The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  I was still staring at it when John appeared by my bed.

  ‘I hear Mary was here,’ he said to me.

  ‘She was, it was very kind of her,’ I said to him. I was slightly embarrassed at him seeing me like this, in a nightgown, vulnerable and helpless, but then he took my pulse with such a professional air that I felt silly to have felt embarrassed at all.

  ‘Well, we caught you just in time,’ he said. ‘But there’s no need to worry. You’ll be fine now, after some convalescence.’

  To tell the truth, it wasn’t the illness that had bothered me. It was that I had given in so easily. I had always thought that I would be one of those who would fight death with all my might. Even with my boy and my love waiting on the other side, there was much to keep me here. I found life sweet. And yet, when I had felt weak, I had not struggled. I had not fought. It just seemed easier to close my eyes and drift away. I had accepted my fate.

  Perhaps that was what my dream was about. I stared over at the empty bed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ John asked.

  ‘Someone died there last night,’ I told him. He frowned at the other bed.

  ‘Did they?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I saw it. I had a confusing dream.’

  ‘The morphine and the anaesthetic,’ he assured me. ‘It’s been known to produce odd dreams.’

  ‘How long do I have to stay here?’ I demanded. He looked surprised.

  ‘Normally we give you six weeks to recover . . .’

  ‘I can’t stay here six weeks!’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can,’ he said, amused. ‘That would take you almost to Christmas.’

  ‘Exactly. I have things to do.’

  ‘Well, shall we say three to start with?’ he compromised. ‘It’s not actually up to me, you know. I just got you in here; it’s your surgeons you have to convince.’

  ‘I’ll convince them. What am I going to do here for three weeks, let alone six?’

  He looked around at the ward, at the empty bed, at the other women.

  ‘You’re in a unique position,’ he said softly. ‘You have no calls on your time but to simply sit and observe. You can learn all there is to know about this ward, and these people, and no one will think it odd, or intrusive. I think Holmes would almost envy you.’

  He leaned and kissed me on the forehead.

  ‘Do what you do best, Mrs Hudson,’ he said quietly to me, so no one could overhear. ‘Listen, watch and learn.’

  LISTENING, WATCHING AND LEARNING

  No one spoke to me that morning, leaving me to recover from the previous day’s ordeal. After my bandages were changed (I had an enormous but very neat cut down my stomach), I pleaded tiredness, and was left alone to sleep. Therefore I was content to lie there, and listen.

  As you probably know by now, I like to eavesdrop. I like to sit in my kitchen and listen to Mr Holmes in his rooms through the air vent. I like to sit in a tea shop or on the omnibus and listen to people talk about themselves to each other, never dreaming I am listening. I know it’s wrong, but it’s something I have a talent for. I look the very picture of a quiet, ordinary woman, so absorbed in her own life she couldn’t possibly be interested in yours. And yet, I find other people’s lives irresistibly fascinating, so I listen.

  It was quite a noisy ward, with the Sister, several nurses and cleaners in and out all day. The doctors and surgeons came in to discuss the cases in the ward that morning, and luckily, they talked loudly. I could hear everyone’s name, and diagnosis, and therefore knew who was who before I spoke. (I pretended to be asleep when the surgeons came to discuss my case. Apparently my stomach obstruction was quite ordinary, and nothing in my case was worthy of note.)

  The woman to my left was Sarah Malone. She was dying. She muttered all the time. I could not hear the words, but judging by the way she clasped and tore at her sheets, she had a great deal on her mind. She stared up at the ceiling as if she saw her doom there, muttering constantly to herself, though her words were never clear. But she wasn’t the loudest person on the ward.

  That was Betty Soland, in the next bed but one to my right. She had broken her leg falling down the stairs. She knitted or sewed or did some sort of work all the time. The bag on her bed seemed bottomless, and she was constantly pulling a new piece of work out of it, either in shades of grey or brown, or in the most virulent shades of pink or green. She had six children, all girls, between eight and twenty years old, and she talked at the top of her voice constantly, whether anyone was listening or not. By the end of the morning I knew all her children’s names, their favourite toys, what schoolwork they were good at and every detail of her own medical treatment. I could not help but think that perhaps her girls were welcoming the silence at home.

  Between Betty and me was the quietest person on the ward: Miranda Logan. She barely spoke to anyone. She sat in bed, in a magnificent red dressing gown, and read papers. Apparently she was there because of fatigue and anaemia – which puzzled the doctors as much as it did me. I snatched a quick glance at her as she spoke to them, and saw that she sat upright in her bed, looking strong and healthy, although she insisted she was very tired. Still, this was the special ward, for friends of friends of the hospital, and no one was about to question her too closely. The hospital needed donations. Her accent was – I was going to say odd, but she had no real accent. She spoke in perfectly correct English. However, she hesitated almost imperceptibly before she did so, as if she was remembering exactly how a word ought to be pronounced.

  Opposite her was Emma Fordyce. She just seemed to be happy. She had fluffy blonde hair and a mischievous smile, and was basically suffering from old age. Actually, she seemed to be enjoying old age. That morning I discovered she had quite an interesting past, and loved to talk about it. She also had a ribald sense of humour, and occasionally slipped into distinct swearing – laughing as she did it. I liked Emma Fordyce. I resolved to get to know her. She mostly spoke to Florence Bryson, the woman with the brown boot-button eyes opposite me. She had a lung infection, which occurred regularly, so she had stayed on the ward often. Florence’s bed was always covered in newspapers – not The Times, but the more scandalous gossip sheets. She was fascinated by crimes and detective stories and by gossip about everyone – she was always talking to Emma about her past. I resolved not to let her know I was Mr Holmes’ housekeeper. She had already said she loved John’s book, and knew every word of it, as well as following any mention of Mr Holmes in the papers. I doubted I would have a moment to myself if she knew who I was.

  That left Eleanor Langham.

  She had the bed to my far right, diagonally opposite, across from Betty. She rarely sat in the bed. She liked to sit in the chair beside it. She had heart problems and had recently had an operation, and I could see the dressing over the top edge of her plain linen nightgown. She didn’t read. She talked, but not much. She just sat, and watched everything that went on. She watched us all. Now I, too, watched, but I watched to learn. I felt, even then, that Eleanor Langham watched to judge.

  I did not like Eleanor Langham.

  That was all my fellow patients. All that was left was the empty bed.

  I still pretended to be heavily asleep, when in fact I was listening to a very interesting conversation indeed.

  The Sister of the ward and a doctor stood by the empty bed discussing the previous night’s death. They kept their voices low, and as far as they were concerned I couldn’t hear a thing.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the doctor said. ‘The treatment was working. There had been signs of improvement.’

  ‘Sometimes people seem to be doing well, and then, all of a sudden, they’re gone,’ the Sister replied. She seemed to be far more pragmatic than the younger doctor. Perhaps she was more used to death. Perhaps she just gave up sooner. He didn’t understand how life could just slip away, like sand through fingers.

  ‘But . . . it makes no sense,’ he insisted.

  ‘The post-mortem will tell us
more,’ the Sister soothed him. ‘But these things do happen.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ he said irritably as he left.

  I kept up my sleeping act until lunchtime. I was only allowed beef tea, but contrary to my suspicions, it was delicious. Then our visitors arrived.

  First was a family of six girls, all quite pretty, but all very badly dressed. Their clothes sat wrong, the stitching pulled, the sleeves were too short, or too long, the skirts trailed along the ground unevenly. In short, they could only be the daughters of the inveterate clothes-maker Betty Soland. They lined up at the foot of her bed, where she held out the latest garment she was making for them. I heard the oldest girl sigh a little at the sight.

  A tall, military-looking man in his seventies arrived next, and made straight for Eleanor Langham’s bed. He kissed her gently and presented her with a posy of violets, which she accepted with a smile. Much as I disliked her (for no other reason than a snap judgement at first sight), he obviously deeply loved her. Opposite me, Emma Fordyce had a man in a suit sit down beside her. He didn’t kiss her or touch her like a relative or friend would, so I guessed he was a business acquaintance of some kind. Now what would a woman like her want with a man like that?

  Mary came rushing in a moment later, hat askew and jacket wrongly buttoned.

  ‘I’m not late. Am I late?’ she said breathlessly, recklessly sitting on my bed despite printed warnings on the walls that she should not do that.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I said, laughing at her. ‘It’s kind of you to come.’

  ‘Kind, nothing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m being nosy, I want to see what goes on in these private wards.’

  ‘Nothing, so far. They all seem very ordinary.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, glancing sideways to Miranda Logan, who was managing to look dark and mysterious whilst reading The Times.

  ‘Well, have you ever heard the name Emma Fordyce?’ I asked in a whisper.

  ‘It rings a bell,’ Mary admitted, glancing over her shoulder to the woman I gestured to. ‘I’ll look her up. In the meantime, I brought you books, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Frankenstein. And The Times.’

  ‘That’s a bit bloodthirsty, isn’t it?’ the nurse asked, as she went by.

  ‘Well, that’s the way the world is going, The Times can’t be blamed,’ Mary told her sweetly. The nurse tutted and walked away.

  ‘I longed to read Frankenstein when I was young, but my mother didn’t let me,’ I confided.

  ‘I remembered you told me that, and you enjoyed the play of Jekyll and Hyde last year. I thought you’d prefer these to Miss Leman’s tales, which I was informed were the very thing for a lady in hospital.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ I assured her. Mary looked around, watching the other visitors, but she seemed less curious than usual.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘What’s worrying you? Don’t say my illness; I’m fine.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she insisted, trying to be light.

  ‘Your jacket is buttoned incorrectly, your shoes don’t match, and you lie abominably,’ I told her. She smiled at me.

  ‘Something Wiggins told me,’ she said. ‘Well, Wiggins told Billy, who told me. Nothing important. I think. Maybe. I’m not sure.’

  Wiggins was a street boy, head of the Baker Street Irregulars. He ran around together with our page-boy Billy a lot, and I was sure they had a secret life of adventure they kept very well hidden from us.

  ‘What?’ I insisted.

  ‘No, let me look at it a while. It’s just impressions for now. I will tell you, I promise.’

  I sat back in my bed, defeated. Mary might not be able to lie, but she could keep a secret. She saw my face, and relented a little. She held out The Times towards me, folded so I could see the classified advertisements on the front page.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said.

  ‘ “Waterfall for sale”,’ I read. ‘It’s odd, but . . .’

  ‘No, that,’ she said, pointing at the advertisement.

  ‘ “Required, the entire physical, intellectual and moral training of a delicate weak boy, even one with physical defects”,’ I read. I put the paper down. ‘This worries you? There are advertisements like this all the time. Someone has a new education system they wish to try out, and requires a subject.’

  ‘A child,’ Mary said under her voice. ‘A weak boy! And he’ll get one, too.’

  ‘You think there’s something wrong here?’ I asked her.

  ‘Not just here, but in an entire system that sees children sent here and there and everywhere, all over the place, abandoned to strangers by parents who should know better! Who looks after these children? Who ensures their welfare, who makes sure they are not dragged down into depravity, or worse?’ she told me in a low, angry voice. ‘Parents don’t seem to care what happens to their children when they abandon them to the whims of strangers.’

  ‘We care,’ I said softly. So, whatever was worrying her, it was to do with children. I wondered what Wiggins had said. And, as always when I thought of Wiggins, my own dead boy appeared in my mind, always running ahead, always beyond my reach.

  Mary saw my face, and was instantly contrite. She reached out to grasp my hand.

  ‘You know I didn’t mean you. I know you loved your son.’

  ‘Yet I would probably have sent him away to school,’ I told her.

  ‘I know, I meant—’ She was interrupted. Florence Bryson apparently liked to spend her time wandering up and down the ward, dropping in on other people’s visitors, because now she loomed over the end of my bed.

  ‘You have a son?’ she said eagerly, grasping the rail at the bottom of my bed.

  ‘I did,’ I told her. ‘He died, when he was very young.’

  ‘I had a son too,’ she confided, utterly ignoring Mary. ‘He died also, when he was sixteen.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ I said formally, unsure how to respond.

  ‘At least we have this blessing,’ she said, leaning forward to touch my leg through the blanket. ‘Our sons can never leave us. They are always with us, even if only in spirit.’ She smiled beatifically and walked back to her bed.

  ‘Well, that was slightly morbid,’ Mary remarked.

  ‘That’s how some people cope with loss,’ I said. It wasn’t the path I had chosen. My son had gone, my husband had gone and I was alone, but I would live the life I had been given. ‘How is Mr Holmes?’ I asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’ve barely seen him,’ Mary said, smiling. ‘In fact, he’s here now.’

  ‘Here?’ I questioned, alarmed he was going to appear in the doorway. It really would not be suitable for Mr Holmes to see me like this.

  ‘He’s not visiting,’ Mary reassured me. ‘He’s in St Barts’ labs, doing some noxious chemical experiment. He says I shouldn’t expect him home until late.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said softly. I didn’t know what else to say. I glanced towards the walls, as if I’d see him through them. I had always taken a certain comfort and strength from being in the same home as Sherlock Holmes and now, it seemed, I was still only separated from him by a few thin walls.

  ‘Wiggins is keeping an eye on 221b,’ Mary said, standing up. ‘I am taking care of Sherlock and Billy. All you need do is get better.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to her, ‘for looking after me.’

  ‘Oh, I owe you,’ Mary said lightly. ‘Remember when I was first married? I was an excellent governess, but knew next to nothing about running a home. You came and taught me all your tricks.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ I said.

  ‘Still, I owe you,’ she said, turning away. Then she turned back, her face suddenly serious. ‘And my life,’ she said quietly. ‘I owe you my life. You saved me, remember? So when you decide you deserve pain, or deserve to die, remember you saved my life.’

  She left quickly, before I could argue. I sat there for a long time, staring after her, thinking about what she had said. It was only when I looked a
way that I saw Eleanor Langham sitting in her chair, watching me steadily.

  THE OTHER PATIENTS

  Now that I was officially awake, I sat up on the bed, looked round, and smiled in what I hoped was a welcoming way to the other patients. I didn’t feel welcoming. I felt impatient and restless. I hate hospitals. People die in them. All I wanted was to get out of this sharply clean room and go home, to my kitchen and my soft bed and my solitude, but that wasn’t going to happen soon. Therefore, I had to distract myself, and people are always interesting.

  ‘Hello,’ Florence Bryson said to me. She smiled sweetly. ‘We weren’t properly introduced. Welcome to the ward. I’m Flo.’

  ‘Mrs Hudson,’ I said, smiling back. I don’t like to hand my first name out to all and sundry. Some distance must be maintained with strangers. But it seemed it was the right thing to say, because Flo’s face lit up.

  ‘Really? You’re not the Mrs Hudson, are you?’ she said brightly.

  ‘Of course not, dear,’ Betty Soland said, in an achingly patronizing way. She was knitting again, some shapeless garment in a sickly shade of green.

  ‘Hudson is a very popular name,’ Miranda Logan said. She was sitting in her chair, reading a newspaper. She looked far too healthy – and too young – to be with us on the ward.

  ‘I’m sorry, which Mrs Hudson do you mean?’ I asked, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Mr Holmes’ housekeeper!’ Flo cried out. ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes, the Great Detective.’