The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [131]
“Yes. I will see him. This afternoon, in fact.”
He mistook the hint of excitement in my voice for nervousness, and reached over to pat my soft scholar’s hand with his big, calloused one.
“Don’t you worry. Just remind yourself that you’re not yoked to him, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’ll do that, Patrick, and thank you.”
had arranged to be at Holmes’ cottage at four o’clock, knowing that tea was Mrs. Hudson’s favorite meal to produce. There was a farm cart overturned on the road, which made me some-what late, but at a quarter past four I pulled the car into his gravel drive and shut off the motor. The sound of Holmes’ violin came to my ears. The violin is by its very nature one of the most melancholy of in-struments when played alone; played as Holmes was doing, a slow and tuneless meditation, it was positively heart-wrenching. I slammed the car door noisily to interrupt and retrieved the basket of cheeses and fruits I had brought from Oxford. When I straightened up, the door of the cottage was open, and Holmes was leaning against the door jamb, no expression on his face.
“Hello, Russell.”
“Hello, Holmes.” I walked up the path trying to discern what was behind those hooded grey eyes, and failing. I stood below him on the doorstep and held out the basket. “I brought you and Mrs. Hudson a few things from Oxford.”
“That was nice of you, Russell,” he said politely, voice and eyes say-ing nothing. He stepped back into the room to let me pass. “Please come in.”
I took the basket through into the kitchen and somehow survived Mrs. Hudson’s welcome without breaking down into tears. I allowed myself to embrace her, hard, and let my lip quiver slightly to let her know that I was still Mary Russell, and then became polite again.
She laid out vast quantities of food for us and talked on and on about the ship and the Suez Canal and Bombay and her son’s family while I filled my plate with morsels I did not want.
“How did you hurt your head, Mary?” she finally asked me.
I decided to make a joke out of it, the absentminded undergraduate walking smack into the lightpost, but it didn’t really succeed as hu-mour. Mrs. Hudson smiled uncomfortably and said she was glad the glass hadn’t hurt my eye, and Holmes watched me as if I were a speci-men under his microscope. She excused herself and left us alone.
Holmes and I drank our tea and pushed the food around on our plates. I told him what I had been doing that term, and he asked a few questions. Silence crept heavily in. I desperately asked him what he had been working on, and he described an experiment going on in his laboratory. I asked some questions to keep the flow of words going, and he answered, without much interest. Finally he put his cup down and gestured vaguely in the direction of his laboratory.
“Do you want to see it?”
“Yes, certainly, if you want to show it to me.” Anything was better than sitting here crumbling a cheese scone into a pile of greasy bits.
We stood up and went into his windowless laboratory, and he closed the door behind us. I saw immediately that there was no ongoing experiment, and when I turned to question him, he was standing against the door, his hands deep in his pockets. “Hello, Russell,” he said for the second time, only now he was there in his face, and his eyes looked out at me, and I couldn’t bear it. I turned my back on him, my hands two fists, my eyes shut. I could not see him now, talk to him, and still keep up the act. After a moment two soft taps came on the door, and I smiled in sheer relief. He understood. He pushed a tall lab stool up behind me and I sat on it, my back to him, eyes still closed.
“We have perhaps five minutes without it looking odd,” he said.
“You’re watched, I take it.”
“Every move, even in the sitting room. They’ve made some arrange-ment with the neighbours—telescopes in the trees. They may even be able to read lips. Will tells me that rumour in town says they have a deaf person there.”
“Patrick