The Rescue Man

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘Tom,’ she called excitedly, ‘the tulips are out!’

  That she could be thinking of tulips at this critical juncture in their affair rather surprised him, but then he realised that a woman like Bella would always be a surprise to him.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ he replied, entering the living room.

  She must have heard the uncertainty in his voice, because she switched to a more explanatory tone. ‘Whenever the tulips appear I always think that spring has properly begun.’ She paused, than added, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ – and now he actually laughed. This was hardly the atmosphere in which adultery could proceed.

  ‘What’s funny?’ she said, about to enter the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ He looked about the room, with its familiar stack of magazines and books, The Times folded to the crossword, framed photographs and paintings propped against the wall, a camera in a half-assembled state on the coffee table. He knew this room and its contents intimately, down to the very pattern in the carpet, but it felt subtly altered now that he was there as more – and less – than a friend. He hadn’t yet told Bella about his last conversation with Richard, and he sensed that once he did she might not be quite as insouciant as she now seemed. He saw the faintly farcical element in Richard’s confiding to him about her surprise birthday party, but indecision gnawed at him. He was already in cahoots with Bella against Richard; he couldn’t enter a similar arrangement with Richard against Bella, however harmless the deception. She came in and set down the tea tray, glancing at him as she did. ‘You’re looking rather worried, my darling.’ The last two words were blithely spoken, but he felt a shiver of delight in hearing them.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said, trying to keep his tone light.

  ‘Oh?’ She arched her eyebrows. ‘Not sick of me already, are you?’

  ‘No’, he replied, smiling, ‘not that … Richard called me – he’s throwing a birthday party for you.’

  Bella plonked down the teapot she had just picked up. ‘Oh, please God, no.’ Her tone mingled vexation with weariness.

  ‘Sorry for ruining the surprise, but I thought you should know.’

  She was silent for a few moments, her face shielded by her hands. ‘Why on earth would he do that? He knows I’m dreading thirty.’

  ‘I imagine he thinks it’s a loving gesture,’ said Baines, with useless loyalty.

  ‘Don’t make me feel worse about it. I wish you’d told him just to drop the whole idea.’

  Baines took out his Player’s, handed one to her and lit one for himself. ‘It’s hardly my place to tell him what he shouldn’t do. Besides, there is one small compensation involved. He’s asked me to occupy you for the day while he gets this place ready.’

  ‘I see … and what d’you propose?’

  ‘Well, I thought I might spend it ravishing you, actually.’ He expelled a jet of smoke. ‘Or else we could just have lunch.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, with a considered moue. As she was pouring the tea she caught his eye, and a smile played over her face. ‘While we’re on the subject …’

  ‘Of lunch?’

  ‘No – of “ravishing” as you so nicely call it. Why don’t you go upstairs and prepare yourself … I’ll be up in a moment.’

  ‘That sounds like an offer I shouldn’t refuse.’

  ‘You’d be mad to,’ she agreed.

  He had not been in their bedroom before. He had never had a reason to. In the small bathroom next door he saw Richard’s straight razor and a badger-hair shaving brush amid the casual disarray of Bella’s creams and pots and unguents. The mirror above the sink caught him in its sights. He turned away and went back into the bedroom. He had imagined that as photographers their dresser would be a shrine of family portraits, but it turned out there were only two. The first was of a young couple marinated in Edwardian sepia, and a brief examination of the woman convinced him he was looking at Bella’s mother; she was nearly as beautiful, with the same frank incontrovertible gaze. The other was of Bella, thoughtful and seated at a cafe table on their honeymoon. For some reason Mavers’s words came into his head: You wouldn’t want to lose a woman like that. He backed away, and sat on the bed. Looking down, he saw a pair of Oxford brogues, neatly aligned and polished. He could imagine Richard’s look of merry industry while he buffed the leather to its parade-ground sheen.

  He heard Bella walk in, and he stood up.

  ‘I really don’t think I can do this,’ he said. ‘Not here.’

  He couldn’t properly explain to himself, let alone anyone else, why the sight of those shoes had thrown him off his stride. After some moments he heard her flop down on the bed and sigh.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eventually. ‘You must think me such a … hussy – I mean, for asking you here.’

  ‘No, I was rather thrilled by it, actually. But it just feels – spooky.’

  ‘We could – I don’t know – go for a walk instead?’

  He turned to her, and nodded ruefully. As they were going down the stairs Bella said, ‘There’s something I quickly have to finish,’ and he followed her into the darkroom, bathed in its sinisterly alluring red light. While she was busy with her tongs and trays of emulsion, he examined the photographs that were pegged and hanging on a line, like laundry. One of them held his eye: he could just make out the profile of the Pier Head at night, though what dominated the picture were the white dots and dashes of light that sequinned the horizon. He took it off its peg for a closer look.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ he said, handing it to Bella.

  ‘Ah – that’s tracer fire, I was out during a raid one night and happened to have my camera with me. It looks like –’

  ‘– fireworks.’ They said the word at the same time, and laughed. The closeness of her, and the enveloping intimacy of the darkroom, stirred the atmosphere between them. For the first time since he had arrived that afternoon Baines felt aroused, and he pulled her towards him. She giggled responsively, slowly tilting her head as he kissed her throat and neck. He loved the feel of her, from the softness of her cheek and mouth to the yielding firmness of her chest – loved too the poignant boniness of her hands that he could feel on his skin where she had pulled up his shirt. He had undone the buttons on her trouser front and had slid an exploratory hand into her knickers when, abruptly, she tensed. He saw quickly enough that her expression betrayed not annoyance but alarm, and she was now cocking an ear to a sound he hoped was imaginary. Then he heard it, too, the muffled footfall on the stairs that could only presage the arrival of one person.

  ‘I thought you said he was out,’ Baines whispered, but Bella was too frantic with rebuttoning her trousers and smoothing her ruffled appearance to answer. Of all the wretched luck – They were suddenly breathing the air of bedroom farce, only with the laughter sucked out of it, and the crimson-dark enclosure that had so recently felt seductive now lit them in a dangerous glow, like the ops room of a submarine that had just taken a shuddering hit. Richard could be heard moving about the office next door. They stared at one another for a moment like cornered animals. Then Bella leaned over and whispered low in his ear, ‘Stay here – don’t make a sound.’

  She composed herself, as if she were about to walk onstage, and slipped out of the door. Baines heard the feigned note of surprise as she greeted her husband, and then some casual remark about not hearing him arrive. He held his breath as the voices drifted out of earshot. The width of a door stood between him and calamitous exposure; if Richard decided to enter the darkroom right now – and why should he not? – then all was lost. He had to trust to Bella’s nerve to clear an escape route for him … Minutes passed, and then the voices receded down the stairs. They were out of the office at least. He strained his ears trying to determine whether they were still in the house. When he could stand waiting no more he silently opened the door a crack and looked out; the fug of Richard’s cigar smoke hung in the air, and with a cracksman’s light-footedness he sneaked over to
the far door. His heart was thumping wildly against his ribs, but his wits were in cold command. Rescue work had taught him this much. As he stole silently down the stairs and out of the empty house he could feel a familiar surge of relief, only something was different. He wasn’t the virtuous rescuer now – he was just a housebreaker who had got away with it.

  He had yet to square things with Mavers. He was conscious of destroying one friendship unavoidably; he didn’t want to let another fall into disrepair. His vicious behaviour on the night of the looting incident had gone undiscussed, and, he sensed, unforgiven. In the last couple of weeks there was not the same ease between them, and though they maintained their professional front it was apparent that Mavers regarded him in a different and altogether less flattering light. Baines kept hoping that the clouds would suddenly disperse and his friend would talk to him again as of old, but the froideur he had detected didn’t thaw. He realised that he would either have to make an appeal to him or else keep silent and risk losing him for good. That both of them wore their reticence like a badge of honour made a reconciliation doubly difficult.

  One morning in the middle of April the squad was carrying out a routine investigation of damaged houses in Garston. The warden on duty had told them he was ‘fairly certain’ that all the occupants had been accounted for, so Mike Wo and Farrell had gone to help another squad with a big excavation nearby. Baines was searching a half-destroyed house with McGlynn and Mavers when he thought he heard a voice deep below the rubble. He stopped to listen, and it came again, high and querulous. ‘Help – get me out!’ Mavers looked over to where Baines was standing.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  Mavers nodded. ‘Sounded like an old woman.’

  Baines told McGlynn to go and fetch the warden. While they waited they heard the voice again, saying the same words, and now they knew they would have to start digging. Half an hour later they had created a makeshift tunnel with the aid of some old furniture that had survived the blast. As they inched along through the rubble they called reassurances to the old woman, who simply repeated her plea, ‘Get me out!’

  ‘She can’t hear us,’ said Mavers.

  ‘Maybe she’s deaf.’ Baines was remembering the old man who had stood outside the burning stable that night. As he continued to dig he mused on how it would be to experience the Blitz without benefit of hearing, the way a deaf person would feel its vibrations, its violent rending of the air, perhaps the knowledge that their last moments were near – and that the genetic injustice which had blighted their life was now conspiring in their certain death, or else –

  Mavers’s voice interrupted his morbid reverie. ‘I can’t work out where she is.’ They had excavated a tunnel roughly to the point where they thought the woman’s voice had been coming from, yet their torches revealed nothing beyond cataracts of rubble and smoking timber. Baines called out again, and received no reply. He looked at Mavers.

  ‘D’you suppose she’s –?’

  The word hung between them, unspoken. They had tried to save her. Now they would face another wretched hour searching for a corpse to drag out. He heard Mavers’s weary exhalation – and then the voice: ‘Help! Get me out!’

  ‘What in the name of fuck …’

  Baines pointed his torch into the crevice beneath a broken door, and twisted himself round to look beneath the splintered wood. He smelt it before he could see it.

  ‘You’re not gonna believe this,’ he said, and carefully drew from the stinking darkness a buckled metal birdcage, its beaky occupant intact. It cawed, ‘Help! Help!’

  ‘Ah, that beats the lot,’ said Farrell, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘A fucken parrot!’ The stentorian roar of his laughter had eventually calmed to a contented snigger. He shook his head as Mavers and Baines sat on the pavement, the battered cage between them. Now that the bird had been rescued it had fallen silent, a dusty fluttering of its feathers aside. Farrell continued, ‘Yous could go into business – pet rescue! Cats up trees, stray dogs and tha’ … parrots a speciality.’

  McGlynn was explaining to Mike what had happened, which started up another little ripple of shared hilarity. Baines could see this story becoming a real favourite back at the depot. As Farrell was leaving he called over his shoulder, ‘Eh! We’ve just heard on the wire – Long John Silver’s on his way over, said yous’d know what it’s about!’ His laughter receded into the distance. When the others had pushed off he handed Mavers a cigarette, and cleared his throat.

  ‘D’you think we’ll ever hear the end of this?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  He stole a glance at Mavers, trying to gauge his mood. ‘Liam – are we, like, straight … with each other?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  His tone was not encouraging. Baines took a deep breath, and exhaled. ‘I wanted to say, you know, sorry for that thing the other week, at the jeweller’s.’

  ‘Don’t say sorry to me, la’. It wasn’t my head you were stoven in.’

  ‘Maybe so, but … I’m apologising anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well … because I regret it – and because I don’t want to lose your good opinion.’

  Mavers looked at him, then shook his head and smiled. ‘“Lose your good opinion …” – you should hear the things you say.’

  Baines shrugged. ‘Just – forgive me, and I won’t pester you again.’

  ‘All right,’ Mavers sighed, ‘I forgive yer.’ Then he turned and picked up the cage. ‘Better go and find Polly a new home.’

  The pianist was languidly fingering the melody of ‘It Had to Be You’ in the far corner. The notes drifted and echoed around the high-ceilinged dining room of the Lisbon, one of very few restaurants in the city that was still serving a full à la carte menu. Baines had been here once before, years ago, and had preserved a particular memory of a fellow in white toque and apron standing at a table to carve the saddle of mutton, and of the diner whose plate had just been loaded handing this carver a tip for his trouble. It seemed the most perfectly old-fashioned thing Baines had ever witnessed. The room was beginning to fill with a lunchtime crowd of lawyers and other hommes d’affaires who he supposed ate here as a matter of course, whether there was a war on or not. A pair of ladies, both wearing elaborately structured hats adorned with feathers, were twittering away at a nearby table. For some reason he thought of the rescued parrot.

  He spotted Bella a moment later waving from across the room, and then she was striding towards him, leaving a diminutive waiter almost hurrying to catch up with her. Baines rose from the table as she arrived, and, momentarily thrown by a sense of caution, he extended a hand. Bella laughed it away and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘This is a treat!’ she said, folding herself into the banquette seat and smoothing a napkin on to her lap. ‘Gosh, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have linen on the table.’

  She was wearing a damson-coloured woollen jacket with matching skirt. Above the collar of the jacket a loop of tiny pearls glimmered on the narrow column of her throat, matching the refulgent liveliness of her eyes. He found himself smiling helplessly.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing – I was just admiring your pearls.’

  ‘Oh, they’re nothing but paste, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well … they look awfully nice on you.’

  A bottle of champagne arrived; when they clinked their glasses Baines said, ‘Happy birthday,’ and then pushed a slim package across the table towards her. She looked at him with humorous disapproval, having previously insisted that she didn’t want presents.

  ‘I told you –’

  ‘I know you did. But open it anyway.’

  It was a silver cigarette case with a mother-of-pearl inlay. He had gone back to the jeweller’s on Lord Street where he had bought the garnet brooch for May. He had baulked at the idea of giving Bella something to wear – rings and necklaces, anything that touched the skin, seemed to trespass on the uxorious – but a cigarette case
, he felt, carried in it both the straightforwardness of friendship and the ulterior associations of intimacy.

  ‘Tom, it’s beautiful. Really.’ She opened it, and saw the inscription, something else that he had hesitated over. The usual formulations seemed either presumptuous or else dangerous. Even to have it inscribed with his name seemed to court trouble, so he directed the jeweller to engrave, hidden beneath the band, BT-TB. He was pleased with the mirror image their initials created. She held his hand beneath the table until the arrival of their waiter obliged her to release it. They both had the consommé – as the restaurant preferred to call it – and the lemon sole. At one point their heads were turned by the complaints of a diner at the next banquette, who called sharply to the waiter, ‘Do you call this rare?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Well, I don’t. Take it back.’

  Bella looked over to Baines, her eyebrows conspiratorially hoisted. ‘What a disagreeable man,’ she said, sotto voce. ‘And to think he’s eating food most people could scarcely dream of …’

  Baines looked about the room. ‘To sit here you wouldn’t know there’s a war on. It doesn’t seem to belong to the world outside.’

  Bella nodded. ‘Or maybe we don’t belong to it. I have a vague memory of my parents taking us to a restaurant like this in London, it must have been just after the last war ended. I suppose with Daddy being in the FO they dined out a lot.’

  ‘Do you still remember them clearly?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mummy in particular. She was quite a firebrand, with the suffrage movement and so on – did I ever tell you she went to prison for it?’

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘I didn’t know until my aunt told me years later. She said it was quite a scandal among the family – though Mummy was very proud of it!’ She laughed, but she sounded sad. ‘I do so wish she were still here. I always imagined we’d be great pals …’

  ‘I saw the photograph of her on your dresser. You look a lot like her.’

  ‘Do I?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m glad she named you Bella. You’ve lived up to it.’