The Last of August

We didn’t go to the Tate that next morning. We didn’t sneak out for breakfast on a couple hours’ sleep, as we’d done in the days before. We packed in silence, Holmes pale in her dressing gown and socks, and after we said good-bye to my mother and my teary little sister, we walked to the station in silence. We rode to Sussex in a private compartment, her face turned resolutely to the window. I pretended to read my novel, and then stopped pretending. I wasn’t fooling her, or anyone.

When we finally got off the train at Eastbourne, a black car was waiting for us at the curb.

Holmes turned to me, hands stuffed in her pockets. “This will be fine,” she murmured. “You’ll be there, so it’ll be fine.”

“It would probably help the whole ‘fine’ thing if we were, you know, talking to each other.” I tried not to sound as hurt as I felt.

She looked surprised. “I always want to talk to you,” she said. “But I know you. You always want to make things better, and I don’t know how us talking to each other right now will do anything but make it worse.”

As the driver came around to take our luggage, she patted my shoulder in her absent way and stepped down to say hello. I stood there holding my suitcase, furious at her for deciding on silence as a way to handle this. For making every decision. She treated me like I was her pet, I thought, and it came over me in waves, the kind of world-splitting lostness I hadn’t felt in months.

It was that same feeling that had gotten me into the whole mess that was Charlotte-Holmes-and-Jamie-Watson to begin with, and I wasn’t so far gone as to not appreciate the irony.

HER PARENTS WEREN’T WAITING FOR US WHEN WE GOT TO the house, which was fine by me. I didn’t think I could manage to be friendly to them, or anyone. A housekeeper met us instead, a neat, quiet woman my mother’s age. She took our coats and showed us down to Holmes’s rooms, and it was dark by the time we finished the lunch she brought down to us on a tray.

That night, after my impromptu lesson on European history, that same housekeeper produced a wooden box for me to stand on while she hemmed Milo’s too-long pants, a length of measuring tape draped over her shoulders. She’d been the only person in Holmes’s room when I returned with my suit. As I stood awkwardly, trying not to fidget, I tried to imagine where Holmes was hiding. Maybe shooting pool in a billiards room, or feeling her way blindfolded through some family obstacle course, the way Holmeses were rumored to train their kids. Maybe she was eating chocolate biscuits in the closet.

“Finished,” the housekeeper said finally. She stood up to survey her work with some satisfaction. “You look very handsome, Master Jamie. The open collar suits you.”

“Oh God,” I said, tugging on my cuffs. “Please don’t call me that. Do you know where H— where Charlotte is?”

“Upstairs, I imagine.”

“There’s a lot of upstairs here.” I had a vision of myself wandering aimlessly through their house in a borrowed suit. Speaking of obstacle courses. “Second floor? Third? Fourth? Uh . . . is there a fourth?”

“Try her father’s study,” she said, holding the door open. “Third floor, east wing.”

I think it might have taken less time for me to get from London to Sussex, but I found his study at last, at the end of a mullioned hall hung with portraits. This wing felt older, darker than the rest of the house. The paintings glowered down at me. In one, Holmes’s father and his siblings were clustered around a table piled high with books. Alistair Holmes looked just like his daughter, serious and withdrawn, hands folded before him. The one with the rakish smile was clearly Leander, I thought. I wondered if he’d arrived yet, and hoped he had.

“Come in, already,” said a muffled voice from behind the study door, though I hadn’t knocked. Of course they knew I was there. There were secrets in this house, it was clear, but I wasn’t going to be able to keep any of my own.

I reached for the handle, then stopped. I hadn’t noticed this final portrait. Beside me, Sherlock Holmes sat with pursed lips and a magnifying glass clutched in one hand, clearly annoyed by the whole enterprise of being painted, at having to do his best impression of himself for someone else’s benefit. Dr. Watson, my great-great-great-grandfather, stood behind him. He rested a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder.

I could’ve taken it as a sign that everything would be okay. But I looked at that hand for a long minute and wondered how many times Sherlock Holmes had tried to shake it off. Watsons, I thought, generations of masochists, and pushed open the door.

The room was dimly lit. It took my eyes a moment to adjust. A massive desk stood in its center, and behind it, bookshelves spread out like wings. Sitting in front of all that collected knowledge was Alistair Holmes, his canny eyes fixed on me.

I liked him immediately, though I knew I shouldn’t. By all accounts, he’d driven his daughter half to death with his training and expectations. But he knew me. I could tell by the cataloguing look on his face, one I’d seen on Charlotte Holmes time and time again. He saw me for what I was, a flustered middle-class boy in a borrowed suit, and yet he didn’t judge. Honestly, I didn’t think he cared about my social class one way or another. After the emotional turmoil of the last few days, it was nice to encounter a little impassivity.

“Jamie,” he said in a surprising tenor. “Please, sit. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“You too.” I perched in the armchair across from him. “Thanks so much for letting me stay with you.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">