CHAPTER NINETEEN:
NIGHT'S CALLING

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TRUE TO HER WORD, it only took her five minutes to convince Mrs Scott to watch James for the rest of the day. It seemed her nosy neighbour had taken a liking to her son, enough that she didn't mind the last minute change of plans. In fact, she seemed almost happy to have the company. It reminded Helen of her own mother and what she imagined she would be like if things were just a bit different, putting her at ease that James would be in safe hands.

When Helen returned to Watery Lane, the line to the betting shop had tripled in length. The drunken group from before were at the front. As Helen drew closer, she heard them grumbling to themselves and encouraging each other to bang on the door. Helen rolled her eyes. She was about to shove past them when she spotted Linda, Arthur's wife, hesitating a few feet away like a deer caught in the headlights. Her blonde hair was pinned in strict curls kept out of her face, revealing delicate features that men like this would no doubt eat alive. Helen would know.

Just as she expected, when Linda murmured a polite 'excuse me' and tried to step around them, one of the men -- the drunkest one -- reached forward and grabbed hold of the basket she carried over one arm.

"What've you got here, love?" he smirked, attempting to shove a meaty hand inside despite her resistance. "Come on, let me look."

"If you value that grubby hand of yours, you'll leave her alone," Helen snapped, which distracted them long enough for Linda to stumble into the door.

The man spun around at the sound of her voice, nearly tripping over his own feet but righting himself at the last second on the shoulder of one of his friends. The rest of the group looked nervous now. They tried to drag their friend away in the sudden spike of sobriety (and common sense) but failed as he smacked at their reaching hands and grinned at her, revealing two rows of rotten teeth.

"Now where did a nice-looking lady like you learn to talk like that?" he asked with breath that stunk of ale.

Brazenly, he moved those dirty fingers to tug on a piece of her hair, igniting a fury in her that was blindsiding. In one quick movement, she'd snatched her hairpin from her pocket and sliced the rough blade across the exposed skin of his palm. He howled as blood splattered, clutching his wrist to his chest.

"You bitch--"

"Careful," she quirked an eyebrow. "Or I might decide that I'm not too happy with how you're looking at me. It'll hurt much more than your ego if I blind you. Don't you agree?"

Wisely, he kept quiet, though his eyes glittered with bitterness and a burning recognition that had come much too late.

"Good," she said, in answer to his silence. "Now move."

His friends parted like the red sea, allowing Helen to join a gaping Linda. She slammed her fist against the door, waiting for one of the women inside to let them in.

"Why did you do that?" Linda asked. Her gaze lingered on the flecks of blood that stained Helen's hairpin. Her disgust was almost palpable, not that Helen cared. She was more confused about why Linda was whispering, for the men had fled Watery Lane the second Helen turned her back to them in dismissal, but she kept her voice low like she feared the wrath of God for the part she had played. Helen would've laughed if she wasn't so annoyed, not to mention impatient.

"That kind of man is like a rabid dog, Linda," she said, trying her best to remain matter-of-fact. "You let them get away with too much, they start to get brave." Huffing, she slammed her fist against the door again. "Bite us once, shame on the dog. Bite us repeatedly, shame on us for allowing it."

At last, Polly opened the door. She raised an eyebrow at the unlikely pair she found waiting on her doorstep but said nothing as she stepped aside to let them through.

Linda's smile returned now with Polly, Lizzie and Esme's attention on her. It was like nothing had ever happened. "Arthur said you'd be short-staffed today because they're on a work outing."

"Piss-up, actually," Esme corrected.

Linda ignored her, depositing her basket on the counter with a flourish. "I brought sandwiches and this lemonade I made myself. I'll make tea and empty ashtrays, but I won't handle money or slips. Arthur says what you do here is illegal but not immoral."

"Depends what time you get here, Linda," Lizzie deadpanned.

Helen lowered herself into the seat she had previously occupied. "I don't mind some good old debauchery. Money, slips, booze. Put me where you need me."

Lizzie joined in on her laughter. "How about all three?"

"Anyways," Linda pursed her lips at them. "I thought I'd offer you my physical and spiritual support in your time of need."

Helen smothered a smirk and busied herself with the stack of papers Polly dumped in front of her. The older woman was sizing Linda up like a lion cornering its prey. Eventually, in that condescending tone of hers that Helen was unfortunately familiar with, she said, "Oh, Linda, if you want to be a help, run up to the shops and get me twenty Senior Service. Lizzie'll give you the change."

Lizzie chuckled without missing a beat. "No, I won't."

Linda, it seemed, had the patience of a saint that morning. "Actually, I'll use my own money, Polly," she sniffed. "And before you ladies decide to find me so amusing, I have a message for you."

"Here we go," Helen sighed.

"Oh, God. No, Linda, I've been to church already today," Polly added, pinching the bridge of her nose and reaching for the nearest bottle of alcohol. "Have you?"

"It's not a message from God, Polly. It's from Jessie Eden."

"Who's Jessie Eden?" she asked, though she sounded like couldn't care less what Linda's answer was.

"She's the lady shop steward at the Lucas factory in Sparkhill."

Now, this caught their attention. Admittedly, even Helen's. A lady shop steward. They weren't exactly common.

"Lady shop steward?" Esme voiced her disbelief.

Linda nodded. "She's bringing all the female workers in the spot-welding and wire-cutting shops out on strike for the day. A protest at being made to work on a holy day. Poor conditions, lack of holidays, unsanitary lavatory provisions and lower pay for female workers. Apparently, all the female factory workers in the city are joining the protest in sympathy, and will walk out of their places of work at 9am to march on the Bull Ring. All oppressed female workers welcome."

Helen lifted her eyes from the sheets of numbers in front of her. Curiously, she gazed at the other women to gauge their reactions. Lizzie's brows were furrowed in thought. Polly stood frozen despite the haze of smoke coming from her freshly lit cigarette. Esme was perhaps the most moved. Her eyes glinted with familiar, womanly rage.

"Them bastards down there shooting deer," she referenced her husband and his brothers. "Me, five months gone, sat here like a pudding."

Slowly, her fury was beginning to catch and spread, encouraged by the men who had taken to banging on the door as the time to open came and went.

"Only one outside lavatory between the lot of us," Lizzie murmured with a calculated tap of her fingers on the tabletop.

"Not consulted."

"Bent over a fucking desk."

"Forgotten," said Helen simply. "Ignored until they need something."

It was certainly nothing new.

"Ladies," Linda beamed, holding her arms open like some kind of preacher. "I honestly believe those who march today will have God on their side."

The banging on the door continued, louder this time.

"Come on, ladies, open the fucking door!"

"Ladies," Helen's jaw clenched. "If I hear that word one more time today out of a man's mouth, I'm going to lose it."

All eyes turned to Polly. In the end, it would be up to her what choice they made; stay or go, shut up or speak out. Opening that door for any other reason than walking out of it, in Helen's opinion, would be conceding to those bastards that they could do what they wanted. Sure, participating in a protest wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind for her day, but moments such as this were rare and life changing. Women were inexplicably bonded by the way that men treated them. Staying silent would go against every part of Girlhood that Helen knew and understood.

It was like she'd told Linda. Bite us repeatedly, shame on us for allowing it.

"Fuck it," Polly exclaimed. "I'm not in the mood today. Let's go to the Bull Ring."

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BY THE SETTING OF the sun, Helen couldn't determine her right from her left. It was safe to say, as all protests typically did, this one got wildly out of hand. It was peaceful enough but she feared that Jessie Eden's point might've gotten lost in translation. Her last clear memory was Polly shoving a half-empty liquor bottle into her arms before she climbed onto the back of a wagon, then everything went a little blurry. They were high on the essence of their vices and a shared sense of suffrage, cheering on Polly as most of the women flocked to the familiar Shelby face like moths to a flame. Despite the spinning of her head, Helen returned to the Betting Shop in relatively good spirits, humming to a tune her mind had created without much thought to what she could've been walking into.

"Jesus Christ, John," she screeched, spinning around and nearly smacking her face into the door, but the damage was already done. The sickening image of his bare ass was imprinted into the back of her eyelids. "Don't you two have a house to fuck in?"

"It's got a bloody kid in every room," she heard him retort, grimacing at the sound of Esme's rustling skirts and John zipping his pants up. "You can turn around now."

Helen hesitated, clutching the glass bottle in her hands for dear life. "I don't know if I want to."

John snorted. She didn't have to see him to know he was rolling his eyes at her. "Just how drunk are you?"

"I'm not drunk. It's not safe for the baby to drink that much," she argued, finally accepting her fate and facing the room once more. Esme was the picture of innocence from where she was perched on the edge of the table. John... not so much. He grinned from ear to ear, yet he stared at the bottle in Helen's hands with a flicker of apprehension. "I was returning this for Polly. Lord knows where she's ended up after the day we've had."

"There's nothing in it," John pointed out.

Stubbornly, Helen shook the bottle. The last dregs of liquor sloshed against the glass sides. "Pretty sure Pol would have my head for wasting even a drop."

She crossed the room to dump the bottle behind the bar, pouring herself a glass of water to wash away the last of her muddy thoughts.

"So how was your piss-up?" she asked. "Sorry. Your work outing."

She expected John to roll his eyes again but he remained unusually quiet. Just one look at him confirmed that this 'business' she'd heard so much yet so little of was beginning to ramp up. There was a struggle in his expression, a game of chess laid before him and he had no control over the pieces. He was a piece, just waiting to be moved to his next place on the board. A soldier who never really left the war.

Not for the first time, Helen wondered if she should've pushed Tommy into opening up to her. The only fact she knew to be true was the involvement of the Russians. Tommy liked to keep Helen as far out of his world as he could. It would've infuriated her once. She wasn't sure when that had changed, but she was beginning to feel the consequences of her own ignorance.

"Dad's dead," John said, sucker-punching Helen out of her thoughts.

She stared at him. "What?"

"Tommy got a letter," he explained. "He was shot."

Esme reached out to hold his hand in a silent display of comfort he didn't ask for. Helen wasn't sure he needed it either. This was Arthur Shelby Senior they were talking about. The last time she'd seen that pathetic excuse for a father (and man) was a whole lifetime ago. She'd just found out she was pregnant with James and was caught up in his showdown with Tommy in the kitchen just on the other side of the Betting Shop door. It was safe to say the world had continued on without him since his death. John's face was entirely blank, and it almost seemed like a weight had been taken from his shoulders.

"Is Tommy at Arrow House?" Helen asked, wondering if it would be a good idea to drive to him.

John hesitated, eventually clearing his throat when Helen and Esme stared at him in confusion. "Uh... he is."

Helen frowned. "What's that look on your face?"

Quickly, John stood taller and tried to school his expression into something neutral. His failure was painful, only succeeding in making him sound suspicious when he said, "What look? I don't have a look."

"Yes, you do," she crossed her arms. "John?"

Letting out a sigh, he dropped his head so he didn't have to look at her. Helen's heart sank into the pit of her stomach. Her mind raced with endless possibilities. Had something happened to Tommy? Had he gotten hurt, or worse? Surely John wouldn't have been fucking his wife on the table in his place of work if his brother's life was hanging in the balance. So what was wrong? Why was he so... unlike the John Shelby she knew so well?

"He has company," he said at last. "You can't see him right now, Nel."

"Company," the word echoed on her tongue but was lost in the ringing of her ears.

Oh.

"It's one of those Russians, isn't it?"

All at once, the world snapped back into focus. The last effects of the afternoon's alcohol had worn off, leaving her with an ache creeping into the back of her skull. Her heart didn't crack into thousands of pieces. She didn't cry despite the sudden heat behind her eyes. Helen had already suffered the sorrowful sting of heartbreak when she discovered that Tommy had been to see Lizzie. It didn't come as a surprise, then, that he had other lovers.

It was just... disappointing. She couldn't stomach the thought of somebody else being in his bed while she was waiting around obliviously. Foolish Helen Godfrey, to think for even a second that she was his equal on the chessboard. Not even his brothers rivalled him.

She returned her gaze to John again. "Isn't it?"

He nodded. "Duchess Tatiana Petrovna."

Now that she knew, Helen didn't want to think about it anymore. She wanted to bury it, smother this Duchess in the dirt where she wouldn't have to deal with her again. She plastered a smile onto her face, but neither John nor Esme were fooled for a second. Esme left John's side to guide Helen out from behind the bar. She linked their arms together, squeezing tight in solidarity.

"Why don't you spend the night with us, sister?" she said, ignoring the indignant look John sent her way. "The kids can play and we can drink."

"Esme," John murmured her name in warning.

She rounded on him, glaring. "You said nothing about no alcohol, John. Besides, Helen needs support. Us women have a duty to stick together."

"Us women... duty... jesus christ," John repeated under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh. "Fine. You know you're always welcome, Nel."

That was how Helen found herself curled up on the couch in the shadows of John and Esme's living room. Night had fallen hours ago and the children, who had tired of their energy after wildly running around the house together, were now asleep upstairs in a pile on Katie's bed. Esme had ventured to tuck them in while stinking of alcohol, then promptly passed out herself while listening to the erratic sound of baby Godfrey kicking away in Helen's stomach. She still had her cheek pressed to the bump, a line of drool dripping onto Helen's dress -- not that she paid enough attention to care. She was nursing a full glass of gin but couldn't bring herself to do more than sip from it. John sat opposite the two women in a well-worn armchair, watching Helen's thoughts float across her face.

"Don't take what Tommy's doing to heart, Nel," he said before he could change his mind. Helen made a humming noise but didn't know what to say. She was not far off joining Esme, her eyes blinking harshly to stay open, but her mind kept her awake as it often did. "The Russians are a messy business. He's doing what he has to."

She huffed out a laugh at that. "Oh, I'm sure he's making great sacrifices right now. He must really be suffering."

It was John's turn to fall silent for a while. By the time he looked over at Helen again, her eyes were shut and she'd leaned her head back into the cushions, her blonde hair fanning her face like a halo.

Bite us once, shame on the dog. Bite us repeatedly, shame on us for allowing it.

Helen didn't know a lot of things anymore, but she did know this. She wouldn't allow herself to be bitten for much longer.