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These recent years have brought to light many interesting truths regarding the complexities of human relations, and foremost is this: It is one thing to live with a man and quite another to set up a household with him.
When Watson and I began preparing ourselves for retirement, I discovered that in spite of our many years of cohabitation, there were scores of domestic preferences which we had never discussed. As soon as the property was agreed upon, the timeline set forth, the wheels, as they say, in motion, we were faced with the daunting prospect of concocting our own domestic lives from scratch.
This was an area where Watson had tread before with his marriage, yet was utterly foreign to myself. Subjects on which I never supposed I held any opinion whatever came whizzing suddenly to the forefront: towels, teaspoons, whether or not we truly needed three copies of Herodotus, for when was the last time either of us had read him? Mercifully, we were of accord on many issues and when we were not, I was always the first to yield. Always, that is, save for one, key sticking point: a housekeeper.
To say that Mrs. Hudson spoiled us is to make an appalling understatement and do her a grave injustice. She was such a woman whose kindness and tenacity are sorely missed from this world, though I have no doubts she is at this moment goading and fussing over many a deserving soul in the next. For me, there is no replacing perfection once lost, and while the Baker Street staff did an admirable job looking after we two ruffians in her absence, I was in no way eager to burden myself with a strange housekeeper in my golden years.
My feelings on this issue are firm. My reasons, twofold:
1. I am a man of irregular habits, which took years for Mrs. Hudson to master, and I do not wish to restart the process.
2. I am a man who loves another and within my own home I should like the freedom to kiss him, touch him, and generally be besotted with him when and where I please.
It was a ridiculous request, I acknowledge. While we are not entirely helpless, neither Watson nor I can be considered self-sufficient, nor do either of us boast any great experience in homemaking. Thus, a bargain was struck, and Mrs. Keeler and her eldest daughter, Molly, were engaged twice a week (Mondays & Wednesdays) for the general mucking out, the laundry, a bit of light cooking, and all the tasks which are beyond our talents. The rest of the time we are more or less left to our own devices, and in exchange for being rather tidier than I am naturally inclined and the occasional attempt at a meal, I am able to accost John in the linen closet in the mid-morning, settle into his lap in the early afternoon, or make a passing swipe for his arse nearly every time it catches my eye. A fair price, for so rare a treasure.
It has not, of course, been without its challenges. I seem to be utterly untalented at cracking eggs, while John has a gift for leaving the windows open when it rains. I believe I speak for both of us when I issue a very sincere apology to any domestic help who has ever withstood an angry outburst from either of us regarding an improperly starched collar, or a lukewarm pot of tea. These things are much more difficult than a talented maid lets them appear. Our success, such as it is, has come from a division of labor based on our varied strengths, quite egalitarian, and I find myself to have adapted quite readily to such chores. Or so I professed, until one week last summer when I discovered I am a bit less domesticable than I had assumed.
It was an afternoon in mid-June, and I had been reclining in the window seat of the front room, pouring over a treatise on tropical botanicals when Watson’s hand was suddenly inserted between my eyes and the pages before me. I blinked, and in blinking realized I had been humming non-deferentially to his asking me something for the better part of a minute. His consternation was etched clearly into his face; he was all bristling mustache and flared nostrils. I apologized compulsively for ignoring him and attempted to explain my current theories as to why the orchid—a Christmas gift from Mycroft—was wilting. This topic did not interest my companion.
“I thought it wasn’t getting enough light in my study, so I moved it in here. Now, it seems, perhaps it’s getting too much—“
“Would you please finish washing up?”
This was a command and, unquestionably, the source of his ire. The washing up was my duty and I will admit to having shirked it. Yet, I saw no great hurry in the thing and waved away his request with the turn of a page.
“Yes, of course. In a moment, after I’ve read this.”
“You said you would do it last night.”
“I meant to,” I admitted, “but by the time I finished with that titration for my new blood analysis, it was nearly eleven and I thought it better to turn in.”
“You were supposed to do it the night before.”
“Our orchid is dying. As a doctor, I would have thought you’d care.”
This topic continued not to interest him and my unfortunately flippant tone only added fuel to the flames—he grew quite red in the face and with a huff started for the kitchen. In another moment, I heard the coursing of the tap and the angry clattering of unwashed dishes. Knowing I would never hear the end of it if I left him to it, I hurried in after him.
Our kitchen was in a dismal state. Baking is very like chemistry, Mr. Holmes, Mrs. Keeler had said, and the evidence of my recent experiments was everywhere: the bench was a mosaic of crumbs and egg whites, dusted all over with a grainy layer of flour. The sink was bursting with, quite sincerely, every cup, saucer, pan, and plate we owned. Watson was attempting to fill the kettle amongst the wreckage, and had had to clear away a small tower of snifters just to get at the spout. A rather expensive crystal glass teetered precariously near his elbow.
“Here, let me,” offered I, more used to navigating messes, and in a moment set the full kettle to boil on the stove, my companion all the while opening and slamming cupboards with a flourish.
“I don’t even have a cup for tea,” Watson bemoaned, indicating the empty little row on the second shelf that was ordinarily crowded with such things.
“Certainly you have, here.”
I placed my solution before him. He stared at it momentarily before giving me such a look as could melt the wings off Icarus.
“Sherlock.”
“It’ll do,” I mumbled, my mouth suddenly full of marbles.
“That’s a creamer.”
“It is essentially a teacup—round, ceramic vessel; open top; handle.”
The response was icy indifference and I began to count myself as Very Seriously in Trouble. Watson pushed past me to install himself at the sink’s edge, performing preparatory dishwashing gestures with ritual seriousness: the rolling of the sleeves, the turning of the tap, the reaching for the soap powder. And yet, I am the one called ‘dramatic’.
“Don’t,” I said, and when he took no heed of me, I pulled the dish brush from his hands. “I shall do it right this minute. I’ll even bring your tea in for you—go sit.”
With the weariest of sighs, he conceded, disappearing through the doorway without so much as a backward glance. I had no other choice but to roll up my sleeves and set to work.
There is very little difference between the washing of dishes and the washing of laboratory glassware, the latter being a field in which I have decades of experience, and what recommended me to my current post. Nevertheless, ordinary washing up inspires within me a strange, melancholy introspection which is utterly absent from the scrubbing of scientific equipment. Perhaps it is caused by the banal domesticity of the venture, or the reminder of our animalistic need for nourishment, or that there has not yet been made a sink high enough so as not to give a reasonably tall person a sore back within five minutes. Washing up always forces me to observe myself from the outside, and it is never a flattering portrait.
That afternoon, I beheld myself with no small measure of disgust: clad in an old shirt which was missing its top button, for I had forgotten to have it mended; barefoot, for I had left my slippers upstairs; in need of a haircut, for I could not be bothered to go into town. Up to my elbows in soiled dishes, surrounded by a week’s worth of crumbs, the debris of meals past, Watson undoubtedly still fuming in the sitting room: these also were the fruits of my idleness. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, indeed.
The shriek of the kettle nearly startled me straight into a pile of plates. I had made appallingly little progress, yet had at least managed to clean the tea things. There remained a few scones of my own creation; it seemed appropriately wifely to butter them for John’s repast. Anything for my darling husband, I thought bitterly. I set everything onto the tray, feeling very much the aging Mary-Ann. As I made my way into the sitting room, my mind hurled at me all those insults to which a man of my persuasion is no stranger. My dismay was undoubtedly evident, for when I set the tray down beside him, Watson seized my wrist and gazed up at me with large, remorseful eyes.
“Won’t you have tea with me?”
“I can’t—there isn’t another clean cup.”
“Use your creamer.”
His voice was sincerity itself. He pressed a kiss against my wrist and smiled at me. Gone was the man who thunders over messes, or steams at indolence; here again was my merciful Jove. I loved him very much in that moment. It took all my willpower to shake my head and insist:
“I ought to finish in the kitchen.”
Truly, I never expected to say such a phrase. In my previous life, so to speak, I spent very little time in kitchens, excepting the odd occasion when one proved central to a case: the point of a thief’s escape, or the site of a murder. Yet, there stood I and by my own hand. I worked for most of the afternoon, alternately scrubbing, soaking, rinsing, drying. I counted the passage of time by the music Watson’s movements: the tinkling of the tea set, the scrape of the chair at his writing desk, the creak of the settee and the crinkle of newsprint.
There was still a handful of cutlery and a large, cheese-coated casserole remaining when the malaise struck. I found myself starring, eyes transfixed upon the faucet. My hands would not move from the sink’s edge. I was, inexplicably, unable to go on. A blanket of uselessness fell over me, heavy and compunction-soaked.
It was a feeling I recognized—I won't say 'was accustomed to’—a plague which struck whenever a failed deduction robbed me of victory and set a guilty man free, or an answer eluded me, or a hastily mixed suspension crystallized prematurely for the fifth time in a row. It is a nasty feeling, black and bottomless, as if a stop has been pulled somewhere deep within me, my blood drained and replaced with a leaden plasma. I rage at myself, at my weakness, and the rage coagulates in my throat. That it can be caused by something so pedestrian as unwashed dishes merely compounds my despair.
I abandoned the sink in hope of relief. In my youth, I had many solutions for this ailment—most of them delivered efficiently through a needle's point. It had been a condition of our retirement that my Moroccan case not make the journey with us, and just then, I hated John for robbing me of blissful release.
Feebly, I staggered through the house, pursued by a feeling of vestigiality. Every room confronted me with evidence of my idleness: lamps that needed refilling in the sunroom, bookshelves half-reorganized in my study, unfolded clothing scattered across the bed, the beginnings of a new hive frame abandoned on my bedside table (why I had thought woodworking an appropriate bedroom activity, I can offer no explanation). Overwrought, I collapsed against the mattress, relishing the coolness of the pillowcase against my cheek. I drew the wrong end of the quit over me, feathered my nest with the unfolded laundry, wrinkling it horribly and unable to care. Thus adorned, I, miserable and useless, let sleep free me from the wretchedness.
The afternoon had slipped into evening when Watson came to rouse me. Fingers carded through my hair. A kiss pressed against my sleepy lips. When I opened my eyes, my companion was perched on the edge of the bed, smiling down upon me with all the radiance of the summer sun. I felt very sheepish for my sorry state.
“Hello,” I tried for start.
“Hello.”
“I still haven’t finished the washing up.”
“I know.”
“And I’m lying on top of the fresh clothes.”
“I know.”
“Oh, John,” I lamented, reaching up to pull him down into a slightly awkward embrace. “I am a pathetic creature.”
“I don’t know about that,” he insisted, making room for himself on the bed next to me. “But you are a damned stubborn one.”
He did not need to say more, for I read his accusations plainly on his face. I would not permit a housekeeper, yet, I had neither the talent nor the desire to perform my share of the upkeep. I kicked off the quilt and wrapped myself around him properly, resting my head against his shoulder.
“Don’t make yourself too cozy,” cautioned my companion, “It’s nearly suppertime.”
Suppertime. Sunday evening. To be specific, the third Sunday of the month, which fell rather soundly into the category of tasks assigned to me. I groaned at the realization, burying my face further against Watson’s chest and not minding if I looked the petulant child in the process. The arms which embraced me suggested he did not mind either. For all my talents, for all my genius, preparing supper seemed quite beyond me at the moment—the thought of mincing meat or greasing pans turned my stomach.
“Don’t you suppose we had better finish off Mrs. Keeler’s steak and kidney in the cold closet?” asked my kind, forgiving John. I kissed him squarely for this absolution.
I shall not say our meal was excellent. A good block of ice may help prevent it going off, but Wednesday’s pie on Sunday does very little to inspire one’s appetite. I cannot even say the company was excellent, as I was still wading through the fog in which my melancholic outburst had left me. I could not offer much by way of conversation, and though I tried very estimably to inquire about the plot of Watson’s latest reading material, my mind drifted, flitting as a butterfly from one sad thought to another.
It seemed to me very squalid for the two of us, helpless old men as we were, to dine alone at the kitchen table on a Sunday evening, eating Wednesday’s pie. We had no wine to drink, no chance of a client or company to ring our bell, no concerts to attend nor criminals to pursue, not even Mrs. Hudson to surprise us with sticky pudding and brandy. Only the promise of more washing up and another day filled with the same tedious minutiae of the day before. I chased a pea about my plate with my fork and realized we had been sitting in silence.
“There you are,” Watson answered to my looking up, “I’d lost you for a moment.”
“Indeed.” I planted my elbows onto the table—no point to standing on ceremony—and sunk my chin into my hands. “I was just back at Baker Street. I suppose this is what means to be homesick.”
“Is that what it is? Homesickness?” He peered at me with his doctor’s gaze and I think he should have put a hand to my forehead, had the table not been too wide to prevent it. I could not help but smile at his eagerness to fuss over me. No king has ever been treated so well as I am by my John Watson when laid up with a head cold or a spot of flu. I should not have been surprised to be prescribed bedrest with a hot water bottle, even for something as ephemeral as homesickness.
“Perhaps,” I replied. In some ways, it was the truth, as that evening I felt nostalgic for our old life. But I knew the much more likely culprit was something we had both feared: my black moods had finally made the sojourn down from London and caught up with me.
For the first eighteen months of our retirement, change and novelty had been abundant. For someone with no occupation, there seemed always something to be doing—house goods to be acquired, skills to be learned, new people to meet, church jumble sales to attend, public house crowds to entertain with tales of former glory. There was the occasional malaise, of course, or disappointment, but no room for the overwhelming bleakness which consumed me that afternoon. Now that we had settled ourselves, become acquainted to the quaintness of our new lives, it seemed my mind would rebel to the last. I was ready to weep for my misfortunes when Watson rose from the table and took hold of my arm.
“Come on, up with you,” he ordered. His face was set with determination, and in his eyes I caught the mischievous glimmer of a man with a scheme, though I could not for the life of me discern his plan. “On your feet.”
“The dishes—“ I protested, rising all the same.
“They’ll wait for us.”
Watson accepted no excuse and I had no choice but to obey. He urged me onwards towards the kitchen door. I paused at its threshold and made one last appeal, this time for my slippers.
“No slippers,” he insisted and pushed us both through the doorway with a perfunctory: “Out you go.”
The stone steps were cool against my bare feet, and the night air was still sweet with the summer’s floral bounty. The door from our kitchen leads to what would be, in a more complete household, the garden: thoughtful, productive, and manicured as most English gardens ought to be. In our delinquent care, however, Nature has begun to wrest control. The lilac bush has swelled to consume the portico, the lawn is overgrown, and we have let the lavender mingle with the foxgloves, and the hollyhocks with the hydrangeas. I have even encouraged this chaotic germination—the bees seem to relish the variety. On a warm summer’s evening, with the moon bright above, the colorful patchwork does work a certain magic, even upon the prosaic of us, and my heart was lighter for the sight of it.
“Sherlock.”
That voice. That tone. That rumble which ignites along my spine.
I turned and beheld the handiwork of my companion. Watson had taken advantage of my unsolicited doze that afternoon to construct upon our shaggy lawn a sort of Eastern divan of sofa cushions, pillows, and an older quilt, the type of thing I would often construct on the sitting room floor at Baker Street. Usually, it was to aid my thinking, though once or twice, when the household was asleep, the curtains pulled tight, and the sitting room door securely locked, I had pulled him down upon such a nest to proclaim my amorous intent. But never in the open, never in the garden bathed with moonlight, the crickets fiddling softly nearby. Never quite like this.
With a grunt, Watson lowered himself onto the makeshift bed and stretched himself out seductively, or, as seductively as a man of our age with a bad knee and a weak shoulder might manage. I smiled at the sight. I have called him a conductor of light, and this remains true; lying there, he awakened a glow within in me, a brilliance which pushed the darkness of my mood to the very edges of my mind. No doubt my face betrayed my surprise, for he grinned at me with the most charming, intolerable smugness.
“My dear fellow…” I managed to say at last.
I joined him amongst the pillows and we kissed, unashamed and unencumbered. This, I was reminded, it was for this that I had strived, had yearned, had resigned myself to washing up and folding laundry. To feel John’s hand upon my hip and his lips against mine upon the lawn on a summer’s evening, without fear of discovery, or the anxiety of haste. There was no need to hide, nor to hurry.
We took our time undressing, shivering as evening turned to night and tinted the air with chill. In the morning, my back would ache, as would all of John’s joints, but we did not care. My hands slid across him, exploring, as if for the first time, all my favorite curves and fixtures of his anatomy. As my hands wandered, so too did John’s lips, tasting and teasing me: now, along my collarbone; now, my stomach; now, the most intimate, secret places upon me.
He is a clever man, my John, a clever man in possession of divine talents. He knows precisely how to overwhelm my senses, until I can think of nothing but him. In his hands I have learned the unity of the mind and the body, the power and majesty contained in what I once thought of as a weakness. As I passed between his lips, I felt as far and distant from the miserable Holmes of that afternoon as I could.
I gave myself over to him, utterly. First to his tongue, then to his fingers, and finally, to the whole of him. He delighted to turn me to liquid in his arms, to pull sighs from me, to hear me cry out his name to the stars overhead. In the end, I cannot say whose pleasure came first, only that we had made quite a happy mess of ourselves, and certainly given an earful to anyone out late on our lonely road.
“That,” I announced against his lips, “was well worth the price of washing up.”
“I am sorry I harried you this afternoon,” said John in a pause between our kisses.
I smirked, and, unable to help myself, added, “Yes, I should have preferred you roger me.”
John took my face in his hands and gave me his Oh Come, Now, Let’s Be Serious look. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
My dearest Watson—thirty years in my tutelage and still he can so fail to observe.
“It wasn’t that. I—“ I paused, unsure what, precisely, to say. Emotions are strange, amorphous things. They defy definition, squirming out from beneath the observer’s lens. I settled, at last, for this: “I was overwhelmed by how much needs doing.”
John nodded sagely. “It can be a lot for two old men, who are more used to scaling walls and picking locks than they are to scrubbing pots and dusting furniture.”
“Scaling walls and picking locks? Are we burglars?”
“You’ve qualified once or twice.”
Thus reignited a long-standing debate between us regarding the relative legality and morality of some of my less-gentlemanly professional moments. It’s a light-hearted argument, which grows sillier and more grotesque with each passing year. Exaggerations piled onto exaggeration; from Watson’s end, I might be the worst criminal in all of England, from mine, I am a saint. And so we bickered, giggling to ourselves beneath the lilacs as if we were boys. The spell was broken moments later, when John slapped his thigh noisily.
“Damned gnats!” he exclaimed. “I’m going inside before I’m eaten alive.”
I continued my lazy recline as he sat up, gathering his clothes.
“I’d like to stay a while, if you don’t min—oh!” A gnat had chosen that moment to make a meal of my ear, another, of my neck. “Never mind, in we go.”
We packed up our outdoor divan just as the rest of the swarm descended upon us. We escaped into the kitchen, clutching cushions to our chests and swatting at the near-invisible enemies. The infallible beauty of Nature, indeed; I should like to see a poet make a pretty rhyme out of such odious creatures as Ceratopogonidae.
“I’m proud to say my bees have never turned upon us like that,” I remarked once we were settled properly into bed.
“Yes, your bees have more dignity than that.”
“It isn’t a question of dignity; it’s a question of the proper apiarist.”
“Oh yes, none more proper.”
I did not turn to look, but I suspected Watson to be smirking at my expense. I did not mind. We held each other for a while, until sleep would cause one or both of us to roll away, and I was, just then, quite proud of my accomplishments with the bees. I was proud, too, of our modest home, of our simple life. We had not bothered to fold the laundry, but pushed it aside to crawl beneath the bedclothes. It would need to be ironed again. Downstairs, the cushions lay topsy-turvy on the sofa, the supper plates, stacked and waiting in the sink. The endless march.
The next morning, I spoke with Mrs. Keeler. She and Molly come three days a week now, sometimes more, when I need instruction in baking or when one of us is laid up. The black moods do, on rare occasion, return, but my wonderful John divines new ways to help drive them back. Our garden is still messy, and I make it a point on the best, balmy nights of the year to once more lay out our divan across the lawn. In fact, if this warm breeze holds up through supper, I believe I shall do just that.