All Through The Night
Sherlock Holmes is a creature of the night. Who knew?
A birthday Sherlock Serenade for Sevenpercent!
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"Cuppa tea? Before I go to bed?"
John Watson directs his question to the still shape on the sofa. There is no reaction whatsoever. Sherlock Holmes is lying flat, long legs hanging over the end of one sofa arm, hands folded loosely across his stomach, eyes closed. He might be asleep. He might just be relaxed. He might even be - and most probably is - deep in thought. Who knows, apart from the consulting detective himself?
.After a brief pause Watson simply says:
"OK. 'Night, then." and disappears.
Sherlock's hearing is acute. He listens to all the routine sounds of kettle and mug, Watson's footsteps withdrawing and heading up the thirteen stairs to his bedroom. Door closes. Floorboards creak as Watson moves around, gets into bed, and then there is silence and stillness.
The consulting detective has seen how grey and exhausted Watson is after a twelve hour shift in A&E, and knows his flatmate will sleep soundly tonight; no nightmares, no PTSD related insomnia. Will be safe left alone.
So now he waits until all is quiet as the flat darkens and settles into night. Surges to his feet in decision. Heads softly and silently up the stairs to reassure himself from the outside of the door that the other bedroom is quiet and Watson sleeps, then he returns downstairs and prepares to go out.
Unlike Watson, Sherlock Holmes sleeps little and rarely. Always has done, since childhood. Sleeping has always been a waste of time to him and an effort of will to achieve unless there is no alternative or exhaustion trips him over sleep's threshold.
So he has always had his nocturnal life. It is a large and vital part of him. Has been for as long as he can remember.
From being a very small a child he would leave his bedroom by the window, scramble the conservatory roof and roam the woods and fields of the family estate and it's home farm. Darkness and solitude never frightened him as it does other children, and the nocturnal sounds have always intrigued and soothed and piqued his interest. Stimulated investigation before he even knew what that meant.
Freedom and a strong sense of self breathed for him in the night time, both features that were rarely allowed to him in the real world of daylight and what other people considered normality.
In the dark his eyes were wide open, all seeing. For he was learning landscape and wildlife, reaching into the secret and hidden worlds he preferred. Learning himself. And also being taught so many traditional and mainly nefarious country skills by the local poachers and gypsies, who were the few people who simply accepted the boy for who and what he was; wild and feral and someone other, something separate - and just like them.
Or if the weather was too cold or too wet to be out, (for wet coats and boots in the hall drew questions he preferred not to have to answer) or adults had become too suspicious that he might be crossing unspoken boundaries of age, and acceptability, of time and place, so that he needed to draw back a little, he would barricade himself inside the library during the long reaches of the night, sitting hidden on the floor between the pedestals of his father's Georgian mahogany partners desk with it's green glass shaded desk light down there in the dark square space with him, as he sat cross legged in dressing gown and old plimsolls, devouring books and paperwork and learning, always learning.
Away at school it had been the same. Surrounded to the point of insanity and suffocation by other boys and staff, he soon learnt to snatch his freedoms as and where he could. He had learnt by then how to tread softly, move invisibly, live an entire other life and landscape beyond the ones he unwillingly shared with the rest of the world in daylight.
Make friends, Sherlock! Find a partner for chemistry - sport - dance - etiquette training - biology experiments. Learn to share, to mix, to be socially aware, Sherlock. Be part of a team. Part of the real world. Learn to care. To reduce yourself and your expectations to match those of other people. To be less unique, to become normal, ordinary, dull. And for why? None of that, none of it, is me. Give me space. Time. Myself. Leave me alone….
So at school he also stole night hours from the world to practise his violin in privacy, to complete homework, to walk the streets unnoticed, move silently to retain and restore his privacy of soul and his sanity when having to live so closely and reluctantly with others day in, day out.
He grew up always feeling the night was his playground, his comfort zone, his true environment and his freedom, to be relished and absorbed into his being, showing him more of the world that was exclusively his, far more so than the world of daylight that was mostly so alien to him.
The habit and the comfort of that darkness never left him. Some people said it reflected the dark hole in his soul. An assessment he ignored because he knew that was not right. But he had spent all his life being misread, misunderstood, misjudged. And eventually he became numb to this, and the opinion of others ceased to touch him.
As a teenager suddenly existing below the bars of normality and decency the night was his natural habitat after all. On the run from real life and responsibility and the expectancy of others, he had worn the normal straitjacket of convention and it's trappings as best he could, but then he wallowed much more at ease in his interlude as a creature of the night.
This nocturnal life bought him time and space as himself, a means of earning and learning that were unnervingly and often dangerously other, negotiating relationships and transactions for survival which had special meaning for him. But he learnt to cope and grow through pain and terror, acquire the skill of being able to tolerate and present a special lack of relativity to others, how they responded to him and treated him when he lived and endured in the dark.
Even after his ever vigilant brother dragged him back into the real world of daylight and responsibility and adulthood, the watches of the night were still the only things that gave him relief and respite from all that.
As he got older, and he was more able and prepared to claim his own identity and his own role in life, he would often roam his city; walking, pacing, travelling, conversing, as an aid to sleep or to thought.
Wandering to observe other people and their works, learning character and behaviour patterns, finding and seeking out individuals and what they did. Learning patterns, criminalities, habits, proclivities. Learning London, taking the pulse of it's heartbeat and it's people from the inside out. Almost as if wearing the city and the darkness as his very own special and protective cloak.
When he first came to London he had been an innocent on the run, bruised and abased and suffering. The dark was his refuge then, and his shelter from the world, a place where he simply did what he must to survive. Where he went and what he did then were strange and separate and other. There were lessons and experiences and lifetimes and prayers. There was blood and muck and cold and sweat, grazed knees, grazed knuckles, hunger and thirst for everything, and more to attain than just bread and water.
The things in life that hurt him also taught him, and seemed to give less pain in the dark; so perhaps it was true that what you could not see could not hurt you. Well; not so much, anyway. Or else he would indulge himself. Investigations, drugs, strange skills, knowledges and compulsions.
But mostly he would be himself alone. The Sherlock no-one else knew or saw or even noticed. Who took in casinos, clubs, gambling halls, drug dens, brothels, all night cab shelters, poker games, drop in centres and coffee bars, an all but invisible wraith of a man who cruised the city on night buses and learnt all the brightest spots, the darkest corners. Taking in all ages and classes of people and their attitudes, picking up news and opinion, tips and tells.
He was a ghost, a watcher, all alley cat, an interloper. He was a spirit and a sensibility. A necromancer and a guardian angel, a shadow and a subversive, a nerve ending.
Making friends, of a sort. And contacts that would stay with him for years and forever.
He lived and he learnt. The university of life they called it. Well, he had done the other type of university too, and he knew which one he preferred.
Perhaps it was this jumbled and jostling kaleidescope of life that more than anything else settled his determination to become a detective. Consulting and solving and bringing things out from the darkness into the daylight. Making the muddied clear, the blackness bright.
He could not explain this yearning within him, not even to himself. He was too isolated and too pragmatic for that.
But as he matured and accepted responsibilities and found solutions, and made people other than himself whole, his contacts in the darkness of the world began to change, too.
There were people like himself - the adult he himself was now - who were also night dwellers. He met these in respite centres, churches, refuges. Night watchmen who were also philosophers. Curates who played night time chess with him, offered him their human puzzles and cared for the world. Street angels who guarded the weak, policemen who patrolled and advised and simply cared. He made contacts, aware of concentric circles touching, listened and helped if he could.
He was a different man in the dark. And he knew it.
And there were also those he met in another strata of life, at his gentleman's club. People whose only relaxation came in those quiet hours when others were sleeping. Men who ran the government, ran the country, saw much of life in their management of London's social world. Men who owned clubs and bars and casinos. Men who were elderly, alone or insomniac. Men with whom he could meet minds and discuss the world, it's secrets and how it was run.
Men who also swam and boxed and exercised in the long dark hours in the privacy and security of the club because it was the only time they could. A Cabinet minister who swapped confidences on the martial arts dojo; a diplomat who confided the manipulations of the EEC and NATO on the shooting range. One of the top industrialists who explained the futures market and the manipulation of commodities on national economies. Many more who mingled with Sherlock Holmes, trusted his silence, and so confided, sharing their knowledge, their predictions and concerns.
If the daytime hours were times for doing, the night time hours were for learning, discussing, expounding, philosophising. For simply tuning into the wider world and seeing it's colours and complexities. And just being.
There were also night times that were very quiet. Personal, private, influential, and more special than normal.
On these nights a blank text message would arrive on his telephone. Never any earlier than 11pm, and often much later. And then Sherlock Holmes would move swiftly and soft footed to an elegant town house not so far away.
He would let himself in through a side door with his own key and make his way silently to the library.
Here a fire would be burning in the grate, and a man would be sitting motionless in a wing chair beside it. Sherlock would drop into the chair opposite without greeting or being greeted.
On the side table beside his chair would stand a measure of a single malt scotch in a crystal glass. Or perhaps hot chocolate keeping warm in a pot over a burner. Or a cafetiere of coffee. Sometimes - most times - there would be an anonymous file or some other paperwork next to it, awaiting his attention. Or something else to regard - a thing to lift and to analyse and examine.
There had been a Spanish stiletto once, glinting in the firelight. An antique handgun. A tattered diary. A Russian black Madonna icon. An Elizabethan portrait miniature. A handbag and it's contents. A family bible, a dog collar, even a vacuum flask. On another occasion there was a bracelet of amber beads.
Sherlock had laughed a little at that one: "'Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?' He had quoted the ethereal poetry without a thought.
"Not green glass, and you are no goblin," came the tart reply that bounced off what would have been the next line. "Although perhaps you are. When I think about it."
The brothers had faced each other and Sherlock had concentrated and described what he could deduce of the history of the beads, a profile of their owner, and a problem that had been pregnant for two weeks in the brain of Mycroft Holmes had disappeared in minutes with the new perspective, his little brother's input like a lightning strike in the dark.
But also, mostly, they just sat together in the dark, sharing a silence that was something other than companionable, where one's intelligence plugged into the mind of the other and both were expanded and rewarded by the truth and duality of their connection. Sometimes as many as six words might be bandied and exchanged. No listener would connect the connections these two men made between them. But connect they did.
Not that they ever spoke of these nocturnal meetings in daylight, nor admitted they even existed to other people. The rest of the world thought they bickered and verbally abused and hated each other, and they were content with that role they shared, happy that no-one else would ever understand their unique parity of mind.
Sherlock would most often return to Baker Street from these sessions enervated and with a soul unburdened, but always rushing to make sure, like Cinderella, he was home before the cock crowed and no-one in the house had any awareness of his version of glass slippers and could share his sterling thoughts.
An entire lifetime could be encompassed across the hours of one night, a whole education could be gained, a solution achieved. This he knew by experience.
So by dawn he would always be back on the sofa where John Watson had left him the night before. As if he had never even stirred in thought or sleep through the dark stretches of the night.
Sometimes he would return exhausted and be at the verge of that sleep. Sometimes he would be so energised by what he had been doing, seeing, thinking, it was almost impossible to quell the lifeforce surging from within and giving himself away.
These are the times he would slump down, hide the fire in his eyes with hooded lids, pretend exhaustion or concentration or both. Would snap and snarl and keep everyone at bay rather than reveal his workings of the night.
John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, none of them, his closest allies, would be any the wiser.
So when Watson would come yawning and stumbling downstairs five minutes after his alarm call woke him, muzzing his hair and his tired eyelids with his fists and seeing Sherlock Holmes, comfortably in place on the sofa exactly where he had left him the night before, he would say, as he always did:
"'Morning! Cuppa tea?"
And Sherlock Holmes would open an eye and say something casual in reply, such as:
"'Morning! Is it morning already? Oh, then - yes please."
And he would very deliberately close his eyes again as the morning routine began and the new day got under way.
Because for Sherlock Holmes it was just another extraordinary day, which had followed another extraordinary night.
For the night has a thousand eyes. And Sherlock Holmes knows them and has seen them all. For his are the most knowing and observant eyes of them all.
END
Author's note:
The poem quoted and deliberately misquoted by Sherlock and Mycroft is Overheard On A Saltmarsh by Harold Monro.