I knew, from the first moment I saw him, standing there: tall and lean and so obviously unconcerned, in his riding habit. I knew, as soon as his cool grey eyes flickered to rest on mine, I knew. I knew that I would love him, and it frightened me.
I had just come back from India, you understand. I was still shaking off the effects of war, and the wound that it had given me still throbbed in my shoulder, in time with the beat of my heart. I couldn't remember at whose behest I had agreed to come here... after all, I was hardly a fan of the steeplechase, and I didn't come from a family that had been necessarily 'horsey.' My cousin Marion had declared it a nice respite from "the rigours of your journey, John; do come, you'll enjoy it so!"
I was not enjoying it. I didn't honestly see the point of it: horses racing around and around, leaping over things and going through things. Obliquely, I thought it cruel to the animal, making the poor beast do things that we ourselves would not have done.
I sat back in my chair and abandoned my binoculars. The section in which we were sitting was packed with people of all manner and station, from the lowliest fish merchants of Cheapside, to the beautifully-dressed ladies and gentlemen of Westminster. It was a motley mixture, to be certain.
"Oh, John, do watch the races... you'll enjoy it so!" Marion twittered at my elbow, a vision in ruched blue velvet and the largest hat I'd ever seen. I wondered how her neck could possibly hold it up: a gigantic confection of ribbons and tulle, topped with a monstrous collection of berries and flowers. "Sitting here and being such a stick! Do smile for us, there's a good man."
Smiling was the last thing I felt like. What I wanted most was to creep away by myself, to sit in some cosy pub and take a sup of ale without Marion's giant hat smashing me in the shoulder every time I turned. I sighed, gently, just under my breath. Would that something might appear to take me out of this... of course, that was like praying for a miracle, and I didn't believe in such things.
There was a great commotion in the stands; the race had just ended. Marion had risen and was clapping and whistling in a most unladylike manner--but then, she had never been entirely as reserved as my family would have liked. I secretly admired her for it, truth be told.
"I'm going down to the track," I told her, anxious to be away. I felt suddenly heavy and weighted in the midst of all this cheerful glee; I didn't belong here.
"But whatever for, John?" Marion's pretty face was downcast; she looked like a weeping doll.
"Oh, it's rather warm for me here... I'm going down to talk to the jockeys, I won't be but a few moments." I hastily made my exit, hoping fervently that she wouldn't begin to weep right then and there. Marion was known for it, to be sure. But she merely nodded and sat back in her seat, lifted to glasses to peruse the crowds, and thereby effectively dismissing me.
When I reached the track level, most of the jockeys had gone into the stables, leading their tired mounts, who no doubt anticipated the ministrations of the groom. The track was churned and muddy, dappled with manure and discarded betting stubs. I was dismayed to find myself virtually alone--alone, that is, except for a tall figure standing at the periphery of the track, and gazing out into the middle distance as if it contained all the secrets of the known universe.
He turned, as if sensing me; turned his cool grey eyes on me and flickered an assessing glance. I'd never seen anything like him; tall and lean, his muscled torso pressing against his tweed jacket; long, muscular legs encased in jodhpurs, shiny black riding boots. I'd never seen such a man... grey eyes, long-lashed and keenly intelligent, gazing out of a calm, slender face of such perfect bone structure, such aesthetic symmetry ... an aquiline nose, straight and true; sculpted lips that hovered just on the edge of being sensual...
And my heart began to beat madly in my chest... I wondered what in hell was happening to me...
I opened my cigarette case and offered him one; he took it, his smile a shade beyond mockery. "You are far too kind, sir." His voice was richly-accented, perfectly articulated, positively genteel. He leaned forward to allow me to light it, flickered a smile at me. "And you are...?"
"Oh--Doctor John Watson." I drew deeply on my cigarette, nodded towards the track. "So you go in for this sort of thing, do you, Mr...?"
"Holmes. Sherlock Holmes." He shrugged, his gaze sliding over me like water. "My business here today has nothing to do with amusement, I assure you." His eyes narrowed, and his body shifted inside his clothes, his hard shoulders straining against the tweed. "There has been a murder, and I intend to find the culprit."
"Ah! So you're a police officer, then?" I wondered if we ought to move back into the grandstand; my boots were sinking slowly into the mud.
He threw back his head and laughed as if I'd just made a most uproarious joke. "A police officer? Oh my dear, no--absolutely anything but that!" He gazed at me keenly for a moment. "I am a consulting detective. I tidy up what the police have so often bungled. I am certain you understand." He glanced down at his feet, as if suddenly realising that we were standing in mud. "Well! Shall we move back into the grandstand? I fear that I am sinking in this morass."
I hid a smile. His manner of speech was affected, to say the least, taking advantage of what I assumed was a vast and intricate vocabulary. But it suited him-- the little I knew of him, after such a brief acquaintance. My gaze rose and met his own, and I found that he was staring at me, and I found that his grey eyes were large, reflective pools into which I could fall, and it shook me to the marrow of my bones.
"John! Are you coming? Mother says you must come to tea!"
Marion's voice beckoned me, snapping me back to reality. My thumping pulse slowly subsided to a flicker, a wing-beat in my throat. "My cousin Marion," I explained... "I ought to go now, Mr..."
"Holmes." He extended his hand, and I took it. "We shall meet again."
I wondered how he could possibly know this, but I decided not to ask. Nothing about him was even remotely like anything else I'd ever known. If he said that we would meet again, then I believed him ... inexplicably, I believed him...
"Goodbye."
But he had already turned and vanished into the shadowed grandstand, trailing the smoke of his cigarette behind him.
It was very early, and I was cranky. I wasn't one for an early rise--I'd had enough of that in the Army. And the hospital was crowded to capacity this morning, crowded with the sick and dying, the remnants of an influenza epidemic that had lately swept through London. I'd just finished my rounds, hovering at each bed far longer than I needed, but feeling that it was necessary. Some of these people would not live past sunset, and it was my responsibility--no, my duty--to attend to them. It was the very least I could do; it was why I had become a physician.
"Well, Dr. Watson--you're looking rather worse for the wear!"
A friendly hand clapped me on the shoulder; I turned, and there was Patrick-- rather, Dr. Smythe--a good friend with whom I'd shared many a pint of ale. "Well, Patrick! How are you?"
We chatted for a few moments, standing near the rows of beds, shadowed by the long, dusky curtains that cordoned off the merely sick from the absolutely dying. I explained how I'd returned from India, and told him (quickly and without emotion) what the war had done to me. I told him, also, how I was very nearly bankrupt since the extinction of my pension... "I have to find somewhere to live; I can't keep paying the rent where I am now..." I sighed. "But, I'm loathe to room with someone... you know how idiosyncratic I am, and how difficult it is for me to get on with anyone..."
He grinned. "You know, John, I may be able to help you." He fished in his pocket for his notebook, wrote something on a page and handed the paper to me. "Check out this fellow--he's a friend of my brother, and apparently he's in your very same position. You might like to room with him, if you've no other recourse."
I put the sheet of paper in my breast pocket and didn't get a chance to look at it until much later that evening.
Sherlock Holmes. 221B Baker St.
I was taken with a cold, insistent chill. He had promised that we would meet again...
I was shown into the rooms at Baker Street by a lovely old white-haired lady who identified herself as 'Mrs. Hudson.' The flat itself was situated on the second floor, up a single flight of stairs, and overlooked the street, she assured me. She tapped timidly on the door, was rewarded with "Come in!!!" and we entered--or rather, she thrust me into the room quickly and shut the door behind me, as if fearing that I might try to escape.
"I've come about the room."
"Of course you have, my dear fellow--" He rose from the desk and turned, saw me at once, and his pale face grew paler still. "It's you," he said, rather abruptly.
I tried to smile. "You did say that we would meet again," I reminded him.
"Yessss..." His grey eyes incised me with their gaze. "At the race-track, the steeplechase, was it not? Yes. You were with a young woman in a very large hat, your cousin Marion. You had a callous on the thumb of your left hand, such as is caused by repeated pressure against the hand-grip of a bone saw." He smiled, triumphantly. "You're a doctor."
I sighed. "Yes. I told you I was a doctor."
"Ah, yes, so you did, so you did." He smiled, that hesitant flicker that died away swiftly. "Now then, how can I help you? Are you looking for consultation on a case? Is it a murder? Extortion? Blackmail?" He moved closer, a tall, lean figure dressed in a fine black suit; his clothes were expensive and obviously well-made. A good family, I reasoned. So why was he forced to eke his living in this manner?
"I've come about the flat."
"The flat...?"
"I've come about renting the flat with you, about us being flat-mates!" I was getting angry in spite of myself; he threw me off my stride, this Sherlock Holmes, he made me forget myself, he made my heart betray itself with that heavy, frenzied thumping that only occurred in his presence.
"Flat-mates?" He took a cigarette from a box and lit it, drew on it deeply, the smoke trickling from his sculpted mouth. "You and I?"
"I need a place to live," I told him.
"Oh, my dear Dr. Watson, I really don't think you and I would be at all suited--"
I cut him off in midsentence. "And why not? You don't even know me, you know nothing about me, you--"
"I know everything about you. I know that your name is Dr. John Watson and that your family is originally from Inverness, in the north of Scotland. I know that you have a preference for tweed suits that you purchase from a Scottish tailor in Inverkeithing. I know that you are a doctor, and that in your spare time you make the acquaintance of one Patrick Smythe, also a doctor, at the Hog's Head Inn, near Finsbury Park. I know that you drink a light pale ale, rather than the lager that your friend prefers, and that you appreciate a dinner of meat and gravy in the evenings when you have returned from your practice, followed by a glass of port." He pulled a face. "I don't see how we could possibly be suited."
"That's quite a premature assessment," I replied stiffly, but my mind was whirling: how on earth had he determined such things about me?
"You are wondering how I have determined such things." He grinned; the first honest grin I'd ever seen... it transformed his face utterly, from brooding and sensitive to inexplicably beautiful. And my heart started that damnable thumping again, as if it were trying to free itself from the bony cage of my ribs. "Tell me," he continued, "what sort of person are you, to live with, I mean? Do you have any ... outrageous habits that I ought to know about?"
"You seem to have determined all of my 'outrageous habits,' I should think."
He waved a hand as if swishing gnats. "No, my dear Doctor--what I mean is, are you unbearably sloppy in your personal habits? Do you keep late hours in the company of floozies and loose women? Are you in the habit of bringing ladies to your place of lodging? Do you drink in excess or refuse to bathe at appropriate intervals?" He fixed me with his clear grey gaze. "I would need to know."
I was more than a little annoyed, but I replied to it anyway. "You will find that I am very tidy and that I keep to myself. I do, however, appreciate a little civilised conversation of an evening--"
"Ah, there you see, my dear Doctor, an immediate failing! I myself have extreme difficulty with being civilised in any capacity--" He was smiling, and I wondered if he were having sport at my expense. "Do go on."
"I have never made company of ... those sorts of women, and I have no intention of so doing--"
"--a man after my own heart! I prefer to avoid the fair sex entirely, if at all possible--"
What did that mean? "You will find that I do not bring ladies to my place of lodging."
"Not secretly married, are you?"
"I should think you'd have made it your business to know anything of that sort."
He laughed uproariously. "Of course! Ah, Watson, of course. Do go on."
"As for personal habits..." I couldn't look at him, but everything in my being was concentrated on just that. He wasn't even looking at me, he was gazing off to the side, his long, dark lashes lowered against his pale cheeks, his sculpted mouth drawing gently on his cigarette... I confess, I had an unforgivable and most unnatural thought... he seemed to invite it... "I bathe every day and prefer a complete change of clothing in the morning and in the evening. And," I added, "I expect you to do the same."
He laughed again, but not unkindly. I moved into the room, selected a high-backed leather chair and prepared to sit... I loathed talking while standing in the doorway, it was most uncivilised--
"That is MY chair!" he roared. I hastily chose the sofa, adjusted the numerous cushions behind my back. My shoulder had begun to pain; the day was damp and disagreeable.
"Forgive me, I wasn't aware." We stared at each other in silence for a moment, and I fancied that I could see his thoughts as they passed behind his cool grey eyes. Something flickered in his gaze and he drew himself upright; moved suddenly to sit in "his" chair.
"What else do you require, Watson?"
"I don't like rows," I said. "I'd rather be civilised. I'd rather we had an understanding."
"Do you consider playing the violin as a row?" He was toying with me, as a cat does a mouse.
"Only if it's played badly. Then, it's a row. If it's played well ... then it's a feast for the gods."
"Oh. Well, that won't be a problem, then." He tapped his long fingers against the arm of the chair, staring at me for such a long expanse of time that I began to get nervous. I noticed that there was a tiny scar at the corner of his mouth. I noticed the tiny pulse that beat at the base of his throat, just above the collar of his shirt. I had a sudden, blinding vision of him: nude and tangled in his bed-sheets, his rich dark hair rumpled, his long fingers clutching the mattress while I--
Good God!
"You can move in immediately. Do you have many things to be moved?" The corners of his mouth quirked in what might have been a smile, or not.
"Just the one case," I replied. "I've brought it with me,"I added. "I hope you don't think that is presumptuous. It's just that ... I've very little money and I'm rather desperate for affordable lodgings."
"Then pray, bring in your baggage and we shall get you settled."
And it was done.