I grew in strength and pride and, while the weather held, spent hours on the deck reading, turning darker yet, my hair almost bleached white. Holmes, on the other hand, drew in. His scathing attacks began to reveal an undertone of bewilderment and pain, an emotional reaction that his pride would not allow him to show to the world. He rarely left his cabin, where the lights burnt at all hours. His plates were returned untouched, and he smoked vast quantities of his filthy black shag tobacco. When the supplies ran low, he resumed the habit of cigarettes, which he had left some years before. He drank heavily, never showing the slightest sign of its effect, and I suspected he would have returned to his cocaine had he been able to get it. He looked ghastly, with a strange yellow tinge beneath his tan, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed in red, his normally thin frame on the edge of emaciation. One night I objected. 'Holmes, there's not much point in this elaborate farce if you kill yourself before she has a chance. Or are you trying to save her the trouble?'
'It is not as bad as it looks, Russell, I assure you.'
'You look jaundiced, Holmes, which means your liver is failing, and your eyes tell me you haven't slept in several days.' I was startled to feel my bunk shaking, and then realised that he was laughing softly.
'So the old man has a few tricks left, does he? Russell, I discovered a large quantity of spices in the ship's hold and liberated a few of the yellower ones. Also, various irritants rubbed in the eyes cause temporary discomfort but lasting external effect. I assure you, I am doing myself no harm.'
'But you have not eaten in days, and you're drinking far too heavily.'
'The alcohol that disappears in my cabin ends up largely in the drains, with certain quantities used on breath and clothing. As for the food, I promise you that I shall allow Mrs. Hudson to feed me when she returns. When I step off the boat, Russell, every eye must know that here stands a beaten man, who cares not if he lives or dies. There would be no other reason for me to return openly.'
'Very well. I just want your assurance that you will care for yourself in my absence. I will not have anything damage you, even your own hand.'
'For the sake of the partnership, Russell?' The smile in his voice reassured me more than his words.
'Precisely.'
'I promise. I shall, if you wish, promise to wash out my socks at night, too.'
'That will not be necessary, Holmes. Mrs. Hudson will do that for you.'
We came home to London on a grey, heavy morning, both of us burnt by the sun and scorched by the fires of conflicts honest and contrived. I stood alone on the deck and watched the city approach, feeling the palpable unease of the captain and men as they worked behind me and below decks. Familiar forms stood on the dock as we approached.
I could see Watson looking anxiously for Holmes, and Inspector Lestrade standing next to him, equally curious at the detective's absence. Mycroft stood to one side, his face a closed book. They called to me as we pulled in, but I did not answer. When the gangway was let down I seized my bags before one of the men could do so, walked firmly across with my eyes down on the boards, and pushed past the men standing on the dock, to the obvious amazement of two of them. Watson held out his hand and Lestrade called. 'Miss Russell.'
'Mary? Wait, Mary, what's wrong?'
I turned to them coldly, not looking at Mycroft.
'Yes?'
'Where are you going? Is something wrong? Where is Holmes?'
A movement on the deck above caught my eye, and I looked up into Holmes' eyes. He looked dreadful. His grey irises stared out like holes in two blood'filled pools. His yellowed skin sagged over his bones, and he was poorly shaven, this normally fastidious individual. His tie was straight, but the collar of his shirt was slightly rumpled, and his jacket was unbuttoned. I squelched any urge to pity or uncertainty and summoned up every drop of the scorn I had spent the last days in distilling, filling my face, my stance, my mind with it, so that when I spoke, acid dripped from my words.
'There he is, gentlemen, the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Savior of nations, the mind of the century, God's gift to humanity. Gentlemen, I leave you to him.'
Our eyes met in a brief flash, and I saw in them both approval and apprehension, and a farewell. I turned on my heel and stalked away down the wharf. Watson must have started after me, because I heard Holmes' sharp, high' pitched, and infuriating drawl stop my friend and uncle dead in his tracks. 'Let her go, Watson, she'll have none of us. She's off to make her mark on the world, can't you see?' His voice sharpened further into a querulous cry that must have carried to the other side of the river. 'And God help any man who gets in her way!'
With these searing words on my coattails I rounded the corner and set off to find a cab. It was the last I was to see of him for two months.
FIFTEEN: Separation trial
She is alone in the world, in the midst of an awakening spring.
Dack at Oxford, I threw myself furiously into my studies. I had missed nearly a month, and although the Oxford program is not dependent on classes and attendance at lectures, one's absence is noted and strongly disapproved. My maths tutor was away, illness of some kind, and I was secretly grateful not to have that pressure. The woman who tutored Greek was also away, vanished into maternity over the Christmas holidays. By dint of working flat out for three weeks I managed to redeem myself in the eyes of my remaining supervisors and felt that I had caught up to my own satisfaction as well.
I changed that spring. For one thing, I no longer wore trousers and boots, but filled my wardrobe with expensive, austere skirts and dresses. I had, as I feared, alienated Ronnie Beaconsfield, and lacked the energy to regain her friendship, but instead made an effort to make contact with the other girls in my year. I found I enjoyed it, although after a few hours their talk made me impatient for my solitude. I took long walks through the streets and the desolate winter hills around Oxford. I took to attending church, particularly Evensong at the cathedral, just to sit and listen. Once I went to a concert with a quiet young man from my patristics lecture. The music was Mozart, and well played, but halfway through the shining genius and the pain of it made it impossible to breathe, and I left. The young man did not ask me again.
My written work changed, too. It became even more precise, less tolerant of other, softer viewpoints, more ruthlessly logical: 'Brilliant and hard, like a diamond' was a remark from one reader, not altogether approving.
I drove myself. I ate less, worked invariably into the early hours of morning, drank brandy now to help me sleep.
I laughed when a librarian at the Bodleian suggested, only half joking, that I might move into the stacks, but my laughter was a polite, brittle noise. I became, in other words, more like Holmes than the man himself: brilliant, driven to a point of obsession, careless of myself, mindless of others, but without the passion and the deep-down, inbred love for the good in humanity that was the basis of his entire career. He loved the humanity that could not understand or fully accept him; I, in the midst of the same human race, became a thinking machine.
Holmes himself, on his farm in the south downs, was retreating from the world into softness and bewilderment.
Mrs. Hudson cut short her expedition to the Antipodes and returned home in late February. Her first letter to me was brief and shocked at the state she had found Holmes in. Subsequent letters neither accused nor begged, but pained me even more deeply when she simply stated that Holmes had not been out of bed one day, or that he was talking about selling his hives. Lestrade had set guards on the cottage at all times. (He had tried to do the same for me, but I had baited him and eluded them and finally he withdrew. I did not believe any of Lestrade's men could guard me better than I could myself, and as time went on I was more surely convinced that the rules of the game had indeed been changed, and that I was not yet in danger. Besides, I found their constant presence unbearable.)
Watson wrote too, long tentative letters, mostly about Holmes' health and mind. He came to see me once in Oxford. I took him for a long walk so I might not have to sit and face him, and the cold and my coolness sent him limping away with his bodyguard.
