The Complete Bostock and Harris

by Leon Garfield

  “It’s for me,” said the boy, and went.

  Cassidy examined the room. There were ships’ posters all over the walls, advising able-bodied seamen, desirous of sailing to foreign ports, to present themselves aboard at ungodly hours of the morning.

  Cassidy saw that all the vessels’ names had been scored out and “Mary Harris” written in their place. It seemed that from China to the Cape there was no way to go but under the flag of the lass with the speckled eyes.

  “Ah, but he’s got it bad!” sighed Cassidy with all the satisfaction of finding a fellow sufferer.

  He longed to compare symptoms and exchange pangs, for love is a sickness like any other, save nobody wants to be cured. A great tremble went through him, but this was because O’Rourke had shaken the ladder.

  Cassidy went up and peered over the edge of the roof. Sure enough, two slates were gone, and you could see that, at the first breath of a wind strong enough to lift a feather, another dozen would be gone. The batten was halfway to being rotten, and all things considered, a new roof would be cheaper in the long run and twenty pounds well spent.

  He came down and told O’Rourke, adding that there was a window broken that might bring in another shilling.

  They knocked on the door and put it to the housekeeper, who went away and put it to the master, who put it that Cassidy and O’Rourke were a pair of loafing Irish rogues and five shillings was all they were going to get.

  They went out to the cart, and Cassidy said, “It was another Mary, O’Rourke! Would ye believe it?”

  O’Rourke nodded and sighed. They returned to the back of the house with rope and tackle and a basket of slates. Cassidy climbed the ladder again and looked in at the window under the roof.

  The boy was back and with a friend. The friend was smallish and pale and gave off a strong sense of ink and intelligence. They stared at Cassidy in a state of suspended conversation.

  Cassidy raised a finger in salute, and his heart went out to the first boy on whose face was frozen a look of boundless hope and boundless despair.

  It was a lover’s look if ever Cassidy had seen one, and he’d have given his right arm to have been of any help.

  Then he and the ladder shuddered together, and O’Rourke shouted up, “Will ye get a move on, Cassidy, or ye’ll be as old as Mary Flatley’s grandfather by the time ye get down!”

  Chapter Two

  THE LARGER boy—and the room’s principal inhabitant—was Bostock. He was thirteen and a half and stood, in a manner of speaking, on the threshold of manhood. In fact, he’d knocked on the door but as yet had received no definite answer.

  His visitor was Harris, who, with a look of piercing inquiry, stood right behind him. Bostock wanted to do; Harris wanted to know.

  They were friends and had been through thick and thin together, for which nature seemed to have formed them, Harris being thin and Bostock very thick.

  At the present moment, however, their friendship was in the balance, as the Mary Bostock loved was Harris’s sister.

  Now Harris had several sisters, but unfortunately it seemed that Bostock had picked the most valuable and had nothing comparable to offer in return.

  Harris had put it to him fairly, hence Bostock’s boundless despair. Then Harris had made an offer, hence Bostock’s boundless hope. Then he’d thought about it, hence the confusion of feeling that was reflected in his face.

  They waited for Cassidy to vanish upward, then they resumed their conversation.

  “Bosty, old friend,” said Harris sincerely, “let me put it to you this way.”

  Bostock sighed, so Harris pointed out that Bostock, being the only known child of Captain Bostock, retired, was, in law, the heir to all his property.

  Bostock agreed.

  Harris went on. He didn’t mean to suggest that Captain Bostock was in any immediate danger of “going out with the tide,” as that sailorly man would have expressed it, but only that he was unlikely to be in full possession of his health and strength for some time to come.

  Bostock looked doubtful, but Harris, being the son of Dr. Harris, who was looking after Captain Bostock’s gout, and therefore in a position to know what he was talking about, assured Bostock that the captain would be unable to rise from his sick-chair and enjoy his property on the upper floors in the foreseeable future.

  Bostock nodded. So far he was with Harris.

  Therefore, said Harris, the property had passed, as it were, into the regency of Bostock, as it wasn’t to be supposed his ma wanted it. It was in Bostock’s gift, which any court in the land would uphold, and Captain Bostock himself, being a Justice of the Peace, would find it hard to deny. Not that Harris advised consulting him, but it was something to bear in mind.

  Harris smiled and rested his case.

  The property that particularly interested him and had given rise to these ingenious arguments was Captain Bostock’s brass telescope. It was kept in a small room at the top of the house, known as the Crow’s Nest, and was well beyond Captain Bostock’s present range of activity.

  Harris’s reasons for wanting it were about as lofty as you could get. The heavens themselves. Pigott’s comet, which was rushing across the sky at the rate of about an inch a night, foretelling the deaths of kings, the fall of governments, and other national benefits, was predicted to appear at its brightest on Saturday night, April 6. This was in three days’ time.

  Although the comet could hardly be seen at all and at best would appear as something between a bright pinprick and a flaming pimple, there was to be an outing to the top of Devil’s Dyke to view the grandeur of the occasion.

  There was to be chicken, veal pies, cheese, wine, and lemonade for the children. Also, if the weather proved kind, there was to be music and dancing. Pigott’s comet, which, by the way, was a highly undistinguished object, would have been enchanted if it had known.

  Everybody was looking forward to the occasion, and great plans were afoot for going with this or that companion and falling under the comet’s romantic spell. In fact, you might have thought it was a kind of speedy Cupid, visiting Brighton for the Easter holidays and showering arrows down on the town.

  But not on Harris. While every Jack thought of his Jill, Harris thought of Captain Bostock’s brass telescope.

  He’d always wanted it, but until Captain Bostock had been laid low with gout and Bostock had been laid low with love, he’d seen no way of getting it.

  Now, however, with the happy onset of the two diseases—the one in Bostock’s heart and the other in Captain Bostock’s toe—he saw his way clear to realizing his ambition. In exchange for what was almost Bostock’s telescope he felt himself able to offer the affections of his sister Mary.

  He promised faithfully to advise and assist Bostock to the utmost of his ability and to leave no stone unturned in bringing Mary to heel. He gave him his solemn word that Mary would be his companion for the night of the comet.

  Bostock beamed, and Harris shook him by the hand.

  “There, Bosty, old friend! I can’t say fairer than that! Now just get the telescope.”

  Bostock’s beam faded and was replaced by a look of creeping doubt. He couldn’t help feeling that something might go wrong. He didn’t know why he should feel like that, with Harris looking so confident; it was just that there was a vague shadow at the back of his mind that worried him. As there wasn’t much at the front of it, anything at the back was worrying.

  Harris watched him closely. “You do want her, Bosty?”

  “Oh, yes, yes!”

  “Then get the telescope, old friend.”

  Bostock fidgeted. He longed to find some way out of his dilemma without appearing to question Harris’s wisdom.

  He respected Harris. He admired Harris beyond anybody else in the world. But did not Harris think his case was really hopeless? Mary was such a scornful, slender, acrobatic girl, and she never gave him a second glance unless it was to express twice the disdain she’d shown in her first.

  Ho
w could Harris, brilliant as he was, have dominion over so wild and free a heart? Surely it was asking too much.

  It wasn’t.

  “I know her, Bosty, old friend,” said Harris. “She’s my sister, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. I know her through and through, like a pane of glass.” He smiled dreamily. “We were in the same womb, Bosty,” he murmured reminiscently, and Bostock received an indistinct picture of Harris, in a warm dark place, scientifically observing Mary growing more complicated, month by month.

  “But—but what if my pa gets better and goes up to the Crow’s Nest?” pleaded Bostock, finding another avenue of escape.

  “My pa says he’ll be lucky to be on his feet by Christmas,” said Harris, closing it. “And he’s dosing him, so he ought to know.”

  “But—but after that?”

  “Then I’ll lend it to you back again,” said Harris. “Until it’s yours for good.”

  Bostock thanked him, and then the awful solemnity hinted at by “yours for good” saddened him.

  “I think I’ll be sorry, you know, when he goes. Out with the tide, I mean.”

  “It’s got to happen to all of them,” said Harris, carefully excluding himself. “Someday.”

  There was a pause in which they both stared at Cassidy’s stoutly gaitered feet, shifting on the rung of the ladder. Then Harris, judging that he’d allowed enough time for Bostock to recover from his pa’s future death, murmured, “The telescope, old friend.”

  Bostock said unhappily, “But how are we going to get it out without being seen, Harris?”

  Harris pointed to Cassidy’s feet.

  “But what if my pa sees it going down past his window?”

  “I’ll go and ask after his toe. That’ll take his mind off the window.”

  “But he said he never wanted to set eyes on you again for as long as he lived, Harris. And my ma says that aggravation only makes him worse.”

  “Makes him worse?” said Harris with a smile. “Then he won’t be up till after Christmas, will he! The telescope, old friend!”

  “You think of everything, Harris,” said Bostock with unwilling admiration.

  He left the room and in a little while came back with Harris’s heart’s desire. It was a sleek and beautiful object, of the brightest brass, that opened and shut like a flexible sunbeam. It had a neat leather cap at either end, like a pair of stoppers for keeping the more stirring sights within.

  Somewhere inside its long dark heart, between glass and glass, there must have been a thousand dreaming ships, some becalmed, with sails as limp as Monday shirts, some leaning dangerously into the wind, and some in a kind of nightmare, dashing themselves angrily against rocks, as if to rid themselves of the tiny, itching figures that would not let go and be drowned.

  Harris, raptly gazing at it, saw, in addition to Pigott’s comet, stars of unimaginable brightness and planets hitherto unknown that would shortly bear a name. He saw Harris Minor, orbiting the sun, and Harris Major, constellated around with a host of lesser lights, among which would be a Moon of Bostock, for friendship’s sake.

  Cassidy, looping his green length down to pick another slate out of the basket, was also captivated by the splendid instrument. He saw himself sitting on a shoulder of the Downs, raking out all the streets until he saw Mary Flatley, maybe as she shook a sheet out of an upstairs window. And he’d call out, “Cassidy’s come!”

  Up she’d look, with her bright green eyes, and smile, for sure to God, she’d be near enough to touch, though she was a hundred miles away!

  Even Bostock was stirred. He saw himself with Mary Harris, right on the top of Devil’s Dyke. He saw Saturday night as if it were here and now, for was it not the business of a telescope to bring what was far away near at hand?

  He gave the telescope to Harris and received in exchange the absolute assurance of Mary’s heart.

  Harris opened the window and asked Cassidy if he would be good enough to take the article to a house, two streets away.

  Cassidy, descending to a convenient height, took the instrument, removed the stoppers, and placed it to his eye. A sweeping blur of blue and green communicated itself to him, and then O’Rourke’s face, with all its bristles and lugubrious aggravation, came up at him like a cannonball.

  Deeply impressed by the nearness of his partner, he gave the instrument back and said it was a wonderful terrible thing, and it would cost a silver sixpence to take it, if Bostock was sure it was his own property, else why wasn’t he taking it down by the stairs with his own two hands and out the front door like a Christian?

  Harris said that any court in the land would uphold Bostock’s rights over the property, so that whether it went out by the window or down by the stairs was of no consequence whatever, and threepence was his last offer.

  Cassidy said to Bostock that his friend had the brain of a Jesuit, the way it went around corners in a straight line, and that fivepence was his last offer as he had overheads to think of, in the way of O’Rourke and the pony, and that threepence would have meant a penny each, which was insulting to man and beast.

  Harris retired to the back of the room and conferred with Bostock.

  “Fourpence,” he said, coming back.

  “Fourpence ha’penny,” said Cassidy. “And have ye got it?”

  Bostock produced the money—which was all he had—and Cassidy reached.

  “On delivery,” said Harris. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “He’ll end up as Pope,” said Cassidy admiringly. “If the Protestants don’t get to him first!”

  Harris handed over the telescope.

  “And which house is it to be?”

  “Two streets down that way. You can’t miss it. There’s a brass plate outside. Dr. Harris.”

  “Harris, did he say?”

  Bostock nodded.

  “Not the Harris that belongs with that same Mary with the speckled eyes?”

  Bostock nodded again.

  “Then why didn’t ye tell me in the first place?” cried Cassidy. “I’d have taken the article for nothing and been proud to! But now it’s too late. I can’t go back on me word. Oh, ’tis the very devil to be an honest man!”

  He laid the telescope in the basket.

  “May it bring us all our hearts’ desires! A Mary for you, and a Mary for me, and health, wealth, and happiness for yer friend!”

  Harris vanished, and Bostock watched the basket descend. Suddenly he had the terrible feeling of one who has not only burned his boats but neglected to get off them first. He wanted to call the telescope back, but it was too late. The basket was down, and in a moment Cassidy and his father’s property had vanished from sight.

  Chapter Three

  CASSIDY had a terrible fight with the telescope. It kept slithering out from under his arm and standing bolt upright before him, like a brass serpent with a glass eye.

  “Cass-ss-idy! Cass-ss-idy! Ye’d get a couple of pounds if ye slipped me to a pawnshop and nobody would be any the wiser!”

  “Be silent, ye filthy beast!” cried Cassidy, grasping it around the neck as if he’d strangle it. “I’m an honest man!”

  “Cass-ss-idy! Cass-ss-idy! Maybe even two pounds ten?”

  “Hold yer tongue, ye brassy snake! Another word and I’ll wrap ye ’round a railing and then ye’ll not be worth a farthin’ of anybody’s money!”

  So Cassidy fought with the devil all the way, but love had turned him into an angel, so he conquered in the end.

  He found Dr. Harris’s house without difficulty. He knew it for a doctor’s right away, for beside the tradesman’s door was a long stone trough on four carved paws, looking exactly like a coffin standing in its stockinged feet.

  Not that Dr. Harris was a bad physician or would have advertised so plainly even if he had been. He had bought the trough when an old mansion at the top of the street had been pulled down to make way for a row of smart new villas. It was going to have flowers in it, but in the meantime it was used by butchers’ boys, baker
s’ boys, and fishmongers’ boys, who hid in it and frightened the wits out of the Harrises’ maid by pretending to be dead.

  As Cassidy approached, a hand rose out of the tomb and beckoned. It was Harris’s. He lay in the tomb like a crusader, among earwigs, beetles, and leaves.

  He was very much relieved to see Cassidy as the thought had crossed his mind, too, that the telescope would have been worth more than fourpence ha’penny, had Cassidy so desired. Harris had, in fact, been wondering, if the worse came to the worst and the telescope vanished from human sight, would he still be liable for the affections of Mary, or could he return Bostock’s money and call it a day?

  But Cassidy had turned up, so he handed over Bostock’s money, and Cassidy handed over Captain Bostock’s telescope. Bostock himself was not present, as Harris had told him to smarten himself up, as women, like moths, were attracted to clothes.

  Harris had discovered this, both from personal observation and from a learned article on Courtship that he had consulted on Bostock’s behalf. It was “The Courtship of Animals,” but Harris did not see that it made any difference, and there was now lodged in his enormous brain a quantity of interesting information which he hoped to put into effect.

  “Are ye acquainted with a lass—” began Cassidy, wondering if fate might at last reward him for his honesty and produce Mary Flatley then and there.

  There came the sound of the front door opening. Instantly Harris and the telescope sank into obscurity, so Cassidy, raising a finger in salute, strolled back to the street.

  He saw that a girl had come out of the Harris front door. She was dressed in pink-and-white spotted muslin and wore an Easter bonnet fit to charm the birds.

  It was (or Cassidy was a Dutchman!) the Mary with the speckled eyes! At once he thought of the anguished lover at the window, and he felt an overwhelming desire to be of help. Perhaps, he thought, someone might do the same for him one day.

  “And—and is it Miss Harris I’m addressin’?” he asked, hastening to catch up with her, for she went like a wind through a rose garden, all rustles and scent.