Sustain III : Obbligato 7/14
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When her boys were young, Violet had been too busy trying to balance the guilt over neglecting her musical career with the guilt over neglecting her children to spend any time organizing photographs. Then, suddenly, they weren't children anymore, and it seemed as though Sherlock had gone overnight from being a problem child to a troubled adult, and the prospect of poring over old pictures had been too painful. Sherlock had never seemed as calm and settled as he did now, so she hadn't any excuse left. It was a relief.
Pip was perched on the window seat, sleeping Edmund in her arms. Mary sat on the floor with Gemma and Genevieve on either side of her, mesmerized by the most awful picture of teenaged Sherlock in his school uniform. He'd nearly reached his adult height and was so thin he looked like a medical poster for rickets. And the straw boater did not suit him. It was no wonder Sherlock had an aversion to hats as an adult.
"Look, it's a baby in a tree!" Genevieve said, waving another picture in the air. The colours had faded, the whole thing gone red with age.
Violet smiled. "That's your Uncle Sherlock. I think he's nearly two in that one. I never thought I'd have to call the au pair agency and ask for someone who could climb trees. His first twisted her ankle trying to keep up with him. Once he started walking, there was no holding him back."
"That one next to you, Gemma, on the left there?" Pip said. "Hold it up."
Gemma did so. Pip squinted. "Violet, is that Evie?"
Violet looked. Oh, yes, that was Evie, all right. The whole Evie business still chafed Violet, even after all these years. But she didn't suppose Mycroft would have told Pip what happened.
"Evie?" Mary said as if she recognized the name. "Who's Evie?"
"Tree climber and professional Sherlock wrangler." Pip laughed.
"The only au pair the agency could find who was willing to chase my son into every grotto, tree, and abandoned tunnel on the estate," Violet said. She noted how Mary scrutinized the picture of little Sherlock swinging from the girl's arms "She was a lovely girl, from the country, no pretensions, no airs. A bit rough around the edges, I suppose, but she was good with him, and he was so good with her. She was with us nearly six years, almost right up to the time Sherlock left for school."
"Eddie certainly does favor him," Mary said, staring intently at the photo. "He doesn't look like anyone on my side, not even a little."
"I should like to meet your family, sometime," Violet said. She was fairly convinced the girl's mother was dead, but she would like to meet a man who could bring up a daughter like Mary on his own. None of them had attended the christening, but families could be odd about such things. And there was more than a little chance they did not approve of Mary's relationship with Sherlock.
"No family left to meet, I'm afraid," Mary replied, sounding apologetic. "I lost my mother when I was little, and my Dad died from pancreatic cancer almost two years ago, now."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear." Violet felt awful. "You've no one? Not even an uncle or aunt?"
Mary shook her head. "My mother was an only child, and her parents were older when she was born, and both passed away before I came along. My father's father, he was killed right at the end of the war, before he could marry his mum, and she gave him up for adoption. He was raised in foster homes after that, so no, I, ah, we don't really have any other family." Mary stuttered looking embarrassed. "Eddie and I are it - all the Hoopers that are left."
"Oh, Aunt Mary, that's so sad," Gemma said with an exaggerated frown, though Violet could tell the girl was sincere. Gemma looped her arm around her aunt's shoulder.
Genevieve reached over and put her hand on Mary's arm. "You've us, now. We're your family. "
"And you have Uncle Sherlock," Gemma said.
"Lucky her," Pip said dryly.
"Thanks, but it's fine, I'm fine, really," Mary said. "Really,"
"Let your Aunt Mary breathe, girls. Oh, look here," Violet said, hoping to distract both Mary and the twins. "Sherlock with Honoria."
Violet passed her the picture. It had been taken when Sherlock was out hunting with Tarquin's mother, the one place Violet's mother-in-law had been anything other than stiff and exacting. He was just a boy, nine or ten, perhaps, making his 'fierce' face, holding a dead grouse by the feet with one hand and rifle in the other, and Honoria had her hand on his shoulder. As formal as Honoria was, it was practically effusive on her part. Both the rifle and the old jacket he wore dwarfed little Sherlock.
"Is that a real gun?" Mary asked, looking and sounding horrified. It hadn't even occurred to Violet that Mary might not approve of hunting. She'd clearly been among Holmeses too long.
"Just a hunting rifle," Pip offered.
"I don't believe he's hunted since Honoria died when he was a teenager," Violet said.
"He's so, so young, so little," Mary said.
Violet couldn't quite remember when he'd first started hunting with Honoria, but she knew it was years before the picture was taken. She certainly wasn't going to tell Mary that.
"They adored each other, Sherlock and his grandmother," Violet said.
"Peas in a pod, those two," Pip said with a smirk. "A strange pod, mind you. My Great Aunt Honoria, Sherlock's gran, was an odd bird."
"It's kind of sweet," Mary said, holding the picture in both hands and studying the image.
"I can have a copy made for you, if you like," Violet said.
"Could you, please? That would be nice to have," Mary said, then quickly added, "for Eddie, I mean."
"And you'll have to let me have a picture made of your family, Mary," Violet said.
Mary opened her mouth, looking as if she was about to object.
"The three of you, I mean," Violet said. "You and Sherlock and Edmund."
"Oh. Um, if - if it's okay with Sherlock," Mary said, her eyes wide, "um, sure,"
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By the time Mycroft arrived at the restaurant and they were ready to order, John was as hungry as he'd ever been. And Sherlock, for reasons John couldn't quite understand, was as twitchy as John had ever seen him.
"Father's busy," Mycroft said by way of greeting. "He'll be late."
"Oh, what a shame," Sherlock said, his words as dry as dust.
Mycroft ignored his brother. "John, I recommend the Seafood Kettle."
"Oh?" John said.
"Mussels, fish, scallops, and lobster tails, all in a glorious white wine sauce, with just the perfect amount of garlic," Mycroft explained. "Their chef is famous for it, and deservedly so." He turned his attention to Sherlock. "Now, brother dear, I presume you have some sort of news for me, yes?"
John caught the waiter's eye, feeling a bit desperate. "Seafood Kettle, is it?"
Mycroft nodded and smiled that unnerving smile of his. "Make that two, please. And for you, Sherlock?"
Sherlock simply scowled.
The waiter returned not a full minute later with ice water and a basket of bread, both of which John attacked. Sherlock and Mycroft, in the meantime, engaged in some sort of staring contest that went on until the food arrived.
It smelled heavenly, and tasted even better.
"Oh for God's sake, Sherlock," Mycroft said, wiping his lips with a napkin, "stop twitching and tell me whatever it is that's on that depraved little mind of yours."
"It's definitely The Roman," Sherlock said. "Whoever this Roman actually is. Your information is pure dross. Or should I say, the information you've given me is pure dross."
"Meaning?" Mycroft asked archly.
"Meaning your people generally turn up better intelligence than this, Mycroft." Sherlock said narrowing his eyes like a pair of coin slots. "Meaning I believe you've mistaken me for an edible form of fungi."
Mycroft scowled.
"Mushroom." John swallowed a mouthful of lobster. "Keeping him in the dark and feeding him bullshit, he means."
Mycroft grimaced. "Lovely image, John, thank you. Why, specifically, do you think that, Sherlock?"
Sherlock snorted. "Please. No specifics, speculation that is little more than gossip, even Superbus's people do a better job than this, and they're all rubbish."
"Super bus?" John asked, then shoveled a scallop into his mouth.
"Latin, meaning prideful. Also known as The Old Man," Sherlock answered.
"Tarquin," Mycroft said.
"Our father," the two said in unison.
"You rang?" Quin said, from the entryway, flashing a brilliant grin and a pair of dimples that looked like they came straight from a Hollywood filme. "Tarquin the Proud, at your service, gentlemen."
Mycroft wiped his mouth. "Don't concern yourselves with this matter any longer," he said, with a wave of his hand. "Now that we're certain it's The Roman, I'll put my best people on it."
"Splendid. Does that mean I can leave this Godforsaken hellhole now?" Sherlock asked.
"Not quite yet," Mycroft answered. "Let's see that things go to plan first, shall we?"
There was a plan? That was news to John, of course. But from the look on his face, it was news to Sherlock, too.
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"Heaven - I'm in heaven," Phillipa sang, stretched out on one of the two leather sofas in Violet's media room. "I love this film, Violet. Good choice."
Molly didn't know quite how it had happened, but she wound up on the floor at the foot of one of the sofas, the way Sherlock often did when they were watching films at home. Only, in this case, instead of a brooding detective in a dressing gown at her feet, she had a pyjama-clad twin on either side of her, and Eddie lying with his head in the crook of her arm, chewing on his teether and trying with all his might to keep his eyes open.
Violet laughed from her own sofa. "Yes, it's very romantic."
Romantic? Molly wasn't so sure about that. When it came to musicals, she always had a hard time suspending her disbelief. Every time she got interested in the plot, someone started singing and dancing and that threw her out of the story completely. Molly hadn't really thought about it until they were more than half-way through Fred and Ginger singing and dancing and wise-cracking but, like her father, Molly really did prefer Clint Eastwood. Sherlock did, as well, given the film choices he made, even though he preferred to call it 'research.'
"Oh Mummy, tell it, tell it!" Gemma said.
"Aunt Mary hasn't heard it," Genevieve said. "It's very romantic."
Pip took another sip of her wine. "Well, when I was nineteen, and Mycroft would have been twenty-four, twenty-five, he was invited, which is to say, ordered to attend, some event at the American Embassy. He had a girlfriend at the time, some over-privileged snooty thing who was lovely to his face, but nasty as she could be behind his back."
"Oh God, her. That girl was awful, Mary," Violet smirked, and took a sip of her own wine. "I mean, she was absolutely horrid, and how Mycroft missed that fact, I still don't know. But I didn't want him getting any ridiculous ideas, so I suggested he take Phillipa, instead. No harm in that, surely, taking his cousin, instead."
"The catch was there was to be dancing. Formal ballroom dancing," Phillipa said pulling a face.
"So he signed the two of them up for lessons." Violet barely got the words out before she and Phillipa dissolved into giggles again.
"Which is funny, why?" Molly asked.
"Mummy and Daddy have two left feet, both of them," Gemma said, rolling onto her back.
"Four all together," Genevieve said.
"I'd had them tutored as boys, but Mycroft was stubborn. Well, I'd assumed he was being stubborn. Turns out he was actually just hopelessly bad at it," Violet said.
"Can Sherlock dance?" Molly asked.
Phillipa blinked at her in that way she had that made Molly feel like she had suddenly started speaking in tongues or something.
"Yes. Quite well," Violet said.
"So," Phillipa continued, "in the course of the lessons, things, well, changed between us, until, during the final class before the ball, we sort of, well, we got distracted and crashed rather spectacularly into another couple."
"And then Daddy proposed," Gemma said.
"No, not exactly." Phillipa said.
"But Daddy says -" Genevieve said.
"I know what your father says, but he exaggerates," Phillipa said. "So, Cheek to Cheek was playing on a scratchy old record player and we crashed into Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe-Brooks. All four of us came tumbling down, and as we were untangling ourselves, I looked at Mycroft and I said 'yes'," Phillipa said.
"And Daddy said -" Gemma prompted, putting her chin in her palm.
Genevieve sat up excitedly.
"He was still sprawled on the floor, mind you," Phillipa said, a twinkle in her eye.
"He said 'Rather presumptuous, don't you think?'" Genevieve supplied in an eerie imitation of Mycroft.
"And Mummy said, 'Not in the slightest,'" Gemma supplied.
"Well, I knew the question and I knew my answer. What was the point in faffing about?" Phillipa asked. "So I said, 'Sometime in the next six months you are going to ask, Mycroft Holmes, and now you have my answer."
"Goodness," Molly said. "What did he say?"
Phillipa chuckled. "He said 'You're quite wrong. It would have been three months, four at most. How does June suit?' and I said, "June suits me fine, but why June?"
"And Daddy said, "I believe Mrs. Forsythe-Brooks has broken my foot, but it should be healed by then.'" Genevieve said.
"So he managed to get out of having to dance, after all," Pip concluded.
"See? Very romantic," Gemma said.
Molly thought the whole thing sounded like something out of a soupy rom-com film, actually, but she wasn't about to say that. And it was hard for her to imagine Mycroft Holmes getting swept up in anything even vaguely resembling a romantic haze. Perhaps he'd been different when he was young, but she somehow doubted it.
"Bear in mind, girls, your Mummy and Daddy had known each other all their lives," Violet said, seriously.
"Like you and grandfather?" Gemma asked.
Violet shook her head vigorously. "I only knew Quin by reputation."
Eddie had finally lost his battle with sleep, and Molly moved him from one arm to the other. "Is Sherlock's father a musician as well?"
Violet nearly choked on her wine. "Hardly. No, no, no, dear. You know how Sherlock is something of an armchair detective?"
Armchair? Molly didn't even know how to respond to that. She didn't want to contradict Violet, but she sounded so dismissive of the work Sherlock did, the really brilliant work. She couldn't imagine why his own mother wasn't aware of his vocation. But, "Umm," was all she could manage.
"It's been a hobby with him since he was in his teens," Violet said, with a wave of her hand. "Detection and what not."
"I wouldn't call it a hobby, exactly," Molly said.
"Well, he bothers the police with his theories about this crime or that, doesn't he?" Phillipa asked.
"No. I mean, yes. I mean, wait." Molly was getting flustered and took a second to compose her thoughts. "It's not a hobby. Some of his work is for, well, private citizens, people who come to him with cases. And he doesn't bother the police. The police come to him. He's a consulting detective. When the police have a complicated case, and they aren't getting anywhere, they consult Sherlock. And John. That's the work they do."
"I thought John was a doctor," Phillipa said.
Molly nodded. 'Well, yes, mostly, he is. But he works with Sherlock, too. It's a real job."
"Well, good for Sherlock," Phillipa said.
Violet let out a deep sigh. "God, yes."
Molly wasn't sure what had just happened. Both Violet and Phillipa seemed so relieved. It was all so odd. "You were saying how you met Sherlock's father?" she said, eager to turn the conversation.
"Right, yes. Well, Quin's father, Augustus, was a banker, and an enormously successful one. But his passion, his love, was archeology. He subscribed to all the professional journals, collected artefacts, spent all his spare time keeping up with the latest finds. And he wrote the most obsessive, pedantic letters to working archeologists, attempting to be taken seriously. My father, Anatole, for one." Violet sounded fond, but also exasperated. "At first, like most of the other professors, he assumed Augustus Holmes was a crackpot, you know? Augustus was a dear, dear man, but tenacious when it came to his theories. Over time, though, my father came to see that Augustus had some very keen insights for an amateur. He and my father grew quite close. He privately funded more than one expedition."
Interesting story, Molly thought, though she wondered, just a bit, if Violet's father would have had time for Augustus if he hadn't had the money to fund archeological projects. "Were any of his theories right?" Molly asked.
"More than a few," Violet said.
"Most," Phillipa agreed.
"Is that how you met Sherlock's father?" Molly asked. "Through his father?"
Violet nodded. "I was just out of the conservatory. I had had a very sheltered upbringing. It was 1968." She looked pointedly at one twin, then the other. "Perhaps if we'd met a few years later, if I had been more worldly, things would not have gone the way they did. But, well, you've met him, Mary, you've seen what he's like. He was so handsome, so charming, and I was such a fool. I was as good as dead the minute I clapped eyes on him." Violet shivered at the memory.
"And what about you, Mary?" Phillipa said. "It's your turn."
"Me?" she asked.
"You and Sherlock?" Violet sounded as though she was working hard to sound casual. "You're neighbours, yes? Is that how you met?"
Molly blinked. "Um, no. We met in the mortuary at Barts, where I work."
"What was Sherlock doing there?" Violet asked, clearly confused.
"It was my first day on the job, and all day I'd been taken for everything from a file clerk to a lab tech to a nurse-in-training. Everything but a doctor. Sherlock was there with Greg - D.I. Lestrade, from the Met, he was at the christening - well, Sherlock and Greg were there on a case. Sherlock walked in, took one quick look at me, and said, 'You must be Dr. Hooper. I'm Sherlock Holmes, and I need to look at a body.'"
Molly sighed a bit. It sounded like nothing when she said it, but it had been so monumental at the time, to finally be treated like a professional on her first day at her first real job as a doctor. For someone to immediately recognize she'd spent a decade in training and was not there to wash the emesis bowls or file a stack of forms. She reckoned her crush had started right there and then.
"And then?" Phillipa asked.
"Well, not much happened, really. He used to eat with me in the canteen when he was at Barts during my shift, but I think, or I thought, it was so people wouldn't see him sitting alone and think they could talk to him," Molly said, feeling a bit foolish to recall those days. "He'd come by the morgue and be, well, you know how he can be, whenever he needed something,"
"All hail Sherlock Holmes," Phillipa said, raising her wine glass in the air, "the king of cupboard love!"
Violet scowled, but it was clearly for show. "And then?"
"Well, mostly, he was horrid, honestly. He'd turn on the charm to get what he wanted, then turn it off the minute he had it. I had a bit of a crush, I guess, and I fell for it every time." Molly sighed. "He didn't want to go out with me himself, of course, he made that quite clear, but, if I went out with someone else, he felt compelled to perform some sort of character assassination."
"So what happened?" Phillipa asked, wide-eyed.
How to explain it all? The Jim Business and John's wedding and her realization that it was time to get on with her life. "Um, I guess the thing that really did it was, well, I told him I was over him and that he should bugger off," she said.
"Thus sealing your fate!" Phillipa giggled so hard she covered her mouth with her hand. Molly didn't think it was quite so funny as all that.
Violet wasn't making any noise, but she was shaking, silently, with her lips pursed. "What did he do then?" she squeaked out.
Molly didn't know how to answer that, especially not with two young girls in the room. She looked down at Eddie and then back at Violet, back at Eddie again, and up at Phillipa. "Well, he didn't like that, as you've probably guessed." She felt herself blush. "He sort of, well, he made a bit of a pest of himself. He was, umm, persistent. Yes, very persistent and very logical."
"Seems persistence and logic paid off," Violet said, glancing at Eddie.
Molly forced herself to smile, despite feeling incredibly uncomfortable. "Yes."
Phillipa actually raised her eyebrow at her before snorting with laughter again. "Well, good for him," she said.
"Oh yes, good for Sherlock," Violet agreed. "That's easily the smartest thing he's ever done."
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End 7/14