The Rescue Man Read online

  But Bella, her face now drained of colour, didn’t appear to be listening. She had picked up the telephone and was asking the operator for the number of the Air Ministry. She stood silhouetted against the window, her back to the room, and after a few moments standing motionless she placed the receiver back in its cradle.

  ‘The lines are down,’ she murmured, without turning. Baines watched as her shoulders began to shake, softly at first, and then her tall frame was convulsed by heaving sobs.

  ‘Oh, David, David,’ she half whispered, her arms braced against the little table on which the telephone stood. Baines, nearest to her, could think of nothing to say, so he laid his hand gently on her shoulder for a few moments, hoping the gesture would carry the sorrow he wanted to express. He felt her body trembling uncontrollably, as if gripped by a chill. Then Richard was at her side, and Baines backed away, without a word, and left the room.

  8

  IN FRONT OF his face he could make out nothing but the soles of a pair of hobnailed boots. They belonged to Mike Wo, the best tunneller on the team on account of his short but muscular build and his instinct for finding the safest route through fallen debris. Baines imagined that Mike had once been a miner, so adept was he in confined underground spaces, though on enquiry discovered that he was actually a manager in his family’s restaurant on Duke Street. In any event Baines would usually volunteer to go with him on digging operations, and once they were crawling through the shifting masses of rubble he kept as close to Mike’s heels as he could.

  At the moment they were working a path beneath a row of collapsed houses just off Vauxhall Road. It was four days before Christmas, and the city had just endured a night-long Blitz, the heaviest since the end of November. They were still carrying out the dead in the late morning when their rescue team arrived. Even Farrell, who could be relied upon for a macabre quip, had been silent as they surveyed the line of corpses hidden beneath tarpaulin; the ambulances would have to do a second, perhaps a third, run to the mortuary. Rafferty led the preliminary search over the mounds of smouldering timber and brick. As usual they had consulted the warden, who had checked the list of known residents.

  ‘We can’t be certain,’ Baines heard him say. ‘There’s a married couple, the Powells, and their son, all unaccounted for, but they may have gone to a shelter.’

  Even information as provisional as this would oblige them to begin a search, and so, stumbling, swearing, they clambered about the ruins. It was Mavers who heard the noise first. He called Rafferty over.

  ‘Thought I heard this … cryin’ sound,’ he said, peering downwards.

  ‘Quiet, everyone,’ Rafferty boomed, and each of them stopped where he was to listen.

  ‘Could be another cat,’ said Farrell. They knew from experience that he was probably right. Baines had lost count of the number of times they had heard a baby mewling and begun a dangerous excavation, only to find a cat trapped in an air pocket. Had it mastered this eerie mimicry on purpose? he had wondered. That would be just like a cat.

  ‘Miaow,’ called McGlynn, and sniggered. He was a young bricklayer who had recently joined the squad after poor eyesight disqualified him from army service. Low intelligence may possibly have weighed against him, too.

  ‘McGlynn – shut it,’ hissed Rafferty. They listened again, and, straining his ears, Baines heard a distant ululation of distress. He caught Mavers’s eye and nodded agreement.

  ‘There’s something – someone – down there.’

  ‘It’s a fuckin’ moggy,’ insisted Farrell. ‘Come on, you know how many lives they ’ave.’

  Rafferty had asked for volunteers, and so Baines now found himself in a tunnel not more than four feet wide. The torch strapped to the side of his helmet offered a dim illumination. Ahead of him Mike Wo was taking a rest, having carefully hollowed out a makeshift passage using table legs and random spars of wood as props. This structure required some delicacy of touch, for whatever the difficulties they experienced getting in they would have to ensure it would still be there when it came to getting out. Mike preferred to use a long plank as a mobile head support, though sometimes a wardrobe frame or a tabletop might be deployed for the purpose. He lowered the wetted handkerchief from around his mouth – worn as protection against a gas leak – and asked Baines if he was all right. Baines lifted his thumb in response, and in a moment they resumed their subterranean journey. It wasn’t the mouthfuls of dust or the stink Baines minded so much as the creaks that sounded ominously through the gloom, a reminder that a few tons of debris were poised precariously over his head. He could sometimes distract himself by imagining he was a boy again, crawling in the dead of night beneath the netting of the vegetable patch in George and May’s garden. That damp, cold smell of earth in his nostrils came back to him now … and so did a couplet from a poem he had learned at school:

  Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

  Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?

  He had always been haunted by that image. Death he could imagine to be dull and cold, but that it manifested itself as an ear was mysterious, and terrifying.

  Ahead of him he saw Mike’s legs suddenly spasm, and his boots kicked up a gritty cloud of ash and brick dust into Baines’s face. ‘Jesus,’ he heard Mike’s voice through his mask, and then saw what had alarmed him. A brown rat, its fur dark with grease, scurried past; it was really getting out of there.

  ‘Did yer see that, Tom?’ Mike called.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fucker had a tail as long as a washin’ line!’

  He was about to joke to Mike that, working in a Chinese restaurant, he must have seen plenty of them, but then he thought better of it – too like the kind of thing Farrell would say. They kept moving slowly, painstakingly forward, Mike testing every bit of broken timber and masonry in front of them. Behind him Baines heard a shudder as the debris moved, and braced himself for the avalanche to descend on them. When it didn’t come they pressed on, like moles burrowing through the dark.

  After another ten minutes of digging they could hear the sound quite clearly, and now they knew it wasn’t a cat. As far as they could tell the ground floor had collapsed into the basement, but from the middle, so that the floor had created a V shape against either wall. They were into the narrow right angle between the wall and a tangle of broken joists and plaster; it was possible to get up off their stomachs and move about in a stoop. From the far end of this dark enclosure they heard a baby’s piercing cries.

  ‘That’s the son,’ said Mike.

  Baines stepped towards the infant, no more than three months old, miraculously preserved in his cot amid the fallen chaos. The smell of faeces and vomit assailed him as he bent down over the wailing bundle. How had this tiny creature not died of fright? he wondered. Looking around he spotted a woman’s shoe, and then his beam revealed a leg, poking out from beneath a huge chunk of masonry.

  ‘Over here,’ he said.

  Between them they managed to heave it away and found, lying side by side on a mattress, the bodies of a man and a woman. Mr and Mrs Powell, he presumed. Apart from a coating of plaster dust and soot there didn’t seem to be a mark on them. But they were both quite dead. Baines wondered if they had suffocated. Above them they heard another protesting creak, the sound of a building in its death throes. He turned to Mike. ‘I’m gonna say a quick prayer, and then we should get out of here.’

  ‘It seems bad – you know, not givin’ them a burial.’

  ‘This is a burial,’ he replied, looking around, ‘and it might be ours too if we don’t look sharp.’ He found the words forming on his lips. ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace – Amen.’ He crossed himself, and started uncoiling the rope he kept in his knapsack. Mike was still in a half-crouch, puzzled.

  ‘That’s it? That’s their funeral?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ He was beginning to feel annoyed at Mike’s unwonted show of piety. ‘
What – you wanna sing a hymn? Mike, we’re getting out of here, right now, so take this rope and help me strap the kid up.’

  Mike heard the urgency in his voice and began winding the rope around the baby, now exhausted into silence, and presently the blanketed bundle was secured around Baines’s shoulders.

  ‘After you,’ he said as they crouched at the hole from which they’d entered. They had done the right thing, he thought; if another collapse got them and they were entombed down here, at least they would die having tried to save a life, an innocent life at that. Ahead of them lay the journey back, another twenty minutes of crawling through that tortuous stinking wreckage, with only a Chinese restaurant manager’s guile – and maybe God’s mercy – to protect them. He retied the handkerchief around his mouth, and then he was on his belly again, his face a few inches from the iron-riveted soles of Mike Wo’s boots.

  Baines always felt hilarious with relief after emerging from a dig. The mug of steaming tea the WVS worker handed to him had the taste of an elixir, and he breathed in the air joyously, no matter how burnt or gritty it felt to his lungs. He was alive, back in the world, escaped from the tomb. Two had gone down, and three had come back: couldn’t that be counted a success? He thought of the child’s parents still lying down there, as lifeless as a medieval knight and his lady carved in stone. He was sitting on the running board of the mobile canteen when Mavers and Farrell came over.

  ‘Well done, Tommy,’ said Mavers, with his odd conspiratorial smile. ‘We were starten to worry about yer down there …’ He offered Baines a cigarette, which he lit and inhaled deeply.

  Farrell said, with a laugh, ‘Should see your face, la’. You look like a nigger minstrel.’

  Baines glanced at his face in the wing mirror of the van. Apart from a faint whitish ring around his eyes it was black with soot and smoke. He thought he looked more like the sweep who used to clear the chimney at home. He didn’t care: he was alive.

  ‘Bet you were glad you ’ad Charlie down there,’ Farrell added. Farrell’s nickname for Mike was, almost inevitably, Charlie Chan. Baines nodded.

  ‘It’s in his hands. He always knows what can be moved – and what can’t.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they start them young down the mines in China. Charlie was probably born carryin’ a pickaxe.’

  Baines knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but he couldn’t resist. He sighed. ‘Farrell, Mike was born in Liverpool. So were his parents. His family’s probably been here longer than yours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ added Mavers casually, ‘you thick Irish git.’

  Farrell laughed, pleased that he’d got under somebody’s skin. Baines, shuddering for a moment, said, ‘We saw a huge rat on the way – moved like lightning, it did.’

  ‘That’s cos it’d seen Charlie,’ said Farrell. ‘It probably knew him from his restaurant and thought – uh-oh, that’s the feller who’s been drownin’ us in the chow mein!’

  Mavers and Baines laughed; only Farrell would be so absurd as to voice the mortal fears of a rat. At that moment Mike appeared, but he didn’t seem interested in what they were laughing about, which was just as well.

  He said, ‘Tom, Rafferty wants a word,’ and gestured over his shoulder. He seemed annoyed about something. He turned to the woman serving at the canteen hatch. ‘You got anything to eat, love?’

  Farrell burst out laughing at this. ‘Oh, that’s just perfect!’ he cackled.

  Mike looked at him distractedly. ‘What?’ But he was preoccupied with the canteen woman, who had only sandwiches to offer.

  ‘What’s in ’em?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Sardines,’ she replied.

  ‘That all you got?’ he said, with palpable disgust.

  ‘Yeah. Why, what’s wrong with sardines?’

  Mike paused for a moment, then looked back at her. ‘I’ll tell yer what’s wrong with ’em – they smell like dead people.’ Then he turned and trudged off. The WVS woman looked as if she’d been slapped in the face.

  ‘Sorry ’bout that, love,’ Mavers said to her, venturing gallantry, ‘he’s been through a rough time, that lad.’

  Baines stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He found his handkerchief and looked in the wing mirror to wipe his face. He really wanted to get home and have a bath, but he supposed it wouldn’t be unpleasant to hear Rafferty commend him for his efforts. Farrell had noticed his quick spit-wash, and was evidently not done with baiting. ‘There’s no need to spruce yourself up for Rafferty – he’s not the fucken’ prime minister, even if he acts like ’im.’

  ‘I’m not doing it for Rafferty. I just hate feeling this dirty.’

  ‘He’ll be in a good mood,’ Farrell continued, ‘with the kid saved. You should ask him for a promotion – eh, Liam, what’s above “professor”?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Mavers, evenly. ‘Go ’ead, Tommy, get it over with.’

  Baines walked off in the direction of the warden’s command post, where he knew Rafferty would be. Most of the corpses had been removed, but at the far end of the blasted street he saw another squad of rescue workers still picking over the debris. As he walked past one of the vans he heard Rafferty call his name. He was sitting in the cabin of the vehicle.

  ‘Step up here a moment, would you?’ he said. Baines climbed in. It was difficult to read Rafferty’s expression, because his mouth was habitually downturned. He was beginning to realise that it was a face he didn’t much like. ‘The child has been saved. I gather from Wo that the Powell couple were dead.’

  ‘Yeah, they were.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘Obviously it would have been better if you’d brought them out as well.’

  This wasn’t the paean of gratitude Baines had been expecting. He spoke carefully. ‘I didn’t believe the structure would hold in time for us to do that. A collapse looked quite possible, so Mike and I decided to save the living … rather than the dead.’

  ‘Did you … search the couple at all?’

  ‘Search them? What for?’

  Rafferty looked measuringly at him. ‘For valuables. Did you notice whether they were wearing wedding rings or – other jewellery?’

  Baines began to see where this might be leading. ‘I didn’t notice what they were wearing, and the only time I touched them was to check for a pulse.’

  Rafferty nodded again, and then said, ‘I ask because, well, there have been incidents of looting among rescue workers. We have to make sure –’

  ‘I’ve never stolen anything in my life,’ said Baines, bridling.

  ‘Yes, but as I say, there have been serious incidents –’

  ‘I’ve never stolen anything in my life,’ he repeated tightly, feeling a dark tide of anger rise in his chest. He opened the van door, then turned back to Rafferty. ‘We risked our fucking necks to get that kid out. This is the thanks we get?’

  ‘There’s no need to take that attitude –’

  ‘Drop dead,’ he muttered, and slammed the door.

  He was still thrumming with rage on the bus into town, sitting next to Mike. He felt his hand trembling as he raised a match to his cigarette. The taste was bitter on his tongue. Mike was idly picking away at the blast netting on the bus window. As it happened, Baines had heard of looting after a raid; there were spivs everywhere, and the black market was thriving, even with fire-damaged contraband. But the idea of robbing a corpse repulsed him, and to be suspected capable of it –

  ‘Fucking outrage,’ he muttered to himself, and Mike turned to him, half smiling.

  ‘Forget about it, la’,’ he said. ‘We did good today. Rafferty’s just watchin’ his own back.’

  ‘Yeah, but to be practically accused of thieving …’

  ‘You should try workin’ in our restaurant sometime. We get people accusin’ us of all sorts, thievin’ included. And I bet Rafferty didn’t ask you to turn out yer pockets.’

  ‘He asked you?’ Baines was incredulous. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him to fuck off!’

  Bain
es was woken from a dream in which he was trapped underground, alone and unmissed. He’d had the dream so often of late that he was no longer surprised by it, though the panic still fluttered in his chest on waking. The sirens had started their keening wail. He groggily checked the alarm clock on his bedside table: half past six. He’d been asleep for just over four hours. He pulled back a corner of the blackout curtain and peeked out to find the evening sky ominously clear: a bomber’s moon. He wasn’t due on a shift tonight, but he knew that if the raids were anything like as severe as last night’s he would be reporting for duty. There was an immediate problem in that fires still burning in the city from the night before would offer a useful guide to a new wave of bombers. But then there was a permanent marker in the glittering scimitar of the Mersey, and they could do nothing about that.

  His jacket was still filthy from this morning’s toil, but he hadn’t another one to wear. On returning home he had washed his body more fiercely than Lady Macbeth did her hands, and now he was reclothing himself in the acrid reek of smoke and rubble and death. The telephone’s ring ten minutes later did not surprise him, though the voice at the other end wasn’t immediately familiar.

  ‘Is that the professor?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘We’re lookin’ for a Professor Baines –’

  ‘Farrell.’

  He heard spluttering laughter, and then muffled ‘voices off’. Farrell spoke again: ‘Rafferty wants you down here quick as yer like. Hitler’s sendin’ over another Christmas packet.’

  There was a click, and the line went dead. Off to the south the heavy broken drone of the Luftwaffe engines grew louder, and closer. He pulled on his boots, put on his helmet and was out of the door within a few minutes.

  On Gambier Terrace he looked up and saw the sky lousy with German planes. Evidently a repeat performance of last night was about to start. As he unlocked his bicycle he heard the first bombs falling, a whistle, or a shriek, and then the impact. The ack-ack guns coughed into life, and across the horizon he could see tracer fire brightly stitching the darkness. It reminded him of a Whistler nocturne, the one in which the green-black night is illumined with falling sparks of gold. Fireworks, he presumed. Well, they could depend on getting fireworks tonight. He would usually have made the journey to the depot in Hackins Hey by tram, but tonight he sensed a greater urgency in the air, and the wind against his face as he careened down Duke Street on the bicycle was, he found, rather exhilarating. At the bottom of the street he narrowly avoided a deep bomb crater, harder to spot without the benefit of street lamps. As he rounded the corner into Paradise Street he felt the ground rock beneath him, and the attendant shock wave gusted past his face; a high-explosive bomb had fallen some distance ahead, and he could see a wall slowly sag and topple. It crashed, and from the impact billowed a dense cloud of dust. All the advice suggested that it was better to be under cover, but Baines, as now, could see up close the way bombing transmuted the solidities of the ordinary world – walls, roofs, floors – into pitiful matchwood structures, toy defences against the tearing blast. Outside one felt utterly exposed, it was true, but one could at least cling to the possibility of movement, to the idea, however illusory, that this onrushing menace might be dodged.