The Complete Bostock and Harris

by Leon Garfield

  Above all, he longed to see Miss Harris again. She, at least, understood him, and she loved music.

  He went down to Bartholomews. He couldn’t help himself. It was almost as if he wanted to be humiliated. People like Philip Top-Morlion—sensitive, artistic souls—seem to have a passion for exposing themselves to anguish. It’s as if only by suffering can they create the masterpieces that give the heedless world its joy.

  So Philip Top-Morlion tried to fix his mind on a poignant passage in his grand symphony as he walked past Collier’s with knitted brows.

  She was there! She was sitting in the window, talking to Miss Hemp. He retraced his steps. Miss Hemp saw him first. She would! She nodded slightly and compressed her lips, as if to say, “You won’t get in here, you know.”

  He smiled, as if to say, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  She said something to Miss Harris. He walked on slowly. He looked back. Miss Harris was staring at him. She was smiling and beckoning!

  “Good morning, Mr. Top-Morlion,” she was mouthing through the glass.

  He walked back.

  “Good morning, Miss Harris.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said good morning.”

  “I can’t hear you! Why don’t you come inside?”

  “I—I—”

  “Please!”

  “All right. Just for a minute!”

  “What?”

  “I said—oh, never mind!”

  He vanished, and Dorothy looked expectantly toward the edge of the curtain that screened the bow window from the door.

  After her terrible night of tears she’d decided to try to make things up with Maggie Hemp before it was too late to go with her to Devil’s Dyke. She hated herself for doing it, but there was so little time left and nothing else in view. Now, however, things had changed.

  “I don’t know why you asked him in!” said Miss Hemp with the beginnings of irritation.

  “I wanted to ask him about my lesson, Maggie. That’s all, really.”

  She continued to look toward the curtain.

  “I wonder what’s happened to him?”

  “I expect he’s changed his mind. You know what men are!”

  “He said he was coming . . . just for a minute.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t hear a word!”

  “I’ll just go and see where he is!”

  “Really, Dolly! You’re man mad!”

  “I’m not!” said Dolly, fidgeting out of her chair. “Really I’m not! I won’t be a minute, Maggie!”

  She left the table and whisked around the curtain.

  Ah! He had come in! Or mostly in. He was standing in the doorway and looking rather flushed.

  “Won’t you join us, Mr. Top-Morlion?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t.”

  He tried to smile but felt more like crying. He was the victim of a peculiarly unfortunate circumstance. His father’s cello had become wedged in the narrow doorway, and he was strapped to it as firmly as to a stake. The boy Harris had been right. He couldn’t get in to Collier’s, and, what was worse, he couldn’t get out, either.

  “Let me help you,” said Dorothy, trying not to laugh.

  “It ought to be the other way around,” said Philip wretchedly. “I mean, isn’t it the knight who’s supposed to free the lady?”

  Back at the table, Miss Hemp began to breathe heavily and to tap her foot. What were they doing? She took Dolly’s cake and ate it. What were they talking about? She stared toward the curtain and could just see the edge of Dolly’s dress.

  If it was only Dolly’s lesson, why were they being so secretive about it? She leaned over as far as she could and strained her ears.

  Collier’s was very noisy. Everybody was clattering cups and talking at once. Nevertheless, over and above it all, Maggie Hemp heard quite distinctly the sound of laughter. His and hers. What were they laughing at?

  Her face grew red and her eyes filled up with tears. They were laughing at her!

  It was as plain as anything. That’s why they hadn’t come back to the table! They wanted to have a good laugh together over silly, honest Maggie Hemp! Oh, they were beastly and sly, like—like monkeys or—or goats! She should never, never have made it up with Dolly Harris! She would never speak to her again!

  She stood up and stalked around the curtain toward the door. Yes! She was right! There they were—the pair of them—laughing like cats! It was horrible—worse than she’d supposed. Dolly actually had her hand on that odious Mr. Top-Morlion’s shoulder as if she’d just been whispering in his ear!

  “Oh, Maggie!” cried Dolly, killing herself with laughter.

  “Oh, Dolly!” said Maggie, as if she would gladly have helped. “Get out of my way!”

  Before Dorothy could move, Maggie Hemp’s anger boiled over and she gave Philip Top-Morlion a sharp push.

  At once there was a grating sound, as of a cello being freed from a doorway, and Philip Top-Morlion, with a hoarse cry, flew backwards down the two steps.

  Dorothy, still holding on to the straps she’d been trying to unfasten, accompanied him, and, with a painful clashing of noses, they completed their journey in the street outside. As on their previous meeting they lay in each other’s arms, mightily surprised.

  “Are—are you hurt, Miss Harris?” asked Philip, feeling dazed, his eyes watering.

  “Oh, no, no! Are you hurt, Mr. Top-Morlion?”

  “No, no! Not at all . . .”

  “But why don’t you ask me?” sobbed Maggie Hemp, standing in the doorway and trembling with rage. “Why don’t you ask Maggie Hemp if she’s been hurt? Why don’t you, you—you hyenas, you!”

  Chapter Eleven

  MAGGIE Hemp rushed away from Bartholomews, half blinded with tears. They were all laughing at her! People were even staring out of Collier’s big window and laughing! She could never go there again! Her whole life was ruined!

  Dolly Harris, lying on the dirty ground and showing a good deal more of her stumpy legs than she needed to, was laughing till she cried, and so was that snaky Top-Morlion, all tumbled up beside her!

  Oh, tears are cheap, aren’t they! But not the boiling, scalding ones that ran down Maggie’s cheeks as she ran and ran with her hands to her ears.

  All the world was laughing at her, and she couldn’t bear the sound of it. It was a horrible world! You only had to look around a curtain, and what did you find? Grins and slyness going on behind your back! Everybody despised you if you were honest.

  It was indeed a cruel world for people like Maggie Hemp, who couldn’t keep a lover for more than a week because she just couldn’t help telling him things for his own good.

  Poor, pretty Maggie Hemp whom nobody understood! Surely there was somebody, somewhere, who would see, wide blue eye to wide blue eye, with her.

  She stumbled along with her eyes awash and her nose growing as red as a berry. She’d been so happy to have made things up with Dolly Harris, and talked about what they should wear for the night of the comet on Devil’s Dyke! Now it was over forever!

  The comet! She hated it. She wished that stupid Pigott had never invented it. If she did go to watch it, it would have to be with her dull-as-ditchwater ma and pa, who’d talk about beef and pork and sausages all the time. Never! She’d sit at home and sew rather than that!

  She sniffed and sobbed her way through the narrow, twisting Lanes, with hateful images of jeers and sneers and whispers cut off short thronging her brain. She never really noticed, as she passed, that many was the head that turned, and many the sympathetic smile, for the pretty, brokenhearted girl.

  “Sure to God they’re not tears, me darlin’?” came a voice in her ear, together with a strong smell of spirits in the air. “ ’Tis the mornin’ dew on yer cheeks—for ye’re as pretty as a primrose, and I don’t tell a lie!”

  It was Cassidy, who’d been loafing outside the King’s Head. He was bandaged as if
he’d been embalmed, for O’Rourke had told him that Mary Flatley herself was coming down with some liniment, and he wanted to show her he needed it. Though he might have done with a roll or two less of the bandage and not come to any harm, it was, as he said to O’Rourke, but a couple of yards of white lie.

  “Oh, please go away!” sobbed Maggie Hemp, mightily embarrassed by the Irishman, who stank of brandy. “Or I’ll call for help!”

  But there was no getting rid of Cassidy as easily as that. The very sight of a female in tears was more intoxicating to him than all the brandy that ever came out of France . . . there not being a drop of good Irish whiskey to be had in the King’s Head for love or money.

  And talking of love, who was it who had made her so unhappy? Say but the word and Cassidy would give his right arm! Or was it that she’d lost a lover by drowning, maybe? It was a fate very common among them who lived by the sea!

  If that was it, then she should dry her eyes and consider that more good men came out of the sea than ever went into it, and they were like pebbles on the shore.

  “So give over weepin’, me darlin’,” said Cassidy. He held out his green arms and took Maggie Hemp’s surprised hand into his own two bandaged ones, holding it as if it had been a rare and delicate butterfly.

  So that was how he was standing, like a whited sepulcher, holding a pretty girl’s hand and calling her “darlin’,” when Mary Flatley, in her best dress and shawl, with a bottle of liniment, a basket of apples, and her last drop of good whiskey, came running down to give him her heart.

  She stopped as if she’d been shot, and her eyes blazed up so that Cassidy felt the heat of them, though he was six yards off and trying to look the other way.

  “Ye dirty scoundrel!” she cried. “Smarmin’ up to another bit of muslin skirt! Me mother was right, Michael Cassidy! Ye’ve not even the decency to be dead!”

  Away she went like whirlwind, and Cassidy, whose bandages were like shackles, was left far behind.

  She flew through The Lanes, losing apples from her basket as fast as tears. She was off for the fishmonger’s son! She’d marry him now—this very minute! He’d only to say the word. Though he was quiet and a bit on the dull side, at least he was honest and true!

  She rushed across Bartholomews toward Saunders’, and there, standing next door and smiling to herself, as if all were well with the world, was the doctor’s speckle-eyed daughter, the one with the poky little face!

  “ ’Tis no use yer smilin’!” sobbed Mary Flatley. “For he’ll break yer heart as soon as spit! He’s found another, so ye’ve lost him even before ye had him, the dirty, philanderin’ rogue!”

  Then she vanished inside Saunders’ and was lost among huge hanging nets and clusters of green glass floats.

  Chapter Twelve

  LOST HIM? thought Dorothy Harris. The girl’s out of her mind! She stared into Saunders’ and was confronted by the slow grins of several huge fishermen who loomed out of the marine gloom like monsters of the deep.

  She retreated and shook her head. If the girl had really meant Philip Top-Morlion, then she’d never made a bigger mistake in her life.

  She smiled. Although she was mildly shocked that Philip should have been mixed up with the Irish girl, there was no doubt it gave him a touch of mystery that wasn’t at all displeasing.

  Anyway, he was coming to give her her lesson at nine o’clock that very evening. He’d have come earlier, but the bridge of his father’s cello had been broken when they’d fallen down the steps, and he had to get it repaired.

  He’d asked if nine o’clock was too late. No, she’d said, but wasn’t it inconvenient for him? Surely he had more exciting things to do with his evenings than to give young ladies lessons on the cello?

  “More exciting things than music?” he’d asked seriously.

  “I love music,” she’d said. “Better than anything.”

  “So do I,” said he.

  “Till nine o’clock, then?”

  “On the very stroke, Miss Harris.”

  Well! If that was losing him, then give her more such losses! She would bear them with equanimity. If only she could keep him off Bach, Handel, and Bononcini, she was absolutely certain he’d ask her to go with him to Devil’s Dyke on Saturday night.

  She went home and set about making herself hauntingly beautiful. This necessitated dressing and undressing some twenty times and waiting for suitable moments to enter her mother’s room and borrow articles of jewelry and French scent.

  By five o’clock she was ready and faced the prospect of sitting in her room, like a vase, for four hours.

  Twelve of them passed, and it was half-past five. She put her ear to her clock. It was still going.

  “Dorothy?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, Mama.”

  “You’re very quiet.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Dorothy?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Have you been using my scent?”

  “No, Mama.”

  “Then why can I smell it all over the house?”

  “I can’t smell anything, Mama.”

  At seven o’clock she was summoned for dinner. She couldn’t eat. At half past seven she remembered her cello and began to look for it. At eight o’clock she was still looking. At a quarter past eight she saw her brother leaving the house.

  She called down to him from her window. “Have you seen my cello?”

  Harris looked up. “Cello?” he said wonderingly.

  “Yes. My cello. Have you seen it?”

  “When?”

  “Now!”

  Harris looked around carefully.

  “No.”

  She stared after him thoughtfully, then went back to searching for her vanished instrument. Harris went down to the beach.

  Bostock was by the breakwater. He was wearing a blue cape with silver frogs, and an expensive wig that lay on his head like an old salad.

  They had been presented to Captain Bostock by Mrs. Bostock on the occasion of his elevation to the Bench, as she wanted him to look like a gentleman.

  The friends shook hands.

  “Harris?” said Bostock.

  “Yes, Bosty?”

  “Do you really think that—”

  “I don’t think,” said Harris, silencing his friend with a smile. “I know. It’s science, Bosty, and science means to know, not to think.”

  Bostock nodded.

  “Harris?”

  “Yes, Bosty?”

  “Don’t you think we ought to be going?”

  “In a little while, old friend. In just a little while.”

  They sat in silence, dreaming their dreams. From time to time Bostock stole a glance at Harris and marveled that a head that was really quite small could contain a brain so large.

  Little by little the sky darkened. The stars winked and the friends left the beach with a noise like pearls.

  They walked, still in silence, to Harris’s house. Lights shone from all the upper windows. Harris pointed.

  “That’s hers!”

  Bostock blushed and stared.

  Harris pulled him away and around to the other side of the house.

  “What is it, Harris?”

  Harris raised his finger to his lips and, with infinite caution, removed his sister’s cello from the stone coffin in which he had concealed it.

  The learned article on Courtship had stated music, vocal or instrumental, so Harris, anxious to take no chances and to leave no stone unturned, had decided on both.

  “Oh, Harris! You think of everything!”

  Harris nodded. He did.

  “I’ll kill him!” gasped Dorothy, aloft.

  The time for her lesson drawing near, she had been watching from her window when she’d seen her hateful brother stealthily lifting her lost cello from its hiding place.

  “I’ll kill him! And that idiot friend of his!”

  She rushed fro
m her window and returned with a bowl of dirty water. Then, hearing the unmistakable grumble of a cello below, flung out the water with an enraged screech.

  “Take that, you filthy little beast!”

  She missed them. Harris and Bostock, capering deftly, arrived back under Mary’s window, panting and unscathed. They did not even suspect the narrowness of their escape.

  They looked up. Mary’s window was open to the spring night. Harris twanged the cello and, marvel of marvels, Mary appeared! Harris felt quite awed by his own success. It was happening exactly as he’d seen it happen that morning, through the telescope. The girl had been drawn to her window by an instinct she could not deny. What had moved one Mary was quite definitely moving another.

  She looked down. She saw Bostock and Harris. She made a noise like a rocket and vanished from view.

  “In Dublin’s fair city,” croaked Bostock, while Harris twanged loudly by his side.

  “Where girls are so pretty . . .”

  Mary came back.

  “I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone!”

  Mary beckoned. Bostock approached, and Mary emptied the contents of a chamber pot over Captain Bostock’s cloak and wig.

  It was five minutes after nine o’clock and the last echoes of Bostock’s cry of anguish had died away. Dorothy Harris waited by her window, listening for the sound of her admirer’s step.

  At ten o’clock she began to cry. At eleven o’clock she was still crying. At twelve o’clock she blew out her candle, got undressed, and went to bed.

  The Irish girl had been right all the time. He had found someone else. Philip Top-Morlion had not come.

  She cried herself to sleep, sobbing, over and over again, “Why, why didn’t you come?”

  In point of fact he had come. And on the very stroke of nine. He’d glimpsed her at her window and had had the happy idea of announcing his presence, not by a commonplace knock on the door, but with a melodious flourish from his grand symphony, on his father’s cello. What could have been more romantic than that?

  He had been rewarded with a stream of filthy water and a loud screech of abuse. He had fled, soaked to the skin. He had never been so insulted in all his life!