5 UNREQUITED

Some days the cold seems to stop at my skin, as if its only function is to give a picturesque edge to the scenery. A little mist and the fog of breath before you as a reassuring by-product of the body's warm engine. Other times the cold goes straight through the aether and into my soul, or in fact seems to emanate from there. As if my mood caused the winter rather than the winter my mood – or perhaps my father's vengeful God made and matched them both. Punishment for my sins. Sins of the mind rather than the flesh, but I have been told it is the same before Him.

Which is all in preamble to this: this morning I felt cold and took grim pleasure in feeling it. A puritan zeal, that if I cannot have the sin I want; I shall attempt to purge myself of wanting it.

Watson shuts the open window without comment. I can no longer surprise him. He takes the guttering pipe from my hand and taps it out on the ashtray. It is already full to the brim from the ash of a long night were sleep eluded me and tobacco was little consolation. I do not acknowledge him, and sadly he does not expect me to. He sits stiffly, experiencing a simpler pain than mine.

The maid enters and kindles the banked fire. Between telling her to desist and maintaining my silence I take the latter path. No need for Watson to be discomforted, after all. Taking their cue from me, the servants and Watson remain similarly hushed; tiptoeing around the sleeping lion.

My clenched fingers curl, cramped in place. I savor the unpleasantness of the sensation. The room grows gradually warm, the morning bright and clear. Watson smiles, lays the morning paper flat across his lap, and turns to me.

"It will rain before noon," I say without even turning to look at him directly, without even focusing my eyes.

He frowns. Which makes him, at least, more in keeping with my day. I hate myself, and my mood, but it is a familiar and comforting hatred. Watson no longer feels any chagrin that I read him so easily; he just smiles in a kind of muted amusement. He no longer asks me for explanations… ah, I miss that. He is such a man, rarely offended, never holding a grudge, always answering my summons no matter how abrupt, and never loved me. Not quite. So close that I sometimes caught my breath in hope. But the closer we drew the more I saw the insurmountable separation. Our friendship is an excruciating hypotenuse, never reaching the point of love.

I held that thought up to the too bright light of day, and let it wound me for a while. I am bitter, ungrateful and difficult even to like, yet he manages to do so. Maybe he even loves me after a fashion, but not so as to say the words or act upon them. My heart no longer races when we draw close. I shall never need to be brave enough to allow the liberties he will not take. Better to be cold, safer at least. A frigid virtue safely inculcated in most English youths, even those who wanted from the first to be something other than what the world would have them be.

A telegram arrives and at my merest gesture Watson knows to read it aloud. My near sight is poor, and his voice, at least, I am allowed. Perhaps this missive will provide some pretext to avoid these pangs that arise and pierce my maudlin indifference from time to time. Arise and incapacitate me with this morbid and self-loathing state, some distraction no matter how petty, to wear me to the point of sleep.

I must capture these errant longings and pack them away on a high bare shelf in my mind, so as to turn it to more productive purposes. I can see them quite clearly there, the heart-shaped lacquer box like some deserted valentine, cracked with age and dulled with dust. A dry safe and hidden heart, such as witches are said to have, to make themselves immune to mortal shocks. Those mortal shocks that flesh is heir to, better off without them I suppose.

Ah, a kidnapping it seems, in the country. I do not know if I can break free from my inertia for such a trifle. The life of a young lady in the balance: Watson's eyes plead. He wants to think the best of me, and disappointing him now will hurt him, but not break him of the habit. Ah well, best I dress.