He felt perversely goaded to speak up for the absent party. ‘I’m sure he loves you.’
‘Oh, of course he does,’ she said impatiently, ‘that’s not what I mean.’
He very much wanted to know what she did mean, but he sensed that closer questioning would be impertinent. Ever since the moment his relationship with Bella had changed, they had not talked about Richard, but even in his absence he was a presence: a needling one.
Bella shifted on to her side, and drew her long legs beneath her. When she spoke again the words came out slow and measured. ‘I was young when we met – twenty-one, still at the Slade. Richard seemed so grown-up, he’d fought in the war, seen the world. He would always … take charge of things. He was dashing!’ She laughed at the old-fashioned sound of the word. ‘When he asked me to marry him it came right out of the blue. I didn’t think very hard about it – and I’m not sure he did either.’
‘He’s … such a good man,’ said Baines, as if he were searching for his own defence of her choice.
Bella nodded, her mouth shaped in that rueful half-smile. ‘Yes. But one doesn’t love a man for his virtue.’
‘You loved him enough to move up here.’
She paused before answering. ‘That was a mistake. I mean, he knows I’ve never really been happy here. But it’s more than that – he thought I was going to be this jolly sort of helpmeet, the wife who bakes and breeds and doesn’t complain, and doesn’t have a career, either. Richard didn’t expect me to be an independent type, and I think it shocked him a little when I took up photography.’
‘But he once told me – I distinctly recall it – that you were a better photographer than him.’
‘Well – he’s always been charming. But I did think he resented me for it at times. I was sneaking on to his territory, wasn’t I? And then there were moments when I realised we hardly knew one another at all. You remember that night we talked about the Liverpool photographs, and the way he dismissed my suggestion about showing both sides of the city – he just thought I was being a mad socialist. “Like mother, like daughter” – that’s what he used to say.’
‘You mean, he doesn’t now?’
‘We don’t really have arguments any more – we’re too aware of the things we might say to one another. Honesty would be the ruin of us.’
Listening to her talk, Baines monitored guilt and relief grappling for purchase within. On the one hand, he was glad to learn that he was not the lone assassin of Richard’s happiness. The fact that Bella had already strayed as far as she had suggested deep faults, on both sides, in the structure of their marriage … On the other, he knew he was actively helping to sabotage whatever insecure base it remained upon, and the monstrousness of what he was doing suddenly lurched up at him.
A brief shiver came from the fireplace as a coal slid off its perch. They listened to the fire’s dwindling crackle for a few moments until Baines felt moved to say, ‘I suppose marriage is … quite hard to do.’ He hoped the vague generality might coax her to say more.
‘I’ve found it so,’ replied Bella, softly. Then she fixed her gaze back on him. ‘You’ve never been … tempted by it?’
Baines shook his head, and heard a distant squeak from the door of his conscience … He had one more secret to tell. Was it worth exhuming now after all these years?
‘I’ve never …’ He stopped, and began again, more carefully. ‘It’s only ever come up once before.’
‘Really?’ said Bella, in a tone that implied she had never suspected such a thing of him. Baines, amused, continued. ‘You recall the night I told you about Alice?’
‘Tom – I would hardly forget that, would I?’
‘Well … I didn’t quite tell you the whole truth.’ He paused, and swallowed. ‘The night it happened, at that reunion, Alice came up to Liverpool, as I mentioned. But we didn’t meet in a pub beforehand, we met here, at this flat. It seemed the friendly thing to do, we hadn’t seen one another for a year or so –’
Bella looked alarmed. ‘You didn’t –?’
‘No! God, no,’ he said, hearing the implication in her question. ‘Nothing like that happened. We just talked, for hours … Of course she was in a very vulnerable state, that’s what must have prompted it.’
‘Prompted what?’
‘She asked me to marry her,’ he said, with a shake of his head, almost disbelieving his own words. Bella was startled.
‘No …’
‘It could only have been because she was pregnant – though I had no idea of that at the time. At first I thought she was joking, and I just laughed. But she wasn’t laughing, she was deadly serious. I couldn’t get over it. We hadn’t spoken for a year, and all of a sudden, this …’
‘I can understand her anxiety. But would having a child really have been so terrible?’
‘Her parents were quite religious, I gathered. But who knows what was going through her head?’
‘So – what did you say to her?’
Baines looked away, the memory of it clawing inside like rats at a pantry door. ‘I told her – as gently as I could – that it didn’t seem the right thing to do. And I remember thinking, if only she’d asked me the same thing a few years back, when I was in love with her … In any case, it turned out to be the last serious conversation we ever had.’
He thought of her again, her statuesque poise on the balcony of the hotel, the silent movie of her stepping into the void – one moment there, the next gone. Might he have saved her by agreeing to her mad proposal? He would never know, and he had carried that uncertainty with him ever since. As he sat there, drained by his story, Bella took his hand between hers and pressed it fiercely against her cheek. She didn’t say anything, but he felt her touch more dear to him than he could have thought possible.
In March the weather cleared, and the bombers returned. Birkenhead and Wallasey caught the worst of it; from across the Mersey Baines could spot flares going up and the distant silhouettes of bombs tumbling down. The ack-ack guns roared blindly into the night. He knew that the pity people felt for their Wirral neighbours would recede as soon as the raiders turned east and their own homes were targeted again. They didn’t have to wait long. One night he returned with Mavers and Farrell from an emergency call at the docks to find that the streets around their own depot had been set on fire, and they had worked into the small hours helping the auxiliary services deal with incendiaries. A huge conflagration at the Cotton Exchange was occupying most of the emergency workers. On the Edmund Street side the huge windows that faced north – designed to admit the light necessary for examining cotton samples – were exploding in starbursts of glass fragments. They were returning to the van when Baines stopped, his ears pricked by the distant tinkle of breaking glass on the narrow cobbled lane running off Old Hall Street; it sounded like a single window being smashed, quite different from glass bursting under heat. Through the curtaining smoke he could make out shadowy figures loitering around a terrace of shops, though some instinct told him that these were not fire-watchers. He called over to Mavers and Farrell.
‘What d’you reckon?’
Mavers, his hooded eyes squinting through the murk, turned to Baines. ‘I’d say they’re up to no good. Terry?’
Farrell nodded. ‘I’ll lay odds they’re standen outside a jeweller’s.’
They began to walk down the lane, and gradually the figures resolved themselves into a couple of men, one of them in uniform; on seeing their approach the pair slipped into the shadows of the building they had been casing. Farrell was right: it was a jeweller’s shop, which had evidently suffered bomb damage from a previous raid and was now vulnerable to attack from the ground. The brick they could see against the emptied window display was, Baines knew, the one he had just heard being heaved through the plate-glass front. Mavers unhooked the pickaxe from his belt, and twirled it briefly in his grip, like a batsman about to take guard.
‘There might be more of ’em inside,’ warned Farrell, loosening his
collar. Touching his finger to his lips he led them quietly through a door that had been forced off its hinges, and thence into the front salesroom, strewn with emptied drawers and broken cases. Mavers swept his torch beam over the rifled premises; even the gas meter had been cracked open for its shillings. A blade of light shone from under another door at the back, and within they could hear murmuring voices. Farrell beckoned them on, and at the threshold turned to whisper, ‘Let’s give ’em a fright.’ There was relish in his voice.
Then he rapped curtly on the door and called, ‘Police!’ flinging it open to reveal two men crouched around the contents of a strongbox, the lantern next to it illuminating their frowns of surprise. Baines thought of an ancient Punch cartoon in which a burglar, caught red-handed, was offering his pathetic excuse to the policeman – ‘I wuz only lookin’ after it for ’im, sir!’ These two didn’t look capable even of that much wit. Farrell was staring at the one in uniform, and shaking his head in a mime of disappointment. ‘Oh, an’ you a warden, ’n’ all.’
Baines realised that this was probably how the looters had known the building was empty. The man stared back at them, his eyes narrowing.
‘Yous aren’t the police.’
Farrell laughed nastily and said, ‘Nah – we’re fucken worse than that.’
In a flash the warden picked up a chair and flung it across the room at them. Farrell ducked, and the other man, seeing his partner bolt for the side door, decided to make a break for it himself. Being a stout eighteen-stoner, he was plainly intending to bullock right through them, and Baines, standing nearest, braced himself for the impact. Mavers, however, was quicker than both of them, and with dexterous aplomb swung the flat of his pickaxe across the man’s knee. He collapsed as heavily as a stunned boar, and lay moaning in pain. Farrell had disappeared in pursuit of the warden.
Above them Baines heard hurrying footsteps, and ran back through the salesroom towards the staircase. Another man was halfway down when he saw his path of escape blocked, and turned back as Baines took the stairs two at a time. He followed the retreating figure into what was apparently the jeweller’s living quarters. He looked first into a bedroom, where bomb damage had left a blanket of soot and feathers in its wake; he could already smell the neglect. The sound of a window creaking open came from the bathroom, and he entered to find his quarry standing on the edge of the tub with one foot on the window ledge. The man must have heard his advance because as Baines went to grab him an elbow swung round and caught him sharply on the nose. For an instant he saw stars and fell back, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth, and as he staggered towards the sink he saw the man’s shadow in the mirror dart behind him and out of the bathroom door.
Smarting, he stumbled after the man, who was now clattering down the stairs with a bag slung over his shoulder. So desperate was his flight that he hurled himself at Mavers, who was coming up the other way, and the two of them went flailing down to the foot of the staircase. The looter was just struggling to his feet as Baines arrived and on instinct nutted him full in the face, in return for his own bloody nose. The man reeled but stayed on his feet, so Baines grabbed Mavers’s pick and rammed the shaft into his midriff, and now he did go down.
‘You all right, Liam?’ he asked as Mavers rose unsteadily.
‘Yeah … ’e landed on me like a sack of spuds.’
A few moments later Farrell returned, his breathing heavy and his expression thunderous. ‘Gave me the slip – fucker moved faster than a squirrel.’
He went off to the back room to deal with the burly man Mavers had dropped. Baines picked up the looter’s bag of swag and emptied its contents on to the floor. Among the ropes of pearls and rings and brooches was a handful of medals from the Great War, their coloured silk ribbons flopped on the floor like tropical fish; they had been lifted from the jeweller’s personal effects. He imagined their owner as one of the doddery old soldiers he had dined among at the North Western a few weeks earlier. It was one thing to have your business premises looted; quite another that the old boy’s service medals, earned in the valorous defence of his country, should be so wantonly tossed in as trinkets to be fenced. The sight of them triggered a sudden rage in him, and he walked over to the looter, still motionless on the floor.
‘You bastard,’ he muttered, and on that word aimed a savage kick at the untidy heap. He heard the crunch of bone and cartilage as the man whimpered under the blow. Without thinking Baines caught him with another, and then another, until his assault was interrupted by Mavers hauling him away.
‘All right, la’, that’s enough,’ he said, as Baines tried to push past him. The blood angrily rushing past his ears had deafened him to reason. Their struggle continued until he felt Farrell’s chunky arms pinion him from behind, and further resistance became pointless.
‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ Mavers eventually said, looking almost hurt. Baines, released from Farrell’s grip, hung his head, at a loss to know whether it was anger making him tremble still or the shock his own violence had provoked.
‘I dunno – just seeing that stuff lying there …’
‘Yeah, well, we can let the police deal with that.’
Farrell had rolled the looter on to his back to examine the damage, and whistled as he took in the bloodied nose and swollen eye. ‘Whoa,’ he said, grimacing, and looked round at Baines. ‘He won’t be out on the nick for a while.’
‘He won’t be up to anythin’ for a while,’ said Mavers, with a note of accusation in his voice. Unable to meet their eyes, Baines bent down and began to sort the medals from the tangle of jewellery. Mavers eventually withdrew to go in search of the police, leaving them to guard the two miscreants. Still absorbed by the battered face of the looter, Farrell glanced at Baines and said, with a dry chuckle, ‘Hope I never take a bite out of yer.’ His tone was amused, but Baines also detected something he hadn’t heard from him before: it sounded, horribly, like respect.
It had been more than two weeks since Bella had been at Gambier Terrace, yet he could feel her still permeating the atmosphere of his flat; he would take the cushion from the sofa on which she had lain that evening and hold it against his face, inhaling her scent. It was blissful to him. He had picked up her lipstick-smeared cigarette ends from the ashtray and gazed at them as he might have done at a religious relic, thrilled to think that the lips that had touched them had touched him, too. He began to have dreams about her, vivid, sexual, very seldom reassuring: in the last one he had found himself back in the jeweller’s shop where they had discovered the looters, only this time he and Bella were being stalked through the upstairs rooms by some shadowy, faceless figure. He kept promising that he would protect her from this mysterious pursuer, but she was crying inconsolably, convinced that they were about to be caught, and hurt. Sleep had become no longer a respite from exhaustion but an invitation to it.
He answered the telephone one morning and jumped slightly when he heard the voice at the end of the line. It was Richard.
‘Our depot got hit last week – nothing to be done with the place. So what d’you know? – we’ve been relocated to Hackins Hey. Looks like we’ll be working with your lot!’
‘That’s – good news,’ said Baines, hoping his bright tone would cover for the lie. Richard was the last man he wanted to be working alongside.
‘Something I meant to ask you, Tom.’ Baines heard a devil’s voice rasp in his head: Would you kindly stop fucking my wife? Richard continued, ‘You remember that birthday party for Bella I mentioned? I’ve invited a few pals to the flat on the twenty-fourth of next month, but I’m keeping mum – it’ll be a surprise for her.’
‘Oh …’
‘– which is why I need a favour. Would you mind keeping her occupied for the afternoon while I get the place ready?’
Baines swallowed. ‘Of course.’ He really has no clue, he thought, and experienced a shocking flare of contempt for his friend. If a man could not read the signs that his wife was straying then he di
dn’t deserve to keep her. In these rare moments he felt reconciled to his deceit. Then the moment dissolved and he would wake from this illusory justification to the ferocious acid of self-reproach burning in his stomach.
13
WAR, THEY WERE not the first to discover, was a friend to romantic furtiveness. Its sudden alarums and emergencies provided ideal camouflage for late-night absences that in peacetime would have aroused immediate suspicion. A wife could pass off an abrupt telephone call as a summons from the auxiliary service to which she was attached, while the preoccupied moods and bedraggled appearances that followed a desperate tryst might assume the guise of war exhaustion. When the air-raid sirens started to wail they signalled a return to a life in which the contingent and provisional ruled: under cover of darkness anything was possible, deception included. Deception most of all.
At first they were careful, and met only at Gambier Terrace. The flat itself seemed to have become a mute witness to their secret, offering neither approval nor reproach; Baines was pleased that Bella seemed to have adapted so easily to its configurations, like the side of the bed that had become hers, or the admiring way the mirror in the living room held her reflection. One afternoon towards the end of March she invited him over to Slater Street after Richard had gone out for the day to photograph bomb damage. The prospect of taking off their clothes in her own bedroom both excited and appalled him. He who had once indignantly claimed never to have stolen anything would now, on top of everything else, be guilty of – what? Breaking and entering, he supposed. His behaviour was unforgivable – but then he didn’t want to be forgiven. He was still bewitched by the realisation that his most passionate feelings for this woman were unambiguously reciprocated. She wanted him, and nothing outside of that thrilling fact mattered.
Bella came out on to the landing as she heard his footfall on the stairs.
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