Prose

Holmes had had his head resting on my shoulder almost the entire train journey from Waterloo; he’d managed even to sleep on the tube between Baker Street and Waterloo, and the Jubilee Line is atrocious at the best of times.

The train had just begun to pull off from Basingstoke when his head slid forward and he jerked awake. I glanced at him, unperturbed, and flipped the page of the magazine I’d been perusing for the past hour. He blinked a couple of times and felt in his pocket for his cigarette pack and lighter. I slapped his wrist smartly and he looked at me in some kind of attempt at a pathetic, puppy dog expression.

“Not until we’re off the train. It’s still illegal, no matter how many letters you write.” He slumped ungracefully against the seat and stared grumpily at the smeared window. I glanced at him with a smirk and rolled my shoulder.

“Watson, you know, I do believe you’re getting more like a nanny every day. It’s almost unbelievable how much you attempt to control me. You follow me around the labs like a puppy and when I go anywhere near a drug you slap my hand. You make sure I don’t smoke in illegal places-”

“That’s for your own good. Both of those are, but do go on.” This was Holmes’ new theory. The years we’d spent holed up in 221b Baker Street solving mysteries – well, Holmes solving mysteries and me there making sure it was legal and that he didn’t overdose between cases – had, I admit, made me more aware of his habits than I’d like, but that wasn’t to say I was nannying him. I was just doing what any friend would do; looking out for him, although Holmes had never really had a friend, so that may have slipped his mind.

“You make sure I eat – my dear Watson, you know I rarely eat when absorbed in a case – and if you hear so much as a violin tuning at 3am you come running into my rooms in your pyjamas
positively threatening me with violence if I don’t go to sleep that instant. The trouble is I’m not sleepy at 3am.”

“Yes, but Mrs Hudson and I are sleepy, Holmes, and violins aren’t the easiest things for sleep to be accompanied by. Especially not the way you play. Why is it that you like atonal tunings so much?”

“That’s a very good question Watson, but I don’t want to talk about music now, my mind is very much occupied by your inability to let a grown man live his life the way he ought.”

“Drunk, drugged and distracted?”

“No…well, yes. But you know I do those to help occupy my mind.”

“Holmes, don’t try to talk down to me, I am, after all, a doctor. Those drugs are NOT meant to be used casually to help keep your mind busy. The cigarettes I can live with but the cocaine I CAN NOT.” By this point I’d noticed my voice gradually growing
louder, and forced myself to calm down for the sake of the others on the train. Holmes was observing me with a distinct air of enjoyment. “The thing is, Holmes, these drugs must be damaging you, not even necessarily physically. If you’d just let me book you in with a counsellor…?”

“I don’t need a counsellor, Watson. I am perfectly fine.” I raised my eyebrows, rolled my eyes, and subsided into silence. Holmes was clearly mulling over my opinions on his drug use, but he kept quiet and watched the window again. Idly, I turned the page of my magazine and started admiring, somewhat wistfully, the hunting rifle displayed on the next page. Even though it had been my decision to remove all forms of guns and hunting from Holmes’ vicinity, it didn’t stop me almost lusting after the clay pigeon shoots and artificial scent-trail fox hunts we’d enjoyed before his propensity towards guns had nearly landed us both in the docks.

With a judder, the train came to a slowing stop at the platform, and through the glass of the station building window, we could see Mycroft standing with his arm wrapped loosely, but tenderly, around the young woman who was his new bride. Holmes started trying to push me from my seat before we’d even reached a complete halt, and I sat one hand on the chair in front, the other on my arm rest in an attempt to make him calm down. He hated family reunions and he’d been dreading this one since he refused his invitation to Mycroft’s wedding three months previously.

He would never admit it, but he was rather intimidated by Mycroft. The youngest by seven years, essentially self-employed, a university drop-out, and perpetually single, his elder brother working for the government – and on occasion being the government, educated to a very high level, newly married…Holmes felt insignificant, even his intelligence was overborn by Mycroft. However, the uses to which the brothers turned their intelligence were so different as to be polar opposites, almost as polar as their personalities.

The instant we were off the train, dragging the enormous suitcases Mrs Hudson had insisted on packing for us – she’d had experience of Winchester before, apparently, and knew that during the summer it was always a couple of degrees warmer than it ought to be, in the winter always a couple of degrees colder, and during spring and autumn it played around and couldn’t make up its mind – Mycroft was commandeering the ticket barriers and easing a way through the hordes heading home for the weekend.

“I told you it would be a bad idea to come last thing on a Friday, Watson.”

“It was your idea, Holmes. How are you, Mycroft? And Jessa, I believe?” She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and Mycroft was pushing forty-five, but they looked happy enough, and they made a thoroughly handsome couple. Mycroft being tall, broad, and a few pounds overweight had presence, and Jessa being petite, beautiful, and apparently a blonde bimbo – to hear Sherlock speak – had charm.