The Rescue Man

by Anthony Quinn

  The terrible destruction visited on the city by the Luftwaffe cannot be too quickly forgotten, yet a welcome surprise has belatedly emerged from those dark days. But for the bomb damage that befell a warehouse in Toxteth the existence of an ‘unknown’ library might never have been discovered. The library, begun around 1870, was only half completed when its creator, a little-known Victorian architect named Peter Eames, went bankrupt and was forced to abandon its construction. The building passed into the hands of a property company which had undertaken to clear the site but instead bricked up the library and used the shell as a temporary warehouse. The company itself went bankrupt some years later. And there the matter might have rested had not an HE landed on the corner of Jamaica Street and Norfolk Street one night in May 1941, destroying a partition wall and exposing the original fabric of the library within. This itself only came to light last month when war damage assessors stumbled on the find during a routine clearance. They handed on their discovery to an architectural historian, Thomas Baines, who quickly identified it as part of the ‘lost’ Eames Library, no plans of which are believed to exist. Intricate tiled floors, vaulted ceilings, original plasterwork and stained-glass windows have been preserved in mostly good condition, though damage to the west-facing wall is severe. Mr Baines described its uncovering as ‘miraculous’, and said that it enhances the reputation of Peter Eames as one of the most innovative architects of his day. Even in its unfinished state, he adds, it counts as a pioneering example of Victorian ironwork and decoration. The architect, who also designed Janus House in Temple Street, allegedly despaired of finishing the library and drowned himself off Blundell Sands in 1873, aged only thirty-three. The fate of the building now rests with Liverpool Corporation, which has a poor record of looking after such properties. A spokesman yesterday announced that no immediate decision had been made, but conservationists fear the worst.

  Over the next few days Baines received a handful of letters, forwarded to him by the Echo, from assorted local historians, mostly of a pedantic nature. One, from a society promoting ‘Victorian interests’, begged him to send a catalogue of books. Another enquired as to its opening hours – and was it a lending library? Ten days after the story appeared another letter arrived, written in a tiny, crabbed hand and stamped with a Birkenhead postmark. Its text was brief:

  Ampthill Lodge,

  Village Road,

  Oxton

  16th May 1944

  Dear Mr Baines,

  I have read your article in the Echo, passed on to me by a very dear friend. Thrilling news about the library, how CLEVER of you to find it! Such an odd thing to have lost, a building, dont you think.

  But you are quite wrong about drowning himself

  Yrs sincerely,

  Mrs E. Westmacott

  When he had finally deciphered the handwriting he read it again, amused first by the writer’s rather dotty misapprehension (‘your article’), then by her enthusiastic praise of his CLEVER find. But it was the final sentence, the bald assertiveness of it, that snagged his attention. There had long been uncertainty over the exact circumstances of Eames’s death: the contemporary accounts that Baines had read on yellowing newsprint when he first began his research had never agreed on the matter. Eames had been with his ex-wife and daughters, and another family, on an outing to Blundell Sands one afternoon in July 1873. He had gone out for a swim, and never made it back. Some reports had mentioned the possibility of suicide; others had described it as an accident. He realised that the obscurity of the life had helped draw a veil over the manner of the death – no biography had ever troubled to discover the truth, because no biography had ever been written. How then could this Mrs Westmacott be so convinced that the Echo article had misrepresented Eames as ‘drowning himself’? There was, tantalisingly, no full stop after ‘himself’, as though she had paused mid-sentence, intending to explain, and then had decided against it. Or had simply forgotten to.

  He dismissed the letter as an oddity. The handwriting and the unreliable punctuation suggested that the lady was quite elderly; it seemed quite likely that she was not in full possession of her faculties. She was doubtless some eccentric local historian who had inherited the story as gossip, then pickled and preserved it until it resembled the truth; there would be no profit in entering a correspondence with her. He decided to get on with other things, such as writing to his bank manager to request a loan. He still had a little money saved, an inheritance from his parents, but it would not be sufficient to keep the library site protected indefinitely. The Liverpool School of Architecture, his alma mater, wrote to him with an invitation to deliver a talk about Eames, whose reputation he had now seemingly been appointed the keeper.

  And yet … he kept thinking of Mrs Westmacott and her curious letter. You are quite wrong about drowning himself. He could not get the sentence out of his head. One afternoon he picked up the telephone directory and slid his eye down the Ws. To his surprise Westmacott, E. was listed, and on the ninth or tenth ring a woman’s voice, younger than he had expected, answered. No, she was not Mrs Westmacott, she replied, but that lady’s housekeeper. Baines explained himself, and asked if he might be able to talk to her in person. There was a pause, an echoey clunk of the telephone receiver temporarily put aside, and then receding footsteps; minutes passed, during which Baines wondered if his call had been forgotten, and imagined the telephone at the other end cupping its ear into the unpeopled silence. Just as he was about to hang up a scraping note sounded on the line and the housekeeper’s voice returned from the void.

  ‘Mrs Westmacott will be at home at two o’clock tomorrow, if that suits you.’

  Silently digesting the formality of ‘at home ‘, he replied that it did, and rang off.

  Standing on the top deck of the Birkenhead ferry, Baines leaned over the handrail and contemplated the sluggish, turbid waters of the Mersey slapping against the pontoons that supported the landing stage. It was a day neither sunny nor overcast; the sky was the worn white of a sheet that had been through the mangle too many times and now carried the faintest tinge of grey. A breeze, carrying a salty tang, chopped the river’s surface into little hurrying waves. Alongside the landing stage two enormous liners were moored, dwarfing the ferry boat. On the other side a steamer mounted fore and aft with anti-submarine guns had recently docked, disgorging American troops clad in their grey-green waterproof jackets and steel helmets. He noticed other passengers crowding along the rails to watch their arrival; some of them waved and cheered. Then a shout came directly from below, the gangways were hauled back, the sliding doors of the ferry were run across, and the mooring ropes unloosed from the iron bollard and tossed on to the stern. These were caught, Baines noticed, by a crusty old salt who didn’t even bother to remove the pipe from his mouth. The boat stirred and bumped against the stage, and, with a sense of reluctance, heaved away. The waters behind it began to churn, and by slow degrees the landing stage receded.

  As the boat headed towards mid-river his gaze lifted to the uptilting panorama of the Pier Head and the trio of buildings that dominated the skyline, the Royal Liver, the Cunard, and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. This display of Edwardian imperial pomp – the city’s gateway – was one that still made him swell with pride. How could Wallace look at such a waterfront and say it was ‘all up’ with Liverpool? These were buildings that indicated the very opposite of apathy and close-mindedness – they had swagger and scale. Surely this was a port that had no fear of the future … and if the largest transatlantic passenger trade had shifted to Southampton, well, what of it? There seemed to be more than enough traffic on the river and activity in the docks and warehouses to keep the place prosperous. Wallace’s Cassandra-like prophecies of decline and collapse were merely the cynical jibes of a disillusioned old hack. He looked down at the churning dirty-white wake of foam, briefly absorbed by the flotsam that bobbed in it, bits of driftwood, bottles, ragged tresses of brown seaweed. He crossed the deck for a change of perspective, and t
here, downriver, he caught sight of a mast poking from the dun-coloured waves at a skewed angle. Next to it lolled buoys and a two-masted, anchored ship, a lighthouse to passing traffic. Along its hull, lettered in white paint, could be seen the word WRECK. Baines stared at it for a moment, then returned to his original vantage on the other side.

  Arriving at Woodside he followed the straggling line of passengers disembarking down the gangway, and found a tramcar bound for Birkenhead. The Wirral peninsula remained something of a mystery to Baines, a place that he had gazed upon from across the Mersey for most of his life yet had seldom visited. The tram’s route took him through streets still gap-toothed from the Blitz, yet amid the bomb damage he saw enough Victorian churches, coaching inns and opulent suburban mansions to make him repent his neglect. On receiving a nod from the conductor whom he had consulted for directions, he alighted at the brow of a long descending road and bent his steps towards the house of Mrs Westmacott. Village Road was a somnolent backwater on which stuccoed Italianate houses could be glimpsed over high sandstone walls and privet hedges. Ampthill Lodge, the grandest of them, peeped from the end of a bowered drive of tall chestnut trees. On either side of its wrought-iron gate twin pillars stood guard, each with a bell set inside a carved rosette; on the left was inscribed ‘Visitors’, on the right ‘Tradesmen’. Amused by this quaint Victorianism, and then ignoring it, Baines lifted the gate’s thin iron handle and walked up the drive.

  He heard the old-fashioned bell pull ring distantly within the house, and while he waited he idly admired the door’s handsomely plain fanlight, dating it to the 1850s. It was the kind of detail that occupied him. A shadow briefly hovered behind the stained glass before the door opened to reveal a middle-aged lady in capable tweed skirt, eau de Nil cardigan and a trim little brooch pinned to her blouse.

  ‘Are you Mr Baines?’

  She introduced herself as Mrs Fleetwood, and he recognised her voice from the telephone. At her invitation he followed her into the hall, where dark oak and brooding oil portraits had whelmed the place in gloom. From upstairs he heard a sprightly étude being played on the piano. Mrs Fleetwood, glancing over her shoulder, said in a conspiratorial undertone, ‘She’s in a good mood today,’ as though they secretly both knew she could be a bit of a dragon. ‘You can usually tell from the way she plays.’

  She led him down a corridor of echoing parquet and, opening a door, ushered him into a study. Then she went off to fetch her employer.

  Baines looked about the room, friendlier than the hall, high-ceilinged, with pleasantly rumpled sofas set around a fireplace. Books were stacked on shelves higgledy-piggledy, and a pile of newspapers mouldered in a wicker basket. He had been in houses like this before, when Jack had asked him along to help value the contents in a clearance – it might be an old dear who’d pegged out and left behind some monstrous-looking furniture, a couple of cats and the miserable odour of long-boiled vegetables. That wasn’t the way here: all he could smell was beeswax; the floor had been swept and there wasn’t a cat-hair in sight. French windows looked out upon a long lawn. He was examining a framed photograph on the mantelpiece when the door opened and Mrs Westmacott herself scuttled in. Once again his expectations were confounded. She was quite elderly and clad in a long bombazine dress, high at the neck with multiple buttons running down the front. But she was not the crazed Miss Havisham-type he had imagined meeting.

  ‘Hullo there,’ she almost called to him. ‘Mrs Fleetwood said you were very young-looking.’ She came forward to examine him more closely. ‘You don’t look that young to me!’

  Baines laughed as he took the impossibly light hand she proffered. ‘I’m forty-one.’

  ‘Well,’ she mused, ‘I’m eighty – in August – so perhaps she’s right. Are you impressed that I still play the piano?’ There was a challenging gleam in her bird-bright eyes.

  ‘I am indeed,’ he replied, swallowing down the words, ‘amazed, actually.’

  She nodded complacently. ‘Mm. I don’t believe it disgraced Chopin.’ Her voice had a flattened Lancashire burr, with something amused in its register.

  ‘Will there be a celebration to mark your birthday?’

  ‘Heavens – I hope so,’ she said, with a quick smile. ‘There should be some compensation for being this old.’

  Baines laughed again – this one was a caution. She had an open face with reddish cheeks that seemed the result of natural high colour. She pointed to the larger of the two sofas and asked him to sit, then plumped herself down on a button-backed armchair at an angle to him. Just then Mrs Fleetwood entered bearing a tray with a teapot and a plate of biscuits that caused Mrs Westmacott’s eyes to dart about in a near-parody of vivacious interest.

  ‘Thank you for your letter – about the library article,’ Baines began, wondering whether he should correct her impression of its authorship.

  ‘Ah yes, the library. We were very pleased to read about that,’ she said, waving vaguely at the departing housekeeper to explain the plural pronoun. ‘We’d all assumed the place had been torn down years ago. Quite a turn-up! I dare say you’ve come expecting a treasure trove of – what? – Eamesiana, I suppose.’ Baines heard a regretful note in the word, though he had not expected any kind of treasure, and wondered why she should think he had. Mrs Westmacott was daintily tapping the crumbs of her biscuit on to a saucer.

  ‘Actually, I was just hoping you might explain something you said in your letter – about Eames not drowning himself …’

  ‘Oh, they got that quite wrong. It’s a very sad story. I tried not to think about that day for years, but as you get older, well, things start to come back to you.’

  Baines sensed something unbelievable begin to take shape. ‘When you say “that day”, do you mean – you were there?’

  Now it was her turn to look surprised. ‘Of course I was there. Even the newspapers knew that much!’

  ‘But I thought – I read that Eames went there for the day with his family …’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ she said, frowning at his slow-wittedness, ‘– with my mother, my sister, Edward and me.’

  Baines thought his scalp might lift off with the hair-raising shock of what he had just begun to comprehend. The discovery of the library was one thing, but this … Mrs Westmacott was now reading the belated realisation on his stunned features.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Baines, I thought you knew … Westmacott was my husband’s name. I was born Eames – Ellen Eames.’

  Baines felt the maddening pressure of questions – hundreds of questions! – crawling over his brain like scorpions, but as ever, his mouth lagged some way behind. He found himself merely staring at her. Why had he not bothered to discover, of all things, whether Peter Eames’s daughters still lived? His consciousness snatched randomly at a name.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘My sister died in 1930. My mother and Edward died many years ago. But there are various Eames cousins still about, Aunt Cassie and Aunt Georgy’s children – some in Scotland, and France, too. I believe I’m the only descendant still living in England.’

  ‘I do apologise, Mrs Westmacott. I’m … overwhelmed. Could you bear to tell me about the day Eames, I mean – your father – drowned?’

  She looked away for a moment, collecting herself. ‘As best as I can,’ she murmured. ‘We were living near Blundell Sands by then. It was one day in July. I was eight, Rose must have been six. We’d gone to the beach for the day, with some friends. I think Pa arrived unexpectedly, because I remember being surprised to see him. Some friends of the family had come, and brought their boat, so most of the afternoon was spent taking turns out on the bay. Late in the afternoon Edward had taken the boat out with Rose and a friend of hers. I don’t know how it happened, but Rose fell overboard – the first we knew of it was the sound of her friend making a commotion. Pa had been sitting with his sketchbook, and I saw him leap up and tear into the water, without even bothering to throw off his coat. He was a very powerful swimmer, I later learned. Much
good it did him. We could see Edward dive in after, and some other boats in the area scudded over to help. Rose was saved, and they all came back – all but Pa. At first we couldn’t believe it. Ma kept telling us he must have been taken up by some other boat, that he was safe. The next day word came that he had been washed up on the shore a few miles away. The papers –’ Mrs Westmacott paused, and took out a handkerchief from her sleeve to dab her eyes. Even at a distance of seventy years the retelling of the story had the power to grieve her. ‘The papers assumed there had been a scandal, and the idea that Pa had drowned himself just … caught on.’

  Faced with her glistening eyes Baines observed a respectful silence, before curiosity got the better of him. ‘Mrs Westmacott, was it not … strange that your father was there at all? I mean, after everything that had happened?’

  Recovering a little of her natural bluff cheeriness, she swatted the question away. ‘Well, he still wanted to see us,’ she replied.

  ‘Um, of course – but how could he bear to be in the company of Edward Urquhart? After what he did?’

  She looked at him as if he were simple. ‘I know you regard my father as a great architect, and that’s very nice. But you have no idea of him as a man, so let me tell you. He was so – obsessed with his work that he didn’t really have time for anything else. You’ve read his journals. You must have noticed how little he mentions us! And once he got started on the library we hardly ever saw him.’

  ‘But he seems kind –’

  ‘And so he was. He loved us, I’m sure of it, but he just wasn’t there. Ma always said he felt a terrible guilt about it. He was shocked when my mother … did what she did – but he knew he was partly to blame. And that’s perhaps how he found it in himself to forgive.’

  ‘Really?’ said Baines, doubtfully.

  ‘Yes. He forgave Ma, and Edward. And somewhere along the way – I hope – he forgave himself.’ She paused, and fixed her vivid gaze upon him. ‘Can I tell you something I’ve learned, Mr Baines? Until you forgive yourself you cannot love anyone or do one bit of good anywhere.’