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sympathyfortheblinderdevil · 3 years

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All Is Fair: Ch. 17 Buying Forgiveness

Tommy has been a shithead, so he tries to buy Lia's forgiveness. Little does he know, she would have totally forgiven him anyway. In the time leading up to Christmas, Lia forms a bond with Charlie and encourages Tommy to do the same.

Tommy was a half-drunk, half-delirious mess. His shambolic footsteps dragged on the stairway, pitching him forward as Lia struggled to keep him from falling. For the previous hour, he’d been whispering what she could only categorize as confession into her hair; at least, that’s what she thought it was, for she could understand very little of it. She had finally convinced him to go back to bed, which led to her current predicament. She wedged her shoulder underneath his arm and coaxed him, “I’ve got you, Tommy, but you have to help me,” and they haltingly made their way to her bedroom.

When they reached their destination, she paused at the door to switch on the light, and in a moment of lucidity, he suddenly rasped, “Don’t... No lights.” He was raw enough to feel shame and to want to hide his face from her.

Once he was on the bed, she helped him out of his jacket, her arm grazing the cold steel of his pistol as she did so. She flinched, then turned her back to drape the heavy garment over the chair. Did Tommy shoot back, or did he just run for cover? she wondered. She stood there trying to collect herself, breathing in and out, pushing those thoughts down. For a fleeting moment, she thought to walk away… just go out into the warm brightness of the hallway and down the stairs to her parlor... leave him to deal with undressing himself, and let him sleep it off. But, just behind her, she heard his shaky breaths and his fumbling hands struggling with leather straps. A rush of almost maternal warmth enveloped her, compelled her to stay, and reminded her that for all his faults she was hopelessly in love with him. When she turned to face him, his glassy eyes apologetically searched for hers as she undid his gun holster. Once freed, his arms went around her. He pressed his face into her belly and he mumbled, “Stay with me, Lia. Don’t leave me.”

Moonlight shone through the window in a muted sliver of luminescence and played off of the silver strands that hid in Tommy’s hair. She brushed it away from his forehead and promised, “I won’t leave you, baby. I won’t ever leave you.”

He was high. The vulnerability he showed her tonight would vanish in the morning, but Lia couldn’t help hoping that Tommy would reveal some small bit of his pain to her once in a while. She couldn’t pretend to understand the brutality and the coldness that overcame him, and the precision with which he could compartmentalize that part of his life. How could he put all of the horrors to one side and just get on with things? But if he could show her that on some level it bothered him, that he had still had a soul to save, she could try to be what he needed.

When she had him stripped down to his undershirt and drawers, she shrugged out of her dress, climbed in beside him, and sank into a deep dreamless sleep.

***

In the days that followed the shooting Tommy and Lia didn’t discuss what had happened. It had been kept out of the papers, so no one outside of Tommy’s immediate circle even knew about the killings or Tommy’s injury. For her part, she was apprehensive about reliving the shock of what had happened to Rodney and the realization that Tommy was much more flawed than she had previously let herself believe. Jenny had tried to tell her about the violence and criminality that were as much a part of him as his pale blue eyes, but until she was faced with the aftermath of the attack and the subsequent murder of the attackers, she hadn’t wanted to believe her.

The Tommy that she fell for was a devilishly charming, handsome man. He told her that he did bad things, but he had an art collection and country estate for God’s sake! She had naively believed him when he said that people didn’t come after him anymore even though it contradicted all evidence. She had never known anyone who needed to carry a gun everywhere, but she had never known a member of Parliament. Maybe all MPs carried guns, she had reasoned. Every warning and every red-flag sailed right past her because she was mesmerized by the warm smell of his skin, the velvet at the nape of his neck, the soft words he breathed into her ear when they were alone.

The little trip to Watery Lane with Polly reminded her that he came from hard beginnings, but it took watching Charlie Strong stitch up a gash from an enemy’s bullet to drive the point home: Once a gangster, always a gangster. Maybe that was what Polly was trying to make her see all along. When she thought back to the way he reacted when she confronted him about Rodney she felt dread. He changed into someone else before her eyes. Polly’s words echoed in her memory, He did have a big heart. Did. Past tense. But then, he was so tender with her afterward. She made herself believe that there was hope for him after all, that Tommy was the paradoxical hard man with a heart. He was ruthless on his climb to the top and would always have a target on his back, so yes, he had to be hard. It was so much an ingrained part of Tommy’s life that he simply accepted it and moved on. She wanted to be like Tommy, and accept it, too.

Consequently, they fell into a comfortable pattern of denial. Nearly every day after it happened, she received a delivery of one kind or another—Flowers one day, a basket of exotic fruits the next, a box of wine and cheese from Harrods, a box of chocolates imported from Switzerland, it went on and on. On the nights he came to stay with her he brought antique volumes of poetry (obviously Ada’s idea) and a diamond bracelet to match the necklace he had already given her. She wanted so much to tell him that he didn’t need to buy her forgiveness, but pointing that out would only draw attention to the subject they were trying to avoid. Instead, she shared her fruits and chocolates with the girls at the library and drew jealous gasps from them as she told about the first edition Shelley that Tommy had given her.

As the holiday season drew closer, Lia finished working out her notice at the Birmingham branch of the library in preparation for her transfer to London. Naturally, she began to spend more time at Arrow House. Charlie was finished with lessons, so he and Lia fell into a pattern of riding, playing games, and baking cookies. At first Tommy had reservations about the growing boy hanging around the kitchen, but then Arthur reminded him of all the winter afternoons that John spent at Polly’s elbow making the Christmas treats. Ultimately, Tommy felt that while he was at work it was nice that someone besides a maid was with Charlie.

He especially enjoyed the greeting he received at the end of a long day. It was often dark when he finally pulled around the fountain and came through the door. Charlie and Lia could hear his car’s approach down the long driveway and had displaced Frances as the ones to meet him at the door. Lia would kiss his cheek and take his coat and hat while Charlie plied him with samples of their latest confections. Dinner at Arrow House was different, as well. Except for the nights that Tommy would be egregiously late, Charlie joined the grownups for dinner. Etiquette and decorum in great houses dictated that children were fed separate from the adults, and Tommy had been too busy to even question it. Lia, however, thought it was strange. She had grown up with family around the dinner table together, and she reckoned that Tommy had as well. Tommy was distant from Charlie in many ways, and she sought to remedy that where she could; having nightly dinner together was a step in the right direction.

One night after dinner, the three of them went into the sitting room for Charlie to play a while before bed. He had spent half of the afternoon setting up a racetrack, complete with pebbles marking the outline of the oval, toy horses on their marks, and toy soldiers crowded around as spectators. Tommy had one arm draped loosely around Lia’s shoulder as he chuckled lowly at the voices Charlie did for the announcers and the people in the crowd. They sipped their whiskeys and whispered their bets to each other.

“I think the black one will win by at least a length,” said Lia.

Tommy leaned closer until his nose grazed her ear. “I think it’ll be the bay. What would you like to wager, Miss?”

She looked up at the ceiling and pretended to think before replying, “How about three kisses?”

Charlie stopped galloping his horses and crowed, “Yuck, I can hear you two, you know.”

“You won’t always think it’s yucky, my boy. Now, run the race so we can see if Lia or your old dad has won.”

When Charlie was once again engrossed in the intricacies of the Derby, Tommy crossed the room to refill his whiskey. He motioned to Lia with the decanter and she joined him for a refill. They were just out of Charlie’s immediate line of sight, so he slipped his arms around her. She relaxed into his embrace and sighed, “This is lovely, but we’ll miss the end of the race.”

“I know what you are doing,” he said. His voice had taken on a more serious tone.

She put her hands on his chest and looked up. “What do you mean?”

“The dinners, the cookies at the door every afternoon, all of it,” he took a final drag from his cigarette and held her gaze as he placed the end in a nearby ashtray. “You are trying to have me spend more time with Charlie.”

“Charlie is a precious boy, and he loves you more than anything, Tommy. No matter what you may think, you deserve his love.”

Tommy stared at her in silence, stunned that she had read him so easily. She was innocent, guileless, and had no ulterior motive for what she said. She only wanted him to have a relationship with his son. The revelation both warmed him and filled him with uneasiness. He had let his mask slip in front of her, and she had seen the guilt and self-loathing that he hid from the world.

He silently blinked at her. When at a loss for how to react, his default was always to stall with a blank expression, a cigarette, and a glass of whiskey. He had stepped back from her and begun rummaging through his pockets for another smoke when Charlie’s high pitched voice called, “They’re in the final stretch!”

She turned to face the boy and his track, and as she did she caught sight of Grace’s photograph. He was far too young to remember the loss of his mother, but he knew the sting of growing up with a father who was absent due to an overwhelming sense of guilt and fear. Lia often reflected that Charlie seemed remarkably well adjusted for a child who had been through so much. She put it down to Ada and the staff, who honestly spent much more time with him than Tommy did. Then and there, she resolved to convince Tommy to have the boy stay in London with them. She couldn’t imagine being separated from him if they could help it.

***

“One of my boys should take you to your parents. I don’t like you taking the train on your own,” Tommy grumbled as his eyes shifted around and noted every shadow of the train station.

Both statements alluded to the very topic they’d been avoiding for a month—one of Tommy’s drivers being shot, and his lingering nervousness about the possibility that danger was still lurking about. Tommy hadn’t minded the train journey before, because Jenny was taking the trip with Lia. At the last minute, though, Jenny decided to stay in town an extra day with her new boyfriend, a Birmingham police detective.

“I’ll be fine. It’s just a couple of hours. Besides, I need a chance to explain to my parents about us. I can’t just swan into the village in the backseat of a chauffeured Bugatti. It’ll give my poor dad a heart attack,” she laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

Tommy cut his eyes at her. “I thought you said you had told them about me already.”

“They know I’m seeing you, but they don’t know how serious we have become. They definitely don’t know about London. I need time to ease them into the idea of me moving to the city with you.” She didn’t say without a ring on my finger, but it hung in the air, nonetheless.

She didn’t want their last moments before the holiday to be anything less than perfect. She wanted the Hollywood movie sendoff, complete with passionate kisses on the train platform, but she would settle for a respectable kiss and less of his moodiness. She cocked an eyebrow and turned her face up to his. He licked his lips and leaned in to oblige her. She blushed up to the roots of her hair when she thought about everywhere his lips had been just a few hours before.

They had spent the night before “saying goodbye” until well after midnight. Tommy (or his secretary) had really outdone himself. They started with an extra-long supper with Charlie. He had become quite attached to Lia and wanted a chance to say goodbye before her trip home. After Charlie went up to bed, Tommy took Lia upstairs where all her things for her trip were packed into Louis Vuitton cases.

Lia gasped, “Oh, Tommy! It’s too much!” She ran her fingertips over the leather and along the brass closures and groaned with pleasure, “Its only a three-day trip.”

He approached her from behind and nuzzled her ear, “Consider it an early Christmas gift. The rest of it is at your house.”

“The rest of it!” She shouted through bubbly laughter, spinning around and grasping Tommy’s face. He was smiling broadly and loudly kissed her.

“You’ll need it when we go to London. So you see, my girl, it’s actually a very practical gift.”

“Wool stockings are a practical gift. This cost more than the house where I was raised.”

He caressed her shoulders and his face took on a more serious expression. “Get used to it, love.”

Lia leaned into him as his hands slid from her arms to her back. He traced down and back up her spine, stopping at the top button of her dress. With achingly slow hands he undid each button while Lia pressed herself closer to his body. Maybe it was the after-dinner whiskey that had made her so giddy before, but now her head was dizzy with want and she found it hard to catch her breath.

After he slid her dress off of her shoulders he grasped her chin between his index finger and thumb and pulled her face up to his. He took in her drowsy expression, and with his eyes wide he gruffly whispered, “Lia, eh? Look at me.”

She fluttered her lashes and complied.

Tommy ground into her until she could feel the blood pulsing through his veins. “I want you to get used to having the best of everything, Lia. You are with me now, and London is on a whole other level than Birmingham. You’re a smart girl, but in London, I’ll need you to be sharp. Can you do that?”

He still had her chin in his hand, but she nodded as best as she could. She had barely breathed out, “Yes, Tommy,” before he had taken her mouth with his own. He spent the rest of the night taking everything else she could give him.

He was thinking of the same thing when he reached into his pocket for his watch. It was time. “Call me when you arrive,” he insisted as he looked her up and down. Even though she would only be gone for a few days, he wanted to remember every detail: the soft waves of her hair, the freckles on her nose, the sad smile on her deep red lips. Standing on that platform watching her go, he began to realize that he wanted her to stay. In the sober light of day, he wanted her to stay, and that worried him.

Hell yeah, I have a Masterlist!

#peaky blinders #tommy shelby #peaky blinders fiction #peaky blinders fic #peaky blinders fanfic #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby x oc #all is fair

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westernmanews · 7 years

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AMHERST, MASS. (SHNS) – Colleges and universities in Massachusetts have grappled with free speech and First Amendment rights in recent years — especially when controversial speakers come to town.

The debate over free speech and counter-protests was recently elevated when Attorney General Jeff Sessions in late September called the American college campus “an echo chamber of political correctness and homogeneous thought, a shelter for fragile egos” during a speech at the Georgetown University Law School.

Sessions said he believes free speech on college campuses is under attack and advocated for First Amendment rights over “disruptive tactics” of hecklers who try to stop controversial speakers. There’s been a “crackdown on speech” on campuses spanning “creeds, races, issues and religions,” he said.

“The Department of Justice will do its part in this struggle. We will enforce federal law, defend free speech, and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come,” Sessions said Sept. 26. “To that end, we are filing a Statement of Interest in a campus free speech case this week and we will be filing more in the weeks and months to come.”

The Georgia free speech case pertains to the on-campus expressions of a Christian group that the justice department believes were improperly constricted, said Sessions, who urged all higher education officials “push back against some of the trends we’re seeing today,” including efforts to block free speech.

Sessions himself used his speech to denounce an incident in Michigan in 2016 in which he said local officials arrested and jailed individuals on a public college campus “for handing out copies of the United States constitution.” He said one third of public campuses surveyed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education had written policies banning disfavored speech, including one policy banning “conduct that a reasonable person would find offensive.”

“For publicly run institutions, the easy answer is that upholding free speech rights is not an option, but an unshakable requirement of the First Amendment,” Sessions said. “But even setting aside the law, the more fundamental issue is that the university is supposed to be the place where we train virtuous citizens. It is where the next generation of Americans are equipped to contribute to and live in a diverse and free society filled with many, often contrary, voices.”

But it isn’t always that easy, as Sessions’ appearance at Georgetown proved. Dozens of protesters took a knee ahead of Sessions’ speech, inspired by protests during the national anthem led by NFL players that both President Donald Trump and Sessions have railed against. Asked about condemnations of those protests, Sessions said “the president has free speech rights too” and called it “a big mistake to protest in that fashion … ”

During his speech, Sessions criticized “free speech zones,” or protest areas set up on campuses, but protesters who opposed his visit were corralled by Georgetown officials in such zones, the New York Times reported.

Clashes over free speech have come to a head here in Amherst, a college town in the western part of the state home to more than 30,000 students who attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst College and Hampshire College.

As Sessions pointed out, debates over free speech often flare up around controversial speakers. UMass Amherst caught national attention last year when its campus hosted panel called “The Triggering: Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far?” headlined by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative associated with the alt-right. Other speakers at the UMass College Republicans event included Christina Hoff Sommers and Steven Crowder.

Yiannopoulos proclaimed “feminism is cancer” and inflamed protesters sprinkled throughout the crowd who shouted and booed. Two female protesters who referred to his comments as “hate speech” faced harassment online for months after the event.

According to a study from the Brookings Institute released this summer, 51 percent of college students surveyed say it is acceptable to shout over a speaker they do not agree with so the audience cannot hear them. Further, 1 in 5 college students believes it is acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking, the study said, if they are known to make “offensive and hurtful statements.”

To foster a “supportive environment” on campus, UMass Amherst operates a “Hate Has No Home At UMass” campaign, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy told the faculty Senate earlier this fall.

“But make no mistake, we will pursue these goals while maintaining our commitment to academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Because in this era of fake news and alternative facts, the unfettered exploration of new ideas, grounded in research and scholarship, is more important than ever,” Subbaswamy said at that time, according to UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski.

At Amherst College, the fall semester got off to a raucous start when an anti-war banner appeared above a dining hall on Sept. 11. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people,” the banner read. “In honor of those killed and displaced by America’s so called ‘war on terror.'”

Amherst officials called the banner “deeply insensitive” but said the college’s obligation to free speech prevented its removal, the Boston Herald reported.

In 2015, Amherst College was at the center of another free speech debate for its “Amherst Uprising” sit-in after “Free Speech” and “All Lives Matter” posters appeared on campus.

On the other side of town, protests erupted at Hampshire College last year after students burned the American flag after the 2016 election. When Hampshire decided not to fly the flag immediately after, the college caught national attention and hundreds of pro-flag protesters swarmed the campus.

When the flag was flown again in December, Hampshire College President Jonathan Lash said the flag hadn’t been lowered to make a political statement or offend veterans, but to “facilitate much-needed dialogue” on campus.

“This is what free speech looks like. We believe in it, we will continue this work on campus, and we will look for ways to engage with our neighbors in the wider community. We raise the flag now as a symbol of that freedom, and in hopes for justice and fairness for all,” Lash said in a statement.

#Western MA news #westernmanews

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