Another Me
An old friend won several theatre awards for his portrayal of a famous historical British political figure, long dead, yet still alive in memory and the annals of history – not only in many older people's memories, but still vivid in the general imagination from his unique look which is often recycled in the media due to his place in history from TV and news appearances at the time.
So I had a think about the especial pressures of an actor playing a real character...and so came Sherlock's take on the situation as he found it for himself.
Representing real life detectives in a fictional or more 'factional' role is not new, even with the trend for dramatising recent famous murder cases as their true selves; from Victorian era French policeman Vidocq to the first (huge) TV success of such a series as Fabian Of The Yard in the 1950's, there is a long and popular tradition of real events slipping sideways into pure entertainment. As here...
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He stood in the doorway and looked awkward, disconcerted and out of place. What impulse had brought him to 221B, Baker Street without even an appointment? Impulse, conviction, good manners, professional pride? All of those things, perhaps. And more.
"Mr Holmes? Good morning, sir. My apologies for arriving unannounced….."
Sherlock looked up from his laptop and frowned. Sighed. He had omitted to close the sitting room door again, he realised Shrugged mentally.
If he kept the door to the flat open he could stay aware of the outside world, shout downstairs for Mrs Hudson. If he closed it he was protected from ordinary people wandering in from the street, could remain remote and enclosed. Life was all about compromise, he thought. Variables. Nuisances. Distractions.
This was a distraction. An unwanted one.
"….but it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is…."
"I know who you are," Sherlock put as much ice and indifference into his voice as he could manage. "I told the producers I didn't want to meet you. So what are you doing here?"
"I….er…..I…" Then younger man in the doorway stuttered, blushed and fidgeted his feet.
Sherlock regarded him briefly and without sympathy.
Younger, shorter, not quite handsome enough, really. Diffident, and too well mannered, Sherlock thought. Boring. An idiot.
Early thirties but with the coltish limbs of someone younger. Well bred, self effacing, public school accent, voice a beautifully, painfully, well modulated and enunciated tenor. Boring.
Dark red curly hair, longish, closely styled. Red Or Dead casual blue jacket, white Arran sweater up to his throat, long sleeves pulled trendily down below the jacket cuffs, expensive denims, Barker loafers. A hint of Eau de Monsieur cologne and geeky black horn rimmed spectacles. And was he really wearing a friendship bracelet on his right wrist? Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes. Oh, please!
Well off, perhaps. Certainly well educated. Well born? Yes. Self deprecating about it, too. Interesting. Was that interesting? A singular boy, more handsome when one looked a second time But his regard remained dismissive and he did not try to contain a customary sneer.
Into the sudden uncomfortable silence the young visitor stopped examining his feet and slanted a look up at him, and Sherlock saw his eyes. His eyes.
"Why are you here?" Sherlock snapped, hoping for a credible answer.
"I….." the younger man continued to hold Sherlock's eyes with his own, opened his hands and shrugged as if in entreaty, and explained: "It seemed good manners. I thought I owed it to you to come and see you. So I can do my best for you."
"And what best is that?"
The younger man sighed.
"You won't remember me. I wouldn't expect you to. I was only a mere shell when you were a prefect. We were in the same house, but….."
"You were at Harrow? No-one told me."
"A coincidence, certainly. But it helps. Sharing the same singular education gives me your body language, engenders empathy. Mindset."
"I don't do empathy."
"Indeed? I don't blame you. Why should you? But I want to get this right, you see. Do you justice."
Sherlock scowled. This was not what he had expected. The younger man looked at him intently, scowled back at him, in fact, his expression the mirror image of Sherlock's own.
But now Sherlock could feel his curiosity aroused. He waved the younger man into the Victorian armchair opposite his own of Bauhaus grey leather and chrome and watched the younger man settle back against the Union Jack cushion and make a good impression of relaxing and getting comfortable.
"How thorough of you," he almost snarled. No reason to make this easy, even less to sound helpful or encouraging.
"You would be thorough too. If you were me. I am thorough. I am a professional and good at what I do. Just like you. In fact."
There was suddenly steel in the younger man's face as he leaned forward to look into Sherlock's, long slim hands clasped together and resting on his knees. Sherlock could not exactly pinpoint what had changed in that long gaunt face opposite his own, and now watching him with such unblinking concentration. But there was something there…
"Or even if I was you?"
"Indeed, Mr Holmes."
The younger man smiled properly then, and his face, which had aged and become drawn and harsh, thawed suddenly into an unexpected smile of great sweetness which transformed him, made him look even younger and more diffident – if that was possible - and almost even changed the colour of his eyes.
"Your eyes…" Sherlock began.
The younger man held onto his smile under that unflinching gaze, took off his glasses and blinked, fast and fluttery like a young owl. .
"The windows of our soul, Mr Holmes," he said. "And just like yours."
And to Sherlock it was indeed as if he was looking down into his own eyes. Slanted grey blue green eyes with large black pupils. It was a shock. He always thought of his eyes as unique. Miles deep, all seeing, never revealing. And yet…here was someone sitting opposite him with eyes just like his own. "Heterochromia iridosa," he muttered to himself.
"Perhaps this is why I am to become you," the younger man observed lightly. "We have very similar eyes."
For a long minute they sat silently looking into each other's eyes, a little too close together for two men who did not know each other, looking into each other's eyes as if into a mirror.
"Talk to me," the younger man urged out of the silence.
"I have no idea what you want me to say," responded Sherlock, oddly impelled to do the younger man's bidding on this. "I told the producers I have no interest in a television series about me. I am not a hero, and really do not wish my achievements to be feted.
"They said there was so much interest in me - how I had been falsely exposed as a fraud, how I jumped off a roof and lived, how I saved the nation in foiling the modern Day Guy Fawkes Plot - that there was so much current interest it would be best if I cooperated. Someone was going to make a programme or a series about me, and I would be best bowing to the inevitable in working with a company that had provably high standards and wanted to do the best they could to represent me accurately…."
"So you went away and thought about it, decided that being stuck between a rock and a hard place was no place to be, so finally gave your grudging approval," the younger man said.
Sherlock frowned. Surely the voice was different now? Deeper, more mellow? A stronger baritone, definitely. Some sentence constructions shortened, some word endings clicked out with staccato precision.
"That is my voice!" he pointed out petulantly before he could stop himself. "Have you stolen it?"
"Hmmn." The younger man hummed agreement, smiled again. " Not a hard voice to get, Mr Holmes, but interesting. I do voices. I am good at them."
He laughed, relaxed. In a cascade of voices and accents, laughter and mannerisms that ranged from Michael Caine to Alan Rickman to John Major, Graham Norton and more, he captivated Sherlock's ears as he proceeded to explain the process that had led him to being cast in the role that was more impersonation than acting. More inhabiting than impersonating. And to be here, sitting in 221B Baker Street right now, right this minute
"….and now they tell me I was the only person they ever considered for the role. The only person who auditioned. I didn't know it was a done deal from the start."
He looked up at Sherlock with a diffident and disconcerted look, open and childishly honest.
Sherlock looked at him, speechless for once.
"Impressive. But still just a trick. A magical trick."
"That's acting for you. All smoke and mirrors," the younger man agreed.
"You are assessing me. Judging me. Classifying me," Sherlock remarked.
"No. I am deducing you, Mr Holmes. That is my job as much as it is yours. We have more in common than you think."
"Really?"
" I'm not as clever as you, sir. Just an actor. But I do my best."
"And you are expected to become... physically me?"
"To look like you? As much as I can. Oh, you mean the running and jumping stuff? Beating up baddies and leaping off roofs? Yeah. Fun isn't it? Not much bad language, no sex. Because that's not you, is it? You are far more complicated than that. Than what people would expect a detective to be."
Sherlock found his first smile of their meeting and allowed it to show.
"Quite so. Everyone but me thinks I am a hero. I am nothing like a hero, and I find that concept boring. Can you cope with the adulation and hero worship that being me may bring you?"
The younger man did not laugh or make a dismissive joke of false modesty in reply.
"I'm pretty grounded," he said. "I have no illusions. I have a close family and good friends who will stop my head being turned should that adulation happen. I'm not after stardom or fleeting fame. I am a grown-up, Mr Holmes. Even though I am an actor and some people might say I just play at life because that is all actors do."
A piercing glance, a self deprecating smile, a little shrug, Quiet confidence without arrogance.
"I know who and what I am. Not attractive, not a womaniser - although apparently women like me. I put that down to public school manners." He laughed a little, and Sherlock Holmes felt a smile tugging at his lips in return.
"I also have a pretty silly occupation, if it comes to that," Sherlock admitted, smiling back despite himself. "Who needs a dragon slayer these days?"
"The whole world, Mr Holmes," the younger man replied, taking the remark seriously. "You would be surprised. In all seriousness…everyone needs a hero, someone to be their strength and shoulder to cry on, someone to be their help in ages past, their hope for years to come. Someone who walks down mean streets on their behalf, who is their shining one. King Arthur, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Gandhi, Buddha, Lao Tse….whoever."
"So you appreciate the Buddhist element?"
"I have studied, taught in a Buddhist monastery even. Know the language and belief system, which I respect and adhere to. Does that sound terribly new age and hippy of me?"
"Not at all. If anything it indicates individuality and strength of purpose." Sherlock leant forward, looked deep into those eyes so fascinatingly like his own.
"There is something else, though, isn't there? Something that gives you philosophy and depth? Some damage."
The younger man looked away and down, the timbre of his voice changing, deepening, even more like Sherlock than before.
"I realise - I do understand - you are as exceptional as everyone tells me. But no, there is nothing. I am just an actor, working my way into my role."
"No," Sherlock fired back with certainty. "There is more."
The younger man sat back in the armchair, closing down the open expression in his eyes, tucking his hands down into his sides. Sherlock's own hands flashed out to grasp wrists above long slim hands so like his own.
The actor made an infinitesimal movement of his eyes towards his hands and tried to lever them away. But Sherlock's grip was fierce. And certain.
He turned the younger man's hands to see. The younger man resisted him.
"No," One word without inflexion, a harsh hiss that was a near echo of Sherlock's own sound.
"I don't intend to pry. Just tell me I'm right."
The younger man sighed, looked up sharply from his exposed wrists beneath the wristwatch and the friendship bracelet to meet Sherlock's eyes briefly, looked away and made a decision, capitulated.
"Tied with your own shoelaces. You fought to live. Cut yourself to the bone. Such things change a man forever."
The young actor nodded once, sharply. The "yes" was less than a whisper. On a breath his voice changed.
"I shall use that look you gave me then. That very look. Yes. It is the key to you," t he actor said, victorious in defeat.
They sat and looked calmly at each other, barely breathing. Communicating now without words.
Sherlock finally broke the unspoken eye contact, leant back in his chair, assumed his imperious default position of blank eyes and steepled fingers that alienated and scared so many people. The actor returned the look and posture, as if challenging; and yet not.
"You will do," Sherlock said. Turned back to his laptop and dismissed the actor without even a word of farewell.
When he looked up again, the younger man had gone, silently and without another word.
Until the next day.
Almost precisely twenty four hours later, the younger man appeared again.
Sherlock heard footsteps, footsteps he did not recognise, a quiet yet confident rap on the open door. Peered round the corner from the kitchen and saw the younger man standing exactly where he had stood the day before. But was different now.
The diffident fidget, the downturned eyes had gone. This time the man stood tall and erect, shoulders back, ramrod straight. He looked taller, slimmer, and in command of the room, if not the entire world. The hair was tousled out from the disciplined style of yesterday, the curls given full rein and looking so different dyed black.
There was a new look in his eyes, the glasses gone. Head angled slightly back and giving an air of both command and high intelligence.
His hands rested in the pockets of a long Belstaff coat, a blue cashmere scarf at his throat. The Spencer Hart French navy suit with purple fitted Dolce Gabbano shirt, open at the throat, fitted slim and sleek as if tailored, and the flat black Lobb Oxfords completed the look.
"Good afternoon, Mr Holmes. Final character and costume check from the mere actor to the ultimate expert. Will this do?"
Sherlock blinked. The voice, the stance the clothes…he could be looking into a mirror, at his doppelganger. The other half of his soul. This was acting of the highest order. He recognised the skill, the strength, the self immolation.
But where had the actor gone? He remembered what the young man had told him yesterday: 'professional…smoke and mirrors….just an actor." But this was more than just an actor before him.
For a long moment Sherlock looked at his other self, his face unreadable, making a critical assessment. The actor looked back at him with professional confidence and great calm. Two strong, determined, implacable Sherlock Holmes' regarded each other, neither backing down.
"Do I really look like that?" Sherlock asked finally, his tone giving him away without concealment. A compliment in itself.
The actor grinned at him, recognising that fact, gave a tiny nod to his complicit co-conspirator.
"There are some people who will have apoplexy at the very thought of there being two of me," Sherlock Holmes reflected with a rare and roguish grin. " Wonder if there will be those who cannot tell us apart? That would be fun."
He turned towards the kitchen, not waiting to see the younger man's reaction. But he heard the single brief bark of laughter behind him, and nodded to himself in a smiling empathy the actor could not see.
"Cup of tea, Sherlock? Or do you need to be back on set within the next ten minutes?"
He smiled at himself and reached for mugs. And reflected it was interesting to be wrong. Just once in a while.
END
Author's notes:
'Shell' is the term for a first year pupil at Harrow School
Much of the actor's dialogue is direct quotes from early interviews.