The Rescue Man Read online

  Let them scoff – it is nothing to me. I was more surprised by the response on handing my notice to Sandham some days ago. I had expected a blast of indignation, a plague upon all my houses &c., but the old man seemed quite philosophical, shook my hand & wished me good fortune. I know he considers me a youth of overweening ambition – but as the poet wrote, ‘a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’

  29th April [1864]

  Chiltern calls at the club today bearing a copy of this week’s Punch, & excitedly thrusts a page of it under my nose: ‘Read here!’ he cries. It runs:

  Thy streets, fair Liverpool, now turn their face

  Upon a human greenhouse, so it seems,

  Bereft, alas, of beauty or of grace,

  And blame for this abortion – Mr Eames.

  To my surprise he calls for champagne & raises a toast. Has he, I ask him, read this disobliging doggerel? ‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘Punch, of all things – you’re famous, my boy!’ If this is fame then it has little savour for me. But I did enjoy the champagne.

  May [1864]

  The press continue to fire their poison darts. The Engineer (which ought to know better) has decanted a whole column of bile upon Janus House. It is really quite astonishing that I should have managed to affront so many; worse, it is alarming that, having set up business on my own, a prospective client may take notice of these assaults. Under the anonymity of Sandham’s patronage, I was ever assured of employment, but when my name is hoisted up the flagpole for all to jeer who will be tempted to offer a commission?

  1st June 1864

  The crowning insult. The architectural critic of the Badger, having vented his spleen on Janus House, now takes leave to write a long panegyric on the recently completed Daubeny & Rudd Bank on Brunswick-street – ‘To those who have studied architecture, the merest glimpse of this building is sufficient to demonstrate the true metal of craftsmanship – the goldsmith’s mark.’ This, the building which I designed & then suffered old Sandham to make his footling improvements upon after D&R cut up rough. Today I visited Brunswick-street & found that the bank, including the windows of which they had first complained, is almost brick-for-brick the edifice which I set down in the plans. But nowhere is my name mentioned.

  In a fury I wrote to the Badger’s critic explaining what ‘those who have studied architecture’ signally failed to notice, namely that the Brunswick-street bank is a design of Peter Eames, so lately defamed in their pages &c. &c. That letter is just now burning in the grate. It is folly to bandy words with the press. As an old legal friend of Pa’s once said: ‘Never engage in a fight with people who purchase their ink by the ton.’

  June 9th 1864

  A mystery has been solved. During the final weeks of construction on Janus House I had cause to notice a young fellow loitering about the place, occasionally carrying a notebook in which he would appear to sketch the elevation in front of him. I conceived an idea that he was a spy in the pay of a rival practice, or else some other kind of mischief-maker, but so fiercely absorbed in work was I at the time that I did not bother to approach him, & after some weeks he disappeared. It so happened I was on Temple-street today when a fellow tapped me on the shoulder; I turned & recognised him – the rough tweed checks, the twirled cane – as my spy. He said, ‘Sir, I believe I have the honour of addressing Peter Eames – allow me to shake your hand.’ The manner was courtesy itself; the accent was American. He introduced himself as John Rawlins, & told me a little of his history. He is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where his father practised as an architect before his death. He had hoped to follow his late sire into the business when the War broke out; he fled the country to avoid conscription, & fetched up here. ‘Since my arrival I have been making a study of this great city’s buildings, & of them all yours is to me the most inventive & inspiring’ – an opinion in which I am entirely disposed to concur. After the calumnies I have recently endured Mr Rawlins’ words come as sweet balm indeed.

  Tuesday, 21st June [1864]

  Dinner with my American friend Rawlins, & more of his gratifying blandishments. He calls me a poet of architecture, who finds ‘as much delight in stones as in stanzas’; this idea I know he has got from Ruskin in The Stones of Venice, who cites reading a building as comparable to reading Milton & Dante, & demands that we ‘wake to the perception of a truth just as simple & certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over & over again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new & different things’ – in short, that we may look to an architect, as we do to a poet, to be entertaining as well as truthful. For all Rawlins’ pleasant flattery, in Janus House I know that I have written only a sonnet, though it is perfect of its kind. One day, mark me, I shall create something ‘new & different’ & it shall be my epic – my Paradise Lost!

  We fell to talk of business at the end of the evening, & Rawlins asked me to consider taking him on as an assistant of ‘the company’. I laughed & explained that my company at present consisted in nothing more than a tiny chamber off the Exchange, that I had not a desk nor a chair nor money to pay him. He was undaunted by this news, & said that until the first commission was secured he would work for nothing. (I gather he came into a small legacy on his father’s death.) Moved by such enthusiasm, I took his hand, & promised him that this faith would be rewarded. He beamed back at me: ‘Sir, I know it.’

  8th August 1864

  This day my wife presented me with our first child, a daughter: Ellen Frances.

  August [1864]

  Ma has received a letter from Frank in Jamaica, his first in more than a year. He writes that he is ‘hale & hearty’, and that he has been getting on capitally in business – a claim one has cause to doubt when he reports a few sentences later that he has left Eames & co. ‘for the present’ to pursue certain financial interests of his own. It is perhaps significant that he writes to Ma & not to Pa, who had secured the Kingston engagement for him in the first place. Has he found more promising opportunities than the coffee trade can furnish? I hope for the best, yet the news has thrown us into confusion – Frank, though as dear a brother to me as a man could wish, has neither ambition nor any especial power of application, & the prospect of his venturing alone into business causes me (I confess it) great unease.

  September [1864]

  Pa calls me into his study this morning to confide the burden of a letter he has received from his manager, Mr Boyce, in Kingston, & a sorry burden it is. He writes to say that Frank, innocently or not, had got himself into low company, & that in recent months he had incurred gambling debts of a quite unmanageable nature. Boyce, to our relief, had succeeded in paying off his creditors, & had determined to write to my father advising him of his son’s dissolute behaviour when Frank, of a sudden, handed in his notice & promptly slung his hook, to go whither they knew not. Pa, greatly depressed by this intelligence, urges me not to disclose a word of it to Ma, who would only fret herself to distraction. He then asks me what is to be done, to which I propose that I should write to Frank – at his last address? – suggesting that he return home (it will do no good begging) where a position here awaits him, should he desire one. At any rate, to have him back in Liverpool should be our principal object. Pa seems mollified by this, knowing that nothing he should write in that vein would have the slightest effect, for he & Frank have been antagonists for years.

  I have just finished composing that letter, & can only hope that its recipient, on seeing the most affectionate & earnest love with which it is expressed, will respond in like fashion.

  10th November 1864

  What a boon has Rawlins proved to be. His work as a draughtsman, while promising, is not yet of the first order, but his willingness to negotiate business, to seek out opportunities, to pick up the scent of money – in this he is without peer. Last month he arranged the lease on splendid new premises in Tithebarn-street, with an
office for each of us, at a rent set astonishingly low. Is this his peculiar talent, or are all Americans so canny? This week alone he has secured new building contractors, designed an advertisement to run in the Mercury & made a fair copy of the plans I have submitted for the Chapel-street competition. If that dreadful war comes to nothing, I shall at least be thankful that it has blown this admirable fugitive across my path.

  25th November [1864]

  A curious letter from Frank. He dismisses my concern without assuaging it, making little mention of his severance from the company & none at all of his gambling debts. Far from acknowledging any gratitude to Boyce, Pa’s manager, he appears to resent him for his refusal to disburse company funds on a certain private ‘business venture’ he had been pursuing. I can only thank God that Boyce had the wisdom to do so, for any such disbursement would have been immediately & irrecoverably lost.

  December [1864]

  An early Christmas gift at Tithebarn-street. The winner of the competition for the office building in Chapel-street has been announced – step forward, Mr Eames! A scene of great excitement at our little office; Rawlins is quite beside himself, not least because the premium is set at 200 guineas. Oh, those wretches of the press who pierced me with their satiric barbs & held up my work to ridicule – let them try to injure me now!

  Thursday, 9th February, 1865

  To walk about Liverpool at present & witness whole streets half-torn down & instantly built up again is a remarkable thing. A week’s absence from town will make a man feel a stranger on his return. A frenzy of demolition spreads across the place like some monstrous plague, its dragon-breath a smouldering compound of fire & mortar & brick & iron. The air is permanently aswarm with grit & soot – it is impossible to keep a clean shirt – & the sound of clanking & hammering so violent as to knock one’s head askew. Thoroughfares become impassable as steam engines & gangs of navvies establish their own independent republics – old cobbled streets are eaten up by vast trenches & excavations. Beneath it all flows a river of money, swollen & ready to burst its banks. These changing times might cause a gentle soul alarm, but to an architect it is only exhilarating.

  Wednesday, 1st March, 1865

  Ma arrives at Hope-pl. this morning in a breathless agitation of spirits I misconstrue as portending bad news. But no – her excitement concerns a letter that arrived this morning from Frank, announcing his intention to leave Kingston & return home. He embarks on the 15th of the month. Good Lord. The suddenness of this news is enough to stun me, but when I see the delight writ upon my mother’s face I am much affected, & in a burst of exultation I waltz her about the room. ‘Oh, to have Francis back with us again!’ she cries. Eight years away. He will find the place much changed, I think.

  Monday, 27th March [1865]

  Today I witnessed something quite terrible. I was walking to the office & had stopped halfway along North John-street to have my boots cleaned by the little fellow who keeps a pitch there. It was a morning no different from any other, the traffic was not unduly heavy & people were going about their business with no particular urgency; the crossing-sweeper was clearing the thoroughfare of horse manure, a coster wheeled his barrow along & whistled away, & the city’s bankers & brokers pounded the pavement like so many others towards their chambers of commerce. I had just given sixpence to the bootblack & lifted my gaze across the way, where another huge building was under construction.

  At the top of the scaffold I could see two men talking to one another on the parapet, about six storeys above the street, then strolling quite unconcernedly along the narrow wooden platform linking one side to the other. I was still watching them – I cannot explain why – when that platform suddenly lurched, the rope on one side seeming to have snapped, & tipped steeply at an angle. One of the men had already gained safety, but the other had lost his footing & was now clinging for dear life to the loosened plank as it swung off the scaffold. I heard a cry go up as the man hung there, frantically kicking his legs, & of a sudden the traffic around me came to a dead halt, as if an invisible puppeteer had jerked its strings & alerted them to the calamity overhead. I had the queer feeling that the whole street had sharply drawn in its breath, startled by the sight of this dangling figure whose piteous shrieks now carried the full force of mortal apprehension. The man’s mate looked down, helpless – everybody else looked up. I was horribly transfixed, & had begun to calculate for how long the man could hang there (what strength might he have in those arms?) when in an instant he was plunging through the air, his body performing a kind of cartwheel, it seemed, but one that could find no purchase in the careless medium of thin air & had as its only end the ground he had not thought to touch so precipitately. I gasped at the sound he made upon hitting the pavement – it was a thock, & resonated with a hard, hideous finality. The stillness as he lay there attested to his condition more certainly even than the claret-dark liquid that was now pooling around his head. Shaken beyond imagining I turned away & directed my steps to Tithebarn-street like a sleepwalker in his trance. Rawlins, seeing my pallor, immediately plied me with his brandy flask until I was able to give a stumbling account of the accident – it was but a weak shadow of the real thing.

  Tuesday 28th [March, 1865]

  A report in today’s Mercury of the accident in North John-street. The dead man, a labourer named Joseph Tressell, left behind a wife & two children. He was twenty-five – my age. I had thought to tell Emily of it, but she was preoccupied with the infant. Ma & Pa also elsewhere in their thoughts, for Frank arrives on the morrow. Besides, how to convey the horror of that poor creature falling through the air, & the frightful noise that still sounds in my head?

  29th March 1865

  Casting aside my gloom I accompanied the whole family down to the Pier Head to greet Frank on his return. The sky was heavy with colossal thunder clouds, though the Mersey offered a prospect to delight the eye, crowded as it was with vessels of all kinds – barques, brigs, schooners, cutters, steamers, skiffs, tugs, even rowing boats plied the river, while on the quayside swarmed men hauling loads, sailors shouting to one another, merchants overseeing their cargoes brought from all the shores of the oceans. Show me a seaport to rival this! After a delay of an hour or more we spotted in the distance the red funnel pipe of the Cunard steamship, her masts billowing in the wind, cannon firing to announce her arrival. The ship moored in the middle of the river, & soon a little mail-steamer was puffing its way to the landing-stage bearing such of the passengers as chose to disembark. We eagerly scrutinised the crowd as it came ashore, they numbered a hundred or more, yet nowhere amongst them could we see him; on & on they passed, until the very last stragglers were descending the gangplank. Then Ma cried out, ‘There he is!’ – & indeed there was Frank, beaming in that familiar way, though in so much else he looked changed. Thinner of face, which now looks quite swarthy (‘dusky as a mulatto’, I later heard Ma whisper), his hair cropped close & near-blond from the sun, & something distant in his gaze, as if he were still lost in the tropical climes of Jamaica. His coat & trousers were travel-stained, of course, & I noticed his shirt was frayed at the cuffs. He looked tired, but his spirits seemed high. Ma & the girls fell on his neck, & once he had managed to detach himself from their embraces he went to Pa & shook his hand. William & he seemed hardly to recognise one another, and Frank marvelled at him – I suppose Will was only a boy of nine when he left in ’57. He came, last of all, to me, & said simply, ‘Pete.’ I felt tears start from my eyes as I embraced this man whose blood runs in my veins yet who seemed withal a kind of stranger to me. As I introduced him to Emily & the child I raised a silent prayer to God, & thanked Him for the safe return of our brother.

  April [1865]

  This morning I took Frank to the Chapel-street site, where the building of Magdalen Chambers continues. I explained to him how the three bays of its front would resemble a huge mullioned window, with the middle arch pushed higher to form a curving gable. Then we walked through to the rear courtyard, whe
re a glass curtain wall similar to that of Janus House is to be erected. As I was running on I realised that Frank, far from being swept along by my enthusiasm, was barely listening. I stopped, & waited for him to speak. Presently he turned to me & asked, ‘How did you come by all this?’ I replied that I had submitted a design in a competition, & that my entry had won it. At the word ‘competition’ his eyes suddenly lit up – this did interest him, but for a quite mistaken reason. As he construed it, I had made some sort of wager at a gaming table & by sheer nerve, or good fortune, had pocketed the winnings. I avowed that there was, indeed, an element of chance, but as to the placing of bets & the casting of dice … Having taken in this explanation he fell silent, & I felt conscious of disappointing him. I was not the gambler he thought me after all.

  We then went off to dine at the Cockspur. Frank ate little, but we both drank steadily – claret, & then gin. My head was quite thick by the late afternoon, but Frank seemed perfectly unaffected. Hitherto we had not touched on the debts he had incurred, but now I asked him how he proposed to make a living (for he does not wish to work for Pa). At this he looked at me & smiled: ‘I’ve a few irons in the fire, don’t you worry.’ But I am worried, I wanted to say. When the waiter presented our bill to us I took it without thinking, but Frank snatched it out of my hand & to my amazement produced a handful of coins, sovereigns among them. He clinked a couple of them on to the salver. I had heard of sailors on shore leave loaded with blunt, but it had never occurred to me that my own brother would be so flush in the pocket. He winked at me, as if to forestall my asking whence his new wealth had come.