The Falling Man

Chapter 14

Ethel POV

It was almost 8 o clock, the time this Peaky Blinder leader would be arriving. I am currently washing my hands in the washroom of the pub while I hear the gramophone music blasting from outside the small wooden door. My brothers convinced me to let them drag my gramophone all the way from my apartment to the pub, saying music was a necessity for the evening. Whatever that means. I look at myself in the mirror and splash some water on my face. I hear knocking on the door, "Can I do anything to make your washroom visit easier and quicker?" Robert jokes from outside. "No thank you." I sassily reply. "He's about to be here. So if I could piss before his arrival that would be nice." Robert says. I look to Gertrude who was also in the washroom with me and moved to the side to let her splash water on her face. Both of us were feeling quite nervous for this meeting and somehow the splash of cold water helped slightly.

Throughout the day I had been explained more and more of the situation. The guns got stolen. My brothers and their men took the eldest brother of the man coming to meet us and beat him to a pulp for information that he did not have an answer to and then proceeded to raid a bunch of innocent people's homes looking for any gun from the inventory. The Peaky Blinders burned a bunch of Irish flags. My brothers stalk this man's family and friends before proceeding to rob their shop with a gypsy gang. This man would probably be coming in to the pub fuming and that terrified both me and my sister.

I look back in the mirror straightening out my hair and patting my face with a rag. Before taking a big sigh and turning to my sister and sarcastically saying, "This is sure to be a lovely evening." With that I open the door to my brother who barges through straight to the toilet.

I head to the bar to grab bottles of alcohol and glasses and set them on the long table we have placed in the center of the room. Fred is already seated at one end of the table, Gertrude takes her seat to the left of Fred with Robert, now back from his piss, taking his seat on her left, my seat is across from Gertrude with the empty seat, for the Birmingham gangster, directly to my right. I was not supposed to have a seat at this table but my brothers started drinking and with that made me agree to sit at the table with them, deciding it would be weird of me to be standing behind the bar on my own; I quite liked the idea of standing behind the bar on my own, away from the soon arriving gangster, but now here I am sitting and glancing nervously at the empty chair to my right.

We all argued over the seating arrangement for a very long while and somehow this was what my brothers decided best. This way the Peaky Blinder leader can be sitting directly across from Robert; after Fred refused to give up his seat at the end of the table. Was I happy about this arrangement? Not one bit, but I had enough of the argument with Gertrude about who has to sit next to the man we are waiting for, so nonetheless agreed.

"You know when you think you have done everything?" I ask my siblings. "Been stationed in France as a military nurse, then moved to London and opened a pub, even gone through the grief of losing a mother. I thought I had done everything. And that felt...great." My siblings snicker at me in amusement. "That's not even mentioning my childhood...running rampant in the streets of Ireland drunk off my head at 12 years old. And somehow, still ending up tossed into whatever your doing..." I say looking at my sister passing her the bottle of liquor. She smiles at me sarcastically, "Thank you." "I now have to pretend to be the friendliest person in the world to a very angry gang leader." I say.

My brothers had told us they want this meeting to end in an alliance between the two gangs. I, after being told the full backstory, was not so hopeful. But, we were told very specifically for us all to act very friendly to the gangster. They suspect he has the guns and we have all of his shops money, an alliance with a gypsy gang that want him dead, Alfie and with Alfie, London. They both have something the other wants. My brothers described prior that they want the possibility of a gang war to be squashed tonight and to end up on the same side as the gangster. I will try my hardest to make that happen only for the safety of my brothers.