The Psyche Knot

by Andrea Johnson

My hair has often been a trial to me. First of all, it is of an undeterminate color somewhere between red and blonde. I have heard a good many jokes regarding the (purely mythical, I assure you) association between women with ginger hair and hot tempers. This is why I much prefer to call myself a blonde.

The texture of my hair also caused me considerable consternation during my teenage years. My hair escapes in curly tendrils about my forehead and ears, despite my best attempts to tame it with braids or confine it with hair combs. Its waist length tangles easily if I fall asleep without first plaiting it. It is difficult to dry in the cold of winter and frizzles naturally in the summer heat.

"Why don't you just cut it all off, Mary?" my closest friend among the Land Girls inquired one day as we planted potatoes in a trench. "It's ever so much lighter."

It would certainly be a great deal easier to assume masculine disguise with shorter hair, I mused, finding the thought tempting. A shorter hair style would also be more convenient when I helped with the planting or with the harvest. My friend Alice had been the first of our number to appear in the fields with a shorn head, but some of our more daring comrades soon followed suit. They all seemed pleased with their liberation from hairpins and enjoyed the disapproving looks of the old biddies in the Eastbourne market. The thought of my aunt's reaction if I should bob my hair gave me a few pleasurable moments.

Yet I brushed Alice's hand aside from my braids and made the claim that long hair was simply easier to care for. I asserted that she would soon find it inconvenient to submit to the hairdresser's scissors every six weeks.

The truth, of course, was somewhat more complex. I still remembered watching my father arrange my mother's long hair when I was a child. Mother would sit at her vanity in her silk kimono while Father stood behind her wielding a silver-backed brush. My mother's eyes closed slowly in contentment at these times. I, hiding behind her dressing room door, thought she resembled our tabby cat when I stroked its back. My father always dropped a kiss at the back of her neck when he ceased his ministrations.

This was one of the first glimpses I was given of the pleasures of marital intimacy. When my mother told me that a woman's hair is her crowning glory, I understood what she meant on several different levels. But at this point in my life, I sometimes questioned whether I would ever have direct experience of married life. My aunt often called attention to my freakish height, flat chest and huge hands and feet. Such a "plain-faced, masculine giantess" as I would be unlikely to attract gentleman callers, she said, even if there hadn't been a war on. No wonder I consoled myself with books and whatever it was I did with Holmes in his laboratory, she said.

"Such a pity you didn't take after your mother," Auntie said one day with poisonous sweetness. "Judith never lacked for beaus at your age. Really, Mary, sometimes I fear that you are unbalanced."

It was Auntie's greatest hope that I would be declared incapable of managing my fortune. This was the only way she would be assured of financial security after my twenty-first birthday.

"Your concern is touching, Aunt," I said, setting aside my book and getting to my feet. "But I assure you that I am perfectly sane and the executors of my estate are well aware of that fact." Auntie sniffed and looked pointedly at my straggling braids and mismatched stockings as I stalked past her.

If not for an incident the previous day, I might have brushed aside her insults as I usually did, but I was still in a state of embarrassment. Holmes and I had paid a visit to a local farmer on one of our long, rambling walks across the countryside. Farmer Jenkins had been much amused when Holmes asked me to get down on my hands and knees to better observe the distinctive print left by his hobnailed boot in the mud. He was still more amused when the wind blew off my cap and my long hair flew into my eyes and in my mouth.

"She's gusty, this morning, isn't she?" our host said, chuckling merrily. "Don't worry, Miss Russell. Don't get up. I'll chase it down for you." He ran after my cap, which had blown clear across the farmyard and was in danger of being eaten by the goat. Meanwhile, Holmes stood and stared at me. His expression was completely unreadable. I could feel a hot blush spreading up my neck and face as I sat on my haunches in the mud and the muck. I knew I must have looked a sight. For once, Holmes did not verbally disparage my appearance. He did not have to.

"I believe it's almost time for lunch," I said, trying to appear more composed than I felt. I got to my feet and did my best to smooth my unruly mane. "Are you as hungry as I am, Holmes?"

"Ravenous," Holmes said, still with that strange look in his eyes.

Farmer Jenkins returned with my cap, which I set firmly upon my head, and Holmes and I set off across the downs toward home and Mrs. Hudson's dinner table. I noted that Holmes ate little. He begged off the chemical experiment we had planned for that afternoon, without giving a satisfactory explanation. When I returned to the cottage the next morning, still smarting from my latest skirmish with my aunt, Mrs. Hudson told me he had left for London on the milk train.

Dear Mrs. Hudson, who was always such a friend to me.

"Is something troubling you, Mary girl?"she said, having read the signs of emotional turmoil on my face. "Did the two of you quarrel? You know how he is."

My hand went to my untidy braids.

"It's nothing like that," I said. "Holmes and I haven't quarreled... or at least I don't think we have."

Mrs. Hudson set a plate full of scones and jam before me and sat down across from me. I buttered a scone and popped it into my mouth.

"You want feeding, with all that work you do in the fields," Mrs. Hudson said.

"These are divine," I said, reaching for another scone. "Whatever will I do when I'm away at Oxford? I shall starve without your cooking."

Mrs. Hudson beamed. She did enjoy seeing her efforts appreciated. Holmes didn't eat enough to feed a starving cat, as Mrs. Hudson had often remarked.

"I could teach you to make them," Mrs. Hudson offered and then laughed when I went pale. "Don't worry, Mary. 'Twas only an idle threat."

I grinned at her sheepishly. It seemed that my incompetence at the so-called womanly arts was complete and was widely known. My hand went once again to my braids.

"Do you think I should cut my hair?" I blurted out.

Mrs. Hudson's eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"Maybe it would be easier after all," I went on, fidgeting a bit as she studied my face. "I don't seem to know what to do with it and it... well, I know it looks awful. But would it look any better short?"

I felt young and vulnerable and in confusion and I did not like it one bit. My feminist instincts rebelled at this sudden, inexplicable concern over my appearance and society's expectations for females. I wished to be rid of this uncomfortable emotion.

Yet Holmes had looked at me so very strangely. I did not care what others thought of me, but I did not want him to be ashamed by my appearance.

"Ah, so that's it," Mrs. Hudson said with a surprisingly gentle smile. "Well, that's easily fixed. Come along, Mary."

Without knowing quite how, I found myself seated in front of a mirror in Mrs. Hudson's bedroom. She unplaited my braids and began to run a brush briskly through my tangled hair.

"You have such pretty, long hair," she said. "I never was able to grow mine that long. You would have been the envy of all the girls in my day."

I stared at her image in the mirror. It had been years since anyone besides myself had touched my hair. My mother used to brush and braid it for me.

"I saw a pretty style somewhere I thought we might try," Mrs. Hudson said."A Psyche knot, they called it."

"That seems a strange name for a hairstyle," I commented. "Since in Freudian terminology, the psyche is..."

"Yes, I know," Mrs. Hudson said, interrupting my lecture. "But the Girl's Own Journal my niece had said it's after one of those goddesses from Roman times, not after that strange Austrian fellow that you and Mr. Holmes like to talk about."

Mrs. Hudson used a wide-toothed silver comb to make a parting at my forehead, going back to the center of my head. She repeated the process, making a part behind my left and then my right ear and pinning the hair into a pompadour. My hair, amazingly, seemed to be behaving itself under Mrs. Hudson's competent hands. I tried to recall the tale of the goddess Psyche and found my memory a blank.

"Men always seem to like long hair," Mrs. Hudson said. "Mr. Holmes in particular always seems to admire it."

I raised a brow. I had never known Holmes to express such a preference. Watson, perhaps, liked long hair, but Holmes?

Mrs. Hudson smiled at me in the mirror.

"Oh, I've watched him over the years," she said. "He's a man, for all he's the great detective. I've seen all his little preferences."

As I was taking this in, Mrs. Hudson continued her ministrations.

"Now, my husband loved watching me take my hair down at night," she said with a remembering smile. "I suppose because no one ever saw me like that but him."

She brushed my hair into shape, tugging and twisting the long strands into an intricate coil atop my head.

"My mother once said something similar," I admitted, feeling a little shy. "Mama had really beautiful hair. My father greatly admired it."

The updo added years and maturity to my face. The person I saw in the mirror looked completely unfamiliar, like a woman I might become in a few years time, like someone I wasn't quite ready to be.

Mrs. Hudson smiled at me proudly.

"You're a lovely young woman, Mary girl," she said, stroking my cheek. "And some lucky man will think so too."

I stared at my image in the glass, wondering if that might one day be possible.

"Now, why don't you try it?" she suggested.

Mrs. Hudson began to remove the pins and brush out the pompadour. Then she handed me the brush.

I did my best to imitate the steps she had just taken. Under her careful, patient tutelage I finally succeeded in putting up my hair in a style that very nearly resembled her version of the Psyche Knot. Perhaps the name of the hairstyle was apt after all, I thought, as proud of myself as I'd been the first time I beat Holmes at chess. Mrs. Hudson had succeeded in combing out the knot in my psyche.

"Just keep practicing," Mrs. Hudson said. "Soon it will seem as natural as braiding your hair." This did not happen, but I did become more accomplished in time.

When autumn came, I went up to Oxford. Mrs. Hudson visited and took me to the London hairdressers. They showed me other styles, though I was not yet comfortable wearing any of them in public. I was still becoming comfortable with that strange young woman in the mirror and the intimacies that my impending adulthood both promised and threatened.

On my eighteenth birthday, I arrived at Holmes's doorstep, wearing a green velvet dress, with my hair elaborately piled atop my head. My appearance provoked what I thought was a fit of apoplexy in Holmes. I was greatly chagrined.

Innocent that I was, I did not connect Holmes' reaction to my conversation with Mrs. Hudson until a good many years later, after we had married.