The Rescue Man

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘Ironic name,’ McQuarrie muttered.

  ‘Anyway, the company wanted to use the site as a warehouse, but found that the library had been so solidly constructed that it would be more expensive to tear down than to leave alone. So they built a partition wall around it, then – seem to have forgotten all about it.’

  ‘As did everybody else.’

  They walked through the reading room, its wide bays ranged to left and right, and ascended the iron staircase to the mezzanine. As they looked out over the relic, magnificent in spite of its neglect, Baines stole a sidelong look at McQuarrie’s lined, worn features, his lightly trembling frame, and was struck by a realisation that the old man was probably of a similar age to the building itself, though he decided that it might not be endearing to point this out. The professor had turned his measuring gaze upon him, and said in a more confiding voice, ‘And what of you, Mr Baines? I notice a limp – were you …?’

  ‘I worked in rescue. During the Blitz. I was lucky to survive.’

  ‘Rescue, was it?’ McQuarrie nodded, understanding, and made a small gesture that encompassed the room. ‘Seems you have a talent for it.’

  The stillness of the place enveloped them, but Baines, who would once have felt nervous in the face of his reticent tutor and perhaps have resorted to babble, had learned to live with silence – to enjoy it, even.

  A quarter of an hour later they heard the slow creak of a car braking outside. McQuarrie lifted his chin in acknowledgement.

  ‘That’ll be my driver returned.’

  ‘Your – son?’ Baines had never enquired into the professor’s family life; he knew only that he had been married.

  ‘Nephew. He’s been visiting, which is fortunate given my reduced mobility. You wouldn’t know that I was once my college’s champion sprinter, eh?’ Baines smiled, privately bemused by the idea of McQuarrie as a young man at all. They emerged on to the street, and the old man extended his hand in farewell. ‘I’ll thank you for your time, sir. Keep me informed about your plans. And don’t let this place slip away.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Baines. When the car pulled away he waved to it, but the professor did not look back.

  He had a second visitor that afternoon. He heard footsteps clunking around the entrance hall, and believing it to be the nightwatchman arriving early he went down to investigate.

  ‘Ah, the Howard Carter of Toxteth!’ drawled Adrian Wallace, and bowed deeply. How odd, thought Baines, that he too had thought of Carter on the day of his discovery. And how annoying that it should be this portly popinjay who had reminded him.

  ‘Hullo, Adrian. To what do I owe the, er, pleasure?’

  ‘You have to ask? Dear boy, I’m here on behalf of our city’s favourite newspaper. This little discovery of yours is quite the sensation.’

  Wallace, unlike the valetudinarian professor, had changed barely at all. His face retained its florid pudginess, and his wavy grey hair had not thinned. Baines made a quick inventory of his attire and found that this, too, adhered to the same flamboyant bad taste of old. The brown-and-cream co-respondent shoes were fine, if you happened to be on a cruise down the Nile with Evelyn Waugh in the 1920s; the striped blazer was similarly anachronistic, a throwback to an Edwardian sports day, and it clashed horribly with the paisley ascot he wore at his neck. None of the clothes seemed to match, and what made it almost poignant was the evident pride their owner exhibited in them. His whole bearing spoke of one who considered himself well dressed. The man was preposterous. And yet, Baines could not deny to himself a reluctant pleasure in seeing Wallace again. Puffed-up and preening as he was, there hovered a spirit of gaiety about him that he found hard to resist.

  ‘So,’ Wallace said, as they entered the main hall, ‘this was built by Peter what’s-his-name in tribute to his dead – father?’

  ‘Brother. And the name is Peter Eames.’

  Wallace, nodding unconcernedly, took out a small notebook, licked his thumb and found a fresh page. He surveyed the room for no longer than a minute before turning to Baines. ‘You found this … how?’

  As he went through the story of Jack’s work on bomb-damaged buildings and his chance mention of Norfolk Street, Wallace impassively took notes in shorthand, interrupting himself with an occasional grunt or nod: an old pro at work. After a cursory checking of dates and names, Wallace recapped his fountain pen, pocketed his notebook and yawned.

  ‘Anywhere to drink round here?’

  Baines was astonished. ‘Is that it – I mean, have you got all you need?’

  ‘Of course. Look, I’m sorry, but this will only be a small item. You may have noticed there’s still a war on. That takes priority. But in compensation for your disappointment let me buy you an ale – on the paper.’

  Baines, embarrassed by his own naivety, explained that he would have to wait for the nightwatchman, but he directed Wallace to a pub at the end of Jamaica Street and promised to join him presently.

  Half an hour later he found the journalist seated at the bar and absorbed in The Times crossword, a haze of unfamiliar tobacco smoke wafting around him. His Turkish cigarette, parked on the lip of an ashtray, was raffishly affixed to an ivory holder. No, he really hasn’t changed, thought Baines. Wallace glanced up as he slid on to the stool next to his.

  ‘I’m stuck on seven down,’ he said, tapping the newspaper with his pen. ‘I think it’s Wordsworth – “Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, / And shares the nature of –” something, eight letters, probably ending n-i-t-y. I thought it might be “humanity”, but …’

  Baines shook his head. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s “infinity”.’

  Wallace scrutinised the clue again. ‘By Jove – I think you’re right. That fits with “paralysis” on ten across. Splendid!’ He filled in the letters, then reread the quotation. ‘Wordsworth, eh – that miserable sod.’

  Having ordered them a round of Higsons and chasers, Wallace squinted at Baines through his smoke cloud.

  ‘So, what’ll become of your library?’

  Baines gave a diffident shrug. ‘I really need to find some institution that will take it on. I thought of applying to the Corporation –’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Wallace, crisply. ‘They’d just as soon knock it down.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought, with it being a site of historical interest, they might want to preserve the place.’

  ‘My dear chap, this is Liverpool we’re talking about. “Preserve”? When has this city ever honoured the principles of culture or heritage above the cold brute urge to make money? You know as well as I do that the place has always been a mercantile centre – and if a thing isn’t paying its way it’s either knocked down or left to rot.’

  ‘Well, what about the Walker Art Gallery? That’s one of the finest –’

  ‘Private investment. I don’t deny that Liverpool’s merchant men have made philanthropic contributions from time to time. But now they’re all moving out and taking their money with them. I’m telling you, it’s all up with this place.’ He paused to take a drag of his cigarette. Wallace’s conversation seldom invited; he simply asserted and pronounced. Baines sensed that he was there only to provide an audience.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Straightforward economics. It’s relied on the port for too long. Once textile manufacture in Lancashire began to fail the writing was on the wall. Liverpool has never had any skilled industry to speak of – you’ve got generations who’ve only known casual labour. And that won’t last. It’s becoming the kind of city that people leave, in numbers.’

  ‘Someone else once said that to me,’ said Baines, distantly.

  ‘Well, he was right. And once the war ends, if it ever does, you’ll see even more following them.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong. I agree that there’ll be economic worries. But you underestimate the people – their resilience.’

  Wallace sighed loftily. ‘Resilience, as you call it, will not create employment. It will not
prevent the industrial centre shifting southwards. As for the people – your attachment is touching, but I don’t think the rest of the country sees us quite so sentimentally.’

  ‘I don’t really care how the rest of the country sees us.’

  ‘And that, if I may say, is an attitude typical of the native. Liverpool doesn’t care – about anything. Resilience! That may have been true once – the transient population off the boats kept it going, the Negroes, the Chinese, the Irish. They had to look for work or else they starved. Now it’s different. You’ve got a people born and bred here, and all I see in them is apathy and inertia. It would kill them to organise anything. Apart from a protest. You can almost hear it in the accent.’

  ‘The accent?’

  ‘Yes! Aside from everything else they can hardly be bothered to open their mouths to speak. The whole bloody city sounds like it’s got a cold in the head. The dampness in the air is partly to blame – not to mention our unfortunate proximity to Wales and Ireland. But really, what other place could have fashioned such a hideous accent for itself? Nobody will ever take us seriously talking the way we do.’

  Baines laughed at this. He noticed that when Wallace talked of Liverpudlians he kept shifting between his use of ‘us’ and ‘them’. ‘Where did yours go, by the way? Your accent, I mean.’

  ‘My mother had the wisdom to send me to elocution lessons when I was at school. “Electrocution”, as I so wittily called it. A teacher drummed most of it out of me, and I’m glad he did. Life’s hard enough without a disreputable accent holding you back.’

  Baines shook his head, feeling a sudden twitch of indignation. ‘I have to say – I worked with fellers during the Blitz who had the strongest Liverpool accents you’ve ever heard, and there was nothing “disreputable” about them. They were brave, quite unimaginably brave, and they risked their lives to save people.’

  ‘I was talking only about the perception of the accent.’

  ‘Well, it’s a misperception. However grating it sounds to your ear, it has no bearing on character. And as for “apathy”, you’d think differently if you’d worked with a rescue squad during a raid.’

  Wallace, realising he had hit a nerve, held up his hands as if he were patting an invisible wall. ‘Dear boy, forgive. I don’t wish to blacken the name of our good citizens. They’ve been brave as lions in this war, everyone knows that. It’s after the war I’m worried about, because I tell you now, there’ll be nothing left for them. The port, the jobs – kaput. If you have any sense you’ll get out of here.’

  ‘So why haven’t you?’

  Wallace sighed again. ‘I’ve often meant to. Perhaps I’ve become complacent. I have an easy life, the paper pays me a decent screw … it would require too much effort for me to leave now. There, you see – Liverpool apathy in a nutshell!’

  Baines looked around the bar they sat in, drinkers huddled in twos and threes, pinched faces lit in the yolky pub light. An old man was shuffling about the room, selling the Echo’s late edition. As he passed them Wallace swivelled round on his stool and bought one. He briefly perused the headlines.

  ‘Hmm. “NAZI SECRET WEAPON – MINISTERS’ FEAR.” Seems they’ve developed some kind of robot bomb … London will have to batten down the hatches again.’ He yawned, and continued riffling through the paper as if he were searching for something. ‘Ah, here we are. This Happy Breed, opening at the Forum today. Reviewed by – Adrian Wallace.’ He read it with unabashed interest, as if it might have been written by someone else. ‘I’ll have to post this down to Noël.’

  ‘So you’re still in touch,’ said Baines. He had never quite determined whether Wallace’s association with ‘Noël’ was an elaborately nurtured fantasy or not.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, not taking his eyes from the review. He chuckled, and read aloud, ‘“In the role of the mother Celia Johnson is an exemplar of enduring, resourceful womanhood. She has about her a peculiar refinement; she looks like the English Home Counties, or perhaps one might say the English Home Counties look like her.”’ Baines wasn’t sure that the line merited quotation, but when its author looked to him he offered a wan smile of approval. When Wallace next spoke his tone had become more musing.

  ‘I saw that friend of yours recently, by the way.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bella – Bella Tanqueray? I almost walked right past her, actually …’

  Baines felt his heart plunge headlong through a trapdoor. Its descent was so sudden he feared it must show on his face. He kept hold of his voice as carefully as a rider with a skittish horse.

  ‘Whereabouts did you see her?’

  ‘Oh, I was down in London – gone to see some bloody awful play. I was hurrying down the Strand when I spotted this face and thought – don’t I know her? So I stopped and risked a “hullo”. And then there was no doubt about it.’

  Baines nodded, his mind racing in several directions at once. His longing to know – about her, about their meeting, about the last three years – pressed on him as an almost physical ache, but Wallace was not the man to whom he could betray that longing. Caution still governed his tongue.

  ‘The Strand?’ He registered his mind playing a trick of misdirection. ‘How – is she?’

  ‘Well,’ said Wallace, with a shrugging laugh, ‘I hardly had time to find out! She was with another lady, who had a child. She said she’d been living in London for a time – I didn’t realise she’d lost her husband –’ He stopped, and turned a curious look on Baines. ‘I presume from your questions that you’ve not seen her in a while?’

  ‘No. After Richard died she just – disappeared. It must be –’ he feigned a casual calculation ‘– three years since I saw her.’

  A sly gleam had entered Wallace’s eyes. ‘Hmm. You know, I always imagined there was something going on between you two.’

  Baines forced a disbelieving laugh that felt like ashes in his mouth. ‘As you see, we’re hardly close. Did she seem – very different?’

  Wallace continued blithely, ‘Still beautiful, I should say. She’s one of those women who’d charm the grey off your hair. One can’t imagine her languishing in widowhood …’

  Baines looked down, and said nothing.

  ‘I had a feeling she’d have liked to talk, but she was with a friend, as I said, and I was on my way to a matinee …’ As Wallace proceeded to describe the play, Baines maintained the illusion of listening – a nod, a smile, a punctuating ‘hmm’ – while his mind tried to unknot its torturing coils of speculation, wonder and regret. Bella. After all this time … did the sight of Wallace cause her to think of him? If so, was she disconcerted, or indifferent? He was surprised at the intensity of his need to know. His ability to go for long periods without thinking of her had convinced him he had mastered that impulse, and even his awkward habit of glancing behind as he walked seemed to have receded of late. He had accepted the idea that he might never be able to expunge the memory of her, but had thought that to board it up in some dark chamber might be an adequate substitute. This too, he now realised, had proven unreliable. Wallace was talking on, charmed as ever by the necessary sound of his own voice, but after some minutes even he had noticed how quiet his drinking companion had become.

  ‘It’s worrying you, isn’t it?’ The question seemed so sudden and well aimed it caught him off guard.

  ‘– Sorry?’

  ‘The library,’ said Wallace, guessing wrong. ‘Look, I’ll tell the editor we should go two columns on it – make a bit of a fuss. It won’t persuade the Corporation to help out, but it might earn a stay of execution. In the meantime, let’s get another one in.’ He called to the barman, as Baines murmured his thanks.

  By the time they emerged from the pub the street lamps were decanting their frowsy glare over the city. Wallace had kept up his inexhaustible chatter – he never seemed to talk about any given subject for less than an hour – and it satisfied both of them. Baines had no wish to talk, Wallace had no wish to listen. His meaty face flus
hed with drink, Wallace called Baines back as they were about to part and said, ‘You should come and have lunch at the Lisbon – we’ll continue our dialogue on the state of Liverpool. Cheer-o, then.’

  He sauntered off, his dainty step rather at odds with his top-heavy bulk. Lunch at the Lisbon, thought Baines – not in this lifetime, friend. He walked on towards the centre, oblivious to the clangour of trams and buses heaving past. The place seemed to him subtly altered now that he knew for certain that Bella was elsewhere. He supposed he had always known, but Wallace’s encounter with her down in London had made it an incontrovertible fact. She had never loved Liverpool; she had made that known the very first time they met.

  These thoughts were preoccupying him when he looked up and noticed people shoaling around on the pavement in front of him. He was passing a cinema, its lights glaring in the dusk, and on impulse he stopped to check what was showing. The title signalled to him irresistibly: This Happy Breed. He smiled to think of Wallace proudly reciting from his review a couple of hours ago. The early-evening show was about to begin, and minutes later he found himself settled in the stale, tobacco-smogged dark amid dozens of faceless strangers. It was not an especially good film, for despite the sincerity of Coward’s chronicle – twenty years in the life of an ‘ordinary’ suburban family – the underlying tone of condescension was too strong to be ignored. It was as if the writer were being the soft-hearted patron, instead of the beady-eyed artist. And yet Baines found himself absorbed by it. Just to surrender to the silver and black ghosts at play inside this glistening aquarium was enough to beguile two hours that would otherwise have been wasted in sorrowful moping. It was like a very abrupt holiday from the gravitational burden of being oneself. And Wallace – garrulous, conceited, amiable Wallace – was right about Celia Johnson.

  Three days later Baines found it, halfway down page five of the Echo, under the headline LIBRARY DISCOVERED IN BLITZ RUIN. It was run over two columns, as Wallace had promised. A smudged photograph of the facade accompanied the article.