“His cheer and openness are lovely features. Society would commit a crime if he were to lose them.”
“Indeed.”
Three more weeks went by. One evening I was sitting in our front room late reading a medical text, and Holmes was out working on a case.
I heard young feet running fast up the stairs. Jack Wright burst through the door without knocking. “Dr Watson, a man downstairs for Mr Holmes, all injured and bloody. His name’s Arthur Tanner and he fainted.”
I jumped up. “Get my medical bag.”
Jack came flying to my side with the bag moments after I reached Tanner. I told him the address where I thought Holmes might be, and gave him money for a hansom. “Go quickly.”
He vanished out the door.
I examined the patient there on the hall floor, moving him as little as possible, and soon concluded that the injuries were not as fatal as they must have looked to Jack. The blood was old and dried. It had come from a bleeding nose and from a scalp abrasion that also sheared off some hair. The loss of blood had caused some shock. Tanner’s twisted position showed that the shoulder was dislocated.
Holmes came through the door with Jack.
“He’ll be all right,” I said.
Holmes replied, “The three of us will be enough to get him up the stairs and into my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I’d like to put fluid into him and check that he returns to consciousness. We’ll wake him, make him drink, and give him morphine. Then cut off his jacket and shirt, and put the arm in place.”
“Yes.”
“Jack, get a large glass with juice from the kitchen.”
As Holmes held Tanny up and caressed his hand, I broke an ammonia vial. His eyes opened – frightened, lost, and in pain. I told him, “Tanny, you’re with Holmes and Dr Watson. You’re safe. We’ll put you back to sleep, but first drink this.”
He smiled weakly, I held the glass to his lips, and he drank. Then I pressed the plunger on the syringe. He dropped off rapidly as we began sponging the dried blood.
In the middle of the night, I awoke, worried.
When Holmes said he would “sleep” on the couch, I didn’t take him literally. At a crisis in a case, he might stay awake all night. I found him on the chair in his room watching Tanny sleep. I took the patient’s pulse and laid my hand on his forehead to check his temperature.
In the morning, Holmes was in the front room.
Jack had been stationed with Tanny to keep watch and to make him keep drinking juice. Neither had reason to suspect they shared their former relationship to Mr Kent. As I entered, Jack was perched on the blanket chest facing Tanny propped up on pillows in the bed, and they were engaged in an enthusiastic discussion of the river chase in “The Sign of Four.” They moved to another topic when they heard me come in, but their new exchange as I examined my patient showed no lessening of warmth. They were both highly intelligent, and they had common interests.
Jack’s eyes glittered as they talked. He had seen Tanny step in from the night in front of him. Tanny was mysterious, unexpected, and wounded, the living embodiment of a character out of a melodramatic tale of Sherlock Holmes. Tanny’s pallor and temporarily disfiguring injuries must only have heightened the effect of his fine good looks and sophistication.
Tanny, for his part, easily assumed the role of an older friend. He too seemed to enjoy their conversation, but to be mildly embarrassed. He tried to evade the boy’s more obvious expressions of idolatry, but without deflating his dreams.
Holmes allowed time for me to finish my examination. Then he came in and ejected Jack from our apartment so we would have privacy to speak with Tanny. We did not worry that Jack would surreptitiously overhear our conversations, for the boy had tried that once, unsuccessfully, and Holmes had sufficiently frightened him.
Now Holmes took up Jack’s former position, cross-legged on the chest, and he gazed severely down on Tanny. “Tell us.”
Tanny was under the covers, dressed in an old night shirt belonging to Holmes. The shirt fit poorly but did not diminish his magnetism. Though weak, he was in an immensely good humour and refused to let Holmes dampen it. He said, “I’m really very, very pleased to see both of you.”
“And you only returned when driven by such injuries?”
“That wasn’t the reason.”
Holmes demanded, “What happened to you?”
Tanny smiled. “No need to be so peremptory.”
“There is every need. I’m worried about you.”
“Please, don’t scold me, Mr Holmes. It is undeserved. Two things: first, I’ve taken to heart the advice you gave me last time; and second, I therefore need your services as a detective.”
“You appeared at our door bloody and beaten.”
“That’s irrelevant to the main point.”
“Perhaps Dr Watson should examine you for a concussion. You seem unable to tell your story logically.”
“All right, apparently the price of getting you to listen to me and help me is that I first have to satisfy your morbid curiosity by telling this unrelated tale. So I will.
“There is a disparity between rich and poor in modern England. A man who hires me can be generous; there are issues he thinks of more than money. One is discretion. Another is decency. He has lived among people who regard his very nature as degraded and despicable, he has kept himself secret, and the need for secrecy has prevented him forming any lasting attachment. An evening with me is more than release of passion, it is an interval of freedom – and normality. Our meeting is invisible to others, even as we sit naturally together in a public restaurant; but to me he can be himself, to a fellow invert who looks good and converses intelligently. A few clients might be either sentimental or brutish, but most would no more be rude to me than to their grocer or their doctor. They try to be friendly. I, for my part, have every reason to fall in with this and no reason for dishonesty.
“Last night, I tried the lobby of the hotel at Liverpool Street. The man I found there was one of the exceptions. At first he seemed all right. Then, as we ate dinner, he more and more seemed stupid and inconsiderate. I let myself become distracted from him. I have no close friends and little personal life outside my thoughts. Without viewing it that way, I do limit myself to my room and my work. Last night, listening to the lout in front of me, that didn’t seem promising.
“Allow me to explain briefly the matters I was musing about then and about which I hope we will speak more. I hadn’t returned to visit you because I was at a practical impasse. First of all, I should apologize. I had a foolish infatuation for you then, Mr Holmes, and had been trailing you, hoping to get your attention. You were right to turn me away that night, though I was angry and disappointed at the time. It was not foolish because of you, but because of me. You, in yourself, would be most excellent as an object of my affections, but my affections are completely, if impossibly, given elsewhere – if only I would come to terms with them.”
I must say that Holmes reacted with equanimity enough to the boy’s blunt, open confession of his forbidden passions. My friend nodded his head in sympathy, with an expression indicating he knew and understood.
Tanner continued, “You advised me to find a young man like myself whose love I could share. There was – and is – one my age, Eric Selden, with whom I want that dearly. But he rode away in a carriage with a handsome, wealthy man. Since then, he has vanished from the soil of England. I love Eric. I am doubly cursed in that I cannot find him again and, if I could, he likely does not love me – although I cannot think it true that he does not.
“Then, last night as I was eating dinner, the idea struck me that perhaps your powers could see though this and sort it out.”
This distressed me. There seemed so little chance for Tanny to find honest love. Also, Holmes was a detective, not a matrimonial agency with advice for the lonely.
But Holmes looked serious and reassuring. He said, “Tanny, please finish the story of last night, a
nd then tell me about your Eric.”
“Thank you, Mr Holmes… This new idea elated me, and I resolved to visit you the next morning. I was so carried away with these thoughts that I made a mistake. I agreed to go with the client to a party. It is usually safe to be with a client in a hotel room because any ruckus will bring unwelcome notice. But a cab, or a carriage, or a private house can mean danger.
“Once in the cab, he embraced me roughly.
“I pushed him away: ‘You don’t have to do that.’
“He said, ‘Don’t fight! You’ll like it.’
“I called to the cab man to stop and let me out, but he only laughed. He’d been paid.
“The cab drove too rapidly for me to jump. Inside, the client wrestled with me.
“As we came to Newgate Street, traffic made the cab slow a little. I took my chances and leapt out. He caught me by one trouser leg, and I spun into the kerbstone with a hammer blow to my head and a piercing pain in my shoulder. Nonetheless, I got up as quickly as I could and made away. There were too many people on the street for him to pursue me without attention. I slowed and began to walk here.”
This outraged me. “You walked all the way here? In that condition? It’s the same route we walked down Oxford Street the night you met us, and an even greater distance!”
Tanny was still calm, despite my wrath. “I was perhaps a little delirious…and all I could think about was the new-found chance of eventually seeing Eric.”
I retorted, “You might have gone to St. Bart’s, almost next door to where you were. They would have tended your injuries before you bled so much.”
“And they would have wondered about the source of those injuries. You forget, Dr Watson, that both as an invert and as a prostitute I avoid situations where I might be asked questions. At the moment you mention, I happened to be opposite the cold, menacing stone walls of Newgate Prison, and those walls urged me to stay away.”
Holmes held up his hand and said, “Young Mr Tanner, be that as it may, I will take your case and I will try to find your lover. But I have an inflexible condition you must meet in return. In view of the tale you just told us, you will suspend practising your profession until I either produce Eric or admit that I cannot. Once I do, we will discuss the matter again.”
“Agreed.”
“Good. Tell me about Eric Selden.”
“I should take up my previous story where we left it. Financially, the departure of Mr Kent left me in the position he had predicted. The interest from my investments would give me enough for the necessities of life. However, my observations of the young men in the hotel lobbies and restaurants made me understand immediately the significance of Mr Kent’s remarks about them. I followed their example. As I said earlier, the work is not unpleasant. Nor is it dangerous, since I am careful about disease. I have been able to bring in a steady income that allows me to live decently while reinvesting my interest and even adding to the principal. My security steadily increases.
“I found that the young men whose ranks I was joining had a kind of fellowship. At the end of an evening, those without clients would sometimes go home together, in a friendly sort of way without pretending to be in love. I usually would not do this, and I never brought anyone to my own room, although I did make friends by being helpful in small ways and by referring to others any clients I didn’t need. Before that birthday, I would have been astonished to learn that so many exceptionally attractive young men would be available to me and that I would forego them. But, after the emotional tangle with Mr Kent, I felt that if being with men was a business, then let it stay a business. I didn’t want more than that.
“The one thing that did continue to give me great satisfaction was my room, and its books and its piano and the view of the tree outside its window. I kept it up carefully and bought more books.
“Two years went by.
“Sometime in February, after my eighteenth birthday, a young man named Eric Selden appeared among our number. He was remarkably like me in every respect – height, weight, age, colouring. I saw him and admired him, thinking that whoever had made me had, to the same specifications, done a far better job in making Eric. In odd moments, I longed for him. But no chance came that brought us together for more than a word or two. I chastised myself for not making such a chance happen. He too seemed to want it. But I was set in my ways. We remained apart.
“In that year, 1892, you remember there was a depression in the stock market. That meant fewer travellers in the hotels and less money to spend on hiring a young man for an evening. Every night, more of us failed to find clients. I was not bothered. I got more clients than most. I knew that stocks would eventually rise, and I had money to tide me over. Each evening, if I didn’t find a client early, then, rather than wait with increasing futility, I would go home, make my own dinner inexpensively, and play my piano or happily curl up in my chair with a book.
“One night in early June, I was in the lobby of the Northumberland Hotel, in exactly that situation – no client and no inclination to bore myself in waiting.
“I got up to leave and found Eric in front of me. He gave me the most lovely smile.
“‘Hello, Tanny,’ he said. ‘You know, for the sake of our amour propre, we ought to treat each other even more kindly than we treat our clients… What? No nice dinner tonight? No nice afterwards? Merely because no stockbroker buys it for us? …I propose that you and I offer each other dinner. We could pretend – just pretend, mind you – that we’re each worthy of the other’s attention, and then afterwards discuss the possibility of afterwards.’
“His wording in this speech was arch, as was his careful elocution. While he spoke, the small beginning of a laugh quivered in his cheek muscles. Friendliness flickered in his lovely eyes.
“He must have known my reputation for solitude – that, given the slightest excuse, I would turn him down. So, he humorously provoked me. He played a game with me and coaxed me to join in.
“I marvelled at how beautiful he was.
“We were close enough that I could smell the fresh scent of his male body, and I drew it in. He observed this and he replied with a subtle sniff in my direction and then a joking nod and a slight lift of his eyebrows, indicating his approval.
“I broke out laughing.
“I told him, ‘Yes, let’s pretend together.’
“He smiled sincerely. We walked casually into the restaurant, looking like any pair of young friends.
“We were seated, and Eric said warmly, ‘I’m very pleased to be dining with you, Tanny.’
“‘And I with you, Eric.’
“Then he returned to his comically affected style of earlier: ‘Might I suggest – not for ourselves, but solely, only, merely for the sake of the pretending – that we start with an apéritif?’
“We laughed, and the phrase ‘for the sake of the pretending’ became our watchword for the evening, to be repeated with mock earnestness and grammatical variations.
“Most of our talk was more substantial. I’d found that, with clients, the literacy Mr Kent taught me should be used in moderation. A man may seek it in a dinner partner, but too much of it scares people. Eric, though, was as literate as I, and he knew Greek and Latin. We had no need to hold back but happily followed wherever the conversation led us.
“We spent a fine dinner together, pretending to pretend we would care better for each other than we would for a client.
“Afterwards, for pretending, I invited Eric to my room. He was the only person in two years to have been with me there.
“In the morning, waking to find him was like waking to sunlight flooding past the green leaves of my tree outside and in through the window. He gave me a sense of ease that I now discovered I’d sorely lacked. In another way, though, I wasn’t sure I was ready for more. Nor was I sure, from the light-hearted way he acted, that Eric was ready, not for anything lasting.
“I joked that he was a swindler who’d cheated his way into my bed. He replied wit
h a show of indignation, and he offered to reimburse me the usual fee for a night of my company.
“After breakfast, we gave a friendly kiss and he left, but with no specific plan to meet again.
“I didn’t see Eric for several days. One evening, I was entering a restaurant with a client and he was at a table with a client of his own. We gave discreet, friendly nods. I manoeuvred to get a seat that would afford me the pleasure of looking at him. He looked at me in return.
“We went on in a contradictory way for a few months. When together, we were happy; but we would make no arrangement for another meeting. In our random meetings there was often no chance to talk. Each time we parted, I would daydream about him and then would become anxious if the intervals without him lasted too long.
“Late that summer, 1892, word circulated about a grand party, organized by several wealthy inverts, to take place on September 10th. It was to be held on the river, atop a beautifully decorated barge drawn up, for privacy, next to a warehouse that would be deserted on a Saturday night.
“The mood among inverts at that time was restless. Many remained deeply angry that a strident bigot like Henry Labouchère had succeeded in attaching the ‘gross indecency’ provision to the Criminal Act of 1885. The vagueness of its language allowed prosecutors and juries to send us to prison essentially just for being inverts – just for existing – since no clear standards of conduct or of proof were required. It increased our susceptibility to blackmail. Later, we had to regard it as a kind of victory when the government was able to soundly defeat the same Labouchère’s attempt to expose them for protecting the inverted aristocrats and royalty in the Cleveland Street scandal. Now, some were eager to press back by joining defiantly in a party that, although not publicized, would be less restrictive than any previous event.
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Page 12