The Rescue Man Read online

  ‘No, not myself,’ Baines replied quickly. ‘I was admiring this lovely old mirror. It’s one I told Jack about a few months ago – part of a job lot from some derelict house we looked at in Ullet Road. See the leaf-patterning on the gilt here, that’s called lamb’s tongue.’

  Brenda peered at the frame, and looked round at Baines. ‘This the sort of thing you write about?’

  ‘Something like,’ he said.

  Jack had come in from the kitchen bearing a tray of bottles and squinting through his own cigarette smoke. He mixed gin and French for the girls, Scotch and soda for himself and Baines.

  ‘It’s a bit stuffy in here,’ he announced, and Baines endured a secret pang of mortification that he’d been overheard explaining the gilt moulding to Brenda. The remark in fact proved quite innocent, as Jack strode across to the French windows and flung them wide. They moved over to the open doors and gazed out at the velvety black of the night, its enveloping softness now and then pierced by the distant rumble of a tram, or a drinker’s voice raised in indecipherable protest. June had a few more nights left to decant. Baines shook out a Player’s, lit it and blew inexpert smoke rings into the dark. He would gladly have stayed there, silently smoking and gazing, with nothing to interrupt his peace for – for the rest of his life. Save our skins and damn the Czechs.

  ‘Here’s how,’ said Jack eventually, clinking his glass against Evie’s.

  He sauntered over to the piano at the far corner of the room, sat down and began playing snatches of different songs. Brenda and Evie collapsed on to the sofa, while Baines riffled through a disorderly pile of sheet music. Jack had been a pianist since his army days, and what his untutored playing lacked in finesse was amply redressed by its feeling. His taste generally dallied at the popular end of the musical spectrum, and tonight he was giving it full rein. He followed ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ with ‘That Old Feeling’, and Evie, sensing a cue, joined him at the piano to sing ‘I’ll String Along With You’. Brenda, not to be outdone, got up and astounded Baines with a beautifully modulated rendering of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, then she and Evie performed what was evidently a party-piece duet of ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, meeting one another’s eyes fondly as they sang the lines,

  And the moment before she died

  She lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam …

  Miss Otis regrets, she’s unable to lunch today.

  Baines, vulnerable to these maudlin tunes, was moved to applaud them.

  ‘What lovely voices you have,’ he said, blushing at his own sincerity.

  ‘Oh yeah – bring a tear to a glass eye, that would,’ laughed Brenda. ‘We were both in Sister Gerard’s choir at Holy Child. Remember, Evie?’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Evie, smiling. ‘There’s not a hymn in the book we haven’t sung.’

  ‘Those Catholic girls,’ sighed Jack, rising from his seat and refilling their glasses. Evie took his place at the piano, and tried out a few uncertain chords of her own. Brenda, recognising the melody, began in her pleading contralto,

  Faith of our Fathers, living still,

  In spite of dungeon, fire and sword …

  Jack raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘I think we should leave them to it,’ he said, backing away from the hymnal ardour as if from the concerted force of dungeon, fire and sword. Baines, born a Catholic, had years ago lost whatever faith he had inherited, though he still felt obscurely stirred by the folk memory of these ancient hymns. Jack, the Protestant among them, treated what he called Evie’s ‘popery’ with steady bemusement.

  While the girls continued singing, Baines sank on to the sofa and closed his eyes, humming along with ‘Faith of Our Fathers’. Eventually, he said, ‘How much do you know about photography?’

  ‘Not a great deal,’ Jack shrugged. ‘I’ve got an old box camera that I’ve not used in ages. Why?’

  Baines explained the new direction the Liverpool book might be taking. He had corresponded with Plover Books about the time-saving possibilities of switching from sketches to photographs, and they had been agreeable, with the proviso that expenses should be kept to a minimum. And, as usual, he had been putting off the moment when he would actually have to do something about it. For one thing, he enjoyed sketching, and the idea of abandoning it for the sake of mere convenience pained him: a photograph to him was something fixed and mechanical, whereas a sketch was fluid and individual. But he knew that if the project were ever to be completed it was a compromise he would have to make. ‘There’s a photography studio down on Slater Street,’ said Jack. ‘I think they deal mainly in portraits, but you might try them.’

  Baines nodded, and sighed.

  Jack looked at him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just … wonder what I’m doing. If what we think is going to happen does happen, what’s the point of writing about buildings that might not be here tomorrow?’

  Jack considered. ‘Well, they’re still history, whether they survive or not – you’re preserving a record of them. But I see why it might have a lowering effect.’

  ‘Does it ever bother you that people seem to behave as if … nothing’s happening? I mean, they take the tram, they buy their stockings and marmalade, they go to the pictures, and all the while a country not very far away is planning to … bomb us into oblivion.’

  ‘It’s not a happy thought,’ agreed Jack, mildly. ‘But what do you expect them to do? It’s just human nature that people get on with things – and they’ll still want stockings and marmalade even during a war.’

  They were silent for a while. ‘What are you going to do – I mean, if it comes to it?’ said Jack.

  ‘Enlist, I suppose. I haven’t any reason not to.’ He was aware as he said this that Jack did have a reason not to. He was four years older than Baines, and had served in France as a lance corporal during the last eighteen months of the Great War. He had been wounded at Amiens, though it was not an experience he talked of much, and Baines was cautious about asking him.

  ‘Word of advice, Thomas – try to avoid the infantry,’ said Jack.

  The evening was winding down. Baines, slightly nauseous from all the cigarettes, appalled himself by lighting one more. There always seemed to be room for one more. Evie swayed over to him and flopped on to the sofa. Her eyes were blurred from the gin, and perhaps from the spiritual transport of the hymn singing. She dipped her head to his and said quietly, ‘You wouldn’t mind walking Brenda to the tram, would you?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ he replied, used to performing small gallantries. Evie leaned over and hugged him fondly. As she did so Baines couldn’t avoid glimpsing the lightly freckled skin that sloped down from her collarbone and disappeared at the V of her thin cotton dress. He looked away, and coughed unnecessarily; he brushed a speck of ash from his trouser leg.

  ‘You’re a lovely feller,’ Evie said, laughing. Baines returned an embarrassed smile, and stood up. Her friendliness was almost too much to bear. He briefly imagined reaching out to touch her face, and just as quickly dismissed the idea. Brenda had collected her handbag and fixed him with a look of bright expectation.

  ‘Tanqueray – like the gin,’ said Jack, as he was letting them out. ‘I mean the name of the photographer on Slater Street.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Baines.

  They had said their goodnights. Brenda, somewhat unsteady, shouldered up to Baines as they walked through the darkened streets and put her arm through his. He flinched, and Brenda felt it.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bite yer!’ she laughed, lightly punching his arm. ‘I think I might be a bit tipsy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Baines, and meant it: he didn’t want to seem unfriendly. Indeed, he had rather come round to Brenda in the course of the evening, and felt that a woman who sang that sweetly could be forgiven an excess of boisterousness. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to turn his little flinch into a joke. But much as he wished it otherwise, he had no suavity in the comp
any of women. Brenda was chatting on about a party she and some friends were throwing at their place – she lived in Aigburth Vale – and Baines realised he was being invited to attend.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure, though, with work and everything. I’m quite …’ He let the thought peter out.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said lightly, ‘I suppose the archaeology keeps you busy. Evie’s got the address, anyway, if you change yer mind.’

  A tram was trundling out of the gloom towards them. Baines turned to her, and extended his hand.

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Brenda.’

  She smiled at him, and put her hand in his. ‘You’re quite old-fashioned, aren’t yer?’

  Now it was his turn to smile. ‘I sometimes think I was born old-fashioned.’

  She nodded, and dropped a little curtsy in reply. ‘Ta-ra, then,’ she said, stepping on to the tram, and as she waved to him Baines felt suddenly wistful. His company this evening had been, as he thought, reliably unscintillating, and yet this young woman had liked him well enough to extend a friendly invitation – which he could quite easily have accepted. But he had become so used to declining such overtures that to behave otherwise would have required a complete sea change in his own fugitive instincts.

  Rain had begun to pimple the pavement as he walked home. He sometimes felt the necessity of simply being himself an insupportable burden. Why was it that whenever the prospect of intimacy loomed he would always refuse? And why, having refused, would he then feel racked by regret? He knew what it was, knew it too well, and whenever the currents of memory tried to drag him under he fought wildly against them, for if he went down he might never come back. It was the silhouette of a woman on a balcony, glimpsed, then gone. He could not look that night in the eye. He would not.

  2

  THE FRONT WALLS of the Record Office on William Brown Street were fatly buttressed with sandbags, though inside the somnolent atmosphere of a library still prevailed. A clerk directed him to the relevant department, and after a long wait another assistant emerged bearing three slim quarto notebooks, which expelled a fine cloud of dust as they thunked on to the desk. Baines guessed that they had lain undisturbed for years, which surmise the assistant immediately confirmed. He settled himself at a corner desk, where melancholy sunshine was falling through the tall windows in slanting bands of brightness, and slowly began to scrutinise the venerable relics. The dark green boards of each book were stiff and bowed, their edges worn and blunted by the years; one of them was in a worse condition than its companions, its cover drastically bleached by sunlight and some of its pages loosened from the spine. But on examination they proved perfectly legible.

  The musty, deadened scent of old paper rose to his nostrils. The journals began in 1860, when Peter Eames turned twenty-one, and stopped, abruptly, in 1869, four years before his death. The entries were fitful, and of varying lengths; sometimes whole weeks and months would elapse without comment, then, as if refreshed from the hiatus, they would start up again with an urgent new rhythm. Breaking up the text at irregular intervals would be a drawing, sometimes nothing more than a doodle, sometimes a precise little diagram or illustration, usually of an architectural nature. The compositional style indicated a fierce and possibly unstoppable energy, an impression amplified by the flowing, confident hand. If the emphatic upward strokes and elegant loops looked to have been the result of careful practice – there were inky hints of experiment in the early pages – they also betokened a very decisive cast of mind. Only in the third and last book did Baines notice a change: the handwriting in the late 1860s lost something of its flamboyance, became more compressed and lean, and the fluency of previous entries was now clogged with his amendments and crossings-out.

  Yet just to hold these dowdy-looking books, to read in brown ink the marks that Eames’s steel-nibbed pen had scored upon its pages, lent them a kind of reverence for Baines. This was the same hand, the same mind, that had gone against the grain of prevailing certitudes in Victorian architecture and conjured a set of designs that were both of their time and dramatically ahead of it. More than this, however, he hoped the journals would help prise open the enigma of Eames himself. Why did this talented young architect, who could have earned himself a fortune from designing commercial buildings, suddenly change tack and stake his career on the philanthropic but potentially ruinous enterprise of a free library? What had happened in the last years of his life that prompted him to break from his business partner and apparently abort the library scheme? And was it madness or despair that led to the tragic denouement of his self-destruction? Somewhere in these foxed and faded pages he felt sure that a key to the inner sanctum of Eames’s life might be found. Returning to the first journal he carefully smoothed down the opening page and began to read.

  3rd September 1860

  Today I am one-&-twenty. Rode out to Ditton with Chiltern & sat sketching for an afternoon. Weather fine; a continuous armada of fleecy clouds sailing over the horizon – ‘as lifelike as Mr Constable’s’, says Chiltern. His own talents as a draughtsman are of the first order – an excellent line, an accurate & steady hand – but unconscionably slow! In the hours he devoted to catching Ditton Mill, with all his shading, cross-hatching &c., I could have designed such an edifice for myself inside & out, & tell him so. He replies that we are sketching, not competing, & that I only betray my youthful ignorance of human capability – ‘You would, without a moment’s forethought, take command of the Channel Fleet if called upon.’ Indeed I would, I replied, & nothing in my manner or address should betray the smallest doubt of my fitness for the office. He laughed, & agreed that it would be so, even as the Fleet were being knocked into atoms.

  I fancy there is about me a bud of something more remarkable than the generality of mankind, but what it is I cannot yet discern. I have done nothing yet for immortality – two years of study in Cambridge, with no degree, & a few guineas earned from the sale of this or that drawing. The difficulty is settling to anything; my brain hums around like a bee flitting from flower to flower. Alas! – to bee is not to do.

  In the evening Chiltern & later Dalby to Abercromby-sq. for dinner; Ma & Pa in very jolly spirits, & so were we all. Claret to drink. From Cassie & Georgy a gift of a beautiful slender fruit knife, to pare my apples as I sketch. From Will a book of Browning’s poems (which he claims to have bought with his own money). After dinner songs at the piano, & convivial merriments.

  Only Frank of all the family not present.

  14th November 1860

  A pleasingly mild & bright morning, so I thought I would walk down to the river. I continued north for three miles or more, marvelling at the immense warehouses & docks that have risen even in the last few years – when I was a boy only a paltry jumble of buildings broke up this shoreline. Ma says that she remembers the town as a seaside resort, with long lines of bathing machines ready to accommodate visitors, who would come hither from miles around to enjoy the briny waters. All gone – even the beach at Kirkdale is swallowed into the giant maw of Commerce. The golden age is never now. But why in Heaven’s name should sea-bathing be thought a superior activity to the unloading of the world’s cargoes at Prince’s Dock? I would sooner look upon that tall forest of masts & spars, & take my constitutional around the Goree Piazzas, than idle away an afternoon up to my knees in water. Liverpool is a changing place – has become a busy seat of trade & prosperity – & much the better for it.

  27th November 1860

  Stopped this morning at the fish market on James-street; prodigious clamour (& a more prodigious stink) rising up from the stalls, close-packed together & slippery with all the creatures of the sea. I stood there entranced by the scene until one of the stall-holders, a withered but bright-eyed crone, broke upon my reverie. Caught off guard I pointed at some cod, & enquired as to whether it was quite fresh. The woman looked sharply at me (I suppose I must have appeared an impertinent youth), & asserted that if her fish were any fresher they should
answer that query themselves.

  25th December 1860

  Another Christmas without Frank. I pray to God that he keeps safe.

  30th January 1861

  Having patiently awaited messages from Providence that would summon me to a vocation (or simply to assure himself some peace & quiet at home) Pa has secured through a cousin a position for me at Messrs Arbuthnot & Sandham, a company of Architects and Civil Engineers on South Castle-street. I have begun as an apprentice draughtsman, in which capacity I may look forward to preferment of some kind ‘after three years’. Three years! In the meantime it seems I must apply myself to the most stultifying sort of hackwork, getting up designs for warehouses, breweries & whatnot, that offer in aspect not the faintest trace of beauty to the eye nor the least particle of credit to the profession.

  Sandham, by whose office I have been vouchsafed the favour of a desk, is a deaf & somewhat querulous old cove, but benign withal. His particular genius is for church-building, a demand which has multiplied through the mighty influx of Irish Catholics since the Famine. Droll stories circulate the office about his confusion in regard to these commissions, such a number does he take up at once. It is said that he has visited a church in the course of erection & advised on its various faults to the clerk of works, who then redirects him to the right church, some distance along the same road. Another time he has glimpsed a church through the window of a cab & expressed his sincere admiration of it – only to be told that it is his own!

  25th February 1861

  This morning old man Sandham called me into his rooms and set about explaining a commission that would bring a ‘considerable emolument’ to the company & be of significant practical value to myself. A gentleman, recently arrived with his family at a large manor house near Blundell Sands, requires a portfolio of drawings of the house in all its aspects, both within & without. The engagement entails that two days a week I should betake myself to his estate & devote as many hours as daylight allows to the task, the particulars of each drawing to be settled between myself & the master of the house. The old man paused, & I chose this moment to venture that I would be very amenable to such an engagement. He looked sternly over his spectacles at me & said, ‘Your amenability, sir, is not at issue – I raise this as an item of business to be transacted, not as a topic for consultation with an underling.’ This is not, alas, the first occasion on which I have been reminded of my ‘place’ (though my own estimation of its whereabouts would perhaps astound my elders & betters). In any event, one of the clerks later owned to me that such a commission is seldom entrusted to the care of a novice, & speaks well of the regard in which I am already held by Sandham &c. As I departed the office this evening I cut a brief caper on the street.