by A S Croyle
Oscar prattled on about his new associations with other celebrities and a collection of poems he was working on. When we finished lunch, I asked him if he wanted to walk with me to St. Bart’s.
“Walk?” he scoffed.
I laughed. Oscar would rather hail a hansom cab to cross the street than walk.
When I was ready to leave, I kissed his cheek, and he touched my arm. “Wait, Poppy. I have something to tell you before you go,” he said quietly. I sat back down.
“What is it, Oscar?”
“My Florence is engaged to marry someone else.”
“Oh, my God, Oscar, I am so sorry. Who?”
“Abraham Stoker. Well, he calls himself ‘Bram’ now. His father died two years ago, and I think it was a way of freeing himself from his father’s shadow. I knew him at Trinity. We were friends, or so I thought.” His tone was bitter and it was obvious that this turn of events had thrown him into a melancholy.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“He lives at St. Stephen’s Green now, but they are to be married this December, and they are moving to London. He’s travelled quite a bit and published short stories and a non-fiction work about the duties of clerks of Petty Sessions - that’s his occupation, some civil servant position. A year or so ago, he started doing theatre critiques, and he gave a favourable review of a production of Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Henry Irving was the star. Bram and Irving struck up a friendship and apparently, Irving has convinced Bram to move to London and become acting manager and business manager at Irving’s Lyceum Theatre here. Florence told me that he is a gentleman with a permanent job and a steady income, whereas life with me would be filled with uncertainty.
“So, Poppy, now I know how Victor felt when you tossed him aside for Sherlock. I understand why he sailed off to India.”
As my face grew hot, I glanced sideways. “Oscar, I did not toss-”
But he cut me off.
“Of course, I did not move to London to get away from the pain - and that would have been an irony, wouldn’t it, considering they are moving here. But I understand Victor’s need to extricate himself from the situation. India is a bit far for an escape but...” He heaved a sigh. “At least Stoker is marrying Florence.”
He paused and threaded his fingers through my hair as if he were admiring a ribbon of fine, black silk. “But Sherlock will never marry, Poppy. Not even you. So do not stay under his shadow.”
I pulled back and looked away. I need not be reminded of Sherlock’s brick barrier to emotions.
He clasped his hands over mine. “Poppy, look at me.”
Reluctantly, I turned to face him.
“You know I am the last person on Earth to criticize nonconformity. I am endeavouring to master the art of nonconformity and the unconventional. To set my own rules and live the life I want. Sherlock annoys me at times, but I also respect him because he, too, sets his own rules. And your independent streak... I applaud it. But you should be cautious. Send him out of your life.”
Suddenly the room felt grey and grizzled, covered in fog. I felt as if I were spiraling and tumbling down a slippery slope of slimy mud.
He withdrew his hands from mine and reached into a rucksack. He retrieved a leather-bound journal.
“I have been waiting for the right time to give you this. Effie gave it to me just before she died and told me to give it to you only when I felt sure you had the strength to read it. I’m still reluctant. I know that it has been well over a year, but you were devastated by her untimely death and still mourn her. But you need to have it. It is her journal and contains happy memories... and predictions, of course.”
I took the journal from him and ran my thumb over the beautiful tan leather binding. It had the O’Flahertie coat of arms emblazoned on the cover, marbled edges, five raised bands and gilt lettering on the spine. I looked up but Oscar’s face had disappeared into the fog my mind created. Instead I saw a translucent figure, buried in shadow, like a nymph who lives in the fairy wood. A beautiful woman with golden hair and billowing sleeves slipping down her soft shoulders and acres of fabric drifting behind her. I blinked and she was gone.
I thanked Oscar, then rose to leave. He touched my hand and repeated, “Poppy, be wise. Get out of Sherlock’s shadow.”
I hurried away as my eyes welled up, and I kept trying not to lose control, trying to act as if my grief belonged to someone else.
As I made my way to St. Bart’s, I was reminded of the many long walks I’d taken recently with Sherlock since that tutorial in ash. He was determined to build a mental grid of every inch of London.
Occasionally, during these long walks, he would take hold of my hand. When he did this, my heart would abruptly beat so fast I feared he could actually see it swelling in my chest.
I would find myself day-dreaming about how wonderful it would be if I were truly a part of Sherlock’s life, not just an assistant, not just the woman he almost gave his heart to. I was reminded again that “almost” is harder and that I should take Oscar’s advice... simply walk away, not allow myself to settle for this. But I still wanted to be with Sherlock, to make sure he ate properly, to fill those voids when he had no urgent problem to solve and feared stagnation, so was tempted to resort to cocaine and chain smoking and too much claret or port. I truly was not greedy for the kind of happiness my parents or my aunt and uncle shared. At least, I told myself that I would gladly ask no more from life than those moments when Sherlock acknowledged me as something more than a colleague, for no more than days and nights by his side. Each of our afternoon promenades was a succession of victories for me as I attempted to plant the seeds of a lasting relationship, the kind to which he had alluded just before Victor found us in an embrace.
The region of sadness I entered after these walks was distinct from that in which I had lived constantly in my long absence from his presence. Now the episodes were sporadic, and I hurled myself with great joy into the walks, the visits to the lab when he would display ashes, some black as soot, some green ones, some brown... and the occasions when he joined me, my uncle and aunt for dinner. The desires and goals and dreams I had nurtured - to be a medical doctor, to be a wife and mother - seemed very far behind me whenever I was in Sherlock’s company. I believe I would have given it all up in order to be able to fall asleep each night in his arms. But his control over his emotions was not just an exterior layer of granite; it was embedded deeply now, necessary to his existence. He could be charming and reserved in the space of a breath. He could be happy as a young bird taking flight one moment and crabby as a hansom coachman the next, sensitive and antisocial in the space of a heartbeat.
Yet there were tender moments between us. One afternoon - it was late and the pink ribbons of sunlight danced off the glass plate windows like the moon bouncing off the ripples of a river in The Broads - I stumbled on the cobblestone and fell into him. I saw our silhouette in a window, the two of us pressed against each other. I wanted to stay that way, clamped in his embrace until the sun slipped beneath the horizon, until twilight faded into night, until the globe rose again and the lark’s song heralded morning. In such moments, I saw not the Sherlock that other people knew but the one I wished he would return to someday, the one that had surfaced in the idle hours we had spent by the river in The Broads, the one who tutored me in vintage wines, the one who asked me to dance in Victor’s ballroom, a memory now so brief and vague yet so sweet a residue.
Sherlock needed to make only one concession - to be what he wanted to be with everyone except me. But I feared that moment would never arrive. And to see him vexed would destroy all the calm he had brought me the moment before. But those times, however short, when he brought me into the game, into the riddle, were still sweet compared to those when, because he was resolute in never again succumbing to his emotions or physical needs, he - seemingly effortlessly - with
drew from me completely for days on end.
One afternoon, sitting near the fountain at St. Bart’s, I’d tried to broach the subject with him. I told him we could do much good if we worked together, hinting that I meant as a ‘couple’ and he responded, “Oh, Poppy, you can be far too idealistic... and altruistic.”
I said, “Perhaps, and I know neither are always rewarded. But what you do is so grim and relentless.”
“Ah, but immensely satisfying.”
“Sherlock, together we-”
“Oh, come now, Poppy, one cannot tie up life neatly with a shiny bow and glitter. I swear you would try to wave a magic wand across the belly of this beast we call London and give every day a happy ending. As if we could have a happy ending.”
“But you need not go it alone. Life is-”
“Life is monotonous,” he interrupted. “Predictable. Melancholy.”
“Sherlock, this is what I mean. You must keep who you are at the centre. Do not let boredom affect you so, or be so permeated with a sense of dread that you lose yourself in cocaine or worse. Please do not let the evil you crave to extinguish seep into your own soul. It’s important that you do not stare so long into the abyss that you become what you have beheld.”
He simply stared at me as if he thought I’d lost my mind.
At such times, after such exchanges, when night descended, came with it involuntary tears that fell more quickly than I could wipe them away. For always, I was alone in my bed, engulfed in the solitude, and my only consolation was the memory of our night in the cottage. That was when I would hear our soft murmuring, our gentle laughter, the chords and melodies of that ancient dance. I wished so much that the memory of that one lovely night would transform into my life’s most painful moment, so that I could close the door to it forever. But it never did.
To what state of mind had he brought me? To what level of anguish would my affections take me? I could no longer picture myself out of Sherlock’s life. I could no longer comprehend a life without him in it. Sometimes he made me tremble. He was like a fever.
8
It was not yet three o’clock when I entered St. Bart’s quadrangle. It held the same awe and wonder it always had, despite the fact that I knew I would never be hired as a surgeon by the hospital. In operation since medieval times, it was the oldest hospital in all of England - though those at St Thomas, where I’d attended nursing school before I became a physician, would beg to differ. My uncle said that the inscription and date over the old surgery at the corner of Duke Street, ‘Liber Fundacionis,’ was conclusive evidence that 1123 was the true year of St. Bart’s foundation. But St. Thomas had also provided healthcare since the twelfth century. As early as 1215, it was already described as ‘ancient,’ but it was named for St. Thomas Becket, suggesting that it was founded after Becket was canonized in 1173. Supporters of St. Thomas Hospital’s claim to being England’s oldest hospital said it was only renamed in 1173 and that there was an infirmary at the Priory as early as 1106, pre-dating St. Bart’s. The debate continues.
By the mid-seventeen hundreds, St. Bart’s consisted of four buildings: the church of Little St. Bartholomew, the outpatient department, the residential quarters of the medical school, and the medical school. In 1859, the pump in the centre of the square that had provided clean water to the hospital was replaced with the fountain. Sherlock and I both loved the fountain, and often we would meet there before meandering to wherever it was he needed to go.
I took a seat on the bench near the fountain, intending to read some of Effie’s journal, but the welcoming breeze from the well-grown trees that adorned the quadrangle made me close my eyes, remembering the way the change of seasons affected The Square, as it was called by the locals. I always looked forward to the changes in the seasons, especially autumn when the turning leaves added so much colour to The Square. The hum of the wind gave way to murmurations of starlings and house sparrows. Sometimes there were pigeons and rooks and jackdaws in the branches. When Uncle told my father that someone on the roof of the hospital had sighted peregrine falcons on the weathercock of the church of St. Michael Queenhite, Papa, an avid birdwatcher, took the train to London at a moment’s notice. Poor Papa, he stayed three days at Uncle’s house, walking each day to the hospital in hopes of spotting a falcon, but never caught even a glimpse.
I let my mind drift back to memories of this place, this almost-hallowed place that I’d started visiting in my childhood and that, with my uncle’s assistance, I now knew like the back of my hand. While I appreciated having had the opportunity to attend the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas, it was St. Bart’s that felt like home.
My first memory was when I was just a little girl, perhaps four or five, and Uncle Ormond would take me by the hand or put me on his shoulders and point out various things of historical significance at the hospital. We had stopped at the great gate in the middle of the Smithfield front, and he had pointed to an inscription. “This front was rebuilt anno 1702 in the first year of Queen Anne–Sir William Pritchard Knight and Alderman President; John Nicou, Esq. Treasurer.” On the course above the inscription are the words, “Founded by Rahere,” who built the priory and associated hospital in fulfillment of a vow to the apostle and in thanks for his miraculous recovery from malaria. Rahere believed that Bartholomew had come to him in a vision and promised that prayers for healing made in his church would always be heard and answered.
And thus was the beginning of St. Bart’s, a place that has given solace to the poor and dispossessed of London since its establishment in the twelfth century.
Unlike most physicians during the time he was a young aspirant, Uncle Ormond had first dedicated himself to his studies to become a physician and later turned to surgery. In times past, physicians tended to attain a medical degree while surgeons apprenticed, like trades people. He had done both, and then briefly served as a ship’s surgeon before becoming a house physician and surgeon at the hospital. Since his first day, he’d taken an intense interest in St. Bart’s history and his study contained stacks of journals with notes about the inscriptions, renovations and the hundreds of physicians who had practiced here for centuries.
Uncle’s journals documented most everything. There is a statue of King Henry VIII in the niche of the archway, with two pillars on each side and the figures of patients. In between the figurines is a window with an ornate canopy which contains a clock. On that first trip to the hospital, Uncle pointed out a map of the reign of James I and an engraving executed after the building of the Smithfield gate but before the reconstruction of the hospital in 1728. We went into the church and then walked the pathway leading to the hospital and the Great Hall. I saw where the cloisters had been and we visited the garden of the hospital, called the Garden dorter, to the right of what once was the monks’ sleeping area.
Uncle particularly liked discovering little facts about his predecessors and had compiled long lists of their names and accomplishments. But my study of his journals focused on the architecture, artwork and engravings scattered throughout St. Bart’s, like the windows in the church and the panels dedicated to famous people.
My reverie was interrupted when a young man tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “May I join you?”
He had a beard, close-set eyes, a long, hawk-like nose that reminded me of Sherlock, dark wavy hair, parted in the middle, and long side-burns on both sides of his thin face. I guessed him to be about thirty years of age.
I shrugged and said, “If you wish.”
“I shan’t disturb you,” he said as he sat down and opened a journal. Then he proceeded to do so by asking, “Do you come here often?”
“Yes, I find the fountain soothing.”
“As do I. I like to sit on the edge in summer evenings and read Theocritus. Even on busy days, it seems none of the noise of the city penetrates The Square. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, it
is so wonderfully quiet.”
Years later, I would ponder that observation for the roar of war disturbed the lovely stillness of The Square in World War I. A bomb was dropped on Bartholomew Close and struck stone posts of the Little Britain gate, leaving its mark and passing through two wooden doors into the matron’s office. Again, during the London Blitz of 1940, bombs severely damaged the chapel.
For a few minutes, we sat in silence but then my curiosity compelled me to speak. I closed Effie’s journal and asked, “What are you writing there, if I may ask?”
He looked up and smiled at me. “A hospital report about the events of this morning.” He sighed. “Quite the morning it’s been. Nearly driven to madness.”
Driven to madness? I thought. Perhaps he has made Sherlock’s acquaintance.
“Is it not always a bit maddening? My uncle works here.”
He gave my face closer scrutiny. “Of course. You are Dr. Sacker’s niece. I’ve seen you when you visit him here. And you also know Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“I do.”
“He’s a bit... odd.”
I sucked in a breath. “A bit. But he is brilliant.”
Sherlock was a polarizing force, but while weary of him at times, I also felt a need to protect him, for to preserve something - someone - so original, so invested in erudition and the science of deduction, someone who could so effortlessly invert the rules, seemed to come naturally to me.
The man shuffled through a sheaf of papers and began writing again.
“So, you were telling me about your mad morning. How went it, sir? You look tired.”
