by A S Croyle
I broke away, barely able to catch my breath. “Wait, Sherlock. Before we... before I... we must talk first.”
I didn’t really want to talk. I wanted to relive the night we’d spent in the cottage in Holme-Next-The-Sea, that one night when he had given into his youthful desires. I wanted to enjoy this moment outside the confines of distraction and intrusion. To give into wildness, to push away confusion, to stop dissecting my feelings, and his, and simply devour him. To trace my mind to that happy night, that cheerful ghost of a night when the paroxysms of our bodies expressed every hidden thought and fantasy. When I actually still believed with all my heart that the impossible was possible.
But I could not proceed without receiving some explanation as to why, after four years, he wished to take me to his bed.
“Sherlock, do you love me?”
He pulled back. He pulled away. “Love again. What does that mean?”
“What does it-” I paused to suppress my anger again. Sometimes I truly wondered if Sherlock had suckled poison at his mother’s breast. But I also wondered if I were his Tara, the goddess Archibald and I had seen at the museum, the one whose milk could counteract the poison.
“Sherlock, I am trying to understand you. I know how much your work means to you. I understand that that your intensity has propelled you down this unusual path. I mean, you work as though your life depends upon it. So why now? This, why now? I mean, when you finish a case-”
“When I finish a case, it feels as if I were hanging over a cliff. It feels like I am in a constant dance with gravity. If I do not work, I get socially bizarre and agitated.”
When you do work, I thought, you are socially bizarre and agitated!
“Then why are we here if you have concluded that you cannot make room for love in your life? If you refuse to admit you fell in love with me?”
I felt him staring at me through the darkness. He rose, lit a candle, ran his fingers through his hair and leaned against the wardrobe. There was no mistaking his tortured brow and his regret at the stirrings of sexuality that hammered to the surface when he was with me.
“Falling in love,” he said, “means losing control.”
“Yes. It does.”
“And despite your intellect and your education and your usually very logical mind, you have a strong, natural turn for this sort of thing, Poppy. I do not.”
“You did feel it, Sherlock. At Holme-Next-The-Sea. Why is it that you cannot admit it?”
His eyes betrayed him. I observed that he was suddenly in a thoughtful mood. He was either striving to recall something in his memory - or to bury it away, seal it from his consciousness forever.
Finally, he said, “Love. It feels like you catch your reflection in a mirror and what you see there is not you. Your knees go, your skin is on fire, and you can feel your internal organs, your heart, your kidneys, your lungs, all of them are burning and beating. And the irony is that you want to keep feeling that way! You are awash in the fear that you will be unable to sustain the intimate relationship! It is my belief that you cannot. You cannot sustain love.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I refuse,” he continued, “to find myself in that vast graveyard of human beings with broken hearts. The earth is scorched with the dying embers of their useless feelings - the remainder of them, for they burn out - and it is littered with such fools. Look at your brother, for example. No, I will not join that dead wake.”
I understood, I really did. I had watched my brother go from his exuberant new life to despair. The frenzy of his love for Effie had died; the fiery furnace expired when she did.
But if only I could convince Sherlock that logic and love could co-exist - a theory he had put forth himself the night of Squire Trevor’s funeral. If I could stir him once again to joy, light a flame, make him quiver as he once did, and split his stone heart, I would trade castle for dungeon and mansion for hut.
“My work gives me a similar feeling, and it is one that is sustainable. I am charged with this obligation to solve cases and I must tend to that end at all times.
“With love,” he continued, the pace of his words growing faster and faster, “too much is left to chance. With work, I am the master. I am... I am like a chorus master. I can be the best. I can even benefit from certain factors that are out of my control. I can cultivate voices in the dark, I can manipulate them, rearrange the positioning of breaths in each vocal part so that certain phrases have a richer tone. I can capitalize on nuances. The work... the work is grueling... seeking out the evidence, scattered as it may be, memorizing it and churning it into a set of facts that will hold up in the court case. The relentless, rigorous work is of no concern, though, because it is a means to an end and in that end is joy, an almost savage joy.”
I clenched my teeth. Usually, even if his voice grated me, I heard only liquid diamonds. But my frustration with this monologue rose; it was like listening to my bitter grandfather’s dementia-fogged ramblings about the Afghan War, his remembrances of lingering sadness and loss so long after that we could barely stand to listen.
“And so,” I said, sighing, “it shall always be about the next case. And the next. And nothing else.”
“Yes, when one ends, then I must audition the players for the next performance and achieve that sublime satisfaction all over again. It is the only way to leave the monster behind.”
I wanted Sherlock to want me more than his work. I wanted him to love me, to realize that he already did. But perhaps that was the fatal flaw. I was not sure that there was any way to make him see it, and I did not want to settle for less. Still I pressed on.
“Sherlock, there is more to life than solving the riddles. More than investigations and cases and victims and criminals. More than medicine! Is it really so utterly inconceivable to you that we can share all of the mundane details and interludes of mediocrity that life can offer up? Can’t we try to edit out the inconsequential differences between us, and have a life together? Enjoy the little things? Can’t you keep an open mind?”
“I do have an open mind, Poppy. And the little things... do not think that I see them as unimportant. The details are important. They can be infinitely the most important in solving a case.”
I threw my hands up into the air. “I’m not talking about cases, Sherlock! I’m talking about... about flowers like those you left for me at the cottage. I’m talking about-”
“I know what you are talking about, Poppy, and I am not immune to emotions. I am not inhuman. I seek admiration and appreciation, like any man. But I know myself. I know wherein my serenity of spirit lies and I best abate my anxieties through my work.”
“Have you never thought that perhaps fate brought us together? That my dog biting you was meant to be?”
“Fate. Fate is surely difficult to comprehend. And it seems to me that fate can bring as much misery as joy. Were Archibald and his little friends fated to be born into such a miserable life? I yearn for peace, Poppy. I do. But the flesh is transient and I aspire to something higher.”
“You sound like someone who wants to be a priest. Sherlock, for heaven’s sake-”
He gave out a sigh like a man too weary to take another step. “Let us say that I simply feel called upon to trace evil to its source. And now that I know it, I must go out for a short while, Poppy.” He went to the dresser, took something from a drawer, and tucked it under his waistcoat. I realized it was likely his pistol.
He walked over to me, kissed my forehead and said, “Stay here. Promise me you will stay here and if you insist, we will talk more when I return.”
“Don’t go, please.”
He turned toward the door.
“Sherlock, this was a ruse, wasn’t it? A ploy to keep me away from Uncle’s house. You are going after the killer, aren’t you?”
“I must take the risks
that the drama asks of me.”
“But, Sherlock-”
He sighed. “I don’t know what you think is hidden at the bottom of this roundabout conversation.”
“But-”
“Poppy, impose no further tax on my patience or time!” he bellowed. “I have drawn the large cover. The animal has broken the cover and now the hunt begins. Do not leave, Poppy. Do not exert yourself in your reckless fashion and follow me,” he warned.
With that, he hurried from the bedroom and I heard the door to the hallway close.
45
In the wake of this soliloquy, I went back to the lounge and sat down in a chair near the fireplace. I had to face the fact that Sherlock might never embrace the possibility that each of us could gain as much as we lost. I still believed that there was something hidden ‘at the bottom of this roundabout conversation,’ that we could renew that hopeful flight of fancy we’d shared; that we could invest in it, widen that sliver of a connection upon which we could mutually agree and liberate it.
I was unsure what I feared most and endeavoured to avoid - a life without Sherlock in it or one that bound me to him. My upbringing, especially my uncle’s influence, had exhorted me endlessly to move forward, steam onward, to carve my psyche into a rather efficient machine, but Sherlock held me hostage. My feelings for him clouded my mind so much that logic sometimes receded. The disconcerting reality was that I alone could exhume that logical self. That I alone could make the decision to distance myself from Sherlock Holmes or accept him for who he was and stop trying to assuage his infinitely impossible personality, his moroseness, his darker side, his coldness.
I wanted to shape the clay from which he was made, cast him in bronze and stare at my towering hero forever. I wanted to erase the vulnerability, mend the broken pieces and banish the blustery veneer. But those qualities made him who he was... an odd man, a fearless man who smiled at death, who beat death. I wondered if Uncle was right. Was there any way at all to make that leap, for me to take him as he was, detached and unapologetic? Could I succeed in looking past his flaws and the disappointments and hone in on the pleasures we enjoyed in each other and the things that set us in motion to begin with? Could Sherlock ever let down his guard long enough to say goodbye to the fear that isolated him so he could let me in? Could I stop giving into the fury and sadness and let go of those emotions and simply appreciate his brilliance? Could I ever stop suffering the anxiety of my own insignificance? Was there a way for us to recognize that among the multiple choices of futures that stretched out before us, the array of possibilities available, we could mutually elect the most positive one?
And if not, was there really any way to leave this man who wielded so much power over me?
I sat there for a long time. Then, like a sudden gust of wind sending a chill through the room, I thought of him, alone, unprotected, standing toe to toe with the murderer of six men. Sherlock drove me insane at times. He drove everyone insane at times. But I was shackled by my affection for him. Love is, indeed, an obstinate shackle, and my heart ached too deeply when I tried to break from it.
Overcome by the prospect that Sherlock would harrow this danger alone, I blew out the candles, turned off the gas lamps, and tossed my cape over my shoulders. Then I rushed down the stairs and out to the street. I hailed a cab and blurted, “Regent Park. And please hurry!”
46
On the way to Uncle’s house, instead of thinking about the danger Sherlock was in, I tried to distract myself by concentrating on all the things I would say to him when this case was resolved. It was fantasy, but I still foolishly wanted to believe that my relationship with Sherlock could rise, like a phoenix, from the ashes.
Ashes, I thought. Sherlock was forever scrutinizing ashes, like he had that afternoon in the lab. Cigar ashes, pipe ashes, ashes from a fireplace, ashes from ashes! Sherlock had convinced me that each kind of tobacco has a different smell, a different look, and thus, a different quality. Given the prevalence of the habit - every man seemed to indulge in smoking a pipe or rolling a cigarette - I supposed it was possible to use it as a means of identification.
Then there were thumb and hand prints. Prints on a letter, prints on glass. He’d corresponded with Sir Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon who had established a mission in Japan, about Faulds’ work in using fingerprints to identify a criminal.
“This man,” Sherlock had told me, “is convinced, as am I, that the pattern of ridges is unique to each individual. In fact, when his hospital was broken into, the local police arrested a member of his staff, whom Faulds believed to be innocent. Faulds collects fingerprints.”
“He what?” I had asked.
“He studied ancient fingerprint markings on caves and started a collection of prints. He recently discovered that someone had taken a bottle of alcohol from his office. The police accused one of his medical students. But Faulds matched the student’s fingerprints which he had on file to those on a cocktail glass and compared them to those left behind at the crime scene. The prints were different. On the strength of that new evidence, the police released the man they had suspected of the crime and caught the true thief. The Yard should take note of that, but they have not. Faulds has even written to a man you admire very much, Poppy. Charles Darwin. He keeps trying to persuade the Yard to establish some sort of fingerprint identification system. They are, as usual, sorely lacking in vision.”
I glanced out and saw some street orderlies, young boys dressed in frock, leggings, boots and shiny hats, risking life and limb as they scurried about the streets with scrapers and brooms to rake up mud and horse dung. I sighed. Many were no older than Archie and they laboured from late at night to late morning for the astronomical sum of five shillings a week and the right to dip into a pint of hot cocoa. By the end of the shift, they were covered in dust and slop and horse muck and mud.
Mud stains, I thought. Sherlock endlessly tested them. And rust stains, stains caused by fruit juice, and blood stains, of course, for he was also convinced that testing it could determine whether the blood was old or new and that it could lead to identification of a criminal. My brother Michael had told me that often in the wee hours, he’d catch Sherlock out in the lab, dissolving blood in water, adding white crystals to it, and then adding a transparent liquid.
I thought back to the day I had watched him test it.
“These are the steps one must take to identify the type of hemoglobin in blood,” he’d said.
“I don’t understand,” I’d said.
“Oh, Poppy, use your brain - it’s slightly less ordinary than the average person’s! Now, I want to be able to differentiate the types of blood that run through our veins.”
“Types?”
“Yes, yes! Determining the type of hemoglobin in the blood will lead to less erroneous identifications. Don’t you see? Soon we shall be able to separate one wild, unruly savage from another by his blood!”
He had added water to a drop of human blood, mixed the contents, added a pellet of sodium hydroxide in a crushed, crystalline form, and mixed it until the crystals dissolved. What was left was a brown dust at the bottom of the test tube. He had not perfected this procedure yet, but I was certain he would. Because he was focused. Because he was mono-maniacal. Because he would not let anything else in. Because he kept his emotions in check and avoided entanglements and commitments to the fair sex.
But there was more to Sherlock’s single-mindedness, his devotion to examining ashes or deciphering codes, than that one explanation. Sherlock really did ponder whether there was anything beyond this life and, in his own way, I think he - like many others - sought his own form of the Fountain of Youth, some achievement of immortality. Though he had thus far refused to take credit for any crimes he helped the police to solve, he feared obscurity. He intended to write a monograph of his findings about ashes and hemoglobin. He often said he wanted someone to me
morialize his adventures. And somehow I knew, even then, that it was only a matter of time until heads of state and royalty, murder and revenge, treasures and guns, chases and dramatic captures in the city’s swirling fog - the stuff that aspiring writers dream of - would pepper Sherlock’s life. Once again, I felt inadequate. Thinking it through, I was perforce reminded that I could never compete with such mysteries and escapades! Life with a country doctor, a family, hanging ornaments on a Christmas tree - how trivial and mundane, how boring and ordinary all of that would be to someone like Sherlock Holmes.
Yet, hadn’t he demonstrated how deeply he felt for me? On my nineteenth birthday - was that really four years ago? - he had given me a drawing of the archangel Michael and compared me to the ‘warrior-angel,’ writing, “What a likeness of you, the avenger of the little ones murdered by the Angel Maker.”
And hadn’t he once said, “You know that I relish silence and stillness, but when I am not with you, I miss the sound of your voice... Is it time for me to show you how I feel?”
Remembering that confession now, I started to shake, just as Sherlock had shivered that night at the cottage when he admitted that he cared for me. He was truly afraid of what was about to transpire between us, and he had told me that he was shaking because “of what happens to me when I am with you. Because I cannot control my emotions where you are concerned. I cannot keep my distance from you. Because I have these feelings and my body keeps betraying me and I would... I fear I would neglect my work...”