Greener Pastures

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife considered very few persons of the East End friends or allies, even fewer were painted as ones she could bear to spend a second of time with! Who remained were the ones who offered her something, or those she could glean something from with her bright ice-blue eyes and snarling sharp mouth. Eoin McDaniels was the kind of person she could keep, or at least see, from time to time.

As far as their agreement stood, Aoife sought his eye despite herself — clambering for his entertainment like a damned floozy playing a spectacular role. She liked to rile the streets with him, causing the mischief that the gaol men sought to put behind bars in but the flicker of a single night. Though she was said to trust no one, even the Greenstreet Gang whom she had set her anchor beside, some whispered that Aoife had come to like the McDaniels guy all too much… Though she had never said so herself.

Aoife had gone looking for food in their communal lodgings, leaping and jumping over fallen bar stools and limp bodies that had chosen to find a spare moment to sleep while peace reigned. With greedy, slim hands she jostled each jar and bottle without a care, clinking glass as if she were creating her own orchestra — with the fall of her face, Aoife came up empty handed, so she turned on her heel and began that high step across the room, stamping her feet with rigid angst against the wood before she found him there, his body expelled against the floor before she lay her foot flat against the ridge of his stomach.

“Get the feck up, we’re goin’ t’eat, Aoife announced, pushing at his tummy with the tips of her fine toes — for she remained barefoot, even against the threat of standing on broken glass. “I’m hungry, and I ain't stickin' around t'starve!” She barked, retracting her foot from his body in order to crouch and pinch at Eoin’s exposed cheek between her finger and thumb.

[Eoin McDaniels]

Eoin awoke like surfacing from primordial black sludge. First there was heavy black nothing, then a sensation pinching somewhere on his body and then he broke the surface — to the first sense of consciousness he reacted with jumping disgust. The skin on his body crawled, the hands pinching his face felt sticky and criminal, he did not know where he was. With a gasp for air he forced his eyes open and snatched whatever he could reach of the fool who was messing with him. He got a fistful of knotted blonde hair and a twig-like wrist. "Get yer bleedin' hands off me—"

He stared insolently at Aoife O'Kelly's ghostlike visage above him, swimming in and out of his field of view. He had a tilt to his optics. "Should whack ya senseless, ya bloody hedge-creeper. Can't a man die in peace—shite." His grip clamped on her wrist like a vice and he shook her once, before he let her go. Eoin sat up. He spat on the floor. "Shite.”, he repeated. “ 'm death warmed up". He tried to sort where his body was at. Everything was way too sharp: the smell in his nose of the creatures around him, the dried sweat on his skin, and the urge to piss. But he had been worse. Way worse. His stomach coiled but he did not retch and shake. He made a try at getting up and that he did. "There ya go."

Blinking into the light, he pulled down his shirt that had ridden up his stomach while he slept. The bones of his wrists stood out too stark. He needed to put weight back on him, he assessed. It was odd, but trying to make it in the gang had him cutting back on the black smoke with middling success, which was more than he could've said a few weeks ago. The other men were hungry for blood and he couldn't be caught too weak around them. Not just around the men.

Eoin turned to contemplate Aoife, who looked with her crazed blue eyes and pointy nose like a starvling fairy from a sewer. Donoghue's mad-knife judy had taken a shine to him and he wasn't sensible enough not to take advantage. "Right," he said. "Where we headin'? Missed me fierce, I bet, that's why ya get on me nerves this early."

He started rummaging around his pockets to see if he had any coins left and produced only crumpled rollies and a pipe. He wanted to smoke, but not those. With a sour expression, he tried to straighten one of the cigarettes enough to light it.

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife didn’t sleep, or never to the point of a deep and luxurious slumber that would leave you feeling refreshed and eager for the following day, instead she shadowed the darkness instead — with her eyes heavy with exhaustion, Aoife dodged the dangers of giving into sleep by taking quick moments of shut-eye in the darker corners of the city with her arms wrapped around herself for comfort. Never had she dared to give herself over to the wandering eyes of the Gang and their hanger-ons, nor had she thought to leave her open wounds exposed to those who would do anything to get a place by Donoghue’s side.

So, she danced around her tiredness, with her eyes set deep in their sockets Aoife lingered, staring down at McDaniels with the poke of her foot and then the pinch of his cheek. What a wicked fool to sleep so openly! Perhaps he was more akin to a pup exposing its soft upturned belly looking for the engagement of someone soft and kind who’d take pity on such stupidness. Aoife was, however, keen to make herself heard and seen as she pinched the young man awake, her body leaping up with a jump as Eoin grabbed at her hair and wrist, a cackle of witch-like laughter spilling from her mouth as he shook her — his keen body pulling her one way and then the other, for Aoife did not stand like stone but shook like a string, her slim cut body carved from years of malnourishment and a lack of care.

“Get yer feckin’ mitts off me!” Aoife yelled, her voice more akin to a wailing banshee than of a young woman as she wiggled from his grasp, sliding from his own large hand with the shakes before she crossed her arms against her chest, standing shoulder-width apart as she tried to anchor herself to the ground — to appear wider or larger than she was. “Aye, y’can see a night’s sleep ain’t done yer no favours! Y’look worse t’an yer did last night,” she grinned, sticking her tongue between her teeth before the wet flesh disappeared back behind clamped lips, her eyes drawn over him as they often did — whether she looked for a fuck or meat to eat didn’t seem to matter, at least to her, as the other got to his feet and latched his soul to his bones.

“I be needing someone t’distract a seller so I can get somethin’ worth takin’... I dunno, bread and the like!” Aoife retorted, the click of her tongue behind her teeth pronounced and strict as she watched him take one of his cigarettes — she, on some strange hand, did not smoke, if only because she hadn’t been given access to the vice beneath Donoghue’s eye or the fact that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together.

“Follow me, yer wee newbie, and earn yer feckin’ keep,” she announced, gesturing for him to follow as she turned on her heel and began a merry skip toward the front door.

[Eoin McDaniels]

Sleeping anywhere did not trouble Eoin. He lay passed out in corners and under benches — wherever he fell. He languished on cum-stained blankets in the worst of doss houses and he snored away on moldy mattresses in opium dens, sleeping and waking to swat caterpillar fingers away from his legs. They filched the pennies from his pockets, but if he was nodding he couldn't care. There was nothing else to take. If some degenerate wanted to get really funny with him, he risked a savage beating; If Eoin was not too out of it to notice anything at all. That was protection in itself. The lads from the gang didn't bother him.

He lit his crumpled cigarette and it went out right away. "If that' so, what're you ogling at?" he returned morosely. O'Kelly sized him up like she wanted to bite him, or wanted a piece of him, anyway. Silly girl had 20 years on her, if that. He didn't take her seriously — the guys said she was dangerous. Eoin cared that she was in Sean Donoghue's ear. He needed a chance to prove his worth.

Cursing under his breath, he went after her. Outside in the alley, he made her wait while he pissed against the brick wall. Steam rose through the chilly morning air.
"So what? Stealing bread? We need some proper business," he complained and shook himself off. He would rather lug crates around the docks than make a fuss for petty theft. After he was done, Eoin turned to look at O'Kelly. What a puny skinny thing. Could've been a pretty lass, if-- Lots of could'ves and if's. The lads from the gang were cowards to be so twisted up about her.

His dark eyes drifted away towards the sliver of grey sky above the alley. Their gaze remained opaque. Silently, he was deliberating how to shake her down for all he could possibly get out of her. "Let's go, boss," he said. "I earn my keep, you'll see."

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife was not ogling him, or so that was what she believed. The truth was more to the point that Aoife was never, at any moment, quite sure of what she wanted or how she felt. Eoin was, perhaps, simply a figure of confusion and complexities to a girl who had never been taught how to manage an inch of self-evaluation. His comment made between cigarette smoke, didn’t rile her per-sey, but rather poked at her matted surface like a hot sting, leaving the blonde to laugh and cackle despite herself as a hand went to scratch mercilessly against her scalp — it was not easy living in the pitfalls of the East End, but it was doable, even if you had to deal with the odd nit here and there.

“Oh aye, can’t get enough of ya, yer wee arse has me puss all a-flutter! Pah!” Aoife spat, rolling her eyes from one side to the other in one deep act as she marched her way toward the front door. Stealing food was a petty job, one that could have gone amiss in favour of something more daring and unusual — but Aoife hadn’t two pennies to rub together, let alone actual tin to exchange for grub. So, she went ahead with her dire plan, pausing if only to wait for Eoin to take a piss — the smell wrinkling her nose as she turned to look at him, the need to offer him privacy or even a moment of personal reflection denied and ignored as she watched him, her arms crossed over her chest as she tried to practice the a kind of patience before she clicked her tongue with annoyance. Why she was meant to hold hers in, when the boys were allowed to piss wherever, frustrated her beyond reason.

“Ah sure we do, but I ain’t killlin’ on an empty belly, yer hear?” Aoife snapped, twisting on her ankle to walk by his side, hopping over murky puddles and dog shit with the elasticity of a cat. What Eoin McDaniels had to offer the Greenstreet Gang remained a mystery to Aoife, who had watched him play brother to those she considered her kin, he had the bulk to perhaps (one day) be something of substance, but in that moment despite his broadness Eoin was almost as slim as her own set of bones. What use was that!? Another mouth to feed and for what?

Her questions piled behind her closed lips: Did he wield a weapon? Had he a talent to use? What the feck did he want? But, she swallowed her curiosities in greedy gulps, her fingers straying to touch upon the weight of her knife that lay against her thigh — in preparation or remembrance, Aosife couldn’t have been sure, as they emerged from the alley into the greater unknown.

“Yer ever killed a fella, Eoin McDaniels? Or d’yer swing yer cock about for self-defense?” She asked with her brutish, unmanicured mannerisms, her eyes alight with opportunities as she turned to stare up at him.

[Eoin McDaniels]

"Christ, ya think I just crawled out a hole for yer 'musement yesterday. Been out here since I been a wee lad."

Eoin laughed. Yes, he looked like shit, face all sunken and hair overgrown, malnourished from addiction — if he was on the nod, holding on to food was hard, if he even remembered to be hungry at all, and his strength went quick. But the gang gave him a chance for a reason.

"Got a trusty friend. For when me cock's tired from swingin' —" He opened his jacket, where he kept a nice and heavy hammer. Old Innes had gifted him that for finishing his apprenticeship, long time ago. It hit just fine whatever was in the way, to do with carpentry or not.

"'sides I killed loads of Afghan bastards," he added. He had made it two good years twiddling his thumbs in India doing blessed nothing before the army shipped him with the Royal Artillery to that godforsaken place to have the runs in the mountains and shoot at imbeciles. Eoin missed having a 9-pounder RML gun to point at his problems. That, and the sometimes regular food. Nothing else.

He turned to the girl beside him. "What's yer business, anyway?"

She knifed a fellow or two for Donoghue, he heard that. But was that all she did? Didn't he have big guys and goons to do his dirty work all over? A question shot through his mind, a consideration that seemed so important that he asked it right away. "Donoghue fuckin' ya?"

[Aoife O'Kelly]

Aoife looked at the exposed hammer with a wet mouth and wanting eyes, it was a fine thing that looked heavy enough to do a decent amount of damage to unsuspecting folk — but it couldn’t have been as quick or slick as her dead Badb, named for the Irish Goddess of war. And then, as soon as her attention waned to the next brightest thing they could come across, he mentioned those he had killed. Killing was more akin to survival to Aoife, and less about the entertainment that came with those who had a crazed look in their eyes. She had killed for the Greenstreet Gang and Donoghue, yes, but more importantly she had killed for herself when men (not unlike Eoin himself) had thought Aoife soft and easy to their inclinations of flesh. She had carved the thumbs off one man who had sought to purchase her body, and had driven her fine blade into the throat of a person who wished to do her in the true sense of harm. Of course, her appearance coddled her reputation, leaving doubt in the eyes of those who saw her, but Aoife was as harsh and blood-thirsty as they came, even if she didn’t look it to them, to Eoin.

When Eoin had come about to hang with the Gang, Aoife had not stopped to listen to his backstory. Unlike the personal characters who liked to make merry with the lot of them, the girl often went solo on her outings unless given express orders otherwise. So, she had seen him in hot flashes, and had ignored his more intimate facts without the need to ask for them… But, the idea that Eoin had seen some action, or been anywhere beyond Dublin and the East End, was a marvel indeed! With bright eyes she stared at him, mouthing the words needed around her lips as she tried to make sense of the influx of thoughts that came to suffocate her.

“And yer find yerself here, after all t’at? Feckin’ English, use yer and grind yer back into t’e ground like yer not’ing. Someone oughta do somet’ing,” Aoife snapped, shaking her head in a rare moment of sympathetic emotion before he asked his own questions, questions that seemed obvious at the very least. She tested her answer behind her teeth, touching upon the uneven row of white with the tip of her tongue as she tried to formulate something of a coherent sentence. Aoife had no shame about what she wanted, or what she offered the Gang. But Donoghue was more akin to a brother than a lover, not that she thought to give him a true answer at any rate.

“Why? Yer wanna fuck me?” She asked without hesitation, “...Sure y’do, like, get me washed and everyone wants t’. Don’t mean t’ey will t’ough! I’d take yer for a ride if yer put some meat on yer bones, McDaniels, t’ats a t’ought and a half!” Aoife howled, laughing as she threw her head back and ran her fingers through her long blonde hair, ignoring how they caught in the knots that had made their way into her locks as she went to take two steps for one of his own, smiling from ear to ear as they made their way toward the various bakeries who battled for the attention of that sparkling East End.

[Eoin McDaniels]

The girl was onto something, Eoin thought while they headed out of the alley towards the bakeries and market stands this side of Spitalfields. Military service had gotten him nothing. "Gave me the boot for nothin'. No pension, didn't get shite. Bastards," he said and shook out another match. His cigarette kept going out.

O'Kelly was acting cagey about if she got with the gang leader or not — no wonder, but for him that was no good, it did not tell him if he would get shanked if he stuck it to her. He did not think so, but that was tricky business and he did not know Donoghue that well, he didn't know him at all. That was a problem. She made him laugh though.

He took his cigarette out of his mouth and threw his head back. Then he drew two steps closer and rustled her a bit with his shoulder, and lowered his head in her ear's direction: "Wash up? Don't need t' make no prissy fuss with me, darlin'," he said and drew out the last letter. "I'd give ya the backalley gallop just as stinkin' nasty as y'are. Ha!" he laughed loudly. Then suddenly he made a pensive face and pulled his shirt up to look at his body. There was a pitiful gap from where his suspenders held his trousers to the concave line of his stomach between his hipbones. He sighed and let the shirt fall back in place. "Ya don't got t' same love for me. Want no meager hack — heartless bitch."

He grinned and looked at her with sly scrutiny. Eoin picked up his pace towards the bakeries. It smelled like freshly baked rolls and mysterious mince pies. His stomach grumbled. He was starving, now that he thought about it.

"Let's get me some bread so I can soon 'nough fuck mad knife O'Kelly! Be drawn up like a war horse, yer don't know what's coming for ya," he announced, and he wheezed laughing about his own jest and looked around and waited for the thieving girl to give him the run-down on how this would go.

There was a woman here that he sometimes schmoozed around for a piece of pie, but he could forget that with the specter in his wake.

[Aoife O'Kelly]

The idea of caring for him and the treatment offered to him by the hand of his English superiors didn’t provoke Aoife’s thoughts or worries, all that came to mind were the troubles that she had been born into. The daughter of a Dubliner prostitute with keen sympathies for the IRB and a member of such a brotherhood intent on unmasked violence, Aoife had come to England not for greener pastures under English rule but rather simply because Donoghue had picked it as a new haven. Her love for those she lived beside was little and strained, a tension that was pulled tight every other day by the fools who tried her patience — alas, she played along, and smiled without much in the way of commitment as Eoin continued to agree with her muddled sentiment.

As he drew closer, Aoife wiggled her body against his, pressing her own shoulder against Eoin’s chest in a moment of tense intimacy, the tightness of a stolen breath wrapped up in their movements as she, in her extravagance, pulled back her lips to pretend and nip his nose with her teeth — a snap and snarl presented in hand with a laugh that rolled off the tip of her tongue. Truth be told, she’d probably fuck him as slim as he was, if only because she felt the electricity spark off him in waves, a physicality that could not be ignored despite herself as she eyed Eoin from her blonde, almost invisible, eyelashes.

But what could he give her, apart from a nice sized cock? Aoife hummed and ahhed over the possibilities, but mostly she saw herself as a way for him to grow close to Donoghue and the others who considered her part of the family. Though academically and emotionally stunted, it was to be stated that Aoife had an inch of common sense, and knew that she ought to never take the hunger of men seriously in the same way her mother once had when she had stalked the streets of that emerald city. So, with pointy elbows and sharp angles, Aoife pressed her tongue into the inner wall of her cheek, a bubble of laughter bursting past her lips before she went to press her hand around the curve of Eoin’s shoulder, reaching up as she did with a snarling grin to match.

“Now look here, you distract that old bint and I’ll go back and get us somet’ing, if yer play yer part well enough I’ll give a t’ink towards yer horse cock, yer hear?” Aoife wagered, wiggling her brows for some extra effect before she released his shoulder, her hand dropped to slap hard against Eoin’s arse in order to push him in the right direction — rounding his body in order to make footfall towards the target’s bounty.

[Eoin McDaniels]

"Goin'," he said and grinned. Sent off with a slap to his bony behind, Eoin slunk into the crowd and made a round, looking at the old woman minding her bread stand. Aoife was nowhere to be seen, meaning she was on her way.

She was a mean thing, but a cup full of fire on a cold morning; one to keep him on his toes and out of his thoughts, that seemed to want to drift away and mix with the smoke, if left unattended.

Now he fixed his eyes on the mark and filtered through his options. Schmooze her? No, he was too ragged. Provoke? Old bint like that had seen it all, all the gaffs to get her to take eyes off her prizes. He couldn't be too obvious. What would do it was the good old appeal to her motherly feeling. She would have brought up a few on those tits, flat and dry as they were now. Sons and daughters gone somewhere to be as downtrodden as the rest of them.

A heart-rending forlorn look appeared on Eoin's face. He shuffled closer to the woman, but not too close. He didn't want her scared, but he broke into her space and arrested her attention. He was, after all, an assault on all senses: his smell to the nostrils, the hard shape of his shoulder and jaw to the primal sense of survivalist alert, and his sad eyes a knife to the heart.

"Beggin' yer pardon, missus...," he let the tremble of his hands and voice go forth unrestrained. "Might ya be able to help a poor soul? Me sister, she's taken awful ill, and I'm turned around looking fer de chemist..."
The woman looked at him with bewilderment and fear and disgust, but something in his performance kept her from chasing him off at once. "Was told it was down dis way, past de church... My head's not right since I've got the fevers." He gestured strangely with his hands, drawing her eyes towards the movement.

"They told yer wrong, Mister," she said, cagey, but even a small buy-in was enough. He swayed closer to her, pretending to misunderstand her instructions where to go. O'Kelly better be quick.