The Complete Bostock and Harris

by Leon Garfield

  Chapter Thirteen

  NEXT MORNING Philip Top-Morlion rose from his bed, shuffled across his room, and, blinking in the sunlight, put his hand out of the window. Sure enough, there was his coat and shirt, where they’d been hanging out to dry, like a suicide.

  He shuddered. It was all true. It had actually happened to him. It hadn’t been a horrible dream. She really had thrown water all over him.

  Why—why? What had he done to offend her? He was used to being ignored, he was used to being slighted, but he was not used to being soaked to the skin and called a filthy little beast!

  It was the end. He hated the world. He wanted to die on her doorstep with, if possible, an explanatory note attached: “This is your doing. I hope you are satisfied.”

  And he might die, too. Sensitive people like him caught chills very easily. You were always reading about them, coughing their lungs up in a garret and being found by their landlady, dead and with a flower of blood coming out of their mouths.

  Already he was beginning to feel feverish. He dressed and ate a hurried breakfast. He ought to see a doctor. It was foolish to neglect himself.

  Unfortunately, the nearest physician was Dr. Harris—her father. Well, it couldn’t be helped. His health came first. If it meant swallowing his pride before he swallowed any medicine, then he’d do it. Posterity would never have forgiven him if he’d sacrificed himself so young.

  He put on his cello, took up his flute, fiddle, and music case, and walked unsteadily to her street and stood outside her house. He wondered if, by any chance, she could see him. He crossed to the other side of the street to give her a better chance. He coughed three or four times and looked exceptionally frail.

  He couldn’t see her, and he felt very angry indeed. He crossed back again. Perhaps she’d be in the hall when he asked the maid if he could see the doctor. He’d ignore her. Or, better, he’d give one deep, accusing look that would strike her to the heart. That is, if she had a heart.

  He knocked on the door. The maid answered.

  “I’ll go and tell Miss Harris you’re here,” she said, and went before he could even open his mouth to say that she was the last person he wanted to see.

  He was about to go away when there was Miss Harris, coming down the stairs, two at a time, in a blossomy gown and looking like a storm in an orchard. She looked flushed and eager. He wondered if she’d dare to beg his pardon?

  Dorothy Harris, who had been watching Philip Top-Morlion from behind her curtain, wondered if he had come to beg her pardon.

  She couldn’t understand why else he should have been loitering on the other side of the street like a criminal and clearing his throat. Perhaps he really had come to explain that something extraordinary had happened last night that had prevented his keeping the appointment?

  And would she forgive him, after all she’d suffered? Of course she would! Only—only she’d be dignified about it. She wouldn’t just throw herself at his head. She’d had quite enough of that! She’d be a little cool and distant to begin with. She’d show him that she had her pride.

  “Well?” she asked breathlessly. “What is it that you want, Mr. Top-Morlion?”

  Can’t she see how ill I look? thought Philip. Can’t she see that I need a doctor?

  “I—I would like to see your father, Miss Harris.”

  “My father? Why?”

  “I think you can guess, Miss Harris,” he said quietly.

  He wants to marry me! thought Dorothy with a rush of amazement. He wants to ask Pa for my hand! Oh, no! He can’t—he mustn’t! It—it’s ridiculous! Oh, I like him well enough . . . but I hardly know him! Besides, I’m much too young to think about getting married! Perhaps he doesn’t know I’ll only be sixteen in July. I know I look older, but—but—Oh, dear! This is awful!

  “I—I think you ought to wait a little while, Mr. Top-Morlion,” she said with a nervous smile.

  “How long?” asked Philip.

  “About a—a year?”

  My God! thought Philip incredulously. A year to see the doctor? And in my state of health? She really hasn’t got a heart at all!

  “Thank you!” he said bitterly. “Thank you very much. But, under the circumstances, I think I’d better find someone else.”

  He tottered away, coughing consumptively.

  Dorothy stared after him, unable to believe her ears. So! Just like that! “I think I’d better find someone else.”

  It was horrible! Women were nothing to a man like that! The Irish girl had been right all along! He really would break your heart as soon as spit!

  She ran back up to her room and slammed the door with a violence that shook the house. She sat on her bed, breathing tempestuously and not knowing whether to scream or cry.

  What evil fate was forever crossing her path so that, whenever she offered her heart, it was thrown back in her face? What had she done to deserve it?

  She began to sob. Perhaps in a year or two she’d have taken such things in her stride, even as, a year or two before, she wouldn’t have been walking that way at all. But now she was in the middle of it. Every shadow was a pit and the very morning sunshine was a gilded iron cage.

  Presently she grew a little calmer. A man like that wasn’t worth crying over. She sniffed and, remembering that it was only Friday, wondered if there was any chance at all of making things up with Maggie Hemp before Saturday night. She felt dreadful about it, but what else could she do?

  She stood up and looked in her glass. Maggie would be bound to notice she’d been crying. Oh, well, maybe it was for the best! Maggie might feel sorry for her and be kind.

  She changed her April dress for one that had a touch of March about it and suggested blossoms blasted in the bud, and left the house. She walked quickly until she came to the row of smart new villas at the top of the street.

  “And have ye taken pity on him, me darlin’?” inquired Cassidy, stepping out from where he’d been loafing at the side door of the house where Mary Flatley worked. “For ye’ll never forgive yerself if he dies of a broken heart!”

  She stared at him with hatred. She’d like to have known just when and where Philip Top-Morlion was going to die as she would like to have watched.

  The side door opened and someone came out. Dorothy hurried away, as she didn’t want to be caught in conversation with the shabby Irishman. Anyway, people didn’t die of broken hearts! Her heart was broken and she’d never felt better in her life!

  She reached Collier’s and there was Maggie Hemp sitting in the window just like old times! Dear Maggie! She went in.

  “You look terrible, Dolly,” said Maggie with affectionate satisfaction. “Like something the cat’s brought in.”

  Dorothy sat down.

  “Oh, Maggie!” Then, “I—I was wondering if you think I ought to wear my blue velvet cape for Saturday night?” asked Dorothy.

  Miss Hemp compressed her lips. She knew perfectly well that something had gone wrong with Dolly’s plans and she was trying to make things up as if nothing had happened.

  But she wasn’t going to let her. She wanted Dolly to be honest with her. If they were going to be friends again, then there were going to be no secrets or slyness.

  “You’ve been crying,” she said.

  “Are—are you going to wear your lovely new silver dress, Maggie?”

  “Your eyes are all red and puffy, Dolly, like giblets.”

  “I—thought of wearing my grey one . . . if you think it would look all right, Maggie?”

  “I do believe you’re still crying, Dolly!”

  “I’m not!”

  “Yes, you are! All over your cake. Look!”

  “Oh, Maggie!”

  “Tell me about it, Dolly. Tell me everything. After all, we are friends!”

  She had moved closer, to comfort her unhappy friend and to screen her from curious eyes, when she became aware that she was being watched through the window.

  Of all people, it was the drunken Irishman who’d accosted he
r yesterday in The Lanes. She remembered he’d called her “darlin’ ” and held her hand. She shook a warning finger. He responded by raising his own in salute.

  Dorothy looked up, and Cassidy saluted again.

  “Do you know him, dear?”

  “No! No!” said Dorothy quickly. “I don’t know him from Adam! Do you know him?”

  “Of course not, dear.”

  “I wonder why he waved?”

  “Oh, you know what men are, dear!”

  Dorothy nodded. She knew. They were beasts, they were brutes, and they would break your heart as soon as spit!

  Maggie smiled tenderly. She was glad they were of one mind. They were friends again. She held Dorothy’s hand and together they sat, in Collier’s window, two frail females alone in a forest of monkeys, weasels, vipers and—and MEN. But nothing would come between them any more. Nothing would separate them again.

  She gestured angrily through the glass, and Cassidy went away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  CASSIDY, having applied at the villa, had been told that it was Mary Flatley’s day off and that she wouldn’t be back till late.

  “And where might she be spendin’ it, ma’am?”

  “With Andrews, of course. The fishmonger’s son.”

  “No!” said Cassidy, white as a ghost.

  “Yes!” said the housekeeper. “And a lucky girl she is!”

  “Don’t tell me they’re courtin’, ma’am?”

  “I’ll tell you what I like, young man!”

  “And him an Englishman?”

  “Every decent, hard-working inch! He’s Mr. Saunders’ sister’s boy. Mr. Saunders, with the shop in Bartholomews.”

  “The villain!” Cassidy had cried. “The dirty philanderin’ villain!” And away he’d gone to Bartholomews, hoping to plead with Mary Flatley before it was too late.

  He saluted the two young ladies in Collier’s window and then went inside Saunders’ Marine Stores and Fishing Tackle, where he blundered about among rods, lines, hooks, choppers, yellow boots, and terrible festooning nets, like a frantic green fish with a bandaged head.

  At length, finding no one about, he stopped and scratched his head.

  “In Dublin’s fair city,” he began to sing, in a small voice as if he’d swallowed a tiny Irishman, “where girls are so pretty . . .”

  He peered into the ill-lit depths of the shop, hoping that his song would draw the girl out. Instead, it drew the proprietor, a hard, knobbly man with a nose like a shrimp.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wonderin’, sir, if ye’re acquainted with a lass by the name o’ Mary Flatley? She’s black hair and—”

  “I am.”

  “And have ye seen her this mornin’, sir?”

  “I have.”

  “And where might she be, sir?”

  “Out with my sister’s boy.”

  “And where might they be walkin’, sir . . . if it’s not too much trouble to ask?”

  “They ain’t walking. Wears out boots. They’re in the boat.”

  “At sea?”

  “Well, they ain’t rowing down North Street!”

  Cassidy hurried from the shop and went down to the beach. He stared wildly over the water, but the sun, spilling all over it, turned it to a sea of fire and blinded him.

  The only vessel he could see was in his mind’s eye, and it was a grand painted barge with a tasseled canopy, under which sat Mary Flatley and Andrews, side by side.

  Cassidy groaned as he thought of Andrews, with his crafty silver tongue, offering Mary Flatley the kingdom of the sea, with cockles big enough to ride in, and mackerels, proud as bishops, to draw her along.

  “But what of me Michael Cassidy, who’s followed me so far and loved me so long?” said she with a wistful smile.

  “Forget that no-good Irish loafer! What can he do for you that an Englishman can’t do ten times better?”

  “Ye dirty lyin’ rogue!” wailed Cassidy, stamping and stumbling along the beach and not looking where he was going, for it didn’t matter any more.

  “Will you wed me, Mary Flatley?” asked Andrews, smooth as silk. “And become a decent Englishwoman?”

  “That I will!” said she with a sigh. “If ye happen to have such a thing as a ring?”

  “A ring?” said he with a laugh, and straightway produced an article with a pearl the size of an egg, maybe.

  “Don’t take it! I’ll give ye a diamond as big as an apple!” cried Cassidy, though he’d no more than a shilling and the life he stood up in.

  He stumbled on till he came to a breakwater half sunk in the sea, so that its last posts poked up out of the water like a row of executed heads.

  He climbed over it, still looking out to sea, and came down on the other side and trod on something soft.

  It was a coat and a pair of breeches, huddled in a heap. Beside them lay a pair of battered boots and stockings, wrinkled like empty worms.

  “You’re standing on somebody’s property,” came a cold voice from the shadow of the breakwater.

  Cassidy started and then saw it was the pale and brainy boy to whom he’d taken the telescope. He was sitting against the breakwater, shrouded in darkness, with the instrument firmly to his eye.

  Cassidy begged his pardon for any inconvenience and hoisted himself back onto the breakwater and continued to scour the sea.

  At last he saw the boat. It was not so far out as he’d been looking, nor so grand as he’d feared. It lay no more than sixty yards away, to the west of a line of nets with green glass floats winking and sparkling like emeralds of the deep.

  It was a rowboat with shipped oars that stuck up like ears, and the sea kept shrugging it in and out of a pool of sunshine so that it came and went like a dream.

  At one end sat Mary Flatley, as small as a thimble, and at the other sat Andrews, as big as a house. Cassidy shuddered at the size of him. A man like that could have given a girl a hundred pound and not even missed it!

  Even as Cassidy watched, the big fellow fumbled in his pocket and then held out his hand. Was he giving her a ring?

  “What’s he doin’ out there?” groaned Cassidy.

  “None of your business,” said Harris from the shadows below.

  “Maybe not,” said Cassidy sadly. “But what’s he givin’ her? Can ye tell me that, young sir?”

  “Yes,” said Harris, not taking his eye from the telescope. “It’s what you might call an inedible but otherwise stimulating object. It’s part of the ritual of Courtship, you know.”

  “And is she takin’ it?” asked Cassidy, his worst fears confirmed.

  “It’ll knock her flat,” said Harris confidently.

  “Oh, Mary, Mary! How could ye?”

  “Instinct,” said Harris. “She can’t help herself.”

  “Will ye lend me a squint through the glass, young sir, so’s I can see for meself?”

  “No,” said Harris.

  “I’ll give ye a shillin’, young sir.”

  “No.”

  “Ye’re a hard case!” said Cassidy bitterly. “An Englishman through and through.”

  He began to make his way to the end of the breakwater so he could see for himself what was going on in the boat, while the hard case remained in possession of the telescope below.

  Now Harris was not a hard case. In fact he considered himself to be quite warmhearted. He’d not parted with the telescope because of Bostock. He did not want Bostock’s present activities to be witnessed by eyes other than his own.

  Bostock, as Harris had inferred, was engaged in procuring the inedible but otherwise stimulating object mentioned in the learned article on Courtship, the presentation of which was destined to knock Mary flat. Mary Harris, not Mary Flatley—for what the devil did she have to do with it anyway?

  Music, both vocal and instrumental, having met with a conspicuous lack of success, Bostock had naturally been depressed. In fact, he’d turned quite nasty, and Harris had had quite a struggle with him.

&
nbsp; Patiently Harris had pointed out that failures, however disagreeable, were really a good thing. It stood to reason. The more you failed, the less chance there was of failing next time. You were reducing the chance of error by using it up. That was science. Did Bostock not know that nothing great had ever been achieved without many mistakes on the way? How many baths did Bostock think Archimedes had to take before the water overflowed?

  Bostock had pointed out that there’d been an overflow from Mary’s window the first time, and that was enough for him. But Harris, explaining the easy success in courtship of foolish creatures like herons, magpies, and oyster catchers, at last persuaded Bostock that the presentation of prey or of inedible but otherwise stimulating objects was worth a try.

  The particular objects to which Harris had directed Bostock’s attention were the green glass floats used by fishermen to hold up their nets. Mary already had three of them, hanging over her bed like a pawnshop, and Harris assured Bostock that another pair would send her wild with delight.

  Bostock said he didn’t have any money, as he’d given Harris his last fourpence ha’penny. Harris said not to worry, as Bostock could nick them from the nets floating out at sea.

  It was quite all right, Harris explained, because as long as they were floating, they were flotsam, and, as such, belonged to the Crown. But, as it wasn’t to be supposed that the king wanted them, he, Bostock, had the law on his side—which any court in the land would uphold.

  All that was needed was a strong swimmer and a sharp knife, to cut the floats free from the nets.

  Bostock was the swimmer, and the knife was a handsome, ivory-handled article that had been presented to Captain Bostock by the Brighton Exploring Society on the occasion of his election to the presidency, and was engraved with his name. It had been the sharpest knife Bostock had been able to find.

  So now Harris waited confidently in the shadow for the triumphant return of his friend, while not very far away Cassidy squatted forlornly on the last stump of the breakwater like a green frog with brass buttons that had missed its chance of being kissed into a prince.