Title: Avowals

Author: Garonne

Warning: Mourning (for Mary)

Disclaimer: If Tchaikovsky and Cranko could produce fanworks of Pushkin's poem, then I think I can safely get away with the same thing...

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

At the end of those lonely years I spent wandering the world incognito, it was a shock to me to discover just how incredibly fortunate I had been to find Watson alive and intact on my return to England. I had left him a happily married man, building up his medical practice and negotiating the purchase of a large house with room for many children. While I travelled the world, I flattered myself that he sometimes thought of my memory with fondness and regret, but expected nothing more from a busy family man. I had never thought, on my return from the grave, to find him an aged and broken man.

My brother's terse communication, reaching me many months after its dispatch, had mentioned but the bare fact of Watson's bereavement. It was Mrs Hudson who told me she was surprised he had not died of grief. At first I assumed her to be referring only to the loss of his wife, but Mrs Hudson's thinly veiled criticisms soon led me to understand what a blow my own supposed death had been also, before Mary ever fell ill.

Given that, it took a remarkably forgiving man to move back into Baker Street with me, and I knew it. I was never quite sure, however, whether Watson was aware of my gratitude for this unspoken and undeserved forgiveness. He kept his own counsel, in his own usual quiet way.

On the surface, therefore, everything was as it had been in years gone by, as we sat together in the old sitting room in Baker Street for our first case as fellow lodgers once more, some months after my return to England. I sat in my old armchair, watching Watson out of the corner of my eye as he scribbled notes while the client talked.

She was an opera-dancer at the Olympic Theatre, rejoicing in the stage name of Esmerelda Lopes, though she invited us to address her rather as Miss Brewer. Clad in a threadbare summer coat, her eyes underlined by shadows of fatigue, she little resembled the flighty, scantily clad creatures of gauze and tulle whose prancing I am often forced to endure while waiting for the true business of the opera to recommence.

She poured out her tale in a stream of complaints, sniffles and allusions to persons unknown to us, but I managed to piece together the heart of the affair. In a few words, she claimed to have been wrongly accused of stealing a pair of pearl earrings left lying in the dressing room of the tenor who starred in the theatre's current production, the earrings being the property of his co-star, the production's soprano. Miss Brewer was not forthcoming on the reason for her presence in the tenor's dressing room, nor how the earrings had come to be in that same place. It was nevertheless as clear as day to me that the man was intimate with both women, and that Miss Brewer, at least, was cognizant of his involvement with his co-star. The awareness was quite probably reciprocated on the other lady's part. It was as good a motive as any for a theft, or the false accusation of a theft, but I agreed nevertheless to come to the opera house and look more closely into the matter. We made an appointment for that very evening, towards the end of the new production's dress rehearsal.

"It's fortunate we shan't need opera dress," Watson said as we resumed our seats after her departure. "I don't believe I even own any which isn't quite eaten away by moths."

"It has been some time since you were last out for the evening, I take it?"

"Many years, in fact." The familiar shadow passed across his face. "Mary didn't much care for the opera." He turned away to take a medical journal from the magazine rack, his face hidden from me.

I stretched my legs out before me and sat back, watching him surreptitiously. His head was bowed over the page, and I noted once more the grey streaks in his hair which had appeared during our separation.

He had been a widower for almost a year now, yet I had had little success in divining the consequences in his mind and heart. He never spoke to me of Mary, save when the words slipped out in error. I supposed he felt I could be no comfort to him, that I would perhaps even sneer at his weakness, having often professed to have no comprehension of the softer passions. It pained me to reflect on how mistaken he was, and yet how much cause he had to think thus.

My thoughts soon fell into the groove which my mind had worn deep over the past few months. The unaccustomed feelings which had welled up in me upon seeing Watson again had been difficult to master, and it sometimes seemed to me that my every waking moment since our reunion had been dedicated to fighting the impulse to throw myself at his feet and make an intolerably ridiculous and emotional scene.

Those years alone, wandering the farthest corners of the world, uncertain when I would ever see Watson again, had brought me to a realisation of something I had previously thought impossible. Each time I lay with some undernourished cellist or world-weary diplomat, I could think only of Watson. Of course I had always considered him the most handsome man I knew. It had always made my breath catch in my throat to be granted a glimpse of his bare skin, or a brush of his fingers. Such momentary physical impulses, however, were easily controlled. It had not been easy to accept the truth that our separation made clear; that he was a great deal more to me than a handsome, stalwart companion.

Those years had also given me the time to simultaneously build a necessary wall of defence around those feelings, for the man who filled my dreams was one I knew to be happily married and perhaps even surrounded by a growing brood of offspring. Finding him a widower and eager to move back into Baker Street with me had made that wall of defence come tumbling suddenly, catastrophically down.

Yet Watson was protected by walls of his own, built of his grief and my own callous treatment of him. His thin, weary frame was only an outward sign of all that he had suffered while we were apart. We were no longer the carefree young men we had been, on that particular day a decade earlier to which I now constantly turned my thoughts, cursing myself more bitterly each time.

We already had several years of acquaintance behind us, that day when Watson surprised me as we closed the sitting room door behind us, still somewhat battered and bruised after a fracas with a pair of dangerous criminals, and drove all other thoughts from my head with his sudden and startling proposition.

It was fortunate that he was standing some feet away, for it gave me the time to master my initial impulse to seize the lapels of his greatcoat and jerk his lips to meet mine. Instead I slowly unbuttoned my own coat, as his words hung in the air between us. My ever unreliable features must have been expressing my conflicting thoughts in some strange and disdainful way, for Watson was now looking rather uncomfortable.

"Forgive me, Holmes. I spoke on the spur of the moment - do not feel the need to even deign to answer. Let us forget this ever occurred."

I was surprised by how breathless I felt, for the situation was not entirely unexpected. I had been aware of Watson's inverted tendencies almost as long as I had known him, and I had always had a feeling that he suspected mine, for although he was never particularly perceptive and I was extremely discrete, one cannot live in such close intimacy with a man and not gain some inkling of the truth, especially if inclined that way oneself.

I hung my coat and hat on the stand before turning slowly back to face him. He was standing squarely, meeting my eye, his honest, open face now slightly overcast with uncertainty.

"Were I a man meant for love," I said slowly, "then I cannot think of a more worthy recipient than you. But I am not such a man, and I have no desire to incinerate our friendship in a brief burst of passion, which would soon die out to leave us with nothing but ashes. I cannot speak for you, Watson, but I know how quickly I would grow bored."

Watson's gaze flickered briefly down to his feet, and then up again, and I saw his face was firmly set in resolute lines. "As I said, Holmes, let us forget I ever spoke." He hung up his own outer clothing, and sat down in his armchair with the evening paper. A few minutes later, he ventured a remark on the political situation in the Transvaal.

Much to my relief, no change was detectable in his behaviour toward me in the weeks that followed, and he never mentioned the matter again. Less than a year later he was happily married, and I was alone in Baker Street.

.. .. ..

Miss Brewer met us at the stage door of the Olympic that evening, and lead us through a maze of narrow corridors in peeling white paint. The building was abuzz with life, this being the final rehearsal before the opening night. The opera transpired to be Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and I determined to find the time to slip away and listen to the orchestra rehearsing. I was always avid for new works by composers of such stature, and this would be the first representation of the opera in Britain.

Miss Brewer led us to a dressing room high up in the labyrinth of stairs and corridors, filled with her fellow dancers in various states of undress. A coy flutter greeted our arrival, although it was all for show. We were certainly not the first gentlemen callers to grace those doors with our presence. Sally and Eliza, subsequently introduced as Miss Larkin and Miss Harding, were called forward to testify, and appeared in a flutter of white tulle and face powder.

As we installed ourselves in a quiet corner to hear the girls' story, I could not help stealing glances at Watson to see how he was taking being surrounded by beautiful, scantily clad young ladies, but his face was quite blank. I supposed him to be thinking of Mary.

I shall not detail the process of my deductions here, as the matter was a laughably simple one, unworthy of the ink I should waste in writing of it. Suffice it to say that it became clear I myself should have to speak to the victim of the supposed theft, the opera's soprano.

Watson followed me back down to the stage, where, as we had been informed, the lady was rehearsing the final scene. We found a place to stand in the wings, from which we had a view of the stage, and beyond, the enormous dark and empty auditorium. Although the opera's libretto had been translated into English, I could not decipher many of the words, but great passions were clearly involved. When the music paused in order for the conductor to rail at everyone around him for some indiscernible reason, I turned to Watson. "Are you familiar with the story, by any chance?"

He nodded. "I have read the poem by Pushkin, in translation. It is quite beautiful, though tragic. The two characters met for the first time many years previous to this final scene. Tatiana, the soprano, was madly in love with Onegin, the tenor, but he rebuffed her advances with a cold and rational sermon."

I could not help but be struck by his words, but his voice was quite neutral and his tone even. For him, it seemed, we were speaking of nothing more than literary criticism.

"He appears to have changed his mind," I ventured. "Indeed, I have known such things to happen."

Watson looked at me for a long moment, and I could not for the life of me tell whether he was thinking of us or merely of the opera. Finally he shrugged. "It's too late anyway, because Tatiana is married."

At that point a break was called in the rehearsal, and a crowd of people flooded into the wings. I accosted the soprano Tatiana.

"I wonder if we could take a moment of your time, ma'am?"

She frowned, but acquiesced with an elegant shrug. I drew her to one side, concealed from onlookers, where a few simple observations on my part were sufficient to bring her to tears, and a sobbed confession.

"That little harlot, Maggie Brewer! Worming her way like that into my fellow's bed." She searched her sleeves for a handkerchief, sobbing angrily all the while. "I told her she was nothing but a thief and I'd see to it that she was dismissed. It's not a lie either, she is a thief! What difference does it make if I say it's my earrings or my man she stole?"

Watson produced a clean handkerchief, and performed his usual comforting routine, but in a rather detached fashion. The flirting at which he had been a champion in years gone by was now quite absent.

On the way home, after extracting a promise from the soprano to retract her accusation, I reflected that nothing at all had been solved by my efforts. This little drama of the pearl earrings was over, but the two women were still fighting for the affections of one person. What a tiresome, horrid thing the human heart was!

I ventured a remark on the subject to Watson.

To my surprise, he said rather sharply, "What would you know of the matter?"

"More than you seem to believe!" I snapped back.

We held each other's gaze. His eyes were wide and surprised, and I could feel two spots of red heat high in my cheeks. For an instant, I teetered on the edge of a declaration of a fervour which would normally be abhorrent to me. The shadow of his gentle wife, however, stayed my tongue.

I looked away, and minutes later we were in Baker Street, climbing the stairs in silence.

Without shedding his outer layers, Watson turned to the small table where Mrs Hudson left our correspondence. He shuffled through it several times, although I could see at a glance that there was nothing new since that afternoon. I watched him surreptitiously as I laid aside my cane and gloves, wishing I could see his face.

Suddenly he span round. "Holmes - "

I raised my gaze to meet his, inviting him to continue, but he frowned and looked away. "Never mind, old fellow." After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, however, he met my eye again, and gave me a small and rueful smile. "Holmes, I can't quite manage to work out what you were speaking of just now, and – well, I should quite like to know."

"Whom I was speaking of would be a more pertinent question," I said recklessly. "I was speaking of you, in fact. Perhaps honesty is the best policy, after all. I fear I would have let slip the truth sooner or later, in any case." I turned away to hang up my hat and coat, thinking to give him a moment to compose a polite and regretful response.

Watson said slowly, "What do you mean by that, precisely, Holmes? I am sorry to press you, but I feel it is better to be quite clear on this."

I had never imagined this conversation being conducted in quite such a clinical fashion.

"I meant that I love you," I said irritably. "There, you cannot get clearer than that."

His jaw dropped. Whatever he had been thinking of, that had clearly not fallen into the scope of his thoughts. "You - What do you mean?"

"What do I - ! Really, Watson, I do not see how I could be any more explicit on the subject!"

"But Holmes, how can that possibly be?" he exclaimed. "I am very well acquainted with your feeling on the subject, after all. Why, surely you remember the day you read me a lecture on love and its ephemeral qualities! We were standing in this very room, precisely as we are now. I shall never forget the coldness of your face, the indifference in your voice."

He was perfectly correct, of course, and I could offer no response.

"I don't believe you," Watson said suddenly. "You know nothing of that of which you speak. No one could make a declaration of love in such a tone and be sincere."

"How could I do otherwise," I cried, stung to the quick, "when you are - Good Lord, one does not make such propositions to a widower of less than a year!"

Watson blinked at this, and I added, more calmly,

"Besides, I know perfectly well I missed my chance, years ago. I am only sorry to trouble you with all this now. Forgive me, my dear fellow. If you had not pressed me for an answer - "

I was turning away when Watson said quietly, "I have loved you all along, you know, Holmes."

This left me nonplussed, for I knew how he had adored his wife. I turned slowly back to him, my heart thudding despite myself. My confusion must have been evident in my features, for he gave me a small smile.

"Love is a more complicated thing than you realise, Holmes. Perhaps I should say, than you yet realise."

Hope flared in my breast. "You mean - ?"

He came up to me, taking off his gloves and dropping them on the table. He took my hand in his. "You will see, my dear man. It's a horribly, extraordinarily complicated thing, but the game is very much worth the candle. You'll see."

...

Fin

...

The plot is (a mangled version of) that of Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky (and Pushkin before him). I couldn't bring myself to give Holmes and Watson the unhappy ending, though...