both.
“You always answer back?” Arthur asked.
“When spoken to.”
“That’s answer enough.”
“Then you may stop speaking.”
Mary Doyle appeared at Margaret’s side, face bright with fear disguised as cheer. Peter lost colour. Harrison looked as if he wished the floor would open and take him before Arthur did.
Arthur took one step.
Tommy said his name.
“Arthur.”
A clear message of: Don’t do that.
Arthur stopped, breathing through his nose, jaw set like he had a knife between his teeth. Tommy did not look away from him until he stepped back. Family was a language. Arthur knew that tone. John knew it too, though John spent more of his life laughing at it.
Tommy turned back to Margaret.
She was looking at him now.
He liked that too much.
“You’re brave for someone new to Small Heath,” he said.
“I’m tired. People often mistake the two.”
There were phrases men brought back from France without knowing it. Little bits of truth wrapped in ordinary speech. Tommy heard one then. He saw it in her face too, in the guarded flicker after she spoke, as if she had given more than she meant to.
“Are you?” he asked.
“Am I what?”
“Tired.”
“Yes.”
“Then why come to the Garrison?”
There were several answers available to her. He could see them moving behind her eyes. Polite ones. Safe ones. A joke, perhaps. She had a talent for making a blade look like a hatpin.
She looked around the pub instead.
All the elements: Men, women,the piano player frozen over his keys. The room pretending not to listen to every breath between them.
“Because hospitals are full of the dying,” she said. “I wanted a room full of people pretending they aren’t.”
Something moved under Tommy’s ribs.
A trench board shifting in mud or a candle flame guttering inside a tunnel. Grace’s voice from an old room, singing while he tried to remember what quiet had felt like before guns learned his name.
He hated the precision of Margaret’s answer.
“You served,” he said.
“I nursed.”
“In France.”
“Yes.”
Before this night he had already known pieces already, her name, London, war, nurse, Birmingham City Hospital, boarding house run by Hodge two streets from the edge of Watery Lane, mother still alive in London, father gone, partner dead, Charles something… Tommy had not yet confirmed the surname, but he would.
He knew facts the way other men knew prayers.
Facts kept men alive.
Facts also told him this woman was lying every time she looked steady.
“Then you’ve earned your whiskey,” he said.
“I paid for it.”
“I didn’t say you hadn’t.”
There it was again. The spark.
No one else would call it that yet. John might later, if he had enough drink in him and the poor sense to say it aloud. Mary Doyle was already watching Tommy as if she wanted to pull Margaret behind the nearest wall and hide her from the whole Shelby family.
Smart woman, Mary Doyle.
He stepped to the bar and picked up Margaret’s glass.
The pub watched him take it to her.
He did it because he wanted to see whether she would accept something from his hand. Simple as that. Men told themselves stories about power. Tommy preferred experiments.
He held it out.
Margaret looked at the glass first, then at him. She understood the room. She understood an offer could be an order if made by the right man. Her fingers came up slowly, gloved, careful not to touch his.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome, Margaret.”
Her name suited her. Formal, clean, hard around the edges. A name that stood upright even when the woman wearing it had not slept.
“You know everyone around here?” she asked.
“Most.”
“And those you don’t?”
“I learn.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It has uses.”
“I imagine it does.”
She drank the whiskey in one go because she knew he was watching. Pride again flared in her eyes.
Also a want, perhaps, though too early for the word. Interest, certainly. On her side as well as his. There was an awareness in the way she held his gaze after the glass emptied. No simper. No invitation laid cheaply across the bar. She seemed almost angry with herself for not looking away first.
Tommy knew that feeling.
“Good evening, Mr. Shelby,” she said.
“Nurse Allen.”
Mary took her arm and led her out while there was still room to leave gracefully. Harrison followed with his head down. Peter trailed behind like a man grateful his face remained attached to his skull.
John watched the door shut behind them and whistled softly.
Arthur slammed his glass on the nearest table. “Fuck me, Tommy. She talks like that in here once more, I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Tommy said.
Arthur turned on him. “She made a mug of me.”
“You did that yourself.”
John laughed. “He’s right.”
“Shut up, John.”
John leaned against the bar, delighted and loose with it. “She told you to stop speaking.”
“I said shut up.”
“She told you very politely.”
Arthur lunged half a step, and John only grinned wider because brotherly stupidity did not know when to fear a punch. Tommy moved past them both.
“Private room,” he said.
The words ended the moment.
Arthur cursed, grabbed his drink of choice, and followed. John took one last look at the door Margaret had gone through before coming after them. Tommy noticed. Tommy noticed everything tonight, which annoyed him more than usual.
The private room behind the Garrison was quieter, though quiet in the Garrison always had noise pressed against the walls. Voices through wood. Piano starting up again with uncertain cheer. Glasses clinking. Men laughing harder now that the Shelby brothers had left the main room and allowed breath to return.
Tommy took his seat at the table. Arthur dropped heavily into a chair opposite him. John remained standing for a moment, restless, then sat sideways with one arm over the back.
On the table lay the business that had brought them here before Margaret Allen changed the temperature of the pub. Papers., names, figures, a map of London folded twice, a list of men who could be paid, and a shorter list of men who would need frightening before payment became an option.
Tommy lit another cigarette.
Arthur drank some more. “We talking about the London thing or John’s nurse?”
“She’s not my nurse,” John said.
Arthur scoffed. “You walked her from the station like a lost puppy.”
“She had a heavy suitcase.”
“Christ, he’s in love.”
John threw a matchstick at him. “Fuck off, I have a wife and too many kids to care about.”
Tommy looked at John through the smoke. “You told me she was difficult.”
“She is.”
“You failed to say she was clever.”
John shrugged, though his face betrayed him. “Thought you’d see that.”
“I did.”
Arthur leaned forward. “Can we not? She’s a nurse. London nurse. Mouthy as sin. Good for her. We’ve got business.”
Tommy tapped ash into the tray. “Then talk business.”
Arthur looked at the map as if he wanted it to confess on its own. “Camden man wants more money.”
“Camden man will get what we agreed.”
“They say London police aren’t like Birmingham police.”
“No,” Tommy said. “They’re more expensive.”
John leaned in now, boyish amusement settling into something sharper. “And Ada?”
The name sat heavier between the three brothers. Tommy’s eyes went to the map.
Ada was in London with Freddie and the baby, living in a kind of peace she had fought them all to get. Peace, Tommy had learned, was often only a room nobody had entered yet with muddy, heavy boots.
“We keep her away from it,” Arthur said at once.
John looked at him. “How?”
“By not doing business near her.”
“London isn’t a parlour, Arthur. We start moving there, people talk. People look for leverage.”
Arthur’s face hardened. “Nobody touches Ada.”
“No one touches Ada if we know they’re coming,” Tommy said.
The brothers went quiet.
Tommy unfolded the map fully and placed two fingers near Camden, then moved them south. “We don’t use her address. We don’t visit in groups. No Shelby cars on her street. No men waiting outside where neighbours can count caps and tell stories.”
Arthur shook his head. “She won’t like being watched.”
“She doesn’t need to like it.”
“She’ll know.”
“Probably.”
John rubbed his jaw. “Polly’ll have something to say.”
“Polly always has something to say.”
“And Freddie?”
Arthur’s lip curled. “Freddie can choke.”
Tommy’s voice stayed calm. “Freddie’s a father now. That changes where a man keeps his courage.”
Arthur made a dismissive sound, but he did not argue.
Tommy looked at John. “You speak to our man at Euston. Quietly. He gets eyes on movement in and out. No contact with Ada unless there’s danger.”
John nodded.
“Arthur, you speak to Camden again. Tell them the money stands. Tell them if they raise the price once more, I’ll assume it's been bought to waste my time.”
Arthur smiled for the first time that evening. “And if it has?”
“Then bring me a fucking name.”
That satisfied the older brother.
For several minutes, they worked. Routes mapped out, amount of money to be used, police to be bought, pubs they can buy, men who could be trusted because they feared the right things, men who could not be trusted because they liked hearing themselves speak. Tommy listened, adjusted, decided. The London business had to begin cleanly enough to look inevitable after the fact. No messy entrance. No unnecessary blood on the floor for newspapers to sniff at.
Still, part of him remained with the woman who had walked out of his pub with Mary Doyle’s hand around her arm.
Margaret Allen.
He did not like distractions.
He liked even less when a distraction presented itself as information he did not yet have.
Arthur noticed his silence first. Arthur was not stupid, despite what people took from his temper. He watched Tommy across the table and frowned.
“You still thinking about that nurse?”
Tommy turned a page. “Yes.”
John’s grin returned immediately. “Knew it.”
Arthur looked disgusted. “Why?”
“She works at the hospital.”
“So?”
“So hospitals hear things. Police wounds. Factory accidents. Men who talk under fever. Women who know who beat them and who paid for the doctor. Hospitals know more about this city than churches.”
John leaned back. “That why you’re thinking about her?”
Tommy looked at him.
John smiled because he knew the answer had teeth.
Arthur drank again. “She’ll be trouble.”
“Yes,” Tommy said.
There was no point denying that.
He could still see her in the smoke, chin lifted, whiskey burning down her throat. Too proud to flinch. Too tired to pretend innocence properly. Her beauty had caught him first, but beauty alone never held him. What held him was the way she spoke of dying people in a room full of drinkers and made the truth sound almost casual.
He wondered what Charles had been to her. Men left shapes behind when they died. Tommy knew that better than most. He wondered whether she slept with a photograph beside her bed. Wondered whether she woke reaching for cigarettes before she reached for prayer.
That thought irritated him.
It was too close to tenderness, and tenderness, for Tommy, had become a locked room since Grace took a ship to New York with his heart packed somewhere in her luggage.
Grace.
The name came less often now. When it came, it still cut clean. She had left the way people left when love was real but life had sharper teeth. New York had swallowed her. Or saved her. Tommy had never decided which version hurt less.
He had stopped waiting for letters he did not admit he wanted.
He had stopped imagining her voice in the Garrison.
Mostly.
Now a London nurse had walked in with war in her eyes and whiskey in her hand, and Tommy had felt something in himself stir awake like a thing he thought had died decently.
Arthur pushed his chair back. “I’m telling you, Tommy, keep John away from her. He gets daft around women with sharp mouths.”
John pointed at him. “I’m sitting right here.”
“Then hear it.”
“She’s not interested in me,” John said, with an honesty that surprised Tommy a little.
Arthur laughed. “That never stopped you before.”
John looked down at his drink, still smiling but quieter now. “She’s interesting, that’s all.”
“Boyish fascination,” Tommy said.
John looked at him. “And yours?”
Tommy held his brother’s gaze across the table.
The room seemed to still.
John, to his credit, did not look away. He had been a boy too long in many people’s minds. France had ruined that, fatherhood had changed it further, but John still carried a careless brightness around him when he could afford it. Tonight, that brightness had Margaret Allen’s shape.
Tommy leaned back. “Mine is my business.”
John’s mouth twitched. “Right.”
Arthur muttered, “Fucking hell.”
Tommy turned toward the door and raised his voice. “Jeremiah.”
A moment later, Jeremiah Jesus came in from the hall, hat in hand, eyes moving once across the brothers before settling on Tommy.
“Tom.”
“I need two men near Birmingham City Hospital. Different shifts, quiet. They watch the doors, the receiving entrance, anyone asking too much about staff.”
Jeremiah’s brows lifted slightly. “Trouble expected?”
“Trouble is always expected.”
Arthur watched him now, expression sharpening. “This about the London business?”
Tommy ignored the question. “Another man near Hodge’s boarding house. Across the street if possible. No standing under lamps like amateurs. No speaking to women going in or out. If Mary Doyle sees them, they move farther back.”
John sat up. “Tommy.”
Tommy looked at him. “What?”
“That’s where Margaret’s staying?”
“Yes.”
Arthur swore under his breath. “You already knew that?”
“I know where the nurses stay when they work in my city.”
“Your city,” Arthur said with mockery.
Tommy’s eyes stayed on Jeremiah. “No contact unless there’s need. If she’s followed, I hear. If trouble comes from Watery Lane toward that house, I hear. If police ask questions about her, I hear before the answer leaves anyone’s mouth.”
Jeremiah nodded slowly. “The girl from tonight?”
“Yes.”
John looked between them. His amusement had faded now, replaced by something more complicated. “She won’t like that.”
“She won’t know.”
“She’ll find out.”
Tommy took a drag from his cigarette. “Then I’ll hear about that too.”
Arthur shook his head. “You’ve lost your mind over a woman who told me to stop speaking.”
Tommy’s gaze cut to him. “You should have stopped sooner.”
John laughed once, despite the seriousness of the situation.
Arthur pointed at Tommy with his glass. “You want my opinion?”
“No.”
“You’re getting it.”
“No,” Tommy said again, firmer.
Arthur held the words in his mouth, then swallowed them with whiskey.
Jeremiah waited until the brothers’ silence settled. “Hospital and boarding house. Quiet men.”
“And good ones,” Tommy said. “No boys trying to impress anyone.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Jeremiah left.
The door shut behind him.
For a few seconds, only the muffled pub noise remained. The piano had found confidence again. Men sang badly. Life went on outside the private room because life always did, disrespectful as ever.
John was the first to speak.
“You protecting her because she’s useful or because she’s pretty?”
Tommy looked down at the map of London.
Margaret Allen was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. That was true enough to be useless. Beauty could be bought, stolen, married, ruined, buried. He had seen all of it. Protection did not come from beauty alone.
It came from interest.
And interest, once it took hold in Tommy Shelby, became action before most men had finished naming the feeling.
“She’s new,” he said.
Arthur snorted. “That’s your answer?”
“She’s new,” Tommy repeated. “She walked into the Garrison without knowing whose room she was entering. She works in a hospital that will see our men sooner or later. She lives close enough to Watery Lane for trouble to mistake her door.”
John studied him. “And?”
Tommy folded the map once.
“And I don’t like mistakes.”
Arthur leaned back with a laugh that held no humour. “Fuck me.”
John smiled into his drink. “She’ll eat you alive if she learns you put men outside her house.”
Tommy almost smiled.
He could imagine it. Margaret Allen at his door, tired eyes bright with anger, that London voice sharpened enough to open skin. He could imagine her calling him arrogant. Dangerous. Pleased with himself, perhaps, since she had already said it to John and seemed unlikely to waste a useful insult.
He found the thought more pleasant than wise.
“Then she’ll know where to find me,” Tommy said.
John shook his head, grinning now. “You do like her.”
Tommy’s eyes rose.
John’s grin softened, but he did not take it back.
Arthur missed the change. Arthur was still scowling at his glass, annoyed by London, women, business, and perhaps the entire arrangement of the modern world.
Tommy tapped ash into the tray and let his gaze drift toward the door.
Beyond it, the Garrison lived and smoked. Margaret Allen had gone back into the Birmingham night with Mary Doyle on one side and two harmless men behind her. She would return to the boarding house, he thought. She would likely write something down. Nurses did that. Women who survived things did that too, if they could bear having the truth in ink.
He wondered what she would write about him.
Then he wondered why he cared.
Grace had once told him there was a man inside him who wanted peace. She had said it like a promise. He had believed her because she had looked at him as if she could see that man clearly enough to call him out.
Then she left.
Peace, in Tommy’s experience, had poor staying power.
Margaret Allen had not looked at him as if she wanted to save him. That was the first sensible thing about her. She had looked at him as if she was deciding whether he deserved the inconvenience of her attention.
He liked that.
Arthur leaned over the table and dragged them back into business with a question about Camden. John argued. Tommy answered. Names moved. Money shifted. London waited.
But somewhere beneath the figures and routes, a new fact had placed itself in Tommy’s mind and refused to leave.
Margaret Allen.
A woman who told Arthur Shelby to stop speaking and drank from a glass Tommy Shelby placed in her hand.
He would learn the rest of her.
That was how interest became intention.
And intention, with Tommy, had always been the beginning of trouble.
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