The Rescue Man

by Anthony Quinn

  Baines smiled, and handed Bella a mug of tea. ‘Sorry, I seem to have no milk.’

  ‘That’s all right. Do you have any whisky I could put in it? I need a bit of warmth.’

  ‘Of course. And I’ll get some coals, too.’

  As he went to the drinks cabinet to fetch a bottle of Dewar’s, he caught a glimpse of his face in the little Venetian mirror above it.

  ‘Good God! What a fright –’ Although the cut below his eye had been stitched by an auxiliary nurse the blood was congealing in an unsightly black scab around it. Bella stood at the mirror behind him.

  ‘I told you! Do you have any iodine here?’

  ‘Er, there might be some …’

  She followed him out into the bathroom, where he began rummaging around the tiny mirrored cabinet. It was a narrow, windowless room, and he sensed the closeness of her presence behind him. She was now staring in puzzlement at something pinned next to the cabinet.

  ‘Why do you have a calendar from 1914 on your wall?’

  ‘Oh … it’s something I retrieved from a clearance Jack and I did a while ago. We found this old workshop that had been completely undisturbed for, um, twenty-five years. It was pretty eerie, actually – they’d obviously just downed tools and gone to join up.’

  ‘And never came back?’

  ‘That’s what we assumed.’

  Bella pondered this, then said with a faint smile, ‘You are peculiar. Do you ever think you live too much in … the past?’

  He paused, considering, and said, ‘I used to, I suppose.’ He plucked out a bottle of iodine. ‘Here we are.’ She took it from him and with matronly briskness began to wash her hands.

  ‘Right, if you could just sit there,’ she said, pointing to the edge of the bathtub. He sat on the uncomfortable roll-top and watched her soak a corner of a flannel in the solution. Because she was tall he had the impression of her looming over him. Then she was bending down and her face was a few startling inches in front of his.

  ‘This might –’

  ‘Fuck!’ he said thickly, wincing from the sharp bite of the iodine.

  Bella reared back, with an apologetic grimace. ‘Sorry …’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, for my – language.’ Since he had begun working in heavy rescue he had noticed himself slipping into the same everyday profanity that Liam and the rest of them indulged in; yet he still considered it brutish to swear in front of a woman.

  ‘Nothin’ I ’aven’t ’eard before, dearie,’ she cawed in the cockney-charwoman voice she liked to use, and he laughed. Once again she lowered her head towards his and began gingerly to dab the wound. Her face was so close he could smell the cold cream she had put on however many hours before, and could discern tiny flecks of amber he had missed till now in her olive-green eyes. Then he felt the awkwardness of staring into those eyes, so he looked at her mouth instead. Her teeth gently bit on her bottom lip as she concentrated, and he saw up close the tiny indent on the front tooth he had noticed on first meeting her.

  ‘That chipped corner, on your tooth – what happened there?’

  ‘Oh … David did that when he was a baby. I was holding him when he jerked up and accidentally butted me in the mouth!’

  There was something about this reminiscence that called to him – it was sad and fond and comical all at once – and before he had time to stop himself he tilted his head and put his mouth on hers. He held the kiss until she drew away. She looked surprised, and yet not surprised.

  ‘What are you doing?’ There was less accusation in the question than curiosity, and perhaps the hint of a challenge.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wondering if his nerve would hold. ‘You looked so … lovely, just then …’

  He stood up to face her. She was staring hard at him, and as the silence lengthened between them he knew this might go terribly wrong. He decided to speak and have done with it. ‘Actually, I’ve wanted to do that for ages. I know, it’s unpardonable, you’re married, but I just didn’t want to die without knowing what it was like to kiss you. You can hate me for it if –’ The sentence went unfinished because now she was kissing him, cautiously at first, and then, as her mouth found an answering heat in his, more urgently. Seconds passed that felt as long as minutes: he was amazed that his tongue should be inside her mouth, feeling the tiny grooved notch on her tooth that had provoked it all. He had a sudden thrilling sense of reciprocated intimacy, and felt the contrasting familiarity of a face he had yearned over and the absolute unfamiliarity of touching it with his hands, his mouth. She pulled back, her eyes seemingly blurred by the accelerating momentum of what was happening.

  ‘I could never hate you,’ she said, but there seemed more meaning in her voice than that simple declaration could contain. He took the bottle of iodine she was still holding and placed it on the sink, then without a word held her arm as he guided her out of the bathroom and down the corridor. A shaft of daylight had poked into the bedroom where the blackout curtain was imperfectly hung. They could hear the gusting rain against the window, the shivering of its frame. Bella looked for a moment at the bed, the unambiguous implication of it, and with a sidelong glance at him she stepped with her languid dancer’s strides on to it and quickly twisted herself round to face him. He unlaced his boots and kicked them off; when he saw her watching him in the dreary half-light he suddenly felt the presumption of undressing and instead climbed on to the bed, and then on to her.

  She laid her hand on his chest, and whispered, ‘Your heart is racing.’

  ‘Is yours?’

  She nodded. The next minutes seemed to evaporate in an ecstatic fumbling of underclothes. When he thought about it later he found the narrative of it had splintered into momentary images and sounds. He couldn’t quite put it all together in his head, the trickle of retreating silk, the vivid counterpoint of pale skin and dark hair, the sudden reveal of livid flesh; and then his own questing hardness within her, the broken, quickening breaths as they moved together, and the sudden high scalp-tingling release, like a flare going off behind his eyes. He desperately wanted to hold on to that moment, but it was already gone, as moments tended to be.

  Later, when he brought in a fresh pot of tea and the forgotten bottle of Dewar’s, she was lying sideways with her head propped against her fist. Her eyes were on him, but he couldn’t properly read her expression. He sat down beside her, and while he pondered what to say he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her; she took a long reflective drag on it and exhaled with a little sigh.

  ‘So …’ she began, ‘did you have this planned?’ The question rather disappointed him, it implied calculation on his part when he had acted – more dashingly, he thought – on impulse.

  ‘No. Though I’d wanted to do it for a long time.’

  ‘When? When did you realise?’

  ‘I think it must have been that night David was at your flat for dinner, back in May. I remember you talking about your family holidays with him, and I suddenly thought of all the years I wished I’d known you. It made me quite ill – with longing.’

  ‘Was that the night you had that sort of turn?’

  ‘Yes. I tried to hide it – not very well, it seems.’

  He wanted her to reassure him in similar vein, but he couldn’t bring himself to pose a direct question in case her answer was too honest – or not honest enough.

  Bella spoke musingly: ‘I kept thinking about the night you punched that fellow’s lights out at the gallery. That surprised me! Till then I’d always regarded you as rather’ – and here she smiled – ‘remote.’

  It was not what he had been hoping to hear. True, he had been in her thoughts, he had even surprised her, but that confessed misperception of his character was very far from his own passionate avowal. He felt himself retreating into self-appraisal.

  ‘I’ve changed, I suppose. You were right when you said I lived too much in the past. It was only when war came and I started doing rescue work that I sort of … woke up.’

  Be
lla nodded slowly, and then sat up in the bed, facing away from him. He gazed at her back, its creamy, elegant curve and the knobby little ridge of bones at the base of the spine. He loved the very tallness of her – it made her beauty more imposing.

  ‘I’ll be thirty soon,’ she said. Her voice sounded distant, pre occupied.

  ‘Why do you mention that?’

  For a long time she didn’t answer, and he began to wonder if she’d heard his question. But eventually she spoke: ‘Because I should be old enough to know better.’

  A shadow had fallen across her. When he leaned over to touch her back she flinched, and then tried to make amends by offering him a smile. But it felt brittle, there was something mechanical and willed in it that dismayed him. Her euphoric mood of a few hours before had dissipated, and in the tense line of her shoulders he seemed to read a shocked reckoning of what they had just done. Neither of them spoke, but he knew that they were both thinking of the same person.

  11

  19th October 1866

  A LETTER FROM Rawlins, now established in partnership with his cousin in Chicago, Ill. Just to see his handwriting on the envelope caused my heart to turn over.

  ‘… My thoughts still carry me back to that morning at the Pier-Head when we shook hands for the last time. I had fled to England from that terrible war – whose effects, I need hardly tell you, still linger dreadfully. For a long time I felt lost. Yet I never thought to leave my place of exile with so heavy a heart, for in Liverpool I truly found the sweets of life. This poor scrap will not suffice to convey my gratitude, either for your diligence as a tutor or for your unceasing kindness to me as a guide, philosopher & friend. Wherever destiny may take me I will always count it a privilege to have known & worked alongside you. Please remember me to your wife, & to your family, whose convivial hospitality I was so fortunate to share. Goodbye, my dear Friend!

  Believe me, ever yours affectionately, John Rawlins.’

  Good, honest John! How keenly I have felt his absence – I can never replace him. He arrived at a time in my life when I most needed a friend, supported me without thought of recompense, & transacted so much of the business that was dreary & incomprehensible to me. Is it not an unkindness of fate that so often it snatches from us those we can least afford to lose?

  October [1866]

  Months have passed since the completion of Magdalen Chambers, yet not one single line has the press seen fit to bestow upon it. An admirable escape, one might suppose, after the avalanche of opprobrium that nearly buried my first building. It seems I am either to be pilloried or else ignored entirely, & feel at a loss as to which I should prefer. When the Badger &c. took up cudgels against me I was affronted, but I perversely rejoiced in the consciousness that my work had provoked them. Now, alas, I cannot claim even this small satisfaction.

  17th November [1866]

  It is hard – grievously hard – to abide in the knowledge that my own brother, the companion of my youth, chooses to avoid associating with me. When Frank was away in the Caribbean for eight years we would write to one another, & thus maintained our fraternal bond by proxy. Now, he lives in the selfsame city as I, yet we are further apart than ever. We have none of us seen hide nor hair of him since Cassie’s wedding day in March. I dread to imagine what undiscoverable slum he calls home. Does he ever think of us, I wonder, or is he too deep in befuddled oblivion? It seems another age when we stood at the Pier-Head & welcomed him off the gangplank – the joy of that day! Since then I have been obliged to learn a bitter lesson – that a family is only as happy as its unhappiest member.

  Friday, 14th December, 1866

  My father’s thoughts have evidently been tending in the same direction, for this evening after dinner at Abercromby-sq. he invited me to his study for a private colloquy. He looked in some degree older, wearier too, no doubt from shouldering the burden of Ma’s now-constant anxiety in regard to Frank. Confounded by his disappearance she has taken it into her head that he must have been kidnapped – else why has he ceased to visit her at home? ‘Perhaps she is right,’ sighed Pa, though we both knew this to be unlikely. Without any prompting on my part he began talking about the long-enduring antagonism between himself & Frank, which he traced back to a time when Frank hoped to assume the management of Eames & co. in Jamaica – an appointment my father withheld, believing Frank’s temperament to be unsuited to the task. His inclination was to set Frank to work in Liverpool, where he might supervise his progress at close quarters. He confessed now that this had been a mistake, not because he thought his instinct unsound but because it was seen to betray a lack of confidence in his eldest son – it was, he added, the only occasion in their married life on which he & Ma had argued. Frank duly marked the slight, damned his father’s eyes & set sail for the West Indies without delay – a leave-taking I sadly failed to witness, having but recently gone up to Cambridge. Pa belatedly arranged a position for his disobliging son, but by now the canker was in the bud.

  All of this I had in some degree suspected, but I was taken by surprise when Pa then asked whether I believed Frank to be the culprit in the burglary of his house. When I confessed my misgivings Pa merely nodded, his expression betraying no anger, or even disappointment – only a profound sadness. The stolen property was of little concern to him, he said, & I believed him; what he dreaded to lose was his son. I tried to assure him that I would do all in my power to find him, though in my heart I have but little confidence of doing so. Frank does not wish to be found.

  Christmas Day, 1866

  A subdued dinner at Abercromby-sq., the first of its kind I can ever remember here. Cassie & Jackson present, & Will returned from his travels, so the house was full. But of course there was a ghost amongst us, & although Ma put on a show of gaiety I could discern behind her trembling lip an anguish that grieved me terribly. Thank Heaven for Ellie & Rose, whose lisping innocence provided such distraction. Noting Emily’s looks of fond absorption I felt, as doubtless many a father has done, a curious compound of love & estrangement – the latter accountable to an entirely natural sense of being usurped by one’s children. However devoted a wife to a husband, once she conceives a mother’s love her spouse must learn his pre-eminence will never again be secure.

  Friday, 1st February, 1867

  Seized by restlessness this afternoon I left the office, not caring where I walked, & found myself hard by Queen-square. There was a small tavern there I used to visit years ago, & nostalgic tenderness had prompted me before now to visit the place – which I never did. Too late, alas, for the wrecker’s ball was at that very moment loudly pulverising it. Odd that I should have been there to witness its dusty death. It used to amuse me that Pa would break off a conversation at dinner to lament the destruction of this or that ancient building – he would look so stricken that one might have supposed he had designed the thing himself. I understand him better now.

  11th April 1867

  At a guild dinner I happened to meet Edward Urquhart, whom I knew a little at Trinity in ‘59. He had been employed for years at a broker’s, which had lately been ruined in some injudicious foreign scheme. This epidemic of speculation! He recounted the story of his misfortune with no expressions of self-pity, though he admitted that the collapse of the house could not have happened at a less timely moment – he was married only last year. We talked very amiably with one another until after midnight, & before parting I took his card, that we might meet again. He seems an honest & capital fellow, & his dignity under straitened circumstances impressed me deeply.

  25th April 1867

  To dinner here Urquhart & his wife, Euphemia, or Effie as she calls herself – a vivacious, apple-cheeked creature with long chestnut-coloured hair & a brightness about her eyes that I found wholly enchanting. Emily liked her, too, & our little gathering proceeded in high congenial spirits. When the ladies retired I ventured a subject which I had been turning over these past days with Urquhart, to wit – whether he would oblige me by assuming the post of my
business manager. (I had previously recounted to him the departure last year of my faithful friend Rawlins.) I had begun to express a regret that the remuneration would be in no wise comparable with his previous employment when Urquhart broke in, his face lit with gratitude, to say how deeply he esteemed the offer & that he accepted it right willingly. We shook hands on the matter straight away, then called the ladies back to share the good news. I hope the appointment brings me as much luck as John did.

  June [1867]

  I begin to despair of entering architectural competitions, so familiar has rejection become. My designs seem to be out of joint with the times, or else they are admired but shunned on grounds of expense. The winning entries of these competitions, by the bye, are of such a dreary & unreflective kind I should be ashamed to put my name to them. Emily tells me that I must persevere, that an architect of my calibre cannot be overlooked for long, but I have really come to wonder if Magdalen Chambers might be the last building I will ever be allowed to make.

  Thursday, Fifth September, 1867

  Yesterday on Bold-street I happened to be standing idly at a shopfront window when I spotted in the glass reflection a figure I recognised – or thought I had. He had passed by so swiftly that it was hard to be certain, but I turned & began to follow him at a discreet distance. As we walked through the massing crowds of Church-street & thence into Lord-street I became convinced by degrees that the person whose footsteps I tracked was Jem, the young shaver who used to keep company with Frank. He seemed a good foot taller since I had last seen him, & though I had yet to look him properly in the face, something in the jauntiness of his gait inclined me to think it was he. At the junction of St George’s-crescent he stopped to look about, & I feared my shadowing presence had been discovered, but he then continued unawares down into the warren of narrow lanes between Red Cross-st. & Canning-pl. & disappeared into a squalid-looking spirits-vault. Conscious of a business engagement set at five o’clock, I paused for a moment, undecided. I was tempted to let deuce take the boy – his identity was yet far from certain – & make for the office, but then if it were indeed Jem I would have spurned the slender possibility that he might lead me to – a certain errant kinsman of mine.