It was shortly after midnight in early April and I was at my desk, engaged in reading The Thirty-Nine Steps, a Buchan novel sent to me by my father. The warmth of the evening had prompted me to throw open my windows. The air outside was infused with the balmy scent of approaching summer and in floated the not uncommon sound of drunken laughter and unsteady steps.
In the distance a chorus of tremulous voices seemed to be engaged in some kind of argument.
The noise prompted me to pause in my reading long enough to glance out of the open window and it was at that moment that the face I knew to be Mycroft's appeared; alive and alight with such brightness as I had not once seen him wear before. He gazed at me with unfocused eyes.
I stared back for a moment, expecting some form of an address. When it did not come I stood up and cleared my throat awkwardly, 'Can I help you?'
He smiled at me hazily, as I approached. 'No, my dear man, please do sit back down.'
Neither one of us moved.
'I'm afraid I find myself feeling most unaccountably disorientated,' he made a clumsy attempt to straighten his collar. His unfailing politeness was somewhat marred by the slight slur of his words.
'The wines were too various.' He continued, anxiously, as if I might hold all the answers to his trouble. 'It was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the combination, you understand. One must know about these things… and that is the truth of the matter.' His eyes brightened inexplicably, and to my horror I noticed he was becoming tearful.
Entirely baffled by the whole situation, and not at all sure of what to say next, I settled for what I hoped was an understanding nod, and an awkward, 'quite so.'
Thankfully, my response seemed to steady him a little, or so I thought. In any case, he seemed to warm to me profoundly. He beamed at me unsteadily through the window, and then, to my genuine astonishment, placed his hands on the sill and began to climb on through.
'I say, what on earth are you doing?'
He dropped onto my floor with the surprising grace of a sleek cat, and rose to shake my hand. 'Mycroft Holmes,' he declared, and for a moment all trace of his drunkenness disappeared and I caught a glimpse of the cool headed man I had seen so many times before. The effect was spoilt when he stumbled suddenly forwards into me.
Before I could quite grasp what was happening, my hands had found his waist to steady him, and I was left wondering exactly what I had done to deserve a six-foot, drunken aristocrat draped over me in the dead of night.
My attempts to return him to his own feet were largely unsuccessful, and I was pondering the propriety of setting him down on the bed when he began mumbling something unintelligible into my suit jacket.
'What's that?' I asked, confused.
He shifted against me, still refusing to take his own weight, and his breath tickled my ear. 'J'ai dit que tu es très beau, mon ange,'* he murmured. I silently cursed my poor French, unable to make out a word of his ramblings.
'Tu n'as pas eu mal quand tu es tombé du ciel?'**
At that moment I was thankfully saved by a knock at the door.
The noise roused Mycroft sufficiently to draw himself up and fall backwards into my desk chair. Upon opening the door I was warmly greeted by his original host, an amiable gentleman of my own year. 'Was it your window?' he asked, a little tipsily. 'I've tried all the other rooms.' He peered round me, gaze alighting on Mycroft, who stared drearily back.
After much muttered resistance, the gentleman, I later learnt he was Anthony White, managed to secure an arm around his shoulders and safely escort Mycroft from my rooms, apologising profusely as they went.
The door was pulled to behind them and I fell quite exhausted to my bed, thoroughly unable to comprehend exactly what had just occurred.
The next morning I donned my gown, and left my room. The memory of the night before remained freshly imprinted upon my mind, and as I made my way towards the lecture theatre (which I still frequented in those days), I found myself subconsciously on the lookout for him.
It was after eleven by the time I returned to the college. I found my room full of flowers. A veritable cornucopia of them, the scent of which hit me with great force the second I opened the door. My scout Hunt was arranging the last of them, looking almost as bewildered as I felt.
'Hunt, what is this?'
'A tall gentleman with an umbrella left them, sir, there's a note for you'
The note was written in green ink on thick, expensive paper. The flowing, cursive script read: My most sincere apologies; you will undoubtedly have formed a terrible impression of me. Please come for luncheon today, and allow me to give a better one. Mycroft Holmes.
It was typical of him, I thought, to assume I knew where he lived; but, then, I must admit: I did.
...
That day was to be beginning of a new epoch in my life.
I went to the luncheon party- for I was not Mycroft's only guest that day- uncertain as to what I would find. It was foreign ground- a world away from the safety net I had built for myself out of simple friends and tiresome acquaintances. But I was in search of an escape, in those days, an entrance into a more exciting world; a world like those I had inhaled from the worn pages of my books.
Mycroft lived in Christ Church, high in the Fields Building. I climbed the stairs in something of a haze, for a short time inexplicably certain that once I reached the top I would stumble upon the sort of enthralling wealth of life which had remained so unhappily concealed from me, secreted amid the grey expanse of the city.
He was alone when I came in, reclined in a plush armchair, absorbed in a book and looking every inch the civilised gentleman I had at first thought him to be.
'I've just finished,' he looked up with a tight smile, setting the book aside and rising to greet me. 'I pride myself on timing.'
He was dressed in a slim fitting white shirt with stripes of pastel blue, a silk tie and a light tan waistcoat. He shook my hand warmly.
'I've finally managed to convince myself that the whole of yesterday evening was a dream,' he ventured, 'please, don't wake me.' He watched me cautiously, and I caught a glimpse of insecurity in the depths of his cool eyes.
He was entrancing; smooth and polished from the reddish wave of his hair to the shining leather of his chestnut wingtips.
His room was panelled in warm wood, lined with shelves of intimidating tomes and decorated with framed drawings. Austere furniture and a large luncheon table dominated the room. I was drawn to the ornate mantle-piece, my eye caught by a photographic portrait depicting a group of gentlemen standing stiffly in the middle of a large room. In the centre, a tall man exuded wealth and power, on his right a younger Mycroft stood upright and solemn, and on the left a young boy with wild dark hair glowered angrily back at me.
'My brother, Sherlock,' Mycroft handed me a sparkling glass of champagne, our fingers brushing, 'He's rather a terror, I'm afraid. It's always a pleasure to get away.'
The party assembled. There were several Etonian freshmen, and a select number of respected older gentlemen whom, I noticed, received the majority of Mycroft's attention. All were mild, elegant and detached. All were inescapably dull. I absorbed myself in the increasingly taxing matter of drinking only as much of the champagne as propriety allowed.
By the time we had moved onto the lobster, a dish wholly new to me, I was thoroughly tired of everyone in the room except Mycroft, whose interest I gathered was in collecting useful contacts. The older gentlemen became increasingly drunk, and increasingly friendly, as time went on. We sat on for some time, sipping Cointreau in the warm room, and by mid-afternoon, I had watched him collect several requests to join prestigious clubs, recommendations for the best tailors in London and an invitation to a ball hosted by the Duchess of Kent.
It was four o'clock before the group dispersed. I rose to go with them, stumbling a little as my eyes remained shamelessly fixed on Mycroft; his eyelashes fluttering in the light streaming through the wide windows. The champagne was, I fear, beginning to tell.
He stopped me with a hand to my chest at the door. 'Have some more Cointreau,' he said.
Translations:
* 'I said that you are very handsome, my angel.'
** 'Did it hurt when you fell from the sky?'
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