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Long before she was ever ‘Mummy Holmes,’ Margaret Lucy Smith had something of an affair at the age of sixteen. A young man, though older than Margaret, was out of school and working at some mill; his current job was part-time and only for two months, a more substantive wage than his mill-work, and had brought him near her doorstep. He was therefore transient and the best kind of accessible.
He was rough-looking, said ‘bloody,’ and appealed to Margaret’s keenness for adventure: to escape the house, obligatory chores, her studies, her family’s expectations, and to cultivate the kind of life she imagined her parents would find horrifying if discovered.
And Margaret never intended discovery.
Except that she managed to get herself pregnant.
There was much crying, pleading, loud talking, and the slamming of doors in the Smith household. Words were said that could not be unsaid.
Margaret’s three younger siblings, all of varying ages, had watched the unfolding drama with a strange kind of detached distress—never sure of the exact issue, except that something ‘not good’ had taken place—especially concerned when Mother and Father decided that Margaret would be spending time away until ‘things not spoken of’ had ‘resolved themselves.’
Once the baby was born, Margaret was forced to give him up. But before the plump little nurse and her nun associate—who worked at the local Catholic-run orphanage—could collect the human bundle, Margaret initiated an escape.
Taking the coach was no small effort, especially with a newborn and she still felt pains. Yet Margaret managed.
She’d made her way to Manchester determined to locate Toby. So she hung around the factory in which she knew he worked, waiting for his shift to end.
Margaret received many ‘looks’ from the stream of endless male bodies who worked at the mill. Many looked down at her with a disapproving gaze. Some even glared. Others gave her short, lecturing sentences or commented on what a nice piece-of-skirt she was and would she like a place to stay that night to keep herself and the wee babe warm? Of course, Margaret, head high, ignored every gesture, every verbal utterance.
Toby appeared eventually, walking with the exiting crowd, one heavy foot in front of the other, heading home or perhaps enacting exodus to the local pub.
Margaret stepped into his path and showed him the child.
“He’s yours,” she said.
“Bleedin’ ‘ell, girl,” he said and she wasn’t sure if his exclamation was shock, disparagement, or disagreement.
“You have to take him. I’m not allowed. He’ll end up orphaned.”
“Just a bit o’ tumblin’ ‘twas, Margie. I’m married.”
“Yes, well, that was obvious, because you never took the ring off, did you?” Margaret rolled her eyes. “Your wife won’t mind, won’t she? Won’t she mind having her own baby to play with and love? And without all that terrible mess of having to actually give birth,” her nose wrinkled up at the memory of pulsing pains, sharp tearing sensations, and rivers of blood.
Rivers.
Toby stared at her like she was daft.
“I mean,” she clarified, “you don’t have to tell her he’s yours. We can say I’m in trouble and need help from an obliging couple. Maybe I’ll come back for the baby when I’m settled, unless she’d prefer I didn’t. But if she’s willing, well, maybe you thought it was something you could both take on? Take on a baby. Bring up this lovely little human as your future progeny. He is your future progeny,” her eyes narrowed in a calculative way, “but we don’t have to tell your wife that, do we?”
She’d tried to sweeten the deal with those words about ‘progeny,’ thinking she could appeal to Tobias’ ego and sense of generational entitlement, an ideology she expected—at that age—all men to have, especially a man of Tobias’ class.
She was, after all, over sixteen now and she was sure she knew the way the world worked.
She also considered herself rather dexterous, in the past, of manipulating her own way. That is to say, Margaret seemed to have a knack for using words to find loopholes or ways around conventional thinking so as to find herself through those tired expectations into a destiny of her own making.
And it wasn’t just that they’d take him away and orphan him. After all, she would keep him, wouldn’t she, if she could, but she still had school and she expected—she planned—on taking her studies far. She was already light-years ahead of the other girls in maths and science, something the boys said women couldn’t do. Why should she have to give it all up? That wasn’t to say she didn’t love the baby. She was sure she did. Deep inside, in fact, Margaret might have wondered if she couldn’t just leave home, finish school, and raise a baby, all under her own power: why was it said that such things were impossible? But the weight of it all was frightening. Margaret didn’t know what was possible and what wasn’t. So she believed this was the right thing to do: the best thing. Give him a real good start with a real family: a father and a mother. She couldn’t give him that. And without school, she’d have no future. No future for anyone, least of all herself. Least of all for the baby dependent on her if she kept him.
This was the practical proper plan.
She waited.
Toby sighed and seemed to cast around for something to say.
The baby began to fuss, then cry, and people on the street began to give the pair a certain kind of condescending look, because now it was obvious what Margaret carried: not just a heap of rags.
Toby told her to follow along, then, and he led her down a few streets over to where she realized he lived. The street-sign read Spinner’s End.
As they reached the steps and Toby entered, he called out, “Eileen, love, we gots ourselves a little ‘un!”
--
Margaret sat on the old sofa with a cup of tea, untouched, by her knees on the coffee table.
For the first time amidst her unfolding plans did Margaret feel a tendril of guilt curl through and tighten in her gut as she looked at Eileen Snape, Toby’s wife. The woman wasn’t a conventional beauty, but distinguished all the same, Margaret thought. A bit tired around the edges, but age indeterminate.
And what made the guilt sharpen and her estimation of the other woman increase was that Eileen didn’t look at Margaret in a disapproving way. Rather, she was polite and solicitous, even going so far as to give her husband reproving glances when he was terse and gruff about the whole thing, especially when he didn’t offer Margaret a seat first-thing.
Eileen sat beside her and seemed to smile at her—and now Margaret was a bit annoyed by it—because it looked a bit pitying.
“You can’t really want to give up your baby, miss, now do you?” Eileen asked with an earnest pat on Margaret’s unclad knee; Margaret was wearing her woolen tartan skirt, which had seemed easier to slip into while attempting her disappearance. Short as it was, it had the effect of heightening how juvenile Toby’s wife made her feel all of a sudden.
Margaret’s lip trembled.
“I really can’t keep him,” she whispered.
Eileen had a serious look on her face and she nodded, “I’m not sure it’s our place to take your child.”
But there was enough hesitation in the way she seemed to say the words that Margaret saw a chance to push her luck.
“I know it’s terribly inconsiderate of me,” and Margaret couldn’t help the real tears that wanted to escape all of a sudden, “I mean, of my baby,” she looked down at his little sleeping body, his one little hand clutching the edge of his swathing blanket, the blanket her mother had sent along—once Margaret’s own baby blanket—“but also to ask of a strange family. Of strangers, I mean. Inconsiderate to just … lay this all on someone else’s doorstep. I just,” her breath hitched, “I really can’t take him on. I can’t. I just can’t,” and a sob broke through, startling her, and seeming to startle Eileen, too. Tobias had long since vanished from the room.
Eileen reached a hand around Margaret’s shoulders and gave the adolescent a gentle squeeze.
“What about your parents, love? Won’t they be upset? I expect they’re worried. They’re looking for you and your baby now, I expect?” Eileen asked.
“They would never. They’re religious and strict. They’d never see him as their grandchild. They absolutely want to be rid of him.” Margaret was adamant, “They’d rather send him off to be an orphan and I know … I’ve heard…. It all just seems rather cruel,” Margaret’s lips trembled, “I want to choose for him. I want him with someone like you. It’s not up to my parents, strangers neither. It’s not their business!”
“I understand … about parents,” Eileen said, head bowed, pausing, “and I’ll be honest,” she added, lowering her voice as though imparting a secret, “I can’t have children,” she admitted.
Margaret looked up at Eileen from under her long dark lashes sprinkled with tear-drops.
Eileen continued. “I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse…” her gaze had shifted a bit and seemed to follow the shadow of wherever Tobias had ended up, “but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want my own child….”
There was longing there.
“Hold him, then,” Margaret all but pushed the baby toward Eileen, who took the bundle with hesitation and awkwardness, looking almost comical as she balanced him half away from her body, but not at arm’s length, just over her gangly knees. “He won’t break,” Margaret soothed the other woman.
“Yes, well…” and Eileen gazed down at the child who now fussed in her arms. “What if he wants you?”
“He’s brand new. He doesn’t know what or whom he wants. He’ll want you if you want him.” And Margaret smiled, imagining the words into reality, imagining her little baby looking up and calling Eileen ‘Mummy.’
Eileen looked into the spirit of things, rocking him gently and holding him closer, making little sounds at him. Her eyes sparkled, but she still had a wary set to her body.
“What about in future?” Eileen asked.
“Oh … well, I don’t know … but I … I don’t think I’d come and get in your way. Maybe I’d want to see him one day, maybe I’d be content just knowing he had a loving mother like you,” and she smiled at Eileen, feeling a sudden kind of kinship—this woman was being so kind and much more hospitable, more honest and caring, then Margaret’s own mother had been, so Eileen almost felt like Margaret’s own real mother in that moment. “He looks good in your arms,” Margaret added.
Eileen smiled. Still tentative, but looking younger now. Was it the effect of the baby or receiving someone else’s kindness? Or something else entirely?
“I really should be on my way,” Margaret was feeling anxious.
What if something changed? What if everything shattered?
Eileen was staring across the room now, seeming to gaze at nothing but the half-empty bookshelves lining the walls of the little parlour. After a long, quiet moment, she shifted.
“Take him for a moment. One last moment,” Eileen said, handing the baby back to Margaret. And Margaret might have been worried, except that Eileen’s words assured her that the plan was in full effect: Eileen would take on and care for Margaret’s baby.
Eileen had walked over to a little desk and was writing something out on a piece of paper, which she brought back to Margaret.
“It’s our postal address and phone number,” Eileen said. “If you need to contact us, you do so, you hear?”
Margaret looked at the piece of scrap paper in her hand, then up at Eileen.
“Tell me you will if you need to,” Eileen repeated.
“Yes, yes, I will,” was all that Margaret said.
“Good,” Eileen nodded.
Then they exchanged the bundle between them for the final time.
“Good bye then,” Margaret said. She leaned forward and, as if anticipating the gesture, Eileen held him forward likewise so that Margaret could reach his delicate little head with her lips and she kissed him on his crown. “Good bye, little prince,” she said.
She didn’t notice the queer look Eileen sent her, but she was overcome with a strange kind of feeling she couldn’t describe, light and heavy at the same time. Her arms and legs tingled.
Eileen held the front door open and Margaret crossed the threshold out into the gloam.
The women gazed at each other and then Margaret gave Eileen a tight smile and walked away without looking back.
--
Margaret never did call.
She tossed the little piece of paper—after rubbing it between her fingers over and over—into the fifth bin she passed on her way back to the coach station.
--
And it was a history that Margaret kept to herself years later.
Of course her parents never mentioned a word of the event—of their daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, of her running off post-birth, of the disappearance of the babe—to anyone, not even bringing it up with her, except perhaps in reproving glances, hasty frowns, or strict rules not held over her siblings. Nor did her parents press to find the child’s whereabouts. Margaret sometimes wondered if they thought her capable of infanticide. The thought angered her, and yet she also thought it gave her a kind of power over them.
Margaret also decided, after that fiasco with Tobias, to keep away from men.
She focused on her studies and she imagined her brain became even sharper than it had ever been.
Not until midway through her Doctor of Philosophy did Margaret meet a man who moved her to reconsider her stance on love and relationships.
Scott Holmes was a man from a wealthy family, hence his Eton education, though he wasn’t particularly bright, at least not in the way someone might be if labeled ‘genius.’ But Margaret found him quite ingenious in certain respects, like the way he smiled at her, simultaneously indulgent and yet not at all trite, as though acknowledging something important about her that she couldn’t see herself.
His initial nervousness around the opposite sex endeared him to her. His suspicion of certain types of thinking and his own steadfast beliefs, which leant toward ethical considerations, garnered her attention and admiration.
An exact definition of Scott’s genius was difficult to pinpoint except that he had a kind of intuitive sense for seeing right through a body to its core. Years later, she imagined that ‘emotional intelligence’ was the right term.
He was laid-back and easy. Generous and optimistic. Margaret was strong-willed and Scott never tried to reign her back: he’d just smile, putter about, and let Margaret get on with things in the way she thought best, though he wasn’t above proving his own point or telling her that his way was the right one in certain instances.
And she’d grant him his moments of triumph because she believed in him.
She almost finished her advanced degree, but by that point she was enjoying sex with Scott far too much, too often, and she was tired of the pill, so they tried the pull-out method, but still she ended up pregnant. This time around, Margaret knew there was no backing out, but as the baby grew and grew, so did her determination. She was at a point, now, where she could be a mother. She wanted to be one.
She’d reached a threshold with Mathematics and while she still had prospective research aims, she knew that her colleagues and the tenured professors didn’t view her work as useful. In fact, she viewed herself as a pariah in the department.
Let them have their academic regimes and their tenured positions of autocratic power.
She’d stay home and complete her thesis in her own time, following her own methods, and then she wouldn’t need to attempt further funding, either: wouldn’t need to prove the worth she knew was inherent in her work.
Scott even promised the addition of a lab to the house as a wedding gift and Margaret felt her world complete itself.
Thus, Mycroft Holmes and The Dynamics of Combustion were born.
--
Years passed. Secrets remained buried beneath mental depths.
But then Margaret’s father died and her mother’s illness became known.
Margaret’s younger brother and his wife had been looking after their parents and her brother had implored Margaret, now, to reacquaint herself with her family before their mother passed, too. An appeal to ‘making peace.’
Margaret had used school, scholarships, and part-time work to depart from her family and cut herself loose, though she’d seen them only once after leaving home, at her wedding with Scott, which had been a selfish pettiness: to show them her successes despite their disbelief in her abilities. Despite her image—according to her parent’s—as an unrepentant Mary Magdalene, pursuing sin and insubstantial, useless work like theoretical mathematics, not to mention male-centric work like chemistry, she’d still hoped for some kind of concession or approval as Eton-Scott’s country house-wife.
The reminder of it had left her sickened; it had all just strengthened her family’s distance.
Regardless, Scott urged her to agree with her brother’s request. And she couldn’t blame him: he was oblivious to the past; he couldn’t understand the origin of Margaret’s hesitation.
With great reluctance, Margaret acquiesced.
Thus, their family of four—Scott, Margaret, Myc, and young Will—descended to the place of Margaret’s youth for her father’s funeral.
His wake took place at the Church of Saint Ariadne in a sweltering July heat.
“Saint Rita, Saint Rita,” her nieces chanted as they danced and pointed at her seat in the front pew.
Margaret rolled her eyes.
“Patron saint of impossible cases,” Myc stated without looking up from his book.
Margaret plucked the item from his hands, upset by his words despite herself.
“Pay better attention, darling. Your deceased granddad is laying there and he demands the care of your everlasting soul before he’s interned within the earth for all eternity.”
Mycroft frowned and pouted, so she added, “Reading a book during my father’s wake is not at all the level of respect I thought I’d taught you.”
“Yes, Mummy,” Mycroft glowered. “But where’s Sherlock? I don’t see you forcing him to sit here in this uncomfortable wooden pew…” he said with great distaste, “I don’t even believe in Catholic theology…”
“He’s with Scott and god knows where they’ve gotten themselves and, for the millionth time, love, your brother’s name is William. Lastly, you aren’t being asked to believe in anything, only to respect their mourning,” and she didn’t pick up on the fact, though Mycroft did, that she was speaking about her relatives as though they were separate people and not at all related. As though she, too, were being forced to endure something not quite worth her belief—her time—either.
A diffuse guilt settled over Margaret’s sternum and her behaviour with her son frightened her, so she returned Myc his book, he went back to reading, and nothing more was said on the subject.
--
But the worst possible event occurred at dinner that evening after the wake.
Myc and Will were behaving themselves uncharacteristically, quiet and attending to the meal as their cousins sat opposite, giggling at the boys and making gestures.
Margaret’s mother had forced herself out of bed and was sitting at the table for the first and only time that visit, appearing sick, old, and snappy. Margaret imagined that she looked like a buzzard attending the feast of the dead, not for piety nor the love of her absent husband, but for meat and blood.
Thus, between conversations and half-way through the meal, Margaret’s mother fixed Margaret with a cold, keen stare and asked, loudly, “Did you call him then? Will that child of filth be at the funeral? Will I have to look at his face? Or have you been too selfish, keeping him away from his family all this time? Or maybe he is dead, you ungrateful little slut! Don’t think that coming back now will save your soul. Your father would’ve been better off without your stain. But he’s going on to Christ and he’ll never have to face the pain you’ve brought him ever again. Ungrateful, disgusting child!”
At that point, Scott and Margaret’s brother had stood and were imploring her mother to move from the table, suggesting she needed a rest after her trying day at the wake and its seemingly endless liturgy.
“Sarah’ll make you up a tray, mother. You can eat in your bed!” Her brother cajoled, speaking of his wife, who stood and entered the kitchen to do just as he proposed.
Scott and her brother each held Margaret’s mother under her arms as they helped her shuffle from the room amidst her cries and pleas to stay, as well as her insults.
Margaret alone remained at the table with her two sons and two nieces, all of whom were now staring up at her with various, unique, child-expressions ranging from horror (her nieces), to a pained consternation (little Will), to contemplation (Myc).
Margaret smiled: a slow, suggestive smile of menace as she gazed at each of them in turn, which stretched across her face like a wound, showing off her pearly shark-like whites.
“Eat up, loves,” she whispered, “before it all gets cold.”
And despite implementing such a defense, Margaret wondered if she wasn’t already tainted in the eyes of her children forever.