The three of us sat contemplating the appealing little object that sat on the table amidst empty cups and the remains of the cheese tray. It was about six inches long, slightly less than that in depth, and about five in height, and the finely textured blond wood of its thick sides and lid was intricately carved with a miniature frieze of animals and vegetation. A tiny palm tree arched over a lion the size of my thumbnail; its inlaid amber eyes twinkled haughtily in a shaft of sunlight. There was a chip out of one of the box's corners, and two of the giraffe's shiny jet spots were missing, but on the whole, it was remarkably free of blemish.
'I think, Miss Ruskin, that the box alone is an overly valuable gift.'
'I suppose it is of value, but it pleases me to give it to you. Can't keep it— too many things disappear when one is on a dig— and can't bring myself to sell it. It is yours.'
' 'Thank you' sounds inadequate, but if you wanted to be sure it has a good home, it has found one. I shall cherish it.'
An enigmatic smile played briefly over her lips, as at a secret joke, but she said, only, 'That's all I wanted.'
'Shall we have a glass of wine to celebrate it? Holmes?'
He went off to the house, and I tore my eyes away from the beguiling present.
'Can you stay for supper?' I asked. 'Your telegram didn't say when you had to be back, and the housekeeper has left us a nice rabbit pie, so you wouldn't have to face my cooking.'
'No, I can't. I'd like to, but I have to be back in London by nine— dinner with a new sponsor. Have to talk up the glory that was Jerusalem to the rich fool. Plenty of time for a glass of your wine, though, and a stroll over your hills.' She sighed happily. 'We used to come down to the coast every summer when I was a child. The air hasn't changed a bit, or the light.'
We took our glasses and walked over the hills to the sea, and when we returned to the cottage, Holmes asked her if she wanted to see the beehives. She said yes, so he found her a bee hat and gloves and overalls, things he himself rarely used. She was at first nervous, then determined, and finally fascinated as he opened a hive and showed her the levels of occupation, the queen's quarters, the neat texture of the honeycombs, the logical, ruthless social structure of the colony. She asked numerous intelligent questions, and she seemed both relieved and reluctant to see the internal workings disappear again behind their wooden walls.
'Had a nasty experience with bees one time,' she said abruptly, and pulled off the voluminous hat. 'Lived in the country. My sister and I were close then, played lots of games. One was to leave coded messages, in the Greek alphabet sometimes, or little treasures— bits of food— inside this abandoned cistern. Must've been mediaeval,' she reflected. 'Storing root crops. We called it 'Apocalypse,' had to lift the cover off, you see? Happy times. Golden summers. One day, my sister hid a chocolate bar in Apocalypse, went back for it the next day, and a swarm of bees had moved in. Both of us badly stung, terrified. Apocalypse filled in. Seemed like the closing of paradise.'
'They were probably wasps,' commented Holmes.
'Do you think so? Good heavens, you may be right. Just think, all those years of hating bees, dispelled in an afternoon. Didn't know you were an alienist, Mr Holmes, among your other skills.' She chuckled.
We made our way back to the terrace, where I served a substantial tea while she entertained us with stories of the bureaucrats in Cairo during the war.
Finally, she stood up to go. She paused at the car and looked over the front of the cottage.
'I can't think when I've enjoyed an afternoon more.' She sighed.
'If you have another free day before you go, it would be a great pleasure to have you again,' I suggested.
'Oh, won't be possible, I'm afraid.' Her eyes were hidden again behind the black glasses, but her smile seemed somewhat wistful.
The drive into town was slowed by the number of farm vehicles about on a summer afternoon, but I had allowed plenty of time, and we talked easily about books and the uncluttered and unrecoverable pleasures of life as an Oxford undergraduate. Then she abruptly changed the topic.
'I like your Mr Holmes. Very like Ned Lawrence, d'you know? Both of 'em positively quivering with passion, always under iron control, both stuffed full of ability and common sense and that backwards approach to a problem that marks a true genius, and at the same time this incongruous tendency to mystify, a compulsion almost to obfuscate and to conceal themselves behind an air of myth and mystery. Ned's extravagances,' she added thoughtfully, 'are almost certainly due to his small stature and the domination of his mother and will bring him to a sticky end. He'll never have the hands of your man, though.'
I was quite floored by this tumble of insight and information so placidly given, and I could only pluck feebly at the last phrase.
'Hands?' Was this some idiosyncratic equine reference to Holmes' height?
'Um. He has the most striking hands I've ever seen on a man. The first thing I noticed about him, back in Palestine. Strong, but more than that. Elegant. Nervous. No, not nervous exactly; acutely sensitive. Aristocratic working-class hands.' She grimaced and waved away this uncharacteristic search among the nuances of adjectives. 'Remember the Chinese ball?'
'The Chinese— oh yes, the ivory puzzle.' I did remember it, a carved ball of ivory so old, it was nearly yellow. It could only be opened by precise pressure at three different points simultaneously. She had handed the ball to Holmes, and he had held it lightly in the palm of his left hand, occasionally caressing it with the fingertips of the other. (Holmes, unlike myself, is right-handed.) The conversation had gone on; Holmes had talked with great animation about his travels in Tibet and the amazing feats of physical control he had witnessed amongst the lamas, and his tour through Mecca, while he occasionally reached down to touch the ball. The magician's apprentice knows to watch the hands, though, and I was gratified to witness the gentle arrangement of thumb and two fingers that loosed the lock and sent the ball's treasure, a lustrous black pearl, rolling gently into the palm of his hand.
'So clever, those hands. It took me six months to figure out that ball, and he did it in twenty minutes. Oh, are we here, then?' She sounded disappointed. 'Thank you for the afternoon, and do enjoy Mariam. I'll be interested to know what you think of her. Did I give you my address in Jerusalem? No? Oh, dash it, here comes the train. Where are those cards— in here somewhere.' She thrust at me two handfuls of motley papers— a couple of handbills, some typescript, letters, sweet wrappers, telegram flimsies, notes scribbled on the corners of newspapers— as well as three journals, a book, and two glasses cases (one empty), before she emerged with a bent white cardboard
