Strategy

Mother Superior: May I ask what this meeting is about?

[Polly places a folder on the table]

Thomas Shelby: The Grace Shelby Foundation is the biggest single source of funding for this charitable institution, devoted to the care of the orphaned girls of South Birmingham, yeah?

Mother Superior: For which we give thanks.

Thomas Shelby: Uh-huh.

[he slides the folder across the table]

Aunt Polly: I have a temper similar to the one described in that report. Yet unlike you, I wait until I'm matched in size.

Mother Superior: Whose report?

Aunt Polly: The testimony of children.

[Mother Superior opens the folder]

Mother Superior: Who have they spoken to?

Aunt Polly: You'd have them only speak to God.

Mother Superior: God be their witness.

Thomas Shelby: There is God, and there are the Peaky Blinders. This is Sparkhill, we're in Small Heath. We're much, much closer at hand than God.

Aunt Polly: And we have heard terrible things.

Mother Superior: We have in this place children of the worst sort. They lie as easily as breathe.

Aunt Polly: You had a child half-black. You made her wash with a different soap.

Mother Superior: Mr. Shelby, your own sins are legend.

Thomas Shelby: Our sins? Our sins, against the beating of children with bricks and hoses? Our sins? Our sins...

[he pulls out a small vial, pours some powder into his hand, and blows it across the table at Mother Superior]

Thomas Shelby: ... against the black child who hanged herself for fear of your temper?

Mother Superior: I do not see how...

Thomas Shelby: You do not see?

[he snatches Mother Superior's glasses off her face and smashes them on the table]

Thomas Shelby: Now put 'em on. Put 'em on your face, or it'll be your eyes that are broken. Please don't imagine that I won't use this minute to do it, or that I am afraid of your prayers or your crosses.

[she hesitates, then puts the shattered glasses back on]

Aunt Polly: You see the world broken. Like those beaten children will.

Thomas Shelby: Now look at me.

[no response]

Thomas Shelby: Look at me.

[no response]

Thomas Shelby: LOOK AT ME!

[Mother Superior fearfully raises her eyes to Tommy's]

Thomas Shelby: Funding withdrawn.

Aunt Polly: All children to be taken into our own institutions.

Mother Superior: You have no say in where the children--

[Polly suddenly draws a dagger and points it in Mother Superior's face]

Aunt Polly: If I come for you--and I still might yet decide to come for you--I will wear high heels so you can hear my approach on the cobblestones and have time to repent. You listen for my footsteps.