Animal Instinct | Peaky Blinders [Thomas Shelby]

02 - One-Eyed Herschel

Vivian lifted up the thick pack of papers folded in the plain, white envelope, looking them over but not quite reading the words. A copper delivered them himself - several different papers, just this morning. She'd been surprised when he knocked on their front door, as she didn't often get visitors so early in the morning. Or visitors at all, really.

Usually, they paid her visits around mid-afternoon when Vivian was at the stables, and they would simply leave the notices hanging on her door. Only twice had they ever visited her in person, and she was starting to grow very nervous. It was interesting how a piece of paper with a few signatures could mean so much.

"You're doing it again," Leo grumbled, his voice heavy from sleep. Vivian, who hadn't heard him sneaking up behind her, whirled around, startled out of her wits. As soon as she saw her son, watching her intently from the doorway, she stuffed the envelope into her coat, unable to look at it any longer.

"Doing what?" She wondered. She turned back around to put her attention on the flapjacks that were sizzling on the griddle. She poked them to make sure they were fully cooked.

"You're worrying."

"I'm not worrying, I'm thinking. There's a difference."

Leo was not so easily fooled, and his face twisted into an almost sour expression, but he seemed to forget what he was about to say when he saw his mother starting to prepare him a plate at the table. The full plate of flapjacks were a contrast to their usual meal of bread and jam, and the boy looked like he could hardly contain his urge to devour them right then and there.

"Is it my birthday?" Leo asked, knowing his mother usually kept meals like this for special occasions. He knew it was September, and so his birthday was drawing close, but he was never one to keep track of the date.

Vivian laughed and shook her head as she poured him tea over his shoulder. "Not for a few more weeks. Miss Wardrop gave me cream and sugar in exchange for grooming her granddaughter's horse," Vivian said, smiling through her lie.

Miss Wardrop was an Italian immigrant who Leo, like most others, knew as a sweet, elderly lady with about a million grandkids and an addiction to sweets, who swept the streets of Birmingham during the day. But at night, she sells everything you can ever want out of the back of her wagon - from decades-old wine and illegal coffee, to porcelain dolls and china.

If you couldn't afford something from the market and talked to the right person, you'd be directed to Miss Wardrop. Vivian found her a few years back when she and Leo were on the verge of starving, and in exchange for a handful of stolen buttons, Miss Wardrop gave her a loaf of bread - no questions asked. But her goods were less than legal, and her suppliers less than refined, law-abiding citizens.

Vivian could never taint Leo's perception of sweet, clueless Miss Wardrop. She could never tell him that she got the cream and sugar in exchange for an old wristwatch she stole off a drunkard in a bar. Perhaps he'd understand that she did it for him. Perhaps he wouldn't.