A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (15 page)

“None. I had only to apply myself. It was humdrum, boring police work, beneath the standards of one who fancies himself a ‘consulting detective.’ Once I had them, it was easy to dispose of Mr Kent and Mrs Renfrew by introducing them to Inspector Hopkins. But what to do with the boy was another matter.”

“I’m glad you brought him here.”

“To assuage my worries about being an interfering tin god, I made a point of interviewing Jack first and offering him the choice between continuing with Mr Kent or coming to live with us. I tried to be fair, without giving too many details, about the future benefits to be offered by Mr Kent.”

“Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Jack finds me to be a somewhat dull fellow, although necessary and not without talent. He feels I have been fortunate to have you as my chronicler who would invest the quotidian minutiae of my work with the proper interest, sweep, and humour. It is you that he admires.”

“Really?” I said, with mock satisfaction.

“Young Mr Wright is a fastidious connoisseur of tales about explorers, pirates, spies, and detectives. He especially praises your talent for physical description. Apparently, within the first few pages of most stories, you find place for an evocation of the locale, as we or the client come to or from our initial meeting. Jack holds that such passages involve the reader with the feeling and point of view of the characters and thereby render the subsequent adventure more impressive and exciting. He does not mention deduction as being so important to literary success, not as much as these extra-logical figurative aspects.”

“Little was required. She looked at him, and before six words were out of my mouth she claimed him. By the time she brought him into her kitchen and was feeding him, her ownership was complete. I should warn you that I was not explicit in telling his past to her, or his sexual proclivities, only that he had come under the influence of a criminal from whom I rescued him.”

“He is an invert, then?”

“Very much so. With physical maturity, he becomes fascinated by other boys. This has conflicted with the required activities with Mr Kent, which were neutral to him but now are at once intriguing and disgusting. Yet he feels obliged to Mr Kent. He has been guilty and restless, since he views ‘it’ as being his own fault – although he is not clear about specifically what ‘it’ is that he is supposed to have done wrong.”

“You got him out of there just in time. I will speak to Havelock Ellis about how, as a physician, I can help him.”

“Yes, Watson, I think it wise of you to consult expert opinion. Mr Symonds and Mr Edward Carpenter might also assist. Your interest in the opposite sex has come to you as a matter of course, and you have been so easily successful and healthy in it that I fear you may not appreciate how very difficult it will be for Jack to adjust to his natural need for his own gender. He must learn to hide completely – from everyone and above all from the law – but without learning to hate himself. Then he must learn to discover a mate among the small portion of the population who could return his interest, even though he and his fellow inverts strive to prevent recognition.

“His cheer and openness are lovely features. Society would commit a crime if he were to lose them.”

“Indeed.”

Three more weeks went by. One evening I was sitting in our front room late reading a medical text, and Holmes was out working on a case.

I heard young feet running fast up the stairs. Jack Wright burst through the door without knocking. “Dr Watson, a man downstairs for Mr Holmes, all injured and bloody. His name’s Arthur Tanner and he fainted.”

I jumped up. “Get my medical bag.”

Jack came flying to my side with the bag moments after I reached Tanner. I told him the address where I thought Holmes might be, and gave him money for a hansom. “Go quickly.”

He vanished out the door.

I examined the patient there on the hall floor, moving him as little as possible, and soon concluded that the injuries were not as fatal as they must have looked to Jack. The blood was old and dried. It had come from a bleeding nose and from a scalp abrasion that also sheared off some hair. The loss of blood had caused some shock. Tanner’s twisted position showed that the shoulder was dislocated.

“I’d like to put fluid into him and check that he returns to consciousness. We’ll wake him, make him drink, and give him morphine. Then cut off his jacket and shirt, and put the arm in place.”

“Yes.”

“Jack, get a large glass with juice from the kitchen.”

As Holmes held Tanny up and caressed his hand, I broke an ammonia vial. His eyes opened – frightened, lost, and in pain. I told him, “Tanny, you’re with Holmes and Dr Watson. You’re safe. We’ll put you back to sleep, but first drink this.”

He smiled weakly, I held the glass to his lips, and he drank. Then I pressed the plunger on the syringe. He dropped off rapidly as we began sponging the dried blood.

In the middle of the night, I awoke, worried.

When Holmes said he would “sleep” on the couch, I didn’t take him literally. At a crisis in a case, he might stay awake all night. I found him on the chair in his room watching Tanny sleep. I took the patient’s pulse and laid my hand on his forehead to check his temperature.

In the morning, Holmes was in the front room.

Jack had been stationed with Tanny to keep watch and to make him keep drinking juice. Neither had reason to suspect they shared their former relationship to Mr Kent. As I entered, Jack was perched on the blanket chest facing Tanny propped up on pillows in the bed, and they were engaged in an enthusiastic discussion of the river chase in “The Sign of Four.” They moved to another topic when they heard me come in, but their new exchange as I examined my patient showed no lessening of warmth. They were both highly intelligent, and they had common interests.

Jack’s eyes glittered as they talked. He had seen Tanny step in from the night in front of him. Tanny was mysterious, unexpected, and wounded, the living embodiment of a character out of a melodramatic tale of Sherlock Holmes. Tanny’s pallor and temporarily disfiguring injuries must only have heightened the effect of his fine good looks and sophistication.

Tanny, for his part, easily assumed the role of an older friend. He too seemed to enjoy their conversation, but to be mildly embarrassed. He tried to evade the boy’s more obvious expressions of idolatry, but without deflating his dreams.

Holmes allowed time for me to finish my examination. Then he came in and ejected Jack from our apartment so we would have privacy to speak with Tanny. We did not worry that Jack would surreptitiously overhear our conversations, for the boy had tried that once, unsuccessfully, and Holmes had sufficiently frightened him.

Now Holmes took up Jack’s former position, cross-legged on the chest, and he gazed severely down on Tanny. “Tell us.”

Tanny was under the covers, dressed in an old night shirt belonging to Holmes. The shirt fit poorly but did not diminish his magnetism. Though weak, he was in an immensely good humour and refused to let Holmes dampen it. He said, “I’m really very, very pleased to see both of you.”

“Please, don’t scold me, Mr Holmes. It is undeserved. Two things: first, I’ve taken to heart the advice you gave me last time; and second, I therefore need your services as a detective.”

“All right, apparently the price of getting you to listen to me and help me is that I first have to satisfy your morbid curiosity by telling this unrelated tale. So I will.

“There is a disparity between rich and poor in modern England. A man who hires me can be generous; there are issues he thinks of more than money. One is discretion. Another is decency. He has lived among people who regard his very nature as degraded and despicable, he has kept himself secret, and the need for secrecy has prevented him forming any lasting attachment. An evening with me is more than release of passion, it is an interval of freedom – and normality. Our meeting is invisible to others, even as we sit naturally together in a public restaurant; but to me he can be himself, to a fellow invert who looks good and converses intelligently. A few clients might be either sentimental or brutish, but most would no more be rude to me than to their grocer or their doctor. They try to be friendly. I, for my part, have every reason to fall in with this and no reason for dishonesty.

“Last night, I tried the lobby of the hotel at Liverpool Street. The man I found there was one of the exceptions. At first he seemed all right. Then, as we ate dinner, he more and more seemed stupid and inconsiderate. I let myself become distracted from him. I have no close friends and little personal life outside my thoughts. Without viewing it that way, I do limit myself to my room and my work. Last night, listening to the lout in front of me, that didn’t seem promising.

“Allow me to explain briefly the matters I was musing about then and about which I hope we will speak more. I hadn’t returned to visit you because I was at a practical impasse. First of all, I should apologize. I had a foolish infatuation for you then, Mr Holmes, and had been trailing you, hoping to get your attention. You were right to turn me away that night, though I was angry and disappointed at the time. It was not foolish because of you, but because of me. You, in yourself, would be most excellent as an object of my affections, but my affections are completely, if impossibly, given elsewhere – if only I would come to terms with them.”

I must say that Holmes reacted with equanimity enough to the boy’s blunt, open confession of his forbidden passions. My friend nodded his head in sympathy, with an expression indicating he knew and understood.

Tanner continued, “You advised me to find a young man like myself whose love I could share. There was – and is – one my age, Eric Selden, with whom I want that dearly. But he rode away in a carriage with a handsome, wealthy man. Since then, he has vanished from the soil of England. I love Eric. I am doubly cursed in that I cannot find him again and, if I could, he likely does not love me – although I cannot think it true that he does not.

“Then, last night as I was eating dinner, the idea struck me that perhaps your powers could see though this and sort it out.”

This distressed me. There seemed so little chance for Tanny to find honest love. Also, Holmes was a detective, not a matrimonial agency with advice for the lonely.

But Holmes looked serious and reassuring. He said, “Tanny, please finish the story of last night, and then tell me about your Eric.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes… This new idea elated me, and I resolved to visit you the next morning. I was so carried away with these thoughts that I made a mistake. I agreed to go with the client to a party. It is usually safe to be with a client in a hotel room because any ruckus will bring unwelcome notice. But a cab, or a carriage, or a private house can mean danger.

“As we came to Newgate Street, traffic made the cab slow a little. I took my chances and leapt out. He caught me by one trouser leg, and I spun into the kerbstone with a hammer blow to my head and a piercing pain in my shoulder. Nonetheless, I got up as quickly as I could and made away. There were too many people on the street for him to pursue me without attention. I slowed and began to walk here.”

This outraged me. “You walked all the way here? In that condition? It’s the same route we walked down Oxford Street the night you met us, and an even greater distance!”

Tanny was still calm, despite my wrath. “I was perhaps a little delirious…and all I could think about was the new-found chance of eventually seeing Eric.”

I retorted, “You might have gone to St. Bart’s, almost next door to where you were. They would have tended your injuries before you bled so much.”

“And they would have wondered about the source of those injuries. You forget, Dr Watson, that both as an invert and as a prostitute I avoid situations where I might be asked questions. At the moment you mention, I happened to be opposite the cold, menacing stone walls of Newgate Prison, and those walls urged me to stay away.”