Tutors

1919

The twins and Polly had been in the middle of their supper when Tommy left, walking past their lively table without a word. If his sister was still upset about the topic of being pulled out of school, she was upset with only him directly. He supposed that was only right. The others were merely upholding his decree.

And even if she was angry with him, anger wasn't what showed. Tommy and Clara had settled back into their new normal and that meant they were very nearly ignoring one another. It was tidier than being angry and took up far less energy but Tommy felt drained nonetheless.

Polly had taken to ignoring him as well but her silence wasn't quite as neutral as Clara's. Tommy wasn't sure his aunt was capable of neutrality. He didn't believe Clara was either but she had an alarmingly convincing mask.

The Shelby women always seemed to be unhappy with him about something these days. It left Tommy with a gnawing need to be away from it all. After spending most of the day in the shop, he couldn't imagine staying in the house any longer but he also couldn't imagine passing his evening in the Garrison. He didn't think he could take an evening full of drunken fools. He had little interest in family either.

Tommy had a brief thought of visiting Lizzie but thought better of it. Lizzie had more and more been attempting to engage him in conversation. She was prone to asking questions, picking up on the intricacies in his moods and making them known in a way he wasn't accustomed to or particularly comfortable with. He wasn't in much of a mood for questions, or revelations, or any type of conversation if he was being truthful.

After a bit of wandering, Tommy found himself at Charlie's yard. Even though his uncle was also on the list of people frustrated with him, Tommy knew he could still find solace among the horses. As he passed the room Charlie called his office and noticed the windows were dark, Tommy supposed he might be able to avoid his uncle all together. He took a bottle from the storage as he walked to the stables.

Tommy hadn't enjoyed a drink straight from the bottle in quite some time. Everything was served in the proper glass these days. It was a sign the Shelby family was moving up in the world, the use of appropriate glassware. It was also a sign that they hadn't had much of anything to celebrate.

The whiskey hit differently as it landed in his mouth. It was not a sensible sip but an unintended gulp, a bit larger than expected. Tommy reckoned with it quickly, taking another gulp as he pulled up in front of his sister's favorite horse.

Lavender stood far from him at the end of the stall. The family had purchased the horse while he was away, not long after he left for France. Clara had introduced him to the creature when she was still considered a filly, though just barely. Lavender was a mare now, fully mature, a beautiful creature with a dapple-grey coat and brown eyes so rich they almost seemed black.

He still wasn't entirely clear what possessed his sister to call the horse Lavender but it somehow suited her, especially whenever Clara had been by to weave wildflowers in the horse's mane.

"Evening, Curly," Tommy said, taking a deep breath as he turned to the man. Curly didn't have it in him to be quiet, his shuffling feet alerting Tommy to his presence moments before. Though he had wanted to be alone, he found himself almost relieved to see the man. "Thought I'd visit with our horses."

Curly nodded. "Miss Clara's been doting on her. Makes the old girl happy to see Miss Clara so often, a comfort to her. She'll be foaling soon."

Tommy had been struck with two realizations on account of Curly's words. First, Tommy noted that time was passing quite quickly and unassumingly if the horse was ready to foal. Could nearly a year have passed already?

Second, he realized his sister was still coming and going without him knowing a thing about it.

"Yeah, Tommy. Clara comes by sometimes. Good girl, she is. She talks with the horses. Understands them, like you and me."

Tommy nodded at Curly's smile, putting the bottle to his lips again. The sizable gulp he took was intentional. He eagerly welcomed the familiar searing in his throat.

The mare nudged Tommy in the chest as she approached, forcing him to set the bottle aside. He reached out to touch his hand to her muzzle, gently running his hand across her skin.

"Ah, there's our girl."

Tommy remembered a time when he passed more of his afternoons with the horses than he did with people. It was a simpler time, his days filled with horses and his evenings with Small Heath girls. That was before the time of complicated strategies and arrangements, back when Thomas Shelby's greatest transgressions involved innocuous pranks and the expected bouts of youthful rebellion.

He supposed strategy had always been a part of it, arranging things and positioning things had always been a part of who he was. And his priorities hadn't changed, not exactly, but he had come back from France with a different perspective on things, a different understanding of what each day was worth to him. There was no sense in pretending the world would just give him anything anymore, no sense in wasting his time. If he wanted something, for himself, for his family, Tommy Shelby had to make a plan and take it. There was no value in waiting to see what you got handed, no value in worrying about opinions, no value in avoiding a good dose of risk if the payout was worth it.

Tommy inhaled deeply through his nose. He willed the smells of the stable and the velvety feel of Lavender's coat to deliver him back to the simpler time, just for a short moment, just to evoke in himself what had once been, but it was fruitless. He found himself stuck in the stable, stuck in the mud and the shit, and stuck in a mind full to the brim with strategies and an unsettling bitterness… a bitterness that he couldn't bring himself back and bitterness that he even had a yearning to go back in the first place.

It was long before sunrise when Tommy coaxed Clara out of bed, early even by her standards. She fought him on it, turning over on the small mattress and pulling the small heap of blankets with her as she resettled.

"Get dressed. I've got a surprise for you," Tommy said, leaving the door ajar as he left.

Clara stared at the ceiling for a few moments before deciding to do as her brother asked. As she slipped out of bed and got dressed, she couldn't escape the fact that she felt a bit sick in the pit of her stomach.

She hadn't been in school for nearly a week now. Tommy still hadn't told her who the tutor would be. She supposed that would be this morning's surprise. In the absence of her brother's confirmation, Clara had come up with a few ideas about who it could be. She had ultimately discounted each of them for one reason or another. Tommy distrusted more people in Birmingham than he didn't so Clara considered her options to be a bit limited. She half expected to come down the stairs to find a solitary stack of educational books, her brother claiming she could tutor herself from the safety of their family table. If he kept the shop doors open, he could keep one eye on her and one eye on the business at the same time.

Clara descended the stairs slowly to find her brother sat at the table, reading a paper. There was a set of breakfast dishes across from him and Clara cautiously slid into the chair, staying silent as she spread jam over a slice of bread. She watched her brother though he stayed hidden behind his newspaper.

The silence between them seemed almost companionable. It gave the semblance of everything being settled. But the quiet between them in this particular setting left Clara feeling uncomfortable, even if Tommy seemed unaffected.

It was the first breakfast, the first time sat alone together at the table in ages, really, and he wouldn't even look at her. It seemed that the mornings where they would conspire over secrets or talk about the latest book she was reading or simply chatter about nothing of particular importance were a thing of the past to be replaced by interminable silences and newspaper blockades.

It made Clara itchy, the silence and the invisible barrier between them, fortified by paper and ink. Every inch of her skin felt inflamed by a warm prickling that frayed her already restless nerves.

"Tommy?"

"Finish your breakfast."

"I'm already finished."

She had eaten half a piece of bread, not having it in her to finish it after a few introductory bites.

"Then go gather your things."

"Can't we just talk a moment?"

Clara watched as Tommy folded his paper, glancing at her half-empty plate before looking at her straight on. "What would you like to talk about?"

Clara shrugged.

After a few moments of enduring her brother's silent stare, she realized the conversation was hers to lead. "Did you read the Boscombe Valley Mystery?"

Tommy nodded once, sifting through his mind for that particular adventure. Though he and Clara had stopped reading together, Tommy still found the books to be distracting enough to help him through the nights when his opium-induced sleep didn't bring him all the way to morning. She knew her brother had continued to borrow them.

"Do you think a person can really change as Mr. Turner did after a whole life of crime? Even if he did still kill Mr. McCarthy? Sherlock just let him go free."

"Sometimes people have to do bad things to achieve good things."

"But he killed a man."

"Only to protect his daughter. People go to extraordinary lengths to protect what they care for."

Tommy watched his sister as she thought it through, reconciling the idea that a person could be and do both good and bad in the world, that one could justify murder by calling it protection.

"But I don't think that makes it okay," she said.

"You snuck off four or five times to visit our Ada, fought a boy in the schoolyard to retrieve your book, threw a tantrum when you got pulled out of school. You were bad in the name of protecting what's important to you. Does that make you a bad person?"

Tommy sensed the change in his sister. He hadn't meant for the conversation to go this way, hadn't meant to start the day by upsetting her but he felt inclined to make a point. He was quite sure now that using her as an example had not been the best way to go about it.

Clara's lips pulled down at the corners and her arms inched up to fold over her chest.

Tommy shifted in his chair, preparing himself for his sister's rage, readying himself to stop it without much of an argument.

"I just want to go back to my school. I won't have any more fights with Wally Bartow. I promise."

"Even if I believed that, the matter has already been settled."

Clara felt the tears prickling in her eyes though she was feeling adamant that she shouldn't let them fall in front of her brother. She was having trouble finding the words to explain why she didn't want a tutor, why she wanted to stay at school with Finn. And she was thoroughly wishing she had stayed quiet, wishing that she hadn't made her brother talk to her because all he'd done was remind her that she had done a lot of bad things lately.

Clara hadn't been able to grasp her brother's message, that the terms 'good' and 'bad' weren't mutually exclusive. The world, and the people living it, were much like Birmingham in that way, muddy and grey. But Clara didn't yet perceive the world to be like that.

As they made their way through the streets of Small Heath, Clara walked silently by Tommy's side, focusing more on her own feet than their surroundings. The steady cadence of footsteps was all that could be heard in the empty streets until she reclaimed her ability to be neutral with him, whatever emotion she had pushed down far enough that she could think about the practical things.

"Where are we going?"

"School," he answered. "Come on."

"But who—?"

"Time for questions later, we're already late."

Clara huffed, her annoyance showing for a moment and she stopped completely. "But it's still night, how can we be late?"

Tommy reached down to grab her wrist, pulling her along.

Within a few steps, Clara matched his pace, taking two large steps for every one of his. "Will you answer my questions if I keep up?"

Tommy glanced at her, eyebrow raised. "Ask your questions."

Clara repositioned her hand inside of Tommy's. "I already asked one."

Tommy snorted. She was right. "Your first lesson is time-sensitive."

"Who's my new tutor?"

"I've employed a few."

"Will it always be before the sun?"

"Just for today."

Clara leaned eagerly over the fence watching as the new foal walked around his mother. She was still in awe over what she had seen, the gentleness with which Tommy and Curly had helped Lavender deliver her foal earlier that morning.

It was mostly just the excitement of seeing the birth, but both Clara and Tommy were feeling lighter. While Tommy and Curly worked with the horse and while he watched his sister observe her horse and the foal in the yard, Tommy uncovered the relief he had been searching for the night before, the sensation of simpler times. His sister was feeling the relief too, a brightness in her eyes and cheeks that Tommy was surprised he had forgotten.

"Shouldn't she be getting ready for school?"

Clara turned and jumped off the fence, coming to her uncle's side.

"Ah, she can't learn this type of thing at a school, Charlie. I'm employing Curly and myself as tutors. She'll be around to help with the horses a few times a week now. I'd like her to learn more about caring for them."

"Are you asking or telling?"

Tommy shrugged. "It'll be good for her, being with the horses."

"I hope you know what you're doing with her."

Charlie pulled his eyes from Tommy's gaze and looked at his young niece instead. She was dressed in her twin's hand me downs, a scar on her forehead now took the place of the stitches. He hadn't often had reason to doubt his nephew's ability to care for his sister but something wasn't right with them. It hadn't been right for some time now.

He didn't place the blame solely on Tommy. Clara had faults of her own, but it was Tommy's job to address it, put her on the right path, keep the girl safe. Charlie supposed that's what his nephew was trying to do. And it wasn't worth offering the man suggestions. Tommy didn't take lightly to them.

"But then, you know everything, isn't that right, Tommy?"

"I'll be a help, Uncle Charlie. I promise," Clara interrupted.

Charlie ran a hand over his niece's head, smiling down at her. "I know you will, sweetheart. Did you give the foal a name yet?"

Clara shook her head.

"Well, you best watch a bit longer, figure out who she is, eh?"

Clara nodded, climbing back onto the fence beside Tommy as Charlie left the siblings alone.

"Are we going to be keeping it?" she asked.

"That'll be up to Curly, I suppose."

"He likes them to stay together, babies need their mother."

Tommy nodded.

"It's important for family to stay together."

Tommy let Clara's words fall between them and as he hadn't responded, Clara focused her attention on climbing the fence, settling herself on the top rail, her legs dangling over the side with her back to the horses.

"Curly says you've been here quite a bit."

Clara shrugged, knocking the heel of her boot against the wood.

"You've been coming out here alone?"

"No," Clara said quickly. "John or Arthur always brings me."

Tommy nodded. "What if I bring you a few days a week instead? On the days I can't stay, you'll spend some time with Curly and Uncle Charlie?"

"Am I still going to have school?"

Tommy nodded, looking at her briefly before turning back to the horses.

He had been working something out in his mind, kneading it around in his thoughts for long enough that it was all starting to come together. Twenty-nine years old and Tommy was realizing that his aunt was right. Not everyone was a soldier. He should have known that. He wasn't a soldier, and even in France when he had been a soldier, he hadn't really been, not at his core.

His Clara wasn't a soldier either. She wasn't able to follow others blindly. She had a deep, primal need to understand, to approve of the way things went. It was what got her in trouble now that she was old enough to follow through, to exert her own will. But because she had always been so well-behaved, always so quick to trust and respect, Tommy had made the mistake of thinking she was a soldier who would unquestionably fall in line behind him. That simply wouldn't work anymore.

Tommy had spent eleven years trying to keep the bad things the family did, the truly scary and terrible things, away from the twins, but more so from his sister. It had all been in the name of protection. They were kids. And so far, his sister had had only small glimpses but Clara was no idiot. She knew the betting shop wasn't quite legal. She knew her brothers drank and fought and threatened, but those were mere drops in a metaphorical bucket. And sure, Tommy and his sister had their secrets, but the things he shared with her presented no true danger in her knowing it. The near innocence of the secrets had comforted Tommy, lulled him into thinking she would be okay with things, that she would, like the others, embrace the murkiness of their family name.

There was a part of Tommy that wanted her away from Birmingham, away from all the people that may wish to hurt her, he couldn't imagine her being anywhere other than Birmingham. She was right. Family was meant to be together. But it wouldn't be easy to keep Clara safe if she was growing out of the traits Tommy had come to count on, compliance and trust.

And on some level, Tommy Shelby feared that Birmingham wasn't enough for his sisters. John and Arthur had seen something else of the world and weren't eager to see more. Birmingham was home. The girls though, he couldn't be sure. He could see the exact ways Ada had grown beyond what Small Heath and their family had to offer. One only had to look at her four-inch heels and the swelling of her belly.

He wondered if Clara's recent revolution and her near-constant thirst for knowledge meant she'd yearn for something more too someday, maybe she was already yearning.

"You know, I haven't done all this to punish you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy watched Clara's eyebrows rise, gaze still trained on her boots. That told him enough about where her mind was at.

"You often punish yourself more than enough before anyone else needs to step in."

While Clara didn't fully know what her brother meant, she did, in a way. She felt sick to her stomach when she did something she believed to be wrong, an ethical infraction. She had strong moral integrity, something not everyone was blessed with.

Clara had just about decided on a response when Tommy started again. "That said, I won't have your life risked for the sake of sending you to a school that's not good enough anyhow."

"It was just one fight, Tommy."

Tommy took a deep breath. He counted in his head three recent incidents between Clara and the Bartow boy and Tommy knew this was the type of thing that could go on for decades. His sister would become a fascination for the young Bartow, her harassment a convenient way to occupy his time if action was slow. Something as innocent as her passing him on the street ten years from now could lead to her being hurt. He couldn't have it. Her life was hazarded enough just by being called Shelby. She had no need for additional vendettas. Tommy just hoped by separating them now, by pulling Clara from the public life of Birmingham's less savory youth, he'd be able to impede it.

"For now, maybe, but I'll not have you running around Birmingham with a target on your back. Can you understand that?"

Clara nodded.

"Why did I pull you from school then?"

"Because I was fighting with Wally and you think it's dangerous," she mumbled.

Tommy stepped in front of Clara, positioning his head in her field of view, his hands settled beside her on the fence rail. Tommy waited for his sister to meet his eyes.

"You're a smart, kind girl, Clara, too good for this town, too good for these people. I'll not have your life marred by the Birmingham mud and blood like the rest of us because of some childhood feud that never ends. I couldn't do without you, Clara. I won't."

"You won't send me away then?"

"Send you away?" Tommy shook his head. "You'll have more trouble getting rid of me than that but I need you to do as I say, to trust I know what's best. We're moving up in this world and if you, out of all of them, don't trust me, I don't…"

"I do trust you," she said even though she knew it certainly must not have appeared that way to her brother, or to anyone else for that matter. It had been a long time since the two of them had been confidants. They readily shared little aside from a certain subconsciously agreed upon animosity.

"You don't trust me though," she continued.

"Why would you say that?"

"Because… because if you did, you wouldn't have called me a liar, and you would let me go to school, and you'd tell me secrets like you used to."

Tommy let out a soft snort. "You miss knowing my secrets, eh?"

"It's not funny."

Tommy cleared his throat. "No, you're right. It's not. And if I ask you to trust me, it's only fair I offer the same to you. Right then, I'll tell you a secret right now."

Clara looked up, squinting at him.

"If there's anyone in this city I can trust, it's you. To hell with the rest of them and that's why you won't be leaving my side without a fight, eh?"

Clara leaned forward and Tommy caught her in his arms as if it was still normal, as if his sister still frequently sought the comfort of his arms rather than keeping herself far away from him. Tommy held her tighter, her face pushed into the crook of his neck as he cradled the back of her head. She was getting nearly too big for being held in his arms, her scrawny legs wrapped around his waist but they could manage it just fine for now.

Tommy heard Clara mumble something into his shoulder, a small lump he'd never admit to forming in his throat as the words registered. He couldn't remember the last time the words had been exchanged. It was something he hadn't even noticed, their absence only noted because of the mix of emotion it stirred in him now.

The phrase didn't typically surface in the Shelby household. It was one of those things they all agreed upon but never spoke of. But Clara, with her mind full of sentimental stories and soul-bearing dialogues, had never shied away from telling the others what she knew to be true deep in her soul.

Tommy placed a kiss to her forehead before settling his chin there. "I love you, too, my girl," he said.

Tommy hadn't meant for the time with his sister to take up the bulk of his morning but it was already nearing ten when they pulled up out front of the Garrison. He fished a key out of his pocket and opened the door, allowing Clara to walk under his arm to enter before him.

She had changed back into her normal clothes, looking the part of the eager student. Clara wandered through the main room of the pub for a few moments, taking in her surroundings while she waited for her brother to explain himself. He had only brought her to the Garrison on a handful of other occasions and always as a last resort, her most recent visit included.

It wasn't until the front doors of the pub opened that Tommy spoke, directing his words at the young woman who entered. "Morning, Grace."

"Good morning, Mr. Shelby," she answered, nodding her head as she closed the door behind her.

"You remember my sister?"

"Of course. Good morning, Clara."

Clara mumbled a greeting before turning to her brother. "I thought I was meeting my tutor."

"You are," Tommy answered, turning Clara in Grace's direction with two hands on her shoulders. "Grace here has agreed to give your private lessons when you're not at the yard."

"But she's not a teacher. She's a barmaid. You said—"

"I said I'd found you a tutor you'd learn plenty from. Grace is a smart woman and she's more than capable of teaching you."

"I took a few teacher preparation courses before I came to Small Heath," Grace offered, smiling despite Clara's frown and the arms crossed over her chest as she stood in front of her brother. "Your brother says you enjoy reading and writing and you're quite good with numbers."

Clara looked at Grace before looking back at Tommy. She didn't want to respond, didn't want to be receiving her schooling from a barmaid in the local pub but the look on Tommy's face was warning her not to push it. "Grace asked you a question."

"She didn't ask me a question. It was a statement."

Tommy raised an eyebrow at his sister, a slight snort sounding as he exhaled through his nose. Tommy had turned away from his sister after making brief eye contact with the girl, focusing his attentions on Grace until he heard small footsteps moving away from him.

"And where are you going?" Tommy asked when he spotted Clara with a hand on the door.

"Home for lunch?"

"You're not going home. Go sit down."

Clara groaned and her brother pulled her to his side. "Wanna try that again?"

"I'm hungry."

Tommy lifted her to sit on the bar and Clara focused on moving a single fingertip across the smooth metal, a deliberate smudge left in its wake.

"I thought you and I had come to an understanding. Had a nice morning, didn't we?"

Tommy placed his hand over hers, stopping the movement. "Clara."

Clara met his eyes. "Yes, but I'm tired and hungry and you only said I had to—"

"Alright. That's enough. Your lessons start today. Go on. Go get yourself set up."

Tommy pointed through the open door of their family's private drinking room before offering her a hand to help her down.

Clara frowned, folding her arms over her chest.

Tommy raised an eyebrow. "I need to have a word with Grace and if you don't go get settled, I'll be coming in right after to have a very different word with you."

Something in Tommy's voice told Clara she shouldn't fight him, so she allowed him to help her down from her perch on the bar top and made her way across the pub.

"And close the door," he called after her.

"Tommy," she whined.

"Close the door," he repeated and she did so, shutting it harder than necessary, the glass panes of the door trembling for a moment after.

"Not a bit afraid of you, is she?" Grace asked while she began cleaning the glasses.

"She usually has a good gauge for when she should be. No harm in a girl exercising her boldness within the safety of her own family once in a while."

Realizing that his sister would never be one of his soldiers, Tommy decided on cultivating a small bit of the boldness that could easily drive him to an early grave, hoping that by allowing some measure of it, he may have a bit of control in molding it.

It was a more recent revelation of Tommy's, that the next ten or so years of Clara's life would be full of the two of them going toe-to-toe in an effort to calibrate behavior and expectations. While having a well-behaved, compliant sister would make his life quieter, Tommy was fairly certain it wasn't in his future. And a girl being too well-behaved or too respectful wouldn't fare well in Birmingham either. Clara was a Shelby after all. She could promise to stop fighting all she wanted, Tommy was fairly certain the fight would continue to find her.

"Who would've thought? Thomas Shelby, governess extraordinaire."

"I'm a man of many talents and titles."

Through the window to the private room, Tommy watched his sister slamming her books on the tabletop before turning to the barmaid. "Thank you for this. Clara's a bit stubborn and I apologize for what she said just now but I think you'll get on well once she gets to know you."

"Of course, Mr. Shelby." Grace smiled and folded the towel over her shoulder, moving to pour him a drink although it was still mid-morning. "And I think your sister is sweet."

Tommy stopped her before she could tip the bottle into the glass. "My sister has been anything but sweet in your presence but I still thank you for helping me with her."

Grace smiled and nodded, turning to place the bottle back on its shelf as Tommy replaced his hat and prepared to take his leave. He continued to study the woman for a moment, firming up his resolve to support his sister's growing boldness and curiosity, committing to actively molding them as they went.

Like his sister, Miss Burgess was a kind, smart girl, and look where those traits had gotten her. She was displaced from her home due to an unwanted pregnancy, serving drinks in a pub, and she had unknowingly become an innocent pawn in Tommy Shelby's strategies.

Tommy wouldn't have that kind of life for his sister. He wouldn't allow Clara's kindness and good heart to put her in harm's way.