Northern Exposure
From Matty Holmes' Diary
Wakkanai, January 12th 1976
Back from hospital at last with my adorable little Billy, who by some mistake of a drunken clerk unable to handle the Latin alphabet appears to go by the name of William Sherlock Scott for now. We'll get that corrected to Sheldon as soon as we're back in England, of course, which may take a while yet and until then Mikey makes the most of it by insisting to call his little brother Sherlock regardless. Oh, the poor boy is so jealous of his baby-brother! Little wonder, for five years he was our sole centre of attention, now he has to share the limelight.
And how darling my little boy is! He's got a headful of dark curls (must be taking after daddy there) which looks very cute, and he's Tertius' spit and image. He's also very lively, but I trust he'll settle now that we're back home.
Wakkanai, April 27th 1976
Winter finally seems to be over, at long last. Told Tertius that we need to find some other place, for I won't stand another winter like this one. I'm at the end of my tether, really. At one point we had ten feet of snow outside!
If at all possible, Billy has become even more demanding. I wouldn't have thought it possible that one child could scream so much. And so loudly! I almost envy Tertius for the time he gets to spend at work.
Between the crying baby and Mikey practising the flute, I don't know where my head is most of the time. No matter what I do, he just won't calm down, he cries and cries and cries. Yesterday, even the woman next door complained. I believe she tried to do so last Wednesday already, but I didn't understand a word she was saying then. This time, she returned with a dictionary and furiously pointed out that she and her husband need to work and cannot be expected to be kept up all night only because our boy keeps on wailing the whole night through. But what can I do?
Wakkanai, May 16th 1976
It pains me to even think it, but I strongly suspect Mikey tried to choke his brother last night. I had just talked to Mrs Watanabe at the door (once more complaining, this time threatening to have us evicted!) and not really noticed that the screams had toned down a little, and when I returned to Billy I found Mikey pressing a cushion onto his face. He didn't even mind me seeing him do it! Declared cool as ice that he just wanted to help because of Mrs. Wantanabe and that the cushion would muffle the noise, and when I told him that he might as well have killed his brother, he just shrugged! Also, he translated some of the things Mrs. Wantanabe had apparently said; I'm torn between motherly pride of him being so fluent in Japanese and shock what kind of words he seems to have picked up, both in English and in Japanese!
That doctor was right after all (not that I ever really doubted it), Mikey is a genius, so I guess I ought not to be surprised by his occasional weirdness. Guess what he wants for his birthday next month! An electron microscope and a book on the Spanish War of Succession! I did not even know there was one! Oh, and he's started talking of wanting to be sent back to England to go to school. At first I thought he was just tired of the long, long winter like me, but apparently he feels we're neglecting him and his education. Fancy that, a not yet five-year-old insisting on his education! That he even knows such words like education, or neglect! And that the Spanish seem to have had a war of succession. Once again, I don't know whether to be proud or appalled. Or guilty. I do neglect him, don't I? Since Billy was born, I did practically nothing else but see after him, and poor Mikey plays the second fiddle. No wonder he tries to murder his brother!
Wakkanai, July 15th 1976
Tertius got an offer to go to Norway and I've already started packing even though we won't be going before the end of September. I can't wait to get away from here and Norway's but a stone's throw away from home. Who'd have figured that I could ever be so desperate to be closer to home? Not me, that's for sure. How excited I've been to move around the globe with Tertius, and it was nice for a while. Iceland, Greenland, Tierra del Fuego, Canada, Mikey was conceived in Antarctica, for heaven's sake, though by now I sometimes wonder whether that wasn't a bad omen, regarding his forbidding coldness. Between one son scarcely acknowledging my existence and the other one demanding every second of my time and attention, I've become tired of all the additional strain of living abroad. Well, Norway will still be abroad, alright, but at least it's in Europe and I'll have a chance to learn the language and can now and again go back to England. I consider that a good start.
Gimsøy, February 1st 1977
Did I really believe Norway was going to be an improvement to Japan? I know, I know, I can never be satisfied. But at least Wakkanai was a proper city and not so far north. I haven't seen the sun in almost 4 months! I wrote the same to Mother and guess what she replied? That being English I ought to be accustomed to such deprivations and that she hasn't seen it in months either. I laughed so hard! As soon as winter's over, she is going to come and visit us, I'm so curious how she will find my little darlings since she last saw them. Or rather say, since she saw Mikey, because she's never seen Sherlock at all, and he is just the prettiest little boy you can imagine.
Thank God for that. If he weren't as cute as he is, I might sometimes want to strangle him. He flatly refused to learn crawling and I was quite worried, thinking that maybe we missed some crucial point during the move to Norway with all the hassle going on then. Mike learnt to crawl when he was about five months old (I strongly suspect so he could better get away from me) and he wouldn't stop expressing his disapproval how 'backward' our little Sherlock was. Well, the joke's on him because Sherlock simply didn't crawl at all but went on to start walking straight away and now he's thirteen months old and even more of a nuisance constantly running away. Mike didn't learn how to walk before he was fifteen months old, and even then it took him a long while before he was as mobile. But that's just Mikey, I guess, because he cannot be bothered to move if it isn't strictly necessary. There's a football team in the village and Tertius was quite keen for him to join, but he wouldn't hear of it. He won't even accompany us talking a walk at the weekends. He also declines learning how to swim or ride a bicycle, and if I hadn't a doctor's chit proving he's a genius I would wonder if he may be a little too stupid for that.
Which brings me back to his schooling. His Norwegian is excellent as far as I can tell and this summer he could start school in the village. Naturally, he thinks it's a waste of his time and keeps on nagging that we ought to send him to school in England as he has decided that the only prep-school worth his while is Dragon School, Oxford. When I joked that it must be due to the name, he gave me the kind of disdainful look that no child of six should ever cast his own mother.
Gimsøy, May 12th 1977
Mummy has arrived yesterday and I am just so happy to have her here! She fell in love with my little Sherlock straightaway, and believe it or not, when she's around, you would hardly recognise him, he's all sweetness and good manners. No fits of temper, no running away, no breaking anything, no crying, no biting, no nothing! And Mikey cannot stand it. He keeps on prodding and teasing the poor kid, claiming he wants to show Mummy how 'he's really like' and making a complete ass of himself. I told him we'll cancel his birthday party if he doesn't behave, which he answered with his usual precociousness, informing me that birthday parties are for children and he couldn't care less. So I informed him in turn that he wouldn't get that microscope he so desperately wants either. This morning he behaved very well, or at least I didn't catch him out, so I reckon I somehow need to get my hands on a microscope within the next fortnight. Damn me and my big mouth!
Gimsøy, January 6th 1978
Sherlock's birthday over and am I on my knees, grateful that it IS over! At last! If the gin wasn't so expensive here, I might just drink myself into a stupor.
My little darling was (predictably) displeased with our presents and expressed himself on the subject with a vocabulary rather astounding for a two-year-old. But nothing is going to astound me anymore. Other than why we ever taught him to speak. What I want to know is, how did we think it'd be a good idea to have another child with Mikey being such a particularly delightful little tyke?
Oh well, it inevitably turned out the disaster I ought to have foreseen. Mike was pouting for not being the centre of everyone's attention and ate the cake before Sherlock had even seen it. I had to stick the candles into a loaf of toast! Next, Sherlock declared that the 500-pieces jigsaw we gave him was 'boring', just like the Dr Seuss book, not to mention the teddy bear which, in his charming words, is 'ridiculous'. HE wanted Mike's microscope and a cockroach farm, he said. At which point Mike once more chimed in, calling his little brother a cockroach, at which point Sherlock threw a tantrum and tried to beat Mikey up, succeeding surprisingly far before Tertius or I could stop him. Did I mention already what delightful a day it really was? And how happy I was when I'd finally managed to put them down to sleep?
Gimsøy, April 11th 1978
Back from merry old England and happy to be back with Tertius. We've never been parted for so long ever since we've got married and I missed him terribly, even if it were only three and a half weeks. By the way: I did not change Sherlock's name. Even if it was a mix-up and the name is ridiculous, it got stuck and everyone calls him so by now, so why change it?
Mummy and Daddy were lovely, I truly enjoyed my time there. Well, mostly. I could comfortably have gone without Rosie coming to visit and see me, because I suspect she didn't really come to see me but parade her oh-so-wonderful life and her oh-so-adorable children. Harold, of course, had no time to accompany them, seeing he is such a HOT SHOT in the city. May I be struck by lightning if I ever make such a fuzz about my family. Yes, Harold is terribly successful and makes tons of money, and yes, Tamara is a pretty, docile girl and Justin is well-behaved and can count to twenty. Twenty! Sherlock is two months younger than he and he can not only count to a thousand but actually calculate. And no, I've not suddenly become an over-competitive mother, but the way Rosie denigrates my boys only because her own children are so ordinary truly rubbed me up the wrong way.
Incidentally, I got Mike off his idea of entering Dragon School, too. I made an appointment, we went there, talked to the headmaster about the curriculum, and being my own little Mikey, he naturally wrinkled his nose and told the poor man to his face that his school was beneath him and that he'd gotten much further already without attending any school at all. I may even have risen a little in his esteem for tutoring him so well, but only a little and I don't believe it'll last.
And talking of tutoring – he's started teaching Sherlock the alphabet, and my, he is a strict teacher! What is even more astounding to me is that Sherlock allows him to bully him like that. Usually, he's quite apt in fighting back when Mike is too overbearing, but not when teaching him something. In that field, Sherlock obeys him completely, he even stays off his dessert voluntarily if he's made some mistake. It's amazing, and a little worrying. On the bright side though, he can write all our names by now and his spelling of 'Mycroft' is better than his pronunciation.
Oh, before I forget – we went to see the Admiral, too, luckily only for two days. Good heavens, if Tertius didn't resemble him so much in looks, I'd bet my last shirt that these two can't be related. If possible, he's become even more abrasive and treated the boys like little soldiers, constantly bellowing at them to stand straight and niggling about every small thing. Mikey idolises him, of course, and let me know that he wants to join the Navy as well (funny aside: hearing this, Sherlock instantly declared he wants to become a pirate, only to get up Mike's nose!). They both fell in love with the house though. Of course they did, it's like a miniature enchanted castle, even I find it weirdly charming. Forbidding like its owner, yes, cold and draughty and impossible to keep clean. But then it's got all these useless turrets and Tudor windows and something like a moat and for two seconds or so, I gloried in being its mistress one day like a fairytale princess. Silly me! In the next second I realised that I'll be spending the rest of my life then wiping dust and trying to clean all those windows and common sense returned at once.
Gimsøy, June 3rd 1978
Midnight sun, and without darkness the boys are impossible to calm down enough to find sleep. They're up and about at all hours and both Tertius and I have begun wearing earplugs at 'night' – that is between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., because I refuse to call it a 'night' if the sun is high in the sky. Anyway, Sherlock taught himself how to ride a bicycle, I am terribly proud, and even prouder because he managed to goad Mikey so badly that he actually coaxed him into giving it a try as well. Same goes for swimming. He – Sherlock I mean – insisted that I show him and point blank refused to use floaties (this child knows no fear, it's quite alarming!) and he's taken to it like a duck takes to water. Now I'm scared to death that he may want to go swimming while his father and I are asleep, so I impressed upon both him and Mike that I absolutely forbid it and can only pray they for once listen to me.
Gimsøy, June 30th 1978
Dear Lord, Mikey nearly drowned! In spite of my express prohibition he and Sherlock sneaked out of the house to take a swim in the sodding Atlantic, apparently Mike could not endure that his little brother can do something he has no clue of and being him – and no doubt instigated by Sherlock mocking him! – he was too proud to even use floaties. Thank God a pair of teenage lovers was making out on the beach nearby and they heard Sherlock yelling and jumped in to save Mikey!
He's not really injured, mostly shocked, praise the Lord. I'm still out of myself though! What if something had happened to my little boy! Oh, what am I supposed to do about them?!
Gimsøy, July 2nd 1978
I went to call on Mikey's savers to express my utter gratitude, only to find that the poor girl – Anne is her name – is living in utter squalor. Two years ago her mother died and ever since her father appears to have descended into alcoholism and neglected her and her three siblings completely. The house was a total mess, empty schnapps bottles everywhere, mould, dirt and dog turds. The poor, poor kid! She was so embarrassed to have me see it, and her father was snoring on a sofa and never even registered my visit. So I scraped together all my best bits of Norwegian and called the social services, hoping for the best.
Gimsøy, July 17th 1978
That's what you get for trying to be good. Poor little Anne Larsson and her siblings got taken away to Tromsø to live in an orphanage or something and in a fit of rage Mr. Larsson beat their dogs to death. All except one which managed to run away and which we got landed with now.
Sherlock is so enamoured with it, Tertius and I cannot bring ourselves to separate them. He called him Redbeard (don't ask me why, I guess it's another pirate thing), and once again Mike is livid with jealousy. He was never allowed to have a dog, he complained, and when I answered that he never asked for one, he just snapped that this wasn't the point. The point is of course that he's got to share his brother's attention now, and don't we all know how much Mike loathes not to be at the centre of things.
Gimsøy, November 24th 1978
Sherlock's reading has become advanced enough to read his own children's books and I am out of another job so to speak. Truly, I know I ought to be nothing but proud of him and Mike, yet it pains me to see how quickly their dependence on me dwindles. He's not yet three years old, for heaven's sake!
What is worse is that Sherlock emulates Mike in other ways, too. He no longer endures to be cuddled by me since he's got Redbeard. I feel silly to envy a dog, but there you go. I am envious of a dog. Mikey could never bear to be touched or kissed, and now my little Sherlock snubs me as well. He more and more seems to be living in a world of his own, where only Mike and the dog are allowed in, and while I'm merely jealous of Redbeard, I have some severe doubts about Mike. He is my son and I love him to bits, but he has an unhealthy influence over his baby-brother. Tertius thinks I've run mad (he doesn't say that, but I can tell).
Gimsøy, January 3rd 1979
Having second thoughts about giving Sherlock a violin for Christmas. Obviously, Mikey and his flute made it abundantly clear that his brother would get no vote which instrument we'd get him, but both Tertius and I wouldn't have dreamt of the awful ruckus he could coax out of such a beautiful instrument. Tertius got me a pair of professional construction worker's earmuffs and joked that it could be worse – we could have given him a drum kit.
Gimsøy, July 18th 1979
Back from civilisation and none the wiser. The physician was as puzzled as I constantly am, recommended seeing a shrink, or at least I think he did, because frankly, his English was even worse than my poor scraps of Norwegian and he had a thick accent to boot. Perhaps I should take the boys home for a few weeks. Tertius is no help, incidentally. He thinks I'm just fussing. But there IS something odd about the boy and it's not the same kind of odd as we've grown accustomed to in Mycroft.
Oh, the tests! Puh! I either have another child prodigy at my hands, or an utter dunderhead who cannot hope to achieve more in life than learning to tie his own shoelaces. OBVIOUSLY it isn't the latter, but as I said, my Norwegian didn't suffice to tell Dr Borg that.
I'm not sure I can cope with another Mycroft! He did so brilliantly the first time around that the doc insisted on a second go. The second time, however, he seemed not to understand a word of what I asked of him and instead drew a strange picture of a beach hut, a unicorn and a flying saucer. Then he took off his left shoe and started playing with his toes. I could read in Dr Borg's eyes what he was thinking, but for goodness' sake! Only because he doesn't allow himself to be reduced to a mere lab rat doesn't make him the village idiot! I told the doctor that in no uncertain terms, but again he pretended not to understand me, or perhaps he really didn't. And I just don't know what I'm supposed to do!
Gimsøy, April 7th 1980
I don't know how he did it but Mikey found out about Sherlock's IQ test results and keeps on tormenting the poor kid endlessly with it. Which isn't only cruel but also completely pointless, seeing that he's got only about ten or so points less than Mike who scored over 200 (at 200 the shrink's scale was at an end). Which means that Sherlock scored 40 points more than Albert Einstein, he is sixty points above the score at which people get certified as geniuses, ninety points above average intelligence. For all intents and purposes, he is a prodigy – but will his brother acknowledge any of these facts? Or, come to that, will the child listen to me when I try to tell him that he is NOT a 'moron', as Mike insists?
Gimsøy, December 22nd 1980
Gil Braithwaite's wife and kids are here for a 'holiday'. Who on earth voluntarily visits this godforsaken place is beyond me, and in winter, too! Betty Braithwaite got no less than six children, apparently Gil makes one every time he goes home, but believe you me, the six of them together are less exhausting than a single one of my own!
Maybe it's because three of them are girls. I often wonder how it'd be to have a girl. Would a girl demand a chemistry set, or a book on the War of the Spanish Succession? Would a girl be as obstinate and troublesome as my little Sherlock? A girl would allow her mummy to embrace her or give her a goodnight kiss, I'm sure! But Gil and Betty's boys aren't like mine either, not a bit. They're nothing if not polite, well-behaved and friendly. No smart alecks, no brawling, no histrionic fits at all! Of course, both Mikey and Sherlock flatly refused having anything to do with them. And I WILL admit that, to me, they seemed to be a bit slow. But I suppose that in fact they aren't, that they're exactly how children of that age are supposed to be. It's my own sweet darlings who are precocious, that's it. But I'm the first to admit that I was secretly pleased how very much they outshone kids twice their age.
Gimsøy, March 8th 1981
The Admiral has died and we all will go to England for the funeral. I cannot really fathom how Tertius truly feels. He and his father were never close, yet he's naturally upset. I simply cannot figure how much, whether he's coping quite well or just suppressing his emotions.
Same goes for Mikey. He worshipped his grandfather, yet his death seems to leave him perfectly unmoved. At first I thought he didn't entirely comprehend the concept of death, but little did I know my brilliant little boy. Of course he does comprehend it. He straightaway refused any of the usual comforts as well, like 'Grandpa is in heaven' and the like. Turns out our not yet ten-year-old boy is a fully-fledged atheist. Of course he is. And that with his other grandfather being a vicar!
Chipping Sedford, March 12th 1981
The funeral went quite well. I don't think I ever attended one without a single tear shed by anybody, but that was the Admiral for you. He didn't exactly inspire attachment.
Oh, and the opening of the will! Fancy that, old Sheldon actually cut Tertius out of the will, in a manner of speaking. Even though it's quite sweet, when you think about it. He left the house and grounds to Mycroft and Sherlock because they loved it so much, with Tertius acting as a steward for them until Mike is twenty-five. He also left them a good deal of money, and even more money to Tertius. No matter how you look at it, we're rich, and I must say I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe it's only because I never had much money. Enough, always, but never too much. Or maybe in my heart of hearts I believe that money corrupts people. Or perhaps I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of having to deal with such a fortune. One ought to give it all away to charity, right? But is that fair to the boys?
Gimsøy, June 21st 1981
We'll be moving back to England, hooray!
With one month of midnight sun behind us and the complimentary constant lack of sleep, with the Admiral's fortune backing us and the necessity to be sending Mikey to school next year, Tertius finally braced himself to fold in.
Oh, I am so happy!
And just so I will never ever forget this: Having heard of our 'windfall' as she deigns to call it, I got a phone call from Rosalie. Rosalie, who used to tell me that the postage for sending a letter abroad was too expensive to write to me, actually picked up the phone and called me in Norway! At first I thought something must have happened to either Mummy or Daddy, but they're alright. No, Rosalie had ulterior motives – now that we've come into 'some money' she tried talking me into giving it all to Harold to invest for us. Seeing that neither of us 'has any clue how to handle money'. Why, it's true, but it galled me the way she was going on and I swear here and now that I'll rather give it all away than allow Harold to get his grubby hands on it!
Chipping Sedford, August 24th 1981
Back at last and residing in ludicrous splendour. Fancy that the Admiral did not possess a single normal dish, or cup, or glass. For our first meals we dined on finest china using silver cutlery. Do I need to mention that Sherlock broke (on purpose!) a tea pot that was crafted by Josiah Wedgwood himself? When I told him off, he grinned at me and said I must not do so because technically, half of the tea pot is his and the other half belongs to Mike, and since they could not agree on it, now each can have his own half and do as he pleases.
Talking of him – Mike insisted to be sent to Morecombe College already. He's too young, but had already informed himself that he merely needs to sit the entrance exam and we all knew he'd pass in a panache, didn't we? So he'll be off next week and boy, is he happy about it!
Why Morecombe and not Eton, with him wanting to go there ever since he could talk? Because it is the Admiral's (and Tertius') alma mater, and he's still in his Navy phase. He'll see what he's got himself into, that's one thing for sure. I don't know about Eton, but Tertius tells me that Morecombe is nothing if not keen on physical training – and Mikey is too lazy for anything. What wouldn't I give to see his first PE lesson!
His soon departure has led to increasing friction with Sherlock, don't ask me why. It's not as if those two got along well, but now it seems that Sherlock has suddenly developed abandonment issues or something. He is furious all the time, picks his food (I'm used to that, but now he has started flicking it across the table at his brother!), never closes a door if he can slam it, smashes valuable china (note to myself: need to buy my own crockery), rows and brawls with Mycroft at every possibility he gets and throws one tantrum after the next.