The Rescue Man Page 13

  ‘A scoundrel, as you would put it,’ Bella said.

  He nodded briefly. ‘Whatever he was doing, it had the effect of making her miserable. She was working at a music publisher, and a mutual friend told me that she’d break down in the office, or else not show up for days. I remember seeing her at a party one night, and she looked in an awful state. He was there too, of course, but more or less ignoring her. And then she was in tears, ranting away. I think it was pretty clear to everyone that she was … far from well.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Bella quietly. ‘Did you ever think you’d had –’

  ‘A lucky escape? Sometimes, yes. But I still clung to the memory of that funny girl I used to know. It was hard for me to accept how much she’d changed. So … then she disappeared, maybe for a year or more. I think everyone realised she’d been taken “away” somewhere. She eventually wrote to me, a rather sweet letter, sort of apologising for – I don’t know what. She knew I’d been fond of her, that maybe things could have been different …’

  He heard something catch in his voice, and waited to compose himself. he’d never recounted the whole thing to anyone before; a few others, including Jack, had known elements of it, but their versions had been gleaned from circumstantial observation and rumour. His throat felt parched.

  ‘Tom,’ said Bella, searching his face, ‘I’d like to know what happened, but only if you want to tell me.’

  ‘I was just thinking – how can anyone really know what happens between people? I mean, even the people involved don’t always understand, so how could anyone else?’

  ‘I suppose people claim to understand one another because it makes life easier. We observe, we imagine, we decide for or against them, but really it’s no more than – guesswork. Even husbands and wives can be strangers to one another. Perhaps them most of all.’

  Baines looked up from his glass at her. ‘Do you not know Richard, then?’

  She shrugged philosophically. ‘Probably not. I don’t know. But I feel quite certain he doesn’t know me.’ Exhaling a long jet of smoke she stubbed out her cigarette, and seemingly the line of conversation with it. An expectant silence fell, which seemed to prompt Baines towards his unfinished narrative.

  ‘Anyway – I wrote back to Alice, in a friendly way, hoped she was on the mend, and so forth. I steered away from anything … dangerous. She was out of the sanatorium and back living with her parents, somewhere down in Sussex. We struck up a correspondence, and slowly recovered something of the old friendliness we’d once had. I didn’t know if she’d seen Heathcote in the meantime. I didn’t ask. There was some university reunion coming up, I suppose I must have mentioned it in a letter because she decided she wanted to come up and see the old crowd again. I was surprised, it seemed rather soon after her convalescence – but there it was … We agreed to meet up beforehand … a pub on Lime Street. She had changed, of course, in the year or so since I’d seen her. A sort of distance in her gaze, though she seemed in high spirits. I’d felt rather nervous myself – you have to remember, the last time I’d seen her she’d been rather unstable. She was quite open about what had happened. But it didn’t really put me at ease …’

  He called for another brandy and soda, puzzled as to why he still felt sober after a night’s drinking. He needed another to propel him over the finishing line. Bella’s dark eyes were intent on him, like a juror’s on a witness.

  ‘We eventually pushed off to the party – it was in the ballroom at the Adelphi. I think we were both quite skittish – reunions have that effect – meeting people we hadn’t seen in, what, five years. There was a crowd, and we lost each other, I don’t remember how … but my heart just sank through the floor when I saw him. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me he’d be there. And of course he was with a woman, who turned out to be his betrothed – God help her. I saw Alice talking with him, briefly, and prayed that it would all be … When I next talked to her she seemed perfectly fine, a little drunk, but then so were we all. Once the bar closed a dozen or more of us repaired upstairs – someone had booked a suite on the top floor. Jack was there, probably with a girl. People kept coming in, carrying bottles. A few of the hotel band turned up. I remember someone blaring away on a trumpet. Some were drinking out on the balcony, it was a beautiful midsummer evening, still quite warm … One minute everything was fine, the next a cry went up, and there was a sudden rush outside. I saw a woman standing barefoot on the furthest edge of the parapet, and I knew immediately that it was Alice. She seemed weirdly at ease, as if there was nothing remarkable about what she was doing. I was horror-struck, we all were, and one or two friends started pleading with her to come down. I pushed my way through to the front and called to her – she saw me, and seemed almost to smile. I think I said, “For God’s sake” … One minute she was there. Then she was gone.’

  Bella’s hand flew to her mouth as she exclaimed sharply, just as if she had been there herself that night and watched it happen. He hadn’t seen Alice’s plummeting descent, but he had imagined it so often that he sometimes felt convinced that he had. The sickening crack they heard was her body hitting the bonnet of a taxi parked on the hotel forecourt below. A woman next to him fainted as a commotion broke out. His mind had gone blank for a while after that; he vaguely recalled sitting on a sofa, his whole body violently shivering, and Jack next to him saying – he couldn’t remember what. He looked again at Bella, whose gaze had nothing in it but pity. He suddenly felt exhausted; he had told the story in the hope of shaking off a ghost, but he sensed it still there, unforgiving.

  ‘Tom, I’m … sorry,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s a rather grim coda to the story. There was an inquest, and a verdict of death by misadventure was returned. The coroner also reported that she – Alice – had been pregnant when she died. It was not known by whom, though of course I suspected Heathcote. But I had a feeling that I was in some way responsible. I’d accompanied her to the party, I should have been more … vigilant.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for that,’ Bella said.

  ‘Maybe not. But guilt has a way of insinuating itself, even when –’

  ‘Even when you know that you’re innocent?’

  Baines nodded slowly, not looking at her.

  Nell’s had slowly begun to fill since they had sat down; a crowd of late-night topers stood at the bar. He was aware that he had just revealed more of himself in the last half-hour than he had done in the previous ten years. The story he had told seemed to be reverberating in the space between them. He wondered now if Bella, for all her show of sympathy, didn’t despise him a little. Pity sometimes felt like that – the kindlier cousin of disdain.

  ‘I’m sorry for … boring on like that,’ he said. ‘I’d better be off –’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Tom! You haven’t “bored on” at all.’ She clasped his wrist beseechingly, and Baines was moved, for the second time that evening, by the touch of her hand. ‘And in any case,’ she added, dropping her voice sharply, ‘I’m damned if you’re leaving me alone with this character.’

  Baines looked round and saw Adrian Wallace swaggering towards them. He was accompanied by one of Evie’s girlfriends from the Echo.

  ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ he said, looking interestedly at Bella’s hand still on Baines’s sleeve.

  ‘Hullo again,’ said Bella. ‘We took up your invitation, as you see.’

  ‘Only happy to oblige you, my dear, and your gallant defender here,’ he said, nodding at Baines.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Bella, nonplussed.

  ‘I heard all about the fisticuffs at the gallery,’ Wallace continued, sinking into a chair and sending his companion off to the bar. ‘Sadly I was upstairs at the time and missed all the fun, but those at the ringside say that some cad propositioned you in a lewd fashion – and young Dempsey flattened him with a punch!’

  Bella glanced at Baines, then turned back to Wallace with a triumphant smile. ‘Yes, that’s righ
t. Tom was a real gent.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, with a measuring look at Baines, ‘I should be careful around him.’ The remark hung in the air.

  ‘I do like this little hideaway,’ said Bella, brightly. ‘It’s very clever of you to be a member.’

  Wallace shrugged and looked about the room. ‘It suits me pretty well. I suppose you met Maureen?’

  ‘The lady at the door, with the make-up?’

  ‘That’s her. “The Black Widow”, as she’s known.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She mates, then she kills,’ he explained, smirking. ‘The second part is metaphorical – or at least I think it is. Since the end of our … liaison, some years ago, Maureen has only looked daggers at me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ he sighed, and flicked at his grey mane again. Baines had never in his life encountered such a degree of campness in a heterosexual man. Wallace had the cultivated poise of a highly experienced male impersonator. ‘Talking of which,’ Wallace said, leaning round his chair, ‘where has that young creature got to with our drinks?’

  The creature in question was tottering uncertainly towards them, her progress slowed by the bottle of champagne and glasses she was balancing on a tray. Baines stood and went to her aid, gently extracting the tray from the girl’s hands.

  ‘There’s a seat for you there,’ he said, nodding towards his own vacated chair.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, she can sit here, can’t you, Rose?’

  ‘Where d’you mean – on your knee?’ she giggled.

  ‘Just here,’ he said, patting the edge of his chair.

  ‘All right then,’ said Rose, wriggling herself in next to him, ‘but no funny business.’

  ‘The very idea,’ he said, with a horrible leer, and popping the champagne, he poured them each a glass. Baines took a deep swallow and felt the acid bubbles burn inside his stomach – he had not eaten anything all evening. His hand had started to ache again, but he felt drunkenness comfortingly near. Bella and Wallace were talking about the Lisbon, a fancy restaurant on Stanley Street.

  ‘They do a very good fried sole,’ said Wallace. ‘I took Noël to dinner there once.’

  Baines, compelled by a sense of obligation – they were drinking his champagne – took the bait. ‘Noël? You mean – Noël Coward?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said airily. ‘Met him up here when one of his plays was at the Royal, can’t remember which.’

  ‘What did he make of Liverpool?’ asked Baines.

  ‘“Too, too thrrrilling,”’ said Wallace, in a remarkable impersonation of the man’s clipped tones. ‘“Oh to be in Liverpool, now that I’m at the Rrrroyal.”’ And for the next hour Wallace was unstoppable, apparently able to reproduce every last morsel of conversation he had gathered from the dinner table that night. As he delivered his party piece on Coward – ‘Noël’ – he seemed no longer to notice his guests, so enchanted was he by his own anecdotal exuberance. He flared his nostrils, he gurned, he rolled his ‘r’s to an improbable length. At times the mimicry became muddled with Wallace’s own voice, to the point where they seemed to be listening to Noël Coward doing a silly but amusing imitation of a northern music-hall comic. As the drinks kept coming the laughter around the table rose giddily, until it had its own hysterical momentum; Wallace could have said anything now and they would have roared. Even Baines was helpless, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. Then he spotted a shark’s fin of pale belly flesh peeking through Wallace’s shirt front where it had ridden up over his belt, and he laughed even harder.

  ‘… so the waiter arrives and puts the HP bottle on the tablecloth – Noël takes one look at it and says, “Sheer sauce”.’ It came out in two resonant syllables: share soss. ‘And I said –’

  Wallace never got the chance to relate another of his brilliant ripostes. An explosive whump, distant but distinct, had made the windows vibrate in their frames. They had heard an air-raid siren whining about half an hour before, but no one had paid it much attention: there had been that many false alarms. Half a minute later there came another one, nearer now, and the room fell silent. The faint throb of engines could be heard. From downstairs an urgent tattoo sounded on the door. Maureen, ensconced at her own table by the bar, called to one of her staff to answer it. ‘If it’s that warden on about the blackout curtains again, tell him to piss off.’

  The barman hurried off, and returned with Richard, who was bright-eyed and breathing heavily, as if he’d sprinted all the way from Slater Street. Maureen, seeing his flustered state, went behind the bar and poured him a brandy.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Richard, as Bella led him over to their table. He sat down and puffed out his cheeks.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ asked Baines.

  ‘I’d say there are about fifty planes circling to the south right now. I’d just locked up at the studio and was near the top of Bold Street when I heard their engines. At first I thought it was recon, then the bombs started falling, so I made a dash for it.’

  ‘The barbarians at the gates,’ said Wallace. He turned to Rose. ‘I don’t think it’s quite safe for you to be alone tonight, my dear.’

  Bella shook her head and laughed. ‘You’re a caution, Mr Wallace.’

  But Rose was genuinely alarmed. ‘How am I going to get home? I live in Woolton.’

  ‘You might have to bed down for the night at mine,’ said Wallace.

  ‘Rose, don’t worry,’ said Bella, ‘we’ve a spare room at our place, haven’t we, Richard?’

  Wallace raised his eyebrows in mock offence. ‘Well, I was only offering a helping hand.’

  ‘And I’m sure it’s much appreciated. But we can take care of her tonight.’ Bella flashed a smile that seemed to clinch the matter, leaving Wallace with the air of a schoolboy who’d been denied his usual cream bun.

  Another half-hour passed before the all-clear sounded. Richard glanced at his wristwatch.

  ‘Well … I think we should turn in for the night. Tom and I will have to report for duty first thing tomorrow.’

  They emerged from Nell’s expecting a scene of devastation to greet them, but Hope Street looked to be sleeping peacefully.

  ‘I think the bombs must have fallen over yonder,’ said Baines. They walked to the brow of Upper Duke Street, and there, on the horizon, a lurid greenish glow was visible some miles away.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Incendiary bombs,’ said Richard.

  ‘So what was the one that rattled the windowpanes?’

  ‘I presume it was a high explosive, probably went off a couple of miles away.’

  They stood in silence for a few moments. Wallace cleared his throat.

  ‘“’Tis now the very witching time of night, / When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this world.” In short, I’m off home. I hope, my dear,’ he said, pressing Bella’s hand to his lips, ‘this is merely au revoir.’ He nodded briskly to Baines and Richard – ‘Gentlemen’ – and cast a sidelong look at Rose. ‘I’ll see you in the office, cheeky.’ He sauntered off.

  ‘Is he always like that?’ Bella asked Rose.

  ‘Pretty much. I’ve heard those Noël Coward stories before,

  and they’re still dead funny.’

  ‘He rather fancies you,’ said Richard to Bella.

  ‘Hmm, almost as much as he fancies himself.’

  As they said their goodnights Baines took Richard aside.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about earlier this evening. That man – well, it’s a long story.’

  Richard smiled and said, ‘You can tell me it sometime. I’ve never much cared for Heathcote, to be honest, so it wasn’t altogether unpleasant seeing you land one on him.’

  ‘I didn’t want to ruin –’

  ‘Just get some sleep. It could be a long day tomorrow.’

  Baines was woken from an uneasy slumber less than four hours later by an outrageously parched mouth and a searing spasm of
cramp in his leg: the drunkard’s dawn. Too restless to get back to sleep, he limped into the kitchen and drank off a long glass of water. In his study the blackout curtains had sealed in an almost funereal atmosphere; parting them slightly admitted a shaft of ashen light, and he saw on his cherrywood side table the Eames journals. They formed a little still life there, dusty and somehow accusing, like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. He had glanced through them from time to time, but had not sat down to read them properly for months. He now recalled his piqued defence of the architect to Wallace last night. He sat down and picked up a stiff-boarded volume, briefly flicking back and forth until he had found his place.

  20th April 1864

  I see that a year has gone up in smoke since I last wrote in this journal. A year! To the charges of neglect I can but offer the defence of its being the most insanely & productively busy twelvemonth of my life hitherto. What changes have come to pass. First, & dearest to me of all, is the woman whom I now call my wife – moreover, a wife with child. Next is the house to which we have removed, situated in the middle of a fine, tall terrace providentially named Hope-place. Third, another house which I take leave to call my own – Janus House – opened for business last month, & every day the people file down Temple-street to stare & point & declare their astonishment, as if some asteroid had plummeted from the Heavens & landed on their doorstep. The press notices have been, thus far, extraordinarily hostile. The Mercury slights it as ‘a greenhouse gone mad’, while the satirical weekly, the Badger, offers this: ‘The plainest brick warehouse in the town is infinitely superior, as a building, to that large agglomeration of protruding plate-glass bubbles in Temple-street, known as Janus House.’