The Complete Bostock and Harris

by Leon Garfield

  Dark figures against the fire, weaving in and out . . . little shrieks as bright embers touched the hems of swinging skirts and then went out. All move around one place . . .

  All but one. At the end of the line a single figure hopped and capered as if unaware that his partner had long since fled his company.

  “Bosty!” shrieked Harris.

  “Harris!” shouted Bostock.

  Shining with delight and relief, he left the dance and rushed upon his friend. They shook hands.

  “Harris!” said Bostock. “You’re a genius!”

  Harris blinked away a tear.

  “You did it, Harris! Just as you always said. Mary danced with me . . . and I danced with Mary! Oh, Harris, Harris!”

  Then, as Harris listened, Bostock told him that not only was he the most brilliant but also the most magnanimous person that he, Bostock, knew. He was ashamed, he said, to think how wonderful and forgiving Harris had been. Even though he’d asked for the telescope back, Harris had still kept his word and given him Mary.

  She’d come around to his house that morning and asked him to be her companion on Devil’s Dyke. Bostock had been absolutely overwhelmed by Harris’s generosity. But how had he done it? How had he accomplished such a miracle?

  Harris smiled and frowned and thought. How had he done it? For the moment he was not quite sure.

  In point of fact, he had done it by accident. But that didn’t detract from his achievement. Most great discoveries are made by accident. After all, Archimedes had meant to wash, not to soak the bathroom.

  Harris had wrought his masterpiece when he’d told Mary, in a fit of anger, that Bostock had found another girl. That was all. Mary, when she’d gotten over her incredulity, wondered who it was that Bostock had found. Who would go out with that idiot? Then she fell to wondering if, perhaps, there was more to Bostock than she’d supposed. Then she’d decided she’d better try Bostock for herself in case she’d been missing something. Also she’d be hitting another girl in the eye, which was a satisfaction in itself.

  So she’d secured Bostock and threatened Caroline, as she wasn’t going to have that little cow laughing her head off while she danced with her brother’s awful friend.

  Now she’d gone, having discovered that the only aspect of Bostock to which there was more than she’d supposed had been his feet. But she had danced with him.

  “Oh, Harris!” said Bostock, quite overcome by the memory. “How did you do it?”

  “It was really quite simple, Bosty,” said Harris, emerging from his ponderings like a sagacious retriever, with the answer in his mouth. “It was only a question of knowledge properly applied.”

  Quietly he explained to Bostock about the learned article and how the whole ingenious ritual of Courtship had been followed and at last fulfilled. First there’d been the display of bright plumage and the discharge of scent, then the performing of music and the presentation of prey, and finally, right on top of Devil’s Dyke, had come the execution of the dance. That had done it.

  It was just, said Harris shrewdly, that you had to go through the lot. There were no shortcuts. Omit one and the rest would never have followed. It was rather like a figure in a quadrille.

  “To prove it,” said Harris, “we could do it again if you like.”

  Bostock shook his head. He’d had his moment and he’d treasure it all his life. Perhaps in the future—a long way off—he’d think differently. But not now. To be honest, he was rather glad it was all over and he and Harris were friends.

  They began to walk away from Devil’s Dyke, leaving the dance behind. Once more a great warmth of affection glowed between them, and a great depth of friendship, no matter how ruffled the surface had lately been.

  At last they came to Bostock’s house, and Bostock asked Harris if he’d like to come in and watch Pigott’s comet through his pa’s telescope, up in the Crow’s Nest.

  Harris said he would, and together they climbed to the top of the house. There, while Harris scoured the heavens with an eager eye, Bostock thought of Mary and the cost of her in terms of his pa’s property, ruined or lost. But he wasn’t worried any more. Christmas was a long way off, and Harris would be sure to think of something. Harris was a genius, after all.

  LEON GARFIELD (1921–1996) was born and raised in the seaside town of Brighton, England. His father owned a series of businesses, and the family’s fortunes fluctuated wildly. Garfield enrolled in art school, left to work in an office, and in 1940 was drafted into the army, serving in the medical corps. After the war, he returned to London and worked as a biochemical technician. In 1948 he married Vivian Alcock, an artist who would later become a successful writer of children’s books, and it was she who encouraged him to write his first novel, Jack Holborn, which was published in 1964. In all, Garfield would write some fifty books, including a continuation of Charles Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood and retellings of biblical and Shakespearian stories. Among his best-known books are Devil-in-the-Fog (1966, winner of The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize), Smith (1967, published in The New York Review Children’s Collection), The God Beneath the Sea (1970, winner of the Carnegie Medal), and John Diamond (1980, winner of the Whitbread Award).