The Rescue Man

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘You’ve not read it?’ he asked. Baines shook his head.

  ‘I’ve not read any Conrad, actually.’ He noted the surprise on Mavers’s face; it flattered and slightly embarrassed him that Liam assumed he was au fait with English literature, for his expertise encompassed little more than the poetry he could remember from school. Most of his reading life had been consumed with architecture and history. And Wisden.

  ‘I’ve just read this great bit,’ Mavers continued, removing the little volume from his pocket and riffling through its pages in the gloomy reflection of a shop window. ‘Here, listen to this – “He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath – ‘The horror! The horror!’”’

  ‘There’s a line for the times,’ said Baines, with a bitter laugh. Mavers looked at him curiously, then closed the book and returned it to his pocket. For a while they walked in silence, and Baines wondered if his response to Liam’s enthusiastic reading had been too brusque. Eventually, without looking at him, Mavers said, ‘Is somethin’ wrong?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he replied, buying time.

  ‘Well … the last few weeks you look like you’ve been – somewhere else.’

  Baines was always unsettled to learn he had been the subject of study. ‘I suppose … I’ve been out of sorts,’ he said, trying to keep his tone light.

  Mavers nodded, and seemed about to speak. The pause felt like his apology for prying. Finally he said, ‘Would it ’ave to do with that woman we met the other week?’

  Baines was so surprised that he laughed in spite of himself. He knew that Mavers was a close observer of other people, but this had to be guesswork of the most outrageous inspiration. Flustered, he stopped and took out his packet of Player’s.

  ‘Cigarette?’

  Mavers took one, and Baines struck a match. In the light that briefly flared he saw Mavers watching him, waiting. He could bluff his way out now, bury the thing completely … but then he liked Liam, and trusted him; if only he could – his inward vacillating was brought to a halt by his companion’s interruption.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Mavers, nodding to himself. ‘The way she kept lookin’ at yer …’

  Baines felt utterly outmanoeuvred, and said nothing.

  ‘You only have to watch people,’ Mavers continued, shrugging. ‘I could tell there was … somethin’ goin’ on.’ Baines wondered how Liam had intuited this when it had taken him so long to recognise it for himself. He thought of Bella now, of the way she would seek out his company, of the way he had sometimes caught her looking at him. Could he really have been so obtuse?

  ‘I noticed she was, er, wearen …’ Mavers held up his wedding-ring finger by way of illustration.

  ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so.’ He valued Liam’s good opinion too highly to admit what he had done. ‘The awful thing is … I think I’ve fallen in love with her.’ He hadn’t dared say it before, but as soon as he did he knew it was true.

  Mavers sighed quietly. ‘You wouldn’t wanna lose a woman like that.’

  They had reached the depot and, by unspoken agreement, the end of the conversation, though not before Mavers turned to him and said, in conspiratorial admonition, ‘Don’t go doin’ anythin’ stupid.’

  * * *

  ‘I’m not sure I should be here,’ said Baines to Jack as he looked up the open well to the top of the staircase they were ascending.

  ‘Thomas,’ Jack replied, clapping him on the back, ‘consider it a favour to me.’

  They were inside the North Western Hotel next to Lime Street station, a large, lavish memorial of the 1860s building boom, now partly given over to a club for officers of the armed services. Voices echoed off the pillared halls above them, and there was a pleasing thrum of joviality in the atmosphere. Tonight was an old soldiers’ reunion, and shoaling placidly amid the waves of eager young men in khaki were grizzled veterans of the Somme and Ypres, chests ablaze with ribbons; around them drifted survivors of even earlier campaigns in Spion Kop and Ladysmith, some of them stooped and supported by canes, some being steered around in wheelchairs. The air hung thick with reminiscence and cigar smoke as they entered the long room on the second floor. Shouldering their way to the bar they passed a trembling beribboned cove with a walrus moustache of magnificent droop. Jack leaned towards Baines and sang in a whisper,

  ‘“Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!”’

  ‘Maybe you should ask him for some tips,’ said Baines, fingering his upper lip. He had maintained a steady barrage of disapproval against Jack’s moustache, and its owner had responded with an equally steady indifference. Jack had handed him a Scotch and was chatting to a couple of his regiment pals when Baines felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and found Richard grinning at him.

  ‘Tom! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Ah – guest of Jack’s for the evening. Shortage of numbers.’ Baines hoped he sounded more relaxed than he felt. By the rubicund glow of his cheeks he could tell Richard was a few drinks ahead of him, but he nevertheless sensed a need to be on his guard. Their talk quickly turned to rescue work; Richard was recounting a story of the casualties his squad had sustained in January.

  ‘… you try to limit the risks, but they’re brave as bloody lions, all of them.’

  Baines smiled. Richard sounded even more like an old soldier when he was among the regimental colours.

  ‘Bella said you saw each other a few weeks ago,’ he continued. ‘She mentioned that cut of yours – nasty one.’ Baines listened warily for an ulterior meaning, and found none. How much had Bella told him? Richard wasn’t given to sly insinuation, but he might know more than he was letting on.

  ‘Yes. She’d just got the news about David, so she was … you know.’

  Richard nodded vigorously. ‘My God, that was a relief! She was so distraught during those weeks – Christmas was a disaster. Between you and me, I didn’t know what to do with her.’

  ‘I’m sure you were – a great support.’

  But Richard had fixed a measuring look on him. ‘Actually, Tom, I wanted a word with you about Bella …’ His tone was not instantly readable: had he been leading up to this moment all along? If so, it would surely be best if he came out with it himself rather than wait for an interrogation. He looked down and mentally prepared the first paragraph of his confession, but Richard got in before he could speak.

  ‘She’s going to turn thirty in April, and I thought after what she’s been through, well, a birthday party might be the thing. What d’you think?’

  Baines felt as one who had pulled back from an abyss. He looked at Richard whose face now wore the innocently enquiring expression of one friend to another, instead of the cuckold’s suspicion that should have clouded it. How could he have done such a thing to him? He deserved – he didn’t know what – a horse-whipping, probably, but he had got away with it, and now Richard need never know. Their friendship was safe. As for Bella, he imagined that she would be only too willing to forget. It would be their guilty secret, locked down in memory’s darkest and stoutest vault.

  ‘I think a birthday party’s a fine idea,’ he said, and received a beam of approval from Richard that should have broken his heart.

  The food was a shambles, the wine was filthy and the diner to his left was a near-deaf octogenarian colonel whose conversation tested Baines’s interest in cavalry manoeuvres to the limit. Yet he endured it willingly enough, for he was still too stunned from his narrow escape with Richard. He looked down the long white runway of the table they were seated at, and let his gaze drift from one unknown face to another. Once the aproned waiters began serving the cheese and port he decided to turn in for the night. Jack was far gone into the bibulous absorption of old camaraderie, and would not miss him. Richard was on the other side of the room – he could hear his laughter booming over the ambient drone of other loud voices.

  On retrieving his coat from the cloakroom, he stepped out into the wintry s
tillness of the night and managed to catch a tram that was heading south. The unilluminated interior was occupied here and there by single passengers, their pale, illusionless faces just visible through the gloom. He had the impression of riding a ghost train: even the conductor seemed frozen at his station. His eye was caught by a poster that had been tacked upon an advertising board: WALLS HAVE EARS – the usual wartime caution against gossip and loose talk. He looked down the length of the silent, swaying car and the handful of impassive occupants. These walls didn’t appear to have enjoyed much earwigging in a while.

  Alighting from the tram, he walked along Hope Street and had turned into Gambier Terrace when, out of the shadows, a figure loomed towards him. He knew her by her silhouette alone.

  ‘Bella? What are you doing here?’

  He could see her mouth shaping a characteristic moue of ironic self-awareness – it was her way of saying, ‘Would you believe it?’ It seemed to be the only answer he might get until she said, shruggingly, ‘I had a night off.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Oooh … a couple of hours?’

  ‘What?! But, you should have …’ He didn’t really know what she should have. ‘You must have been freezing.’

  She nodded. ‘I still am.’

  ‘Sorry – I mean, come in –’ he said, hurriedly fumbling for his door key and guiding her up the steps. Once inside they ascended the dark staircase in silence; when Baines snapped on the light in the living room the air felt abruptly charged, as if they had made an entrance at the beginning of a play. It felt too exposing, so he killed the light and lit a couple of candles instead.

  ‘Richard has been out all evening, so …’

  ‘I know he has. I talked to him.’

  Her expression darkened. ‘How – at the dinner?’

  ‘I was a guest of Jack’s. Richard came over to say hullo …’ He wondered if he should tell her how close he had come to giving them away. In the meantime he poured her a Scotch and started to prepare a fire in the grate. Bella, still in her coat, had sat down on the sofa, and he sensed her watching him as he lit the fire. Eventually he stood up and said, with a levity he didn’t feel, ‘I thought you’d decided never to see me again.’

  Bella looked away. ‘That’s what I thought. That morning here … I kept telling myself it was a mistake. I’d been so relieved about David – do you remember? – and when you – when we … – I thought it was just that rather giddy mood I was in – it didn’t really mean anything.’ She stopped, and seemed to blush. ‘Sorry, that sounds awful …’

  Baines waited a few moments, not sure how to construe these stuttered sentences. ‘So – that’s what you came here to tell me?’

  She shook her head. ‘I came to see you because …’ Her voice had dropped to an undertone – ‘… it was killing me not to.’

  Doubt, which had been asphyxiating him, let go its grip, and thus released he felt his heart begin to lift and swell. Those days and weeks since they had last met, she had been thinking – of him! It seemed a marvel, a miracle. He didn’t want to do anything that might break the eggshell fragility of this moment. Stalling, he turned to gaze at the fire that was just starting to crackle and spit. The candle flame wobbled on the mantelpiece. He heard the clink of glass as Bella put the tumbler of Scotch down on the low marble-topped table, and looked over to see her eyes still fixed on him, her head enquiringly tilted. Her face … it really was the most agonisingly lovely thing he had ever seen. He walked over and sank on to the sofa beside her, and their faces met one another in a kiss. It was astonishing all over again to feel the firmness of her mouth, astonishing and strange and exciting. After some minutes she pulled away and gazed very seriously at him. Her voice came in a whisper.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking … of all the things I’d like to do to you.’

  Pressing her down so that she lay lengthways on the sofa, he unbuttoned her coat, but didn’t remove it. He felt her body’s warmth through the layers of clothes; slowly, he unbuttoned the woollen cardigan she was wearing; he kissed her stomach through the silk blouse underneath, and the sweet embroidered vest beneath that. Then he pushed these back too so that he could taste the pale skin, and felt her trembling against his mouth. His hands caressed the sharp jut of her hip bones, and fingered the buttons at the side of her skirt which he anticipated trouble with, unless … He had the sensation of journeying through veils, of a headlong descent towards disclosure, and the prospect of pausing to fiddle with more buttons was not to be borne. Her breathing had become shallower, and her face was turned distractedly to one side. His head had drawn level with her lap, and as he lifted up her skirt he recalled an image of Bella at Slater Street casually flipping back the dark hood from her camera and removing the plate. Feeling the snaps and entanglements of her underclothes as a delay to his progress, he placed a kiss, quite reverently, on the ivory-coloured sheath of her pants; through the material he traced smooth skin, then the wiry tussock below. The thin silk felt like water purling through his fingers. His hands squirmed beneath the cool curve of her buttocks and stroked the dimple at the base of her spine. Then he dipped his head lower until his mouth grazed the tip of the inverted white triangle that ended between her legs; he brought a hand around and, parting her legs slightly wider, allowed his finger to draw back the pouched silk. It felt to him as if he were tending a delicate weeping wound, and as he probed it with his tongue he heard her moan quietly. Excited by the oysterish intricacy of her he sucked and licked the salty folds until they became sweet, and slowly she arched her back to heighten the angle of provocation. As her gasps grew more urgent he glanced upwards and saw her face almost angrily flushed and straining, his mouth now breathing in the wetness of her until, with an agonised cry, she stiffened and shuddered down the length of her torso.

  Obeying a vague chivalrous instinct to give her a few moments alone, he went into the kitchen to fetch some water. When he returned he was amused – and aroused – to find her lying in the same half-abandoned state, her uncovered flesh almost electrically white against the gloom. He went over to the fireplace and stirred the coals, glowing peaceably in the grate, then brought a candle from the mantelpiece to the middle of the room, the better to light her face. Bella’s eyes appeared to have changed colour, their olive green transmuted into an inky opacity. Recumbent on the sofa, her mouth a bruised-looking smear of red, she had the sated look of a beautiful vampire. As he handed her a glass she seemed to waken again to her surroundings, her eyes focused and she smoothed the skirt back over her hips. She took a sip of water, and noticed him gazing at her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing – nothing at all,’ he said, and chuckled. ‘You’re so beautiful it’s frightening.’

  ‘Am I?’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Yes! I look at a woman sometimes and think, well, God did a good job there. But you … He must have been – showing off when he made you.’

  She laughed, not in the deep-throated way he had sometimes heard, but the relaxed, giggling tenor of a schoolgirl. Different laughs – that was another thing he loved about her. She plucked out a cigarette from his proffered pack and lit it, then said, ‘D’you remember that day we met? We went for a cup of tea at the Kardomah on Dale Street, and I found out you were an orphan, like me.’

  Baines nodded. ‘And you said that you didn’t really like Liverpudlians.’

  Bella placed a hand over her eyes in a mime of horrified embarrassment, then peeked at him through the lattice of her fingers. ‘What an appalling thing to say. You must have thought I was so … rude.’

  ‘Not really. I took it as a challenge. I thought – I’ll have to charm her.’

  She smiled archly, and fluttered a hand at her dishevelled state. ‘Looks like you succeeded.’

  ‘In a way I could understand your view of us. Liverpudlians – they’re a curious lot, so belligerent and cocksure, and yet with that fierce Irish st
reak of sentimentality. I used to think they – we – were hard to like …’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘This war, I suppose,’ he shrugged. ‘Adversity seems to bring the best out in people here. You come across such courage – such kindness, and in the most desperate circumstances. This may sound potty, but it’s made me quite proud to … be among them.’

  Bella squinted through the smoke. ‘It doesn’t sound potty at all. I liked that shy way you introduced me to those fellows you work with.’

  Baines smiled. ‘It’s odd, you know, how quickly you can become close to someone. When you’re dodging bombs and crawling through wreckage you come to depend on the feller next to you. There’s a couple of them … well, they’re like friends for life.’

  ‘The one who called you “Tommy”?’

  ‘Liam, yeah,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You’ve never met such a stoic, he has this wonderful cool-headed common sense about everything – sort of keeps the whole squad together.’ He was now remembering the last time Mavers had spoken to him, fire-watching on Whitechapel. ‘He said something about you, as a matter of fact …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mmm. He said, “You wouldn’t want to lose a woman like that.”’ Bella inclined her head graciously. ‘How nice of him.’

  ‘It’s true, though,’ he said, and something prompted him to add, ‘I imagine Richard thinks so, too.’

  He watched her, and she didn’t flinch. ‘I sometimes wonder if Richard even sees me.’