(Sequel to "That Would Work" (though they can be read independently. I own nothing but my own plot and just love to play in the BBC/Arthur Conan Doyle universe.)
#
Sally sat down in the chair and drew a long, slow breath. This week had been brutal and she needed nothing less than a chance to completely relax with like-minded people.
By which she decidedly did not mean her colleagues from the police force. She smiled at the other women sitting at the table and reached for her bag, already feeling the tension draining from her shoulders. "How's everyone today?"
Murmurs of "Good" and "All right" came from the others as Sally pulled out her work, disentangling the working end. No matter how carefully she put her knitting away, it always managed to tangle itself in the bag. She took a moment to spread the cardigan out on her lap before pulling out the pattern to find her place. She was just at the point where she would start decreasing for the armholes, and took a moment to count her stitches, making sure everything was right.
She settled into her knitting with a blissful sigh, letting the other women's voices wash over her. It was soothing, hearing them talk about their own jobs (so much less stressful than her own), or problems with their kids or husbands. She so often saw the absolute worst of people every day, it was a comfort to be reminded that not all problems led to a body in an alley or a crime of passion.
That was exactly why she relished these Saturday afternoons at her local yarn shop. Sitting at a table with some familiar, some new faces every week, surrounded by skeins of yarn—it was like a giant hug, as unlike her job as possible.
So it was a shock when she heard a familiar voice. "Yes, I'm looking for some roving, and I understand you carry some?"
John Watson? She craned her neck from her spot at the table and, sure enough, there he was at the counter, inquiring about wool roving for spinning of all things. But, no. There was no possible way that Doctor-Gun-What-Gun could possibly know how to spin. It must be a request from the Freak for some bizarre experiment comparing the disintegrating properties of human hair to wool, or something.
She heard Melanie ask if he was picking up the wool for his wife? Girlfriend? And Sally couldn't help but smirk at the thought. Everyone knew John Watson's longest-standing relationship was with the Freak, no matter what he claimed about not being gay.
It was odd, though. John didn't have any of the usual awkwardness that men did when they came into the shop. There were men that knit, but most men who came through Melanie's doorway were on errands for their wives or girlfriends and couldn't wait to get back out the door as quickly as possible.
John, though, was standing and comfortably chatting about the quality of the roving, discussing the relative merits of Corriedale versus Blue Faced Leicester, and his preference for worsted drafting over woolen for long wear. Sally couldn't believe her ears and her knitting fell into her lap, hands slack with astonishment.
Melanie asked about his ever-present jumper and he said it had been made for him by a neighbor years ago as a thank you when he'd made her a spinning wheel. "My landlady found out, though, and asked me to make her one, so … I just need some wool to try it out, make sure it's pulling correctly."
Sally dropped her knitting completely. John Watson was making a spinning wheel? She couldn't decide whether to be envious or skeptical. She was dying to give spinning a try, but couldn't afford the price of a wheel. Surely any wheel John—a complete amateur—made would be a joke? Except, he said he'd made one before. And then there was the fact that, while she had never seen him do anything creative, John Watson simply exuded competence. As much as she hated to admit it, she had a hard time imagining him being bad at anything he turned his hand to.
Melanie was talking about the shop's wheel now. It wasn't a new one or a familiar name like Ashford or Majacraft. Instead it was a wheel she'd found at a junk dealer for £25 and had grabbed in hopes of being able to use it. She'd brought it home and lovingly rubbed lemon oil into the wood and oiled all the moving parts but … the poor (but beautiful) thing was something of a clunker.
And … oh no … she was dragging John back to take a look. There was no way he wouldn't see her. Sally scrabbled to pick up her knitting and hurriedly began knitting at it, trying to look like she was concentrating so hard she hadn't seen him come in.
"Sally?"
She looked up casually, gratified to see him looking as shocked as she was. "Why, John. What a surprise. I didn't know you knit."
His lips twitched. "I don't. I was just looking for something to spin and Melanie asked me to take a look at her wheel."
"You spin?"
He nodded, looking embarrassed. "Well, sort of. It's been years, but I need something to test, so … rusty skills are better than none at all, yeah?"
"You two know each other?" Melanie asked.
Sally felt her face warm, dreading the questions that were going to come up when they found out she was a detective. So much for keeping her work life separate from her personal life, but John was just introducing himself, "John Watson. I see Sally at work from time to time. So, where's this wheel of yours?"
Melanie showed it to him and he immediately shook his head. "Yeah, the problem here is that this isn't actually a spinning wheel. Not a functioning one, that is. It's just a display piece that's meant to look pretty sitting in a corner, but not really spin. See? There's no orifice for getting the yarn to the flyer."
"I know. I don't know how I missed it when I bought it." Melanie's voice sounded crushed. "But the treadles work, and it does spin, see? Can it be fixed?" She reached out a hand to nudge the wheel.
"Well, without the orifice…. It's like a beautiful clock that has no gears—you can spin the hands around and it'll look lovely on the wall, but it's only going to tell the time twice a day." John bent again and took another look. "I might. I'd need to take it back to the shop to really tell. It could be as simple as drilling a hole, or it might be more complicated. You'd need bobbins, too. I could make some for you, but it might be more practical to find a commercial line that can be adapted."
Sally still couldn't believe John Watson was standing right in front of her, talking knowledgably about spinning wheels. Her hands worked blindly at her knitting as their voices washed over her until she heard her name. "Sally could help, if she wouldn't mind. Between the three of us, we can get it to my shop easily enough."
Sally was still reeling. "Wait, what? You have a shop?"
He turned and grinned at her. "A workshop, yeah. It's not like I can build furniture in the sitting room with Sherlock around."
She felt her eyes widen, picturing Sherlock Holmes surrounded by sharp wood-working tools, then John looked at her knitting. "It looks like you should probably take a break, anyway," he told her with a twinkle in his eye. "You've dropped a few stitches, there."
She stared down at her knitting and gaped at the tangle. How had she made such a mess? She was going to have to tear back at least three rows. She sighed and crammed it back into her bag. Fine. She'd help Melanie and John with the stupid wheel.
"So, where's this workshop of yours?"
John just grinned. "221C, of course."
#
John put down the spinning wheel base and opened the street door and waited while Melanie and Sally struggled through with their pieces. Disassembling the wheel had made it manageable to transport, but that didn't mean it had been easy. Whoever built this thing had made it solid (i.e., heavy).
He paused in the hallway while they caught their breath, relishing the scent of wood and wax with just an overlay of fresh scones from Mrs. Hudson's flat. "The shop's down here," John said, pointing. "Watch the stairs." He pulled his key out of his pocket and opened the door, flicking on the lights as they headed down.
He wondered, as they all carefully maneuvered down the narrow stairs, if he should have offered to carry the spinning wheel pieces down himself. He was never sure, with Sally Donovan especially, when it was polite to offer assistance, when it would be construed as patronizing rather than helpful. It was so hard to tell with Sally, she was so defensive all the time—though Sherlock was usually around, so defensive was easy to understand.
He grinned at her low whistle. 221C had been dingy, empty, and smelling of mould, but no more. It was now a full-fledged workshop, with good lighting, tables and wood-working equipment filling the small space. Sawdust and wood chips squeaked under foot as they entered. He couldn't help the quick inhale of the familiar smells of glue, stain, and wood pitch.
"This is amazing." Melanie was turning on her heel in the middle of the room, taking in the finished pieces and the works in progress.
John nodded, looking around the cluttered space with pride and just a touch of chagrin. "I don't know how it happened. All I was going to do was fix one broken shelf and then … it escalated."
He smiled to himself at their surprise. He was unbearably proud of his workshop, with all its friendly clutter of warm woods and half-finished pieces. He might never entirely get rid of the mould smell from the walls, but it was so overlain by wax and stain, it didn't even bother him anymore.
Sally had leaned the drive wheel against the wall and was staring around the room. "This is all yours?" Her tone was disbelieving, as if she expected he'd stolen someone else's workshop for some kind of cover.
"Of course it is, Sally." He put the piece he was carrying down next to it. "Who else would work down here?"
She was looking around examining everything. "It's not like the Freak would let you go further away."
John sighed. "Sally."
"Right. Sorry." She was tapping the arm of a rocking chair, noting the easy glide it made on its rockers. "Well, anyway, it looks like you're good at it. How long has this been going on?"
"The short answer is about six months." John said with an absent-minded air as he watched the chair rock back and forth. "The longer answer is since I was kid, but with a long hiatus while I invaded Afghanistan and saved some lives."
He watched Sally walk around the room. She paused in front of the bulletin board in the corner, covered with invoices and sketches. "Are these all orders? You're doing well for yourself."
John picked Melanie's wheel up and put it next to the worktable. "You can blame Mrs. Hudson for that. Once she found out I was going to start making things again, she spread the word and suddenly … well, I just hope all those people are patient, because you know how much free time I've got."
"So, where's this spinning wheel you're making?" Sally's voice was harsh, but slightly softer, as if unwillingly impressed by the work around her.
"Don't believe me?" He turned and showed them his wheel in the corner, spinning it, watching for any unevenness as it turned. "From a construction stand-point, it's fascinating. So many moving pieces that need to be perfectly balanced and interact just so to work right. It's a fun challenge."
"I can believe that," Melanie said. "How much is this one going for?"
"£800, but it's a custom design, so …" John looked up and laughed. "Close your mouth, Sally. Some people charge a lot more."
"Sorry," she said. "Keep this up, and you can quit that part-time locum work you do."
John just laughed. "You think you're joking, but really … yes, I could. As long as the orders keep coming in."
"Well," Melanie gave the spinning wheel a nudge with her finger and watched it turn effortlessly on its shaft. "You look like you know what you're doing. I do need to get back to the shop, though."
John turned back to Melanie's wheel. "Right. If we're lucky, all I'll have to do is drill an orifice for the yarn to go through. The hooks on the flyer might need replacing, but that's not a big deal. You'll need bobbins, too."
She nodded and they agreed on a price and a delivery date and then excused herself to get back to her shop. She glanced over at Sally, but she was standing in front of John's incomplete spinning wheel and just said she'd see her next week.
After Melanie had gone, Sally said, "I can't believe you made this."
"Yeah, well …" John wasn't sure what to say, but he took note of the longing on her face. "Do you spin?"
"Never had the chance. How'd you learn?"
He shrugged, trying not to be offended by the antagonistic tone. "Lived next to a sheep farm when I was a boy. Our neighbor's old wheel broke and since she knew I made furniture, asked if I could build her a new one. I learned to spin so I could test it. It's not something I've done in years."
He watched her face, unable to identify the emotion he saw there. Longing? Envy? Was that even possible with hard-as-nails Sally Donovan? He was completely taken aback when she blurted out, "Is there anything you can't do?"
"I … what?"
"You're a doctor. You were in the army. You're apparently the only person in the world that the fre… Sherlock … can stand and you somehow put up with all his nonsense. And now not only make this gorgeous furniture, but you spin, too? God in heaven, John. How is it possible? How do you get to be the one person who gets to do everything? Do you know how unfair that is to the rest of us?"
He just stared, blinking for a moment, dumbstruck at the tears he saw in her eyes. "You've got it backwards, Sally," he finally told her. "I don't do all those things because I'm lucky. I do them because I had no choice."
He ran his fingers along his worktable, feeling the sawdust grit under his nails. "I grew up making things with wood and would probably have done that forever, except my dad got sick. I went to medical school mostly to prove to myself that there was nothing we could have done to save him—and luckily for me, I never found anything. To pay off my school fees, I joined the army and went to a war zone, trying to save as many lives as I could because it was the only thing I had left. And then, well," he gestured at his shoulder. "That got taken away, too. I do a lot of things only because I keep having to rebuild my life."
He looked at her face, twisted in a grimace of self-hatred. "But … how? How can you still be standing here all happy in that stupid jumper? How do you keep starting over instead of being … trapped?"
John swallowed in the face of such naked emotion. "You're only as trapped as you want to be, Sally. Everybody gets dealt lousy hands by life—what matters is what you do with the cards. I never wanted to be the kind of man who folded at the first sign of trouble. If I lose one hand, I'll just play another one. You don't give up on the game just because you don't like the cards."
"I don't understand that," she said, angrily wiping at her eyes. "I am the person I am. I can't just decide I don't like it and choose to be somebody else."
"I didn't do that, either. I've always been me. It's the circumstances that keep changing. And when they do, I do what I have to to make it work. Isn't that what they call learning experiences?"
She snorted, an ugly noise that was half a sob. "You don't go for that psychiatric claptrap any more than I do."
"No, I don't," he agreed. "But I've never been one for sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Or, not for long, anyway."
He gestured at the spinning wheel. "Want to give it a try?"
"I thought you said it wasn't done?" Her voice was tight.
"It's not perfect yet, but it definitely works. That's why it needs to be tested." He snagged a stool from under the table and set it down in front of the wheel. "And I do happen to have a nice, new bag of wool."
She shook her head, but took a step forward as if she couldn't help herself. "But I don't know how to spin."
"Then you can't learn any younger," he told her, gently pushing her down onto the stool. He picked up her knitting bag. "Can I have a piece of yarn? I didn't think about the leader. About two meters, if you can spare it."
Sally rummaged through her bag, pulling the length of yarn off her working skein and handing it to him.
"Before you can spin new yarn, you need a leader, a piece of yarn to start with—something to grab onto," he told her, deftly tying the two ends together and then looping the yarn around the bobbin on the wheel and threading it through the slide on the flyer and out the orifice. "This feeds the yarn onto the bobbin. The flyer spins around the bobbin, both in motion, but the flyer going just a little bit faster. It's a balancing act, with everything moving, but in perfect sync."
He reached into the bag of wool roving from the store and tore off an arm's length and then started tearing it into thinner strips, barely thicker than a pencil. "Like anything else, if you start with the right kind of raw material, it makes life easier. How you prepare the fiber makes a difference—a lot of commercial roving comes so compressed by the processing, you need to let it breathe a little before you can get it to work. I always found separating it into strips was easiest, but some people prefer to stretch it, letting the fibers slip against each other, but I think it's too easy for things to get pulled too thin, to break apart that way. I prefer to work with manageable pieces."
Reaching past her, he twisted the end of the leader and threaded the tip of the roving into the loop. "Take off your shoes and put your feet on the treadles," he said, "then treadle to the right, slowly."
She did, laughing a bit when the wheel started in the wrong direction, but did as she was told.
"The whole point of spinning," he said, hands working as first the leader and then the white wool in his hand began to twist, "Is to slide the individual fibers lengthwise so that they're overlapping, but not clumped too closely together or stretched too far apart. The twist is the pressure that locks them into place."
His arm brushed her shoulder as his hands worked, patiently drafting the fiber with his right hand as his left somehow controlled the twist and fed the yarn into the wheel, making a couple of adjustments to a knob on the wheel. She looked almost hypnotized as the fluffy handful of wool became actual yarn right in front of her. "It's just like anything else—it's a matter of balance, timing, experience, and a unique set of skills. It's forgiving, but if you do anything too wrong, the yarn will break. If it's too thin or over-twisted, the stress will break it apart. If it doesn't have enough twist, it falls apart. But it doesn't have to be perfect. You improve as you practice, but at first, all you need to do is whatever it takes to make yarn."
She laughed. "What, is this the great John Watson Spinning Life Lesson?"
"No, Sally." He shook his head at her. "I mean, far be it for me to argue with a classic metaphor that probably goes back to the beginning of time, and all, but I'm just making yarn. That's enough for me." He told her to stop treadling for a moment and reached for the next length of roving and showed her how to graft in a new piece and then handed the wool off to her.
Her first few attempts were disasters. The yarn broke several times so that the end fed up onto the bobbin before she could catch it. Her drafting was terrible, so that what little yarn she got to hold together until it was on the wheel was knobbly and over-twisted, ranging from thick to thin and she complained that it was ugly. John just laughed and said everybody started like that.
Before long, though, she was actually spinning and John couldn't help but smile at the proud look on her face. "So, how's it spin, then?" he asked after a while.
"It's wonderful," she said, face beaming. "Not that I've spun on any other wheels, but … Oh." She looked self-conscious and stopped treadling.
"What's the matter?"
"I just realized … I shouldn't … it's not my place."
John chuckled and moved back to the workbench. "Don't be silly. It needs to be tested, and I've got more than enough to do over here. You're doing me a favor. Just let me know if you have a problem."
He made a fuss of busying himself with his tools while she slowly restarted the wheel, feeding twist into the wool with growing speed and confidence. He could see her shoulders relaxing and knew for himself how soothing spinning could be with its steady pace, the rhythm of feet and hands working in sync. It was satisfying in a way that was hard to come by—mindless yet creative, soothing yet not boring. It kept your hands busy while letting your mind think. He had always found it meditative and realized that part of him had missed it.
Only part of him, though. A life full of quiet contemplation would have been impossibly boring—even if he'd never realized what he was missing. He thought about what he'd said, about having to recreate himself, and found he was grateful. His life would have been so boring.
And, with the whirr of the spinning wheel going in the corner, he reached for the wax and began buffing the finished rocking chair. He wouldn't want that boring, craftsman's life back again, but as an interlude between cases and medical emergencies and a break from Sherlock's general insanity?
He wouldn't change a thing.
##
FIN
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