𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐃𝐀𝐘 peaky blinders

xii. HAILS FROM GALWAY

ACT: TWO
CHAPTER xii: ' hails from galway. '

           Green Lanes had turned into a ghost town since news spread of an Irish Inspector being positioned in Birmingham for the foreseeable future. All the Irishmen who lived there were huddled around dining tables with cigarettes burning at their lips and sweat dripping from their foreheads at the long hours they'd spent coming up with plausible solutions to fix the arising problem.

Chief Inspector Campbell was rumoured to be en route to the city.

With Campbell being the reason why many of the good Catholic men that lived in Green Lanes had fled their homeland to the charred streets of Small Health, the reactionws were scattered. Some grew frightened by the news that the vulture of a man had followed them to England, whereas the others felt their blood begin to boil, wanting nothing more than to right the wrong he did to them. They'd become fugitives back home and driven out from their people like a lone lion being lured out into the open by a herd of hyenas, only in this case Campbell was a lone hyena and he'd still managed to separate lions from their pride.

It was a tough thing to do, leaving everything you knew and loved behind; it was even more difficult when it wasn't by choice. So it came as no surprise to learn that some of the men were polishing bullets with Campbell's name on them.

Others like Eamonn Montgomery made the effort to try and keep the peace, steadying the emotions of their comrades so that they could get out of their current situation unscathed. They didn't need any extra heat on them from the British authorities for the murder of a Chief Inspector. But of course, that proved difficult when most of the leaders among the (ex)IRA men were about to go into hiding in order to escape Campbell's grasp, Eamonn included.

The wives and children of these men were feeling the real toll of Campbell's arrival, the nerves and direness of it all sinking in and devouring them like quicksand. Most choose to carry on as per usual, overdoing themselves in an act to pass the time and keep their minds occupied, only stopping when the younger children asked why their father's disappeared so abruptly and then suddenly, they were crying behind the bathroom door, trying to quieten their sobs to keep up with their strong act.

Marie Montgomery, however, didn't shed one single tear in front of her children or otherwise, not even when an upset Mila made a comment about how their father was a coward for running away. Perhaps, Eli hadn't given the twins enough credit before because it seemed they understood the situation their family was in better than she had first thought.

Eli, herself, was trying to follow in her mother's footsteps. But she wasn't quite herself and Polly had noticed when she'd popped into the shop only to note Eli's sunken complexion and slightly trembling hands. Ironically, Polly was one of the people that could understand perfectly well the heavy weight of not knowing whether a family member was alive or lying dead in a cut somewhere. She'd felt it firsthand when her three nephews went off to war and left the women behind to wallow in their absence and pick up the pieces of their business.