Work Text:
1938
Ruby was supposed to meet him in their father’s Parliament office. She wasn’t there. Charlie wasn’t even really surprised. Ruby was far from what anyone would call predictable, but there were certain things she could always be counted on to do. She would never sit quietly in the office while their father was giving a speech.
Charlie gave the empty office one last once over like his little sister was just going to show up out of nowhere. When Ruby didn’t appear, he heaved a sigh and left the office, locking the door firmly behind him.
Charlie had spent enough time in the halls of Parliament to find his way to the observation platform without trouble, but that didn’t mean he was happy to be there. He’d never admit it, but Charlie hated politics. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it, in fact he knew way more about the subject than he wanted to, but overall, he found politics a deep and anxious hole that he preferred not to dwell in for any longer than necessary.
His father was speaking when Charlie reached the top of the stairs that lead to the observation platform. Charlie actively tuned him out. He’d heard his father speak before. He wished Karl was here. His older cousin good at not listening to things and good at distracting Charlie as a result. He missed Karl overall, actually, it had been a while since he’d seen him and he wasn’t sure why because he saw his aunt Ada and his cousin Amelia all the time.
Every once and while someone—usually a brave soul who didn’t mind being associated with the most openly socialist member of the Labour party—would complement Charlie’s father by saying he was a good speaker. Charlie had always thought that was kind of funny, because it wasn’t actually true. Anyone who’d ever seen Tommy Shelby fail at giving an impromptu speech at Christmas dinner would know he was no public speaker. It was more that Aunt Ada was an adept speech writer.
Aunt Ada was sitting at the front of the observation platform listening as she always did. Amy and Ruby were unsurprisingly sitting next to her. Ruby was fiddling with a collection of interlocking rings their great-uncle Charlie had made for her. Ruby was a creature of constant motion, fiddling with her clothes, flapping her hands, bouncing up and down in her seat. Uncle Charlie had made the ring toy for her after it became obvious that if she was ever at rest with nothing to do with her hands she started pulling her hair.
“Hi, Charlie,” Ruby greeted as Charlie slid into the seat next to her.
“Hi!” Amy waved, looking up from the sketchpad she was bent over. Aunt Ada gave him a smile before returning her attention to what was happening below.
“You were supposed to wait for me in Dad’s office,” he hissed to Ruby under his breath.
“I wanted to hear the speeches,” Ruby said. She didn’t look in his direction as she spoke. Eye contact was unnatural for Ruby and while she could fake it if necessary she generally didn’t bother with the family. It didn’t bother Charlie, in fact he wasn’t sure to what extent he’d noticed it before he and Ruby had started interacting with people outside the family who had commented on it. In fact, he wasn’t sure to what extent the adults in the family had noticed either. Ruby was odd, but her brand of oddness ran in the Shelby family so her quirks weren’t anything the family hadn’t seen before.
“I was looking for you,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Ruby said. “You didn’t have to come. You could have waited in the office. We’ll have to stop there before we leave anyway.”
“I know,” Charlie said.
“It’ll be over soon,” Ruby assured him and returned her attention to what was happening below.
Charlie sighed and tried to vanish into his head and block out the sound of his father’s speech. It wasn’t that he disagreed with his father’s politics, it was more that he seemed to be the only member of the family who noticed or cared that other people disagreed with his father’s politics. He couldn’t listen to his father speak without thinking about every little thing that his teachers and the boys he went to school with would say. Charlie knew that he shouldn’t care what anyone thought of him or the rest of the family but he hated conflict and no matter how much he disagreed with someone he always somehow felt guilty for not agreeing with them, which didn’t even make any sense. It was easier to just avoid thinking about politics as much as possible.
Fortunately, Amy was there. She was easy enough to draw into conversation about her drawings. Ruby switched places with her so she and Charlie were sitting next to each other and Charlie kept peppering his younger cousin with art questions until the session of Parliament ended and everyone filed out.
“How are you, Charlie?” Aunt Ada asked as they headed down the stairs.
“I’m good,” Charlie said, which he’d long since learned was the correct response to such questions no matter what was going on. “You?”
“Fine,” Aunt Ada said. There was something tense about her, but Charlie couldn’t put a finger on exactly what. Aunt Ada had been worried a lot recently. Charlie wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask. “How’s school?”
Charlie took this as indication that he should launch into his pre-scripted spiel about school. He did his best not to let on any of the issues he had at school with his classmates and teachers to the family to avoid compounding the larger Shelby issues involving school.
Ruby had a very poor track record where schools were concerned through no fault of her own. She’d been expelled from her first one when a new headmaster with a personal grudge against their father had come into power. It turned out that while the big fancy schools were hypothetically willing to take the money of one of Britain’s most vocal socialists that arrangement was only acceptable if the administration was alright with ignoring it Once one with a personal grudge came into power they’d start stirring things up and before you knew it droves of parents started sending angry letters dripping in antiziganism talking about how you were going to pollute their children’s delicate minds and you got expelled.
Ruby hadn’t been expelled from her new school, but their parents had pulled her out a few months before, though the circumstances surrounding that were a bit murky. Their mum had eventually told Charlie that Ruby had been being bullied. Charlie might have believed her if not for the long conferences between Ruby and their parents in their father’s office, and all the prodding questions Aunt Polly had asked whenever she was around.
That had been months ago, and Charlie was no closer to figuring out what had happened. Ruby was splitting her time between Arrow House and London while their father tried to find her a tutor and she wasn’t answering questioning about what had happened. Neither was their mum, and their father never answered questions about anything.
They met Charlie and Ruby’s father before heading for his office. He was quiet in the distant way he tended to be after Parliament meetings, something which had become even more pronounced of late. Charlie got the impression that something wasn’t going well on the politics front, and perhaps it was terrible that he had no desire to figure out what that was. Ruby was more than willing to fill in the gaps in silence with animated chatter about what had been discussed during the meeting. Politics was Ruby’s thing. She was a bottomless vat of knowledge on the subject and could talk about it for literally hours. Charlie was a bit mystified about how she got any joy out of it, but it tried to live with it, and not to be too offended when she was so caught up in something new she’d just read that she forgot he didn’t like to hear about politics.
Ruby was still talking when they started out of the building after stopping at the office, only their father had had enough time to start to come back from whatever hyper-focused state he went into during Parliament meetings and was starting to interact with her so the conversation wasn’t so one-sided. Charlie did his best to tune them out. They were all going to drive back to Birmingham tonight. There was a family meeting in the morning and for once he and Ruby would be allowed to attend. That likely meant there wasn’t anything important on the agenda—he and Ruby weren’t supposed to know about the illegitimate business but at this point there was basically just a family-wide unspoken agreement that no one would acknowledge that they knew—but it was still nice to be treated as part of the family sometimes. He wondered if Karl would be there. He hadn’t seen Karl in too long. Every time they stopped at Aunt Ada’s he was out. Charlie understood that Karl was an adult now and probably didn’t have time for his younger cousins, but he still missed him.
They were passing by a group of people talking. Charlie glanced over and tensed when he recognized Oswald Mosley.
Charlie’s parents had kept him and Ruby away from Mosley when their father had been working to undermine him years before, but Charlie still knew exactly who he was. Mosley had lost his reelection bid in 1931, but he was still hanging around like a bad stench, stirring up the fascists of Britain. He made Charlie’s skin crawl.
Today Mosley was surrounded by a group of people, some of which Charlie knew from bitter experience where his father’s political rivals (they were also unfortunately the fathers of some of his classmates) and a tall young man with a strangely familiar brown hair. The man turned a little as Charlie and his family passed by and Charlie’s heart stuttered.
It was his cousin Karl.
Charlie almost tripped over his feet and fell on his face. His brain stumbled over the impossibility of Karl standing there with Oswald Mosley and his classmate’s horrible fathers. His mouth opened almost without thought, preparing to call Karl’s name and ask what the hell was going on.
His father’s hand closed around his shoulder and he physically dragged Charlie forward as they sped up.
“Th-That-that—” Charlie spluttered, trying to find the words.
“Keep walking,” his father said without looking at him. His hand was so tight on Charlie’s shoulder that it hurt.
“But—” Charlie protested.
“I’m aware,” his father growled.
Charlie looked to the rest of the family. Aunt Ada was clutching Amy’s hand tightly and staring straight forward, blank-faced. Ruby had stopped talking and her hands were fluttering a little at her sides. Amy’s lips were pressed tight together as she clung to her mother’s hand. His father had the grim look he wore in Parliament back on. Whatever was going on with Karl, they’d all already known about it.
Charlie looked back over his shoulder. Karl’s back was to them, so it was impossible to tell if he’d even noticed them. However, Mosley did notice Charlie looking. He met his eyes and smiled. Charlie shivered.
~~~~
“Are you all just going to keep ignoring my questions?” Charlie demanded. “I’m not stupid. You all knew about this. Tell me what’s going on!”
They were in the car going to pick up some things from Aunt Ada’s house before driving to Birmingham for the family meeting. Everyone had been stoically ignoring Charlie’s questions about Karl since they’d left Parliament.
Charlie’s father pulled up in front of the house and took a breath so deep his shoulders heaved.
“Dad—”
His father whipped around, his face like a thundercloud. Charlie jumped, surprised by the sudden anger.
“Tommy—” Aunt Ada began.
“Go inside and get your stuff, Ada,” his father said. “Charlie and I are going to talk for a minute.”
He thought Aunt Ada was going to argue, but then she nodded and got out of the car. After a moment, Ruby shifted awkwardly in her seat and reached for the handle of her door. “I’m going to go with Aunt Ada,” she said and hopped out of the car before anyone could say anything. Traitor.
“I’m going too,” Amy said and practically hurled herself out of the car with such haste that she forgot her sketchbook.
Charlie watched Aunt Ada, Ruby and Amy until the front door swung closed behind them. Anything to avoid facing his father. Tommy Shelby was terrifying. It was a wonder any of his myriad enemies were able to start up to him.
“Charlie, look at me,” His father said. Demanded really.
Charlie obeyed but he wasn’t going to just sit there and say nothing. “I don’t understand why you won’t just tell me what’s going on. What was Karl doing for Mosley? Is he doing some undercover work for the business? Why does Ruby know about it when I don’t?”
Somehow that made his father even angrier. “Tell me,” he said. “At any point in the last half hour did you think to notice that your aunt looks like she’s going to cry whenever someone brings Karl up? Or did you notice and just not care?”
Charlie hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t even thought to wonder how Aunt Ada felt about what they’d seen. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
His father ran a hand down his face. “I understand that you’re ashamed to be related to the rest of us and hate that you have to put up with us having politics that make things awkward with your rich school friends, but the fucking least you could do is take a moment to care about not deliberately rubbing your aunt’s face in this.”
Charlie’s stomach bottomed out. It was like he’d been hit by a train. His mouth opened and closed as he struggled to figure out what to say. “I don’t think that,” he finally managed to stammer. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.” He said again, but that was so inadequate in the face of this. His father probably didn’t even believe him.
His father turned forward in his seat, making it even more impossible to tell whether or not he realized Charlie’s apology was genuine. “Since you are so determined to know,” he said, staring out the front window. “Karl appears to be working with Mosley in some capacity. If it’s some kind of plan to undermine him, I was not informed. He hasn’t spoken to Ada or I in months. Beyond Lizzie and Ruby none of the rest of the family know and I’d prefer it remains that way.”
Charlie wanted to ask why Ruby had been let in on this secret while he had not, but he was afraid that it had something to do with what his father had just thrown in his face so he didn’t ask.
“Does that satisfy your curiosity?” His father asked tightly.
“Yes,” Charlie whispered. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
They sat in stony, awful silence until Aunt Ada, Ruby and Amy came back. Aunt Ada loaded her and Amy’s bags into the car and they piled back inside. Once she was in the car, Aunt Ada turned in her seat and gave him a gentle smile. “Alright, Charlie?” but it was obvious she’d been crying while in the house. Did she think he hated them all too? Did his mum? Did Ruby? He looked at his sister, but she was talking to Amy and didn’t look in his direction. Now that this train of thought had been opened, Charlie couldn’t stop it. He’d be analyzing every interaction he had with his whole family for the rest of life, probably.
“I’m alright,” Charlie said and forced a smile. “I’m sorry for being pushy before.”
“It’s fine,” Aunt Ada said, even though it obviously wasn’t and his father started the car.
Charlie spent the entirety of the four hour drive to Birmingham trying not to cry.