And that's about as fur as I c'n go
Belatedly, Happy Birthday to 
legionseagle!
This story was a struggle, as you can probably tell; I'd been thinking about it ever since Mycroft mentioned the Other One, whose fate proved that he was not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion, and I fell to wondering whether Mr and Mrs Holmes really needed to go all the way to Oklahoma to practise line-dancing or whether they were up to something else... But this was my third attempt to write it, and I felt it was now or never, because I expect to be thoroughly Jossed when Sherlock returns in a few weeks. I don't think I've done justice to Mrs Holmes, for whom I share her husband's admiration, but at least I tried.
The Holmes parents are the only canonical characters who appear.
THE OTHER ONE
"Gandy?" called out Lieutenant Turner. "Special job for you today."
Gandy did not want a special job today. The Oklahoma State Penitentiary had finally brought back the Prison Rodeo after cancelling it for the last few years, and she was dying to go. But she did her best to look conscientious and interested.
"You're to sit in on a visit to the supermax prisoner. Make sure there's no inappropriate communication."
Gandy frowned. "Didn't think that class of prisoner got visits. Or is it a lawyer?"
"No, parents. Unusual, but the brother's some kind of big deal in the British government. The parents come once a year. Usual restrictions, nothing political, and that includes any mention of the brother. Either brother. We'll record any conversation for analysis afterwards, but you're to intervene if they stray off the guidelines."
She identified the parents as soon as she saw them coming through the security gate. They looked like a crazy old English couple from central casting - though a lot more respectable than their daughter's status suggested. Then again, if the son was government... The woman was stylish, or would have been twenty years ago, but had the determined glare of a battleaxe; the man, trailing in her wake, smiled amiably at everyone.
"This is Sergeant Gandy," said Turner. "She'll be looking after you today. Sergeant, this is..."
"Mr and Mrs Holmes," said the woman decisively. "We're here to see Grace Holmes."
Turner winced. "We don't actually use that name here..."
"Oh, really, you can't expect an old lady like me to remember your code names. We gave her a perfectly good Christian name, and that's what we call her."
"Ma'am... sir... if you're ready, I'll take you to the meeting room," said Gandy. Mrs Holmes stared straight at her for the first time; her eyes were petal-blue, with an intensity that almost made you catch your breath. She nodded curtly, and her husband said that would be very kind. He was humming faintly as Gandy led them down the corridor into the maximum security wing.
"I must remind you both that you must observe certain guidelines while talking to the prisoner," she said. "You must avoid..."
"No need to remind us, we've been doing this long enough to know all your rules," said Mrs Holmes. "No politics, and nothing about other members of the family."
It struck Gandy that the Englishwoman's memory recorded what she wished to record.
"If you could just sit down in here," she said, steering them into the small meeting room, "the... your daughter will be here shortly."
After a few minutes' wait, Sergeant Pearse brought in the prisoner, who threw herself into the chair facing her parents and scowled at nobody in particular. Gandy noticed that she had her mother's fierce blue eyes, though her hair was dark. Hard to tell whether Mrs Holmes had ever been brunette; she was almost white now.
There was an awkward pause, broken only by the sound of Mr Holmes humming.
"Well," said Mrs Holmes, "it's very nice to see you, Grace. Though I've said before, that orange outfit does you no favours. It makes you look dreadfully pale."
Grace rolled her eyes. "I don't exactly get a choice."
"But you are all right? Are you getting enough exercise?"
More eye-rolling. "I don't get a choice about that, either. They make me do it, every day."
"Well, that's good. We could never get you to exercise, except that year you had the thing about horses. They don't let you anywhere near the horses, do they?"
"Horses?"
"This rodeo thing everyone was talking about when we came in. You'd be bound to fall off, you were always falling off."
"It was just once."
"It was a lot more than that, but it was just once that you had to go to hospital."
"Hospital," agreed Mr Holmes.
"What happens if you're ill in jail here? They can't make you pay, can they? It's such a worry, being in a country with no National Health Service."
Gandy wasn't quite sure whether referring to socialised health care constituted political discussion, but she coughed slightly. Mrs Holmes gave her a sideways glare.
"Anyway, if you have any trouble, just tell me and I'll complain to the Governor."
"Warden," Grace corrected.
"Whatever she's called," said Mrs Holmes. "I had to complain to our councillor last month - and no, officer, this isn't political in any way that counts - it's completely ridiculous, they've cut back the bin collection to once a fortnight. He said it was to encourage recycling but we could have a bigger bin if it was really necessary, and I said that was all very well, but it's no joke for Father having to wheel it down the garden path, if he's not careful it could easily roll down the slope and crash through the gate, it's so heavy, and what if a car was going past? There could be a nasty accident."
"I'm very careful," murmured Mr Holmes. "It's quite safe, really." He resumed humming.
"So he keeps saying. But he's seventy-five, and he had that dizzy turn at... a few months ago. Fortunately Billy was there."
"Billy?" enquired Grace, without much interest. She didn't say much, but her eyes were constantly moving, whether expressing disbelief at the banality of her mother's conversation or searching for some form of distraction from it Gandy couldn't tell.
"A young man who'd come round for dinner. He has a remarkable range of homeopathic remedies. It's significantly improved my stamina for line-dancing. We go to a weekly class in town now. And we're thinking of joining the amateur dramatic society. You'll never guess..."
"...what's on," added Mr Holmes.
His wife glanced slyly at Gandy. "I'm not sure we should talk about it. Very political, all that Peronism and revolution. But the director said I'd be perfect as a hoity-toity lady from Buenos Aires. Maybe we should go on to Buenos Aires, now we're here?"
"Now you're where?" demanded her daughter.
"In America, of course! Oklahoma's somewhere to the south of North America, isn't it, so it can't be all that far from South America."
"Buenos Aires is further than London!"
"Oh. I suppose that's Mercator's fault, squashing up the projections. Well, never mind. Maybe we can go another time."
"We could learn the tango," suggested Mr Holmes, beginning to hum an appropriate tune.
"But one thing we can do while we're here is watch this Prison Rodeo. What's it like?"
"No idea. Never seen it."
"Well, you must know, dear." Gandy suddenly realised Mrs Holmes meant her.
"Oh! Haven't seen it yet, I'm hoping to go this evening. Usual kind of thing, I guess."
"Roping horses? Trying to stay on while they're rearing up?"
"Yeah, bucking horses. Bulls, too."
"Bulls?"
"They usually tie some money on a string between the bull's horns, and the prisoners run round trying to grab it."
"So... something like the bull-leapers of Knossos," said Mrs Holmes thoughtfully.
"Is Knossos another State Penitentiary?" asked Gandy, innocently. The older woman gave her a pitying look, but she caught a wink from Mr Holmes. Yes, she had read Mary Renault, thank you very much.
Later on, she saw the English couple sitting in the stands watching the rodeo, where four men kept trying to sit playing poker round a table while a bull repeatedly charged the table. Mrs Holmes's expression bordered on disbelief, but Mr Holmes smiled and waved when he spotted Gandy. She didn't try to communicate with them; the din from the crowd was deafening.
"You were magnificent, my love," he was saying.
She smiled her loveliest smile. "Well, you were doing all the hard work, darling."
"But I had plenty to talk about. You kept going for so long, without much help from either of us. Magnificent."
"So what did she tell you?"
"She's fine, but very bored. She said she'd consider working for Mycroft if he'd get her out."
"Goodness, she must be down. D'you think he'll be convinced?"
"If anyone can persuade him, you can," he said. "But the other interesting thing was that she seems to know Mary Watson. Calls her Anna, though. Said it was good to know one of the old gang was still out there. And it was Sherlock's silly fault he got shot."
"Hm," she said. "Any more on that, or are we supposed to unpack it?"
"She didn't go into details."
His wife stared across the arena. "This is really rather... downmarket. I imagine the Minoan bull-leapers were far more elegant."
"Remarkable people, weren't they? The Minoans, I mean. Didn't they have a flushing toilet in that palace we saw in Crete?"
"Now, that's an idea," she said. "Next time, I'll work up a monologue about plumbing. Disaster with the boiler. I could keep that going for hours."
"Ah, there you are," said Turner as he sat down next to Gandy. "Anything of interest in the supervision?"
"Not really," she said. "Her mum's quite something. She can bore for England - non-stop, for an hour."
"The company will check it for code words. What about the prisoner? And her dad?"
"They could hardly get a word in. He hummed a lot. And she mostly rolled her eyes." Gandy shook her head. "Crazy English. Coming all this way just to talk about bins."
Note: There are scenes from the Oklahoma Prison Rodeo here; it doesn't seem to have taken place in recent years, apparently less because of complaints about cruelty to animals than the cost of repairing the stadium. I reinstated it for fictional purposes.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
legionseagle!
This story was a struggle, as you can probably tell; I'd been thinking about it ever since Mycroft mentioned the Other One, whose fate proved that he was not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion, and I fell to wondering whether Mr and Mrs Holmes really needed to go all the way to Oklahoma to practise line-dancing or whether they were up to something else... But this was my third attempt to write it, and I felt it was now or never, because I expect to be thoroughly Jossed when Sherlock returns in a few weeks. I don't think I've done justice to Mrs Holmes, for whom I share her husband's admiration, but at least I tried.
The Holmes parents are the only canonical characters who appear.
THE OTHER ONE
"Gandy?" called out Lieutenant Turner. "Special job for you today."
Gandy did not want a special job today. The Oklahoma State Penitentiary had finally brought back the Prison Rodeo after cancelling it for the last few years, and she was dying to go. But she did her best to look conscientious and interested.
"You're to sit in on a visit to the supermax prisoner. Make sure there's no inappropriate communication."
Gandy frowned. "Didn't think that class of prisoner got visits. Or is it a lawyer?"
"No, parents. Unusual, but the brother's some kind of big deal in the British government. The parents come once a year. Usual restrictions, nothing political, and that includes any mention of the brother. Either brother. We'll record any conversation for analysis afterwards, but you're to intervene if they stray off the guidelines."
She identified the parents as soon as she saw them coming through the security gate. They looked like a crazy old English couple from central casting - though a lot more respectable than their daughter's status suggested. Then again, if the son was government... The woman was stylish, or would have been twenty years ago, but had the determined glare of a battleaxe; the man, trailing in her wake, smiled amiably at everyone.
"This is Sergeant Gandy," said Turner. "She'll be looking after you today. Sergeant, this is..."
"Mr and Mrs Holmes," said the woman decisively. "We're here to see Grace Holmes."
Turner winced. "We don't actually use that name here..."
"Oh, really, you can't expect an old lady like me to remember your code names. We gave her a perfectly good Christian name, and that's what we call her."
"Ma'am... sir... if you're ready, I'll take you to the meeting room," said Gandy. Mrs Holmes stared straight at her for the first time; her eyes were petal-blue, with an intensity that almost made you catch your breath. She nodded curtly, and her husband said that would be very kind. He was humming faintly as Gandy led them down the corridor into the maximum security wing.
"I must remind you both that you must observe certain guidelines while talking to the prisoner," she said. "You must avoid..."
"No need to remind us, we've been doing this long enough to know all your rules," said Mrs Holmes. "No politics, and nothing about other members of the family."
It struck Gandy that the Englishwoman's memory recorded what she wished to record.
"If you could just sit down in here," she said, steering them into the small meeting room, "the... your daughter will be here shortly."
After a few minutes' wait, Sergeant Pearse brought in the prisoner, who threw herself into the chair facing her parents and scowled at nobody in particular. Gandy noticed that she had her mother's fierce blue eyes, though her hair was dark. Hard to tell whether Mrs Holmes had ever been brunette; she was almost white now.
There was an awkward pause, broken only by the sound of Mr Holmes humming.
"Well," said Mrs Holmes, "it's very nice to see you, Grace. Though I've said before, that orange outfit does you no favours. It makes you look dreadfully pale."
Grace rolled her eyes. "I don't exactly get a choice."
"But you are all right? Are you getting enough exercise?"
More eye-rolling. "I don't get a choice about that, either. They make me do it, every day."
"Well, that's good. We could never get you to exercise, except that year you had the thing about horses. They don't let you anywhere near the horses, do they?"
"Horses?"
"This rodeo thing everyone was talking about when we came in. You'd be bound to fall off, you were always falling off."
"It was just once."
"It was a lot more than that, but it was just once that you had to go to hospital."
"Hospital," agreed Mr Holmes.
"What happens if you're ill in jail here? They can't make you pay, can they? It's such a worry, being in a country with no National Health Service."
Gandy wasn't quite sure whether referring to socialised health care constituted political discussion, but she coughed slightly. Mrs Holmes gave her a sideways glare.
"Anyway, if you have any trouble, just tell me and I'll complain to the Governor."
"Warden," Grace corrected.
"Whatever she's called," said Mrs Holmes. "I had to complain to our councillor last month - and no, officer, this isn't political in any way that counts - it's completely ridiculous, they've cut back the bin collection to once a fortnight. He said it was to encourage recycling but we could have a bigger bin if it was really necessary, and I said that was all very well, but it's no joke for Father having to wheel it down the garden path, if he's not careful it could easily roll down the slope and crash through the gate, it's so heavy, and what if a car was going past? There could be a nasty accident."
"I'm very careful," murmured Mr Holmes. "It's quite safe, really." He resumed humming.
"So he keeps saying. But he's seventy-five, and he had that dizzy turn at... a few months ago. Fortunately Billy was there."
"Billy?" enquired Grace, without much interest. She didn't say much, but her eyes were constantly moving, whether expressing disbelief at the banality of her mother's conversation or searching for some form of distraction from it Gandy couldn't tell.
"A young man who'd come round for dinner. He has a remarkable range of homeopathic remedies. It's significantly improved my stamina for line-dancing. We go to a weekly class in town now. And we're thinking of joining the amateur dramatic society. You'll never guess..."
"...what's on," added Mr Holmes.
His wife glanced slyly at Gandy. "I'm not sure we should talk about it. Very political, all that Peronism and revolution. But the director said I'd be perfect as a hoity-toity lady from Buenos Aires. Maybe we should go on to Buenos Aires, now we're here?"
"Now you're where?" demanded her daughter.
"In America, of course! Oklahoma's somewhere to the south of North America, isn't it, so it can't be all that far from South America."
"Buenos Aires is further than London!"
"Oh. I suppose that's Mercator's fault, squashing up the projections. Well, never mind. Maybe we can go another time."
"We could learn the tango," suggested Mr Holmes, beginning to hum an appropriate tune.
"But one thing we can do while we're here is watch this Prison Rodeo. What's it like?"
"No idea. Never seen it."
"Well, you must know, dear." Gandy suddenly realised Mrs Holmes meant her.
"Oh! Haven't seen it yet, I'm hoping to go this evening. Usual kind of thing, I guess."
"Roping horses? Trying to stay on while they're rearing up?"
"Yeah, bucking horses. Bulls, too."
"Bulls?"
"They usually tie some money on a string between the bull's horns, and the prisoners run round trying to grab it."
"So... something like the bull-leapers of Knossos," said Mrs Holmes thoughtfully.
"Is Knossos another State Penitentiary?" asked Gandy, innocently. The older woman gave her a pitying look, but she caught a wink from Mr Holmes. Yes, she had read Mary Renault, thank you very much.
Later on, she saw the English couple sitting in the stands watching the rodeo, where four men kept trying to sit playing poker round a table while a bull repeatedly charged the table. Mrs Holmes's expression bordered on disbelief, but Mr Holmes smiled and waved when he spotted Gandy. She didn't try to communicate with them; the din from the crowd was deafening.
"You were magnificent, my love," he was saying.
She smiled her loveliest smile. "Well, you were doing all the hard work, darling."
"But I had plenty to talk about. You kept going for so long, without much help from either of us. Magnificent."
"So what did she tell you?"
"She's fine, but very bored. She said she'd consider working for Mycroft if he'd get her out."
"Goodness, she must be down. D'you think he'll be convinced?"
"If anyone can persuade him, you can," he said. "But the other interesting thing was that she seems to know Mary Watson. Calls her Anna, though. Said it was good to know one of the old gang was still out there. And it was Sherlock's silly fault he got shot."
"Hm," she said. "Any more on that, or are we supposed to unpack it?"
"She didn't go into details."
His wife stared across the arena. "This is really rather... downmarket. I imagine the Minoan bull-leapers were far more elegant."
"Remarkable people, weren't they? The Minoans, I mean. Didn't they have a flushing toilet in that palace we saw in Crete?"
"Now, that's an idea," she said. "Next time, I'll work up a monologue about plumbing. Disaster with the boiler. I could keep that going for hours."
"Ah, there you are," said Turner as he sat down next to Gandy. "Anything of interest in the supervision?"
"Not really," she said. "Her mum's quite something. She can bore for England - non-stop, for an hour."
"The company will check it for code words. What about the prisoner? And her dad?"
"They could hardly get a word in. He hummed a lot. And she mostly rolled her eyes." Gandy shook her head. "Crazy English. Coming all this way just to talk about bins."
Note: There are scenes from the Oklahoma Prison Rodeo here; it doesn't seem to have taken place in recent years, apparently less because of complaints about cruelty to animals than the cost of repairing the stadium. I reinstated it for fictional purposes.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.