HEADLIGHTS
By Hallospacegirl
Chapter Four
The time spent with Sherlock Holmes in nineteenth century London begin to roll like a snowball that first tumbles ungracefully down the hill but gradually grows and gathers speed. Days melt into a week, then two, and one night as I sit curled up by the fireplace I realize that fifteen whole days have passed.
Life is not as difficult as I expected, mostly because Holmes insists on keeping the same schedule as before. His landlady, an older woman named Mrs. Hudson, cooks our meals and takes our clothes to the corner laundry, and at the end of the day the only chores I am left with is clearing the dishes and sweeping stray tobacco dust from the carpet.
When I try to organize the papers and books in the study, Holmes appears annoyed and tells me he has his own unique method of organizing things. I scan over the mountains of old clippings, half opened books, and photographs stabbed to the mantel with a jackknife, and I'm not sure I believe him.
It seems to me that Holmes is content simply to listen to me talk. Every evening after dinner we sit by the warmth of the fireplace, and he urges me to tell him about my world. And then his distant eyes are on me as he smokes a pipe and I describe everything I can think of, from television shows to the streets of San Francisco. By the time we go to bed at the stroke of midnight, the intoxicating smoke from his pipe have gathered in misty tendrils on the ceiling, but not once before then does he interrupt me, not even when I know I'm not making sense to him with my babblings. He only listens.
At night I dream that caught in the blinding headlights are the woman with red lips and the man in white and the body of Mary Jane Kelly – and sometimes even Tony – but I no longer feel pain or hear their screams, as soft cool rain splashes lightly into my dreamscape and a voice whispers, "Shantih."
Come morning, life moves at a different pace. Holmes is often in the study with Dr. Watson, both of them conferencing with a business client, and their expressions are enough to tell me that I'm not welcome there. Sometimes they leave for hours and return with haggard faces and dusty clothes. When I ask them what has happened, Holmes always cuts Watson's sentences off with a curt, "Business, Miss Cooper."
One day Watson draws me aside into my room. He asks me under his breath, "Are you all right?" and I note the worry in his tense features.
"Why shouldn't I be?"
He seems as if he's struggling to make his words come out in the correct manner of a Victorian gentleman. "You are, after all, from a very distant place and time, Miss Cooper, and I wonder if you have... adjusted... to your stay here. Holmes can be, shall I say, difficult. He is quite a singular man, and when he is on the scent of a case he can forget that anything else, or indeed, anyone else, exists. Perhaps... at times, he has neglected to give you adequate..."
He trails off, but I understand what he is saying. "It's okay, Watson. We get along. We talk."
"Indeed?"
"Yeah. Well, actually I talk the most and he likes to listen. He wants to know all about the twenty first century. Other than that, I stay out of his business, and we're both okay."
Relief makes the doctor's rigid shoulders relax a little, and he smiles. "You know, there is always the company of Mrs. Hudson. And I believe there is a young woman across the street only a handful of years younger than yourself."
"I'll keep that in mind, Dr. Watson. Thank you."
It is then that Holmes rushes in, dressed in his tweed suit and floppy brimmed hat. "Whatever is keeping you, my dear Watson? The game is afoot and you waste precious time."
As Watson departs he gives me a small, vaguely sad nod. "Good morning, Miss Cooper," he says, and we never speak of the subject again.
But over the next few days the thought dances in and out of my mind, and I find myself musing about Holmes's private life whenever I notice him in the corner of my vision, scribbling in a notebook or hunched over a bubbling chemistry experiment.
Has he been married? Who is she? What did she look like? Did she leave him and is that the reason why he treats women as if they're no different from men? Is he gay?
The thoughts become a lighthearted distraction during the moments when I gaze from my window into the fog stained London street and feel the darkest shadows of my memories come seeping into consciousness.
By the end of the second week, when I have almost convinced myself with my little mind games of Holmes's homosexuality, I find something that surprises me. It is twenty minutes past midnight and I'm shuffling drowsily to my room when the corner of a large sepia photograph on Holmes's desk catches my attention.
Holmes, still sitting in his armchair, is immersed in a scientific book, and doesn't notice when I gently free the photograph from the surrounding papers and pull it towards me. The photograph is of a woman. A heartbreakingly beautiful woman with full dark lips and smooth skin and thick wavy hair that is coiled loosely into a cascading crown. Her pale eyes are startling, shining with an intensely intelligent and distantly unhappy light.
I lose track of how long I stand there staring into those luminously tragic eyes, but I eventually find my voice. "Holmes?" I say in a daze.
"Yes, Miss Cooper?" he responds, looking up from his book. "May I be of any assis..." He sees the item in my hand and the faint smile drops from his face. Slowly, he closes the book between his palms and after a long silence, says almost inaudibly, "Did you find that on my desk?"
"Yeah. Who is this?"
In the wavering glow of the dying fire Holmes's eyes are almost black. "She is... she is but a suspect in a case, Miss Cooper. May I kindly ask you not to – "
"Does she have a name?"
Another drawn out silence. "It escapes me."
"Or did she escape you?" I whisper, half to myself, as I flip to the back of the picture. On the bottom left corner in Holmes's distinct hurried handwriting is the note:
Mar., 1888. Irene Adler. The woman.
"Her name is Irene Adler, just in case you forgot," I announce, turning over the photograph so I can see the woman's face again. It's the face of someone he loves, I think, and somehow I know it to be true.
Holmes lets out a short sigh. "You say it is Irene Adler? I will certainly remember that, Miss Cooper," he says levelly but sarcastically, passing a hand through his uncombed brown hair.
I shake my head. "But her name's not very important, is it, when she's the woman to you?"
In a single fluid motion Holmes has risen to his feet. He walks toward me and reaches me in four strides, and for the first time in more than half a month I realize how tall he is.
I swallow uncomfortably. "Was she your lover?"
He is staring down at me and his eyes are dark and otherwise unreadable as he wordlessly slides the picture from my fingers. He does not even glance at it as he opens the nearest leather folder on the desk and places the photograph face first among the assortment of other crumbling snapshots. And then he slaps the folder closed, ties the strings of the covers together, and inserts the folder into the middle of a stack of identical ones in the far shelf of his desk.
Then he walks away from me until he pauses the doorway of his darkened bedroom. He places a hand upon the rich mahogany frame and turns to look at me. "She was not my lover," he says softly, regards me for a second more, and disappears from view.
The nightmares that plague me that night are once more blasted with sound and agony, but this time the cool rain doesn't sprinkle its soothing caresses upon my burning body, and I wake at sunrise with Irene Adler's cruel and haughty laughter still ringing in my ears.
..........
To be continued...
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