The Complete Bostock and Harris

by Leon Garfield

  Trees whispered, tombstones loomed, and monuments glared. Harris faltered. He listened in vain for the murmur of lovers’ voices and the music of amorous sighs. Regretfully he abandoned the idea of a courting couple and considered instead the possibility of grave robbers, body snatchers, murderers, and other likely inhabitants of a churchyard by night.

  He could still see the light, moving about in a thoroughly spectral fashion, and he could hear the slow, heavy thump of mysterious feet.

  Harris felt a strong desire to be back in his room, with his head under the blankets, and asleep.

  The light drew near, and a long black shadow fell across a grave. Harris, mentally bequeathing his possessions to Bostock and his murdered body to science, moaned and went horribly white.

  “Holy Mother of God!” shrieked O’Rourke, coming out from behind a bush and beholding the apparition of Harris. “ ’Tis a murdered boy!”

  Indeed, it was a ghastly, spectral Harris, whose corpse-like pallor would have deceived any body snatcher into taking him into stock at once.

  They both stood, trembling violently and glaring at each other and inspiring as much terror as they felt.

  O’Rourke crossed himself and required Harris, in the name of St. Patrick, to vanish and return to those mysterious regions whence he’d come.

  Harris would willingly have obliged, but was unable to do so. Paralyzed with dread, he remained motionless in O’Rourke’s lantern light.

  Then O’Rourke perceived that the terrible, white-faced thing was the friend of the magistrate’s son, and Harris perceived that the huge gaunt figure with the lantern was one of the Irish roofers he’d seen at Bostock’s house.

  “Wh-what are you doing here?” inquired Harris in a tone of voice that suggested that, if O’Rourke didn’t choose to say, then he, Harris, would not press the point.

  But O’Rourke was so relieved to discover that Harris was flesh and blood—although, by the look of him, there wasn’t all that much blood about—that he was only too thankful to talk.

  “I was lookin’ for somebody,” he said, casting his light around the graves. “And I pray to God that I won’t be lucky enough to find her.”

  “Somebody dead?”

  “Now would I be lookin’ for a livin’ lass with her name on a stone and her pretty self under it?”

  “Then she is dead!”

  “Never say such a thing! If Cassidy heard ye, he’d go right out of his mind! Just say she’s somewhere, that’s all. And may Cassidy be the first to find her, though he’ll fall off his ladder and break his neck!”

  O’Rourke beckoned. “Come over here and sit with me on this stone, young sir, and I’ll tell ye a tale of love and courtin’ that’ll bring the tears to yer eyes, even though ye’re as small as a wink in a blind man’s cup!”

  He held out his hand as if to assist the uncertain boy. “I’ll tell ye of Cassidy and sweet Mary Flatley, that’s been gone for a year and a day. But I tell a lie, for it’s tomorrow already, so it’ll be a year and two days. ’Twas in Dublin’s fair city, and she in the fish business like Molly Malone before her, and Cassidy comin’ up to mend the thatch of her father’s roof. . . .”

  So they sat on the tombstone with the lantern between them, which turned the black midnight yews into a golden bower, while O’Rourke told sadly of Cassidy’s courting and Cassidy’s seeking and Cassidy’s singing under every window, down every street in the land.

  Then his face grew longer and even more lugubrious as he told of his own quiet searching down streets of a different kind, where the houses had no windows, and were dwellings for only one.

  “But she’s in one or the other, and that’s for certain-sure, and whichever way it is, no good will come of it, for it’ll break Cassidy’s heart or break Cassidy’s neck.”

  He put out his lantern, and the trees, the stones, the church, and they themselves sank back, like dreams, into the darkness of the night.

  Harris went back to his home, and O’Rourke went back to the King’s Head, a little public house in The Lanes, where he and Cassidy shared a room.

  “She wasn’t there, Cassidy!” he whispered, bending over his sleeping friend. “She wasn’t there at all, so ye can still be an honest man!”

  Chapter Nine

  O’ROURKE shook the end of Cassidy’s bed so that Cassidy came out of his dreams with a great start, or, rather, a great stop, which was what O’Rourke had put to them.

  “ ’Tis tomorrow!” he shouted. “Ye loafin’ great bundle of sleep!”

  “Where am I?” inquired Cassidy in a grumbling kind of fright.

  “In the King’s Head!”

  “And what monarch might that be with a thought like Michael Cassidy inside of him?”

  “ ’Tis the public house, ye mad thing—” began O’Rourke, when he saw that Cassidy was deceiving him, so he went on to inform him that half the world was up and about its business and, most likely, taking the bread from their mouths.

  “Another minute!” sighed Cassidy, brightening up his eyes with his knuckles. “Only another minute and she’d have been in me arms! Ye’re a hard man, O’Rourke.”

  He began to array himself for the day’s work, taking particular care with the scraping of his whiskers and the whitening of his teeth, which he polished, first with his tongue and then with a bit of old rag.

  “Do I look all right, O’Rourke? D’ye think she’ll have me?”

  “Ye look fine, Cassidy! Handsome enough to lead a parade!”

  “Today’s the day, O’Rourke! Today’s the day I’ll find her! I feel it in me bones!”

  O’Rourke nodded. He did not have the heart to remind Cassidy that he’d felt it in his bones every single morning since they’d landed in Liverpool, and it was a marvel that Cassidy could still stand upright, with bones inside of him that told such terrible lies.

  They left the King’s Head and went down into Bartholomews, where O’Rourke collected a pane of glass from a glazier’s, and came back all sideways, like an Irishman in an Egyptian picture, carrying nothing at all.

  They went to the stables and Cassidy said they ought to take the pony to the doctor’s, as he looked sick as a dog.

  “D’ye really think so, Cassidy? For it’ll cost us money!”

  “Just look at him, O’Rourke! Did ye ever see such a poor beast with so many spots behind his eyes?”

  Gloomily, for O’Rourke was no joker and Cassidy always caught him out, he gave Cassidy the glass and the pair of them got up onto the cart.

  Then O’Rourke jerked the reins, and Cassidy began to sing, pausing only to pay his high-flown compliments to every pretty girl they passed. Nor did he overlook the plain ones, for Cassidy found something to be charmed by everywhere.

  “In Dublin’s fair city, where girls are so pretty . . . Good mornin’ to yer ladyship! And what might ye be doin’ so far from Dublin with such cherries in yer cheeks?

  “I first set me eyes on sweet Molly Malone! . . . Oh, but if I’d seen ye first, me darlin’, I’d have had no eyes for that Molly Malone! Chalk and cheese! Chalk and cheese!”

  So he went on, singing and saluting, and sometimes holding up the glass at a girl as if she were a picture, crying out for a frame, while O’Rourke boomed steadily, “Tiles and slates! Chairs to mend! Pots, kettles, and pans!”

  At last they came to the row of smart new villas that sparkled in the sun. “There’s the house!” cried O’Rourke, pointing to the end of the row. “ ’Tis a window upstairs in the front!”

  He’d spied the cracked glass on the previous day and obtained the business of mending it from the lady of the house herself. They halted.

  “And while ye’re up there, Cassidy, ye might take a look at the roof and see if ye can wheedle a slate or two down, for she’s not a lady to begrudge a shillin’,” said O’Rourke.

  “That wouldn’t befit an honest man,” said Cassidy, climbing down.

  “For God’s sake, Cassidy, it’s business and there’s nothin’ perso
nal in it at all!”

  Cassidy beamed.

  “She died of a faver, and no one could save her,” he sang, carrying the ladder to the front of the house.

  “Must ye sing, Cassidy? ’Tis a respectable house!”

  “I must, O’Rourke. I must!” said Cassidy, and went on with, “And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone!” so that O’Rourke couldn’t help feeling that it would have been a good thing all around.

  “Her ghost wheels her barrow, through streets broad and narrow,

  “Crying: Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!”

  He laid the ladder against the wall.

  “Alive, alive-o!”

  “Go easy, Cassidy, or it’s the dead ye’ll be awakening with that great bellow!”

  “And haven’t they been sleepin’ long enough, O’Rourke?” demanded Cassidy, and went on trumpeting his song at the top of his voice.

  He began to mount the ladder.

  “Alive, alive-o!”

  He’s like a bird! thought O’Rourke with unwilling admiration, as the smart buttons on the back of Cassidy’s green coat winked and twinkled down on him.

  Cassidy went dancing up, alive and alive-o-ing all the way. He reached the cracked window and tapped on the glass.

  “Alive, alive-o!”

  The window flew up.

  “Alive, alive—OOOOH!” shrieked Cassidy as Mary Flatley herself looked out.

  Like a bird! thought O’Rourke, as down plummeted Cassidy with a hoarse cry.

  “Dead!” howled O’Rourke. “Cassidy, are ye dead?”

  “Not dead! Not dead!” screamed Mary Flatley, coming out of the window almost far enough to follow after. “Don’t say ye’re dead, Michael Cassidy! Never say that in me hearin’!”

  “So it’s yerself!” wailed O’Rourke, staring up at the cause of the disaster. “And didn’t I always tell him ye’d break his heart or his neck?”

  Cassidy lay among bushes, green as a giant leaf, with a face on him as white as any blossom—and him just singing, “Alive, alive-o!”

  “Oh, Cassidy, Cassidy! Tell me ye’re not dead!”

  Never a word out of him, never a look. His eyes lay under lids as quiet as stones.

  “Oh, Michael Cassidy, Michael Cassidy!” wept Mary Flatley, coming out of the front door and joining O’Rourke in his lamentations. “I’ll not wed another if only ye’ll tell me ye’re not dead! For what should I be doin’ in this old world without ye?”

  The mistress of the house appeared, then neighbors came, and presently there was a little crowd gazing down on the fallen Cassidy and wondering what to do.

  Then somebody remembered that a doctor lived nearby, and ran off to fetch him, while Mary Flatley wept and picked leaves and twigs from out of Cassidy’s curly black hair.

  Dr. Harris came and everybody made way for him. He looked up at the window and down at the ground, for all the world as if he expected to find Cassidy somewhere between. Then Mary Flatley showed him where Cassidy was, and he looked at Cassidy and felt him and listened to him through his green coat and right down to his heart. Then he said that Cassidy was alive and that his neck was as good as yours or mine.

  “ ’Tis a miracle!” said O’Rourke.

  “ ’Tis Michael Cassidy!” said Mary Flatley. “And that’s miracle enough for me!”

  Then O’Rourke took one end of him and two of the villa people took the other, and between them they eased him off the bushes, and Mary Flatley picked up a silver sixpence that had fallen from his pocket and tucked it into his shirt.

  They laid him on his ladder and carried him out to the cart, and the lady of the villa said she’d pay the doctor’s fee as poor Cassidy had fallen in her service, in a manner of speaking. And Dr. Harris said no, not at all, she wasn’t to think of it, as he’d only acted out of common humanity. And O’Rourke, who was all for saving money, agreed that there never was such a common piece of humanity as Michael Cassidy, God bless him!

  “He’ll need liniment,” said Dr. Harris to O’Rourke. “Can you fetch it for him?”

  But before O’Rourke could answer, the lady of the villa, anxious to be of service, said she’d send her very own maid.

  “We’re livin’ in the King’s Head,” said O’Rourke. “The establishment in The Lanes.”

  “I’ll be there before ye!” cried Mary Flatley, and flew back into the villa to put on her best dress and fill a basket, so that Cassidy, when he woke up, should have something good to look at, as well as good to eat.

  They put him in the back of the cart where he lay like a fallen knight collected for burial. Sorrowful O’Rourke briefly turned his countenance—to make sure Cassidy hadn’t tumbled off—and the cart trundled away. It was a scene of ancient chivalry, bright as a tear and a thousand years old.

  Chapter Ten

  HARRIS saw it all. Leaning out of his window like an angel on a bracket, that had, for reasons of short-sightedness, been equipped with a telescope, he had watched Cassidy go climbing up his ladder, singing at every rung.

  He had seen the girl come swiftly to her window, her face all wild with longing as she heard her lover’s song. And then, just as O’Rourke had predicted in the churchyard, down had plummeted Cassidy with a hoarse cry, remarkably like the snipe.

  Harris had witnessed the courting of Cassidy and Mary Flatley, and he could hardly believe his luck.

  He had seen everything he needed to know, hanging in a miraculous bubble of light, suspended before his eye.

  Fascinated, he observed the girl fly out of the house and rush to Cassidy’s side, kneeling and weeping all over him, as if to water him back to life.

  Quietly he put the telescope by. The problem was solved. What had moved one Mary could hardly fail to move another. Courtship, love, and the very springs of passion were, to Harris, now an open book.

  He left his room and went downstairs, passing on his way his sister Dorothy, to whom, unhappily, courtship was a book that had been slammed shut. She sniveled, dabbed her swollen eyes, and stared at her brother as if, somehow, he were the author of all her misfortunes.

  He departed from the house and went around to the side. He looked into the stone coffin, but Bostock wasn’t there, so he went down to the beach.

  On the other side of the road Philip Top-Morlion was hanging about, trying to summon up courage to call on Miss Harris and propose another time for her lesson. He was still bewildered by her tempestuous departure from the tea table, particularly after she’d held his hand. He saw Harris and waved.

  Harris ignored him. He had a great deal on his mind. Bostock was sitting on a breakwater, hurling stones with tremendous force into the sea, as if to provoke it. But it lay, flat as Sunday, scarcely bothering to lap at the pebbles before drawing itself back with a noise like soup.

  The friends shook hands, and Harris perched himself on the breakwater by Bostock’s side. Philip Top-Morlion, who’d tottered after, watched from a distance and wondered if he should ask Harris if he thought his sister would like her lesson now.

  The two boys appeared to be deep in conversation, and of a very private kind. They kept looking up at the wheeling, shrieking seagulls as if fearing they were eavesdropping on the secrets that each was confiding to the other.

  Philip smiled indulgently. What secrets could they have at their age, when their hearts were still sleeping and they knew nothing of the pangs of wounded pride?

  He eased his various musical burdens and waited for a suitable moment to approach the two boys. Although he felt that the presence of a grown-up person like himself would probably be flattering, he was sensitive enough not to want to interrupt.

  Her brother appeared to be doing most of the talking. He was waving his arms about earnestly, and every now and then he laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder with an affectionate, reassuring air.

  Presently Bostock stopped throwing stones and began to nod, as if he’d been talked into something. Then, to Philip’s surprise, Harris started to sing. It was uncanny, a
s if there were a bird somewhere inside him that had cut its foot on something sharp.

  Philip, the musician, winced, but Philip, the music teacher, felt that the suitable moment had arrived.

  He crossed the road and stumbled bulkily over the pebbles of the beach.

  “You should take lessons,” he said, as if Harris’s singing, though pleasing in an artless way, would have benefited tremendously from paid tuition.

  Harris looked mildly affronted.

  “I think you have talent,” lied Philip, not wanting to make an enemy of Miss Harris’s brother.

  Harris nodded, and Bostock did not look surprised.

  “I was wondering,” said Philip, “if your sister Dorothy would like her cello lesson this morning.”

  “It’s Thursday,” said Harris. “She goes to Collier’s. Free cakes.”

  “Ah, well,” said Philip casually, “perhaps another time. Collier’s, did you say? I might even see her there.”

  Harris looked at him carefully. “You won’t get in, you know,” he said.

  Philip Top-Morlion stepped back as if he’d been struck. His eyes filled with tears.

  “Thank you,” he said shakenly. “Thank you very much!”

  He’d never been so insulted in all his life! To be told by a child—a sordid, vulgar, hateful boy!—that he wasn’t good enough to be admitted to that cheap little coffee shop in Bartholomews! And after he’d told the boy he had talent!

  Philip Top-Morlion raged hopelessly against the injustice of it. Why hadn’t he struck the boy? Why hadn’t he punched him in the face? Why was he always so sickeningly meek when everywhere you saw stupid arrogance honored? When every loud-mouthed fool was hailed as a genius because he said he was!

  Why did he never tell the parents of his simpering pupils what he really thought of them? Why did he always say, “Thank you,” when he meant, “Damn you!”?

  He longed with all his heart to be able to explode with outrage and spread a peacock’s tail of anger across the sky. He longed to strut, to give grand concerts and be greeted with reverence and wild applause.