THE WILDEST OF THEM ALL - a Peaky Blinders fanfiction
IN WHICH all sorts of things happen, at home and outside, every day, but Darcy doesn't recall having ever thought that in the life she had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's a...
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Everything had gone as planned; Darcy told Polly she'd be at Winnie's, Winnie told her Ma she'd be at Darcy's, the four of them met at the station and got on the train— they were in London by ten.
The train was very crowded, and Billy and Lawrence stood next to the girls, on the lookout, the whole way. They were afraid that someone might touch the two young ladies, but no one did, the faces of their escorts were too dangerous.
When they'd arrived at Paddington, Darcy swirled around and so did her faint blue dress, her chin up against the glass roof, her neck almost breaking for how far she turned her head. It really was a gold mine. And she remembered.
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Darcy ran away from the parish the second week she was brought there, to Birmingham. When they couldn't yet find her family, she lived there, temporarily, in the orphanage, run by the parish. Oh, how she hated those nuns, those so-called holy sisters, who beat her like rag doll when she was only a child. Yes, she was bad, yes, she did attack Sister Judith, the mightiest, and get her in the hospital, and yes, she did drive two other nuns mad, but only because they were awful.
One time, when it was the six o'clock mass and everyone was at the church, Darcy climbed through the pews and between the people's legs, and didn't stop running until she was at the station she remembered. The little girl got on a train of some sort, she didn't know where it went, but what she knew—, was that she was in the same extravagant place she was brought through from the many; Paddington.
Of course they'd get her, later. A five-year-old girl, alone in a big station with nothing but a shabby uniform, the coppers eventually caught her, and when she'd set eyes on the nuns who came to get her; she screamed and thrashed and kicked around, but to no avail.
A week later, she was standing on the Shelby doorstep covered in fading, yellow bruises and a deathly glower.
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Darcy wanted to go to an area, where she knew there would be wealthy, elegant people. Billy and Laurie were opposed, but they couldn't or wouldn't explain, and responded only by muttering and insulting indeterminate people they called "dandies."
The girls ganged up and insisted. Just then they heard honking. They turned and saw the Bentley, owned by none other but Will Jenkins, whose mum remarried a rich man, and he got all sorts of things. The girls were also there, waving from the windows: Ethel and Maude. They looked pretty, with pretty dresses, pretty hair, sparkling earrings, they waved and shouted happy greetings to others outside. Billy and Laurie turned their faces away, Winnie was too surprised to respond. Darcy was the only one to shout enthusiastically and wave, with broad motions of her arms, as the car disappeared into the night.
More than anything, Billy, Laurie and Winnie felt bitterness. That image of power had passed in a flash, three other young people in a car—that was the right way to leave the neighborhood and have fun. Theirs was the wrong way: on foot, in shabby old clothes, penniless. They felt like going home.
