‘Hullo! – pardon my, er, déshabillé.’
‘I’ll come back later –’ she said, beginning to back away.
‘No, please, come in,’ he said, eagerly. ‘I’ve just brewed a pot of tea. I’ll put a shirt on, too, to make it formal.’
She looked uncertain for a moment, then shyly edged her way in. She was holding a carrier bag from Bon Marché, where she still worked as a buyer. They had met again by chance last year, one afternoon in Church Street, and since then had seen one another a few times, just for a drink. It was nothing serious. He led her through to the living room, then went to fetch her a cup of tea. He had put on a shirt by the time he returned, sensing that this might put her at her ease. She sat rather primly in her smart charcoal suit, knees together, as if she had been called in for an interview. As he buttoned up a shirt cuff he said, ‘I hope you’re still coming to this thing at lunchtime …’
She nodded with a head prefect sort of brightness. ‘Oh, definitely! I was just on me way to work, though, and stopped by to – wish you luck.’ He realised with a start that the Hayworth hair, the make-up, had perhaps been finessed not for work but for this afternoon’s event.
‘You make it sound like I’m getting married,’ he said with a laugh in his voice.
‘– and I wanted to give you this,’ she added, abruptly covering another blush. She had taken out of the carrier a thin flat cardboard box, inscribed with a London–Paris–New York marque he vaguely recognised. He unloosed the ribbon, and took off the lid. Bedded inside snowy folds of tissue paper was a tie of slubbed silk, claret-coloured with a patterning of tiny silver fleur-de-lys. He stared at it for a moment, secretly wary of its fanciness, but openly touched by the unexpected gift of it.
‘This is – lovely!’ he said, beaming.
She looked at him anxiously. ‘D’you like it? They’d just arrived at the shop … I can always take it back.’
‘I don’t want you to take it back.’ He walked over and bent down to plant a dry kiss on her powdered cheek. As he did he glanced at the side table stacked with uniform copies of a book, their spines in serried repetition. Compliments of the publisher. He went over and picked one off the top, its pristine dust jacket in the familiar cream-and-sage livery of the series. The title was set in sober Roman type.
The Plover Guide to the Historic Buildings of
England
LIVERPOOL
by Thomas Baines
It looked rather well, he supposed. The austerity paper on which it was printed couldn’t be helped, but it had a nice weight in the hand and the accompanying photographs had a clean, professional crispness. It was almost incredible to him that it was finished, though the irony that parts of it were already out of date had not escaped him. Certain buildings he had documented in its pages had been recently pulled down. More would follow. Nothing lasted for long. He turned back to Joanna and handed her the book.
‘I don’t expect you to read this,’ he said with a rueful smirk, ‘but I’d like you to have one.’
He watched her as she smoothed down the title page of the book and made a very creditable effort to look enchanted by it. His thoughts turned to the day they had met, the guarded look she had given him as they stood in the lobby of the Imperial. No wonder she had been suspicious. He had not expected to see her again, but now here they were, exchanging presents like a couple of proper friends. Joanna had known heartache as well. She had waited for her man all through the war, and her prayers were answered when he returned from the fighting in Burma unharmed. But not unattached: he had met someone else during his service years, and later married her. Baines wondered if that was why she seemed much less sure of herself than he had remembered; something tentative in her manner. He liked that about her.
She looked up from the book with an enquiring frown. ‘This line here under the title, “Worthy of my undying regard” – who’s that for?’
‘Oh, I stole that from a novel I read a few years ago. The author was a former seaman, and he wrote that in tribute to his ship’s company.’ He realised that this had not answered her question, but she didn’t press him.
‘I’ve never known anyone who’s written a book before,’ she said, wonderingly. ‘Thank you.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better be off. But I’ll see you later.’
‘You know where it is, yeah – Norfolk Street?’
‘I’ll find my way,’ she said, giving the book in her hands a little triumphant shake.
After Joanna had gone he went into his bedroom and, taking the jacket of his suit from its hanger, gave it a cursory brush. As he did so he saw the top of the envelope peeking from its inside pocket. He still liked to carry it there, for some reason. He took out the letter, written on wafery duck-egg-blue airmail paper, its US stamp franked and dated 2 p.m. March 16th, 1947. He had read it so many times now he could perhaps recite it. He discarded the jacket and lay down on the bed.
154 Spring Street, N.Y., N.Y.
March 15th
Dear Tom
I’ve lost count of the number of run-ups I’ve taken to this letter – every jump so far has failed to clear the bar. The last one covered eleven pages before I decided to spare you, purely on humanitarian grounds. Into the garbage it went. You could be annoyed that it has taken me this long to reply, or you could regard it as a compliment that I waited until I got it right – or as right as I ever will. I hope you, as a past master in the art of postponement, may understand. Though ‘past’ is now the mot juste, it seems, in the light of your forthcoming publication! I was convinced you’d finish it one day, even if you weren’t. I am very, VERY proud of you. And there was never a need, by the way, to worry about getting my ‘permission’ to use any of those photographs – as far as I’m concerned, they were always yours. I would only ask that you send me a copy of the book when it’s published. I know you’ll never let me forget what I said about Liverpool all those years ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated to read it. So will you – please?
I don’t know what to tell you about the place I’m living in, as I’ve only just moved here myself. It’s a tiny apartment on the fourth floor, with a leaky shower and no cooker. Cosy, though. Downtown is less swanky than the 50s and 60s, there’s a greater sense of everyday toil down here, but it seems more of a neighbourhood too. Right now outside my window I can hear the truck loading at the bakery door, and smell fresh-baked bread wafting up. I don’t know why, but that smell makes me incredibly happy, – happier than I’ve been in a while. Rebecca, a new friend I’ve made, says I should go into analysis – it’s all the rage among her crowd. Personally I can’t think of anything more ghastly than confiding my ‘problems’ to a complete stranger, but I suppose that’s just my Englishness coming out. Rebecca’s also a photographer, and really has helped to get things up and running. I owe to her the most fabulous stroke of good fortune; she’d bought one of my photographs (a street scene) and hung it in her apartment where a gallery owner she knew spotted it and asked about me. To cut a long story short, he’s putting on a little show of mine in a few weeks at his place on Bleecker Street, a few blocks away. So it’s quite exciting!
Being busy again, being active – it’s saved me, I think. About a year ago I had got to drinking more than I ought. I didn’t notice it at first. They serve huge Martinis over here, from pitchers, and I developed a taste for them. Too much, I’m afraid. There were mornings I’d wake with a hangover so skull-splitting I couldn’t even get out of bed to be sick. Of course I don’t need to tell you what sorrows I was trying to drown. Remembering that day now – well, most of it’s a merciful blank, but I still have in my head the awful moment I was lying on that gurney and asked you where George was. The look on your face that told me. That was the one and only time in my life I wanted to die, because oblivion felt preferable to the rawness, the shocking convulsion of that grief. I’d had intimations of it years ago when my parents died, but as a child one tends to be more resilient than is generally supposed.
You live in your own world. When Richard died my overwhelming feeling was guilt, not just because of us – though that was bad enough – but because I’d never been the wife he’d hoped I would be. With George, I felt I was being punished for my selfishness. I’d never properly atoned for what I’d done – to Richard, to you – and now I was getting my deserts. You were so kind to me then, first at the hospital and in those months afterwards when I was stuck under that boulder of depression, so crushingly heavy I thought it would never move. When I think of how patient you were with me, after all that I’d put you through, I feel a lurch almost like vertigo.
I always thought I’d persuade you to come. There are alternatives which we hide from ourselves too convincingly for us to fear them. I had to go, and to the last minute believed you’d come with me. You once joked that your leaving Liverpool would be like a polar bear trying to abandon his ice cap. Yet sometimes I imagine you here in New York, wandering about the streets in that dreamy staring way of yours. You’d be amazed by the architecture, of course, the huge roaring canyons, the extravagant size of everything. Sometimes, when the fog comes off the river in the morning and the light slants at a certain angle, it reminds me a little of Liverpool. If this sounds as if I’m trying to tempt you into visiting some day, then – guilty as charged. Even polar bears need a holiday, don’t they?
Talking of visitors, I have the imminent prospect of Nancy and David coming to stay. Heaven knows where I’ll put them both – there’s barely room here for me. Nancy’s still in London and has met, rather late in life, a man that she likes. Mirabile dictu, as you would say. David has got someone, too, but he’s much more secretive than either of us – I dare say he’ll allow us to meet her in due course. When I’ve been feeling a bit ‘blue’ I try to remind myself how lucky I am. They’ve kept me going. Wherever I am – in a picture house on Third Avenue, or a bar (I haven’t completely forsworn Martinis), or just the poky little bedroom where I write this – it’s comforted me to know that you’re out there. Even if it’s the other side of the world. I once read, I can’t remember where, that missing someone is a way of spending time with them. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it’s what I tell myself. Dearest Tom – I’ve left the enclosed till last. I hope you don’t mind my sending it, but I just couldn’t bear the idea of your not being able to remember him. Perhaps in time it will bring a smile to your face. Please know that it comes with all my love.
Bella
He lay on his bed, staring intently at the little glossy picture Bella had enclosed in the letter. It was a photograph, brownish, not much bigger than a cigarette card, of Bella and George in a garden. She is holding him forward to camera, her face smiling in profile as she seems to coax some engagement from him. George’s face registers a subtle mixture of curiosity and surprise, his eyes wide and his mouth open, apparently on the verge of an exclamation. His hand, swiping the air, is blurred. Baines was glad that she had sent it, though she had been quite mistaken in thinking that he might not be able to remember him. We carry them with us. For a long time he lay there, without moving, as the tap-tap of the building work continued outside.
Of course he had left it very late, but then it would have surprised him to leave it any other way. The event began at one o’clock, which gave him about forty minutes: to be late for one’s own party would look very shabby. He hurried down Gambier Terrace, the cracked Victorian flags glimmering from overnight rain. It had been a mild spring, after the atrocious winter of ’46, but the sky had a lowering shifty look, as if it might launch a sudden downpour just for a joke. As he approached the junction of Upper Duke Street he heard a tram, and made his customary hobbling dash for it, but it was already descending the hill by the time he got to the turning. He glanced at his wristwatch: half past twelve. The problem with running in public, he thought, panting, was the way it rendered you slightly pathetic, like a dotard, or a fugitive. He had been a cyclist for years until he came down one morning to find the wheels had been stolen from his Raleigh. He had never got round to buying another one. His reaction at the time was less outrage than bafflement. Who on earth would bother stealing bicycle wheels? He was slowing to a trot when he heard a taxi’s engine chugging just behind him – deliverance! – and flagged it down.
As it tooled along Duke Street he wondered if he had forgotten the place. He had only been there once before, just after he came out of hospital in ’41. Six years had slipped by without a single meeting. Perhaps it was the case that friendships forged in adversity withered in more tranquil conditions. It was the intensity that kept them going. Then through the cab window he saw it, Wo’s, a narrow little front tucked into the middle of a terrace, its windows primly curtained against the daylight. He jumped out of the cab and with anxious steps entered the hushed gloom of the restaurant. A couple of tables were occupied, though smokers appeared to outnumber the diners. An elderly waiter stalked out from behind a beaded curtain and eyed him cheerlessly.
‘Tabor for one?’
‘Um, no,’ said Baines. ‘I was hoping – does Mike still work here?’
There was a minute slump in the waiter’s shoulders as he turned and cawed incomprehensibly towards the kitchen. Then he continued past him. A few moments later another man swished through the curtain, his air unmistakably inconvenienced until he saw the reason for his summons.
‘Hullo, Mike.’
Mike looked startled. ‘Tom? Is it you?’
‘Course it’s me. How’re you?’
‘Er … bit shocked, to tell the truth.’ He was staring candidly at him. ‘What are you doin’ here, like?’
‘Oh, just wondering what the specials were today …’
‘Crabs!’ he replied brightly. They laughed, and he seemed to relax. Mike had put on weight in the intervening years; he was puffier around the face, jowlier, though he still carried himself with a certain bantam swagger.
‘I know this is right out of the blue, but I wonder if – have you got an hour to spare?’
Mike looked at him awkwardly. ‘Well, it’s lunchtime …’
Baines resisted the temptation to gesture at the empty tables – maybe they filled up very suddenly about now – and looked him in the eye. ‘Listen. You remember me telling you about the book I was writing – the one about Liverpool? Well, it’s done. Finished. The publishers are having a little do for it, um, in about twenty minutes’ time. I’d really like you to – be there!’
‘You don’t give us much warnin’, la’.’
‘Yeah, sorry … I’ve got a taxi waiting outside.’
Mike exhaled, and scratched his head meditatively. He stared at Baines for a moment, then called to his old waiter. He barked to him in rapid Chinese, brusque little phrases that sounded impatient but might simply have been their everyday demotic. A younger waiter appeared, and then Mike was suddenly oscillating between the two, instructing the one in a long burst of Chinese and following it with a few choice words of Scouse. Baines watched this little confabulation in quiet wonder. Mike turned back to him.
‘I’m ’ardly dressed for it,’ he said, plucking at his kitchen whites.
‘You don’t have to be,’ he replied.
Mike went back to the kitchen, and reappeared moments later shrugging on his civvies. Another querulous exchange with the old man, then they were out of the place and into the idling taxi. As the terraced streets slid by the window Baines couldn’t help himself chuckling.
‘Wha’?’ asked Mike.
‘Just listening to you and the old feller. I’ve never heard you speak Chinese.’
‘He’s me uncle,’ shrugged Mike. ‘’e doesn’t understand much English. And the young feller doesn’t understand Chinese. But we get by.’
Baines offered him a Player’s, and they sparked up together.
‘So what’ve you been doin’ with yerself?’
Baines sighed. ‘Oh, not much. Finishing this book, mostly.’
‘Not married or anythin’ – kids?’
He shook
his head. It would have taken too long to explain, and he wasn’t inclined to burden Mike so quickly after their reunion.
‘You?’
‘Yeah. Coupla kids. The missus wants to move out of ’ere.’
‘Where to?’
Mike gave a little snort. ‘North Wales, la’. I’m not ’appy about it.’ He seemed to brood on this, but then his face cleared. ‘Eh, you’ll never guess who I ran into.’ His eyes were gleaming with amusement, and Baines thought he might be able to guess.
‘Not Farrell?’
‘Yeah! ’Bout a year ago, pub on Mathew Street. He ’adn’t changed. Still called me Charlie.’ Mike was enjoying the memory. ‘We talked for a while, actually …’
‘The old times.’
‘Yeah. He was a fucken pain, really,’ he said musingly. ‘But it was … nice to see ’im again – you know?’
Baines nodded, and murmured, ‘We went through a lot.’ They had briefly stalled in traffic, and to their right the clank and thud of a demolition site made the car windows throb. Dust clouds were gusting from inside the shell of an old red-brick municipal building, and men in tin hats and masks drifted about, mute, incurious. Baines glanced at Mike, who was watching it too, and added, ‘You sometimes wonder, though …’
The south-west side of the Eames Library had been reconstructed, though it still hid beneath scaffolding. The brickwork of the facade had been repointed, and the tiled floor of the atrium squeaked underfoot from its recent cleaning. Within, the reading room still bore the whiff of planed wood and fresh plaster, and motes of dust could be seen drifting in the funnels of light that poured down through the stained-glass windows. The walnut shelves had not been filled, but they soon would be. On a raised dais at the centre of the room a Mr Mowbray, editorial director of Plover Books in London, was winding up his muttered and rather pedestrian speech, unable to keep from his voice a faint note of astonishment that he was there at all. In the little cluster of people near the front Baines picked out Joanna, who smiled as he meaningly straightened the knot of his new tie. May and George were there, too, their faces bewildered with pride. Further back he saw Adrian Wallace, whispering slyly to a young woman. No change there. Then Mowbray falteringly invited his author to address the assembled.
The Rescue Man Page 38