A Lady's Chamber

by Andrea Johnson

I was watching my glass-fronted observation hive in the Great Room when it happened. I had decided it was nearly time to fix a frame atop the honeycombs to make room for a new one when I heard the most extraordinary atonal buzzing, urgently exciting, signifying a momentous change.

For a moment I thought the sound came from the mass of orange and black blanketing that thick comb. Then I realized that it came from somewhere else in the room. I whirled, prepared to confront the swarm of bees that had somehow invaded the cottage.Instead, I saw my young son coaxing an ode to the bee from his child-size violin. His bow sawed away at the strings with lightning speed. The instrument in his small hands hummed with passionate energy, prodded its listeners to war and revolt. And yet, the boy had only just turned four.

I stood there for a moment, shocked by the force of nature Russell and I had created. This was no life for his father to mould into the pattern I had chosen for it, as my father had attempted to mould mine. The only possible response to such talent was awe and reverence. How had we produced this?

"Art in the blood does take the strangest forms," I murmured thoughtfully.

And then Jack ended the piece with a flourish, propped the violin (one-thirty-second the size of an adult violin) against the fireplace, and was once again only a small boy. He stood there grinning at me like a dog. He had his mother's smile, a flash of radiant life that warmed me to the core.

"I fooled you!" Jack said in delight. "Did you think the bees were swarming, Father?"

"I did indeed," I managed. "However did you think of it?"

Jack shrugged elaborately, his nonchalance doing nothing to conceal his great pride.

"I played what I hear," he said. "That's how the queen bee would sound if she could play the violin, don't you think?"

Then he giggled.

"It sounds sort of like Judy too, doesn't it? Buzz, buzz, buzz."

Charles John Jacob Sherlock Holmes was the somewhat ponderous name we chose for our son. Three of these names were given in honor of his maternal grandfather, his parents' dear friend Watson and (despite my dismayed protests) his father. The fourth was chosen simply because his mother liked it. As it was, we called him by none of these names. He was "Jack" from his first hours.

His temperament was intense and mercurial; his interests and his friendships wide-ranging. His artistic nature demanded exhaustive detail. He wanted to know the exact shade of the lavender in the garden so that he might attempt to reproduce it with his paints. He needed to taste the difference between one plate of food at the breakfast table and another. This latter habit was of no small annoyance to his elder sister, who wished to dine at table without interference.

Small wonder that he should reproduce with exactitude the rage of an angry queen and of a sister driven beyond endurance by brotherly teasing. I was amused in spite of myself by this comparison, though I knew Judith would not be.

"Girls are silly!" Jack said with a grin. "I'm never going to get married."

I seated myself in the basket chair before the fireplace and patted my knee.

"I said as much once upon a time," I said ruefully, remembering a detective who claimed strong emotion interfered with rational thought, like grit in a sensitive instrument. "Come here, my lad."

Jack scrambled noisily onto my lap and wrapped one arm around my neck. I noted that his face was still sticky with stolen honey from the breakfast table.

Looking at him sometimes startled me. He so closely resembled myself at the same age that it was like catching sight of myself in my grandmother's gilded mirror nearly seventy years before.

"Father? Why do girls always get SO mad?" Jack inquired.

"Many persons of the male sex would also be annoyed to have their bread and honey snatched from their plate," I pointed out.

Jack's gray eyes twinkled at the memory of that morning's deviltry. I ruffled his dark brown hair.

"Ruffian!" I said. "A little pretended remorse would help you avoid further reprisals."

"But she started it!" Jack protested. This I did not doubt.

"Sometimes the female of the species is angry for good reason," I added. "The world is not always kind to women."

"Why not?" Jack inquired, tipping his head back against my chest and looking into my face.

I saw that my son was honestly puzzled. For him, his sister was a worthy opponent, one who often bested him because of the advantage her increased years and size gave her. Judith and Jack wrestled like young kittens, testing their strength against one another and then falling into an exhausted, giggling heap.

It was one of Russell's accomplishments that Jack could not imagine a world in which women did not play a dominant role. His mother and our housekeeper Mrs. Hudson were also strong figures. Six months before he had seen his nanny, Jean Carmichael, fire a warning shot at an old enemy of ours who thought our children unprotected and easy prey with their parents gone on another case.

Mycroft had suggested Mrs. Carmichael as a suitable nanny for children of parents such as Russell and myself. He had been proven right. The (female) villain was now in prison and Mrs. Carmichael's salary had been substantially increased.

"The world is unkind to women for many reasons," I told my son, still hearing his composition buzzing in my ears.

It seemed to me that he had tapped into the underlying song of our age. Such purposeful anger, pregnant with intent, would not remain confined for long. The hive was about to swarm. War was coming. Women would demand greater equality and men would resist. My son and daughter would live in a changed world, one I would perhaps never see.

"Few of those reasons are fair, however," I told Jack.

"Was Mummy ever angry with you?" Jack inquired.

I smiled slightly at the memory of a scarred nineteen-year-old, snapping and snarling, trying to provoke me to battle so that she might have a reason to leave me. And less than two years later, a locked bedroom door, the furious young woman behind it pacing back and forth like a bee queen trapped within a self-imposed prison cell, fighting both herself and me.

"Oh, yes," I said.

"Why?" Jack asked, wiggling a little on my lap. I did not respond. The answers seemed far too confusing.

Jack waited a moment and then posed another impossible question.

"What did you do when Mummy was angry with you?" Jack asked. "Judy hits hard."

Jack rubbed his arm and winced after this comment. I felt the corners of my mouth twitch. It was sometimes said that the female of the species was the most deadly. Russell's open-handed "lady's slap" had considerable force behind it, as I found out on one occasion.

"Sometimes subtlety is called for; at other times a situation requires that you confront a woman's anger directly," I said obliquely.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Jack asked, looking disgruntled.

His expression said he wanted pointers on how to win his next battle with his sister, not philosophizing.

I chuckled, remembering the wooing of his mother with very private satisfaction.

"Remember this, Jack, for when you are older: Faint heart never won fair lady. For now, don't tease your sister or you will continue to feel her sting."

Jack sighed.

"Mrs. Hudson is always saying, 'Don't tease your sister.' But where's the fun in that?"

"Jack," I said firmly.

"Oh, very well," Jack said, grinning wickedly. "I promise I'll be nice to her. Today, anyway."

It seemed Jack was not destined for a quiet life, I mused to myself as my son slid off my lap and ran off in search of his sister.

Later that evening, I smoked a pipe in front of the fire, pondering the news reports from Germany and the latest intelligence from Mycroft. My great-nephew, Julian Vernet, had provided us with valuable intelligence and was once again deep undercover in Germany. He had met our young friend Jessica Simpson the summer before and married her six months later. Now she was expecting their first child, a child who might be raised without a father. The future was uncertain everywhere.

Yet life continued and I could not help but be glad of it. Russell arrived home from Oxford late that afternoon and surprised the children with gifts from a friend in India. Jack and Judith played harmoniously together with a pair of carved ivory elephants for much of the evening.

Then, inevitably, Peaches the cat chased one of the elephants under the sofa and Jack burst into exhausted tears and had to be carried upstairs to bed, protesting all the way.

Eight-year-old Judith was resplendent in a teal blue silk salwar kameez, the loose pants and long-flowing tunic that are traditional to India. The outfit called forth the memory of a blazing Indian sun, the gentle chime of bells and the scent of saffron. I told her stories of India as I fingered the remaining ivory elephant and examined hints of the Far East in the décor of the Great Room. A length of orange and red sari silk embroidered with lotus flowers was arranged atop a trunk here; a small gold statue of Krishna sat on a bookshelf there. Someday, the child told me, she would visit this far away country herself.

Judith resisted sleep a scant fifteen minutes longer than her brother. Now she was sprawled in the basket chair before the fire, her lanky, half-finished frame lax with sleep. I remembered the bees and her ambitions as her brother's composition buzzed in my head. I couldn't help but wonder what dangers lurked in the future to snatch happiness from her grasp. I rose and went to knock my pipe out against the stones of the hearth. I feared that our future might also be ashes.

Yet Russell's footsteps on the stairs recalled me to the pleasures of the present. Tonight my wife wore a blue and gold silk sari, another gift from her friend Gayatri. It reminded me of the early days of our marriage and a fancy dress ball aboard a ship en route to India. How Russell had cursed the yards of silk that came undone about her slim body in our cabin and refused to be held secure even by my emerald stick pin.

But how I had enjoyed the slow unraveling of the sari's silk, I thought.

"I thought Jack would never fall asleep," Russell said in exasperation. "Now I think he has finally gone away to dream land."

She paused when she saw my expression.

"What amuses you, my husband and colleague?" she said with a quirk of an eyebrow.

I gestured towards the sleeping Judith.

"Good God, Russell, look at her," I drawled. "She'll have half the stalwart sons of England at her feet. Lucky for her she took after you, eh?"

I permitted my eyes to travel slowly up and down my wife's slim form, letting her know how well the sight of her pleased me.

Russell snorted in amusement.

"Now, Holmes," she teased. "We are both well aware that brains and spirit are of greater use to a woman of the twentieth century. And those, my dear husband, she has in great abundance from the both of us."

Russell knelt and gathered the half-grown girl into her arms with that surprising strength of hers. The child stirred and murmured something unintelligible. She wrapped her long legs around her mother's waist and buried her sleepy face in Russell's neck. The golden hair spilling down her back was the same shade as Russell's.

"I had a conversation with our son today on that very subject," I told my wife.

"Oh?" Russell said, smoothing Judith's long hair. "And what conclusion did the two of you reach on this matter?"

"That brains and spirit are greatly to be admired in a woman of the twentieth century," I said. "And, I may add, such stalwart qualities in our women provide us poor males with ample entertainment value."

Russell grinned.

"I suppose you would like me to shave," I added softly.

"Please do," Russell said. "I will endeavor to provide the entertainment value if you allow me a moment to settle the daughter of the house."

"I will be waiting for you," I said with a smile.

As she turned towards the stairs, I pondered the twists and turns that fate had taken since a meeting on the downs all those years ago and because I had dared to enter a lady's chamber.

Then, putting the pending war and the uncertainties of the future aside, I went to shave.