“But the price you paid for your education!”
“You speak as if I could give it back and make a different bargain. I have already paid the price. I can only live now as who I am and become the best man I may.”
“So you thank Mr Kent for making you a criminal?”
“That’s not so easy to decide. You forget that the law makes me a criminal in any case, merely for being an invert, which I could not have avoided. No. Mixed with the hatred I feel for Mr Kent, I would be unfair and inhuman if I did not also feel gratitude. He might have done worse.”
“So you do hate him, then?”
“Yes, in its due place.”
He laughed again, this time with humour. “Fine detectives we are, gentlemen! What would Mr Sherlock Holmes think if he found us drawing conclusions before I finish recounting the story?”
Holmes smiled. “Pray, continue.”
“The life I’ve described to you went on for several years. Mr Kent gave me a sum of money on each of my birthdays, forty pounds when I was eleven, two hundred when I reached fifteen. He made me use this money, under his supervision, as a small laboratory to reinforce the lessons he gave me in stocks, bonds, and markets. The goals he set me were to balance my investments to earn good profits but always with security.
“He enjoyed taking me to certain restaurants where he quietly showed me off. I was proud of his obvious pride in me. Towards my sixteenth birthday, he concentrated on restaurants in the hotels attached to the great railway stations, and he made a new variation. Before we went in to eat, he would have us stop first to sit for a time in the hotel lobby. I did not see a reason for this, but did not find it unpleasant. I would watch the people in their variety. There were families travelling. There were solitary businessmen. However, there were always a few handsome young men I admired. These often would seem to have made arrangements to meet older friends there, for they would approach, smile, converse briefly, and then go into the restaurant together.
“As my birthday neared, he gave me to understand that he would have special gifts for me, but also that our relationship would alter in a way that I might find hard to accept. I would have to overcome these changes like a man and make a future for myself with the means he was giving me.
“Indeed, on the day when I became sixteen, he brought me to a nice restaurant and ordered a sumptuous meal for us. As we ate dessert, he gave me presents. The first was a deed making me the legal owner of my room and its contents. He asked me how much money my investments amounted to. I was surprised because he would know their value well: it was about nine hundred pounds. He gave me certificates that were worth another nine hundred and pointed out that my total was now some £1800. If I were content to keep them with my broker and live solely from the interest, then, considering that I owned my lodging, I had enough for the necessaries of life and need worry about nothing.
“I was, despite his reassurance, worried about everything. I had already been full with foreboding, and now this kind of talk frightened me out of my wits. I asked, ‘But, why are you speaking this way?’
“‘Because, Tanny, you need to face up to the truth. I can no longer come to visit you in your room. You have done nothing wrong. Only, you have become too old now. You develop into a man. You have done nothing wrong. I want you to be sure you know you are the best boy I ever could have had. You are perfect. But I am not. I am… May God help me, I am what I am! …And you are too old for me. We will not be able to see each other again after this dinner.’”
At this, Holmes gave an angry growl. “What an elegant solution! He had no need to throw you out. He merely needed to not come back.”
“Exactly.”
“He fancied he need feel no guilt. He left you able to fend for yourself. He needed only to step neatly back into his own life.”
“Exactly… I felt as if I had been run over by a carriage in the street, and he kept talking and talking, earnestly and eagerly as if it were important to him that I understand and that I go on to live happily. I could barely hear him. I watched his lips move. He explained that, unlike himself, most inverts did not care at all for boys but only for men of my present age or preferably older. They usually would not want to keep someone permanently, but many would pay generously for an evening’s discreet company. He pointed around the room at couples I had noticed before and thought were merely friends. He said they would have met in the lobby, where they quickly, easily came to an agreement. He emphasized how important it was that I invest in my clothes and my appearance, so that I could fit inconspicuously into a situation like this, as the other young men did.
“Then he pressed my hand, smiled, left money for the waiter, and walked out of the restaurant.”
Only a moment ago, I had been enraged with Mr Kent for keeping Tanner – and now I would horsewhip him for giving Tanner up.
Tanner looked at me quietly and said, “Now you know why I hate him. Perversely, it was what he did on my behalf – giving me the stocks and the deed to the apartment – that hurt me most. His need to make a pointed gesture of doing that put the seal on the fact that, without my consent, our relationship had been a business transaction, the kind he taught me to have with my clients now. I had come to him as a small boy, in need. I gave him, in the limited, special way I could at that age, my trust and my tenderness. And, indeed, he wanted those things, given in that way, and was willing to pay handsomely for them. But they meant nothing deeper or more permanent to him than that.
“What had I, in my turn, felt for him? It was not romantic love, not what two adults share. Yet it was a group of feelings that might differently be ‘love.’ I’d been filled with gratitude to him for rescuing me from the streets. I accorded to his intelligence and his knowledge the admiration only a boy can. I soon learned that, for unknowable reasons, I could drive him mad by sitting in certain poses or by allowing my shirt to fall open, and I enjoyed that. I was not physically attracted to him, but as a young invert I found the things we did powerful, new, and most pleasurable in themselves.
“It was the reverse of what you would think. He was the child and I was the adult. It was he who pined to remain impossibly arrested in a twilight moment, not night and not yet day, where I would be ten years old forever and he would forever be my kind schoolmaster. But each new thing I learned made me eager to grow. I often could make no sense of my emotions or of his, and there was no point in looking to him for insight. He had none.
“How was I, at that age, to disentangle such complicated skeins about which I felt so strongly and had so little experience? Long before I could, it ended abruptly. He paid me for my services and left me.”
In our walk together, we had turned up Orchard Street to Portman Square, at the beginning of Baker Street. Before Holmes and I proceeded to our door, we stood while Tanner finished. I had been glad to hear his tale, so interesting in itself and concerning matters so exotic to me – as if it were about a foreign, unexplored city embedded within familiar London. I was glad to have met Tanner, who by now I quite liked. Still, I was also glad for the story to finish. It was late, and I was tired. The story had shaken me.
It did not seem to have shaken Tanner, certainly not to have broken him. He was poised in a self-understanding I could only admire. He glowed with his youth and physical beauty. I felt I ought to be sorry for him, that he was trapped in the life of an invert and prostitute, but his very being denied that there was any unsolvable problem. He seemed, if not happy, yet substantial and able to be happy.
He turned to Holmes. “Thank you, Mr Holmes, and you too, Dr Watson. You were right. It was good to tell all that.”
Holmes was the essence of tenderness. “You’re welcome.”
Tanner’s eyes were luminous in the darkness. “I don’t have a chance with you, Mr Holmes, do I?”
“You have every chance in the world, Tanny, as my friend.”
I grew aware of the meaning of Holmes and Tanner’s words.
“I knew it,” Tanner repl
ied bitterly.
A moment ago, I had been sympathetic to Tanner. I accepted that he was an invert. Now he impudently supposed Holmes might be an invert. And Tanner even wanted…
Holmes said, “Tanny, please understand me carefully. I cannot be the one for you. In any case, I feel that you have been used very badly. I could not continue that.”
“I hoped you might be its solution.”
“It is not possible.”
Tanner turned to walk away. “Thank you. Good night.”
Holmes reached out to stop him. “Don’t! …Tanny, I would like to be your friend. Here.” Holmes took out a card and wrote on it, saying, “If you are ever in trouble, with the police or with anyone, use this card. Tell them to send for me and I will come.”
“Yes.” Disconsolately, Tanner put the card in his pocket.
“Be reasonable. You know the only solution for you is to find a young man like yourself to share the love you want. That man will be fortunate.”
“Of course. No one seems yet aware of the opportunity.”
Even I had to wonder, where were all the inverts of London that they were not knocking on his door?
“Tanny, come and visit me again. Please?”
“Certainly.”
“You’d best return voluntarily. You know that if Sherlock Holmes wishes to find you, he will.”
Tanner laughed at that. “I surrender. You will see me again.”
He went back toward Oxford Street.
3. The Truth
One afternoon, I came home and there was a boy in the front hall, polishing the wooden bannister. He was a happy, pleasant-mannered, healthy boy, about thirteen years old. He put down his cloth and rose to greet me. But, before saying anything, he gave a start of surprise and said, “Oh, you must be Dr Watson.”
I laughed and said, “Yes, I am, lad. Who are you?”
“I’m Jack Wright, sir. I mean, John Wright. I’m staying with Mrs Hudson now.”
“That’s fine, Jack. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
He looked as though he had much more he wanted to tell me and to ask, but instead he blurted out, “Mr Holmes said he would explain me to you.”
“Do you require explanation?”
“No. Please, sir, ask Mr Holmes.”
“All right. Welcome to our household, Jack.”
Upstairs, I put away my medical bag and washed up. I said to Holmes, “So, would you be kind enough to explain him?”
“Explain who? …Oh, him.”
“He promised me you would.”
“Yes. Let me think about the way to say this.”
“Simply might be the best.”
“The case of Arthur Tanner has been preying on me.”
I too had given thought to Tanny in the three weeks since we had met him. I was disturbed he had not fulfilled his promise to visit us again. But how would mentioning him be a prelude to explaining Jack Wright?
I replied, “There was no case involving Arthur Tanner, only a tale.”
“That’s what vexes me. I very much want to help that young man.”
“I too.”
“Do you sometimes wonder, Watson, if I suffer from delusions of grandeur? …No, don’t trouble to evade answering. I mean, before I enter a case, the world is working along in a certain way. After my efforts, people’s lives differ, sometimes greatly. It’s enough to make a man feel he’s playing at being a tin god. The only way I satisfy my conscience is to remember I come into the case by the invitation of someone injured, and any ensuing harm would fall to those who did it.”
“This seems sound enough.”
“I would like to help Arthur Tanner, but I can only do so if he figures out how he needs me and then asks me.”
“When you apply your rule to his particular case, it’s harder to restrain one’s self, but still I agree with you.”
“There was a crime in which he was the victim.”
“Certainly.”
“Solving it would hardly solve his problems.”
“No. He seems to have done well in recovering from it and in balancing himself to live his life.”
“So, he wouldn’t thank me for working on it?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I would be an interfering busybody if I did.”
“I don’t know.”
“I have done so. Some slight thought about what Tanny told us suggested that somewhere in London there must be another boy, between the ages of ten and fourteen, who had been lost but was now living in a nice room filled with books, and who was being attentively educated, and who was generally enjoying the munificence of Mr Kent. If not for Tanny’s sake, then for the sake of that other boy, I ought to take it upon myself to investigate.”
“And, of course, Jack Wright is that boy.”
“Precisely.”
“Bravo, Holmes! I’m proud of you!”
“Mr Kent let Tanny go four years ago. He would have started a new ten year old as soon as he could. The conditions of the market might have delayed him or forced some small variation in the age, but not probably by much.”
“That villain! Would he have been able to recruit a boy so easily?”
“Watson, do you have any idea of the number of lost boys in London? Even for Mr Kent’s special needs, the supply would be unlimited.”
“You had no difficulty finding Mr Kent?”
“None. I had only to apply myself. It was humdrum, boring police work, beneath the standards of one who fancies himself a ‘consulting detective.’ Once I had them, it was easy to dispose of Mr Kent and Mrs Renfrew by introducing them to Inspector Hopkins. But what to do with the boy was another matter.”
“I’m glad you brought him here.”
“To assuage my worries about being an interfering tin god, I made a point of interviewing Jack first and offering him the choice between continuing with Mr Kent or coming to live with us. I tried to be fair, without giving too many details, about the future benefits to be offered by Mr Kent.”
“Very scrupulous of you.”
“I told him that we would make him attend school.”
“And he chose us?”
“It was you, Watson, who had the most weight.”
“I? How so?”
“As you know, Mr Kent selects boys with literary interests. Jack is yet another of your readers.”
“And yet another of your admirers?”
“Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Jack finds me to be a somewhat dull fellow, although necessary and not without talent. He feels I have been fortunate to have you as my chronicler who would invest the quotidian minutiae of my work with the proper interest, sweep, and humour. It is you that he admires.”
“Really?” I said, with mock satisfaction.
“Young Mr Wright is a fastidious connoisseur of tales about explorers, pirates, spies, and detectives. He especially praises your talent for physical description. Apparently, within the first few pages of most stories, you find place for an evocation of the locale, as we or the client come to or from our initial meeting. Jack holds that such passages involve the reader with the feeling and point of view of the characters and thereby render the subsequent adventure more impressive and exciting. He does not mention deduction as being so important to literary success, not as much as these extra-logical figurative aspects.”
“Holmes, I believe your vanity is wounded, despite your joking.”
“He attempts to write stories himself, and he has hopes that you would help him learn the art. I have assured him that you will.”
By now, there was nothing I could do but laugh heartily. I asked, “How did you persuade Mrs Hudson to take him?”
“Little was required. She looked at him, and before six words were out of my mouth she claimed him. By the time she brought him into her kitchen and was feeding him, her ownership was complete. I should warn you that I was not explicit in telling his past to her, or his sexual proclivities, only that he had come under the influence of a criminal f
rom whom I rescued him.”
“He is an invert, then?”
“Very much so. With physical maturity, he becomes fascinated by other boys. This has conflicted with the required activities with Mr Kent, which were neutral to him but now are at once intriguing and disgusting. Yet he feels obliged to Mr Kent. He has been guilty and restless, since he views ‘it’ as being his own fault – although he is not clear about specifically what ‘it’ is that he is supposed to have done wrong.”
“You got him out of there just in time. I will speak to Havelock Ellis about how, as a physician, I can help him.”
“Yes, Watson, I think it wise of you to consult expert opinion. Mr Symonds and Mr Edward Carpenter might also assist. Your interest in the opposite sex has come to you as a matter of course, and you have been so easily successful and healthy in it that I fear you may not appreciate how very difficult it will be for Jack to adjust to his natural need for his own gender. He must learn to hide completely – from everyone and above all from the law – but without learning to hate himself. Then he must learn to discover a mate among the small portion of the population who could return his interest, even though he and his fellow inverts strive to prevent recognition.
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Page 11